Tag Archives: target audience

by

How to Boost SEO by Optimizing Your Content on Every Web Page in this Week’s SEO Discussion

Digital Marketing Managers need to consistently create relevant high quality content in order to maintain it’s search engine rank, and each new page of content on your website needs to be optimized for search correctly.
Components involved in on page seo to optimize every page of content on a website to boost seo source - http://www.reliablesoft.net/5-on-page-seo-techniques-thatll-boost-your-rankings-checklist-included/
Recently, many SEO articles mention the end of the SEO Manager because of Google’s updates in 2013. However, I believe the new role of a SEO Manager includes optimizing new content for SEO.

Items to Optimize for All Pages of Content to Boost SEO

Keywords Phrases

  • Pick 2 to 3 keyword phrases to include in each piece of content to avoid keyword stuffing.
  • Anticipate differences in search behavior and account for them while preparing your keywords for your content.

Title Tags

  • HTML Tag – <title>.
  • Prepare a unique title tag that accurately describes the content on the page.
  • Be brief but descriptive.
  • Can include one keyword phrase.

Meta Description Tag

image of where the meta description is located for a single results on a search engine results page Source - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

  • The subheading for this section links to a previous post about meta description tags.
  • HTML for tag – <meta name=”description=” content=”summary of content goes in meta tag”>.
  • Should be unique for each page.
  • Should summarize the content on the page and spark interest to potential readers.
  • Length should be 140 characters or less.

URL Structure

  • URL should display the words contained in the title of the page.
  • Make URL’s as simple as possible.
  • Have one URL for each page.
  • The image below is an example of what a link should look like for a web page about hosting applications.

example of what an URL should and should not look like Source - http://www.gossamer-threads.com/blog/moving-up-the-ranks-an-seo-introduction/

Navigation

  • Should be organized to help visitors quickly find the content they want.
  • Group pages with similar content into categories.
  • Navigation should feel natural to your visitors.

Components of Content on a Page

  • Easy to read and focuses on the topic of your page.
  • Unique, relevant, and helpful information for the visitors.
  • Include your 2 to 3 keyword phrases sporadically throughout the page.
  • Visitors should view your content as authoritative and trustworthy.

Anchor Text for Internal Links within Content of Page

  • The words used to link to another page should be concise and descriptive.
  • Give the reader a clear idea of where they are going.
  • Make the links easy to spot.
  • In the example below, your visitor would only see “Jon Wye’s Customer Designed Belts,” and the rest is the HTML code that is hidden.

example of anchor text code source - http://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text

Images & Alt Text

  • Supply Alt Text to describe the images posted on a webpage.
  • Since Google can’t interpret images, Google uses the description of your images in the Alt Text to calculate the overall rank of your web page.
  • When saving images on your website to your images folder, use file names that briefly describe the image.

Heading Tags

vimage of the different heading tags Source:http://blog.woorank.com/2013/04/how-to-use-heading-tags-for-seo/

  • Create Subheadings making it easier for readers to scan and consume your content.
  • Anything in your H1, H2, and H3 heading tags are taken into consideration when ranking your page.
  • Use Heading tags sparingly throughout page.
  • If you want to highlight text but don’t want to use a heading tag, you can bold text using <em>, <strong>, or <b> tags.

Link Building

  • Look for websites that hosts similar content.
  • Submit a request to the sites to host your link.
  • Include internal links to relevant content previously published on your website.

Social Signals via Social Media to Promote Your Content to Boost SEO

image of social signals and seo source- http://stpaulmarketingteam.com/smm/social-media-seo-and-social-signals/

  • When content is published in WordPress, it automatically posts the title of the new content to your social media networks via the Publicize feature.
  • If your website development tool does not provide this feature, you should manually post the title of your new content to all of your social media networks.
  • Place social media icons on each page for your visitors to share with their connections.
  • The more Likes, Favorites, and Reweets you receive the more Social Signals Google notices, and the higher your content can rank.
  • For Facebook and LinkedIn – If you participate in any groups, ask the group manager if you can promote your new content to the group.
  • Post new content to any other Social Media Networks where your target audience participates.
  • Visit last week’s SEO weekly discussion to learn more about using Social Media to boost your SEO efforts.

In the fight for page rank, optimize all your current and new content with the components mentioned in this blog post, and the search engines will recognize the new content.

Keep this blog post on hand to use as a checklist when preparing new web pages, and you should make sure every page of content your website publishes contains all of the items mentioned.

Recent SEO News and Resources

Recent Local Search News and Resources

Recent Link Building News and Resources

Recent PPC Google Adwords News and Resources

by

Content Marketing Weekly Topic: Repurpose Your Content to Extend Your Reach in Your Target Audience

Repurpose your Content into different forms of content Source - http://www.boom-online.co.uk/2014-new-years-resolutions-of-an-internet-marketer/#axzz2urapa82wCreating original content everyday is difficult, but to help Content Marketers and Digital Marketing Managers, you can repurpose your current/story content into other forms and expand your reach within your target audience.

People consume many different forms of content, but we all have our favorite forms of content.

Below is a table on the form of content I prefer based on the topics.

Topic My Preferred Form of Content
Friend Updates Social Media
“How-To” or “Tips” Article or Blog Post
Deploying a Marketing Process Checklist
New Product/Service White Paper or Webinar
Product or Service Update Social Media or Email for a heads up that leads me to an article or blog post
Marketing Process eBook, webinar, or Infographic of Process

As you can see, I prefer different forms of content depending on the topic.

However, someone else may prefer to see the same topic in another form than me.

Therefore, when you are writing about a single topic, make sure you prepare different forms of content about the same topic.

In other words, you want to repurpose a single topic into different forms of content, which will help extend your reach within your target audience.

This reminds me of an analogy that I learned during a Jason Miller
presentation, and Jason Miller learned about this analogy from Rebecca Lieb.
Different forms of content for the same topic Source - http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/leftover-turkey-a-content-marketers-dream/
“I use a Thanksgiving analogy. You cook up this giant bird to serve up on one glorious occasion and then proceed to slice and dice this thing for weeks on end. If you are like most families you are going to be repurposing this bird as leftovers for quite some time creating everything from sandwiches, to soups, and more. Your content marketing strategy can be thought of in the same way.” – Rebecca Lieb

So for every topic you write about, think about how you can produce additional forms of content about a single topic.  For example, if you have an eBook, you can create a webinar, video, and a series of blog posts.

By creating different forms of content a single topic, you are delivering information to your target audience in the form that they want. So, listen to your target audience and find out what forms of content they prefer.

25 Forms of Content at Your Disposal

  1. Blog post or Article
  2. Lists of different blog posts/articles about the same topic
  3. How To Guide
  4. Customer Opinion/Testimonials
  5. Tips
  6. Survey/Quiz
  7. Images
  8. Competitions
  9. Social Media posts – one example is live tweets of a webinar or conference
  10. Interview with thought leaders or guest blog from industry influencer
  11. Google+ Hangout
  12. Whitepaper
  13. Case Studies
  14. Video
  15. Webinar
  16. eBook
  17. Infographic
  18. Checklists/Tip Sheets
  19. Podcasts
  20. Thought Map
  21. Visual Note-Taking
  22. Slideshows
  23. Show Example of what not to do
  24. Create a Timeline
  25. Q&A or FAQ Web Pages

Enjoy creating multiple forms of content about the topics you recently released to maximize your reach in your target audience.

Keep in mind, create forms of content about a single subject that make sense.  For example, it does not make sense to create a podcast for a list of tips, but it does make sense to create a podcast for an eBook.

Call to Action in Repurposing your Content to Extend Your Reach within Your Target Audience

  • Choose a current piece of content (preferably a white paper or eBook)
  • Think about the different forms of content you can create using the same information
  • Create new forms of content with the same information and deliver it to your target audience
  • Check out next week’s content marketing discussion that will describe the different forms of content listed above
  • The next blog post will discuss SEO

Sources

Additional Content Marketing News and Resources

by

Content Marketing Thursday: 4 Tips to Include in Your Content Marketing Strategy to Build Relationships with Your Target Audience

Content Marketing Source: http://www.seogon.com/blog/content-marketing-is-not-just-blogging-7-more-content-marketing-ideasBuilding relationships with your target audience is a top goal for a Digital Marketing Manager, and here are some content marketing strategies to put in your digital marketing toolbox in building relationships with your target audience. By implementing these content marketing strategies, it can increase your brand awareness and be highly effective in positioning your company as a thought leader in your field as well as shorten the length of the sales process.

Content marketing strategies are less formal than traditional marketing methods. So, when deploying your content marketing strategies be casual, and your target audience will be more open to the idea of building a relationship with your brands.

4 Tips to include in your content marketing strategy to build relationships with your target audience

  1. Embrace the Blog – Blogs give you the capability to talk to your target audience on a regular basis in a casual atmosphere. In addition to reaching your target audience, blogs assist your SEO efforts by increasing your search rank to drive traffic to your site.
  2. Promote through Social Media – Social media sites are one of the best ways to develop relationships with your target audience. Here, you can have two-way conversations with your current, past, and future customers, and social media allows your target audience to influence their social media communities.
  3. Drop the Sales Pitch – In the long run, content marketing strategies influence total sales, but content marketing tactics (blogs, social media, webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, mobile apps, newsletters, etc.) are not the forum to deliver sales messages. Consumers visit websites and social media sites to learn about a business’ brands and area of expertise, not to experience a hard sell. Content marketing provides the opportunity for your target audience to build trust in your brands and facilitates the relationship building process. Just be creative, informative, and engaging when communicating with your target audience, and they will place a purchase when they are ready to do so.
  4. Add Video – visuals help people connect with your brands. You-tube, Instagram and Vine are inexpensive ways to distribute your video content, so don’t be afraid of creating videos. Plus, search engines love video; therefore, as search engines tweak their algorithms, video will help you stay at the top of search engine result pages.

To help you utilize these tips you need to learn about your target audience by doing the following:

  • Listen to your Target Audience – listen to their preferences, needs, and wants
  • Understand your Target Audience – find out what is relevant to them and learn where they are on the Internet and when they are online.
  • Engage with your Target Audience – in the right time and the right place with what they want to read or hear

Try including these low-cost and effective tips into your content marketing strategy to watch your brand’s credibility and recognition increase without spending lots of money deploying traditional marketing methods.

Sources

Additional Resources

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

by

Email Marketing Tuesay: 9 Tips on How to Segment your Email Marketing List

As mentioned in last week’s Email Marketing Tuesday, today’s blog post
Segment target audience into smaller groups that are things in common is all about tips on how to segment your email list to create engaging email marketing and help maximize your email marketing results.

As a Digital Marketing Manager, your email marketing efforts may be one of the top revenue generators. Therefore, you want to try and maximize your email marketing results, and one way to do this is segmentation.

First, let’s define what is segmenting. It means dividing your target market into smaller groups where each group have similarities.

Segmenting is near and dear to my heart, and segmenting a target market is one of my favorite things to do. In segmenting, you learn more about your past, current, and potential customers, which I’ll refer to as your target audience. The more you know about your target audience the easier it is to develop relevant content and create engaging experiences for your target audience.

Not sold on the segmenting idea, consider the following:

  • Personally, when I have segmented my email lists, the email marketing efforts received a 25% lift in response rate.
  • According to Monetate’s 2013 Intelligent Email Marketing that Drives Conversions, “Segmented email campaigns produce 30% more opens than undifferentiated messages.”
  • According to DMA’s 2013 National Client Email Report, “Email marketer estimate 30% of email revenue derives from targeting to specific segments.”

Now, I’m happy to share with you 9 tips on how to segment your email marketing list to make your email marketing efforts more relevant to your email subscribers.

Two Types of Segmenting

  • Who they are – segmenting by demographics
  • What they’ve done – segmenting by behaviors or transactions

Segmenting by Who They Are aka Demographics:

  1. Gender
  2. Age
  3. Job Title
  4. Industry
  5. Interests
  6. Company Size
  7. Geography

Segmenting by What They’ve Done:

  1. Collecting Behavior Data – track browsing and searches on your website that lead to purchases
  2. Past Transaction History – past transactions can predict what they might purchase in the future

Next, you are probably wondering where do you get all the information you need to segment your lists. You can collect the information you need to segment by:

  • Asking for information when you collect an email address on your website
  • Ask for additional information during repeat web visits
  • When you have an email address, invite them to answer some questions about them
  • Data Append Services – you can hire companies to provide demographic information or information about IP addresses
  • Keep track of click paths and transactions

Conclusion

Consumers are starting to expect marketers to know about them, so you should consider segmenting and creating personalized marketing messages to engage your target audience and create superior experiences with your brand.

Source: Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing

Additional Resources