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Getting High Quality Links Using Social Profiles

The concept of getting inks using profiles on several social and discussion platforms is fairly old. But the way this technique has been used has made it a spam practice. But the matter of fact is that there is a genuine way social profiles can be used to get high quality links.

The first thing that you are going to have to do is to make sure that you have a real profile about you as the person representing the business you want to promote. You are going to have to make efforts in building connection with the other businesses that may have the tendency to link with you.

There are a few ways you can use profiles to get links.

Use executive’s profile to get better response

Connections need to be established between real persons when it comes to business promotion. This way, you will be able to build trustworthiness of your business.

However, the major problem is that many of the users have learned the way to ignore messages from brands because there are many brands trying to convince users to buy from them.

In this scenario, you have to make sure that you are making personal connections.In order tobuild trust, marketing teams ask company’s executives to create business profiles on social and discussion platforms. These profiles are managed by the marketing teams. They log into the profile and try to connect with the audience.

The benefits of forum profiles

Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are very common and, so, quite popular for the typical social activity over internet. But there are more niche networks and forums that allow people belonging to certain industries or niches to connect with each other.

In such forums and platforms, you are going to find that people ask questions which have more depth. That’s where you can find better opportunity to build better connections. Another advantage of such platforms is that you can find great ideas about the content for your website.

Using LinkedIn to share content with right people

A LinkedIn profile of your company’s executive can be the best tool of promoting the content that you want to share with the audience. Of course you are doing everything with the permission from your executive. You can share schedules to let the people know about the latest piece of content that you are going to share.

Reaching out to the profiles of people who are authorities

You can also use general platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and certain forums to perform an outreach and build interest for your content.

For instance, you can follow the profiles of people in authority over Twitter. You are going to have to take the first step in building relationship with the people working behind those Twitter handles. This effort in building interaction can be both direct and indirect. For instance, you can address those people directly in your tweets or you can simple use their profile handles in order to mention them in your tweets. That is the best way to get noticed and have their responses.

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Best YouTube & Video Optimization Tools to Bring Your Videos Views

YouTube has become a leading and most powerful social media platform out there. Every day, people spend billions of hours on YouTube. So, it should not come as a surprise that YouTube marketing has become one of the leading ways to get your brand promoted in the world.

In this scenario, it is nothing less than a challenge for the marketers to make sure that their videos do not get lost in the millions of videos uploaded every day.There are certain tools and methods that can help your videos stand out.

Keyword Tool

It is the initial requirement to make sure that your videos are watched by right audiences.  And so, you have to invest your time in finding out what your audience likes to search. You will be able to know about the search phrases which your audience uses to search for the content.

Keyword Tool can be quite helpful here. It can help you find the keywords from YouTube autocomplete database. You have to enter a keyword and it will show you several suggestions related to that keyword.

Camtasia

You may sometimes need to include screen recordings in your videos. You are going to need to do it when you are creating how-to’s, demos, or tutorial videos. If you are using a smartphone or camera to record what is happening on your screen, it will look unprofessional.

You can do screen recordings with the help of a tool known as Camtasia which also allows you to record your mouse movements and keystrokes.

You can edit your recordings later to add effects, notes and several annotations.

Canva

The first thing that appears along with the title of the video is video’s thumbnail. In most of the times, people look at the thumbnail to decide whether or not they need to see the video. Therefore, it is very important to create professional, high quality and relevant thumbnails for the videos to attract viewers.

And easy to use and efficient design tool that you can use to create high quality thumbnails is Canva. Except for a few features which you are going to have to pay for, Canva is mostly free.

TubeBuddy

When you own a channel, you have to make sure that you have a nice system in place to view the user comments and reply to them as soon as you can. This way, you can increase engagement with your audience.

However, viewing and replying to them manually is going to be very difficult due to obvious reasons. so you can take help from a tool known as TubeBuddy. It is basically an extension that allows you to manage your YouTube channel without having to switch between the tabs.

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The Concept of Image Link Building

The idea of using visual content to earn more links is amazing. We all know how powerful the images can be. They have the capability to captivate your audience. But using this visual content to earn links is the best thing that you can do. In literal meaning, I am talking about link building through images.

We all know that Google has been paying lot of attention on the user experience. And the bigger part of this user experience is based on videos and images. If you are getting this point, it will not be difficult for you to understand that it is the need of the hour to modify your approach in order to present your website’s information to Google and other major search engines.

Now, you may wonder how you can use images to building links. Well, there are some ways you can do it. It is basically about the types of content that you can use to building links. A quick run-down of the key types of visual content may be useful here.

Infographics

The infographics have become so popular that they sometime seem to be overused; and this is what many people think. But the matter of fact is that eye-catching infographics can be quite helpful to prompt the users understand your point. And that is the very reason that they never stop helping publishers in building links.

Appropriate use of logo

While you may be thinking how a brand logo can be useful for the users. But the matter of fact is that it is a visual content;and also that a professionally developed logo can build a nicer image of your brand.

The logo of your website is going to be a representation when you are contributing as a guest blogger in other websites. You can associate this logo with a link back to your website’s main page.

Product photos or a brand photo-shoot

If you are an e-commerce business, you can use the product images for link building. Make sure that you are using high quality images only. Moreover, you are going to have to optimize each of your images for SEO.

If you do not have products to take the photos of, you can consider having a brand photo-shoot. For this purpose, you can get services of a professional photographer. The brand photo-shoot can include the photos of you working on your computer or sitting on the office desk.

Statistical charts, graphs and maps

Depending on your business, you can take help from data visualization, charts, graphs and maps to build links. For this purpose, you are going to have to a little research to pull the statistics about your business and the products and services that you are selling. Make sure that the information you are using for the development of graphs and other visualizations is easy to understand.

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Difference between SEO, SEM and PPC

The concept of SEM (search engine marketing) started in 2001. This concept would include both paid and non-paid methods of marketing the content to get it ranked in search engines. Using this definition, we can say that both PPC and SEO fall under the SEM term.

In other words, you can consider SEM as a category of marketing through search engine. PPC and SEO are the parts of hierarchy beneath the SEM main category. And this definition makes sense.

Although the above statements about SEM make sense, SEM seemed to fit in the paid search sphere more than SEO; and it continues to do so. In this scenario, it may be worth describing the difference between PPC, SEO and SEM.

Difference between SEM and PPC

The simple thing that you are going to have to keep in mind here is that PPC is SEM. In other words, PPC is same as SEM or at least a major part of it.And SEO is none of those things.

This is mainly due to the evolution of potentially confusing acronyms as well the need to put a major emphasis on the importance of paid search. Whatever the reason is, the end result that we have got is that two cost driven marketing terms have now started to mean the same thing.

Sadly, if you are the one enthusiastic enough to get a sense based on the literal meanings, these two terms are going to confuse you further. Now, there is no doubt about what PPC means. It may be called CPC, paid search, or search ads. It is clear that it is referring to the paid search marketing through the search engines such as Google and Bing.

Difference between SEO and PPC

We all know SEO is search engine optimization. But if you look at the words in a literal perspective, you are going to see that these words do not make sense. I mean, how can you optimize an entire search engine? No, you are not going to do that. Search engine optimization is the set of strategies and tactics that help us in optimizing content and websites for search engines. The purpose is to make sure that they are better able to address the masses.

As mentioned above, PPC marketing is the same as or a bigger part of SEM. The factors that make both of these similar are mentioned below.

  • Both are paid
  • Both need budget allocation
  • Both help search engines and other major marketing platforms earn a lot of money.

If you look at the basic definition of SEM, you will find it saying, “a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.”

From this definition, you may call SEO and SEM the same; but they are actually not.

SEO and SEM are not the same

The reason for this is mentioned above. With PPC being the same as a bigger part of the SEM, there is not much room left for the SEO to be a part of this scheme. Both PPC and SEM are paid initiatives. It means that they have everything to do with the advertisers who are ready to spend money. On the other hand, the concept of SEO is entirely different even though it tends to do the same thing which the PPC and SEM pull off.

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What to Do If Google Ranks Wrong Pages for Your Keywords

It is nothing less than good news for you to know that the page that you wanted to rank is being ranked by Google. And it is surely going to be a bad news if you find out that the page you wanted to rank is not what Google wants to rank.

No matter what the reason is, the traffic is not going where you want it to go. It means that you might not get the conversions, which is the major goal of any SEO strategy.

This problem is not new and the good news is that it can be fixed. There are a few steps that you need to consider in this regard.

Evaluation of user intent

You may have heard about user intent in the past. It is basically the goal a person has while typing in the search field of Google.

Over the past few years, it has become highly important for a page to match the search query which has been entered by user with intent. The user intent may be related to a goal to buy something, a goal to find a particular website or page, or a goal to find helpful information about a certain topic.

Make sure that your content is tailored to the content.

Evaluation of content on the page

After you have ensured that your content is matching the intent, you have to make sure that the content on the relevant page is fully optimized. A few things that you are going to have to focus include:

  • Presence of primary focus keyword in the page title
  • Reference to primary focus keywords in description
  • Length of the copy as compared to those in the top ranking pages
  • Use of semantic keywords by competitors
  • The ability of your page to answer the queries

Evaluation of internal links

The Google terms a page important that has more pages linking to it. Therefore, you are going to have to make sure that more pages are linking page to the page which you want ranked. About 3 – 5 topically relevant pages in your site need to link back to the page that you want to rank.

Evaluation of external links

This step is similar to the above one. You are going to have to make sure that multiple high quality sites are pointing at the page that you want to rank. While internal linking is not difficult at all, you are going to have to make a strategy to make sure that you are getting high quality links from the other sites.

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Strategizing SEO for Software Businesses

If you want to use your software business with the help of the business website, you are going to have to make sure that the website has clear hierarchy and structure. For this purpose, you will have to work on the content first.

While working on the SEO of your website, maintaining website structure gets even more important. The reason is that this website is going to have information such as product details, product features, use cases, and solutions. New releases, tutorials, and knowledgeable articles are also shared through these websites.

In this article, we are going to talk about the strategizing of SEO for your software business website.

The core of your website

The people will come to your website by searching for your brand name or through referral. The first thing they are going to interact with is your home page. Homepage and main navigation are the centerpieces of your website. They tell users about the product you offer, its features and use cases, and other parts of the website that users would want to navigate to.

The navigation of a software business website mainly includes:

  • Products and their features
  • Solutions from the perspectives of need, industry and role
  • Case studies
  • About and Contact pages
  • Resources and tutorials

Creating the navigation that supports your SEO efforts

You can classify customers from the perspectives of their needs and tailor the sales copy of that product to reflect those classifications. In this scenario, you need to create a ‘mega’ menu that will direct different prospects to right sales pages.

In this scenario, the menu created can include different presentations of your product. Those presentations mainly include:

  • By brand name or by features
  • By main purpose or functionality (keywords)
  • By industry
  • By role
  • By task

It is not an obligation to display all of these categories. If it doesn’t make sense for your website, you don’t need to show it. Nevertheless, it is a great framework to classify your users and their needs.

Content creation

While the core of your website is not going to have long form content, you are still going to need it if you want the site to do well in search results.As a matter of fact, it is pretty important to have sufficient content on your website if you want to do effective SEO and content marketing.

The main purpose for which you have created the site is to bring the home page and product pages in front of your users because those are the pages that directly help you in earning revenue. But there is a huge audience that searches for information that is available through topic search. That’s where the website’s blog comes in.

This blog is quite helpful as it allows you to share information about the type of services you offer. You can talk about the technology which is being used in your products. You can share other forms of knowledgeable information.

Other things that you can share include tutorials of your software, resources and whitepaper, and reviews and comparisons.

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Blog Content Optimization for People Who Skim

People skim online content in order to get the point without spending too much of time. A survey suggests that 55% of the online readers read a post for no more than 15 seconds.

While one may think that it’s just a habit of this huge portion of readers to skim the content, the real reason is that the content is not usually up to some good standards. The first thing to ensure in this regard is that the content being developed is digestible. The main objective here is to optimize the blog content for the people who skim while still retaining the readers who like to read full articles.

In this article, we are going to discuss some ways to optimize blog content for people who skim content.

Summary graphics for each header

The main purpose of using H2 and H3 tags is to optimize content for people who skim. The use of these tags structures content quite logically. But you may be wondering because you already do this and still do not get people to read your content.

Well, you don’t need to stop at the use of H2 tags. You can go one step further by using summary graphics. These graphics are visual representations of your content. It is used to summarize the key sections of your article.

Intro paragraphs

Introduction is an important part of the articles. Sadly, most of the people skim that part. The reason is that many writers tend to write lengthy intros for unknown reasons. And the people who skim content jump straight to the H2 section without reading that intro. Keep in mind that article’s intro is one of the most powerful sections of any article. So, instead of wasting time in something which people do not care about, you need to follow a simple strategy such as PAS (Problem, Agitate, and Solution).

Writing intro this way gives readers a quick overview about what the article is all about and what they can expect from the article.

Table of content and scroll to top button

A 5000-word article with no table of content makes reading quite difficult for the readers. The main problem here is the usability. A detailed table of content makes reading experience quite better in this regard. The insertion of table of content is specifically important when you are reading on mobile screen where scrolling might seem endless.

Moreover, people may be searching only for a specific portion of your article. A detailed table of content makes it easier for such readers to directly jump to that part of the article.

In many cases, readers want to jump back to the top of the article. That’s where you can use ‘Jump Back To Top’ button.

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Content Marketing Trends to Look Out For In 2020

Content marketing and SEO are expected to reach new levels in 2020. We are moving to technically amazing content which is capable to align with the habits, preferences and search needs of the users.The reason content is getting better is that the content creators are getting smarter atresearching, strategizing, creating and publishing the content.

Content marketing is not a marketing experiment. It is actually an entire strategy which can be quite beneficial for your brand.

In this article, we are going to discuss some top content marketing trends that we are going to see in 2020.

Convincing visuals in content

Platforms where visual content is shared continue to be trendy and it seems that this popularity will continue to rise in 2020. Examples include Instagram, YouTube, and SnapChat. These are the favorite platforms for teens.

Adults are more attracted towards YouTube. And it is an intelligent guess that visual content is going to be more interesting in 2020.

Video content and visual storytelling

While talking about the importance of video content, let’s have a look at some stats. The popularity of YouTube, digital imagery and AR has given boost to video content and visual storytelling.

  • In 2018, about 85% of internet users in US watched video content in monthly basis using different devices.
  • About 56% of the people aging between 25 and 34 years and 54% of the people aging between 35 to 44 years actually want to see more video content from the brands they like to hear from.

Moreover, 62% of internet users say that they consume video content more thoroughly as compared to the text content. It means they are better able to pay attention to the video content.

E-A-T

Google published a blog on Webmaster Central in August 2019 reminding about the core updates. It also told about the ways to handle those updates.

Among other suggestions, Google pointed at the importance of paying attention to E-A-T which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Now, you may wonder what’s so special about it since there is a majority of people already working on it. The fact that Google pointed out specifically at this factor emphasizes the importance of it. And it also means that Google is going to pay even more attention to this factor.

So, what is E-A-T all about?

  • It starts with earning links or brand mentions from high authority resources.
  • Then you need to provide E-A-T information on your site. For instance, you can include bio and other credentials on your about page.
  • Then you need to link out to authoritative sources.
  • Lastly, you are going to have to update your site and content on a regular basis. Make sure that the content you are placing is relevant and accurate.

Customer first content

In 2018-2019, we saw that the content that targeted customers rather than insisting on sales was more successful. This is actually the trust-building strategy that worked. The only way you can confirm sales from the customers now is that you have trust from those customers. And good thing is that Google’s systems are updated enough to support this type of marketing. So, it is all becoming more natural as your content can rank only if it is capable of convincing your target audience.

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Content Trends to Focus In 2020

Right since the inception of the concept of SEO, a major emphasis has been put on the value of content. The content kept getting better with the passage of time. It is mainly due to the expectations the people have with the content. With people getting more familiar with the consumption of content to get information they want, it has become quite necessary for the content creators to develop high quality content. And another reason for content getting better with time is that the content creators continue getting better with the process of strategizing, researching, creating and publishing the content.

This entire situation makes it necessary for the content creators to focus on current and upcoming trends to stay ahead in the competition. Thus, it would be worth talking about the top content trends which need to be focused in 2020.

Visuals in the content

Right according to expectations, visual content has been quite trendy until now. And this trend is going to rise even more in 2020. The evidence is the fact that content creators are using expressive imagery for elaboration of their content; and people like it.

In this scenario, it is worth mentioning that content creators are moving beyond the use of still images. GIFs and video embeds are getting more popular because such visuals tend to explain what the text is talking about.

Video content

In 2019, videos continue to grow in popularity. Looking at the current trends of popularity of YouTube, dynamic imagery and AR, we can expect that video content will rise further in 2020.

  • Stats suggest that 85% of the internet users in US watched video content on monthly basis in 2018.
  • About 56% of people aging from 25 to 34 and 54% of people aging from 35 to 44 want to see video content from the brands they like.

These stats mean a lot for the marketers. Marketers can have an analytical look at habits and preferences of the audience.

In this scenario, it is worth mentioning that it’s the good quality of content that makes a video different from the one that fails to get user attention. And this quality is basically concerned with the storytelling capability of the video.

E-A-T

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is the factor which the Google pointed at in a blog published at Webmaster Central in August 2019. And what’s more interesting here is the fact that many of the people are already working on it.

However, the act of Google specifically singling out E-A-T can be seen as a huge hint. It means that Google is going to pay special attention to expertise, authority, and trust in the content published in the websites and blogs.

Better and purposeful content

2019 saw the rise of stellar and purposeful content; and this trend seems to continue going in upward direction in 2020 as well. This is the reason that content creators and marketers pay attention to the high quality content.

  • Survey suggests that successful content creators give priority to the information needs of their customers over their promotional needs.
  • The content marketing area which took a huge part of the spending by companies in 2018-2019 was content creation.

This is due to the fact that content creators have started understanding the fact that the only way you can win good ranking in SERPs is the insertion of high quality content in the website.

Consumer-first content

As mentioned above, content creators have been paying attention to the needs of their customers over their promotional requirements in 2018-2019. This is what successful content creators have been doing. Successful content creators understand that the key to a permanently better rank in Google SERPs is to work on the high quality content which is helpful in building trust with the audience.

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Using Right Directories to Build Links

If you remember the old days, you would also remember the use of phone books. At that time, a phone book was the only information resource from where any local business in the area could be contacted with. Well, those phone books are obsolete now after online directories took over their role. That’s one of the countless major benefits internet has provided.

And the good thing is that the users can use search engines to find contact information from the directories. It means that if you are running a business and you want it found online, you certainly need to use online directories. And another major benefit of using these directories is that you get your business site’s URL listed in these directories; and that brings a link building advantage for you.

Benefits of using online directories

Those link building opportunities are quite rare that allow you to build high quality links through an easy process are very rare. One of such ways is to use online directories which are also known as business directories or business listings. A few benefits of using these directories are as under.

  • Online directories make it easy for you to put your business in the right category. It means that users will be able to find your business when they will search for the business that offers the type of service you are offering. These online directories also allow customers to leave reviews about the business.It means that if your business has done well to serve the customers, you will get a genuine reputation for that with the help of those directories.
  • When you get your website listed in an online directory, it tends to get its SEO improved as a byproduct. High-ranking online directories are trustable sources of information for a wide domain of internet users.Since your website link is going to be added in the site, it will complement your link building efforts.
  • A majority of online directories allow free submission of your business listing. Those online directories also include top websites such as Bing Places, Yelp and Foursqaure. Some online directories charge a listing fee. Even if you have to pay for a listing, it’s a worth making investment because you will get a high quality link back to your site.

Ways to find right directory for your business

It is worth mentioning here that there are different types of online directories out there. For instance, there are general directories, business listings, local listings and niche directories. In this scenario, choosing the right directory is not a process of submitting your business listing in every type and see what happens. You will need to strategize your efforts to find the best directory for your business.You can strategize your efforts through the ways mentioned below.

  • If you want to reach the right audience, you are going to have to make sure that you are submitting your link to the relevant directory. Type of directory does matter in this regard. if you are a local travel business, you would not want your business listed in the directory that contains lists of international businesses. Doing so can surely hurt your SEO efforts.
  • After confirming that you have a list of relevant directories, now you need to pick the sites with high domain authority. It is worth mentioning here that domain authority is not the most important ranking factor but it is also the truth that link building in the websites with higher domain authority can bring your site into the SERPs sooner. There are several online tools that you can use to check domain authority of any site.
  • It is up to you to decide whether you want to go for a simple NAP+W listing or a listing that offers additional features such as photos, reviews and ratings. If you want your audience to learn more about your business, it is worth going for the extra features.