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Getting tired of waiting around for your search engine rankings to increase? Make no mistake. SEO is an ongoing process, and results won’t appear overnight. However, there are things you can do to help speed up your SEO efforts.

Focus on increasing social sharing of your content — Building buzz around your content is one of the best ways to speed up your SEO efforts. The search engines now incorporate social signals when generating results. The more times a particular page is shared across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, the higher it is likely to rank in the search results. This means you need to focus on creating content people want to share. Your content needs to be unique, interesting, and worth talking about. And you have to promote it. You need to push it across all the social networks, and you need to focus on getting the major influencers in your niche to share it as well.

Use guest blogging to get more links — Link building is a very important part of SEO. The more high quality links you have from other websites pointing to yours, the better. But building links can be time-consuming. One of the most popular methods of link building right now is guest blogging. By becoming a guest author on other blogs, you get to share valuable content, raise awareness of yourself and your brand, and include a couple of links back to your website. Check out My Blog Guest to find guest blogging opportunities more easily.

Study the competition — Checking out the competitive landscape in the search results is a good way to see what others are doing that you might be able to mimic and what they’re not doing that you could capitalize on. This offers a quick way for you to develop an SEO plan for overtaking the competition in the search results.

Take it a little at a time — There are probably dozens of keywords you’ll want to rank for and countless pages on your website that need to be optimized. Tackling all of this at once is a daunting task, but if you focus your efforts on just a few things at a time (e.g. building links around a few keywords, optimizing a certain section on your website, etc.), you’ll start to see results more quickly, and you can move on to other tasks.

Ensure proper site architecture — The layout of your site is very important for SEO purposes. The more disorganized your website is, the harder it is for the search engines to crawl it and rank it. Make sure your site has clear, easy-to-follow navigation, and use keyword-rich internal linking strategically on your website.

What are some of your best tips for faster SEO results? Share them by leaving a comment below.

The holidays are upon us, and with that comes the busiest shopping season of the year. Consumers are already spending at high rates, and they’ll continue to do so for the coming weeks. As a marketer, there’s a lot you can learn from the holiday shopping season…lessons that will help you be more successful this holiday season and in the holiday seasons of years to come.

Here are 5 of the biggest internet marketing lessons you should take away from the holidays.

Don’t wait to optimize for seasonal terms – If you haven’t already optimized your website for seasonal, holiday-specific keywords, it’s a little too late to start getting organic traffic from them this year. But that doesn’t mean that it’s too early to start preparing your website for the holiday seasons to come. The best keyword research tools will give you insight into search trends, showing you which phrases tend to get searched for most often during the holiday season. Make sure you optimize the relevant pages on your website for these seasonal keywords so you can start ranking for them.

Use holiday-driven offers in PPC ads – Pay per click marketing is a very effective tactic during the holidays. You can gain an instant search engine presence for the relevant keywords your customers are searching. But having just any old PPC ads isn’t enough during the holidays. Relevance counts. With that in mind, make your PPC ads and landing pages holiday-driven. Use holiday-specific words to make your ads timelier so they’ll stand apart from the rest.

A strong email list is worth its weight in gold – Email marketing is effective all year round, but it’s especially powerful during the holiday shopping season. If you have a good email list with highly targeted subscribers, temporarily ramp up the frequency of your messages during the holidays with great offers and engaging content. Throughout the year, you should always be focusing on getting more subscribers. The bigger and more targeted your list, the more money you stand to make.

Shipping rates matter – A lot of consumers will be buying presents online. They’re always in search of the best deals, and that goes beyond just the price tag. Shipping rates are especially important during the holidays. Your customers are trying to stretch their shopping budgets to the max, and shipping costs are very important to them. Make sure you offer your customers plenty of shipping options, and you might even want to consider offering free shipping during the holidays. It could be the difference between making the sale or not.

Holiday shoppers often have unique concerns – During the holidays, consumers tend to have different concerns than they might usually have. I already talked about the important role shipping rates play in buying decisions, and staying on the subject of shipping, your shoppers will need to know how long they have to place orders to ensure delivery by Christmas. Make sure these shipping deadlines are posted clearly on your website. Return policies are also of interest during the holidays as customers will want to know if the gifts can be returned or exchanged should they not be what the gift recipient truly needs.

What are some other holiday internet marketing lessons? Share yours by leaving a comment below!

Blog posts are a great way to increase search engine traffic. There are many who think driving huge amounts of traffic to their blogs is quite difficult. However, this need not necessarily be the case as it actually depends upon certain factors like:

• The niche you have chosen
• Marketing and SEO techniques

It also depends on how dedicated a blogger you are. Every day, there are millions of searches on major search engines and if you want to dominate your niche, you will have to take advantage of this huge traffic. One way of doing this is to optimize your blog so that it not only attracts more traffic to your site but also helps you rank higher on the search engines. Given below are a few techniques that can help you in optimizing blog posts.

1. Choosing the right niche and domain
Once you have chosen a particular niche for your blog, make sure that the domain name is short and includes a couple of related keywords so it’s easy for visitors to remember when they leave your site.

2. Using Google Webmaster Tools
The Google Webmaster tools help you submit the map of your blogs to search engine crawlers. This will help you in getting your blogs indexed quickly and in a comprehensive manner. These tools actually provide information about the performance of your site so you can take steps to increase visibility.

3. Loading Speed
Google has begun using loading times as a factor to rank a site’s authority on search engines. Websites that perform better are accorded a higher ranking as they provide the visitor with a better experience. Using tested techniques such as using a dependable host, reducing your image sizes and caching plugins can aid in reducing the loading time for your blogs.

4. W3C Compliant
Poorly coded sites can prevent search engine crawlers from indexing your site effectively. This is precisely why your blog’s code should be W3C compliant. You can in fact use the W3C mark up validation to check for any errors. A few minor errors may be acceptable but if there are many, you may have to hire a developer to make the necessary corrections.

5. Increasing Backlinks via Guest Blog posts
Guest Blog Posting that are well written are one of the best ways of getting quality backlinks to your site especially with the recent updates to Google search algorithm (Panda). Guest Blogging helps your blog gain exposure and increase search engine traffic and gain backlinks.

Apart from the above discussed techniques, you can also use the following to optimize your blog posts.

• Avoid Black Hat SEO Techniques
• Web Directory Submissions
• Creating Original / Informative Content
• Update your Blogs Frequently
• Writing New Product Reviews
• Social Media Marketing

These techniques will help in optimizing your posts and will also help your blogs gain popularity and rank higher on the search engines.

Setting goals is a general standard for successful individuals and organizations. Studies have shown that people who set written goals are over 95% more successful at achieving those goals than those who merely have ideas, or no conceived goals.

The concept of mapping gained popularity as a practical application for life coaches to help their clients set and achieve personal goals. Mapping has since been expanded into the organizational development domain. Based on the application of three fundamental principles, mapping is similar to the planning that is required when taking a road trip. In this vein, the mapping formula consists of three points known as A, B and C. Point A is where the trip begins. Point C is the destination and Point B is the vehicle and route being employed to mobilize travel between points A and C or more simply:  A+C = B.

Mapping can be very effective in creating a successful road trip for achieving Search Engine Optimization. SEO is often overwhelming for a small business owner who is trying to run the business, as well as execute a content marketing strategy loaded with digital asset bells and whistles. SEO has created a subliminal fear among many businesses that they cannot be successful without taking advantage of every digital asset and every social media site. Mapping can alleviate these fears by setting business goals that are achievable through SEO, rather than setting SEO goals that may not further the goals of the business itself.

Point A – Starting Point

Every journey has a very specific point from which it begins.  In order to create an action plan of any kind, you need to know where you are starting and where you are going, in order to figure out how you are going to get there.  The mistake small businesses make is that they set SEO goals based on SEO elements such as rankings, traffic or back links, rather than setting business goals that can be achieved through SEO elements.  SEO is the vehicle used to travel from point A to point C, and the elements are the route or Point B. The current state of the company as far as resources, revenue, cash flow and percentage of profits is starting point A. This is information that a small business owner should be aware of on a daily basis.

Point C – Destination

Knowing the starting point helps to determine where you want the company to improve.  Set broader business goals such as increasing the number of leads, sales volume or hits, whatever the starting point reveals needs to be pursued. From the broader goals set specific benchmarks, such as a 10% increase in sales or a 25% increase in leads in order to measure progress or as on a road trip, mile markers.  Common sense dictates that you do not attempt to plan point B, how to get there, before you know exactly where you want to go or point C.

Point B – The Route

Once you have set the map with allegorical push pins marking points A and C, the route or point B can be planned. For these purposes the vehicle being driven toward point C is SEO. As with any vehicle, it will require fuel in order to move forward.  The SEO fuel chosen should be directly tied into reaching the destination goals at point C.  The defining question in planning route B should center on whether an action will further the journey to point C, hold it back, or get you off the beaten track.  For example, rankings are only important if they are achievable to a level that will directly affect reaching a point C goal.

Road trips are often subject to unforeseen problems such as adverse weather conditions or road construction.  Persistence and focus on reaching point C will increase the possibilities for success. If problems occur, they should not be solved by changing the destination, but rather by adapting the route, keeping in mind that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Identifying both where you are and where you want to be are the first steps to your business success.  Understanding the tools available to you and the effect they will have on achieving your goals is of primary importance.  Just as you would not buy a Porche to traverse dirt roads in mountainous terrain, a four-wheel-drive Hummer will not get you very far very fast on the Autobahn.  However, by matching your goals to the online marketing tools available, your business will achieve both long-term and short-range success with greater speed and clarity.

Online feedback is critical to the success of any business or organization. It is important to know and understand how customers are feeling about products, services, customer service, employees, and specific processes within the company. If customers are not satisfied, then they will simply take their business elsewhere, most likely to a competing business. A very inexpensive way to receive feedback from both loyal and new customers is relatively simple if you use your online resources. Below are 4 suggestions for staying in-touch with customers online:

1. Online Customer Surveys

In order for your business to keep making money, you must keep your customers satisfied. The only way for you to know the level of satisfaction you are giving to your customers is if they tell you! Online customer surveys are a great way to give customers an opportunity to express how they are feeling about a specific product or service. Have them rate their satisfaction on a number scale and give them a space to give feedback in their own words. Compile this data and come up with new marketing strategies based on the results.

2. Contact Forms

Even if a customer is satisfied overall, they may see some areas of your business that really need improvement. For example, if they loved the product they received but a customer service representative at a hosted call center was very rude to them-how do they report this? This is where internet contact forms come into play. Sometimes people call customer service to complain, but where do they go when they need to complain about customer service? Online contact forms are a good way for customers to talk to a company when phone representation is lacking.

3. Social Media

Facebook and Twitter are your instant online conversation with consumers. Moderation of your Facebook Page and Twitter Feed is critical in keeping your clients happy and being good at social media. In today’s world, more and more people are voicing their opinion, whether good or bad, to companies via social media. If companies aren’t represented on these mediums, they are basically invisible. Take advantage of these FREE applications and you will see real results. It will also be the faster way for clients to communicate with you online.

4. Utilizing Online Polls

When a business considers releasing a new product or service, they have to think about how customers will respond.  Creating an online poll on the front page of your site will be a great place to gather data. Giving a customer something to vote on is a good way to gather an estimate of how many people would buy the product or invest their money in a specific service. You can then use this feedback to help decide whether it is a good financial decision to move forward.

Customers enjoy knowing that a business they invest their money in truly cares about them. They like to have a voice when it comes to the decisions that are made about the business and they like to know that they are being heard. By giving outlets for consumers to go to online, you are showing your customers that you care about what they have to say and that you are listening to them. In the long run, you will hopefully develop long term relationships with customers and thus gain brand loyalty.