Mediaboss Marketing

About a decade ago, I was the Freelance Writing Guide for About.com, a company that rigorously trains its employees in search engine optimization (SEO). In addition to receiving that formal training, I locked myself away in a caf for a week and studied what was then a leading book on all things SEO, to help wrap my brain around the concepts I was learning.

Eventually I left the Freelance Writing Guide position and launched my own blog, Dancing with Pain, which shot to the #1 spot on Google, for the keyword natural pain relief. Then, as I segued into public relations management, I continued to implement everything I had learned, as well as intuited, about SEO over the years among other things, generating inbound links to my clients websites, from top media outlets with the result that my clients websites shot to the #1 spot on Google, for the various keywords of choice.

Recently, however, SEO got so damn convoluted, with algorithms changing every six minutes, that I stopped trying to keep up and now advise clients to bring an SEO specialist on board. For those on a budget, however, I figured it would be helpful to pass on these hot DIY tips from Tommy Landry, an SEO expert from Austin, Texas. Like a proper geek, Tommy uses numerous technical terms when discussing SEO. To ensure that even the novice understands the concepts to which he is referring, you will find these terms linked to blog posts on topic either those Tommy wrote himself or those he recommends from other SEO specialists.

Loolwa Khazzoom: What is the #1 most important thing that people need to know about SEO?

Tommy Landry: SEO is a long-haul strategy, and there are no effective shortcuts to success. Plan to dedicate time, energy, and resources to SEO, and the results will come. Anything that attempts to accelerate the process by gaming the system will backfire eventually, typically by way of a penalty from Google.

LK: What is the biggest mistake you find people making, when attempting to manage SEO on their own?

TL: Most people have, at best, an over-simplified idea of what SEO is and how it works. We talk to people all the time who say they know about SEO. In most cases, knowing SEO means generating content with on-page optimization (i.e. placing keywords in all the right places for Google to find and index them), then hoping the rankings follow. Without understanding more in-depth topics such as technical SEO, off-page SEO, advanced keyword filtering, and semantic markup, DIY SEOs will be hard-pressed to show actual results from their efforts.

LK: Is there ever a time that people can or perhaps even should ignore SEO?

TL: More than half of how Google decides to rank websites depends on who links from their website to yours. The more authoritative the website that links to your domain, the better your content will rank, by virtue of association with said authority.

This is why your clients and your websites quickly have improved in ranking for various keyword searches. By generating coverage among high authority domains such as The New York Times and Dr. Oz, you have secured some of the most coveted inbound links, passing along authority of those sites to the sites of your clients and yourself.

For websites that already have established link profiles and domain authority, publishing content should suffice for SEO benefit. Those websites quickly will rank and naturally will earn more links, as a result of the inherent visibility of their domains as a whole. There are also industries where the target audience either is not online (as in the case of products targeting oil rig workers who go offshore to work) or is not likely to do a search for options (as in the case of well-established industries, where there are only a couple of nationally-known options).

LK: What are your guidelines on balancing the art of writing with the functionality of SEO in websites? in blog posts?

TL: Previously Google focused on character matching algorithms, scanning for web pages with exact words and characters typed into a search field. Today, however, Google focuses on search intent, scanning for web pages associated with the meanings of words typed into a search field. A well-built list of semantic SEO topics identifies keyword variations and synonyms - providing a range of verbiage that helps keep the content reading naturally and making it easier to optimize content. Semantic SEO is paramount to effective SEO performance in 2017.

It also pays to understand semantic markup, or to hire someone to take care of it for you. Semantic markup enables you to establish entities via the code, which Google and the other search engines can use to help better interpret the intent of your content. Semantic markup will help you rank better on low volume/low competition searches, many of which happen for the first time ever on a daily basis (up to 25% of daily searches have never happened before, according to Google).

LK: For small business owners without the budget to hire an SEO expert, what are your top three tips for selecting and incorporating keywords?

TL: Think about how someone might search online, for the kinds of products or services you offer. For example, consider a problem for which your product or service offers a solution, and build keywords around fixing that problem. Do your keyword research, to figure out how many searches each keyword gets on a monthly basis, but also factor in search competition (i.e. how difficult it will be to rank for a keyword, based on the strength of sites already ranking for it). High volume keywords are almost certain to have high competition, so lesser-volume but more attainable options will be preferable. Among other considerations, think in terms of topics (similar keywords to use in tandem, such as Auto Shipping, Car Shipping, Auto Transport, Vehicle Shipping, etc.). These topics will be peppered into your body copy, and also used in the most important on-page elements that will tell Google what you are targeting, such as page title, meta description, etc.

LK: Would you recommend any online tools for selecting keywords?

TL: I always advocate starting out with the Google Keyword Planner, for anyone who has access to it. Thats a great way to generate an initial keyword list, based on a crawl of your website. It also will be insightful for seeing what Google thinks your site is about (which may surprise you). Next, review the results and choose what you most want to pursue. If possible, review what your competitors are pursuing as well, and consider adding those keywords to your list. Get access to a premium keyword tool, to layer in the SEO competition/keyword difficulty metrics (SEMrush, Moz, ahrefs, and Market Samurai are tops in my book). If you dont pay to use any of these premium/paid tools, keep in mind that any well-qualified SEO expert will have access to one or more of them.

LK: For solopreneurs managing every aspect of their business, having to think about and implement SEO on every website page and blog post can feel overwhelming. Is there such a thing as fast and easy SEO implementation, or are there no shortcuts?

TL: For on-page SEO (the body copy and other elements on each web page that you control), knowing where to place keywords is a big deal. The art of keyword placement can be learned very quickly when working with a WordPress-based website, through installing Yoast SEO for WordPress. This plugin adds a dialogue at the bottom of the page and post editing views - evaluating your on-page optimization in real time, as you build the page.

Presuming you have a great target keyword already picked out, you can add it in the Yoast section at the bottom, and Yoast will tell you whether or not you have used it correctly in the various meta tags, ALT-Texts for images (which is a great place to include keywords that many overlook), and body copy. That said, for everything else under the SEO umbrella, the savvy solopreneur will understand that nothing is immediate, and patience is absolutely required.

LK: How many keywords do you recommend using per page, and why?

TL: Given that keywords are more important as guideposts today, we recommend identifying topics that include multiple keywords. Once you have rounded those up, put together long tail keywords - terms with 3+ words, incorporating short keywords. In the case of your Dancing with Pain blog, for example, you included the keyword pain in natural pain relief. Had you selected pain alone, you would have been competing with the leading pharmaceutical corporations and the United States government, among other top contenders. Even with your inbound links from prestigious media, it would have been quite a challenge to secure the #1 spot on Google for the keyword pain.

Longer tail versions, like natural pain relief, have lower search volumes and much lower competition for page 1 ranking, creating the greatest chance of securing the highest placements. In other words, it is better to come in at the #1 spot on the first page of a Google search for natural pain relief than it is to come in somewhere on the fifth or twelfth page of a Google search for pain.

Bottom line: Use long tail versions as your target keywords. The rest of the iterations on the keyword can be used within the content, to help indicate to Google what the overall topic should be for that page or post.

LK: Back in the day, if you hyperlinked a keyword on one page to the same hyperlinked keyword on another page in particular, if that keyword was in the first paragraph you would get additional SEO juice. Now that practice gets you dinged. Why the switch? And if someone is genuinely writing on that topic, how does s/he emphasize the natural keywords, without it backfiring?

TL: About a decade ago, the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) began to be overrun by poor-quality websites that were using highly-questionable tactics to leapfrog other websites. Some were ranking because of over-optimized content, which Google eliminated with their Google Panda penalty. Others were cheating with their link-building by automating link acquisition with software tools that placed a ton of links on random websites, as well as by keyword-stuffing the anchor texts pointing back to their sites. (Anchor texts are the words that are highlighted in blue and underlined, linking to other pages.) So Google rolled out the Google Penguin penalty, to hand-slap webmasters who were overly-aggressive with their off-page link-building. As a result, today you cant over-optimize the text in the hyperlink itself (anchor text), without opening yourself up to a penalty by Google.

This development is actually great. Keyword tracking is obsolete now that we have semantic search. The better metric to keep tabs on is domain authority, which measures the search weight of your website, relative to all sites on the web. Domain authority, in turn, is driven by a range of link-related factors. These reasons are why link-building should be left to a highly-knowledgeable SEO expert, rather than be executed on the basis of guesswork. Guesswork literally can backfire, resulting in a website being de-indexed altogether.

LK: Since domain authority is now the primary consideration for SEO, would you say that generating top media coverage, and therefore, inbound links from leading authorities, is more important than ever?

TL: Yes and no. Generating top media coverage will absolutely help you rank and improve your domain authority (DA). Better yet, however, if you can get a third party to include a link to your site within a contextual piece, i.e. non-promotional in nature, you will get even more DA weight with Google.

Dont get me wrong; the press coverage is still a fantastic DA builder. If you can have a major media publication write about your business, your owner, or anything special you have accomplished, make it happen. But Google absolutely loves earned links rather than proactively-pursued placements. Such links often come through content from third-party writers on a topic you have covered, with a link to your blog or website as a reference supporting key point(s) in the content. The higher the DA on the site linking to your domain, the more your own site will rise organically in searches.

LK: Yoast SEO plug-in will ding someone for using a, the, in, etc for example, preferring the keyword massage therapist San Francisco to the keyword a massage therapist in San Francisco. But the former is so awkward to use in a sentence. How does one get around this SEO stumbling block?

TL: This matter primarily comes down to keyword selection, but also to the tradeoff between perfect SEO targeting and a healthy user experience. Synonyms are important regardless. As we have discussed, algorithms today are driven by semantics that can better assess search intent, when keyword variations are included eliminating the previous need to repeat a keyword a dozen times.

Use both the primary target keyword, as well as any synonyms on the page, knowing full-well that Google will figure it out. Use the naturally-phrased version in the body copy, and optimize the meta tags and image ALT-Texts for the Yoast recommendation, with slugs removed. Yoast is not perfect, but it remains the best option I have seen among SEO plugins. Realistically, it would be impossible to build a plugin that fully accommodates semantic on-page optimization, in its constantly-changing state.

LK: Why should someone hire an SEO expert? What simply cannot be achieved without the professional level of support?

TL: Technical SEO could possibly be handled in-house, but it is important to conduct deep research into the various pieces of it, before presuming one understands it fully. By bringing in someone with years or decades of experience working on websites, the path to success is quicker and significantly easier for the client.

Off-page is also much more work than any other part of SEO. It could be a full-time job doing the work to build high-quality links that will move the needle. But off-page is more than half the battle to move up the SERPs, so it should not be overlooked. Without it, the rest of SEO is just busy work that will make marginal differences. An expert can help build off-page links properly, while avoiding the risk of a Google penalty.

Finally, keyword research is no longer a simple task, where it is enough to identify what keywords have search volume. SEO competition is a mandatory filter for removing keywords for which you never will be able to rank.

Semantic SEO understanding is also important, to avoid the myopic trap of thinking you can track 10 keywords and understand where your traffic originates. A properly-optimized website wont live or die on 10-20 keywords, which will typically account for less than 10% of traffic these days. With intent-based matching algorithms, topics matter more than keywords do. Get an expert to identify these topics and put modern Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), a.k.a. success metrics, in place.

LK: Is there anything else youd like to say about SEO practices for business?

TL: SEO underwent a significant evolution in the 2007 2013 timeframe, and the SEO of lore is no more. Today we need to focus on responsible link-building, semantic topics/markup, and a range of new concepts. Theres a reason we have a whole cottage industry of SEO experts, and the savvy solopreneur will seek to get help with search engine optimization rather than sinking too much time into DIY efforts. Once a strategy is set, and the client understands it, the client can start to take on more in-house, moving forward.

Read more from the original source:
Hot Do It Yourself (DIY) Tips from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert - HuffPost

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Heres what to expect October 2426 in NYC:

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We know your time is valuable, and we guaranteethat your experience at SMX East will be worth the investment.

Register for SMX East, and join fellow SEOs and SEMs making an impact in the search marketing community. For only $1,795, youll learn fresh tactics to improve your search marketing campaigns, have unlimited expo hall access, networking, WiFi, meals, snacks and more! That is a limited time savings of $400 compared to on-site rates.Register before next Saturdayfor lowest rates!

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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3 days of SEO and SEM tactics at the lowest rates. SMX East prices increase next week! - Search Engine Land

ASHEVILLE, NCThe JB Media Institute , a digital marketing training program offering online and in-person classes, is giving away a lifetime of digital marketing training (valued at over $10,000) to the winner of its Summer Sweepstakes. From August 1 through September 7, anyone 18 years of age and older (from anywhere in the world) can enter for their chance to win at jbmediagroupllc.com/sweepstakes . A winner will be drawn at random and announced mid-September.

The total prize package includes:

One free seat in the JB Media Institute in-person or online training program

$957$2,500 value One lifetime membership in the online learning community $4,500 value over the first 5

years One 90-minute private coaching sessions 4 times per year for 2 years $2,400 total

value Bonus for Asheville locals Access to all of our local Bootcamps and Workshops for 2

years $600 estimated value

Total value $10,000 over the first 5 years

More than 250 students have completed the programs since its launching in 2013. Justin Belleme, founder of the digital marketing agency JB Media Group in West Asheville, cofounded the JB Media Institute with Sarah Benoit, lead instructor. Together, they want to help business owners and marketing professionals achieve their digital marketing goals. The Institute covers digital campaign best practices for strategy, SEO, social media, online advertising, and online public relations.

Students Across the Globe

The JB Media Institutes comprehensive training program offers three in-person sessions per year and seven online sessions per year. The in-person classes are offered in Asheville, NC, where the Institute is headquartered, and the online Institute is available to anyone with internet access.

In the last year, the Institute has expanded to include free monthly webinars and a summer workshop series. The Institute also continues to offer half-day digital marketing Bootcamps in Asheville throughout the year on a wide variety of topics. As the program has grown, Benoit has worked to diversify and adapt the curriculum in numerous ways that support different styles of learning.

We are always focused on student feedback and discovering ways to improve and strengthen the curriculum. The program now offers more than 20 hours of training materials, made up of over 100 presentations and how-to videos, says Benoit.

Different people find certain types of training and educational environments more conducive to success, she continues. It is my goal to offer students of all kinds the opportunity to enhance their skills and achieve their digital marketing goals, whether they prefer one-off workshops, immersive training, in-person classes, or online courses.

Theory Meets Real World Application

Uniquely, the school draws from the expertise of the JB Media Group agency professionals who provide real-world, on-the-ground support and instruction. Currently, the Institute has 8 to 10 active instructors made of up a combination of JB Media Group staff, local industry experts, and academic thought leaders. Students include business owners, marketing professionals, administrative staff, and those in career transition.

From the very beginning, we have worked hard to integrate current trends and best practices into the training program, says Belleme. This allows us to teach both the theory and real-world application of a wide variety of digital marketing skills in an accelerated learning environment.

Belleme and Benoit are excited to offer anyone interested in the Institute a chance to win a lifetime of training through the sweepstakes.

This is an awesome opportunity for someone to win the training they need to execute a successful digital marketing strategy or to level up their skills to advance their marketing career, says Benoit.

Additional JB Media Institute Updates

Along with the sweepstakes, the JB Media Institute has a number of other exciting developments this summer and fall:

A Summer Internet Marketing Bootcamp will be held Tuesday, August 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Goodwill Career Center in West Asheville.

Cofounder Justin Belleme will present an update on the JB Media Institute at Ashevilles 1 Million Cups of Coffeefree and open to the publicon Wednesday, September 6, at 9 a.m. at RISC Networks. Our fall online and in-person Institute sessions begin on Tuesday, September 12. Free monthly webinars are open to the public and are typically offered on the first

Wednesday of the month.

About the JB Media Institute

Headquartered in Asheville, NC, the JB Media Institute launched in 2013 by cofounders Justin Belleme and Sarah Benoit, and has graduated more than 250 students across online and in-person sessions. Through a hands-on approach, students learn to create a complete digital marketing plan covering strategy, SEO, social media, online advertising, and online public relations. In addition, the JB Media Institute holds free monthly webinars and various half-day bootcamps across the Western NC region. Learn more at jbmediagroupllc.com.

Read more:
JB Media Institue offers a lifetime of free digital marketing training - Mountain Xpress (blog)

BALLARD COUNTY, Ky. -

Ballard County is investingin a plan it hopes will bringmore people and money to the community.

"It's a struggle to stay open sometimes, but we're still here. And there's a lot of shops that are still here,because we know something great is coming," said Ballard County business owner Cindy Martin.

Martin hopes a plan Ballard County is investing $40,000 into is the answer she's has been waiting for. Ballard County Chamber of Commerce, Ballard County Economic Development and the county's fiscal court are partneringon the project with the goal of makingthe county a destination for tourists and businesses.

They are hiring a Paducah-based consulting company to helppromote the county and all of its cities and businesses online. The goal is to attract people from all over and get them interested in visiting, moving or opening a businesses there.

Cindy Martin's favorite place isthe flower and gift shop she has run in La Center for 20 years.

"I keep it full, not because we have tons of customers coming in every day, but because I believe in this area," Martin said.

She saidkeeping a business open in Ballard County can be a struggle.

"It's been very rough since Verso closed. We lost so many employees, not just the few hundred who work there, but all of the others who were in support of that company," Martin said.

Martin saidthe solution is to attract more people to the area. On Friday, county leaders announced a plan to do that. Consulting and destination branding group20/20 Extremewill work with leaders to research the area for 14 weeks. Then, the company will figure out how to brand and promote the county online.

"We recognize that we have to have a presence on the internet. As a small chamber, our resources are limited," said Ballard County Chamber of Commerce Director Myra Hook.

Hooksaidthe group will help build a website to highlight the county, its cities and businesses. "So, this is going to be an opportunity for our smaller businesses to have an internet presence like thy couldn't have before," Hooksaid.

"I don't know whether to cry or scream hallelujah," Martin said.

She's happy someone is finally taking action.

"They need to promote us, because we're worth it," Martin said.

During the research period, the groups involved want the community's input. They'll hold a series of seminars. The first is Sept. 7.

The branding will take six months. After that, the company will work with the county for two years to maintain the branding.

The $40,000 comes out of the general budget. The county and chamber are in the process of applying for a federal grant to help cover thecosts.

Originally posted here:
Ballard County invests $40K in digital marketing plan to boost economy - WPSD Local 6

When Pratiksha Tewari, a young child psychologist in Delhi, wanted to wear something different for her friends wedding, she checked out Instagram and settled on a beaded necklace embellished with silver bells of NakhreWaali, an online designer jewellery store.

It worked for me because of the novelty pitch, said Tewari, adding that she cannot find such things at regular online portals. A lot of this stuff is sold on Instagram and small sellers often make customised stuff, which is good for people who like personalised things, she said.

NakhreWaali is one of the numerous budding online businesses running largely on the foundation of social media marketing in the country.

Startups such as NakhreWaali, Vajor.com and Prerto bet on unique, handcrafted fashion products that they showcase on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, creating a niche market away from big ecommerce marketplaces.

Fashion consumers in India want pieces that are unique, with a story, said Antalya Varma, fashion analyst from The Institute of Apparel Management (IAM), Gurgaon.

She expects such niche brands to steadily create a market for themselves, riding on the exclusivity factor. These brands provide a healthy balance in the market for fashion enthusiasts and consumers, Varma said. Most these startups were founded on shoestring budgets and are run without external funding.

NakhreWaali, for example, was started on a budget of just Rs 1.5 lakh. We started off with our own funds, said Gursakhi Lugani, its 24-year-old founder. Whatever savings I had from my corporate job and some that I had earned from my work as a creative head for an online fashion magazine was put into this business, she said.

Lugani never had any formal education in fashion. A friend of mine and I happened to attend fashion week, and we decided to customise our earrings for the event. The compliments we received made me think about turning this into a business. We took the plunge and NakhreWaali happened, she said.

Founded early last year, NakhreWaali is already one of the most popular shops of its kind, having earned Rs 25 lakh in the last six months. Bollywood actors Parineeti Chopra and Swetha Tripathi, comedian Mallika Dua, and TV personality Miss Malini are among its clientele.

Lugani attributes her success to social media. Weve never sold anywhere except online, she said. No one would know NakhreWaali if it wasnt for Facebook, Instagram and the likes we receive. These businesses have flourished greatly on the back of smart, eye-popping marketing on social media where people across the world have access to collections, styles, colours, and prices of their products. Sure enough, many brands are now popular in markets outside India too.

A large majority of our customers are from India, the UK, US, and UAE, said Prerna Agarwal, founder of Mumbai-based handcrafted jewellery brand Prerto. We also have stockist in New Zealand, Africa, Canada, Singapore and several other countries across the globe.

Agarwal, who has selectively opened the brand to a few fashion shows and exclusive multi-designer stores, said she has now managed to start another online business two months ago with her earnings from Prerto.

Apurva Lama, director of apparel brand Appycat Street, said she owed her business to social media marketing. Instagram alone drives half of our traffic, she said. Weve had sales from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Weve reached corners of India that we hadnt heard of and have built a steady international customer base with a number of sales in the US, UK, Dubai and Australia, she said.

NakhreWaali has built partnerships with entities in Dubai and Milan to enhance sales in those cities and plan to add more to the list very soon. Consumer connect is a common thread binding these brands.

Brands like Appycat Street and online designer apparel and jewellery store Vajor.com have collaborated with social media influencers like fashion bloggers and models who widen the market further for them. Natasha AR Kumar, founder of Vajor, said the brand placed high value in content development and has worked with lifestyle and fashion bloggers as well as people from different walks of life.

We have a section on our blog called Vajor Muse where we feature intriguing and inspiring women who are travellers, writers, environmentalists, artists who are doing all of this aside from their day to day jobs, she said. Started in 2014 without any external funding, Vajor has been growing at an annual rate of 200%, Kumar said.

Appycat Street have had Instagram stars and lifestyle and fashion bloggers Komal Pandey (College Couture), Nilu Yuleena Thapa (Big Hair Loud Mouth), and Dolly Singh (Spill that Sass) help them reach a wider audience. However, despite their success and popularity, many of these startups are facing some difficulty due to lack of funds.

Himani Singh, founder of online beauty store Ayca, said that being self-funded has made it sacrifice on things like customised packaging, which required huge volumes and cash flow. Singh and her business partner Mallyeka Watsa started Ayca by investing Rs 5 lakh from their savings. The brands turnover in the past six months has been around Rs 20 lakh and it has Bollywood actor Harshvardhan Kapoor among its clients. According to Varma of IAM, these brands understand their customers inside out and provide them with exactly what they require. India is an aggressive market, and with time competition is only going to increase, she said. These brands need to focus on what they bring on additionally to the table other than their basic products, through their brand image, sales and service.

Surbhi Gupta, an MBA student from Pune, said she was an avid online shopper and she had started purchasing products exclusively from smaller, customised websites rather than the big guns like Myntra, Jabong and Koovs. The big websites offer mainstream stuff to their customers things can be found in any mall, she said. There are so many smaller websites to choose from here, and the stuff they sell is pretty affordable since we know where and how most of them are being made.

Continued here:
Smart social media marketing drives millennial businesses - Economic Times