Why SEO is often better than paid search marketing

Paid search marketing is considered one of the easiest and quickest methods to achieve high rankings in Google and other search engines for related-to-your business keywords. Moreover, paid search marketing costs a lot. Talking about SEO, it takes less money and at the same time gets more targeted visitors.

What is the difference between paid search marketing and Search Engine Optimization?

SEO focuses on the regular "organic" search results on Bing, Yahoo, Google and other search engines. If your site is itemized in the list of regular search results, you do not need to pay for the click. In case you decided to take advantage of paid search marketing for advertising your site on search engines, you have to pay for each and every click. Therefore, your site appears in the separate section of the search results page, where "sponsored results" are displayed.

SEO Benefits:

1.    Lasting results

Paid search marketing provides targeted quick results. You can see the positive effects several minutes after your paid search campaign has launched. However, with paid search marketing, you stop getting new visitors at that moment you stop paying.

In order to get high positions in the organic results, you need to develop quality web pages and effective links, which point to your website. It takes a lot of time to get high rankings with Search Engine Optimization. Luckily, the majority of sites keep their rankings for a long time.

So if you are interested in the long run, SEO is your choice.

2.    To improve your website

Using paid search marketing, you get visitors due to the fact that you pay for them. Search Engine Optimization allows you to get visitors because your site is well-encapsulated.

In case you choose Search Engine Optimization to promote your site, you are of necessity to optimize all web pages, including the usability, content, etc. Undoubtedly, it requires more time and consequently more work. Your site and your revenue benefit significantly from these changes.

3.    To integrate with social media

Social media helps you to increase the amount of links, which you get from other websites. It results in getting higher positions in Google's regular results. So create a new page on your site and mention it on Twitter or Facebook. Therefore, you have a wonderful opportunity to get new visitors through social media websites. Some of these visitors certainly will link to your site, having a positive influence on your Search Engine Optimization Campaigns.

Paid search marketing is a good option for you if you need website visitors right now. But if you want to get high rankings in Google search results that can last without paying for clicks, choose SEO to promote your website. 

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

8 Must-Have Elements of a Successful Blog Post

Talking about marketing online, you will probably hear that “content marketing” is considered one of the greatest methods to introduce your website to the world. However, content marketing is not the same as dashing off blog posts every day. 

There is much more to a great blog post than just couples of words on a screen. Here you can see elements that are “a must” in your blog post:  

1. The article requires a certain point.
There are tons of blog articles with no point and no sense. They are created in order to be created and have nothing to say. Each article should communicate a point.

When your article has a certain point, readers receive something they can think about. They are more likely to comment on it, share it, etc.

Moreover, having a point, you can take advantage of specific keywords. Implement those keywords by writing an article with a succinct point.

2. Images
In order to be successful an article should be enjoyable to read. Of course, content is considered the main thing for search engines, however visual aids are still important. Good images attract attention to the topic and the text.  Images should be strategic and eye-catching to help your readers and enhance your content.

3. Structure
Structure is the matter of great significance. It never could be overestimated. Before communicating a concept, you have to organize and write down your ideas. If not, you are going to have scattered statements and sentences.

Articles should have paragraph breaks, headings and subheadings. It makes the text readable.

You can take as example the following model:

• Introduction
• Making your point and explaining it. 
• Making your second point with explanations. 
• Conclusion with call to action. 

Of course, it cannot be the same detailed plan for all the articles, because the topic always differs and consequently the text specifications also differ, however you can see the general idea of the content structure.

4. Unique content
First and foremost, it should be something new for you to say that makes the whole idea and text unique. I don’t think you actually want just to repeat what others say. You need to have a unique point of view, fresh approach or new details. If it is a peculiar point of view, it should be well-reasoned.

Secondarily, the content must be unique. Under no circumstances copy and paste content from another website!

5. Substantial length
Your blog post should be as long as it takes to say what you have to say. However, it shouldn’t be a 200-words article. As a rule, it may include from 1,000 to 1,500 words.

6. Internal linking strategy
Internal linking, where you link one blog post to other related posts within your website, serves to improve the value of a site. It is not difficult to manage.

7.  Attention to grammar
Everybody makes mistakes. It is human. However, try to avoid it and double-check everything you wrote.

8. A call to action 
The call to action is the wonderful and really necessary element, which makes a blog post worth it all. Each post should call to action. The reader has to be ready to do it, to respond to it, to click where he is asked to click.

The call to action is the key that brings in more conversions.

Simple writing content for a blog is not the right way to success. Think carefully about your strategy and make a plan to go ahead with.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

How to Accumulate Good Customer Reviews That Stick

Sometimes local business reviews provides a serious boost in site sales and traffic. Client reviews make a website much more trustworthy. So a local listing with a lot of rave reviews attracts more attention and give a strong impulse to visit the website. Good customer reviews are an effective method to stand out from your competition.

Today mobile search gives consumers the convenient opportunity to search and shop online, so you should use every single opportunity to stick out. For instance, reviews that are posted on your Google+ page can be displayed when your business listing appears in Google’s local search results. The total amount of reviews can also help to attract consumers to visit your site. Your Google+ reviews are also shown in your PPC ads in order to increase the click-though rate.

Customer reviews encourage other clients to leave reviews. However, there are some common mistakes businesses make trying to accumulate reviews. They include:

• Asking all the customers to leave a review and preliminarily giving them a pre-written model to copy. If all the reviews will be the same, the review websites will mark them as suspicious.
• Asking all the customers to leave a review at their business location. Reviews posted from the same IP address can be defined all of the reviews as spammy and suspicious.
• Asking past customers to leave a review all at once. If many reviews appear on the website in a short period of time the algorithm will define them as unnatural.

So how to attract reviews from customers is the right way?

High-quality customer support. If you treat each client like he/she is your №1 customer, he/she is surely provide you with good word-of-mouth advertising by telling his/her co-workers, friends and family about your business and high-quality customer service.

Social media for supporting customer service. Don’t use social media to ask for reviews, take advantage of a customer-service extension. If your customer mentions your social media profile or join your business page, wait a minute and let him/her know that you are glad to see him/his here and wish their experience to be pleasant. 

Reach out to your customers via email. Don’t forget to create a client database of your customers' e-mails for you send them various promotions and offers. Send an e-mail, where you ask them to write a feedback after their purchase to make sure they are glad with the experience.

In case you sent to each of your customer base, you will surely get some replies. Respond to each e-mail, thank for the feedback and remind them where they can find you on Google+ page.

Don’t lay your customers under a necessity of leaving a review. Just offer a good-quality service or product, provide excellent customer service and don’t forget to make sure that your customers know how to find you on such websites as Yelp and Google+, and you will receive natural reviews that stick.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

Why Cheap, Outsourced SEO Will Cost You in the Long Run

As a business owner or entrepreneur, you certainly receive several e-mails and phone messages with offers to improve your website rankings. Today SEO is considered one of the most effective ways of Internet marketing. However, placing confidence of the company’s site in a poor-quality SEO provider is quite perilous and frustrating.

The majority of new businesses prefer to conduct affairs with overseas companies in order to save money initially. Many companies strive for hiring a SEO professional for just a few hundred dollars, while a high-quality agency costs several thousand. Here you can find several reasons not to use cheap, outsourced Search Engine Optimization:

1.      Low-quality link building can cause a Google penalty. Paying a few hundred dollars a month you cannot receive good-quality link building and content marketing. In such a case you are likely to receive poor-quality spammy links, which are created using automated tools and software. The greater number of links doesn’t mean the better result.

2.      Low-rank site content and poor grammar. As a rule, using bad-quality outsourced Search Engine Optimization services provides low quality and almost unreadable website content. Such “professionals” usually scrape existing online content and spin it. Therefore, you receive a piece of content that doesn’t make sense and represent your company.

3.      Language barriers and communication. It is known that a lot of the overseas outsource companies are working on different time schedules. It makes business a little difficult. Moreover, sometimes language barriers can result in a complete disaster, which takes an incredible amount of money and time to solve the problem.

4.      Ignorance is no excuse. Quality Search Engine Optimization offers much more than just blasting amount of links. All your website requires, including original content creation/distribution and outreach/link-building strategies can’t be done properly just for a few hundred dollars. No matter what they say.

5.       Long-term business relationship. Do you really think you were the only one company receiving that typical e-mail or phone message that offers to make SEO wonders for some dollars? Such messages are sent to all the e-mail addresses and phone numbers the companies have. They don’t pursue the goal of building long-term business.

You get what you pay for when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Selecting the cheap variant in the beginning can really spoil your future efforts and input .

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

Content Pieces Created With No Writing

You are not feeling yourself to be a good writer? Take it easy! Even if you understand the importance of content these days, you can still find a lot of other content pieces, which can be made without much of writing. Check out the following ideas to stimulate your creativity:

1.    Photo gallery: Upload various photos and images to your blog. In case you have your own blog, create galleries with your own visual observations and experiences. If you have a business site, try to create a collection of funny product-related images.

2.    Song list: Make a selection of songs that evoke a certain mood or help to achieve other purposes for the audience. It could be, for example a list of “Top 20 Songs for Grieving”.

3.    Quotes Gallery: Regardless of the subject your site has, there is a list of wonderful quotes that can inspire and engage your readers. Search for related to your industry quotes.

4.    Link list: Curation is the most convenient way to effective organize your web properties that are full of content. Choose 15-20 interesting, entertaining and informative industry links you have come across online recently, share them with your website audience

5.    Video series: It may be a collection of Vimeo or Youtube videos with master classes or something like this. For instance, if you are a tech new entry, a selection of good TED Talks would be quite interesting for your readers.

6.    Audio And Video Interview: It is very easy to create an audio interview. All you need is a free-cost recording program, for example, Audacity. If you want to make a video interview, it would be a powerful and effective way to create content and compel attention.

7.    Podcast: Running your own podcast series can give you the opportunity to generate a lot of content with no writing. If you’re successful, you may take advantage of your recording featured on podcast sites.

  

8.    Slide deck: The convenience of sharing slide decks on your different web properties is that you do not need to make them yourself. It‘ll improve your branding efforts. Moreover, you can effortlessly find a variety of interesting presentations in order to embed them in your own site.

9.    Infographic: Got creative skills? Translate your knowledge and the industry stats you’ve accumulated into an engaging infographic image that’s sure to get shared around by members of your target audience.

10.  Comic: In case you are good at illustrating, comics are a wonderful way to fill out your content needs and to engage your followers at the same time. However, don’t forget to keep any humor you include appropriate to the expectations of your audience.

11.  Reviews: Reviews are quite easy to create. Moreover, they will give you many insight into your customers, your product and your marketplace.

12.  Re-blogged posts: When you find an interesting, informative or related-to-your-product blog post, seek permission to re-blog it on your website. Re-blogging is one of the easiest ways to add valuable content to a site with no effort.

13.  Guest post: in case there is no good content to re-blog, invite authors to create guests’ posts in order you could share on your website instead of a backlink. In order to avoid being viewed as a link schemer, upload only top-quality interesting posts for publication.

14.  Customer-created content: Cannot create your own content? Make your customers do it for you! For example, organize a photo contest, where participants have to share their own photos using your product in various creative ways.

15.  Outsourced content: In case you yet require writing some pieces of original content, you can think about paying somebody else for doing that instead of you. There are many professional writers out there who can help you create everything you need.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

Increase Traffic to Your Website With Four Blogging Alternatives

If you need good and intriguing content on your site for getting organic search traffic and you are not an expert in copywriting, take the following steps to rank high in Google's competitive search.

Some people may solve the problem by hiring a copywriter, however it’s not the only solution, especially for startups on a budget.

For those who want to create engaging SEO-friendly content, here you can find some alternatives.

Design an infographic. A high-quality infographics can go probably better that text-based content. People are likely to share data displayed in a visual format. As a rule, infographics generally are not cheap to create, but you can take advantage of such services online as Piktochart, which offers templates to design an inforgraphic at a low cost.

Whatever variant you select, make sure your infographic

•         provides a certain theme or strong storytelling element
•         has compelling data
•         aims at a certain demographic (typically your audience). 

Carrying out customer surveys is an effective way to gather data for infographics.

Create a YouTube video. YouTube is considered the 2^nd most popular search engine next to Google. It is also owned by Google. You can create a short 3-minute-video, using your iPhone, then upload it to YouTube and strongly promote it across the social media channels.

Don’t forget that your video, just the way as infographics, should be useful and engaging to your audience. You may create some tutorials, tell a customer success story or show yourself as a professional in your field by answering the questions.

Produce a slideshow. Images are considered very popular online. Moreover, they are indexed by search engines. Therefore, slideshows are perfect for Search Engine Optimization. Slideshows do not need a lot of writing, they require just titles and short descriptions under each image. That’s it!

It is very important for slideshows to actually resonate with your audience the content has to lend itself to images.

Request reviews. You can have a wonderful opportunity for getting your customers to create content for you? User-generated content is one of the best tools for Search Engine Optimization. Moreover, it helps with social, because users enjoy sharing their content with their followers. Publish feedback on a testimonials webpage, and in case you are running an ecommerce website, ask for product reviews.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

Link Building Systematization and Scaling

Being the best link builder in the whole world doesn’t mean you are able to scale and systematize your link building. For achieving true scale you will need to remove the bottleneck from the system.

It is easy to scale low quality link building, for example robotic scripts that send email spam to webmasters or large offshore link building companies; but unfortunately this will be the case of Google penalties.

Creating high quality links requires high quality human cooperation. Bloggers and social media marketers are smart people and they focus on their own kind, not on bots, scripts, etc.

The point is that we need humans who are persuasive and sensible and there should be a team made up of such people. Creating a replicable team of people with workflow, methodologies, routines, and so on, is the key to quality link building scaling.

The Workflow

Think about the idea if having a to-do list on your mind right now. This is worthless. One of the greatest mistakes people make is keeping a to-do list in their heads. Our brain isn’t good for that. It functions at its peak when it is clear of the information. That information should be dumped into your trusted system.

That system should be organized in a way so that it facilitates the turning of a huge amount of information into actions and decisions. It is useful if you think of an approach called GTD (Getting Things Done) developed by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done.

In GTD you should understand that actions are not really actions, they are projects. A project is anything that requires more than one action to complete. The next action is the activity required to move the project forward.

As far as the workflow is concerned, next actions are the units of progress that you alongside your team will have to deal with.

The workflow is crucial when it comes to carrying out a SEO campaign effectively. Here are few steps of a GTD process:

1. Find Potential Customers and Check Their Authority

It is very simple. It can be like running Google.com queries in order to find relevant blogs in your niche. You should look at authoritative, relevant and trusted websites from the point of view of their topic.

2. Find Contact Info of Potential Customers

After identifying the relevant websites, it’s time to get contact information from various sources. And this doesn’t mean only names and emails, but also Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumbles, Youtube, and other social networks if there are any.

3. Create Appropriate Templates

Obviously you won’t write from scratch each email that is being sent. It is not scalable. This is where an intelligent template system comes in.

Every attempt gets a template. You should attempt more than once, but no more than three times to the same individual, because most likely you won’t get any response.

Creativity here is the key to success. Everybody receives unwanted emails asking to guest blog on our sites. Despite of the fact that those emails are well-written, we discard them. But, what if you ask a blogger about their favorite tools in the field for an article that you are going to write? Moreover, you want to cite them as a source. Obviously they will respond.

There are some more steps for achieving success (template personalization, moderation queue, CRM, etc.), but these are three major ones.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

How to Surreptitiously Include Keywords in The Web Content

If you need any piece of original content for your website, the cheapest variant is to write it yourself. You shouldn't be scared of writing. The process and type of writing you need to do for a site is completely different than the typical writing that you do for university. It is more limited than creative writing; however it comes out only in need to write using keywords. And that’s the “problem”!

If you are a first-timer in internet marketing field, you might be confused with keyword optimization. But it actually sounds more difficult than it really is. Fundamentally, keyword optimization is responsible for checking the content has enough instances of the keywords. Keywords are selected phrases or words widely used in search engines in order to find things that a company offers. For instance, if you are selling real estate in Alabama, your keywords may be "alabama real estate," "alabama homes for sale," "birmingham alabama real estate," "birmingham houses for sale" and so on.

You can find keywords manually or choose them by using keyword research analyzers and tools. There also are paid analyzers you can use, or the well-known Google keyword research tool.

When you have already chosen the keywords, consider the way you can divide them into logical groups. If your website is new-made, begin with the less competitive phrases and words.

Having your selected keywords, you are ready to create the website content. It is the time when the keyword optimization gets into play. You have to repeat your keyword phrases several times throughout all the content. As a rule, the keyword should appear 2-5 % of the time. For instance, if your article includes 500 words, the keyword should appear from 10 to 30 times.

If the nature of your site cannot use keywords that often, you have to use separate sections, which contain optimized content that relates to your website. For example, in case you have a website connected to "fan fiction," you can write articles about how to create fan fiction or something like that. Here "fan fiction" is going to be the optimized keyword. Take into consideration your community and reviewing analytics and logs, thinking about content ideas.  Don’t forget to include other articles, which can be of interest to your audience. They can be not relating to "fan fiction".

By keyword optimization, you get the opportunity to express yourself, making sure your website gets seen by search engine bots.

While writing the site content, don’t forget that it should sound natural and be enjoyable for site visitors. However, the principal aim is to include the necessary amount of keywords for them to look absolutely natural.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

Start Preparing Your SEO for the 'Internet of Things'

Prepare for an Internet Marketing Revolution, which is coming by way of smart home technology or what is now developed into a wider concept: the Internet of Things.

Smart home technology traces its roots to 1960. However, initially it has mostly been viewed as a luxury for wealthy homeowners. Today things have significantly changed and many electronic devices, including door locks and thermostats are Wi-Fi enabled.

“Internet of Things” presents an old concept that a lot of us already know about.  It is the smart home with a variety of interconnected smart residential devices aimed to make the life easier, more enjoyable and efficient.

Last month Google announced that The Internet of Things wants to buy the burgeoning home control company Nest Inc. for $3.2 billion. It gives a wonderful opportunity to make a huge step forward the smart home industry and the future of online search.

If Google doesn’t know what its customer wants, paid ads will not show up unsolicited on the company’s smart devices. Though, they will probably show up for the typical reasons: customers are generally using free services, which are paid for by ads or they are making Google searches. And here where smart devices in the Internet of Things get into the play for Search Engine Optimization Marketers.

Search Engine Optimization Professionals plan to optimize everything for smart things in the foreseeable future. Anyhow, a new generation of devices is going to be connected to the Internet, and Google definitely will be there.

Undoubtedly, search will not be the principal purpose of a smart refrigerator or thermostat, however in case you require a recipe while you are preparing a meal in your kitchen, you can use the most convenient web browser available, located on the fridge, for example, near your oven.

This factor changes Search Engine Optimization considerably. If people have smart devices in their apartments, desktops and mobiles won’t be the only 2 Search Engine Optimization Realms, which marketers have to think about.

Predictions for residential Search Engine Optimization:

• Local search optimization is going to become much more important.
• Local search is going to divide into: mobile and residential arenas.
• Psychographic data is going grow in value because of residential marketing increase.
• Content marketing is going to become dominate.
• E-commerce Search Engine Optimization is going to continue to focus on desktop and mobile search.

 We all know that just time can really tell how the Internet of Things is going to change Search Engine Optimization. However, today the most principal thing for marketers remains keeping smart devices and their active development in mind. You may not see the explosion of residential SEO for a few years, but you can definitely start preparing for the inevitable, and that means preparing a mobile content strategy.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/

How Much of Your Marketing Time Should Go to SEO to Be Highly Effective

Search Engine Optimization is very important, particularly as search-engine algorithms and consumer habits change. Today consumers are becoming more and more likely to make a search instead of engaging directly with businesses. Actually, the majority of consumers start their discovery process with a search.

The principal aim of Search Engine Optimization is to make your content easily understood by search-engine algorithms and easily discovered by people when they search.

Due to the fact that these algorithms are highly advanced, they don't approve the information the way people do. By rapidly improving Search Engine Optimization, you can be sure that the algorithms in place can readily determine what each page is about. Moreover, the content has to be very useful for customers who are looking for answers.

Don’t forget that Search Engine Optimization is a long-time process. Good results require constant maintenance, because search algorithms are regularly changing. Just last year brought great changes to Google search algorithm increasing focus on high-quality media rich content.  In case marketers do not have dedicated resources on Search Engine Optimization their content is likely to be lost in the significant amount of marketing content appeared daily.

It doesn’t matter how wonderfully your Search Engine Optimization program is developed, if consumers do not really find value in your content. In such a case your marketing strategy is useless!

It is extremely important for marketers to dedicate resources and time to creating original content, which is engaging and useful. Theoretically, there should be a marketing department team aimed at creating content, which can offer a unique perspective, inspire conversation and fulfill other consumer needs.

Source: http://rankwinz.com/