Social Media Marketing

What is Social Media Marketing?

In today’s marketplace, organizations need effective, profitable social marketing strategies. Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that implements various social media networks in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Social media marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content, videos, and images for marketing purposes, as well as paid social media advertising.

Before you begin creating social media marketing campaigns, consider your business’ goals. Starting a social media marketing campaign without a social strategy in mind is like wandering through a forest without a map - you’ll only end up lost. Using social media for marketing can enable small business looking to further their reach to more customers. Your customers are interacting with brands through social media, therefore, having a strong social media marketing plan and presence on the web is the key to tap into their interest. If implemented correctly, marketing with social media can bring remarkable success to your business.

Create a social media marketing plan and brainstorm about your goals: what are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing? Who is your target audience? Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media? What message do you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?

Social media marketing tips

Planning - As discussed previously, building a social media marketing plan is essential. Consider keyword research and brainstorm content ideas that will interest your target audience.

Content - Consistent with other areas of online marketing, content reigns king when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure you are offering valuable information that your ideal customers will find interesting. Create a variety of content by implementing social media images, videos, and infographics in addition to classic text-based content.

Consistent Brand Image - Using social media for marketing enables your business to project your brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. While each platform has its own unique environment and voice, your business’ core identity should stay consistent.

Blog - Blogging is a great social media marketing tool that lets you share a wide array of information and content with readers. Your company blog can also serve as your social media marketing blog, in which you blog about your recent social media efforts, contests, and events.    

Links - While using social media for marketing relies primarily on your business sharing its own unique, original content to gain followers, fans, and devotees, it’s also great to link to outside articles as well. If other sources provide great, valuable information you think your target audience will enjoy, don’t be shy about linking to them. Linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability, and you may even get some links in return.

Track Competitors - It is always important to keep an eye on competitors - they can provide valuable data for keyword research, where to get industry-related links, and other social media marketing insight. If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing technique that seems to be working for them, do the same thing, but do it better!

Measure Success with Analytics - You cannot determine the success of your social media marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can be used as a great social media marketing tool that will help you measure your triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies are better off abandoned.  Attach tracking tags to your social media marketing campaigns so that you can properly monitor them.

How to Use Social Media for Marketing?

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content. Social connections may also impact the relevancy of some search results, either within a social media network or at a “mainstream” search engine.

Facebook 

Facebook’s casual, friendly environment requires an active social media marketing strategy that begins with creating a Facebook Business Fan Page.  You will want to pay careful attention to layout, as the visual component is a key aspect of the Facebook experience. Social media marketing for business pages revolves around furthering your conversation with audiences by posting industry-related articles, images, videos, etc.

Google+

Google+ is the new Facebook competitor, and it promotes the same fun, casual atmosphere. On Google+ you can upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. Also take advantage of Google+ circles, which allow you to segment your followers into smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while barring others. For example, you might try creating a “super-fan” circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with that group.

Pinterest

Pinterest is the latest in social media marketing trends. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but anyone can benefit from using Pinterest for social media purposes. Pinterest allows small businesses to showcase their own product offerings while also developing their own brand’s personality with some unique pinboards.

Twitter

Twitter is the social media marketing tool that lets you broadcast your updates across the web. Follow tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you should gain a steady stream of followers in return. Mix up your official-related tweets about specials, discounts, and news updates with some fun and quirky tweets interspersed. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about you, and don’t forget answer people’s questions when possible.  Using Twitter as a social media marketing tool revolves around dialog and communication, so be sure to interact as much as possible

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the more professional social media marketing sites. LinkedIn Groups is a great venue for entering into a professional dialog with people in similar industries and provides a place to share content with like-minded individuals. Encourage customers or clients to give your business a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations makes your business appear more credible and reliable for new customers. Also browse the Questions section of LinkedIn; providing answers helps you get established and earns trust.

YouTube

YouTube is the number one place for creating video content, with can be an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool. Many businesses try to create video content with the aim of having their video “go viral,” but in reality those chances are pretty slim. Instead, focus on creating useful, instructive “how-to” videos. These how-to videos also have the added benefit of ranking on the video search results of Google, so don't under-estimate the power of video content!

Reddit

Reddit, or similar social media platforms such as Stumble Upon or Digg, are ideal for sharing compelling content. With over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social media marketing potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire - submit spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.

Using social media in marketing does more than improve site traffic and help businesses reach more customers; it provides a valuable venue for better understanding and learning from your target audiences. Hopefully this article has helped you better understand how using social media for marketing  can improve your business.

SEO Professionally

Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com

Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

Website: https://SEOProfessionally.blogspot.com/

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SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic from the “organic”, “free”, “editorial” or “natural” search results on various search engines. SEO is the simple activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering. In many respects it's simply quality control for websites. A successful search engine optimization campaign will have, as part of the improvements, carefully select, relevant, keywords which the on-page optimization will be designed to make prominent for search engine algorithms.

Search engine optimization is broken down into two basic areas: on-page, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to website elements which comprise a web page, such as HTML code, textual content, and images. Off-page optimization refers, predominantly, to backlinks (links pointing to the site which is being optimized, from other relevant websites). There are two major types of search engine optimization, white hat search engine optimization (the best kind), and black hat (the not so good kind). There are of course differing opinions about the nature of each type of SEO. Get the information you need to be able to tell them apart and make an informed decision.

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There are some major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo which have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. There are a number of SEO services which can help contribute to the improvement of the organic search engine rankings of a website. These services include, but are not limited to, on-page (or on-site) optimization, link building, search engine friendly website design and development, and search engine friendly content writing services.

If you are more into the link building side of things (working to improve the rankings on your site by earning links), go straight to the Beginner's Guide to Link Building. Links are important but don't confuse quality with quantity and don't think about links in isolation from your content. It's vital to understand that having great content massively increases your chances of securing natural links from quality relevant pages. These links will help you the most.

Quality of traffic is that you can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they are coming to your site because Google tells them you are a resource for Apple computers when really you are a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer. Quantity of traffic is that you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.

A site is not really a site until you have content. But SEO for content has enough specific variables that we have given it its own section. Start here if you are curious about keyword research, how to write SEO-friendly copy, and the kind of markup that helps search engines understand just what your content is really about. Great Content encourages people to link to your pages and shows Google™ your pages are interesting and authoritative. This leads to search engine success because Google™ wants to show interesting and authoritative pages in its search results.

Google™ promotes authority pages to the top of its rankings so it's your job to create pages that become authority pages. This involves writing content people find useful because useful content is shared in blogs, twitter feeds etc., and over time Google™ picks up on these authority signals. This virtuous circle creates strong and sustainable Google™ rankings.

On the surface, search engine optimization is a good way of marketing a website; after all, who does not like free traffic. Unfortunately, that kind of approach to SEO is exactly how many individuals and companies invest thousands of dollars into SEO campaigns without useful results. There is a lot of misinformation about what an SEO campaign (company) can accomplish when it comes to organic search engine rankings. Here we try to dispel the myths, and give you realistic expectations of what a search engine campaign can accomplish in the short, mid and long term.

To learn more about search engine optimization and help you get started on optimizing your website, check out our services or feel free to contact us if you want to rank your websites.

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Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com

Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

Website: https://SEOProfessionally.blogspot.com/

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SEO Analysis

One of the very first things we do when we start working with a client on a search engine optimization project is perform a head to toe site analysis. In fact, more often than not, we will not actually even quote a price for SEO unless we have already done an analysis. A search engine optimization (SEO) analysis is a report that details how a website owner can improve his or her ranking on popular search engines. Below are some important factors of SEO Analysis:

Statistical Data - The biggest part of an SEO analysis is the research.  Research results in statistical data. This is not just information you have in your web stats program, but other information you may not have access to, such as how many people do a search every day on your particular keyword, or what your competition is doing, and how they are doing it.  There can be endless reports and data that an SEO could provide, so be aware you can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers provided. An SEO might consider creating the analysis as an overview, with the statistical data in addenda or reports to back up the information.

Explanations of Terminology - You may end up with a huge analysis with lots of data, findings, and reports, but if you can’t make heads or tails of it, then it may not do you much good. Some SEO firms put the analysis on paper for you, and then offer a free consultation with it to go over anything you may not understand.  This is a good idea if the SEO firm doesn’t explain the results in the analysis directly.

Specific Keyword Research - Unless you are a site with thousands of backlinks because of branding or other link popularity reasons, you are just not going to rank highly for broad keywords. A good SEO analysis will gear its keyword research to keywords and key phrases that are appropriate for your site and its pages, and make recommendations for keywords or key phrases to consider optimizing for.

Detailed Findings - It is not enough just to show you what your meta tags say. You can find that information out yourself, so why would you need someone else to do that for you? You need specific research customized to your site that digs pretty deep. You will want to look for a search engine simulation (what a search engine would see if it were to crawl your site), a list of broken links, site structure, navigation crawlability, which pages and how many of them are being indexed, when the last search engine crawl was, and so on.

Current Search Engine Rankings - Here we do not just mean the top ten or even top 40 results, because chances are you can do all of this yourself. Look for a company or individual who can access 500 to 1000 or more results in more than just one search engine.

Site Recommendations - If you pay for an analysis, you should be able to take that analysis and change some of your site elements yourself with that SEO’s recommendation. Now obviously an SEO wants your business, and wants to do the work for you, so they aren’t going to reveal all of the little secrets they have about your site, but there should still be a good portion of step by step instructions for you to work with. If there is a consultation included, it’s even better.

Possible Futuristic Events or Predictions - There is absolutely no one that can predict what a search engine may or may not do, and as a result there is not an SEO firm in the world that can make predictions about how your site will do in a search engine. This is a sticky subject because it gets into the area of guaranteed results. I’ve seen countless firms out there that offer Top Ten results guarantees, or number one results. I shake my head every single time. 

It’s difficult to imagine trying to do all of the above mentioned things manually, especially if you are a do-it-yourself type of person. In fact, it would be ridiculous to try to do some of them that way, like current search engine rankings.  The very first step in great SEO work is the analysis; it is also useful continuously throughout the optimization process, and you cannot do well without it. If you want to perform the analysis yourself, then go for it. Self analysis is sometimes the best thing you can do for your own website, because no one knows your website like you do. 

SEO Professionally

Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com

Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

Website: https://SEOProfessionally.blogspot.com/

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Guest Posting

Guest blogging is a method used by bloggers to increase blog traffic where bloggers write posts to be published on other bloggers' blogs. Guest posts and guest posting is where a writer who owns his or her own blog creates a unique and original post on another blog or site with a mention of the author and usually their blog at the bottom of the article. Guest posting can help build brand awareness with a different audience and help drive new traffic to your site. 

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Beware that many websites use guest blogging as a way to build links to their website. If the primary reason for having a guest post published is to insert links back to another website, this is frowned upon by search engines. In fact, Google often penalizes sites that use guest posting for SEO link building purposes and asks that sites nofollow links going back to the guest author's site.

Guest blogging is also a great way to establish yourself as an authority figure within your market and build relationships with other bloggers and experts within your field. It's an opportunity to take your expertise and share it with others, as well as an opportunity to increase traffic to both parties’ blogs. Since guest blogging should be a two-way street, when hopping on the bandwagon, you should also consider featuring posts developed by guest bloggers. Featuring guest posts will also expose your audience to a new perspective and fresh new content. 

With the right kind of content on the top blogs, you can do all three of these things. If you are trying to accomplish either Number 1 or Number 2, then you will want to find blogs that have a good sized and engaged audience. If you are just trying to accomplish Number 3, then you need to pinpoint blogs with strong root domain authority. You can check this for free using the SEOmoz toolbar. Knowing your goals in advance will help you in determining which blogs will be the best for you to submit guest posts to.

Before you get started, make sure you are clear about what you are looking to get out of the guest blogging experience. This will help you find businesses that you may be interested in blogging for and also give you an idea of some guest bloggers you would like invite to post on your business’s blog.

Research is essential to guest blogging; with that in mind, focus on finding writers within your niche and your market. Also, be sure that your writers are coming from a respected business or background. You should also agree with what they are saying and have it align with your personas interests. Guest blogging is great but it can easily turn into a domino effect when the content doesn't align with your business, personas or your tone of voice.

Blogging as a guest is a great way to increase your site rank in Google searches because of the links that exist back to your site from the blog you are appearing on. The way Google sees it; if other people are interested in your site it must be interesting. So when individuals comment, share, like or link to your blog it moves up in Google’s PageRank, which means it’s more likely to pop up when someone Google searches a relevant topic.

Here we offer a service of publishing your articles in site DA+50 with dofollow links. Please check the list of guest post links below:

Guest Post - Auto Niche Sites

Guest Post - Business & Finance Niche Sites

Guest Post - Casine & Dating Niche Sites

Guest Post - Education Niche Sites

Guest Post - Entertainment Niche Sites

Guest Post - Fashion & Beauty Niche Sites

Guest Post - Finance Niche Sites

Guest Post - Food & Beverages Niche Sites

Guest Post - Health Niche Sites

Guest Post - Home Improvement & Real Estate Sites

Guest Post - Law & Legal Niche Sites

Guest Post - SEO & Website Design Niche Sites

Guest Post - Shopping Niche Sites

Guest Post - Sports Niche Sites

Guest Post - Technology Niche Sites

Guest Post - Travel Niche Sites

Guest Post - Different Niche Sites Sites

Guest Post - General Niche Sites

SEO Professionally

Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com

Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

Website: https://SEOProfessionally.blogspot.com/

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Link Building

Link building refers to the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website. Link building is one major aspect of search engine optimization (SEO). Actually, it’s a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content creation, sales, programming, psychology, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want other people to consistently link to your site.

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In this article, you will learn what link building is, and how it is beneficial for your website. Most webmasters feel that writing quality articles will help them in getting links, but that’s not 100% true. Unless you specifically try to get links, it will be hard for you to do so. Back in the day, link building was an easy process. You could easily automate tools to submit to article directories and Web2.0 sites to generate backlinks. The quality of the article or inbound links didn’t matter so much.

Building links is a difficult, time-consuming process as not all links are created equal. A link from an authoratative website like the Wall Street Journal will make a greater impact on a SERP than a link from a newly built website, but high quality links are hard to come by. This guide will teach you how to build quality links.

Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites. There are many techniques for building links, and while they vary in difficulty, SEOers tend to agree that link building is one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Many SEOers spend the majority of their time trying to do it well. For that reason, if you can master the art of building high-quality links, it can truly put you ahead of both other SEOers and your competition.

Whether you are brand new to link building or have been doing it for a while, we are sure you will find something useful in this guide. The landscape of SEO and link building is always changing, and today, the importance of building high-quality links has never been higher. The need to understand and implement high-quality campaigns is essential if you're going to compete and thrive online, and that isn't going to change any time soon. This guide is designed to get you going quickly and in the right direction. There is a lot to take in, but we've broken everything up into easy-to-digest chapters and have included lots of examples along the way.

However, links are not everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines' algorithms to link-related factors. Through links, engines can not only analyze the popularity websites and pages based on the number and popularity of pages linking to them, but also metrics like trust, spam, and authority. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources. Authority models, like those postulated in the Hilltop Algorithm, suggest that links are a very good way of identifying expert documents on a given subject.

We are offering Link Building and Guest Posting Services. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

SEO Professionally

Email: SEOProfessionally@gmail.com

Phone number: +1 646-948-9882

Website: https://SEOProfessionally.blogspot.com/

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Local SEO Citations for Google Maps

When it comes to local SEO, citations are almost the equivalent to backlinks in organic SEO.  Improving the authority and volume of your citation portfolio (the total makeup of your citations) is one of the best ways to improving your rankings in Google local search results (Google Maps).

One of the most common questions we hear is how do we improve the citations to my local business?

And hopefully this article will help to answer that question and put you on the path to higher rankings in Google local search.

Two citation distribution platforms for higher Google Maps rankings

1. Moz Local

We use Moz Local to gain citation distribution for our clients in the four major local business data hubs.  The four primary sources for local business data used by all major search engines are:  Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze, and Factual.

These four data sources are used by major mapping applications such as Bing, Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Facebook.

Getting your citations accurately published in these four data sources can help you scale the distribution of your local business data across hundreds, even thousands, of local business end points.  And since you can control the accuracy of your local business data in Moz Local, you can control the accuracy of your business data in these four major sources.

The downside to Moz Local is the speed in which distribution is achieved.  We’ve seen it take as long as 6 months to achieve 100% distribution in the four major data sources with Moz Local.

But, it’s well worth the wait to achieve the authority of these distribution end points.

2. Yext

We use Yext to achieve speed and efficiency in the distribution of our client’s local business data.  With Yext, you get instant access to 55+ local business directories.  Your local business data will also be distributed to major mapping applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, & Yelp.

When using a combination of both Moz Local and Yext as your local business citation strategy, it’s important to make sure your local business data are exact matches in both systems.

See a full list of our data end point partners for citation distribution.

If you have a discrepency between Moz Local and Yext, you can end up with a large scale of inconsistent data published across the web.

And this inconsistency can cause downward pressure on your local rankings in Google Maps.

The best way to ensure your local business data is accurate in both platforms is to use your Google My Business listing as the starting point.

Make sure your profiles in both Yext and Moz Local are exact matches to your Google My Business listing.

Google Map Citations for Local SEO

Google Map Citations are instances of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) that are published on external websites and directories.  Search engines use citations to determine the accuracy and relevance of your business information.

What Are Local SEO Citations?

The most authoritative Google Map citations for local SEO are those that are consistent with your Google business page.

The way you publish your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on external websites and directories should be an exact match to the NAP on your Google business page.

Then every published Google Map citation on external websites and directories should be an exact match to that NAP.  If there were citations that spelled out the word “Suite” where my Google business page used the abbreviation “Ste”, then I would be creating inconsistencies with my citations, which would dilute the authoritative and impact of that particular citation source.

The businesses with the most authoritative citation portfolios are those who pay attention to these seemingly minor details.  By creating consistent Google Map citations across multiple sites, you’ll be creating a highly authoritative citation portfolio that will help you compete at the highest level in local search results.

What is a citation portfolio?
I’ve mentioned the term “citation portfolio” a couple of times already, so let me quickly explain what this means.  A citation portfolio is the collection of all citations for your business published on the web.  If you have 150 citations published for your business across 150 different websites and directories, then these citations collectively make up your citation portfolio.  This is similar to a stock portfolio that’s made up of shares from 150 different companies.

Google Map Citations for Local SEO Are Similar To Backlinks

Citations for local SEO purposes are similar to backlinks to your website.  Google uses citation analysis when determining the rankings for local search results, just like they use backlink analysis when determining the rankings in organic search results.

When it comes to citations for local SEO rankings, it’s important to remember that not all citations are created equal.  Google will consider many different variables in their citation analysis such as:

- The relevance and authority of the citation source.
- The volume of citations for your business.
- NAP consistency in your citations.
- The relevance and authority of the citation source.

When building out your citation portfolio, it’s important to consider the relevance and authority of the sites where your NAP is published.  There are two characteristics of authoritative citation sources for your business.

#1:  The relevance of your citation sources.
The relevance of your citation source depends on location and category of your business.  For example, if you are a florist in Atlanta, Georgia, the most relevant citations (NAP’s) for your business would be in a directory specifically for florists in Atlanta.  Finding hyper local directories like this can be challenging, so it may require some research to dig them up.  But putting in the time and effort is worth it because highly relevant citation sources can give your local rankings a substantial boost.

#2:  The authority of your citation sources.
The authority of your local SEO citations refers to the domain authority of the websites or directories where your citations are published.  For example, Yelp.com is a highly authoritative site for citations because it carries a PR7 (PageRank of 7) on their homepage.

However, it’s important to remember that that mainstream directories like Yelp are where all of your competitors are more than likely listed as well.  Which means having a citation on this site, although authoritative, doesn’t necessarily differentiate your local business from your competitors.

This is where hyper local directories can give your local rankings a substantial boost.  Having citations published on the mainstream (authoritative) directories is almost a given, but the hyper local directories will give you relevance that can far exceed that of your competitors.

#3:  The volume of Google Map citations for your business.
The volume of citations for your business refers to the total number of times your NAP is published on the website.  Each unique domain represents one instance of your local business citation.  For example, if you have a citation published on Yelp, YP.com, and Best of the Web, this would equal three total citations within your citation portfolio.

There are many different tools you can use to increase the volume of citations for your business such as Moz Local and Yext.  However, as I mentioned previously, these tools will get you into the mainstream directories in a relatively automated fashion, but they won’t help you getting into hyper local directories.  For the purposes of achieving citation volume distribution, using one of these automated solutions is definitely the easiest path to go.

Again, these are valuable tools in achieving the goal of volume with your local citations.  But I strongly recommend using Google to search for hyper local directories that are relevant to your specific metro area and business category.

How Google Map Citations Improve Your Local Search Rankings

We’ll conclude with talking about how Google Map citations can improve your rankings in local search results.

Citations are really just one piece in the overall puzzle of the local search algorithm.  Because you are able to control the creation and distribution of your citations, any local SEO consultant worth their weight will advise you to focus on building out an authoritative citation portfolio.

The more citations you have in your portfolio, and the more relevant that are to your location and business category, the more authority you’ll be adding your Google business page compared to your competitors.  And the more authority your Google business page has comparatively, the higher your local business will rank for targeted keyword phrases.

It’s important to know that citations alone will not give you a top ranking in the local search results.  There are many other factors to focus on while engaging in your local SEO strategy.

Source: https://bippermedia.com/

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Advantages Of Doing Guest Post SEO

A detailed discussion on how guest posts are advantageous for the guest bloggers and the blog site is presented here:

Establish Authority
Quality of blog posts is of great importance for making a website popular and relevant. By encouraging well written and authoritative blog posts and articles, a website stands to establish itself as an authority on the subject. The search bots love sites that have authentic information to offer. The guest blogger benefits from posting on sites that promote authentic articles by way of exposure to the readers of a niche category who are genuinely looking for information. Thus the guest blogger establishes His/Her authority as a quality writer.

More Link Juice
A website is of no use if it does not earn a single dime. It’s a fact that no one can afford to ignore. Hosting a website entails utilizing resources – time, efforts as well as money. Why waste the efforts? By guest posting you will earn not only money, but will also figure on the higher pages of the search engine results.

How? Well, one of the many criteria for search engines is the quality of links that point towards a website. These are called off page links. The more links you have from relevant websites that point towards your site, the greater your chances are in making it to the the top ten or so list on the search results page. By guest posting on websites that are related to or are similar to your website you are increasing the level of ranking via quality back links.

Improves Writing Skills
There are great writers and then there are Great Writers. No one is perfect in writing great stuff from the go. Great writers have one thing in common. They practiced to arrive at their masterpiece. Write and blog about topics that really interest you and have a genuine readership. By combining these magical ingredients, you will certainly succeed in creating a niche readership. Blogging sites are always on the lookout for genuine and authoritatively written articles. Your writing skills will ensure them legitimate traffic thus improving their rankings and traffic conversion ratio. Hence, practice and practice even more.

Social Networking Benefits
In the Web 2.0 age, it is only logical to link your content and become part of the ‘inner circle’. Guest posts are shared by readers and discussed about on a variety of social networking sites and forums. This allows a writer to understand different perspectives on the same subject thus adding to his/her knowledge base which in turn makes him/her a better writer.

Website Financer
Though making only money is frowned upon by the blogging community, it is beneficial if you are paid for writing authentic guest blogs, directly or indirectly. Writing guest blogs should be mutually beneficial. As mentioned earlier, hosting site costs money. An e-commerce blog is based on the profitability module; it makes no sense for it to not earn money! Of course, by encouraging guest blogging a site offers a quality value added service to its audiences. But if the audiences do not convert, the website might as well shut down and save upon the resources or put them to more profitable uses.

For the guest blogger, writing for websites that are based on profitability would mean earning a steady income to run the site he/she hosts. It also attracts potential customers if it is a site that offers complementary products to the blogging site it has guest posted on. E.g. A guest blogger whose site caters to servicing of electronic items would benefit by writing about How to Keep Your Air Conditioners in Working Order during Summer and posting it on an e-commerce site that sells air conditioners!

Branding
Guest Posting is a great way of building your own brand name. You have the idea. You have the content. You just  have no way of telling others about it. Guest posting will ensure that you share your ideas with readers who are genuinely interested in the information you have to offer. Your niche writing establishes you as a brand. Many websites publish the author’s picture to lend authenticity to the posts. Thus you have the guest blogger as a brand by itself!

Encourages Reciprocal Writing
A community of writers is born due to guest blogging. A guest blogger more or less gives another blogger a break by writing on his/her blog! It helps to offer a different perspective to the bloggers site. And a long term relation is established which in future would mean that the blogger would be more than happy to offer you his/her guest post.

Awareness
For people, who feel sour at the mention of ‘money’, we have a reason to make you smile – guest blogging is also not about only making money. It is also about making readers aware about various issues that affect them in real life. Many web revolutions have been spawned due to heartfelt write ups written by bloggers only with the intention of creating awareness.

Guest posting is an excellent means of communicating with the right people for the right reasons. Its advantages cannot be ignored by a writer/blogger. It offers budding writers an opportunity to express themselves via guest blogs which otherwise they would not have a chance to do so. It encourages good writers to voice their opinions on various subject matters to kick start a healthy discussion. Authority writers cannot ignore guest posting as it allows them a chance to increase their brand awareness and reaching out to the ever growing community of internet users.

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6 Strategic SEO Tips From the Experts to Get Massive Traffic

Are you up to date with the latest search engine optimization (SEO) tips?

If not, that’s a big problem.

SEO means optimizing your content so it shows up more often in search results.

Get it wrong, and your content might as well be invisible.

But if you get it right, you can reap the benefits of increased traffic, which can lead to more conversions, improve lead generation, and boost sales.

And every business wants more traffic, leads and sales, right?

The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide). That means the search engine optimization techniques that worked 5 years ago won’t fly today.

That’s why we’ve recruited some expert help so you can make sure you’re using the best SEO strategy for the coming year.

Our six experts share their favorite SEO tips and tactics for building big traffic in 2018. As you’ll see, if there’s one theme that unifies them all, it’s creating better content, but some of our experts take their own unique approaches.

Recommended Resource: Need more website traffic? Learn how to rank #1 on Google with our Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2018.

1. Improve the “Almost” Posts
Andy Crestodina: Rewrite the posts that almost rank high. There may be lots of them. Look for them in Analytics in the Acquisition » Search Console » Queries report. Set an advanced filter to show just the phases for which the average position (rank) is greater than 10 (on page two). Eureka!

Now give those articles an overhaul. Add details, examples, answers, statistics, images, contributor quotes and anything else that pages it a better piece.

If you go big on quality, you’re very likely to add length and keyphrase usage naturally. Make it a page that you’re so proud of, you want to print it and frame it on the wall.

Here are three ways to make this tactic even more effective:

- Check all the rankings of the page, so you’re sure not to hurt the relevance for an even better phrase
- As you rewrite, work in the semantically connected subtopics, which are visible on the search results page in the answer boxes and in the “related searches” at the bottom of the page.
- Do this as a regular, quarterly content marketing audit.

2. Tap the Potential of Video
Shilpa Shah: One of the best SEO tips is quality over quantity. If you have a large number of indexed pages, it doesn’t always mean your site will attract more organic traffic.

Get rid of shallow posts on your blog that have either low word count or superficial content.

Focus instead on meaningful content that is truly engaging and makes each visitor want to read through the complete article.

Also, videos have a lot of untapped potential – great for SEO and make for good user engagement. Chances are, that your user might quickly run through a 1-minute video but may not have the patience to read your 100-word article.

3. Build Something Useful
Ian Cleary: We are doing outreach to build links and have focussed on brand mention links.  When a brand mention us and doesn’t link to us we reach out to them and generally get a link.  We get a lot of mentions online so we have an opportunity to really grow our link profile and generate substantially more traffic.

The other approach we are taking is building useful utilities.  This is pieces of software that provide significant value to our audience but we make available for free.  We then do a 301 redirect from the site with the utility back to our site and generate a lot of links.  We also do a lot of outreach to promote these tools.

4. Optimize, Amplify, Distribute
Heidi Cohen: To maximize 2018 SEO results, marketers will continue moving away from disposable, once and done content. To accomplish this, tap into the 4Cs of content: Conditions, Creation and Circulation to build your Community.

Create content based on your business’s conditions (business goals, audience needs and content context) to achieve your 2018 SEO goals. Focus your content on strategic keyword silos.

Support your 2018 search objectives with 3 content types:

- Renovate existing content: Audit existing content. Then update and re-promote it.
- Develop new content: Based on your content gaps and keyword needs, create the 5 core content types (foundational, FAQ, cyclical, crowd pleaser and long-playing content) to meet audience and business needs.
- Transform new content: Extend content longevity by converting content into other formats (images, video and audio) and related pieces of content to live on owned, social and third party media.
- Recommended Resource: Do social media shares count the same as backlinks? Google says no, but are they telling the whole story? Find out the truth in our guide to Social Media and SEO: Do Social Shares Really Matter for Ranking?
- Optimize your content. Make your content work for customers, social media, search, influencers and your business. Create off-ramps to collect email addresses.
- Amplify your content. Focus your first 3 days of promotion to maximize reach. Use amplification platforms, influencers and paid advertising (especially Facebook).
- Distribute your content. Continue promoting your content on free and paid media. Publish your transformed content over time to maximize results.
Lastly measure your results and support your growing community.

5. Maximize User Engagement
Max DesMarais: Focus on user engagement. Whether it is updating an existing post, or creating an entirely new one, the page should be created in such a way to maximize engagement. The page should:

- Be easy to read. Content utilizes whitespace, headings, short paragraphs, and relevant images to make the page easier to absorb, and increasing the user’s time on the page.
- Include highly relevant links and offers on the page. Offering relevant internal links that will answer a reader’s question. This often can significantly decrease bounce rates, and get users further into your site.
- Use LSI keywords, and answer additional questions that users may think of after viewing the content. Simply offering only the content that a user searches for is no longer enough. Pages need to supply additional information a user may be seeking. Providing additional information will help retain the user, and tell search engines that the page’s content is not only answering the search query, but providing additional value that other pieces of content may not be.
- Contain multiple ways for users to absorb the content. Include images, infographics, video, and text. This will capture readers’ attention, and keep them more engaged on the content.
- Employing these tactics will ensure that your pages are highly valuable to the readers, and search engines will mark these pages as high quality content.

6. Make Old Blog Posts New Again
With SEO in mind, you should now routinely go through old blog posts and do the following:

- Update any information that’s no longer accurate or relevant.
- Add new stock photos and remove any old ones that looked dated.
- Write/optimize title and alt text for all images.
- Rework old titles to be more SEO-friendly.
- Add subheads to posts that have none, using keywords when possible.
- Review title tags and meta descriptions for keywords and relevance.
- Weave additional keywords into posts that seem lacking.
- Check existing links to make sure they still work and add links to newer pages that are relevant.
- Lengthen posts by adding more detailed content as Google now favors longer, information-rich pages.
- Proofread for mistakes. It’s amazing what you can catch with fresh eyes.
- Susan Greene has been a professional copywriter for over 25 years. She has a deep understanding of Internet marketing and a conversational writing style that converts prospects into customers. 

That’s the end of our roundup on search engine optimization tips and tricks.

Over to you to put these SEO tips into practice. When you’re done, make sure your new strategy is working by checking out our guide to measuring content marketing ROI.

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