There is a ton of information out there out optimizing your landing pages, and while there’s no arguing the importance of doing this, you shouldn’t neglect your About Us page. This page is important because it puts a human face on your brand or business and tells visitors why they should do business with you. Below are the essential traits that your About Us page should contain:
Personalization
This page of your site isn’t the place for corporate speak or a sales pitch; instead, you should be telling your company story. Your About Us page should demonstrate your passion for what you do and show that you really care. Highlight staff members and put up photos… Anything that best defines your company and demonstrates your goals and beliefs.
Value
Even though you don’t want to bombard your visitors with a blatant sales pitch on this page, you DO want to highlight your strengths and why they should choose you over one of your competitors. If it fits in with your niche, provide testimonials from happy customers to show that you have a good track record. Be sure to list any awards or special distinctions that you have received so that you can foster a sense of trust that will convince people to do business with you.
Creativity
Your About Us page is your chance to let loose and let your unique personality shine through. This is where you can establish the “voice” you want for your company and to demonstrate the emotional stance your company takes with issues relating to your industry. You should also consider using videos, photos or any other multimedia format besides just plain text to give your audience a good idea about your corporate culture.
The main takeaway is to use this page to loosen things up a bit and show that there actual living, breathing human beings behind your brand. Let your creativity shine through and don’t be afraid to show your true colors!
As the number of online marketers and businesses continue to increase, the need for SEO is growing more important than ever. If you want your brand to stand out, you must always be thinking of ways you can optimize your content so that it has as many eyeballs on it—both human and computer—as possible. Video sharing sites have become very popular and if you want to employ video as part of your marketing strategy, you have to optimize it for SEO. Keep reading for tips and ideas on how to make sure your web video is able to boost your search rankings.
Use Keywords Liberally
Wrapping your video with a bow of keywords is a crucial step if you want anyone—human or computer—to know that your video even exists. The most important place to use keywords is in your video’s title. There over 2 days’ worth of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute, so in order to get people to click on yours, it HAS to be informative and demonstrate its value. Including keywords in your title will also make it much easier for the search engines to find your video and rank it. Another place you will want to insert keywords is in the tags section. YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google, so it is very important to take this step to get the good rankings you want. Tagging your videos with keywords that are relevant to your niche will also enable you to link your videos with other ones that are similar to yours, which will get you even more views.
Brand Your Channel
On all video sites, you will have your own channel, which is basically your profile page. It’s very important to take the time to make this as branded as possible by including your URL, writing a company biography/description that contains your keywords, and links to your other social media profiles. On some sites, you have the option of providing a custom background that matches your brand’s look and feel. Taking the time to brand your channel will demonstrate your company’s credibility and trustworthiness, which, in turn, will lead to increased conversions and online exposure!
Social Proof
Once you’ve made sure that your video’s title, description and tags are optimized with keywords and that your channel is properly branded, it’s now time to promote your video on your other social media accounts. Because most video sharing sites are very compatible with social media sites, this is an easy way to get your video out there to a wider audience. By sharing your video on Facebook and Twitter (and Google+ and LinkedIn), not only are you increasing viewership, you can also encourage them to leave comments, which will show that your video is engaging and has value. You can also embed the video in your blogs (you ARE blogging, right?), which will function as an inbound link back to your video’s channel.
When optimized properly, online video can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal!
Link building is a basic building block of SEO; in order for your site to rank well, you have to demonstrate relevance and quality to the search engines and links are the best way to achieve this. There are many different ways to get links with certain methods, like writing relevant, compelling content, requiring more time and effort than others. Simply requesting a link from someone is a viable, simple tactic that isn’t too time consuming. Before popping the question, be aware that there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about doing it. Always make sure you do the following:
Do Your Research
When sending out your link request, make sure that you’ve actually read the website and are familiar with the material to which you want to link. Some people are in such a hurry and are so desperate for links that they ask for them from anyone and everyone without first checking to see if it’s pertinent to their industry. Remember, the point of link building is to show the search engines that you’re a credible, valuable source and if you have a bunch of questionable links that have little to do with your niche, they will look at you with suspicion. So, before you send out that link request email, do your homework and decide whether getting a link from the site will really help your cause.
Be Smart
It should go without saying, but definitely bears repeating—before sending out that link request, double- and triple-check it for misspellings and grammatical errors. Nothing will make you look like a spammer more quickly than sending out an email riddled with errors and it will most likely end up getting immediately deleted. It’s preferable to use an email that contains your site’s domain name as it will appear more professional and will prevent you losing correspondence due to a less reliable account with a full mailbox. Also, before emailing your link request, check to see if there’s an online form on the site to which you want to link for submitting the request. If there is and you just email anyway, it will signal that you didn’t bother to check out the website and that you can’t follow directions.
Be Polite and Personable
When trying to get links, some people completely forget about minding their manners and engage in all sorts of rude behavior. For example, instead of taking a few minutes to research who the link request needs to be sent to, some people send out blatant form emails where they couldn’t even be bothered to address it to an actual person, instead using something generic like “webmaster” or “to whom it may concern”. If you can’t be bothered to find out someone’s name, they will most likely delete your request as soon as they get it. Besides learning the correct name, you should also include something in the email to pique the interest of the person you want the link from. Take the time to write a few sentences about why you want to link to them, mentioning something specific about the website that drew you in.
Asking for a link request isn’t rocket science, but there IS an art to it. The key to a successful link request is to do your homework, be genuine and respectful. Know your stuff before sending out your request and NEVER send multiple requests or try to take a hard stance by threatening to remove their link if they don’t give you one. Instead, focus on demonstrating your value and establishing genuine relationships with appropriate sources in your niche. With a little time, effort and patience, you will be able to build a respectable link profile.
Social media has made a huge impact on the way businesses are able to connect with and market to their customers. In fact, engaging in social media allows companies a way to take the customer service they provide to a whole new level and to seamlessly integrate this most important aspect of their business across all of their marketing platforms. Below are specific ways in which social media enhances and elevates the level of customer service you are able to provide.
Humanizes Your Business
The most remarkable aspect of social media is that it enables brands to step out of their “ivory towers” and present a relatable, authentic presence to their customers and prospects. Instead of barking out marketing rhetoric from on high, social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter give businesses the opportunity to engage in a two-way conversation with their audience which will show that there are actual living, breathing human beings behind the company façade that care.
Lets You Hear, Firsthand, What Customers are Saying
Social media will allow you to discover, in real time, the main issues and concerns of your customers and a way to deal with them and nip potential problems in the bud right away. The beauty of this platform is that you can deal quickly, and publicly, with issues that arise and demonstrate to your audience that you are paying attention and truly care about the satisfaction of your customers. Through Facebook posts, Tweets and message boards, you will be able to achieve transparency and maintain an open line of communication that is essential for success in today’s marketplace.
Enables You to Provide In-Depth Product-Related Information
Through your Facebook or Twitter account, you can post informative blogs and videos on specific products you offer, explaining and demonstrating their use. How-to videos are all the rage and are an extremely easy and effective way to spotlight your products and to provide a useful service at the same time. If your customers can see your products in use and how they work, they will be more likely to make a purchase. With a social media presence, you can also respond immediately to any product-related questions someone may have or another customer may even be able to provide an answer before you can!
Puts the Spotlight on Your Customers
Above all, customers want to feel acknowledged and that they really matter to you—that they are more than just faceless, nameless dollar signs in your eyes. Cultivating an interactive, rich social media presence with contests, games and message boards creates a feeling of community and fun that will enable you to accomplish your goal of generating customer loyalty and brand ambassadors. The point is to encourage conversation and fellowship amongst your audience and to really celebrate them and show your appreciation, and the way in which you accomplish this task is only limited by your imagination!
With a successful social media presence, you should find that your customer service department moves away from being merely damage control and starts to integrate with your marketing efforts. Ensuring customer satisfaction via social media is easy, proactive and can reduce the number of complaints you receive, freeing up more of your time for finding new ways to gain new followers!
The field of search engine optimization (SEO) is extremely complex, consisting of many different tactics and methods. There is a lot of debate within the SEO world of the best practices to use, with the main conflict occurring between “white hat” and “black hat” strategies. White hat is generally thought of as the gold standard of SEO, the “right” way to do things that fall within search engine guidelines. Black hat, on the other hand, refers to methods that are “shady” and oftentimes violate the rules set forth by search engines. Read on to learn about the “no-nos” of SEO that you should never use.
Adding On-Page Elements Solely for Search Engines
Some websites try to adjust their page in a way that isn’t visible to human users but are to the search engines. This includes “hiding” links and text by putting white text on a white background or linking from a meaningless character, such as a hyphen or a period. Why would people engage in such seemingly purposeless hijinks? Namely, they want to reap the SEO benefit of having a lot of content and links on their site without having to do the legwork. While being sneaky and hiding nonsensical information may at first boost your ranking, you will end up getting caught and have your website penalized or even banned, so don’t do it!
Overusing the Same Keywords
This practice is commonly known as “keyword stuffing” and consists of cramming keywords anywhere and everywhere in your site. Some people use keywords in their title tags so the titles of the webpages don’t even read coherently to visitors. Flooding your meta description, the summary of your site that appears in the search engines results, with a series of keywords is another example of keyword stuffing. Do not stuff keywords into the titles of your images or list 2,000+ words of keyword-infused content below your footer, for these are telltale signs of keyword stuffing that will get your site dinged.
Obtaining Links in Dubious Ways
Links are a great way to boost your site’s credibility and presence, but you need to make sure you are harvesting them in an organic manner and not through link schemes, farms or exchanges. These methods consist of linking sites that have little to no original content and instead are filled with pages and pages of links. Those who engage in this behavior generally operate with a “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of attitude, yet, rarely does obtaining links in this way benefit anyone. Some people try and generate links with spammy blog comments. Instead of taking the time to actually read a blog and respond with a thoughtful comment, some choose to use this as an opportunity to stuff in a link to something completely unrelated. This tactic stands out like a sore thumb, is sure to irritate the blog owner and is a really useful way to get banned.
Successfully implementing SEO into your site will take time and effort. You will not see results immediately; instead, it requires constant upkeep and monitoring. While engaging in black hat methods may provide you with a temporary boost, the long-term damage it will do to your reputation simply isn’t worth the short-term rewards you may experience. Don your white hat and be the good guy for, as they say, “haste makes waste”!
As 2010 draws to a close and a new year is about to begin, businesses need to take stock of their current marketing methods and adjust their strategies and tactics to thrive in the ever-changing online landscape where what might have worked a few months ago is no longer effective. Being proactive and continually monitoring and updating their marketing methods will be the best way for a business to prosper in 2011 and beyond. Below are a few methods that are worth keeping in mind if you want to see your business succeed.
Marketing Acceleration
It will be more important than ever to act quickly and in several key areas. For starters, it is crucial to respond right away to potential leads and take immediate action to ensure they become a customer. Make sure you are removing any unnecessary obstacles that may prevent a sale from being made. Marketing concepts are another area in which time is of the essence. Once an idea has deemed to be viable, it must be put into practice as quickly as possible so your company can remain competitive and fulfill its purpose, which, of course, is to make money. Even though your campaign may at first be extremely useful, circumstances may change, so it is essential to continually monitor its effectiveness and act immediately if it no longer performs effectively.
Marketing and Sales Alignment
All too often, there is a disconnect between these two extremely important departments within a business. Marketing and sales needs to be synergistic with one another, not antagonistic, and if you want your business to succeed, it is crucial to take steps to ensure that your sales force and marketing departments are working in concert with one another. An effective way to achieve this goal is to have your marketing people go on sales calls. This is will allow the marketing force to hear straight from the “horse’s mouth”, so to speak, what works and what doesn’t when it comes to attracting clients. It is also extremely helpful to have a new marketing member in your organization to sit down with the head of sales so the two departments can communicate and be on the same page.
Social Media
The importance of this medium cannot be stressed enough. Some businesses are still hesitant to enter into this arena, fearing it is a waste of time and/or resources. This is simply not true; engaging in social media is a simple way to interact with your customers and if you aren’t using this platform to do so, it will negatively impact your business. Establishing a social presence online will not only enable you to gain valuable insight into the minds of potential clients, it will also unite your business as a whole in that everyone can be involved in the common goal of managing customer relationships.
No matter what type of industry your business specializes in, by following these simple guidelines, you will be able to keep up with, if not surpass, your competition. Just remember—it’s all about keeping current on the latest trends and adapting to them. Stagnation is the kiss of death so make sure you constantly analyze your results and adjust them accordingly.
Although it’s still in its infancy, it appears we are finally seeing the beginnings of the promised integration of Facebook’s Open Graph and standard search. Bing and Facebook have joined forces to provide a “Liked Results” area in the search results pages for certain queries. This section shows pages Bing deems relevant to a search which friends in the searcher’s network have Liked.
It is unknown as of yet what, precisely, triggers this to be shown, but it is speculated that it has to do with the number of friends the searcher has who have liked websites which match the query. Clearly, they can’t show a list of sites Liked by a user’s friends of none of those friends have Liked anything relevant. No one knows yet whether only one Like is needed or a whole slew of them before it’s considered relevant enough to show.
Although a vast number of websites have incorporated a Like button, a great many have not. In addition, although a user might like a website that sells widgets, and even like a particular widget very much, nothing guarantees that user will choose to Like the site in the Facebook sense. If I like something, I will usually only Like it if I think my friends can benefit from such information. As such, the Open Graph will remain incomplete as a measure of website relevance.
Bing’s inclusion of the Open Graph in a separate section of their site is a wise move, allowing them to begin to incorporate social votes without obscuring their standard results.
We just learned that the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) declared October “National Cyber Security Awareness Month” (NCSAM). Their goal with NCSAM is to spread awareness of our shared responsibility to protect the resources allowing us to work, play, and interact online. NCSA is a private nonprofit group sponsored and endorsed by such giants as the Department of Homeland Security, Google, AT&T and McAfee.
“If we are to achieve the potential of a digital society for robust and widely available content, community, communication, commerce, and connectivity we must protect the resource that makes it possible,” they state on their website.
Most people in developed countries take for granted the ability to use the Internet from nearly anywhere. Home computers, smartphones, and tablet devices all allow us to plug in at almost time for information, community, and business. It is easy to forget that the Internet is actually built on a physical infrastructure of machines, hubs which are necessary for our interaction with the Web. They remind us that since the Internet is a shared resource, it’s our shared responsibility to secure it.
Besides these lofty (and important) goals of protecting our infrastructure, the NCSA also provides information about everything from home-level dangers such as viruses and spyware to corporate threats and ways to combat them. Also included on their site is information about protecting children from online dangers, both at home and in the classroom.
Whatever your level of technical expertise, it’s never a bad idea to be reminded of the importance of such simple steps as staying educated on modern security threats and installing and updating a reliable anti-virus program.
The new Facebook Javascript SDK used in some implementations of the Facebook “Like” button appears to be creating duplicate versions of pages which serve users a blank page. Some of these duplicate pages are showing up in search results, bringing users to blank pages while showing search engines duplicate content. Aside from obvious usability issues, this also results in splitting your page’s strength across two pages.
Until they get this fixed, one alternative is to use the iFrame version since it doesn’t use the Facebook JavaScript library. It is also possible to implement a bit of a workaround through Google’s and the other search engines’ webmaster tools, and you can filter it out of your analytics fairly simply. See the post on Search Marketing Man for further details on squashing this bug.
It is a bit disturbing to realize that this ubiquitous tool is causing such a potentially large issue for SEO. Hopefully, an official fix will be released soon.
You’ve probably heard some rumors about the “New Twitter” being rolled out to a small percentage of Twitter users, but unless you were part of that 1% you probably haven’t seen it yet. So, what’s the big news? The short version is, Twitter is finally spending some time on their website’s interface.
For a while now, Twitter has been letting third party developers tackle improving the Web interface’s deficiencies while Twitter itself focused on its mobile app and on back-end infrastructure. With the New Twitter, it’s clear Twitter developers are putting some attention into the website itself. A wider right-hand column allows a wealth of information to be displayed, including media such as photos and videos and tweets related to the one you have selected. Some theorize that it also leaves a lot of room for advertisements, should Twitter decide to go that route.
Another notable change is the repositioning and re-tooling of Search. The search bar now appears along the top of the website (more intuitive for most Web-savvy folk), and lets you filter results by location, people, and even whether the tweets include links.
There are a number of other changes, including changes to the “reply” interface and an easier way to disable retweets. Since only 1% of users get to see these changes, they’re clearly doing some user testing; it will be interesting to see if any of the new features or adjustments are changed or removed before the full launch.
