Content Strategy - An Important Aspect of Marketing

It is not that simple to entice visitors towards the online destination of merchandises, oodles of search engine marketing efforts are desired to attract their attention. However, amid all those verticals of this improvised form of marketing that claim their credit in luring the potential visitors, it is perhaps the quality content that ultimately steals the show, let us know why.



Importance of content:
In the domain of online marketing, content could be deemed as a sensible stuff that could motivate the people towards buying a particular product. Having said that, it could be anything but gibberish; intelligently blended with the material that never seems like an advertisement yet manages to gather a respectable customer base. Whatever is its form, whether text, audio, video or image, it ought to be interactive. This evidently fuels the necessity of chalking out a sound and soothing content strategy that could appeal masses.

Content strategy:
Three effective points lead to the formulation of a thriving content strategy that could really lift the reputation of a website:
•    Creation of gripping content
•    Assuring increased search engine rankings
•    Mustering quality backlinks from other sites

Gripping content:
 An engaging content is one that could attract the potential visitors and at the same time could also be indexed by search engines more often. Intense use of keywords is likely to distort the originality of the content thereby making it more search engine friendly rather than user friendly. It is therefore necessary to design content that is appealing enough both for the users as well as search engines. After all, the ultimate goal is to make the most of a web page in the form of high end monetary benefits and only an informative, readable yet SEO friendly content could do the honors.

Enhanced search engine rankings:
Significant traffic boost together with high search engine rankings comprise of the most important ingredients of a thriving content strategy. Needless to say, quality content paves its part significantly towards helping these ingredients striking the right chords. Though, including good Meta tags is definitely a good practice that helps the web page to be identified by search engines. But yet again it is the actual text on a web page that enhances the chances of indexing, which is a must to make way for enhanced traffic and better search page rankings.

Mustering quality backlinks from other sites:
Search engine rankings are heavily influenced by high quality inbound links. If a particular web page is linked to multiple authoritative pages that own a higher credibility over the search engines, the chances of former to secure enhanced traffic and therefore high ranking, increase excellently. However, the number of inbound links could witness an appreciable surge only if the content is genuine, to-the-point and relevant.

Additionally, the number of social media websites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious Digg, Magnolia and so on has increased heavily in the recent times that have contributed towards assuring bigger and better customer base online. The importance of fresh and flawless copy that could enthrall the attention of these millions of online visitors has therefore grown to manifolds. Most of the big companies attain this coveted targeted by producing more articles, press releases and blog posts on regular basis and they have indeed got success in mustering high quality inbound links.

Content strategy in the post-panda and post-penguin era:
Google keeps on updating its algorithms so as to bar the low-quality content from getting any attention on the search pages, this instantly work sin the favor of websites that possess high grade content. Abiding by this fact, many of the SEO companies have been targeted that used redundant, keyword stuffed, and unattractive content, both with respect to the readers as well as the search engines since the past one year, thanks to the advent of Google Panda and Google Penguin algorithm (announced on April, 2012).
Implementation of these algorithms have left the room for only superior content to break the ice while those with lower grade no more share the space of search pages. Owing to this fact, certain important amendments in the content strategy are worthy to be taken care of the prominent of them being avoiding ‘thin content’ and combating the occurrence of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) issues. In short, attention to details is a must while drafting out a copy, such as:

•     Reduce grammatical mistakes to all time minimum
•     Avoid writing crap copy, full of keywords and devoid of real meaning
•     Use keywords as well as the words that relate to them, such as synonyms in balanced proportion.
•     Do not overuse or under use keywords
•     Avoid redundant copy that conveys same intent repeatedly

What is Local SEO? A Complete Guide to promote Locally

In this article I will cover following questions:-
1.    What is local SEO?
2.    What is the need to do it?
3.    How to do it?

What Is Local SEO?
        Basically local SEO can be defined as various strategies required to be performed on website to make it rank first on local Google searches. Either you have small or large business with target on a particular country, state or region you need to optimize your webpage according to local SEO for serving the purpose to rank well in local searches.

No business owner wants his words to be heard or seen by non- interested eyes and ears; this is where local SEO helps in focusing on right customers and particular area for your business according to your services you provide. 

I will discuss various local SEO strategies and web page optimization further below.

What is the Need of Local SEO?
       You have understood What is local SEO, now it’s time to reveal its need. Before understanding its need first we need to understand what happens when we enter our search in search bar of Google and hit enter, Google basically uses your IP (internet protocol address) as a factor to give you results, it will only show you those results which are appropriate for your area. In simple words Google takes physical location of searcher in to the consideration before showing results. For example if someone is searching “restaurants” in California Google will show restaurants in California only and if someone is searching for restaurants in India it will show “restaurants” in India only, which states that Google results matters according to the country or region. Now if you search for restaurants from your mobile Google will not search according to your city then it will search for places near your current location so that you can reach their fast and easy. To make it understand I will use following example to make it more clear.

If I search for “pub” in Google it shows me this:-

Type the same in your search bar of Google and look the difference between the results.

Suppose you have business of a coffee parlor in California and think how much beneficial it would be for your business when someone searches for coffee parlors in California and your website comes at first place locally. So this is how if you are a business owner with particular region in target then you need to do local SEO to your website, above example disclose the need of local SEO.

How to Do Local SEO?
    The answer of this question always remains dark or unclear but today I would like to answer this question with best of my experience and knowledge.

Have a look on the following points.
1.    Optimize Your Website
    Start local SEO by first optimizing your website for having good ranking in local search results.
•    Make sure your website has clear and accessible WebPages and links so that Google or users won’t face any problems to accessing it.
•    Link important pages to home page.
•    Have proper XML and HTML site maps so that Google crawlers can go where ever they want.
•    Introduce robort.txt in your website. 
•    Internal linking will add plus point in your website.
•    Find and Repair broken links.

Fill Your Website with Quality and Good Content:
    Make sure your website has good content which describes services offered by you and other related information. Make your each web page loaded with title and description.
Be sure to add “alt” tag in your images and never over use a particular phrase this can harm your website, just be descriptive about what you offer.
Give Google a reason to come back and crawl your website aging up updating it frequently and give your visitors authority to have contact with you by giving them your email.

2.    Make Your Visitors Contact You Easily
    Provide complete business address details and other related contact information so that your visitors can reach you easily and display it on each web page of yours. And if you have a physical address, add a Google sitemap on your website. You can also add comments so that your visitors can comment also; the main thing is let your customers join you.

Spread Your Business Information
    Let Google and Visitors know you. Internet is a means where you can spread your business fast by listing your business in following sites:-
1.    Local Directories or Local Citations Sources
2.    Google Local

•    Local directories and citations:-
        Internet is about information more you spread about your business more Google will know about you. There are thousands of local directory websites are available, submit and list your business there with your business name, postal address, phone number, description of services, photos, working hours and other related details. Make sure to provide only correct information. Because of these directories Google as well as visitors will know you.

•    Google Local:-
Basically Google places for business is a high authority website by Google itself it lets you to register your business with related images and details of your business and sends you a post card for verification. This will help Google and customers to know about you more.
If you don’t have a proper physical address or you work from home you can hide your address but still have to verify your details but the difference will be people won’t come and knock your door.

Take Control of All Your Business Information:-
    If in any case you face change in your business address or phone number then be sure to update your directories also. Don’t let any barrier to come in-between you and your customers. Frequently update your contact and related information if any occur.

3.    Social Media
Never forget to promote your business, promote your- self and got promoted by your customers. Register your business with most famous social websites like
1.    Google+(first preference)
2.    Facebook
3.    Twitter
4.    LinkedIn
Let your customers to get engaged and interact with you. Add share buttons in your websites. Let your customers to leave reviews about you on Google+ and related top social channels media. Frequently add latest updates on your business in these websites and even tweet them. The main thing is to get interaction with your customers because a good word from your customer can get you lots of business and will help to earn trust easily.

Social media is very powerful weapon in Local SEO. Once you are promoted here it will promote you automatically. Do simple but effective. More you let your customers engage with you more popularity you will get.

Let's See How Mobiles Change and Help your Businesses Grow Faster than Ever Before

Hi friends, I just found this awesome and thought to share my blog as well.

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++

Source: How Mobile is Changing Business – Infographic

Beginners Guide to Boost Your Rank in Google

Having a well ranked website is always a plus point for business and other aspects. But gaining a rank in Google is not like an easy job. Now at present only deserving and well reputed website with unique and informative content deserves to be ranked well in Google. This article that I am writing serves the purpose of educating the person own a website but knows nothing or less about process of ranking in Google. The process of ranking well in Google is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), lots of things are required to be performed on a website to increase its rank. Basically SEO includes On-page and Off-page optimization both of the aspects plays a very vital role in the performance of website in ranking process and I will take both of them in consideration below.

All of the work that used to be done in previous years to make a website rank well has now been eliminated because Google is getting updated frequently for providing better quality results to its users and compete with other search engines. And still performing black hat techniques on the website can even harm your website and decrease your website importance to rank.

How Google Works?

Before starting and talking about search engine optimization I would like to throw some light on how actually Google works. Google is required to provide most relevant and related search results to its user by crawling, sorting and indexing thousands of similar web pages, it is not an easy task, and to perform this task Google performs various actions which collectively figure out the importance of specific web-page should be come on a certain index. When a user enters search query in search bar and hit search button what actually happens is:-

1. Googlebot :-

googlebot is basically a Google web crawler robot. Actually googlebot requests the Google web servers for the respective web pages then it downloads them and hand over them to Google Indexer for further indexing process.   

2. Google Indexer:-

Googlebot hand over the downloaded pages to Google Indexer. And Google indexer then stores them into Google’s index database for further process. After this stored pages are sorted alphabetically and index them. Now after indexing process Google query process performs the final task to rank every individual pages on a certain place in SERPs(Search Engine Results Pages) listing accordingly to their intelligent algorithm measuring factors (approx. 200 factors in this process to measure or figure out the importance of a webpage should be ranked on a place for a particular search query).

3. Google query processor:-

Google’s query processor is responsible of providing top most relevant and related search to the user. To accomplish this task query processor evaluates and matches the query with related documents or web pages and ranks them on the basis of page authority, domain authority, links and other on-page and off-page factors. In the end this is how results are shown to the user in a perfect sorted manner. All this happens in fractions of seconds and user doesn’t even think about it.

 

Natural and Paid Results:-

Basically Google shows two kinds of search results when anybody types a query in search bar one is known as paid and other one is generic which also known as natural or organic search. Following image will clarify more:-

As shown in image above 1st three searches with color in background and searches on left hand side are paid one which is also marked with boxes, and others are generic or natural below the top three. For the paid one website owner pays Google to keep its website on top and website will be at top most position till owner pays Google which is also known as Google Adwords where they provide full dashboard to the advertisers to keep track their paid searches. And second one which is also known as organic in this part website needs to earn its rank on list, here website is first judged by Google on various aspects and relevant query search. 

Domain Authority and Page Authority:-

Simply domain authority can be described as a prediction about how a website will perform in Google rankings. Domain authority shows domain’s strength and this strength is calculated on various aspects.

Page authority is basically shows the content strength of the page and shows how a particular page will rank in Google rankings.

Basically all of the SEO aspects that we are going to discuss below are only to increase a website’s domain and page authority. 

Following we are providing a video by SEOmoz describing page and domain authority in depth:-

Video:- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics

Keyword Research :-

The most important part of SEO process where website owner needs to find out and confirm that on those phrases his website must rank well. Actually one must do a proper keyword research before going for SEO process, basically keyword research is a part of On-page Optimization and have a finalize list of keywords will help the owner to focus on only those keywords.

The thing is if you don’t target and specify any keyword for your website and are not likely to rank for anything on Google.

How to do keyword research :- 

Google itself provides a facility where you can check and see which keyword or phrase has been searched more than any other searches (results not more accurate). The service is known as Google Keyword Tool. Following image will make it more clear :-

As above shown with the help of this tool you will be able to capture the exact picture of the phrase on which you are going to focusing on.

Generating Page Titles :-

After the keyword research you are required to utilize that research in the proper manner. We generated page title always add a plus point in your website. 

Let me clear it to you with the help of an example:-

If a user searches for games online then Googlebot will select only those pages containing   games online phrase either in title or description or rest of the content in that respective web-page. The web page with word games next to online will be given more preference than webpage containing games and online both at different places.

 

Enter the researched keyword in title and content to be rank well on the prospective of that phrase. Because Googlebot first crawls and match the entered query with title and description of the page. Basically title of the page helps the Googlebot to know that what the page is about.

Links :-

This is another thing besides keyword research that Google takes into consideration when ranking a webpage. Links can be described as a word or phrase containing a hyperlink to another web page or site. These links are known by Google as a website is referring to another website and the referred website will get profit or a vote. Links must be obtained from high authority websites because Google also considers the referring websites domain and page authority with the relevancy both parties have each other now having more importance and crucial factor in this regard to count high quality Links.

Links count as votes.
Go, get more links for your website!

More links that a website contains higher rank the website gets. 

Link building can be made from some of the areas I use are:-

• News and Media

• Communities

• Blogging

• Articles

• Guest posts

• Q & A

Social media :-

Social Media plays a very important and vital role in website’s ranking process. Social media is a mean where video, text, and images can be published with the interest of gaining more people interaction. Basically social media is a platform where your visitors can interact with you; they can even have the authority to comment and question. More audiences your website have, more trust and value your website will gain. A good social presence can also give a website boost in ranking serps.  You must surely take help of social media for promoting your website. Following are some of the famous channels I use are:-

• Google+ 

• Facebook 

• Twitter 

• Pinterest

• Youtube

• LinkedIn

To rank well in Google one must have to use Google+ in order to promote website because Google gives first preference to websites having Google+. 

In previous times social media was not preferred much but now at present social media is one of the most important aspects of Of-page utilization. Following video will describe the importance of social media:-

Following questions must be answered if you want to rank well for a targeted keyword:-

• Do you have target keyword in page title?
• Do you have target keyword in your content or article?
• Number of links pointing to the page?
• Are links coming from high domain authority websites?
• links should be created naturally with your brand
• the page, you are going to take a link has relevancy with your niche

I hope you understand well in my words. Be in touch , there will be more tips and guidance will be going to publish soon. Don't forget to comment if you like or not or want give back suggestion over the topic.