4 Proven Online Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business
4 Simple Ways to Increase Leads On Your WordPress Website
Shared Hosting and IP-Based Spam Lists
A Friday Story, and Blocking Spam
Article Keyword Research - Going Where The Traffic Is
I just spent about twenty minutes using a free online tool called ManageFlitter to Unfollow 855 people on Twitter.
It easily picked out the Inactives, the folks I Follow who aren’t active on Twitter and haven’t Tweeted in over a month. These are the people I Unfollowed. Many of them had been inactive for eight months or more. Read more
You sell products. Or services. And you’d like to sell more, to people who want to buy them. Seems like you’d want to let them know what you sell, particularly in the place that most buyers look first.
Image via Wikipedia
Imagine the perspective of a potential customer, who wants to buy a product or service. If you wanted to buy a product or service, and you didn’t know where to get it, you’d probably start with a web search. Go do one. Notice what you type in as you search. Is it a brand you’re looking for? Is it a phrase describing benefits? Do a local search if that’s appropriate. See if you can find three companies that offer it on the first page of Google (or your favorite search engine).
“Huh?”, you say. “Of course I can!” But for many items purchased regularly, even those that cost hundreds of dollars, you’ll still struggle to find a seller who wants your money.
For example, let’s say I want to buy a lawn mower, and I don’t know what brand. I could search for lawn mower vancouver. Read more
If you’re a regular reader here, you probably either have a WordPress website, or plan to build one. I’ve made no secret of my belief that at this time, WordPress is simply the best tool for building a website for almost every small business. One of the reasons for that is that WordPress is structured to be easy for search engine robots to navigate. Also, when you create posts and pages, WordPress makes it really easy for you to take the right steps for search engine optimization (SEO).
Let’s review some of those steps today, to make sure you’re taking advantage of what WordPress can easily do to help your search engine optimization.
When you create a page in WordPress, the title of the page becomes part of your site navigation – your main menu. This means that it becomes an “anchor text link”, which is a valuable search engine optimization resource. An anchor text link is a link where you click on text and are taken to a webpage. You’re not clicking on the address of the page itself, you’re clicking on text which contains the address. Google and other search engines really like anchor text links, because they help clarify what the page is about.
Marketing Coach <– Example of an anchor text link
http://outcomemarketing.com/marketing-coach <– example of a link with no anchor text Read more
Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz just posted a game about making sure your readers understand your business. Since Naomi’s posting for the second time on this topic, and she’s brilliant at helping tiny businesses get less tiny, let’s play her game. What you need to do is copy the following questions into a document, and then <drumroll> answer them. Then, for big bonus points, make sure your website answers them!
What’s your game? What do you do?
Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?
Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?
What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?
What’s next for you? What’s the big plan? Read more
Since I was sitting here updating some of my workshop materials for my Social Media and Networking Power Workshop, I thought I’d share some sure-fire techniques for losing the followers you already have on Twitter.
This is a sure-fired technique that will drive anyone who actually reads your Twitter stream away. Sure, sell me products you produce, or really use yourself, in extreme moderation. But don’t link-spam me with every affiliate offer you can find out there on Commission Junction or Clickbank. There’s nothing wrong with some of the products sold there, don’t get me wrong. But if your Tweets consist primarily of links to products you know nothing about, I’ll unfollow you in a flash. Ugh.
You know, I’m grateful for someone who posts a link to a high-quality article in a niche that interests me. Some people do this very well. Then there are those of you who discover how to connect keyword-driven RSS feeds to your Twitter stream, blasting lists of crap at me that you’ve never read. Guess what? It’s possible to tell the difference. Read more
The first challenge for my clients in our Weekly Marketing Mastermind Group Coaching is to realize what they’re really getting done in terms of their small business marketing. Action matters, not plans. Most people underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term and overestimate what they can do in the short term. Here are two questions to get you started:
Over time, taking a very small marketing action consistently will add up. Creating the habit of taking action on your marketing every day is of huge benefit to growing your business.
Think of water wearing away rock – a drip system of tiny actions can add hugely to your marketing impact over time. Read more
