Coaching For Success
Reap The Benefits Of Twitter’s New Advertising Platform
Mar 14th
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Promoting your internet business on the various social media networks is regarded as a major component of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy today.
Some of the social networks, such as Facebook, also offer excellent opportunities for paid advertising, and it appears that Twitter is about to leap headlong into that market also.
Watch For Promoted Tweets Coming Soon
Advertisers’ messages on Twitter are known as Promoted Tweets, and users should start seeing them in their timelines any day now, if they haven’t already.
This is part of a major push by Twitter to sell advertising space to small-sized and medium-sized businesses in the form of either Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts, which is Twitter’s pay-per-follower advertising system.
Choose The Right Type Of Advertising
The question then is, Which type of advertising is right for your business? That all depends on the amount of money involved and also what the goals of your business are.
If the aim is to promote a single product or a single piece of content, your best bet may be to use a Promoted Tweet, but that depends on how popular what you’re offering is with the Twitter users and how relevant it is, not to mention the quality of the copy in the tweet.
If you’re looking to gain more followers, then the Promoted Account may be right for your business, but the expense can only really be justified if you intend to maintain your business’s presence on Twitter over the long haul.
The optimum option may actually be a combination of the two, particularly if most of your user base comes courtesy of Twitter.
Is Advertising On Twitter A Good Bet?
While it’s estimated there are over 200 million accounts on Twitter, only about 20 million are “active”, i.e. access their accounts at least once per month. So, this begs the question, “How effective can advertising on Twitter be?”.
That remains to be seen, but Twitter is determined to become a major player in the advertising stakes and is putting plenty of its not insubstantial weight behind a push to match, and, eventually, overtake Google and Facebook when it comes to revenue from online advertising.
Its sales force is playing a leading role in the push, but even more important is its upcoming platform for self-service ad buying, similar to Google’s AdWords, making ad buying much more accessible and affordable on Twitter.
More and more internet business owners are advertising on social media platforms to great effect, and adding Twitter to your advertising portfolio may be a great move, provided your budget can handle the expense.
For more information and help advertising on Twitter, check with a UK internet marketing consultant, who will help you determine the best strategy for your business going forward.
Expand Your Backlinks Portfolio With These 5 Tools
Mar 11th
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******************************************************************************************************************3. Ontolo
In order to get your internet business‘s web site ranked highly in the search engines, one of the most important things you need to do is build high-quality inbound links. This should already be an integral part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy anyway, but, in view of Google’s recent algorithm changes, takes on an even more important role.
Building Links Takes Time And Effort
But, building links that are high-quality is time-consuming and hard work, despite the great rewards it can bring. And, then again, how do you define “quality” when it comes to links, and what makes them “better”?
There are several services and tools that can help in finding, selecting and managing the right links for your business. That’s not to say it won’t still be hard work, but the following list can help make the whole process less arduous.
1. Majestic SEO
With an index of more than 3 trillion URLs that’s continually being added to, this is a backlinks analysis tool that provides users with all the high level information needed to determine a link’s potential. Its index is now bigger than Yahoo’s, allowing it to provide even more extensive information than Yahoo. Most of the services are free with the rest available to premium subscribers.
2. Link Insight
This tool finds high-value links, which are then graded according to 4 categories: SpamSignal, TrustSignal, GeoSignal and SocialSignal. It has a couple of unique features, Domain Strength, which shows how well a site ranks in the search engines, and Domain Discount, which can be set to handle multiple links from the same site. Licence fees start at $399.
3. Ontolo
Free tools are available that help find and qualify prospective linking candidates, including Query Generator, URL Reviewer and Backlink Monitor. The commercial packages range in price from $297 to $1,247 depending on the number of campaigns and links, and offer far more than backlink analysis.
4. Raven
Among the marketing tools Raven offers is Link Manager, which allows users to add links along with associated data such as status, owner, type, etc., and allows them to receive updates whenever changes occur. Plans range from $19 to $249 per month depending on the number of links.
5. BuzzStream
BuzzStream’s toolset (Link Prospect Research, List Building, etc.) is designed to take the tedium out of the task of link building by making research and analysis much easier. Some tools are free, while the cost of others ranges from $29 to over $300 per month, with a free 14 day trial offered.
Link building is vital to the success of your internet business, so it might be wise to investigate these tools further.
For help evaluating all available link building tools, a UK internet business coach can supply you with all the help and advice you need to select the tool that’s right for your business needs.
New Changes To Googles Algorithm Mean Content Reigns Supreme
Mar 9th
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******************************************************************************************************************Quality Content More Important Than Ever
As an internet business owner, one thing you have to do, if you want your business to be found in the search engines, Google in particular, is stay abreast of changes to search engine algorithms as best as you can.
Google’s Changing Things Up Again
Google recently announced a major change to its algorithm that, according to their blog, may affect as much as 12 percent of sites on the web. This change will target sites Google regards as providing low value due to poor content or duplicate content or simply because they just aren’t very useful. And those sites will end up having their rankings lowered, so this is potentially very damaging when it comes to a site’s position in the search engine results.
As with all changes to Google’s algorithm, ignore this at your own peril!
Give Google What Google Wants
If your site is made up of quality, informative content that provides value to your visitors, you won’t have to worry about losing your rankings. That worn out old epithet that you may be tired of hearing that says “Content is king” looks like it may be truer than ever going forward.
The sites that will probably be in serious trouble are such as the ones known as content farms. These sites are more concerned with quantity rather than quality and up until now they’ve profited from the volume of content they contain, resulting in a lot of poor quality content littering the search engine results.
And, as long as Google is upping the ante in the content stakes, you can guarantee the other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing won’t just sit around and watch the quality of their results sink compared to Google’s. So, watch for similar changes to be announced by the other search engines before too long.
Quality Content More Important Than Ever
What’s obvious here is that quality is going to rule supreme from now on, with quantity taking a back seat, but that seat will be waaaaaaayyy back compared to content.
Bloggers beware! Posts need to offer something new or at least a new twist on something that may already be familiar – just re-publishing a story or news item won’t cut it going forward. The emphasis for Google needs to be on quality, original content, meaning that you need to be saying something new, or risk losing out in the rankings.
Overall, this should be a change that’s a win-win for everybody – those seeking good, original content and those producing it.
What This Means For Your Internet Business
The first thing you should do (and this is something you should already be doing as part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy) is keep a sharp eye on your analytics to make sure your traffic numbers haven’t been adversely affected.
One thing to bear in mind is that search isn’t the only way to get traffic. Now’s the time to boost your social network presence; if you have an e-mail list, begin to interact with them more and work at expanding your list, or if you have newsletter subscribers, the same advice applies. In other words, increase your user base.
Work at increasing the number of inbound links by soliciting links from sites with quality content using anchor text that is keyword-rich. Quality inbound links are still an important factor as far as search engine rankings are concerned.
Vary your content by adding videos on YouTube, post photos on such sites as Flickr and create podcasts. The search engines love variety.
You may also want to look into hiring a good writer to produce quality content for you. Excellent content will help attract links and improve the overall value of your site in Google’s virtual eyes.
As you may gather, internet business owners need to evaluate the content of their sites and, if necessary, consider the above steps to make their rankings more secure.
A UK internet business coach will work with you to ensure your content is of the highest calibre and that your search engine rankings aren’t adversely affected.
Ten Rules To Building A Successful Internet Business App
Mar 7th
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******************************************************************************************************************6. Provide Notifications
In recent years many internet businesses have developed applications to enhance their users’ experience. Nowadays, applications can be created by companies in the cloud and deployed to millions of users.
Not All Apps Are Good Apps
With the increase in the number of applications available, the number of those that are mediocre or at best poor has increased proportionately. So, if you’re considering creating an application for your business and your users, here are 10 guidelines to follow to give yourself a good chance of creating a successful application:
1. Make it useful
This may seem obvious, but it’s vital to the success of any app that it provide value to users to keep them coming back and perhaps get them to pay for it.
2. It Must Be Fast
Users are used to apps being lightning fast these days, so yours must be the same. If it takes a while to load, make sure to display something to keep the user engaged while the rest of the app loads in the background.
3. Keep It Relevant
It needs to be sleek and modern with the latest design features, especially as it relates to your market. Take a look at other apps in your field to see what they’re doing and incorporate those features in your design.
4. Overdeliver And Surprise
Be sure to add more value to your app by including a few little extras that will be a pleasant surprise to your users and convince them that you’re working hard for them by giving them what they need before they even realise they need it.
5. Must Be Easy To Use
If your app is complicated and takes a while for a user to understand, you’re likely to lose many of your visitors. Keep it as simple as possible initially and add more complexity later.
6. Provide Notifications
Your app should let users know when something’s going on. For example, Groupon lets users know whenever a deal becomes available in their area. The main thing is to keep users informed regularly yet remain unobtrusive.
7. Make It Fun
Add an element or two of fun to your app, because fun = engagement.
8. Provide Great Service
If there’s one thing that will keep customers coming back, it’s great service. And that’s how your product or service gets recommended to others, so make providing excellent service a priority.
9. Respond To User Feedback
Give the customer what they want by responding to feedback as quickly as possible.
10. Charge A Fee
If your app is following the preceding guidelines and delivering a first-rate customer experience, don’t hesitate to levy a fee for your app, especially if it’s costing you. Remember, you’re a business, not a charity.
Follow the above guidelines and enhance your internet business with a great app.
A UK internet marketing service will be glad to provide all the help you need to develop a superior quality app.
Google Putting Greater Emphasis On Social Search Recommendations
Mar 4th
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******************************************************************************************************************Twitter Firehose Makes Results More Comprehensive
OK, so nobody can say we haven’t talked about this and that we haven’t tried to emphasise its importance to you and your internet business, but now the proof of how much effort you’ve been putting into the social networking area of your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts will soon be evident.
Google’s Really Going Social
That’s because Google is putting more emphasis on social search results (it may be more accurate to refer to them as social recommendations), bringing them more to the forefront by actually listing them in their search results pages.
These results will be mixed in with the rest of the search results based on their relevance to the query submitted by the user and also taking into consideration the content from the user’s social graph. Results will also be dependent on which accounts the user has connected to their public profile on Google.
This represents a major change in Google’s philosophy, since social search results were previously only listed at the bottom of the page. Now they can appear anywhere in the results and a notation will appear alongside the results showing their origin, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Twitter Firehose Makes Results More Comprehensive
In 2010 Google paid a lot of money for access to Twitter’s database of tweets (also known as the firehose) and is finally using that data to produce more comprehensive socially based results, meaning that links shared on Twitter may now be displayed as part of the search results.
Overall, it’s highly possible that, if someone is connected to you and your business publicly and decides to share a link, that may well appear in Google’s search results.
The More Connections The Better
The obvious takeaway from this (at least, we hope it’s obvious!) is that, if you haven’t done so already, you should be out there in social network land building a fan base and a following for your business. The more social connections that can be established between your business and social media networks the more search results may be displayed with references to your internet business.
We can’t emphasise enough the importance of establishing a presence for your internet business on the social media platforms from a search engine optimisation (SEO) standpoint, and, with Google’s latest initiative, that fact has become doubly important.
Check with a UK internet marketing consultant for help getting your business established on the social media networks to take full advantage of Google’s latest search initiatives.
