Marketing

How to Find the Best Search Engine Optimization Pricing in 4 Easy Steps

The World Wide Web is a chaotic space. Millions of pages exist on every possible topic—but how do people know what’s legitimate? How do they know what will benefit them right now? How do they even begin to look around for something they need?

The answer, obviously, is search engines—tools like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These search engines were created to help organize the chaos of the Internet and turn it into a catalog of knowledge that anyone can quickly navigate. What does this mean for you and your business? It means that you need to invest in search engine optimization so that your website is one of the few that is found by your potential customers.

But how do you get the best return on investment? Where do you find the best search engine optimization pricing? Here are four steps to help you find the right approach for you.

1. Make a commitment to getting professional help

As with any marketing strategy, you need to invest in professional help if you want the best results. This is especially true with search engine optimization (SEO), because SEO is not something you can do when you get a few minutes here and there when you get the time. SEO is such a vital part of establishing an online presence, it’s important for you to recognize that a certain amount of money and time should be regularly allotted for this purpose.

2. Figure out what you need

Unfortunately, there are a lot of SEO firms that make promises about top rankings, charge astronomical fees, and yet provide only vague details about what they’re going to do for your site, or when you might expect to see results. Worse, some firms use questionable tactics, like link buying, which is not only not sustainable over the long term, but could actually earn your site a penalty, making it less visible to prospects.

Having a good idea of exactly what you need to outsource will ensure that you get the best search engine optimization pricing. For example, if you have a knowledgeable IT person on staff, you won’t need to outsource a technical SEO audit. However, you might find that you don’t have enough in-house capacity to add more content to your site on a regular basis. A professional SEO writing service would provide you with content for your site that would keep it fresh, provide value to your clients, and make your site visible in the search engine results pages.

3. Figure out what you should spend

Once you determine out which services you need to invest in, you can think about how much your business will need to spend. Here’s an important tip: don’t just think in terms of what you can afford. Looking at your budget and saying to yourself: “I have only got $1000 to spare for this, so that’s how much I will spend” is not an effective approach.

Think about your goals. If you know you want to increase sales of your blue widgets by 100 per month, and you know that that 50 out of every 1000 visitors buys a blue widget, you can then figure out how many more visitors you need to bring to your site every month. (You’ll also want to improve your conversion rates, but that’s a subject for another blog post.)

With this knowledge, you can then project how much you should spend to reach your goal. This will help you decide whether spending in other areas should be cut in the short term to supplement your SEO spend.

4. Measure, measure, measure

Before you commit to outsourcing your SEO needs, make sure you measure how you’re doing right now. Look at things like keyword ranking, organic visits, purchases, and so on. This will give you a baseline to compare your results to as you go forward.

Be aware that search engine optimization does take some time. This is especially true if you’re in a highly competitive niche. Be patient, and be prepared to commit to doing this for the long term.

If you want your business to build a following online, you need to make sure you’re using all of your resources to get the best return. By investing in things like SEO writing services, you can increase your chances of reaching customers. Be sure to consider these tips when deciding which service to use.

Inbound Marketing Explained in Three Easy Steps

Inbound marketing is one of the best ways to attract and nurture new leads and potential prospects. When executed properly, this permission-based marketing tactic drives relevant traffic to your website, turning visitors into prospective customers and converting leads into sales. This method of attracting qualified traffic to your website is both effective and efficient.

So, how can you get customers to invest in your inbound marketing? It all starts with the creation of compelling content.

The inbound marketing funnel

According to HubSpot there are three distinct steps to inbound marketing lead generation:

Step one: Get found

The production and distribution of informative, engaging content will maximize the number of people you attract to your inbound marketing funnel, which in turn will impact the number of customers who come out of the funnel.

The creation of great content impacts your website in the following ways:

causing your site to perform better in organic search engine results
attracting natural backlinks from other websites
spreading information through social networking and sharing sites
increasing newsletter subscribers and widening your distribution network

All of these outcomes will help you bring in warm leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers. Getting found is the most important step of the process — you can’t convert visitors into customers if you don’t have any visitors to begin with after all!

Here are three top tactics for getting found online:

Blogging

Companies that blog have been shown to get 55% more leads than those who don’t.

Search engine optimized content

Most customers begin their buying process by searching for product information on Google. Make sure your website is listed prominently on search engine results pages by integrating targeted keywords and properly optimizing your website code.

Content marketing

Once you’ve got the knack of publishing content to your blog, take things one step further and develop a content marketing strategy. Unlike blogging, content marketing isn’t restricted by a medium or platform. A robust content marketing strategy can include viral videos, webinars, white papers, and more.

Step two: Convert

Step two of the inbound marketing funnel kicks into high gear once qualified visitors hit your website. This is the beginning of the lead nurturing process. Well-crafted content, call-to-action buttons, special offers, and targeted landing pages will help you lead potential prospects deeper into the funnel.

Not sure how to nurture leads on your website? Here’s a quick and easy three-step process:

Build a targeted landing page. Remember all of the content that you created and distributed back in step one? All of this content should have included backlinks to one or more targeted landing pages on your website. This way, when a visitor clicks on this call to action, they’ll be taken directly to a page where this action is fulfilled…after the user subscribes to your email marketing list, of course!
Stay in touch with email marketing. Email marketing is a great way to nurture long-term relationships with potential prospects and loyal customers. Focused email campaigns that contain relevant content will help establish your company as an industry leader and guide people through the sales process.
Get personal with marketing automation. Keep the lines of communication open by sending customized marketing messages to your company’s followers. For example, if a visitor downloaded a case study from your site, you might want to send them a series of emails that contains related information. However, if this visitor signed up to participate in a webinar, you might want to change any follow-up communication in order to ensure relevancy.

Step three: Analyze

No inbound marketing campaign is complete until you’ve sat down and reviewed the numbers. Once you’ve started to convert visitors into leads and leads into sales, it’s time to analyze your inbound marketing funnel in order to figure out ways to make the customer attraction and retention process more efficient. This will involve looking at website visitor metrics, leads, conversion rates, sales, and industry benchmarks.

All of this information will help you set and track specific marketing goals that will ultimately have a positive impact on your bottom line.

8 Content Distribution Sites You Should Be Using

We know the Internet is endless. As online marketers, we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the ever-growing networks of cyberspace. Staying ahead of the infinite droves of new competitors in a limitless market can seem like a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.

Among the scores of websites accessible to online consumers, how do you know your content sharing strategies are working? Are you reaching your maximum potential audience?

One of the most effective ways to put your mind at ease and increase traffic to your website is to use content distribution sites. To make things simple, we’ve compiled a list of eight content sharing sites to help your posts, articles, and podcasts reach those most likely to enjoy them.

1. Business2Community

What started as a personal blog in 2010 has become a major business community, sharing high-quality, business-related content to 3 million regular visitors via an open forum. Business2Community has received high rankings from reputable tech and business panels, including AdAge magazine and Technorati.

Pros: Huge audience, professional reputation, opportunity to network with marketers and advertisers who might further extend the reach of your product or content

Cons: Highly sought-after membership—only the best of the best may become contributors

2. Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a content curator, meaning it’s a platform to share existing content on a specific topic of interest and match consumers with the information that matters most to them. This tool allows you to find interesting links related to your business and share them easily, which is a great way to diversify your content feed and show that you have authority on a particular topic.

Pros: User-friendly and automated but fully customizable; free and paid membership options; huge time saver

Cons: No direct sharing of your own content (though you will generate interest from the sites to which you link)

3. BizSugar

The Reddit of the business world, BizSugar allows users to submit content for peer review in the small business community. Posts are added to a virtual bulletin board, where members vote on the content they find most interesting, engaging, or useful. The most popular posts make it to the website’s home page, Twitter feed, and weekly newsletter for maximum visibility.

Pros: Potential to have your content seen by 1 million members of the business community (and thus drive real, usable traffic back to your site)

Cons: Audience limited to those already active in the small business community; success requires some effort (frequent, consistent posting)

4. Medium

Medium hit the blogging world not just as a beautiful platform but also as a place for writers, journalists, and bloggers to get noticed. The site began as an exclusive band of pre-selected writers and, as a result, has earned a reputation as a place to read really, really good articles. Basically, if your content shows up on Medium, readers are pre-conditioned to think it’s a cut above.

Pros: Reputation of excellence, design not marred by paid advertising (an aesthetic plus guaranteed to keep more readers on the page)

Cons: Unclear boundaries and limitations (no identified market or audience); paid or pre-selected contributors are promoted over everyday bloggers

5. Storify

Similar to Scoop.it, Storify offers an aesthetically pleasing, easy way to curate social media posts to reach a greater audience. The website is based on the idea that social media makes everyone a potential news reporter—it’s just a matter of having those stories noticed. Storify users have the ability to drag and drop social media posts to create shareable “stories.” Then readers can search the host site for stories related to specific topics, breaking news, or areas of interest. Posts on Storify have even been picked up by news agencies and international media organizations.

Pros: Ability to embed your own content to be shared by other users; a way to diversify content feed while still personalizing each post

Cons: Somewhat limited audience—most users are women aged 25–34

6. Followedapp

Followedapp is a content sharing tool that combines the power of social media with an advanced algorithm to connect readers with the posts they want to see. For you, this means the optimized content you upload will be assessed and recommended to the consumers most likely to enjoy it, rather than to a general (and possibly indifferent) audience. Instead of sharing your content on a separate website, Followedapp allows you to use your established social networks to share relevant content—both your own and other people’s—with your audience.

Pros: Easy to set up and personalize, also great for finding other people’s content to share with your social networks

Cons: Unlike some of the other sites on this list, no free option available

7. Taboola

This is a paid content distribution site that works by displaying a web widget that suggests content users might find interesting. Taboola was originally built to handle videos, so vloggers or online marketers who produce a lot of audio-visual content might find this distribution network particularly effective.

Pros: Best for sharing videos; different pricing options, including a premium option that distributes to the most popular sites on the network

Cons: Difficult to target specific audiences

8. Outbrain

The behemoth of the content distribution world, this paid site is the best known among its competitors, and for good reason. For sponsorship that runs between 25–35 cents, Outbrain displays your content prominently as recommended reading to users browsing popular websites. The distributor upholds strict quality policies, such as not allowing spammy posts that trick readers into clicking on links they aren’t actually interested in, thus protecting the site’s reputation.

Pros: Well-known, solid reputation, affordable pricing, huge network and audience potential

Cons: Limited ability to target specific audiences

Have you used any of the above sites? Did they boost traffic to your site?