Archive for the ‘Social Marketing’ Category

Link Popularity through Article Marketing

Monday, February 27th, 2012

Once you’ve gotten your website for your online business up and running, you may step back and take a moment to pat yourself on the back. A word of caution here—make sure that moment is a short one, because your work is really just beginning. Successful online businesses take constant work and promoting your online business can be frustrating, tedious, yet (hopefully) ultimately rewarding. While some online business owners choose to pay for advertisements in their quest for getting noticed, others go the article marketing route.

Successful Article Marketing = Increase Link Popularity and Quality

While article marketing has many benefits, one of the greatest is that it can improve both your link popularity as well as your link quality. Considering the vast importance of links in getting your site to the top, you can see why article marketing is crucial.  If you have decided to use carefully crafted article marketing strategies to grow your online business, take note of the following ideas.

If You are Unfamiliar With Article Marketing…

For all the online business owners struggling to get their message out to their target market, article marketing and promoting may well be one of the most well-liked strategies around. As you know, search engine bots go through the Net with a fine-tooth comb, using incredibly complicated algorithms to neatly index the vast array of pages. These algorithms use (among other factors) offpage optimization techniques which target both link popularity and link quality in their final assessment. Link popularity encompasses those links which purpose back to your site while the link quality basically refers to importance of other websites which leave a breadcrumb trail back to your business website.

Article Marking Brings Multiple Backlinks

Article marketing consists of adding a resource box at the end of the article with at least one link back to your site. Once the articles are submitted to multiple article directories, you will happily receive a link from each directory back to your website. Additionally, other website owners who are hungrily looking for content for their own site can use your article, sending yet another link back to your site. Don’t forget, however, that any old hastily-written article just won’t do. If you are serious about increasing your link popularity and quality, then your articles must be compelling and of the highest quality.

Qualities of Successful Articles

Obviously the text in your articles should, in some compelling way, relate to the content on your website. Your chosen keywords should appear relatively sparingly through the body of each article, and you should take special care with your resource box at the end of your article to ensure it contains a catchy phrase to encourage a solid click-through to your site. You also must consider anchor text as well as the words surrounding it. Anchor text is what you see and click on in an article which takes you to the web page link, and can definitely affect your link quality. Make sure only your most relevant keywords are used in anchor text, and also make sure your article has a totally compelling, attention-grabbing title which will persuade your readers to click and read.

Mechanics of Article Writing

Of course after you’ve crafted the most amazing title in history, you have to back it up with a great article which delivers solidly on the title’s promise.  You don’t want to leave your reader disappointed in the time they’ve spent, feeling as though you left your promise unfulfilled. As most of us are aware, reading on a computer screen is vastly different from reading a book. Break up your text into short paragraphs, and use headings, bullet points and numbering (judiciously) throughout the article, making skimming much easier. Using trusted resources, scatter plenty of details and facts throughout your article and—it cannot be said enough—proofread, proofread, and proofread again. Many find they can more easily see mistakes on a printed copy than on a screen, so sacrifice the ink, print out a copy and proofread yet again.

In the end, article marketing for site promotion is not particularly complex, but it does require persistence, patience and dedication to the end result. While you will likely not see a huge impact from one single article, the more you write, the more backlinks you receive, and, ultimately, success is realized!

How Facebook Can Drive Traffic to Your Website

Monday, February 6th, 2012

Social media is the darling of traffic-generation for websites, and Facebook is the darling of social media, so if you haven’t made the leap, now is the time! Twitter has over two hundred million users, and Facebook over 600 million, so the potential reach is truly staggering, and any business owner or webmaster would be crazy not to take advantage of the huge social media push. Although relevant, inspirational content is obviously one of your top priorities, as are getting the necessary links to your site, social media marketing adds a dimension to your SEO push that you really can’t get anywhere else. Although a well-optimized page is essential for steady traffic, if you want to start getting blog comments and conversions from your readers, social media is the key, and Facebook is simply the best. There are, however, certain “rules” which can make your foray into Facebook much more successful.

Facebook—Personal, Business or Both?

While most people are at least somewhat familiar with using Facebook for their personal use, using it for business purposes is less typical. The first thing to do when jumping into the business Facebook is to let the world know you are a FB user. Send out messages on other social media sites, and add your Facebook profile links anywhere it’s allowed. Once you begin getting more bloggers added to your list, you will need to create filters which allow you to separate your family and friends from your business, blogging and network contacts. In other words, your Aunt Millie may be much less interested in your blog and your website than your network of business associates are.

Engage With Your Followers

Once you have your FB account set up to your satisfaction, you will start engaging with your followers by responding to status updates with comments that are insightful or helpful, and sharing content both from your own site as well as from high quality articles you’ve read during the day. Engaging with your followers will slowly but surely bring traffic to your website. You can also create a Facebook group for your particular niche, however don’t send out a blanket invitation to join your group without first sending them a private message, explaining about the group and asking if they would like to join. You actually have to spend some time on Facebook—and be social—in order to bring the traffic you want and need to your site.

Social Groups, Welcome Page, Profile Page

Create a welcome page for your site; if you don’t have the necessary design skills to create your own fabulous welcome page, you can look for a FB theme page for your welcome. On your profile page you can provide links to your websites or to articles you have written, or you can even write more information about your business to enable your visitors to get a clear idea of the services and products you provide. Creating a social group on Facebook is a really good marketing tactic which you should go out of your way to take advantage of.

Social groups allow you to post links, business updates and events so your readers are always updated on what your business is doing. Create a specific Facebook page for your website which is very similar to your own profile page, allowing you to post links, information and get conversions for your business. Work on increasing your Friends list on your business FB page—although the limit is 5000, how great would it be to get 5000 regular readers who are interested in your website and blog, and pass along their interest to their own friends and family?

Attorney Social Media Marketing is Important to Law Firm Search Engine Optimization

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

Social media websites like FaceBook, Twitter and others are driving a substantial amount of Internet web traffic. To search engines and your website visitors, when you see icons or buttons which show how many likes, tweets, shares or digs the post on a law firm blog post or law firm web page has, the more attractive the information on the website becomes.

Most people are unlikely to share or bookmark just any piece of law firm web content. So when someone does, it provides extra value and credibility when someone does share your law firm website content with their social network.  This social sharing is one of the most essential part of any law firm website conversion. This also has an impact and will have an even greater impact on your law firm search engine rankings.

Everyday, law firm search engine optimization (law firm SEO) methods are being used online to obtain enormous amounts of LOW COST web traffic to a law firm website.  Your competition is steadily and consistently at work trying to reach the top of Google. Most click-throughs on a legal website only happens off of the first page. Also, a majority of the users searching for legal information or legal representation rarely ever go past the first page on a law firm website. Law firm websites that are ranking at the top of the search engines attract a substantial stream of qualified traffic.

So what is another technique to ensure that you have high traffic and visibility to your law firm website?

Social marketing can achieve this. Every time time an law firm article or legal blog post is visited by a user, their is a potential that it will be shared to their social network. One way to encourage this is by offering the user to add his or her comments. As your law firm blog or website is visited and the  visitors leave their feedback, this helps influence the interaction to promote sharing. In addition, if your legal website provides an incentive to comment, this will lead to bigger conversations that will auto pilot your content and updates to your website or blog!

In some cases, the commenting may carry over to the commentator’s website. That is why it is equally important for commentators, who do consider leaving feedback, to say something of value. Social bookmarking through Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and others has made it possible to further spread the influence of your high quality legal content. In turn, the commentators that make the effort or take the time to leave their comments or feedback will be 10 times more likely to share your blog post or article with their followers on the various social networks they are involved with.

Each time you visit a website take notice of the number of the bookmarks made and look at the feedback as well. The correlation between the bookmarks made and the number of feedback comments is really interesting.  Social media, if performed and managed by a expert such as Lawyer Success, Inc.,  is an important part of the law firm search engine optimization process. Also, the number of legal consumers that vote and/or share their links are more than likely to share again and present the same link to their followers. This can result in a cycle of viral shares which really adds value to law firm Internet marketing and makes social marketing for law firms an attractive strategy for law firm SEO.