Online Marketing for Local Business
Posts tagged SEO
Article Marketing and Backlink Basics
14 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
Article Marketing is a very effective way to promote your company, brands, and products and services, and one we haven’t talked about in a while. Essentially anything resembling a press release can be sent to many distribution outlets online (our favorite PR Log, which like many other platforms is a free service/website). An interesting article or story could find itself literally anywhere after submission to this website and other similar ones, as your release will be shared with hundreds of outlets, and can be picked up by news services, newspapers, online new aggregators, anyone. After your submission to press release distribution sites, consider posting on one of the popular article directories. Once again, our favorite at Hat Trick Associates is Ezine Articles.
What is the benefit of these distribution services? Well, as noted the hope is that the article or story will be shared all over, and that potential customers or clients will find it online and read it. But there is another benefit. Every time the release is shared online, the backlinks contained within the article that direct back to your website are GREAT for SEO purposes. But there are some rules you should follow when adding these valuable backlinks in your submission, or in the Author’s box that follows the article. Here are some good tips for including links in your releases:
- 2 Self-Serving and 2 Non Self-Serving Links Maximum – A self-serving link is any link that you have a vested interest in promoting. A non self-serving link is a link that you do not have a vested interested in promoting but adds value to the article, such as unbiased facts or data about the topic.
- Less Means More When Including Links – When referring to rule #1, note that it isn’t necessary to include 2 self-serving links in every article. Including links that are unrelated to the topic usually makes the article appear spammy.
- Keep Links Below the Fold – “Below the fold” refers to the way a newspaper is folded across the middle to cut front page stories in half. In this case, links must be kept out of the first 3 paragraphs of text (the area above “the fold”) to keep your readers’ attention. Otherwise the same “spammy” problem just noted comes back into play.
- Try to Limit Self-Serving Links to the Resource Box – Only 1 self-serving link is allowed in the body of most articles submitted to the major distributors. Including more than this will get your article rejected!
Don't Be Scrooge With Outbound Links on Your Website
15 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
So, you’ve worked hard to get visitors to your web site. I know. (I’ve worked rather hard to get YOU to read THIS.)
And now you’re asking if you should provide outbound links. Well, should you?
What if visitors leave via those links, and then never come back? It’s a concern that many business owners and newer website administrators or writers have.
But let me tell you a secret: Visitors leave when they’ve seen enough. Period.
When they have read (or glanced at) your article or articles; whether they have read an interesting tid bit or have read every last word, they leave. Nothing you can do will stop this. Trying to box them into your site won’t stop them from leaving.
Besides, the truth is that many visitors aren’t even relevant to your objectives – as some of you reading this are undoubtedly to mine – so you might as well provide them with helpful directions or a pathway to a more appropriate web site. Who knows, maybe they WILL be quite relevant to your business later on, and will remember your usefulness?
Does this mean you link to direct competitors, or have outbound links all over the page? Certainly not. But spreading a little love by placing some outbound links makes your own site that much more relevant. If you have a good business, and you provide value on your website, you will get your fair share of customers!
A good related article, and outbound link I might add! Don’t be a link miser.
How to Increase the Life Expectancy of Your Online Content
015 years
by admin
in Uncategorized
Go Green – Evergreen, that is! You can greatly increase the life expectancy of your online content by remembering to write in a “timeless” manner.
Writing a regular stream of fresh articles is critical to your article marketing (or blogging) success. However, it’s also important to make your articles as “evergreen” as possible, with content that stays fresh and useful long after you publish it. Being sensitive to how your articles could be read in the upcoming years will help keep them from eventually becoming stale, irrelevant pieces of text.
Most publishers that you are trying to attract with your articles prefer evergreen content as well, for a very clear reason. Evergreen content makes your articles (or postings) more useful to their readers for a longer period, and they can spend less of their own time pulling out stale content. So if done correctly, your articles might live on for years and years on a publisher’s website.
So How to Increase Your Evergreen Factor?
Remove the Time Element – Notice how the evergreen title below drops the year reference? Be sure to remove any time-specific references in the body copy, too.
Stale: “Hot Summer Fashion Trends in 2010”
Evergreen: “Hot Summer Footwear Trends: Flip-Flops vs. Sandals”
Find Long-Lasting Angles on Time-Sensitive Topics – This allows you to take even topical news items or recent events and make them virtually timeless.
Stale: Writing about this week’s top-ranked golfers in the world.
Evergreen: Writing about the characteristics and traits of top-ranked golfers, and how you can incorporate some of their success into your own game.
Use the One-Year Test – After you write your next article, read it again and imagine it’s one year later. Is your article still relevant? You should rewrite anything that would be outdated.
Stale: “10 Things You Need to Know Before Investing $499 on Apple’s Hot New iPad”
Evergreen: “10 Things You Should Know Before Purchasing an iPad”
The concept of evergreen content can of course be in mind when you begin writing any fresh, new article, and you can also apply the concept when you older content you have previously created and re-work it to become “evergreen”!