Archive for year: 2015

When you spend time and effort to craft stellar blog posts, you want them to be read and shared as much as possible. Yet what many bloggers don’t realize is that you have to grab your readers’ attention with the headline or it’s not happening. It may be hard to believe that those 8 to 11 words are going to make such an impact, but according to “The Father of Advertising,” David Ogilvy, “On Average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” In fact, Ogilvy himself spent nearly half of his time writing better headlines as he would spend on the rest of the advertisement content.

With that in mind, the following five strategies should help you create the most compelling headlines possible and maximize your online marketing efforts.

1. Shorter headlines pop. Back in the day, it was recommended that headlines be 5 to 10 words. In present day, the standard is between 8 and 12 words. Keep your headlines short and succinct if you want to grab readers’ attention.

2. Use numbers. Research shows that the most successful headlines include a number. Readers assume that the number lets them know how long the post will be and lets them make the decision if they want commit or just skim the content.

3. Make lists. With the number rule in mind, lists make for ideal posts. List headlines make a specific promise and they’re more readable, easier to skim and scan, and most importantly, the reader knows what to expect.

4. Inspire curiosity. One of the best ways to capture readers’ attention is to ask a question that evokes an emotion and makes them feel like they have to get an answer. This technique utilizes the curiosity gap, making readers feel like there’s a void between what they know and what they want to know.

5. Use what’s trending in your industry. Look at what’s trending, what your clients are discussing and what the competition is doing and take note. Doing this will help inspire ideas to blog about and craft the most attention-grabbing headlines.

Visit this link to learn about our online marketing services.

Pinterest is a bit like a digital vision board—you pin photos you like and categorize them according to topics of your choice in an online profile. Some use it for personal purposes and others use it to gain exposure for their products and services, while many use it for both. Many clients wonder whether there are any benefits to using Pinterest for business marketing or as part of their social media and online marketing campaigns. The consensus is that it can definitely be a great tool for garnering online exposure and attracting new customers. Read on to learn about how it can benefit your business.

One of the many benefits of Pinterest is that it enables you to define and garner exposure for a brand and the people behind it. When the people behind a brand showcase their passions and interests, it helps them become relatable and connect with potential customers. Pinterest also allows users to demonstrate their expertise in their area of business. If your company is a service-oriented firm, you can pin photos of happy customers or client projects. This is an excellent way to promote everything from fitness training, hairstyling and makeup artistry to interior décor, auto restoration or original art, for example. Followers will be inspired and visit your board for ideas, which will increase your credibility and appeal among both new and potential customers.

While an obvious use is to upload photos of your products or services offered, Pinterest also offers a great way to promote text-based content, such as blog articles. When you pin the photo that accompanies the blog post on a board, you can link it to the content to attract traffic. This is a popular method for workouts, recipes, how-to guides, house décor, real estate listings and more.

On the SEO front, Pinterest is beneficial because it adds backlinks to your website and increases overall visibility.

Click this link for information on our online marketing, SEO and social media services.

Video optimization and YouTube are an important part of online marketing, yet many companies overlook this avenue for boosting their search engine rankings and gaining exposure for their products and services. Every day, billions of videos are watched on YouTube alone—it’s considered by many as the second largest search engine in the world. Building a strong YouTube presence can have an incredible impact on your brand reach and will give you the chance to engage with the millions of visitors of using the platform.

It makes sense to leverage these audiences and use video to boost your online marketing efforts. Here are three tips for optimizing your videos and making them easier to find and share.

1. Provide relevant, interesting content. You want to make sure that your video is compelling, related to your products or services, and interesting to watch. Make sure you’re not shoving your brand in viewers’ faces; they are there to learn about whatever they searched for. If content feels too promotional, they will quickly move on to the next item that their search query brought up. Don’t make your videos too lengthy either; studies show that viewers’ attention spans rarely last more than three minutes.

2. Make your video optimization search-friendly. Just like Google, YouTube uses algorithms to determine which videos appear in the search results and where. YouTube will evaluate the bounce rate of your videos—as in how long viewers watch your content before clicking out. Other important factors include the number of subscribers your channel has and the number of likes, dislikes and comments each video garners. They will also look at keyword relevance and the length of your videos.

3. Provide a clear call to action. Since you have viewers’ attention, you want to capitalize on it. Here is your chance to create a call to action that is compelling and attractive so that viewers have the opportunity to take advantage of what you have to offer.

Click here to learn about the stellar online marketing services we provide.

You don’t have to be an online marketing guru to understand the importance of search engine rankings. By now, your company is most likely engaged in SEO activities, such as linkbuilding, blogging and on-page optimization. While it’s essential to perform those activities at a bare minimum, it’s equally important to understand how you may be hurting your search engine rankings, whether it’s due to inactivity or too much activity.

As Google regularly updates its algorithms, you run the risk of being penalized in the form of lower rankings, which translates to less traffic. If you feel like your current strategy is on point, but your results are subpar, check some of the items below to make sure you’re doing things right.

1. Your site isn’t mobile-friendly. More than half of Google’s traffic is from mobile devices, which means if your site isn’t mobile-responsive, it will be penalized. This isn’t about favoritism or anything like that—it’s just that search engines strive to reflect user experiences in their search results.

2. Your website isn’t keyword-optimized. It’s still essential to make sure that your target keywords and keyphrases show up on your site in an organic, relevant way. Your keywords should appear in the page title, your H1 and H2 header tags, in the meta description and throughout your content. What’s critical here is keyword density—unlike in the past, you don’t want to overdo it, which is called “stuffing.” Google will definitely penalize you for overstuffing your website with your keywords and hyperlinks—instead, make sure they appear naturally and in moderation.

3. Your site doesn’t have fresh, original, quality content. Search engines seek sites that regularly feature new, fresh content that is relevant to searches. It also has to be quality content—the Google Panda algorithm seeks to penalize any content that is duplicated from another site, poorly written, too short and lacking information. This doesn’t just affect the pages containing this low-end content; it affect the entire website’s rankings.

Click through to learn about our online marketing services.