A Good Time is Blog Time

Online marketing is like no other marketing, in the sense we are not only trying to get our message out, we are also trying to be found. The Internet is the only medium where users, can actively search for the content of our website and additional content we have posted on other sites. It only makes sense to develop content in a strategic manner to make it easier to be found by users. It only makes sense to develop content that is useful for clients and potential clients. In this sense, our content is our marketing. Here are some ways we can approach marketing through content sharing, and link it to the content we have on our website design and ‘news’ or blog.

• How to Videos. It only makes sense to use YouTube videos and a YouTube channel to distribute videos to help potential clients. Some people prefer to watch videos instead of reading text. YouTube is a search engine, and a heavily used one at that. If you have a blog, you can use YouTube to host your videos and embed them into your blog. We can save on our own storage space, and we can take advantage of being directly in YouTube’s search results. Make sure you use appropriate tags and proper descriptions of your videos so they can be found by YouTube and Google’s search engine. Google still cannot actually watch your video.

• Forums. We often turn to forums when we are trying to find particular information. This makes them the perfect place to be a part of when we are actually marketing ourselves. Again, we should be conscious of our keywords as forum results will also come up in Google search. We should spend the time to find the appropriate forum for our business with the right type of user – one that matches our potential target client. We can link to our existing online content to assist with answers to user questions and issues on the forum.

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Has anyone else been checking their PR on their websites blogs and articles. I had a pretty good coo when I went from PR0 across the board to PR4 for the home page on my European Travel Website with many of the other pages getting awarded PR3  or below. All done without smoke and mirrors and no black hat techniques. Fingers crossed that the pages will retain their new found status. I checked some of my keyword targets and I am getting page one of Google for many of the terms I identified when the site was set up. Can’t be bad then can it, I guess time will tell.

So I think it is fair to say that the latest algorithm changes and PR criteria must be suiting the way I do business. This blog crept up another PR number to 3, which considering how competitive the subject is, should be considered no mean feat. Especially as I actually do operate as a one man band and I write my own unique articles i.e. no automated spinning software allowed or at least not deliberately. I do accept guest articles but try and make sure they are good quality, properly written and provide useful information. One or two substandard ones have crept in on occasion on some of my blogs, but they don’t stay long once spotted.

So what is the secret to getting a pat on the back from Google? Well if the results I have seen are anything to go by there isn’t really a secret, because Google have been telling us and I have been telling you about it in my Search Engine Results Experiment. Hopefully you have been following that dialogue and taking on board what I have been saying, it certainly is starting to look like that is the way to go. In summary then, it is as originally stated : Read the rest of this entry »

The importance of a snippet cannot be underestimated, like an Adwords campaign advert, your snippet needs to be laser focused and highly relevant to your page topic. The reason is obvious when you think about it, when the snippet is presented on the search results pages, hopefully page 1, it is, for a potential new visitor, their first glimpse of the subject you are presenting. It is the hook that brings them to click on your link and visit your page.

So having got your new visitor to take the bait, you then have to deliver on the promise. Fail to do that and the fish will slip the hook and swim off into the ocean looking for a tastier morsel.

So how do you make sure that the snippet presented by Google et al is the one you want to present? Let’s ask Matt Cutts of Google.

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Google have announced on their blog the release of a very significant algorithm change from the 24th February 2011, I can’t believe they waited until I went skiing to make the change . The statement on their blog states that 11.8% of the queries they receive will be affected. Now for Google that is a pretty big number.

The key points of what they have tried to achieve are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

So is getting traffic to your blog a black art or is there a secret formula that guarantees you success. Perhaps just paying Google for position is the answer. I attended an advanced tips and techniques webinar with Google the other day discussing lots of different ways for getting a better click through rate on your Adsense ads. There were some really good techniques shared but not much said about getting traffic to your blog, a little bit to be fair but really not that much.

Now for me the biggest influence on Adsense income is getting traffic to your blog in enough quantities that you get a reasonable number of clicks. So when they opened the webinar up to a questions and answers session, I asked one simple question. I basically put up the question what is the most important feature of a blog that will result in Google placing it high up on the search engine results page, the consequence of which is getting traffic to your blog.

I was playing devils advocate a bit, because I pretty much knew what the response to that question would be…..

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