Are you Blogging for the Wrong Reasons?

February 28, 2012/in Blogging /by Piri Darabont

There are a lot of reasons to be a blogger: some of you are blogging for personal reasons to share your personal life and passions with others while others blog for business reasons.

If your blogging for your business online presence with time you can develop a great network, expand your company’s reach and influence, and change your industry.

Regular blogging is one of the best things you can do to help your business grow – businesses that write on their blog regularly receive 55% more website visitors and have 437% more indexed pages in Google than business that do not.

But even when you’re blogging for business, there are important mistakes you want avoid if you really want to see the desired success.

Let’s examine some signs that reflect the real reasons behind your blogging.

Your blogging only to keep your website “fresh for SEO.”

A mistake often made by bloggers who can’t comprehend why their blog isn’t having the impact on their business that they thought it would. More likely they heard that fresh content is critical for SEO, and that Google and Bing both love to find fresh content. This is all true, but to have their content have the impact they had hoped for they need to stop writing to try to impress search engines, instead they need to focus on their human readers. You need to create great content that people want to read and share, instead of writing short, lower-quality blog posts just to make the site have some appearance of activity.

Instead of trying to trick the search engines into thinking you have great content, actually have great content.

Produce articles that people will want to read and share with their peers. Far more important than being “fresh” is having high-quality content for people to read.

If people don’t like your content enough to link to it, share it, or comment on it, it’s not going to have the same impact on your business as truly great content will. If you want the benefits of having great content, you must put in the time and effort to produce it.

You post all your company news and press releases on your blog.

Great blogs exist to share useful information, unique insights and help you express your leadership and expertise on a subject to your audience. They can be narrowly focused on one topic, or cover broad subjects. Blogs shouldn’t exist just to put your company’s news and awards online. There’s nothing wrong with doing that from time to time, especially for unusual events, but if the majority of your content has no educational value for your audience, that’s not a good sign.

Make sure that you’re providing content on your blog that is interesting to people at all levels of depth.

There’s nothing wrong with posting exciting company news or announcements on your blog. But if that’s all you post, your blog just won’t attract a lot of repeat readers. Great bloggers know to mix up their content and keep things interesting so that they can attract readers without relying on too much promotion.

You used to blog every week, but it’s actually more like once a month.

You’ve got a lot of things going for you, but you need to be regular and consistent if you want to see some real growth of your blog. Without regularly adding content, it will be difficult to attract subscribers or inbound links.

If you have pressing demands on your time that make it difficult to publish new content frequently, you still have good options for making your blog vibrant and successful. Try creating shorter content that’s still high-quality, such as useful top ten lists, or take older posts from your blog and update them for new and improved versions. It’s also useful to make sure that you set reasonable expectations for yourself so you don’t get discouraged.

Blog readers love to be able to come back to sites that they enjoy to read more content. If you’re only updating your blog sporadically, it’s hard to build a real fan base. Keep creating great content, and set reasonable expectations for the frequency and volume of your blog so that it can fit into your schedule.

For great results gather topic ideas or questions from your sales team or contact form to learn about what your potential leads and customers are asking about and what their needs are, and write posts that answer those questions.

It’s great to use your blog to encourage your customers to continue to learn more, and to share content with them. Make sure that you write for a broad audience by varying the types of content you produce, and use your blog to generate leads as well as to help your existing customers.

Have you ever faced any of these problems on your own blog? How did you solve it or change your content?

7 On-Page SEO Tips Using Keywords or Keyword Phrases

January 6, 2012/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization you have to understand that there are two sides to search engine optimization (SEO). They are on-page SEO and off-page SEO and simply put the on-page SEO includes elements on your website or web page and the off-page has to do with back links that you will get to your site.

The following SEO tips will help you optimize your webpages for better rankings in major search engines.

Using the right keywords and phrases will affect your page’s ranking in the search engines and your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Determine your keywords – Keyword research is a vitally integral element of SEO. Creating a list of keywords relevant to your business is absolutely crucial if you want to rank high in search engines. Think about which keywords or keyword phrases are the most likely users put into the search area when looking for your product or service. Once you have your list you will want to create a webpage that focuses on that keyword or phrase. Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords can lead to huge amounts of traffic and business loss. Oftentimes, websites are optimized for keywords that are perceived to be of high-value – however, perceived value and actual value can greatly vary.
Create a web page with the right keyword density – The goal of every website owner (whether business or personal) is to get higher rankings in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. With this in mind you have to be careful to not get involved with duplicate content. Google robots are intelligent to find duplicate content.You also need to make sure you have valuable content. Content is king and search engine robots are looking for fresh and relevant content. With that in mind you should include the keyword that you want to rank for in the search engines in the page’s content at a percentage of 1-4%. For example, if you have 400 words on your page you should have the keyword present 4-16 times. Having the right keyword density is one of the most important tips for SEO.
The first 50 words in the body – There are software that grades a page’s potential for ranking by determining a number of on-page values. One of my favorite tool grades your site’s SEO potential by making sure your keyword or phrase is mentioned once within the first 50 words of the body text. Incorporating you main keyword or keyword phrases in the first paragraph of the body is an important on-page SEO step.
Include keywords in Page URL – Whenever is possible having the keyword in the page name of the website is valuable. Most search engines consider the text in the page name to determine what the web page is about. When you create your website is important to set up search engine friendly permalinks (often know as Search Engine Optimized permalinks) to improve your on-page SEO.
Include keywords in Page Title – The Page Title is one of the most important things that Google and many major search engines evaluate to determine what is on a web page. Your keyword or keyword phrase must be in the title of the web page if you ever want to rank better in search engines.
Keywords in the Meta Description – There are several “meta” tags in each of your web pages and they have their own importance. Part of your meta tags includes your website’s description. It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:
META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.”

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.” When it comes to on-site SEO tips this is another one that you need to follow. My recommendation is to always use description tags on every page where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they’re on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

If you’re optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you’re a good words. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be, but keep in mind that Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description.

Keywords in your H1 tag -The H1 text is usually the title of an article or some larger bold text at the top of your page. Because many search engines will use the information from H1 tags, and give it more weight over normal page text, it is a valuable tool for improving search engine placement. Make sure your keyword or keyword phrase is there.

At Intact Marketing we tailor our keyword research to you and your needs, ensuring that you can optimize for the keywords that are most likely to bring you the valuable, targeted traffic that you want. Our On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO services can help you establish higher ranks in Google as well as other search engines.

How to Make Call to Action Landing Page for your Website

September 27, 2011/in Search Engine Optimization /by Piri Darabont

How to Optimize your Landing Page to increase your Click through rates

Having a compelling – call to action – landing page is absolutely crucial if you want to convert your website visitors into customers and ultimately increase your Return on Investment (ROI).

Businesses often invest in Search Engine Optimization or in Search Engine Friendly Website Design and while they get a lot of traffic they are still unable to convert that traffic into customers and eventually in sales.

If you fall into this category you should consider setting some goals for what actions you want your visitors to take once they reach your web page such as:

Request more information
Email or call you
Fill out a form
Sign up for services
Or purchase your products online

Once you clarify what your online goals are, you then need to create powerful action statements or a – call to action – to encourage your website visitors to take the desired action.

Creating a compelling call to action landing page is crucial if you want to increase your conversion rate, get more customers and increase your sales!

Start with an Offer Your Customers Can’t Resist

As a business you must have a “unique selling proposition.” This is what sets you apart from all of your competition and what should compel your target market to buy from you.

It makes sense to design your compelling offer or proposition so that it responds to a problem your target market is dealing with.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When they sit down at their computer and search for a term such as, “buy portable air humidifier unit” what do they want to see when they click on your website? On the other hand, if the customer sits down and searches for “tips for installing a humidifier unit” they will expect to find something very different.

When designing the offer, answer these three questions:
Who is your target market?
What problem do they want to solve?
How do you offer the best solution to their problem?

These questions probably guide most of your business decisions. Your website is no different. Keep your answers to these three questions in mind throughout the entire process of writing Call to Actions for your website.

Six Tips to Create Effective Call to Action Landing Pages:

1. Focus on Your Target Audience

You would speak very differently to a Business Lawyer than to a Tradesman such as an Electrician. As such, you need to match your action statements to your audience. Focus on your audience’s needs and focus on using an appropriate tone.

2. Stay Focused on the Next Step

The purpose of a “call to action” is to help visitors take the next step. Your landing page should include one primary call to action, which leads the viewer deeper into your site. Any secondary call to action should not be in competition with your primary call to action. Overwhelming visitors with too much choice can leave them paralyzed instead of moving forward. It is your goal to help the visitor take the next step.

3. The KISS Principle

Keep it shot and simple! Be clear. Be specific. Be simple. Your home page is more than just an entry portal. It is your opportunity to let people know what makes you unique. Position your value statement above the fold and make it stand out from surrounding content using font size and color. Write the statement so that a 10 year old can understand and act upon it.

4. Establish a Context for the Response

In any real world situation, without context to a command, most people are unwilling to respond. For example, you wouldn’t donate $500 dollars just because a non-profit organization called you but you would probably consider it if they offered “Donate $500 to the Children’s Hospital and your company website will be listed as sponsors on their site”. In some instances you need to provide grounding for the call to action and in others you need to help the visitors realize their need before they will consider taking the next step. In the example of a Humidifier, you may need to provide a web page outlining the benefits of having a humidifier unit in the winter in order to convince the visitor to download your catalog.

5. Add Value

It is human nature to carry a – what’s in it for me – mentality where it may take additional persuasion to convince them to act. In essence, your – call to action – will state, “Do this so that you can get that.” Always try to connect the action with a direct benefit in order to show value.

6. Create a Sense of Urgency

In our human nature we tend to procrastinate and put things off. To overcome this tendency add urgency to your call to action. Create a deadline so that the offer expires or only lasts for a short time. If the visitor doesn’t act upon the statement immediately chances are they will not come back to your site to do it later.

Businessman Touching Domino Pieces Arranged in a Line

The Social Media Domino Effect – There is HOPE

September 22, 2011/in Social Networking /by Piri Darabont

How Social Media impacted my life.

As a social media service provider, I often meet people who wonder if social media really works or not and what kind of impact does have on a business or individual when total strangers get to connect via a social media platform.

I will share today’s personal experience and how a Twitter bio affected my life personally.

Yesterday, we had a MAFE (Milton Area Female Entrepreneurs) Meet Up where I had the privilege to meet some amazing entrepreneurs. I got to know this group through Facebook. I first connected with @SandyHatzis – an amazing realtor and great entrepreneur – via Facebook when she invited me to a MAFE Meet Up months ago.

This morning Sandy posted on her twitter feed a post about yesterday’s MAFE Meet Up and while I went to reply to her post I ended up checking her following list. I learned that great people learn from great people. I know that the people you surround yourself with (whether online or offline) – aka “follow” when it comes to Twitter or “LIKE” on Facebook – will impact your business and personal life in general.

I love networking and I’m always open to connect with new people. As I went through Sandy’s “Following” list and checked some people’s bios (I don’t follow blindly) – this bio got my attention and really changed my day.

Rich Christiansen @richchristianse
Father of 5 sons – 24 years of marriage & still crazy in love. I have founded 32 companies: 11 terrible failures and 11 multi-million dollar successes.

I found his bio encouraging and full of HOPE.

We live in a world when divorce rate is 50% and this couple made it through for 24 years. I am married for – soon to be 18 years – and we had bumps and times when I asked my husband: are you leaving or am I leaving? Yet we realized that if we start to see each other’s differences as a blessing instead of a problem we can really complete each other. And as a couple we ought to complete each other not compete against each other.

I’m not sure, but I would suggest that Rich too – just as he had some big business losses over the years – in his married life too, had moments when it was close to failure, yet they had to choose to work it out and it looks they did a good job. There is HOPE that if you do your very best you CAN – not just survive to be married for 24 years, but actually be still crazy in love.

There is HOPE in your business life and personal development too. Tell me about it – founded 32 companies – 11 were terrible failures – most people give up after failing 2-3 times. They retract in their shells and never try again, yet Rich’s life is a proof that if you NEVER give up, if you try again, if you learn from your previous failures – each and every time – you become better, stronger and the wisdom you learn from those failures can be the stepping stones on your next success.

The road to a successful life often is not a straight path, nor is a highway. The road to your destination might be bumpy, and sometimes you might feel alone or even have to walk alone, but bumpy roads can lead you to your destination too … IF you keep moving one step at the time, IF you choose to stand up after a failure, IF you always do your very best and IF you never give up.

@richchristianse’s bio spreads HOPE. Hope is something we all need. It resonated with me so deeply this morning because I am a mother of 3 boys, married for almost 18 years and still in love, emigrated in Canada 14 years ago with two suitcases and started life alone without any help. Started few businesses what most would call failures, yet I look back and I call them stepping-stones. I learned something from each failure and I HAVE HOPE that if I do my very best, and I never give up I will see amazing success in my business and personal life too. There is hope against all odds that we can grow old TOGETHER with my husband and set an example to my kids they could follow. There is hope against all odds and friend’s suggestions that we CAN succeed even if our first businesses might not ended up the way we planned. There is HOPE if we NEVER give up.

Does social media work? I let you answer the question. You can see the importance of a well written bio and the impact social media had in my life today. If it wouldn’t been for Facebook and Twitter I would never get to know @SandyHatzis or @richchristianse. Do these connections will impact my life or their life in a long term? I don’t know – the future is still ahead of us and I don’t know what it holds. But today it impacted my life; I read @richchristianse bio when I needed the most and while I shared on Facebook and Twitter I know that already encouraged few people.

What does your bio broadcast about you or your company? Does it reflect who you are and what do you stand for? Your Twitter bio, Facebook info and your profile in general on any given social network is the first impression someone has about you or your company. It is crucial to have a well written bio, it either builds confidence and trust or you lose a potential follower.

Do you want to know the continuation of the story? When I mentioned to @richchristianse that his bio impacted my life, he generously offered to send me his new book which will come out only in October, but some are in print now. What a privilege and honor. His offer touched me and brought tears to my eyes. I confessed and with that I gave away that I’m a woman. I am passionate and emotional in everything I do. Kindness in any form really touches my heart.

To be CONTINUED … with your very own social media story. I know without a doubt that there are many people whose life and/or business is impacted in some form or other by social media. Send me YOUR story to info@intactmarketing.ca and I will publish it here on my blog.

Create your Facebook Page Custom URL (Vanity URL)

August 11, 2011/in Facebook, Social Media Marketing /by Piri Darabont

Set up a Custom URL (Vanity URL) for your Facebook Fan Page

Over the years I noticed that one of the most commonly missed optimization by many Facebook Fan page owners is the opportunity to change the Facebook Page URL and set up a Facebook Custom URL or often mention as Vanity URL for your Facebook business page.

When you create a Facebook fan page, as a standard Facebook will generate a fan page URL that will look like www.facebook.com/pages/page-name/1983123013. The numbers at the end are important as they indentify your page; each and every Facebook Fan page has its own set of numbers, yet is very obvious that people can’t remember such complicated numbers and in this format is not suitable for you to use it on your business card, banner, or other method of promotion.

Facebook allows you to change the Facebook fan page url and customize it to your desired, easy to remember facebook custom URL.

Here are the steps to Change your Facebook Fan Page Url:

First, you need to ensure that your fan page has at least 25 fans. You cannot have a Facebook Custom URL for your Facebook fan page if the number of fans for your fan page is below 25. Once the number of fans is 25, from your PROFILE Page Click “Edit Page”

Once you’re on your settings page from the left side bar Click the “Basic Information” menu.

Enter your desired username for the page and check the availability. Not all the names will be available so choose something nice. Facebook allows you to change your facebook url only once so choose your username (URL) wisely.

When everything is done your page URL should look like this: facebook.com/yoururl

People often are asking me why is important to have a vanity url for Facebook?

It’s easy to remember.
Creating the custom url prevents someone else from registering it. You really don’t want someone else to register your brand.
Improves your website’s SEO – especially if you use keywords in the URL name. It is well knows that keywords in URL help pages to rank higher in search engines. Having a keyword in your Facebook page URL could help your page ranking high on search engines which in turn can generate more traffic and revenue. For example, facebook.com/DogTrainer will result in more hits than facebook.com/BarkBusters.

So go ahead and Set up your Facebook custom URL (Vanity URL) for your facebook fan page and take advantage of the awesome opportunities social media offers.

Contact us for Custom Facebook Landing Page creation, Facebook Set-Up, Maintenance and Management as well as for Facebook Advertising Campaign Management Prices.

7 Tips to Consider When Developing Your Facebook Community

June 17, 2011/in Facebook, Facebook Marketing /by Piri Darabont

As social networks explode, more and more companies try to integrate their online presence through social media platforms. The most used platforms would be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and lately foursquare is receiving lots of attention.

Using these social platforms successfully needs more understanding then just how to set up a profile.

Facebook Fan Pages are considered a great starting point for social media engagement, more and more companies are searching to learn the best practices to adopt in order to build up the desired followers.

Seven factors to consider when developing your Facebook community

1. Focus on the Content

Upload images, videos, texts and other media types around your brand, focusing on the interests of the community you want to build. This is a place where you want to show your human side of your company. It is well know that people are more likely to react to pictures, so update some interesting pictures regularly.

2. Encourage Discussions

Engage with users by asking and answering their questions. People want to be involved and are more likely to interact to a human tone of voice instead of a cold corporate talking. Be as friendly as possible, facebook is all about friendships and family; don’t over push your product and services. First build trust with your followers

3. Setup Contests and games

To keep your new fans and earn their trust you have to be creative! Motivate people to participate and add entertainment value to their online experience.

4. Reward your fans

Why should I hit the “Like” button? Do you offer only information about your company and products? A way to attract more “Like” thumbs is to offer something special for your fans. But remember you don’t want to build up followers who are attracted to your specials only, but you want to build relationship with your brand.

5. Promote your Facebook Fan Page

Add your Fan Page’s link in your website, blog, e-mail signatures newsletters and printed media.

6. Create Custom Welcome Pages / Tabs

The purpose of your facebook business page is to expand your territories. The first impression of your facebook business page is critical. Your customized facebook landing tab has to be interesting enough to encourage fans join. Create custom facebook pages with compelling images or videos. This could be a presentation of your company, a contest announcement or even an application.

7. Be prepared to respond to negative reviews

Social platforms give people a voice to express not only their positive, but their negative reviews and comments too. You should always be prepared to respond a negative review and you should not just try to hide it by deleting the post. This requires a specific policy and the right spokesperson to handle kind situations.

What other tips would you recommend to be successful with your facebook fan page?