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| | | | | While "How To" content is being created at the site, I thought it would be a good idea to have a temporary weekly newsletter to keep the ball rolling for everyone. The newsletter also provides a good vehicle to let everyone know as content become available at the website. In a few weeks I'll check in to see if it's working for you. If it is we can keep it going. If not I can go back to random email when necessary.
An added benefit to this format is that it provides information in small bites so it won't take a lot of time.
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| What's in this weeks newsletter
An quick non-technical introduction and overview to;
- Blogging
- SEO
- Social Media
- Website Content Creation
- Using WordPress
- Online business tools
for the business website owner.
Here goes...
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| Blogging
There's no better place to start than at the beginning.
Blog is a short term for Weblog. You can learn probably more than you ever wanted to know about it at the Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog.
In short, it's a page or pages on your website that display posts in a chronological order.
Around the year 2009 some website owners realized the power of a blog and began to post in a grand scale with multiple authors and professional editors. This began to draw huge amounts of traffic to the site. People like Oprah, Ellen and the countless Talking Heads in the media are all examples of bloggers. Who said a blog came only in a text post format anyway?
A small to medium sized business with a website doesn't stand much chance to compete against an online magazine style blog like Forbes, for instance even if just out of shear resources, not the least of which is time. It still does have a purpose, however.
The internet is a great neutralizer. If you have an answer that someone is looking for, they will find you.
Therefore, a blog will still serve your business goals. First it will draw traffic, even if it isn't in scale with an online magazine. Most importantly, it will serve 3 purposes:
- It will build authority in your niche.
- It will engage and nurture both prospects and customers by providing "actual" value.
- It enables your message to spread to new audiences organically (i.e. for free)...
Well, nothing is free. You'll pay with your time but by free I mean that you won't purchase traffic, leads and customers with money via advertising. This type of marketing, called Content Marketing, provides your audience something of value to them via the content on your blog.
When someone comes to your blog what you're trying to do is to get them to say, "Hey this person knows what they're talking about! I found a solid answer to my question / problem." (Authority)
Then, "Hey, look at all the answers they have to so many of my other questions on this topic. I wonder what else they can solve for me? (Authority to prospect)
"What they offer must be what I need because they understand so much about it." (Prospect to buyer)
"Well there's no risk with this money back guarantee so I'll have to give it a try." (Buyer)
"This product / service was great. I have to go back and get more." (Return customer)
"I see they that they have other things that I can use. I'm going to buy here because I know I'm getting value." (Loyal customer)
I heard a good analogy about having someone come to your site and trying to get them to buy something first visit. It went something like this...You wouldn't meet someone and ask them to marry you right there, would you? No you'd ask them to get a cup of coffee first, then maybe go on a date or 2, then you'd propose marriage. Well it's the same progression selling on the internet.
Create interest, give something of value, build authority and reputation, and then get married. Nothing to it, right? Well, there is a little more to it than meets the eye. After all, no one knows your website even exists and you don't have the benefit of meeting in person.
SEO
At this point in the progression, Google and Microsoft (Microsoft owns Yahoo and Bing) see what’s going on and they say "Hey, look at this! We're going to have to show this site more often when people are searching for "your keywords" so let’s put this site up higher in rank for those keywords. Higher in rank means more people see your site and this brings more traffic. This is how the process begins to spiral upward.
Now other sites see your content and traffic and they say "Hey (your site) is an authority on (your keywords). When we reference that topic we're going to link to your website and use some of your authority to support what we're talking about. This creates backlinks. The search engines see the backlinks and they say, "Wow this site is not only popular but it's also important because other sites are referencing it. We better give more rank to (your site). Get the idea how this is going?
I don't want to over simplify SEO because there are many technical factors involved in making this happen as you'll see in the Online Business Tools section. This is the concept of how it works, however.
In future, I'll go into more detail on how to blog, how to minimize your time doing it and how to SEO without having to become an overnight geek.
Social Media
So where does social media play its role in this process? Well let’s keep an example in mind while we look at it. If you've ever watched "America's Got Talent" or "Dancing with the Stars" You'll realize that these shows are to social media what Oprah and Ellen are to blogging. Why? The audience votes. The winner isn't necessarily who the most talented are, they are the ones that America likes the most. Popularity. The same is true for websites. Search engines want to show the websites that are most popular among internet audiences. It pleases the most people, it's what the audience wants, and therefore, it will please the most search engine customers to show those links. This is how they make money and I probably don't need to go into the wealth of Google to get the point across.
So Google and Microsoft factor "Social Signals" into your page rank. The number of Views on (YouTube), the number of Like's on (Facebook), the number of Followers (Twitter), and the number of Connections on (LinkedIn) matter to your website search engine ranking and therefore affect your traffic. The greater these numbers, the more rank you get. Therefore, you always post your blog content to these social media sites to gain popularity.
The trick is not to send your traffic to them but to draw traffic from them. This is a common mistake and these services make it easy to make that mistake since the goal of every website (including theirs) is to get traffic. There giving you their service for free so they don't mind taking your traffic in exchange.
We'll cover how to do this without having to become a NFL quarterback or a famous singer and still keep your sanity.
Website Content Creation
So when you are creating content putting your keywords in the right place, encouraging backlinks by creating authority and writing what will be popular socially, (all at once) consider that the title and an excerpt will be posted to social media with a link back to your blog to read the rest of the post. It will have to be very attention getting to get a person to leave their favorite social media site.
We'll go over how to create content like this for your blog.
Almost too intimidating to even want to write anything, isn't it? Look at how many ways there are to mess up? This is where WordPress comes in.
Using WordPress
I'm sure that all of you are by now familiar with the fact that you have a post editor in the backend of your site. With WordPress you can type your post in your native language and not have to concern yourself with writing HTML and CSS to be able to see what you wrote on your website. WordPress, through your theme, will keep your posts looking consistent with your overall website's look and feel. You also don't have to write special code for search engines with each post because this is done for you. What isn't done for you is the SEO of the actual content of your post. Namely, title, permalink, and body content. There's no way for WordPress to actually understand what your wriitng.
It's to address this problem that every WordPress website I build for anyone, I install a plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast. I install this on every site that I build with the specific intention to help make the person writing every post a correct post. This SEO plugin guides you through the process of creating a search engine friendly, keyword rich. technically correct blog post. It too is software however and doesn't know if you’re being savvy. It's up to you to put in the human part into your writing while following the guide and creating enchantment for your audience.
There will be a using Yoast section on the site for you to get more familiar with its use.
So now you’re creating search engine friendly, customer valued, socially popular content using WordPress and its many intrinsic features. You’re doing great right? Wait a minute, "I'm not on page 1 of Google. How do I know if I'm making progress?”, you wonder.
That is what online tools were invented for.
Online Tools
This week’s online tool will be to get a free look at your website through the eyes of a site that watches all of these SEO factors and a whole lot more. If there is any time left in your week after reading this (lengthy) quick introduction and overview, try to get over to https://ahrefs.com/.
At this site, you can enter the address to your website and see some of the things that are being watched. Be warned that it will only show you so much and only once per day without an account but it's enough to get a feel for what you should be working on. Google for instance uses approximately 200 factors in ranking sites. Way too many for us to go into without making this a complete course in SEO. I'm guessing that you'd rather be running your business than become an expert SEO professional, so we'll keep this to what's relevant.
To Wind It Up
Don't get discouraged, it's easier than it seems. It just takes a little know how and direction. If you hang in there and follow me through, you'll know how to exploit what can be a very valuable asset.
In the future we'll keep it briefer but this needed to flow.
A final thought
Even though I'm not a great writer, when you read this, do you being to get a sense that I may know what I'm talking about? Does it begin to build a sense of authority for me on this topic? Now that we've had a cup of coffee together, maybe next we'll go out on a date but for now I challenge you to go and do that for your customers. Write a blog post in your niche, similar to this.
It sounds like the weather is going to be great here in NH so I'm going to turn off the computer for a while and head outdoors. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and get some down time too.
Russ Morgan
http://rmseo.com
russ@rmseo.com
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