Category Archives: Online Marketing Strategy

Increase Website Traffic With Google Authorship

February 24, 2014Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOSamuel Lozano

Imagine you own a crossfit gym and you’re looking for some marketing pointers. You head to Google and type “crossfit marketing” into the search queue and the following results come up – which one are you more likely to click? The first one – studies have shown that by having this rich snippet image next to your blog can increase clicks to your website up to 150%!

You don’t need to be a technical guru to get your photo to show up – all you need is a Google+ profile and an email address with the domain you’re blogging on.

If you don’t have a profile in Google+, stop what you’re doing right now and create one! If you need help, check out my guide How To Get Started with Google+.

Step One: Add Your Domain Email to Google+

The first thing you have to do is verify your website domain email address with Google so they know that you’re account is legit – to do so, head to your profile’s ‘About’ tab and scroll to the ‘Contact Information’. Then click ‘Edit’. Make sure you’re using an email address with the same domain as your blog. According to Google, as long as you’re posting on that domain, and the posts have the same byline as the name on your Google+ account, this is enough to make the connection.

Step Two: Link from Your Google+ Content To Your Domain

Head to the bottom of your ‘About’ page to the ‘Links’ section and click ‘Edit’. Here you’ll see a section called ‘Contributor To’:

If you have a bio page on your blog, link to this bio.

If you don’t have a bio page, link directly to the post itself.

Google claims that when done correctly your image should show in search results within 5-7 days. However, for some of our clients this wasn’t enough. If this doesn’t work you’re going to have to go on to step 3…

Step Three: Link Your Content to Your Google+ Page

From the byline or author box at the bottom of your post, link to your Google+ profile, adding “rel=author” in the link.

If you have a bio page on your site, link to the bio with “rel=me” in the link.
If you don’t have a bio page on your site (or if you’re having trouble getting authorship to work), link directly to your Google+ profile with “rel=author” in the link. See the sample code below.

If your site is built using WordPress, there are a couple of plugins you can use to make your life easier:

Rich Snippets
Author Box Reloaded

Step Four: Verify With Google

The final step is to verify with Google using their Structured Data Testing Tool.

When you follow the steps above, simple paste the link from the article (or your website URL) into the allotted area. If you followed the steps correctly, it should appear like this:

Google+ Authorship If the steps were not followed correctly, then the areas with green text will show up red. I get a lot of follow up questions and emails from this article in regards to how long it takes for your picture to actually show up. I like to think I have an answer to everything, but for this one in particular all I can say is it depends. Google doesn’t give a lot of guidance about your picture showing in search results, but only as to how to set yourself up as an author. From everything I have seen Google is making is increasingly more difficult for your picture to show up. All I can say is follow the steps provided and make sure you are providing good wuality content on a consistent basis – after that, just be patient. There are billions of websites on the web, sometimes these things can take significant time to work.

Aside from that, the setup process is easy and only takes about 20 minutes. I urge you to take advantage of this while you can!

You can find Ryan on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram as well.

Facebook Ads For Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide

February 23, 2014Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, Social MediaSamuel Lozano

Facebook ads! You’ve seen them – they started off as the little boxes on the right hand side of your desktop homepage and eventually they took over your News Feed. They’re annoying, obtrusive and they don’t belong in your social network – but they’re damn effective.

Facebook ads should play an essential part of your businesses marketing plan for a few reasons:

They’re cost effective. If you can successfully target your customers and create an engaging post that isn’t obtrusive, you can get extremely cheap and high converting traffic.
Targeting. Facebook is a data warehouse – think about how much information you’ve put on Facebook over the years! They store all of it and allow advertisers to target their audience.
Retargeting. Facebook has a feature called ‘custom audiences’ that allows you to upload a list of emails or Facebook user ids to show ads. This is extremely effective for re-marketing offers to your existing customer base.
They’re different than Google Ads. When we pitch Facebook ads to clients the number one response is “we tried Google Ads, they didn’t work for us”. Facebook ads serve a different purpose than Google Ads and shouldn’t be viewed as an ‘either/or’ situation. Understanding the difference is crucial to every marketing strategy, and I will cover that in depth later in this post.

So let’s get into setting up your first campaign.

First and foremost, never run paid traffic to a website. Let me repeat that – NEVER RUN PAID TRAFFIC TO A WEBSITE (especially from Facebook!).

Why?

People have short attention spans. If you’re lucky enough to divert their attention you don’t want to send them to a website with a ton of information – they’ll get lost, forget why they came and leave.

You should always run Facebook ads to a landing page that captures their information for you to contact them at your convenience.

Now that I covered that, we can get into setting up your first ad!

Step One: The Goal

I like to start with the end goal and work backwards. Why are you running these ads (please don’t say “to make money”)! The goal of your ad should be to gather information on people who are interested in your business. If someone clicks on your ad, they’re interested. You want to know who they are and how your business can help them. Let me give you a few examples of various businesses I’ve worked with and their end goals:

Crossfit Gym –> Sell gym memberships -> Gather email addresses
Real Estate Agent –> High-end home sales –> Gather phone numbers / mailing address
Coupon Website –> Traffic to site –> Gather email addresses for newsletter

Once you have your end goal in mind, you can move on to the next step.

Step Two: The Offer

10 years ago people would click on anything. These days, people are a much more hesitant to click on ads, let alone give you their personal contact information. In order to get this prized information, you have to incentivize them.

Keep in mind, the more information you want, the more interested that person has to be. I know I personally NEVER give out my cell phone number unless it is a service I am really looking for. I will however, give out my email address for much less.

Crossfit Gym –> Email address for free week pass
Real Estate Agent –> Phone and mailing address for free set of wine glasses (to qualified buyers)
Coupon Website –> Email address for exclusive coupon offers

Step Three: The Landing Page & Sales Funnel

This is an extremely important step that many advertisers overlook. Landing page optimization is a science in itself, and when you’re spending money for traffic you want to make sure you are gathering information from as many people as possible. The theory behind this is anyone who clicks on your ad (or comes to your website) has some interest in your business and you want to know who they are. Whether they’re buyers at this point isn’t overly important; once you have their information in your sales funnel you can convince them to be buyers.

Building a landing page is easy and there are a number of websites out there that have pre-created templates for you to choose from. Most of them offer a free month trial, and an affordable monthly subscription after that. I highly recommend you check out one of the following for your business (we’ve used both):

Unbounce
Lead Pages

Both of these companies offer you the ability to host the landing page on your domain for no extra cost. In addition, they offer the option to send opt ins to an auto responder email marketing campaign. No matter what your industry you should have an email list and you should be sending out consistent updates to your subscribers. The following companies offer low monthly fees to use their platforms:

Aweber
Mail Chimp
Drip

I don’t want to get into too much detail about landing pages and email marketing in this post, as I want to focus on how your business can set up Facebook ads. However, landing pages and email marketing play an integral role in the process of running any sort of paid traffic so I highly recommend you sign up for one of the providers listed above.

Step 4: Create Your Ad

Create Users/Enter Payment Info

The first step in creating an ad is setting up your advertising account. The process is extremely easy and all you need is an active Facebook account and PayPal or Credit Card. If you are creating an account for your business, make sure to input your company information since it may be needed to set up invoicing.

You can get started by visiting this URL: facebook.com/ads/manage/. In order to create an ad Facebook will prompt you to set up a funding source to pay for the ad spend. To do so click “Billing” on the left hand menu and then “Funding Source”.

Click “Add new funding source” button on the top right and input your payment information.

Then click “Settings” on the left menu. From here you can manage your personal/company information and VAT number for invoicing if you’re a business. You can also manage the permissions on the account if you want multiple people to have access to the campaigns.Now that you have your payment information in place, we can create your first ad!

Create Ad

You will use the same URL (facebook.com/ads/manage/) as before to create all of your ads (Note: you can also access the ad platform by clicking in the upper right hand corner of your homepage).

The first thing you’ll notice when you get into the platform are the 8 different ad campaign types. For the purpose of this beginner article, I am only going to focus on the “Clicks to Website” ad campaign.

Select that option and enter the URL of the landing page you created. Then click “Continue”.You will then enter the ad campaign platform. On this screen you will enter everything you need to create your ad.

Select an Image

The first part is selecting an image for your campaign. Facebook allows you to upload up to 6 images for your ad. If you choose to upload more than 1, Facebook will automatically create 6 different ads and split test to see which image gets the highest click-through rate. If you’re a beginner, I recommend you take advantage of this feature and upload 6 different images to get a good feel for what your audience responds to.

Choose Ad Type

Your next step is to select the ad type for your campaign. If you don’t have a Facebook fan page set up for your business, than you will only be able to run a “Right Column” ad (the small ads that appear on the right hand side of your home feed).

If you have a Facebook fan page you can run “News Feed Ads” – these are the ads that appear in your audiences home feed. I personally only use News Feed ads because they appear larger and more noticeable that Right Column ads. However, depending on your business and niche Right Column ads can be extremely effective. I suggest you run both Right Column and News Feed ads to see which works best for your business. Writing Your Ad

Copywriting is a science in itself and I highly recommend you do your research on how to craft good ad copy. However, the only way to truly master the craft is practice. Here are a few simple pointers to get you started:

Headline: You’re given only 25 characters to create a headline that will grab your audience’s attention. I generally use a question that addresses a general pain point for my target audience or I sneak in the offer (discussed above):

Want More Traffic?
Out of Shape?
Struggling To Find Good Leads?
Attention Lawyers!
Claim Your FREE Wine Set

Text: This is what shows up under your headline (you’re given 90 characters). Here you are given a short platform to convince your audience to click. You’re going to want to make sure you communicate your offer (your incentive to click) and most importantly to make sure you have a clear call-to-action (CTA), such as:

Get It Now
Click Now
Click Here
Claim Now

Believe it or not, countless studies show that ads with no CTA have a much lower click-through-rate (CTR) than ads that do. Your ad needs to be direct and tell your audience exactly what it is you want them to do.

Targeting

Facebook has been collecting data from people for the past 10 years – as an advertiser you can use this data to target people’s interests. Targeting is an extremely important part of your ad and this is where most beginners struggle. Try not to get overwhelmed with the amount of information they provide and keep your target consumer in mind at all times.Demographics and location

Location: Target your audience by country, state/province, city and zip code.

Demographics: Target your audience by age and gender.

Interests

Interest targeting allows you to target your ideal audience based on their interests that they have shared on their Facebook timelines. Some of these include hobbies, movies, music, education, job titles, pages they ‘like’ and groups they belong to.

Categories

Category targeting allows you to more easily reach your intended audience. Your ad will be shown to people who have included information in their Facebook Timelines and liked Pages that are relevant to that category.

Connections

You can use connections targeting to show your ad only to people who have a connection with you, such as people who have liked your Page.
You can use connections targeting for any Page, group, event or app you’re the admin of, even if it’s not what you’re advertising.
Click on advanced connection targeting under Connections in the targeting section and type the name of your Facebook Page, group, event or app.

Advanced Targeting

If you’re a beginner I don’t want you to worry about advanced targeting options, but for the purpose of this post I do want to cover them quickly. Advanced targeting tools have the capabilities to help you reach people that are connected to you outside Facebook and who are similar to your best customers.

Custom audiences: Securely upload a contact list of people you’d like to reach and target your Facebook Ads to these customers.
Lookalike audiences: Find people who are similar to your best customers.
Facebook Exchange: Reach people on Facebook who have expressed an interest in your business based on specific actions they’ve taken online, such as visiting your website.

Again, don’t get overwhelmed with targeting. Simply put yourself in the mind of your ideal customer: what they like, their age, location, etc. and you can create an effective target audience.

Setting Your Budget and Bid Type

The last part of your ad set up is creating a budget for the campaign, duration and how you will bid on the ads.

Whether you’re a beginner or expert, I always set the budget at $10 a day. You need at least $10 to get enough data to make a decision if the ad is effective or not. You can also set a start and end date – unless you’re running an ad for an offer with an expiration date, I like to let my ads run indefinitely. Finally, the bid type. There are 2 options for you to choose from:

CPC – cost per click.
CPM – cost per thousand impressions.

Both of these options allow you to bid manually or let Facebook optimize for you. As a beginner, I suggest you select CPC and let Facebook automatically bid for you. If you have a good ad that is getting a lot of clicks, this section is somewhat irrelevant.Step 5: Monitor & Optimize

Your Facebook ads are going to require a lot of love and attention at first. If you’re a small business on a budget, you don’t want to waste any money on ads that don’t drive sales. In order to make sure you are seeing a return from your ad spend, you have to keep an eye on what is working and what isn’t. The best way to do this is split testing.

Split testing is the process of running multiple ads that are all the same except for 1 tweak to each. The ad that performs the best out of the bunch is the winner and that ad should then be split tested for another factor. The following is how I like to split test my ads:

Image: I create 3 identical ads with 3 different pictures.
Copy: I take the ad with the highest CTR from before and tweak the headline and text.
Targeting: I take the winner from before and change the demographic.
Bidding: I take the best demographic and split test CPM vs CPC.
Landing Page: Once I have the best performing ad, I split test 3 landing pages to maximize opt ins.

This process generally takes a week and I recommend you spend at least $10 for each split test. You have to make sure you are pushing enough traffic to really get a feel for what works.

Although this process is time consuming, once you have a few ads that work you can set them on auto pilot. Facebook ads will play an integral role in your lead generation process and with the right care and attention can pay massive dividends for your business.

You can find Ryan on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram as well.

6 Methods For Effective Crossfit Marketing

February 20, 2014Offline Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOSamuel Lozano

Crossfit’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past few years and gyms are popping up in every neighborhood. As a business man and ex-college athlete, I love crossfit; the combination of high intensity workouts that rarely last over 45 minutes fits perfectly with my competitive nature and busy schedule. As a consumer the large increase in gyms has been great – I no longer have to travel 20 miles to work out and the level of competition has driven the monthly price down to a much more affordable rate. However, as a crossfit ‘box’ owner the amount of competition has taken a toll on even the top crossfit boxes. I decided to put together a list of 5 easy, simple and cost effective ways to market your crossfit box.

Here are some highly effective crossfit marketing strategies to grow your box:

1. Facebook Ads: Facebook ads can deliver high returns in a very short period of time for an extremely low cost, but we don’t recommend them for every business. They are only effective when your target customer regularly logs in to Facebook. Since the crossfit demographic skews younger, a good ad campaign can deliver amazing results. Facebook’s platform allows you to target people who are in crossfit groups, ‘like’ crossfit pages, and post updates with a crossfit hashtag. Our suggestion is to create a series newsfeed ad offering a free class or free trial at your gym targeting these groups. This type of ad generally registers a high click-through and conversion rate and your gym can see an influx of customers within a week.

2. Instagram: Almost all of our crossfit clients were already using Instagram when they hired us. Instagram is great because it has such a young and active user base (the average Instagram user spends three times as much on Instagram than any other social network). However, just posting pictures and videos to your account isn’t enough; if you aren’t actively reaching new users, there really isn’t much of a point. Instagram doesn’t allow ads (yet) so the only way to reach new users to be creative. These are a few of my favorites:

Give away free swag at your gym (t-shirts, hats, etc.) in exchange for social media posts wearing them
Hold competitions at your gym and encourage members to post their results
Give away a free month of membership to any member who refers a paying member via social media

3. Groupon: I was hesitant to include this because the Groupon market is saturated with crossfit gym coupons, but I still believe its an effective marketing tool. The rationale behind the Groupon is simple: offer a short membership at a large discount. This is one of the oldest marketing techniques in the book – get people in the door at cost (or loss) and win them over with your awesome service. There are two main reasons it works for the crossfit model:

Crossfit gym costs are extremely low so even at the discounted monthly cost, you can still breakeven.
People who try crossfit even hate it or become obsessed. Your main concern should be getting people in the door, even if it means taking a slight loss the first month.

4.Corporate Programs/Local Businesses: I used to work at a large Fortune 100 company and they were constantly pushing fitness programs on employees by offering incentives to those who performed well. Working in this environment I know firsthand how much emphasis businesses put on employee wellness (and how much money they’re willing to spend on it). Penetrating a corporation isn’t easy, but here are a few suggestions on how to get involved in the business community:

Attend BNI or Chamber of Commerce meetings and give out free pamphlets on proper exercise and dieting
Offer businesses group or employee discounts for membership
Offer to travel to a local park or company gym and give group classes

5. Free Weekend Workouts: In my experience 8 out of 10 gyms already offer some form of free workout, but its the most effective way to get customers in your gym. As I mentioned earlier, due to the cult like following crossfitters have, the main goal as a gym owner should be to get new customers in the door. In addition to free classes at your gym, you can also offer to do boot camp style classes at public parks. This not only gives your current member base a change up to their normal routine, but also gets your business out in front of hundreds of other people who come to the park to work out as well. Make sure you reach out to others at the park and offer them a free workout! 6. Search Engine Optimization: Obviously, we’re biased but SEO is the best way to market your crossfit gym for 2 reasons:

Very few (if any) of your competitors are doing it
It requires little to no effort on your part

Think about how much time you spend building your company’s social media profiles – but does anyone use social media to find a gym? Social media is great for interacting with your current customers and engaging with potential ones, but people aren’t going to Facebook to search for a gym. For that they use Google. The best part about SEO is you don’t have to lift a finger. The process is pretty simple:

Person goes to Google and types in “Crossfit gym in Miami”
Search query returns a list of websites of which yours is at the top
Person clicks on your website and is directed to a lead capture form
Person enters their information
You get an email notification with an interested person’s name, email, phone number and questions/comments

Doesn’t that sound nice? This a gross over simplification of the SEO process but a good SEO company can deliver these results for your box. Watch what Yandy Roman from Crossfit Muscle Farm in Ft. Lauderdale and Downtown Miami has to say: We work with 63 Box Owners across the county and would love to work with you. You can speak to us on live chat by waiting 10 seconds on this page until the live chat box pops up or you can call us at 1-800-672-6974 .

Get Quality Leads Daily With Real Estate SEO

January 20, 2014Offline Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOSamuel Lozano

When you’re dealing with high priced items like real estate, quality leads are tough to come by. Since we work with so many real estate firms as clients, I have a good grasp on their lead generation process. They generally stick to the following sources:

Networking
Email list blasts
Networking
Buying zip code blocks on websites like Zillow
Networking

We all know the #1 way to make sales is through good old fashioned networking – this is a necessary evil of the business and will always remain the number one way to generate real estate leads.

However, aside from that the real estate industry has yet to fully adopt online marketing techniques that can auto generate quality leads. But before I get into that process, let me just make one thing clear: NEVER BUY LEADS!

I understand that Zillow is a reputable site and you have made a couple of sales off of those email blasts, but for the most part they are a waste of your money and you don’t really know the quality of their lead generation process.

I can make this statement because I have succumb to purchasing leads and there is nothing more awkward then a sales call like this:

You: “Hello, Business X, I received your information from an online submission…”
Business X: “Where did you get my information? I don’t remember doing that. Stop spamming me!” Hangs up.

While Zillow does generate thousands of quality leads a day, those are their leads. A real estate sale is extremely personal – your leads need to come from your website, with your picture and with your listings – anything else is a waste of time.

So how does a website like Zillow get so many leads? Simply because when you search for ‘real estate listings’ their website pops up first. Real estate related searches registers tens of millions of searches each month – and with 94% of searchers only clicking on first page results, it’s really no secret how they generate so many opt ins.

Your business can have the same effect as Zillow simply by being present when people are searching for you. Unless you want to spend $1M a month on SEO, you’ll never outrank a giant like Zillow. However, what you can do is target specific niches in the market and dominates each of those.

real estate leads — Put your lead generation on auto pilot – can’t show you their names though, sorry!

Here is a list of potential keywords to optimize for your real estate business:

[your city] ocean view condos
[your city] ocean view homes
ocean view condos [your city]
ocean view homes [your city]
[your zip] ocean view condos
[your zip] ocean view homes

The list goes on, but I think you get the picture. The key is to pick extremely targeted keywords related to the types of real estate you’re selling. This does 2 things for you:

The more targeted the keyword, the easier it is to rank your website
The more targeted the keyword, the more likely that searcher is to be a buyer

Point number 2 is crucial – when it comes to real estate you have to target keywords from the perspective of a buyer. For example, some people type ‘mansions’ into Google just to look at pictures. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars ranking for a high search volume keyword that delivers only window shoppers to your website. You want to make sure you are targeting keywords that will drive buyers to your website.

3 Ways To Get More Patients With Plastic Surgeon SEO

November 18, 2013Offline Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOadmin

Cut Down on Costs and Time by Hiring Only Credible Professionals

You can employ a number of effective plastic surgeon SEO techniques. But how you effectively do this is also a skill that you must learn and acquire for yourself. You gain this in very much the same way as how you earned your expertise in the field of plastic surgery both actually takes some good amount of time to learn. With respect to your field of concentration, you can come up with a custom program marketing strategy for your plastic surgeon SEO techniques. This kind of targeted effort will go far beyond the conventional SEO techniques and Web marketing strategies you may be aware of that are usually practiced by most businesses in their online marketing campaigns. To help you come up with an educated and wise decision in choosing the company to handle your plastic surgeon SEO needs, you may want to consider the following points.

Testimonials

The amount of success that you can have in your practice greatly depends on testimonials, and you have a good understanding of this. When previous clients profess and vouch how good you are and how satisfied they are with your services to them, you in turn need to make good use of those to advance your interest and market yourself. Most of the SEO companies you will find on the Web will have a dedicated page on their official website for their client testimonials and accolades. This signifies that they are far more competent and trustworthy than any other companies.

Keywords

Another important element in securing success for your online marketing efforts are good well searched array of relevant keywords. The absence of good keywords meticulously selected for your plastic surgeon SEO campaign will spell your doom, reason being that web users searching the Net for the kind of products and services that you offer will have no way of ever finding your business in the search engines. With respect to your aesthetic practice, indeed it can be very deleterious. You can just imagine first the amount of effort, money and other resources just to come up with a viable website, together with all the necessary elements in it, information as well as relevant links to it only to find out in the end that it is not performing as expected because there is no observable increase on the number of possible patients interested in your offer.

Regardless if you are getting the services of a local SEO company or one from overseas, you can trust that they are highly reliable and dependable if they have a good idea of what keywords to use for your plastic surgeon SEO needs. Only that after you hire them for your project, they would specifically pick out the right terms to use for your company.

HTML Tags

Some people whose businesses have an online presence have this notion that good and effective use of carefully selected keywords alone would be more than enough to help their site land on the top pages of Google search results, wrong! This scarcely happens on Google. Google has other parameters in place to gauge the viability of a website; one important aspect of this that you should know is the proper use of tags in your website’s HTML code. Your title tag stands for what you have decided to name your site with; the meta tag would be for the selected keywords you’ve chosen to target; and the heading tags, also referred to as H1 tags when all these are combined together and utilized effectively will spell a big difference to your plastic surgeon SEO campaign. You need to make use of these tags wisely and in the right places throughout your website but not to a point that you are overusing them otherwise Google will simply flag down your site for spamming. An experienced SEO company will know exactly how to prevent this and make your site look good in the eyes of most search engines, specifically Google.

If you have this dire need to increase potential clients and convert them into regular ones, you need to make sure that you are employing ethical standards and utilizing too plastic surgery marketing techniques.

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SEO Starter Guide For 2013 – Life After Penguin

September 16, 2013Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOfirst page hq, firstpagehq.com, samuel lozano, seo starter guide, www.firstpagehq.comadmin

In the last few years, the term SEO has flooded the online marketing world, yet many business owners are not exactly sure what it is and how it can help their business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing traffic by boosting your website’s search engine ranking.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the most cost effective method for gaining new traffic since it doesn’t require a substantial budget. It is also essential for any online business that wants to increase its market share. Earning a higher ranking will result in more online traffic and hopefully greater sales.

It is estimated that 70% of consumers start their purchasing process online using a search engine. The majority of these people will only click on the first few links and almost no one will visit links that are found beyond the third page of the results.

Solid SEO Strategy

SEO involves a specific marketing plan geared at enticing search engines and building online authority. There are countless great SEO techniques on the internet, but unfortunately there are also some you should avoid. Google’s web crawlers are looking for sites that try to scam the system and taking shortcuts will usually be penalized.

Links & Backlinks

Web crawlers look for essentially a spider web effect created by links and backlinks. If other reputable sites have made reference to your website or your articles and then link their content back to your site, it will give your site more creditability. You can also use links to reference other people’s content or your own content.

Search engine crawlers will reward natural link building. It is always better to have a few real links to a couple well-establish websites than it is to have hundreds of links that were created using a link building scam.

Lead Nurturing Content

Informative and keyword-rich content is viewed favorably by web crawlers and online visitors. You can increase your chances of converting new visitors by posting well-written content that actually answers their questions and concerns.

Although you will need to place the right keywords in the right places, it is the article itself that really matters. It has to be relevant to your website’s main purpose and provide some real value to the reader. Google will penalize sites that post illegible content or keyword-stuffed articles. Google has a reputation for being the leader in search engines, and their users expect relevant and helpful results. That is why so many of the old SEO tricks are no longer getting the results they once did.

Local SEO Strategy

Part of having the right keywords involves using your physical location to promote your website. Take, for example, a lawyer in Lansing, Michigan. Her web content and articles should reference Lansing and Michigan whenever it makes sense. When a potential client searches for “Lawyers in Lansing, Michigan” her site will directly match up with their search, which will push it to the top of the rankings.

SEO is a necessity in today’s global marketplace. It is the most efficient way to increase online exposure and attract new leads. Today’s savvy consumers also feel more comfortable trusting higher ranking websites. If your business does not already have an SEO strategy in place, you will have a lot of ground to make up. Fortunately, using the right strategy can take you from last place to first in a matter of a few months.

Why Your Website Needs SEO

August 22, 2013Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, SEOfirst page hq, firstpagehq.com, samuel lozano, www.firstpagehq.comadmin

What is SEO?

Everyone has heard of search engine optimization (SEO) but how many know what it is? The answer to this question is quite simple. Search engine optimization is basically a process that is used to improve the ranking of a website on various search engines result pages for searches related to that website. This process uses a combination of link building, social media and content creation. If you want to create an effective SEO for your website, you need to understand that what are search engine’s algorithms and their ranking factors.

Why does my website need SEO?

After knowing the meaning of SEO, the next question which arises is “Why a website needs search engine optimization? If you own a website you will definitely want to have your website at the top of search pages and one way of doing this is through Google Adwords. However it is not a sustainable option. SEO is a long term alternative that helps a business become visible through organic search.

1. Increase Your Rankings: A good search engine optimization plays an important role in increasing your website’s ranking on search engines.

2. Visibility: When the ranking of a website increases, its visibility on search engine pages automatically increases.

3. Increase Traffic: As your website gets high rank and becomes more visible on search engines, your website traffic will start increasing. It would be easily found by the visitors. For this, proper web design and website features are important. The reason is that they ensure that your new website visitors have a great experience on your website.

4. Increase Leads & Sales: When your website starts gaining huge organic traffic, there must be an increase in sales and leads. Again a good website design is very important in order to transform these visitors into leads and sales.

SEO can have a tremendous impact on your offline business and every business owner should understand how SEO works. SEO should play a vital part of every businesses marketing strategy.