7 SEO tips that can help your startup increase revenues

By David Ronald

Search engine optimization can have a dramatic effect on the success of any business regardless of its size. SEO best-practices are always changing, however, because Google frequently modifies its algorithms—so much so, in fact, that approaches which were effective in obtaining a page one ranking just a couple of years ago may even be counter-productive today.

The evolving nature of search requires a fresh strategy when it comes to keep your business prominent in search engine listings.

In this post I’m going to highlight seven tips for successful SEO:

1. Develop your strategy—a carefully-crafted marketing strategy is vital in identifying your target market segments, how best to communicate with them, what types of messages and content you want to evangelize, metrics that can help determine and how problems when content doesn’t perform as expected and so on. It’s an ever-evolving plan, but an initial strategy needs to be formulated before it can grow into itself.

2. Identify target keywords—all SEO projects begin with research into target keywords. Your goal here is to determine the keywords that have the most return with the least competition, and this is based on your target segments and an in-depth analysis of current and recent search trends. Build compelling content around these keywords—Google is adept at determining how relevant and informative content is to specific keywords.

3. Keep content pithy—if you’re focusing on a particular topic in your segment(s), then strive to write about everything relevant to that topic. Creating pithy content is how you attract new users and make sure that your site doesn’t stagnate. These also feed into the idea of generating good backlinks to go with good content. Together these things are very helpful for a site’s final page rank.

4. Build relevant links—modern day link building requires proper understanding of how anchor tags work and how you can best utilize them to increase your search engine rank. Link relevancy is key in figuring out which sites are best linked to. Tools such as Mozbar allow you to quickly ascertain if a link is good by glancing at the DA score. This is important because these links affect how relevant a site you are to your niche.

5. Determine social channels—there are hundreds of millions of users across dozens of social networking channels and as a startup, and your time dedicated to social media is already at a premium. Understanding that you can’t cover all the possible avenues is the first thing to come to grips with. Some background research can then direct you to the social media network where the majority of your target demographic dwells, allowing you to focus on that one.

6. Be mobile-friendly—it isn’t necessary to completely re-build a website in order to make it mobile-friendly. There are plenty of resources online that can convert a website to mobile-friendly standards, without a great deal to time or money. Even if budget is your concern, you have far more to lose from a site that isn’t mobile compatible than you save from not making it mobile compatible.

7. Befriend analytics—the numbers don’t lie and the relevant numbers to you are the ones that tell of your page’s successes and failures. While successes are important to celebrate, failures allow you to improve your site. Analytics gives you goals to aim for and are a pretty good guide as to how effective your marketing strategy has been thus far and what could be improved in the future.

These seven tips should get you started on the journey to a position on page one of a search engine listing. SEO is a huge and complex topic, so strive to increase your knowledge as much as possible—subscribe to relevant blogs (there are some very good ones) and consider taking an evening class at a local college if time allows. Spending time in acquiring more and more knowledge will be a worthwhile investment for your business.

Thanks for reading.

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How to achieve good PR when you're a startup

By David Ronald

Public relations is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. In an era when anyone can broadcast their opinions about your startup to the world, good PR remains as vital to the success of a business as it always has been. Indeed, it’s arguably more important than ever.

Even so, good PR requires a new level of engagement on the part of entrepreneurs and companies and in this blog post I’m going to examine what that involves.

• Less what, more why—although innovators are right to be proud of their latest development, it’s important to avoid falling into the trap of focusing on the “what” it is and “how” it works. Focus, instead, on the “why” it is going to have an impact and enrich people’s lives.
• Search for a “hook”—endeavour to pitch your product or service by relating it to current hot button issues as much as you can, as this increases the probability of successfully “hooking” your audience.
• Tone down jargon—yes, it’s true that our lives are full of technical buzzwords but don’t automatically expect that everyone understands all of the ones you use. Describe your innovation in everyday language as much as possible.
• Map your messages—it’s generally true that the technical press is the best place to seek coverage if you have an exciting product announcement and the business press is more suitable if you have company news.
• Avoid irrelevant news—the quickest way to excite an editor’s “delete button reflex” is to get your company associated with non-news. Overcome your natural urge to be “in the news” regularly and, instead, put out press releases only when you something truly interesting to announce.
• Connect on social media—journalists, even at mainstream publications, use social media as a key way of staying abreast of breaking news. Posting your news on properties such as Twitter and Reddit can help you gain coverage.
• Seek bloggers' coverage—the blogosphere is the perfect link between social media and PR as bloggers are active on social media and many of them are closely monitored by journalists.
• Identify your keywords—determine the keywords that will give you an edge over your competitors and use them your press releases, social media posts, and so on. Spyfu (http://www.spyfu.com/), for example, is a good tool for helping determine which keywords to use.
• Publish social media-friendly content—since your goal is to prompt engagement, and potential sharing, post content on social media that elicit an emotional response. Case studies, for example, are an ideal way ay to get your message across.
• Leverage Google Analytics—you can determine which online publications are helping drive traffic to your website using Google Analytics. Put more of your advertising dollars there.
• Focus on media where you advertise—the walls between advertising and editorial are sometimes rock solid and sometimes non-existent. A good rule of thumb, however, is that you’ll get the best coverage in the publications where you’re spending the majority of your ad dollars, and vice versa.

Do you agree with this list?

Leave us a comment if you feel we've left something off it. 

3 types of online advertising for small businesses

By David Ronald

The goal of advertising is to attract new customers—after all, no matter how awesome your company’s product or service is, if you don’t advertise, nobody will know about it.

It’s not surprise that ever more businesses are choosing to advertise online - digital advertising spend was $49.5 billion in the United States, in 2014, according to Internet Ad Bureau, digital now commands nearly one in five ad dollars.

The first thing to know when you are considering using the internet to advertise your product is what types of online advertising are at your disposal. And that will depend on what your business needs are. In this blog post, I describe the three key online advertising methods.

1. Search Engine Advertising

Of all the types of online advertising, search engine marketing has to be one of the most dynamic and challenging to harness. Basically, popular search engines like Google use complex algorithms to deliver searched-for content in their results pages. It obviously pays to be one of the first few results on a popular search engine. However, because these algorithms are constantly changing, staying on top of the search engine optimization (SEO) methods can be a little challenging.
The key benefits of this type of advertising are:

Origination—many prospects will hit search engines first when they are looking for a new product or service, or attempting to locate one that they haven’t had luck finding. By making yourself visible from the point of origination, you are more likely to get those customers.

2. Display Advertising

This category of advertising includes all of the visual ways to get your message across: videos, graphics, banners, sidebars, logos, photos…you get the idea. The display delivery system has come a long way from the early days of internet advertising, and it isn’t uncommon to see ads that are more experiential than passive, like interactive video ads.
The key benefits of this type of advertising are:

Visibility—of all the types of online advertising, display has the best chance of making a visual impression; a buyer can see your logo, your service, your contact information, or really whatever information you choose to include, which can make a lasting impression.

Targeting—huge steps have been made in targeting prospects, mainly through the use of behavioral targeting, which uses cookies and search data to deliver ads to people who are more inclined to want what you’re offering. Geographical targeting, on the other hand, will target buyers who are close to your location, which is especially useful for small brick and mortar shops.

3. Social Media Advertising

Social media is currently the sweetheart of all of the different types of online advertising choices that you have available to you. Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Vine and other social media properties are having a profound effect on the way information is shared online. And virality, or the exponential rate at which information is shared is what makes social media marketing so desirable—though it can be a little tougher to determine which things actually will spread like wildfire.
The key benefits of social media advertising are:

Cost—with a few caveats, most social media accounts are free to open and operate, making this one of the cheaper types of online advertising.

Visibility—many people enable push notifications, which update their mobile devices and computers immediately with alerts from social media sites. The popularity of these sites, and potential consumers’ constant interaction with them means that you’ll have a larger chance of being seen by more people.

So what are the next steps? Well, that’s entirely up to you! The first thing you should do is take a thorough stock of your advertising needs and see how these and other types of online advertising can meet those needs. Educating yourself and your employees in social media marketing will give you a definite leg up and understanding how to build the type of websites that people want to purchase things from will keep you on top.

Thanks for reading.

Leave us a comment if you found this information useful.