Backlinks and SEO (search engine optimization) success are always linked together. It is understood that a website with plenty of quality backlinks usually ranks high in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). That’s why many SEO firms, website owners, and Internet marketing professionals incorporate link building strategies into their SEO plan – in hopes of enhancing their search performance on the Web. What is a backlink? A backlink – sometimes called incoming link, inbound link, or inward link – is a link that points to a website or web page, coming from another site or page. A quality backlink is often considered a vote of confidence, as it signifies that the backlink source trusts a website or page well enough to lead or direct the source’s visitors to the backlinked site. SEO experts, website owners, and online marketers know that it’s not enough to get as many backlinks as possible. Quality matters, too, and perhaps – in these days of – Read the full article
Like it or not, Instagram is pretty big right now. It’s cool. It’s cross-platform (available for Apple and Android devices). It has a lot of users (about 30 million – and growing). It takes beautiful pictures no matter what your level or experience in photography is. Let’s not forget, too, the fact that the photo sharing app was acquired recently by social networking giant Facebook for approximately $1 billion in cash. If you’re managing or marketing a business, it makes perfect sense to use Instagram as a marketing channel of sorts. The only question is: how? To answer that, Lakeshore Branding came up with this quick guide on how to use Instagram for your business – and enhance your visibility on the Web. If you’ve only gotten started with the app, we hope you find these tips useful; if you’ve been at it for awhile now, let us know in the comment section below how you think Instagram supports your – Read the full article
No matter what the business or the industry, the consensus is the same. We live in a visual society and the only way to stand out among your business peers is to be visually exciting. Use Visuals to Engage Your Audience Visual stimulus is more than a nice little add-on. It is essential to bringing customers to your website and keeping them there. More and more businesses are finding that making video a central part of their homepage is an essential step to building and maintaining an online customer base. Video Can be Affordable Many businesses forgo using video on their websites because they think it is too expensive. However, the cost of making a professional-looking video has reached the point of accessibility for even the smallest of startups. High definition cameras are routinely purchased by new businesses looking to create video for their websites. Because customers are less and less impressed by movie quality special effects, it is not – Read the full article
Ever heard of Kickstarter? If not, well – you ought to try it out some time. Especially if you’re planning on raising funds for a cause, a project, a product, a service, or a business. Kickstarter, after all, is currently the world’s largest online crowdfunding platform. It has successfully raised funds for endeavors that include indie films, music albums, books, food-related projects, and even solar energy technology. Kickstarter was launched in 2008 and it facilitates crowdfunding based on a “provision point mechanism”. This means that a Kickstarter project owner (“creator”) either gets the funding he has set to raise – or he gets nothing at all. If he meets the target on or before the deadline, he’ll get paid. And those who pledged money will receive prizes, freebies, and goodies from the creator (whatever he offered to entice people to contribute or pledge). If the creator doesn’t meet the target – well, no money changes hands. That’s right: if the – Read the full article
Social media seems to be dominating the lives of Internet users today, with 800 million users alone on Facebook. Other sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube don’t seem to be doing too bad, either. It is amidst the rise of this new era of social media that businesses are now adopting new online marketing strategies to promote their products and services. Yes, we’re talking about the increasing importance of having a social media strategy. This post provides some guidelines on creating your own social media strategy, as well as a number of essential tips on marketing on today’s most popular social networks and platforms. Define your goals: Before you take the plunge into social media, it’s important to define your objectives first. What do you really hope to achieve by going social? Do you intend to boost traffic? Would you like to increase your number of followers? Do you aim to promote a new campaign or brand awareness program? – Read the full article
Attention is what visitors pay to your blog if they find your content creative, interesting, original and inspiring. However, one of the realities of blogosphere is that people don’t stay on any page for very long. But how do they understand that your content really rocks? Usually, a Web user scans a page and decides within a few seconds if it’s worth staying on it and reading further or not. That’s why it is of vital importance to grab a reader’s attention by all possible means. The best blogs not only include amazing content, but they also look good. They invite visitors in to read more because they’re visually appealing. Fortunately, there are some easy tricks you can use to make your blog posts look great and grab visitors’ attention to your content. Write a click-worthy headline A catchy title is 80% of your success. If it’s catchy, intriguing or provocative, it will surely impel visitors to click on it – Read the full article
All website owners aim to land on the first few pages of search engine results, and that’s why various search engine optimization strategies are being implemented. After all, SEO is designed to enhance the search rank position of a business or a brand. Last year, however, website owners and SEO professionals received some serious beating no thanks to the Google Panda update. The search engine giant began changing the algorithms that determined a site’s page rank and search performance. The aim was to promote websites with original high-quality content; it also reduced the effectiveness of content farming, thus giving low preference to websites with low-quality content. A number of legitimate, well-meaning sites, however, were also adversely affected by this update. These changes made by Google have made it difficult for website owners to determine which SEO strategy to adopt – or drop – to make their SEO strategies and campaigns successful. But adjust we must, and move forward to align – Read the full article
When you try and use Internet marketing and blogging to bring in more business, it is essential to think about each word that you publish. Each page of your website needs to have a goal and each blog post must be aimed at achieving the following: Providing readers with information regarding your business and industry Creating a call for action Encouraging sales Working on optimizing the website Providing customer service Building brand recognition Installing trust Fitting all that into a blog post of around 300 to 500 words may seem like a lot but with the help of SEO copywriters, each of your blog posts can achieve all of those goals for you. Working on Web Copy Your website will no doubt be split up into different sections; what they are will depend upon the services and products that you provide. Most websites will have the obligatory Welcome page, About Us page, and the Contact page. These need to be – Read the full article
