Archive for category Content Development
Small Business Marketing to Attract New Customers
Posted by admin in Content Development, Getting Started, Social Media for Business, Social Media Networking, Website Development on February 10, 2023
What do you do to attract new customers to your business?
Most of us cannot attract customers with a colorful merry-go-round, and so we turn to marketing plans.
There are two general categories of small business marketing:
– Outbound or the old “PUSH” marketing – sending out advertisements on websites, in e-mails, on flyers, in magazines. Based on past experiences with outbound marketing, fewer people react to words like “New!”, “Sale!”, “Amazing!” and other overused terms, and it is more difficult to get the attention of your prospective customers in the clutter.
– Inbound marketing – attracting people to your brand and your products with engaging content – attention getting, interesting, useful, helpful information, supplemented with nice, related images and videos.
There are three main points to remember for successful Inbound Small Business Marketing:
1. Make a social connection, using one or more social media platforms for your business. Use social media that you are comfortable with. Remember to add regular updates, and occasionally mention your product or service, or a special event you are hosting, but not all the time.
An optimized business Facebook page is a great way to start. For some tips on optimizing your Facebook page for small business, take a look at this Search Engine Journal article.
2. Get more attention for your message with interesting, topic-related images and videos.
- Create a YouTube video channel for your short, optimized business videos.
- Then share those videos in your website blog articles can be a real boost for your site’s ranking.
- Ask clients to send in videos of themselves using your product.
If you post interesting or helpful information about your business on your company FB page and Profile, your followers will share the information.
3. After attracting these potential clients, don’t forget to provide a CTA (Call To Action). As excited as you may be to get hundreds of visitors reading your blog article, remember you also want to get them to engage with your business. Ask a question and invite them to share an opinion, Ask them to share their experience in a similar situation. Tell them if they have any questions about the information you’ve shared, you’d be glad to provide your insight and make sure your telephone number and link to your Contact page are prominent on your website.
How is your small business marketing going? Do you have questions about this article? Do you want to help market your business better online? Contact Jax SEO Works.
Beware Free Website Offers
Posted by admin in Content Development, Digital Marketing, Getting Started, Website Development on July 15, 2022
Some businesses make “FREE” website offers.
Reading their ads, it sounds like the client gets a free website, and pays a small monthly fee to get online visibility and high ranking in search results.
The truth is, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” – Milton Friedman
And there is no such thing as a free website.
The company offering a “free website” to new clients frequently retains the domain name. This means if the client ever decides to try to take their business to a different online marketing company, they will lose any online ranking they had. All of that domain rank stays with the “free” website that belongs to the original marketing company.
And search engines like Google, Firefox, Edge, Bing, and Yahoo have shared numerous articles about how websites can rank well. A website will rank better if the website is easy to use, and has information that is helpful and interesting.
Your local small business marketing should focus on your business, brand, and service area.
Recently we looked at a free website offer that a friend had gotten from a company who said they would help them get more business.
- The evidence that the company was using a content template was clear.
- A quick Google search showed that company was using the same page template for each client. They used the same words again and again. They just changed the business name and service area for each new victim (I mean client)! Repeated text won’t fool people. And it surely won’t fool search engine robots!
- If you want to get clients, you have to give them good, original information and interesting photos and videos of your work to get and keep their attention.
If you have a small local business and would like to get started with a website for your business, or for help improving your small business website, or your digital marketing, please Contact Jax SEO Works.
Avoid Duplicate Content on Your Website
Posted by admin in Content Development, Resources, Website Development on May 3, 2022
Duplicate content on your website can hurt your search engine ranking, and make a bad first impression with your website visitors. Don’t do it!
Have you ever been researching a subject on the internet, and gone to a site and remember seeing the very same wording, on a site you were on just a few minutes prior? Déjà vu, but not in a good way.
You have probably heard the old quotation from Charles Caleb Colton, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Others call it plagiarism. But search engines do not like seeing exactly the same content on more than one website, just like you don’t.
Even if one web page was published prior to the page with duplicate content, search engines don’t always give the credit to the site that published the content originally. Some search engines drop both websites’ duplicate pages from their listings.
People (and search engine robots) who visit your website want to see what to see your unique and interesting information; what makes your business, product, or topic stand out from others.
To retain credit and search engine visibility for your content, you can see what other websites have posted the same or very similar content at the Copyscape website.
If you find your content on other websites, you can modify your content to make it your own by:
- adding information that is specific to your own website (this is best)
- changing some of the words, using synonyms
- changing or adding headings
- restructuring several sentences in each paragraph
If you need help with your small business website; getting more website visitors on the internet, coming up with ideas to get better results with your website, updating your website with new articles, Jax SEO Works can help. Contact Jax SEO Works.
Start a blog on your small business website!
Posted by admin in Content Development, Social Media for Business, Social Media Networking, Website Development on February 22, 2022
A blog can be a part of your social media program, a way to reach out and begin communicating with your web site visitors.
Your small business blog post should share information people want to read. Some posts should (of course) be about your business. Tell people about a new product or service you offer. In alternate posts, choose a topic that’s interesting, helpful, believable, and sometimes even something funny.
You can also pick a topic for your blog that you can relate to your small business. Your blog topic should be something you know about, or you will have to do research just to find subjects to blog about. For example, if your business installs gutters, consider blogging about home improvements.
Do some research on the Internet.
- Find out which small business blogs / bloggers are rated most popular for your blog topic.
- Read some popular blog posts.
- If you can add helpful information to the discussion, leave a comment and (sometimes, if you feel it’s appropriate without being “spammy”) a link to your web site. (It is considered bad manners to just leave a comment like, “Nice article.” or “Very informative.” And even worse when you add your name, business name, and website link to your too casual comment.)
Your various blog posts should mix in a little marketing, advertising, and promotion. Your posts should always include an easy path for web site visitors to contact you for more information.
Your goal should be to make new posts on your small business blog on a regular schedule. You might, for example, one to two times each week, or that often each month. Regular posting also adds new content to your web site, which both visitors and search engines like to see.
What do you think ? Do you have any other helpful ideas to share ?
Like some help improving your small business web site?
Contact Jax SEO Works today!
Selecting Keywords for your Website.
Posted by admin in Content Development, Keyword Development, Resources on January 24, 2022
Good keywords are important to have in your content.
A keyword is a word or short phrase that you think people may use to search for the product, service, or topic of your website. The content on each page of your website needs to include some of these keywords, so people and search engines can find your website.
Tips for Selecting Keywords
To select some good keywords, you need to do some keyword analysis; you need to do some research to see what words other people are using most often to search for the business, service, or topic of your website, and then evaluate your results to pick the keywords that should work best for you.
You can develop your list of possible keywords by listing :
- all of the keywords that you can think of that you might use for a search engine to find a website on your topic,
- all of the keywords that are similar to possible keywords you already listed (a Thesaurus may be helpful),
- keywords used by your more popular competitors:
1. One at a time, go to some of your competitor’s websites,
2. On your browser’s menu bar, select View, and then Page Source,
3. Scroll down the new Source page for <META NAME= “keywords”> tag,
4. Find any keywords that could also be applied to your website.
Here are some more free Internet resources for keywords :
Need help getting started making your small business website better? Contact Jax SEO Works, we like to help.
Add Good Content Regularly
Posted by admin in Content Development, Getting Started on November 17, 2021
Somehow, even when you get busy, you need to make time to post articles on a regular basis.
Regularly adding good content will be appreciated by your website visitors, and the search engines, and this will benefit your website and your business.
Can you imagine someone wanting to read a document called “Same Old Stuff?” Would you be interested if you saw something with the title “Nothing New Here?” I don’t think so. So if you don’t add new, interesting, useful content to your website on a regular basis, visitors may return once or twice, but why come back if there is nothing new?
Adding new content is good also helps your website grow in size, and that gives new visitors more to interest them. But remember to make the content helpful, useful, interesting; you wouldn’t look around very long on a website with disorganized, repetitive content, and neither would your visitors.
Your new content doesn’t have to take a lot of time or be a long article, just think “What can I share that my website visitors would find helpful and interesting?” Organize your thoughts, and get started sharing.
Do you need help improving your website? Contact Jax SEO Works, today!
A website can benefit a small business.
Posted by admin in Content Development, Digital Marketing, Getting Started, Social Media for Business on September 16, 2020
The Internet is huge!
There are almost 2 BILLION websites on the internet!
How can your website stand out among so many websites, to let people know about your small local business?
A well built and optimized website can help more people in your community find out about your business, and what makes your business special.
Anyone can have a basic website made and launched on the internet.
And who hasn’t heard promises to “Get your website on the first page of Google search results”?
What helps your website stand out from all of the millions of other website is when you put the facts about your small local business on your website, telling your story about your service or business, and what makes your business special.
No one else can tell what makes your product or service special like you can.
- Is it how you always have a fresh flower for each lady who comes to your store?
- Do your service people put on a clean set of overalls and booties when they get to the client’s home?
- Or do your service representatives roll out a durable carpet protector to make sure they don’t leave a trail across your living room?
- Or that your business only uses lawn care chemicals that are safe for pets and kids?
You know what makes your small local business stand out, what makes it special, and Jax SEO Works can help you create a website or improve the one you have, to share that special message with your community.
Social media is an important way of letting your community know about you and your business. Often, a Facebook page can help you share timely updates with potential clients – sales, specials, new products or services, new employees, and more. People buy from businesses that they trust, and social media can help your community fans get to know you and build that trust. LinkedIn profiles for a business owner and members of the business team can also help people get to know the people who make the business work.
Jax SEO Works is experienced in helping small local businesses get better results with their website, and build trusting relationships with their community using social media.
If you would like a website built for your business, or get your business website revised and updated, or find out more about getting started in social media like Facebook and LinkedIn, Contact Jax SEO Works today to get started !
Better Website Content
Posted by admin in Content Development, Digital Marketing, Keyword Development on May 12, 2020
If you want people to visit your business website and find out about the products or services that your business provides, you need to have better website content.
Better website content than who, you may ask? You need your website to have better website content that the websites of your competition; the other small businesses that you are competing with.
The text and images on your website will decide whether people stay on your website and find out about what you are providing, or “bounce” to another website to see if they find what they are looking for there.
Actually, the search engine robots mainly read the text on your website, they cannot actually read the images on your website. (Search engine robots can read the alternate text titles that you put on the images on your website, so be sure to add them to your images.)
Human visitors to your website can experience all that your website has to offer, the text, the images (and hopefully NOT those annoying popups that block visitors’ screens and they click to close as soon as they can).
For each page of your website, select a good keyword phrase (a short phrase that you think people may use to search for the product, service, or topic of your web page). Then be sure to use that short keyword phrase several times in the content on your web page. I say several times because once is not enough, but repeating your selected keyword page more than 3 or 4 times on a web page can be considered to be “keyword stuffing”, and can cause your website to be penalized by some search engines.
Search engine penalties can push your website much lower in search engine results, and sometimes cause your website to not be ranked at all in search results. And we all know that the higher your website ranks in search engine results, the more frequently website visitors we see the content of your website.
Your website content needs to be :
- interesting
- very significant to your website’s topic
- easy to read and understand
- periodically changed, updated, or refreshed
Are you giving your website visitors the content that brings people to your website, and keeps them coming back, or are you seeing most visitors come to your website and then bounce off to find what they were looking for, somewhere else?
Jax SEO Works can take an objective look as your small business website and give you a short report with any obvious suggestions for improvements. Sometimes we find little, simple fixes can make a big difference. Contact Jax SEO Works to get help with your small business website.
Copywriting for People Visiting Your Website
Posted by admin in Content Development on February 13, 2020
Copywriting, creating the text for your website, must be done to appeal to people who visit your website. Copywriting for marketing can make your website be more popular with search engines, too.
Search engines engines evaluate your website text a lot like the people who will visit your website. Both look for :
- keywords : words or short phrases that you think people may use to search for the product, service, or topic of your website.
- headers : headings in bold text, to identify the main idea of each section and subsection of content,
- correct spelling and good grammar,
- useful, interesting, and informative content.
And most important for the people visiting your website, provide call-to-action hyperlinks; links to allow the people visiting your site to contact your business, buy your product, make an appointment to see one of your representatives, etc. You should provide several call to action links, at different positions on your web page. Several CTAs help your visitor easily take action when they want to.
*NOTE* This article, originally written and published in September 2009 is as true today as it was then.
Google, the most popular and influential search engine, has created updates to its website evaluation criteria (algorithms) so that its reviewing robots will make websites that humans find interesting and helpful to rank better in search results than “spammy” website which use terminology like “We’re the Best!” “Number 1 results!”, et cetera.
When copywriting for your small business website, your articles should stay generally related to your product or service, with occasional articles about something new at your business, such as a:
- new product
- new feature
- sale
- new sales person
- awards
- a topic related to your business.
If you are just getting started with your small business website, or if you’d just like to hear if there were some easy ways to improve your website to get more traffic, please Contact Jax SEO Works for a free evaluation and recommendations.
Marketing Ideas for Your Business
Posted by admin in Content Development, Digital Marketing, Getting Started, Website Development on September 11, 2012
This may sound rather basic, but you can find lots of helpful marketing ideas on the Internet.
Search the Internet for online marketing and digital marketing, and also for the product or service that you offer on your website to find:
- infographics, memes, articles, and lists
- bulletin boards and forums
The more you research, the more helpful information you will find. Don’t just copy and paste or plagiarize! Often, you can find information that will spark ideas for a new advertising campaign, maybe a fresh outlook for the content about the product or service you offer, or a different application for your product or service, or find businesses to collaborate with for mutual benefit.
The main thing to remember is that you need to keep learning. You can’t expect the marketing ideas on the website that you built (or had built) five years ago to take care of you forever. Website maintenance – updating and adding new and interesting articles, checking for broken links, backing up your data files – that stuff is important. You need to keep up with what is changing in your part of the business world. Don’t get left behind.
Make it a habit to do a little marketing ideas research for your own benefit each day. Take notes of things you find interesting and each week. Then review your findings and decide which ones merit action and which ones are just good to know.
And the next time you socialize, either on the internet or “live and in person” you’ll also have some interesting information to share with your peers.