The Benefits of Customizing Your Facebook Fan Page

Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 2:24 pm  

Creating a Facebook fan page for your business is absolutely free. The problem is that most pages look the same, with a “wall” for comments and places for photos. If you’re lucky, someone will start a conversation in the “discussions” tab, too. These pages are, simply put, somewhat boring.

The most successful Facebook fan pages are the ones that have been customized. They include modified landing pages, encouraging visitors to take advantage of a special discount or deal offered only to those who LIKE the page, before sending them to the main wall. Many include special tabs for coupons and some even run regular contests. The pages can be colourful, bright, and engaging – much like little websites contained within the social media platform.

In fact, they make it possible to continue your company’s branding efforts right inside of Facebook… making your fan page a natural extension of your main website.

Ease of Use

The truth is that most people using the web today have relatively short attention spans. If they are on your fan page, they’ll want to find all of the information needed right there. While some will gladly go visit your company’s main website, others will reject the idea of being redirected elsewhere. Customizing your Facebook fan page will make your visitors feel as though they’ve landed on your website. You can add videos and information specific to different localities, if you choose. The trick is to make your visitors feel as though they’re found a one-stop-shop for information about what you do. Don’t forget to include a customized contact page so that your potential clients can get in touch without leaving a public message on your wall.

You’ll Earn More Followers

Customizing your Facebook fan page will play a significant role in helping you to grow your fan base. The more engaging your content, the more likely people will be to participate in your discussions. Some major corporations offer free samples (via mail) to those who LIKE their pages and fill out registration forms.

The goal here is twofold. You’re not only generating interest in your products but you will also create a platform for the receipt of feedback. Those who receive those samples will likely come back and share their thoughts about the product. You can use this information to make changes or enhancements. Those who love what you are offering will, of course, turn into regular customers.

Of course, the same outcome can be achieved by giving away a coupon (or other gift) that is “downloadable” online. You can require your new “fan” to LIKE your page before they receive their gift or you can add an email “optin” form and require that they subscribe to your email database.

Encouraging Interaction

A customized Facebook fan page will encourage your visitors to spend time on your page, interacting with your company and with other fans. It’s also a great way to encourage your fans to participate in the growth of your page. Jillian Michaels, for example, has a space on her fan page where those who have used her products and workout DVDs can post before and after pictures. Not only is she encouraging user participation, but she’s gathering proof of the effectiveness of her products for those who are still on the edge.

Growing Your Fanbase & Gaining New Customers

Facebook now receives more website traffic than Google’s search engine. This is why it is so important for you to ensure that your company has a presence there. Facebook users are going to talk about the products and companies they love, and they are much more likely to speak well of those who engage them in a fun and informative way.

Another benefit comes from the “viral” effect on Facebook. As each new fan LIKES your page, that information is displayed on THEIR wall. In turn, their friends will see that they LIKED your fan page and this will bring you new customers and the ability to grow your fanbase virally.

Customizing your Facebook presence will give you a better chance of surviving in the growing marketplace – and you’ll simply love the way your enhanced page looks.

Filed under: Facebook Fan Page

Google Places SEO Tips (Part Two)

Saturday, March 12th, 2011 at 5:25 pm  

Towards the end of 2010, Google made a number of changes to the algorithm that determines the position of your Google Places listing. It used to be that businesses without websites ranked equally as well as those without, but this is no longer the case.

This is good news for all businesses who have a company website but not so good for those that don’t. While having a website for your business has always been a good idea, it’s become more vital as a result of this change.

Here are seven additional tips to help you improve your Google Places’ rankings:

1. Pay close attention to your “on page” Search Engine Optimization. This includes the keywords/keyword phrases you are targeting, all standard SEO practices, and ensuring that your business name, address and phone is listed exactly on your site as it is in your Google Places listing.

2. In addition to building backlinks to each page of your site, it’s also a good idea to build backlinks to your primary “citation” references (usually found on directory sites like Yelp, InsiderPages, CitySearch, etc.)

3. Build backlinks to your Google Places page itself. As most won’t do this, this will give you an added edge.

4. Do some social bookmarking of both the pages where your citation references are found as well as your Google Places listing itself.

5. Use a phone number with a local area code for your primary number. If you’re currently using a toll-free phone number, I recommend you get a local “virtual number” and use that instead. You can list your toll-free number as a secondary number.

6. Instead of uploading your images direct to your listing, choose to add them from the web. I recommend you upload your images to either Flickr or Panoramio and make sure to “geo tag” your images with your businesses’ address/location information.

7. As with your images, it’s wise to “geo tag” your videos as well. This causes your videos to play a dual role… they increase your ability to rank because you’ve chosen to add them to your listing and because they are now considered to be a citation as well.

In the end, optimizing your Google Places listing is very much like optimizing your website. Your goal should be to give as much helpful information as possible that will benefit those looking for a business like yours and to outperform your competition.

As it takes a significant amount of work to thoroughly optimize a Google Places listing, you will frequently find that your competitors are lacking in one or more of the areas mentioned in this article.

Filed under: Google Places

Google Places SEO Tips (Part One)

Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 10:02 am  

Through Google Places, formerly called Google Local, you have the ability to create a high-quality free listing for your business whether you currently have a website or not.

While it’s relatively easy to create the listing, it can be much more challenging to get your listing to appear on the first page for the keyword phrases you are targeting.

To that end, I offer the following tips:

1. Thorough Research

Before creating (or claiming) your listing it is important that you do thorough research. You should know what keyword phrases you want to rank for and what your competition looks like for the terms you intend to target.

I recommend that you do not optimize your listing for any keyword phrase that does not currently have a Google Places listing associated with it. If you search Google for a phrase and don’t see a Google Places listing, it’s best to choose another phrase.

After you’ve come up with the keyword phrases you plan to target (I recommend 5) it’s wise to study your competitors listings to see whether their listings are complete. Have they filled in every field? What keywords are they targeting? Have they used their maximum allotment of photos and videos?

The answers to these questions will give you an idea as to whether you can expect to outrank one of the listings currently found on the first page.

2. Fill out every field completely

There are approximately 20 fields to fill out when completing your Place Page listing. It is imperative that you fill out each and every field as the omission of even one can negatively affect the ranking of your Places Page.

3. Utilize every available category

Google will suggest one category specific to your business and require you to use it. However, you can also add more categories and it is important to do so.

Using your keyword research, use your remaining keywords as the category names until you have used every additional category available to you.

4. You’re allotted ten photos — use ‘em.

It may seem basic, but it’s true. Each business owner is afforded the same opportunities when creating their Google Places listings but many don’t take advantage of them.

Google allows you to use up to ten photos and I encourage you to use every one of them. You can also enhance your optimization efforts by renaming your images to include your keyword phrases before uploading them.

5. You’re allotted five videos — use them too.

As it is a bit harder to create videos than photos, you’ll frequently find that your competitors fail to use their entire allotment.

However, you can create short “slideshow” type videos (which are merely a collection of photos put to motion) quite easily. If you search Google for the phrase, “slideshow maker,” you’ll find a number of tools that can help you make these types of videos online.
You’ll need to upload each video to YouTube.com before you can add it to your listing.

6. Understand citations and build as many of them as possible.

A citation occurs whenever an online reference is found for your business and services. In Google’s eyes, it’s a validation that your business truly exists and that it offers the type of services you list on your Places page.

It’s important that your citations closely match the information found on your Places page. You can create your own citations by submitting your information to a variety of online directories including Yellow Pages, Super Pages, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Yahoo Local, Localize and a number of others.

7. Get reviews and ratings.

Google will automatically display reviews it finds on sites like yelp.com, insiderpages.com and demandforce.com. Having a lot of positive reviews is not only helpful for your Google Places SEO, it can help you get business that might have gone to a competitor otherwise.

Ask your existing customers to post a review of your business on the site of your choice and if necessary, offer them some form of bonus for completing the task.

If you spend the time to follow each of these seven tips, you’ll be well on your way to getting your Places page listed on the first page for a variety of terms.

Just like traditional SEO however, don’t make the mistake of neglecting your listing after completion. While you’ve completed the majority of the work, it’s wise to continually build new citations, get more reviews and ratings and respond publicly to the reviews you receive.

Filed under: Google Places

Improving The SEO Of Your WordPress Run Website

Thursday, February 24th, 2011 at 3:01 pm  

WordPress is a great piece of CMS/blogging software. You can create wonderful websites with it and they don’t have to look like a blog or even include common blog elements.

While most search engines love WordPress run websites, there are a number of things you can do to improve your ability to rank well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Here are three tips to improving the SEO of your WordPress run website:

1. Permalinks

Each time you create a new page on your site or write a new blog post, WordPress will create a specific page (and corresponding website url) for this content. The url is generated dynamically by WordPress and by default, it’s not that great.

Here’s an example…

Let’s say you create (and publish) a post named, “Welcome To Our Website.” If this was your very first post, the generated url would look something like: YourDomain.com/?p=1

Do you see that “?p=1″ portion after the main domain name?

That bit is called the “Permalink” and like I said earlier, is generated dynamically by WordPress as soon as you publish the content. The problem is that “?p=1″ looks a bit strange to human visitors and tells the search engines nothing about the content.

So, it’s best to change your Permalink structure to something that looks better to humans and is meaningful to the search engines. Although there are a variety of choices to choose from, I prefer using the custom “/%postname%/” structure.

With this change made, our “Welcome To Our Website” post would now get a website url structure like this: YourDomain.com/welcome-to-our-website

Isn’t this a lot better?

You bet it is! The url now makes sense to anyone visiting the website and tells the search engine more about the content that is to be found on the page.

If you are careful to include your Primary Keyword Phrase in your Page/Post Titles, you will improve the “on page” optimization for that particular term.

2. SEO Plugins

There are literally thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from and hundreds related specifically to Search Engine Optimization. It would be impossible for me to tell you all about each of them in this short article so I won’t even try.

Instead, I’ll just tell you a little about the most popular SEO Plugin for WordPress, called the “All In One SEO Pack,” by Michael Torbert.

After installing and activating the All In One SEO Pack plugin, you will gain a number of benefits including:

• Full control over the “meta title” for your homepage and for every Page/Post you create.
• Full control over the “meta page description” for your homepage and for every Page/Post you create.
• Full control over the “meta keywords” for your homepage and for every Page/Post you create (if you’re one who still enters meta keyword information).
• The ability to reduce the chances of duplicate content occurring on your site.
• And many more benefits as well.

3. Website Performance Plugins

More and more, the search engines are placing importance on how fast your website is and how fast your pages load. How important this is to SEO is up for debate but most experts agree that it’s factor in. As a responsive website is also beneficially for your visitors, it’s certainly something you should pay close attention to.

There are a number of plugins that will help you improve your website’s performance but one popular one is called, “WP Super Cache,” by Donncha.

What it does is rather technical but I will do my best to explain it as simply as I can.

Instead of serving up the dynamic WordPress pages (which are run by PHP), the plugin generates static html files. After the html file is generated, your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier (and slower loading) WordPress PHP scripts.

The end result?

Your pages will load faster. This will make your visitors happy, the search engines happy and your web host happy too.

Although there are many more things you can do to improve the SEO of your WordPress run website, these three tips will give your site a boost and a leg-up on your competition.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation

Online Marketing Is Customer Centered

Sunday, February 13th, 2011 at 11:33 am  

An old adage in sales is that “the customer is always right.” Over the years as retailer grew large, profit margins faded and experienced salespeople grew scarce, there seemed to be less interest in the customer.

People grudgingly accepted the lack of customer service as the price they paid for cheap products. They complained, but they bought anyway because that’s just the way it was. Online shopping, while distant, is more customer centered than many local retailers.

To develop a rapport with customers in a virtual environment, online marketers had to establish trust and they did it with money back guarantees plus fast delivery. This customer-centered approach not only created trust as planned, but also caused a surprising number of customers to ignore the local stores and shop at major retailers’ online sites.

As a developing Internet marketer, you can learn from this brief history. You want to position your product as user friendly and open for refund. Granted, this is easier with downloads and information products than with shipped products.

But even shipped products that offer guaranteed, no questions asked refunds actually have fewer refunds because the consumer feels free to try to return it if they’re not satisfied. Before the sale, you want to provide ample information about the product – including several photo views if appropriate.

Think about the questions a buyer might ask and have the answers ready before the question arrives. An easy way to provide this information is with an expanded FAQ (frequently asked questions) page. Make sure there’s a link to the FAQ page from each product page.

If your product requires assembly after delivery, post an extra copy of how to assemble it. Even better is to post a video showing and telling how to do the assembly. Another great idea is to post videos showing alternative ways to use the product. This gives buyers options that they might not have considered.

To be consumer-centered means that you can be reached easily. Post your email (or that of your customer service center) and a phone number or SKYPE name. If you are the “Customer service center,” send those emails to a designated email box and answer them promptly.

If you can’t, at least set up an autoresponder saying that you received the customer’s email and are working on the solution. The more ways you can be contacted, the more the customer feels at ease that you aren’t hiding in some unreachable corner of cyberspace. You can’t shake hands with your online customer, but you can create an ongoing buying relationship by demonstrating that you’re a customer-centered online marketer.

Filed under: Marketing Strategies

Traffic Conversion by Doing the Unexpected

Sunday, February 6th, 2011 at 12:22 pm  

Techniques for traffic conversion are well known in the Internet marketing community, but most that are used are basic. They work well, but not spectacularly. What you need is to find a new twist on traffic conversion.

Perhaps what you need isn’t something different, but a different approach. You might find that taking an unexpected route is just what your site needs to increase buyer response.

Replace “want” with “fear.” Sure it’s great that a viewer wants your product, but desire isn’t as strong as fear. Make your sales copy emphasize the scarcity of the product and how terrible it would be to miss out.

“You can spend hours trying to make those purchased templates look like a custom website but you’re stuck with a few colors and choices. Meanwhile, marketers with XYZ Web Page Super Package are up and running in an hour with the look of expensive graphics.”

Now the reader pictures the competition making money while he’s still fighting with fonts. That’s fear – fear of being left out.

Long sales copy works only if it’s not boring. In an effort to create the typical long sales letter, inexperienced writers just repeat the same information with little variation. This isn’t the time to “do it yourself.”

Professional writers know how to get that same information across in fresh ways so that each section of the sales letter is familiar, yet not repetitious. If you don’t have the skill do to that, then hire a professional copywriter. What you pay for a good sales letter is a direct investment in traffic conversion. Consider it a one-time expense for endless traffic conversion opportunities.

Raise the price. But wait, if sales are falling, why would charging more be better? You may have under-priced your product, which gives it a lower value in the viewer’s perspective. Add another section or package with a second information product.

Change the cover design. Add new delivery options so that a buyer can choose eBook, CD or MP3 audio product formats. These small changes give you a reason to bump up the price. And don’t get chicken by going from £7.95 to £12.95. Take the price up to £17 or £27 and hype the promotion. You can do a limited time discount – “Order now to get the product for £12.95 because in 48 hours, the price goes to £17!”

Make a Limited Time Offer. Create urgency by offering a one time purchase to a limited number of buyers for a short time. This plays to fear (“what if I miss it”) and scarcity (“I want it before someone else gets it”).

Then take it off the market at the end of the offer. Nothing discredits you more than repeated “limited time” runs. Remove the product, make a few changes or updates and add something else to the package. Then – and only then – can you bring back the product without losing face and buyers.

Filed under: Marketing Strategies

The Importance Of Building Quality Backlinks

Sunday, January 30th, 2011 at 2:00 pm  

If you’ve studied SEO for any length of time, you know that there are things you must do to your webpages themselves, called “on page optimization,” and things external to your website, called “off page optimization.”

While there are a number of tactics that fall into the off page optimization category, the most important is the building of quality backlinks. A backlink occurs whenever an image, a piece of text, or your full website url is linked “back” to your site from some other.

The best links are those that are “one-way,” meaning that a site links to you but you do not link back to them. It can be beneficial to “trade links” (called reciprocal linking) with another webmaster for the purpose of gaining website traffic but it’s not a strategy that will improve your search engine rankings or SEO.

As each page of your website should be optimized for 1-3 keyword phrases, it’s best to build “anchor text links” (aka text links, hypertext links, hyper links, contextual links) that include the keyword phrases you are targeting. The more links you build, the better your ranking will be for the terms contained in the links.

Here’s a perfect example of this in real life:

If you search Google.com for the term, “click here,” you will find a page that gives access to the free Adobe Reader (a page off of Adobe.com) ranked in the first position.

This is an interesting/valuable observation as their page is not optimized for this keyword phrase at all. You won’t find it in their Page Title, their Meta Page Description, or anywhere on the actual page itself.

Then how is this page ranked in the top spot for this term?

It’s happening for one reason, and one reason only… a huge amount of backlinks have been built by webmasters from around the world, that link to this page. Want to guess what keyword phrase they’ve used when creating their links? That’s right… they’re linking the term, “Click Here,” to the specific page that is ranking in the first position!

As I write this, Yahoo reports that 2,878,898 links are pointing to this page.

This shouldn’t be taken to mean that you should abandon your on page optimization efforts, but it does reveal the power of anchor text backlinks. The more links you build to your pages that include your targeted keyword phrases, the more likely your pages are to rank well for the terms… it’s just that simple.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation

The Difference Between a Long and Short Tail

Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 4:03 pm  

Long tail is a big buzzword in marketing these days. The term “Long Tail” was initially coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson in an article in Wired magazine. The term was initially used to describe the niche business strategy that is used by companies like Amazon.

Marketers are now using the term to describe the phenomenon that “long tail keywords” could get more traffic combined than the broader, more general keywords. For example, let’s say the keyword “dog training” gets approximately 2,420 searches per day.

Then you start looking at the long-tail keyword phrases for that niche – dog training collars, dog potty training, dog training careers, and so on. When you add up all of the long-tail keywords, which are easier to dominate in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), it equals more traffic than if you simply went after Dog Training.

If you have 10,000,000 websites competing for the term “dog training,” but only 361,000 competing for “dog training DVD,” then you have a far greater chance of reaching the first page than you would if you were competing against 10 million pages.

Being ranked number one for a broad term like “mp3” would probably take a truly exceptional SEO expert many months of very hard work and a very large budget for buying backlinks to accomplish.

Ranking for a term like “1970s rock mp3s” might be much easier – because it’s a long tail. If the term gets 50 searches per day, and you rank number three, then you might get 20 or 30 hits to your website per day.

If you rank number 30,714 for the term “mp3,” you won’t get any traffic from that at all. Finding good long tail keywords is very important, because you need those long tail phrases to bring in traffic.

While some marketers shun long-tail keywords, believing they have to rank well for the prime keyword phrases, others are using it to reach a demographic that has money in hand. Would you rather get traffic from people searching the word “golf” or from someone who types this into Google: “Taylor Made R580XD Titanium Driver?”

The person who gets more specific with their searches is usually someone who’s ready to buy – someone who knows what they want. The person typing in golf may want to know its history for a project, might want to take a golf vacation, or could be interested in attending a local tournament. That won’t do you any good if your site sells golf clubs, but the long tail phrase will cater to that crowd.

Pick your keywords and phrases carefully. Separate your broad, generic terms from your long-tail phrases so that you can monitor your Google SERP positioning and see how your keyword list is performing for you.

Filed under: Keyword Research

Don’t Most Web Designers Know SEO?

Friday, January 7th, 2011 at 10:16 am  

The world of web design is complex and fraught with misinformation. Chief among them is the belief that most web designers have a solid understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In truth, the exact opposite is true. Most web designers know very little about SEO and this includes those with college degrees in Website Design.

A friend of mine received a Bachelor’s Degree in Web Design from a reputable University. When I asked her what she was taught concerning SEO she replied… “Not much.”

They gave her their definition and spent a little time explaining the basic concepts. However, they weren’t actually trained in the art and science we call SEO. They were told that work should be performed by an individual/company that specialized in Search Engine Optimization.

I agree with this, as web designers are “artsy” by nature and not best suited to things that are highly technical. That’s not to say that there aren’t some who are good at both, just that it’s probably the exception rather than the rule.

The real problem is that most clients know little about the web design process and mistakenly believe that their web designer has optimized their site for the search engines. As many web designers forget to discuss the topic with their clients, the site is put live without being optimized.

To improve your chances of getting a beautiful website that is well-optimized for the search engines, it’s important you understand these three factors:

1. Web Design

In this phase, your web designer will work with you to create a nice looking website according to your project specifications. This part is primarily graphic in nature but it does form the foundation of the entire project.

2. Website Coding

After the website graphics are finished, the design will be coded such that it can be understood and displayed by browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. Some web designers will use a program like Adobe’s Dreamweaver to code the design while others will hire a web coder to do the process manually.

As a general rule, designs that are “hand coded” by a code specialist are more likely to follow the standards set by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). They are also more likely to be “lighter” in their design, which is beneficial to SEO.

3. Search Engine Optimization

After the site has been designed and coded, the work can begin to optimize the website for the search engines. This is best performed by a SEO Specialist.

The SEO Specialist’s job is to work closely with the client in an effort to understand their business and what outcome(s) they are looking to produce. With this information, we begin the process of keyword selection and set about optimizing each page of the site.

In addition to the work performed to the site itself, the SEO Specialist will perform a variety of “off page” tasks. These tasks may include linkbuilding, social bookmarking, the creation of reviews as well as many others.

As you can see, successful web design is a rather complex topic and frequently requires the work of several specialists. Armed with this information, you’ll know what questions to ask to ensure your project is completed to your satisfaction.

After all, a beautiful website that receives little visitors won’t help you achieve much in the way of new business.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation

How To Build Quality Backlinks

Sunday, December 19th, 2010 at 7:43 pm  

Most novice SEOs know the importance of building backlinks, but knowing how to build them frequently eludes the masses. While there are hundreds of techniques to build backlinks, I’ll list five simple strategies.

Here are five easy methods to build backlinks that point to your site/web pages:

1. Article Marketing

Short articles, like the one you’re reading now, are written and submitted to a variety of online article directories. As most directories allow you include 2-3 links inside what is called the Author’s Bio Box, you can build multiple links per article.
In addition to building anchor text links, it’s wise to build a direct “web url” link as well.

2. Online Press Releases

Like articles, you can write a short press release about your business and submit it to a variety of online press release distribution sites. What types of links you are allowed to include will depend on the specific distribution site and whether or not you are paying to have your press release distributed.

3. Website Directories

There are many online directories that will allow you to list your website. You will generally be able to link to your website from the directory listing.

Some of these directories are free and some, like the Yahoo Directory, charge for their listing services.
Here is a resource that lists many online directories:
DirectoryCritic.com/free-directory-list.html

4. Blog Commenting

Some blogs allow you to leave links when you comment on a post. The effectiveness of this strategy will depend upon whether or not the blog assigns the “no follow” attribute to the links you leave.
There are tools available to search for blogs relevant to your business. Some of the tools will even tell you whether or not the blog is assigning the “no follow” attribute.

5. Buying Text Links

This topic is a bit controversial, but it needs to be addressed. Some will tell you that buying text links will do more harm than good but I have not found this to be the case. It likely depends upon where you are buying your links from and ultimately, where they are placed online.

It is wise to avoid “link farms,” which are sites that typically feature hundreds of links per page and not much else. These types of sites are frowned upon by the search engines and may harm your SEO efforts.

You can buy links from a large supplier, or you can buy them direct from an individual webmaster. Active bloggers frequently sell “text links” and this can be a great place to start.

When building links it is important to remember a few things. You should attempt to build links from a variety of sources and concentrate on using the terms you are specifically trying to optimize for.

Remember to build links for each page of your site and not just the homepage… this is frequently misunderstood. Lastly, it’s important that you continue to build links over time. It would be great if this was a “once and done” chore, but this is not the case.

The search engines routinely scour the internet looking for links and if yours seem to come to an abrupt halt, they will assume that the popularity or relevance of your page is diminishing.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation

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