Search Engine Optimization

Building a business blog is simple, but building a successful business blog that brings you a steady flow of leads is another story altogether. Whether you’re a small business owner running your own company blog or an in-house employee helping to manage your employer’s blog, these tips may help to take your business blog from unknown to internet famous.

Participate in Communities Where Your Target Audience Hangs Out

Explore different social media networks, forums, and blogs to determine where your target audience gathers. Create accounts at all of those sites and start participating. Be a good community member for a while without trying to hawk your wares. Eventually, people will be eager to visit your site and learn more about you because of your valuable contributions to the community.

Make Your Blog’s Content SEO-Friendly

There are more than three billion searches performed each day on Google, so it’d be silly not to get a sliver of that traffic to come to your site by optimizing your blog posts for the search engines. Contrary to popular belief, SEO doesn’t affect the quality or creativity of your content. When done right, SEO is virtually unnoticeable. With simple on-page SEO tactics and link-building techniques, you’ll be able to boost traffic levels and get your content in front of more people.

Target Audiences That Are More Likely to Share Your Content

People who are extremely active in social media and/or who have blogs of their own are generally more inclined to share content, so create content that they’ll be eager to spread. By targeting groups of people who are likely to share your content, you’ll be able to expand your audience and reach.

Sign up for Major Social Networks

If you’re not already a member of major social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, sign up now. Fill out your profiles completely, follow the who’s who in your industry, share your content on a regular basis, and ask thought-provoking questions that engage your followers. If you consistently share relevant, high quality content and interact with people in a positive way, you’ll build trust and credibility.

Link to Your Own Posts and Those of Others

Continue giving the gift of traffic to older posts on your blog by linking to them in your newer posts. In addition, link to other bloggers’ content in your blog posts to attract their attention and build relationships with them. They may even link to your content in the future if they like what they see.

Write Guest Articles

Write articles for other sites with links back to your site, so you can build your brand and reputation in your industry. You can also accept guest contributions on your own site to attract more traffic and build relationships with other content creators.

Participate in Q&A Sites

Participate in Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers by answering questions that are relevant to your industry. Include a link back to your site in your answers. As long as you provide helpful, in-depth answers to people’s questions and provide a relevant link, no one is likely to accuse you of spamming or link dropping.

If you do business online, chances are you have a contact form on your website. For many business owners, the goal of a website is to funnel visitors towards a contact form to take the relationship to the next level. From requesting a quote to placing an order, a contact form can be used for many purposes.

In order to increase conversions and prevent people from abandoning your contact form, make sure that the form is as user-friendly as possible. Below are some tips for optimizing the contact form on your website.

1. Clearly highlight required fields

It’s very annoying for users to submit a form, only to discover that the submission failed because they didn’t fill out the required fields. Make sure it’s obvious which fields users are required to fill out by highlighting them with an asterisk.

2. Include a statement about privacy

Include a statement about privacy below the contact form to build trust and increase conversions. Something like, “We respect your privacy,” will do the trick.

3. Avoid asking too many questions

Sure, you want to know a lot about your prospects and why they’re contacting you, but as with any relationship, take it slowly. Avoid asking too many questions, so you don’t overwhelm your website visitors or put them on edge. Only try to get the answers you absolutely need. You can get the rest of the data you need later on in the process of converting prospects to customers. The simpler and more concise the form, the better it will convert.

4. Make a versatile contact form

A good contact form will enable your customers to perform a number of tasks, from asking questions about your services, to talking to you about press opportunities, to requesting a quote.

5. Make your contact form easy to find

Make sure your contact form is as accessible as possible by making it easy to find. Your contact form should be in your main navigation and be accessible from all of your main product or service pages.

6. Avoid using CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is about as user un-friendly as it gets. Many people decide not to fill out a contact form simply because it has CAPTCHA. Others give up after several unsuccessful submission attempts. There are other ways to prevent contact form spam besides CAPTCHA. For example, you can require users to answer a question like, “1 + 1 =” to verify that they’re human.

7. Use a call to action on the submit button

Submit buttons with explicit calls to action like “Get a quote now” or “Learn more about working with us” convert better than buttons that say “Submit” or “Click here.”

8. Include a contact form above the fold

Contact forms located above the fold in the upper right hand corner of a web page tend to perform the best. In addition to including a contact form above the fold, put one at the bottom of the page, as well, to emphasize the call to action and maximize conversions.

The web is becoming increasingly social, so it’s essential to build a social media presence in order to boost your business’s credibility. Benefits of building a strong social media presence include improving the way visitors feel about your website and reducing the amount of risk they sense when doing business with you.

Anyone can start a blog or website and do business online. That’s why it’s more important than ever before to build credibility and trust. Now that search and social are becoming intertwined, it’s especially important to get involved in social media. Here are some tips for boosting your business’s credibility factor through social media marketing.

Increase Your Social Authority

Increase your social authority by posting social media updates several times a day and interacting with other users on a regular basis. The more social authority you have, the more other users will trust you and the higher your site will appear in search engine results.

Network with Power Users in Relevant Niches

When using a social networking site like Twitter, network with power users in relevant niches. In social media, it’s not just about how many people you know – it’s about who you know. Engaging with power users helps to boost your credibility as an authority in your niche.

Encourage Sharing

Encourage social media users to share your content by including sharing options on your website and asking readers to share your content if they like it or find it useful. The more your content is shared, the more credible your site will appear in the eyes of users.

Be Personal

Contrary to popular belief, acting “business-like” in social media won’t boost your credibility. Businesses that have embraced social media in a personal way, such as Starbucks and Dell, have had the most success with the medium. Customers want to do business with companies that show they are real human beings. So, don’t be afraid to mix personal information and business information in your social media updates – let your customers can get to know the real you.

Be Picky about the Content You Share via Social Media

Reciprocity is important in social media, but don’t feel the need to share mediocre content just because that particular content creator always shares your stuff. Build your reputation as a social media user who consistently shares high quality content. Otherwise, people will start ignoring you.

In addition, don’t just promote your own content on social media sites. Become a respected voice in your industry by sharing the best content from other content producers in your industry. That way, people will come to see you as a trusted source of industry information.

Don’t Be Pushy

There’s nothing that’ll hurt your credibility more than using pushy sales tactics. People use social media to socialize, not buy products or services. Let your followers get to know you first before running promotions.

Establishing credibility via social media marketing takes time. You have to do all of the above for a long-term period in order to establish credibility and achieve worthwhile results. Just like in the offline, traditional business world, you can’t expect people to instantly trust your business. Building trust and credibility is a gradual process, but it’s well worth it in the long run.

2011 was a difficult year for the SEO world. From the Google Panda update to the removal of keyword referral data in Google analytics, the changes in search have made it all the more difficult to rank well for target search terms. But the New Year is upon us, and many SEO pros are gearing up for what is to come. Here are 5 SEO predictions for 2012.

1. Search and social will become inseparable

Google and other major search engines have continued to hint at the fact that social media plays an important role in search engine rankings. In 2012, it will become clear that no company can hide from the social web. Not only do social signals come into play in ranking algorithms, social media is becoming the primary method for users to discover and share new content online.

2. SEO will move towards content marketing and inbound marketing

SEO is becoming something broad and all-inclusive that incorporates content marketing, blogging, social media marketing, and web analytics. SEO companies will likely start focusing less and less on traditional SEO tactics, like link-building, site architecture, and keyword research to prioritize audience building and outreach. Increasing audience interaction with your content is critical because it enforces your brand’s authority, both in the eyes of search engines and users. The search engines continue to weed out sites with low quality content, so you also have to make sure that your content is engaging, informative, and useful. Keyword-stuffed articles you paid $5 for on a bidding site aren’t going to cut it anymore.

3. Google’s focus on paid search will back fire

Organic search engine results still get approximately 80% of all clicks, but that percentage is dropping, thanks to Google’s aggressive paid search ad displays that take up the first six positions. Nowadays, when you search for products, you’re bombarded with star ratings, reviews, prices, and product photos above the fold. While this is pushing more and more businesses to rely on paid search ads for traffic, Google’s strategy may end up backfiring in 2012 because people will become frustrated with being served so many paid ads and will start ignoring them in favor of organic results.

4. Brands that want greater search engine visibility will be forced to join Google+

It’s already happening. Google is encouraging more brands to join the Google+ network by making Google+ circles and +1s visible in their results. As more people join Google+, it will become easier for Google to link search and social signals. The downside of giving Google so much control is that they’ll obtain even more data about our online behaviors, which will make them an even more dominant force online than they already are.

5. Mobile search will become increasingly important

Optimizing your site for the mobile web isn’t just something to consider – it’s critical. Traffic levels to mobile websites are already significant, and they will continue to rise in 2012. Brands that do not have a mobile website and that don’t optimize their web presence for mobile users will suffer. Brands also have to manage content delivery effectively across various types of mobile devices, including smart phones, tablets, and game consoles, in order to maximize the value of mobile users.