SEO – Page 6

Easy Tips to Make Money Blogging

Creating and managing your own website has never been easier since the explosion of blog websites on the Internet. “Blogs,” short for weblogs, are websites that produce new content on a regular basis. Blog popularity is based on the amount of Internet traffic directed to the website. Since blogs consistently update their content, blog writers develop an audience that follows the posts. Upon discovering this, companies have jumped at the opportunity to reach new demographics for products and services by writing blogs. As a result, it is possible for individuals, companies, organizations, and many more groups to make money blogging.

Money can be made through a blog in a few different ways:

Advertising: Particularly for personal blogs, advertisers have access to an untapped marketing opportunity. Based on the topic of the blog—for example, fashion—companies that offer products and services related to the topic can advertise on the site. The blog reaches a predetermined demographic for the company. The readers already have an interest in the topic of the blog. Advertisers can then point toward specific products and services related to the topic, which will ensure successful sales. You can make money blogging by advertising space on your site, much like advertising space in a newspaper.

Affiliate Programs: Another one of the benefits of blogging is that bloggers can earn money from affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are companies that will link up with a blog to increase Internet traffic toward a particular product or service. Like advertising, bloggers apply for the programs that complement the topic about which they write. However, this differs from advertising because, instead of selling advertising space on the website, the company pays for the blogger to promote the product or service in the content of the blog. Bloggers will post links on their page that direct the audience toward the company’s website. Bloggers are then paid commissions based on how much traffic the website receives.

Selling Products: Individuals and companies can sell their products and services on a blog as a way of directly engaging with the audience. They can promote their products and connect with the audience on a more personal level. Customers can also ask questions and leave comments.

As you can see, while blogs are often considered a site for self-expression, they can also be used for business purposes. You might be thinking, “Well, if everyone has a blog these days, sign me up.”

You can make money blogging, but it’s not always simple. There are a few things to consider before starting your very own blog:

What is my topic going to be? Maybe you write movie reviews, maybe you invent your own recipes, or maybe you want to document the adventures of your cats. Whatever the topic is, there must be a market for a particular product, or there is no business model. Make sure your topic is specific enough that it can attract a common audience, but original and interesting enough that readers will want to continue to follow you.

Can I keep my blog up to date? The whole appeal of advertising through a blog is the promise that readers will return to read more. This means that the author needs to be writing compelling posts on a regular basis that will engage the readers. Once there is a steady flow of traffic, advertising opportunities can emerge.

Even though writing a blog might take time and energy, it can be incredibly rewarding to earn money by discussing interesting topics on the Internet.

Getting your Content Found: 5 Steps to a Perfectly Optimized Blog Post

If you’ve been doing your search engine optimization (SEO) research, you know how important maintaining a blog can be to your website’s SEO. You’ve no doubt come across the benefits of blogging for your business in countless articles and—not without irony, I know—in blog posts across the web.

Okay, you’re thinking, I have to create a blog for my business site. But will simply having a blog be enough to improve your site’s SEO? If you haven’t already figured this out, here’s your first lesson: never trust anything that sounds too good to be true, especially if you read it on the Internet. Thinking that creating a blog is enough to improve your SEO is like thinking that buying a notebook will make you a successful author. No, merely creating a blog is not enough to magically make your site the go-to resource in your industry. You can’t just write a blog: you also need to optimize it. So, how can you optimize each blog post to maximize its SEO benefits?

1. Start with a good idea

I’m in no mood to get into a metaphysical debate about the nature of matter, but that’s not going to stop me from making this next statement: you can’t make something from nothing. This adage definitely applies to blog posts. You may think that just having a great idea is enough to create a successfully optimized blog post, but in reality, a great blog post is inspired not by a spontaneous burst of creativity, but by keyword research.

Of course, you will start each blog post with a general idea of your topic. But you shouldn’t begin actually writing your post until you have determined which keywords will help you optimize it. If necessary, you can slightly adapt your topic to fit the appropriate keywords. This will ensure that you can organically incorporate the keywords into the prose, avoiding keyword stuffing, and creating a more natural experience for your reader. Creating a great reading experience for your audience should be your number one priority, as the tactics involved are great for your SEO. Besides, you want people to read your darn blog!

2. Make it pretty

Okay, so after doing some killer keyword research, you came up with a great idea and wrote an awesome blog post. Now what? It’s time to dress that baby up and take it out. The first thing you’ll need? Why, a dashing title, of course. If possible, your title should contain your keyword. You should also aim to make your title “clickworthy.” If we humans are nothing else, we are curious creatures. (Or is that monkeys? No matter . . . ) Pique the curiosity of the average search engine user, and you’ll find many more visitors will stop by to check out your blog. Now I’m not suggesting that your blog can be garbage with an irresistible title, I’m just saying that fun—or at least intriguing—titles often do better than straight-to-the-point, boring ones. That said, your reader should be able to figure out what the post is about by reading the title. It’s a tricky balance—trust me, I know!

What else can you do to spiff up your blog post? First, you can create and properly format relevant headings and subheadings (complete with keywords, if possible). These are great for both your readers and search engines, as headings make your post easier for search engines to crawl and categorize and easier for people to read. After you’ve formatted your headings, you should add images to your post. If done properly, images are great for SEO. Keywords can and should be part of image names and alt text, as this will help search engines determine how the images relate to your blog post, which helps to bring in the right kind of traffic. You should also make sure your writing is completely free of errors—everyone knows that bad grammar does not a successful blog make.

3. Link it up

I’m sure you’ve already learned about the importance of inbound links for SEO. When other sites link to your blog, they are essentially telling search engines that you know what you’re talking about and should be trusted. But did you know internal linking is also an effective way to boost SEO?

Think of internal links as threads in your site’s web. The more threads, the more obvious the connections are between different pages on your site. Creating these connections also allows your user to navigate the different pages of your site more easily. The text in which internal links are imbedded is called anchor text. The best way to add an internal link to a blog post is to incorporate its anchor text naturally into the prose of your blog. So, instead of saying, “To learn more about SEO, click here,” you should say, “There’s a lot to learn about SEO.” Just as you want to avoid keyword stuffing, you want to avoid using unnatural anchor text or only using your blog post’s keywords as anchor text. The anchor text should relate as closely as possible to the content of the page to which it links while still sounding natural on the page from which it links.

4. Be friendly

Optimizing a blog post is a lot of work for one person. Luckily, you don’t have to do this job all by yourself. Instead, you can allow your readers to help you out by sharing your post via social media. Social sharing should be made as easy as possible by adding social sharing icons to each post. You should also encourage your readers to share the material they like or find helpful. Enabling comments on your blog posts can be another way to improve SEO, though many factors may contribute to your decision to enable or disable blog post comments. The more your readers engage with and share your content on social media, the greater your content’s reach will become. A greater reach generally means a higher search engine rank.

5. Make it mobile

How many people do you know who sit on their computers browsing the Internet? Now how many people can you think of who regularly check in on their phones or tablets? These days, most people actually spend more time on their mobile devices than they do on their computers. Let’s say you’ve followed all the advice given so far in this article, and now one of your followers has shared your blog post on her Facebook page. Her friend, who is scrolling through Facebook on his iPhone, clicks on the link to the post. Because it has not been designed for mobile use, the post is either impossible or very difficult to read. Do you think the friend of the follower is going to take the time to get on his computer just to read that blog post? No. Will he ever read it now? Not likely.

Guess what else recently decided it doesn’t like sites that aren’t mobile friendly? Google. Thanks to Google’s newest algorithm update, it’s more important than ever to make your blog mobile-friendly. As you probably already know, when it comes to SEO, Google is the boss. It doesn’t matter how much you dislike their rules—if you don’t play by them, you’re out of the game. So make your blog mobile friendly already, all right?

8 Reasons Your Website Is Failing to Increase Your Conversion Rate

The Internet is a huge network of people, businesses, information, and services striving to attract the most visits to their respective websites. When you first launch your business website or service, the process of attracting potential customers can be overwhelming. Your website is probably one of many that offer similar products. Despite this, you can set yourself apart from competitors and increase your sales in two ways: attract more potential customers or increase the conversion rate of the customers already visiting your website.

Optimizing your website to increase conversion rates is therefore an important component of any online marketing strategy. A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that take the action you desire them to take, whether that means filling in their information to become a lead or buying a product or service to become a customer. Many factors contribute to successful conversion rates, and you can make a number of small changes to your website’s design, content, and accessibility to boost your lead conversions or sales. Maybe the number of visitors to your website has stagnated, or maybe it’s growing, but why aren’t those visitors turning into customers? Below are eight potential problems your website is facing and eight solutions that will help you optimize your website and increase the conversion rate of its visitors.

1. Your website design is outdated.

On average, it takes less than a second for a visitor to judge your website (and business) based on its design and overall aesthetic appeal. People are more likely to buy from a business that presents itself in a way that appeals to them visually. This is bad news if your design is outdated or unprofessional, with clashing color schemes, mismatched fonts, unprofessional images, or too much information crammed into a small space.

Solution: Simplify your design and choose an attractive and consistent color scheme that compliments your business and the aesthetic of the customers to whom you want to appeal. Create an attractive and obvious header image that showcases the name of your business so your customers know they are in the right place. Understand and use font hierarchy so the most important information you need a new visitor to know stands out from the smaller print. Avoid large blocks of text on your main pages. They can overwhelm visitors who are new to your product or service—leave the more substantial content for the blog posts, ebooks, and other great resources your website has to offer.

2. Your call to action (CTA) isn‘t the first thing your visitors see.

This step is crucial for increasing conversion rates. Is it clear what you are offering and how potential customers can obtain your product or service? Depending on your business, your call to action could be a free service quote, a subscription, a free trial, or a consultation. All these lead a potential customer to a purchase and should be among the most prominent elements of your website.

Solution: Be bold and make your CTA as obvious as you can. Create an attractive, easy-to-see button to advertise what you have to offer, and be sure to place it prominently.

3. Your website doesn‘t load quickly.

When more people can find your business’s website, you have more potential customers. Are your products and services easy to find? Customers who run into problems loading pages, face long wait times to see information, and encounter broken links or other errors are customers who will most likely go somewhere else with their business.

Solution: Optimizing your website for all browsers and mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, will naturally increase your conversion rate. Invest in a hosting service that ensures your information loads quickly. Make sure that all pages on your website load properly and that all links work.

4. Your website lacks great content about what you have to offer.

Your website is built and your product or service is available, but you are still having trouble attracting visitors and converting those visitors into leads or customers. People tend to buy from companies that not only have something to sell but also have knowledge to share.

Solution: A great way to attract visitors and convert them into customers is to create great content. Become an authority in your niche to increase your visitors’ confidence in your company and product. Consistently writing helpful articles and engaging content related to your business will help solidify your reputation as an online resource that people will return to again and again.

5. Your navigation is complicated.

Too many options can be overwhelming. Does your website do a great job of leading customers to the information they want to find? How navigation is addressed in your website design is one of the most important factors in increasing conversion rates. Visitors who can’t find what they need quickly and easily will most likely not turn into customers.

Solution: Check out how your competition handles website navigation. Often, certain types of businesses have a recognizable system that works efficiently to get visitors where they want to be. Keep menus simple and clean, and lead your customer to information by presenting it in a progressive and intuitive way.

6. Options to purchase aren‘t immediately clear.

A website for a product or service should make it easy to purchase that product or service. Navigating to products should be easy and intuitive with clearly defined menus. Once a visitor is viewing a particular product, it should be easy for that visitor to find the Add to Cart button and become a customer.

Solution: Make every effort to create an easy-to-use ecommerce system with visible “Buy” buttons and checkout options. Finding product categories or services on your main page should be quick and easy. Avoid complicated menus.

7. Your content isn‘t honest and authentic.

If you’re the owner of a small online business, you’re responsible for many different things. You want to add content that attracts visitors and increases your conversion rates, but you’re not sure how to write it.

Solution: The key is to be transparent about who you are and what you do. People are more likely to buy from you if they recognize that real people are behind the online business. Try to convey this through your content in a way that makes your visitors more likely to connect with what you have to offer and become customers. Be open about your products and services and about the availability of both.

8. Your website isn‘t up front about purchasing or product information.

It can be hard to compete with other online businesses, some of which may have a much larger following than you. Reputation and word-of-mouth testimonials are just as important online as they are in real life. How do you go about building trust to convert more customers?

Solution: Building trust and a great reputation online can take time. Offer customer reviews so that first-time visitors can gain an idea of how previous customers feel about your product or service. Be transparent about your return policies and shipping fees, and make it easy for each customer to track their transactions so that they can see exactly where their purchase is.