Archive for the ‘content creation’ category
How to Use Magnolia.com to Promote Your Web Site
Ma.gnolia is a very nicely designed social bookmarking site that is easy to use. It has a Google Page Rank of 7, so it can be a nice boost to your site to acquire links from it.
To sign up:
1. Visit http://ma.gnolia.com.
2. Click the Join button on the top menu. The URL is: http://ma.gnolia.com/join.
3. Type in the required information and click “Join Free”.
4. In a few minutes you will receive an email from Ma.gnolia that you will click to
activate your account.
To bookmark a web page:
1. On the front page, there is a box on the right side of the screen labeled “Add a
bookmark”. Click the arrow beneath the textbox to expand the box to give you
options to add a title, description, and tags (separated by a comma).
2. Type in the information and click Save. Leave the checkbox labeled “Keep
bookmark private” unchecked.
3. As before, make use of the keywords someone would use to search for your web
site in the tags and in the title.
To see the top tags being used on the site, click the Tags link on the top menu. Then click
the tab labeled “Everyone’s Top Tags”.
To add the functionality to your browser to bookmark sites without having to go do the
Ma.gnolia web site, visit: http://ma.gnolia.com/support/bookmarklets.
We suggest that you create an account and bookmark every page on your site that has strong content. Hopefully some other people will see your bookmark, check out your site, and bookmark it themselves. Another strategy is to get people who know you or are associated with your business to create their own accounts and bookmark your site as well.
For help integrating social bookmarking sites into your online marketing strategy, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.
Web Site Marketing: Choose Your Content Management System Vendor Carefully
I have had a fair amount of experience working on optimizing web sites that were built on top of some kind of sophisticated content management systems (CMS), and my first thought is almost always the same: man, I wish they had contacted me before BEFORE building the site. The very nature of a CMS works against what you want to accomplish with your site from a search engine marketing perspective. I’ve said it a number of times, but it bears repeating: you want to maximize content and minimize code. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with a system that has to flexible enough to accomodate all kinds of different content of different lengths, widths, and attributes, the code to make that happen is often very poorly optimized.
But if you follow our suggestions, you will be more likely to hire a company (and a CMS) that will allow you to effectively manage your content and also rank well in the search engines:
Look at examples of code generated by the CMS for other web sites. If you don’t have a strong grasp on what well-optimized code should look like, hire a search engine professional to do this for you. It will be money well-spent. If the CMS provider can’t provide samples of cleanly coded web pages, move on to another company.
Ask for a list of other companies who have used the CMS. Then search for their web sites in the search engines (by industry, not by company name) to see if you can find them. If they don’t appear in the search engine rankings, then that is a clue that the CMS provider creates web sites that are not search engine-friendly.
Ask the CMS vendor about search engine optimization. They will probably say things like you can insert keywords, meta descriptions, etc. That’s not what you’re interested in. You want to know if they really know anything about search engine optimization – listen for terms such as “keyword density”, “CSS”, “layers”, and “optimization.” Again, it may be very helpful to hire a search engine expert to take part in this conversation.
Call companies who have used the vendor’s CMS and ask about their satisfaction and if they are getting much natural traffic from search engines.
If after doing the above things you don’t feel very confident that the CMS will work well AND will help you establish high search engine rankings, then look elsewhere.
If you need help choosing a content management system for your web site (this needs to be done BEFORE you build your site!), call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
Getting Started Distributing Articles to Promote Your Web Site
Today we thought we would talk a little bit about where to distribute articles for Internet marketing purposes. If you’ve read much of our blog, then you know we are huge proponents of article distribution as a way to drive traffic to your web site. The key word there is DISTRIBUTION. You need to get it out there.
Here are some article directories to get you started:
http://ezinearticles.com
http://articledashboard.com
http://easyarticles.com
http://buzzle.com
http://article99.com
http://articlealley.com
http://articleexpress.com
http://articledash.com
http://articlenexus.com
All of the above sites require membership with the site to post articles. There is software that claims to distribute your article to lots of these kinds of sites at once. It’s probably worth investing in, although the surest way to get it done is manually.
One other article site we really like is http://isnare.com. It has a feature whereby you can have your article distributed to dozens of other sites that are part of its network, so that is a good, low-cost, high percentage way to leverage your efforts and reasonably sure that your article is getting distributed.
If you can write and distribute one article per week, it will have a profound impact on your web site – even more so if you combine article writing with blogging.
For help implementing a content distribution plan for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.
Internet Marketing: Conversion Strategies for Turning Visitors into Customers
You put a lot of work into getting people to your web site – search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content creation – but it doesn’t mean much if you are not able to convert traffic into customers. Following are a few tips for improving your conversions.
Make it easy for the visitor to convert
Make it very easy to do whatever it is you want your web site visitor to do. If you want her to fill out a form, make the form easy to find and don’t ask for too much information. This is another area where testing can help you find the best way to do things. For example, you could create two different landing pages with different forms, and then use pay-per-click ads to drive traffic to those two pages. Your analytics (discussed later) will then tell you which one converted better. You will then know with great confidence which of the two forms works better.
Get the visitor involved
You want to draw visitor into your web site and get him involved. Get them clicking, selecting and typing. Devices such as text boxes, radio buttons, check boxes and dropdown lists cause your visitors to interact with your web site. The more they interact, the more likely they are to engage in some kind of conversion event. Even if it’s simply getting their email address, that is far, far better than their leaving with no conversion event at all.
Tell the visitor exactly what to do
Don’t assume anything! Give your visitors specific instructions on how to go about ordering, subscribing, contacting you, or whatever action you want them to perform. If they need to click the big red button, tell them to click the big red button. And despite what you may have heard, there is nothing wrong with a link that says “Click here”. Research has shown that those types of links actually have higher click-through rates. Don’t worry about insulting your visitors’ intelligence. You won’t. It is much safer to design for the lowest common denominator – those with little web surfing experience who need specific, step-by-step instructions.
If you need some help converting your web site visitors into customers, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.
Internet Marketing Advice: Market Every Day
Dan Kennedy has a piece of marketing advice that I really like, and that I try to adhere to every day (actually, Kennedy has many pearls of wisdom), that goes something like this:
Do something every day to put prospects in the pipeline.
In other words, do some kind of promotion every day to bring business. It could be:
- Make a blog post
- Send an email
- Write an article
- Send a newsletter
These are just a few examples. Unless it’s a day where you are determined not to do any kind of work, don’t rest your head at night until you have done SOMETHING to bring in business. Work Media really likes the approach of blogging every day. It creates lots of original content, helps our search engine rankings, and helps get our name out to the world. If we at least make a blog post, then we have made some kind of little effort in the name of marketing.
Which is why, as on many nights, this post is being made at just a little before 11:00 PM. It might be bed time…but we’re still promoting.
Eyeballing Your Web Site for Search Engine Optimization
Even if you don’t know a thing about HTML, you can at least partially optimize the pages of your Web site by “eyeballing” them and passing the suggestions along to your web designer (or doing them yourself if you have that ability). Here are some tips to get you started (these tips assume you already have some idea of keywords you need to target):
- Does the web page have a keyword-loaded title?
- Does the keyword have a keyword-loaded header? A lot of un-optimized web sites have a header that says something like “Welcome to my web site!”. Scrap that and replace it with a header that instead uses your keywords.
- Does your web page copy use your keywords and are the keywords used near the top of the page?
- Is the web site copy easy on the eyes? Copy on a web page is much more difficult to read than words on paper, so you should break the copy up into short paragraphs and use lots of bullet points, along with occasional bold text, italics, etc. And use dark text on a light background.
- Does your front page have some kind of call to action? You should try to get the Web reader to read more, sign up for your newsletter, read your blog, or whatever would further your objective.
- Is the web design clean and uncluttered? Is the site easy to navigate?
- Think from your customers’ perspective. Are you giving them what they need? If you don’t know what they need, you should find out by asking or doing surveys.
These suggestions have nothing to do with keyword density or anything like that. They simply relate to making sure your web site is easy to read, easy to use, and tries to get your visitors to perform some specific action.
For help optimizing your web site, contact Work Media at info@workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.
Online Press Releases – Immediate Traffic Generators
Unlike the real world, where doing press releases is a slow, laborious process, in the on-line world, sending a single press release can result in extremely wide distribution and almost immediate feedback. The first key is to use a press release distribution service such as PRWeb. PRWeb already has a huge network of writers, editors, webmasters, bloggers, etc. who voluntarily receive press releases. You can also have the press release injected directly into search engine news results.
One powerful aspect of online press releases is how fast your information is distributed. Upon sending a press release, your information could appear on news-oriented web sites in 48 hours or less. These sites will now link back to your site. Also, if you use keywords in your press release, you could quickly achieve high search engine rankings for those keywords. In a 48 hour period you could create hundreds of new, keyword-loaded links pointing back to your site.
You need to take great care when composing your press release. You need to think in terms of both compelling, interesting copy, and of search engine optimization. Use your keywords as near to the top of your copy as possible, and use them as often as possible without sounding spammy. If your press release contains a strong call to action, that is even better. You want to compell readers of the press release to visit your web site for more information.
We will be talking more about using online press releases in future blogs. For help implementing an online PR campaign for your business, contact Work Media at workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.