Building Web Content vs. Traditional Advertising - How to Explain to Your Boss or Prospective Client(s)

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One of the biggest challenges you will probably face is trying to explain the virtues of building content over traditional advertising to a boss or prospective client. Let's face it, most businesses are experts in their respective industries, not search engine marketing.

Many people still think advertising first- be it online through pay-per-click ads or more traditional means like direct mail, radio/TV and more.

How can online marketers effectively communicate the value of content marketing over traditional advertising?

Considering many still cling (...perhaps stubbornly) to the notion that advertising is the only way, it can be difficult to convince them otherwise.

Here are a couple of lines you can throw:

1. Discussing the value, content you create for your website has a much longer shelf life at a much lower cost. It can be re-purposed and used over and over again. More content leads to more traffic and engagement online.

2. Speaking of tone - traditional advertising shouts at prospective clients while web content pulls up a chair and chats. Web content offers a more personable tone and leads to meaningful conversations and relationships.

Other reasons/benefits you can provide include:

•· Instead of one-size fits all materials, draw customers in through relevant content
•· Easier to update, change and more dynamic
•· Easier to gauge success, see feedback
•· Costs less
•· Fewer risks
•· Reach a wider audience
•· Reach target audience easier
To further bolster your case, provide examples of websites who've implemented a good content building plan and show your boss/prospect data about traffic, conversions, bounce rate and more. Show them how over time, websites can get a steady stream of increased visitors that stay on the site longer and end up clicking buy, filling out an e-form or making a call.

Providing these reasons along with strong data to back it up will certainly go a long way toward convincing skeptics of the value of building content on their websites.

50 SEO tips to increase page visits...

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1) On Site SEO: Glossary pages are good content for SEO

2) On Site SEO: Use footer links sparingly and only link to your most important pages. Don’t waste pagerank on content that is worthless.

3) Search: You need to get your site in to the blended search results using images and video. A picture is worth 1000 words and people are clicking on it.

4) Keyword Research: Use Google Insights to make sure the keywords you are focusing on do not have declining interest.

5) Analytics: Measure your brand traffic and keyword traffic separately.

6) Analytics: Are you ranking #1 (or trying to rank #1) for a keyword that will not provide any real benefit to your business? Check that.

7) Keyword Research: Perform ongoing keyword research. The way people search changes.

8:) Competitive Analysis: Read competitors press releases. Are they using words that may change the way people search? Think "Kleenex, Xerox, Dell"

9) Keyword Research: Use Google Trends to check traffic trends in different markets. There may be emerging opportunities in other geographic areas..

10) Keyword Research: How long will it take to get a keyword converting? Will it be worth it when it does?

11) Launching a new product that doesn’t exist in the market yet? Associate it with one that does to make people more comfortable with it.

12) Landing pages: put the call to action above the fold.

13) Landing pages: keep forms above the fold and make them as short as possible

14) Conversions: 3% to 5% is decent

15: Bounce rate: 30% is good, 50% is ok, 70% needs work

16: Search: 80% of queries are informational. Give them the information they want and then lead them where you want them

17: Forms: make sure there are no questions they can’t answer or they will leave

18: Does your "Thank You" page cross sell or further engage? It should.

19: User experience: Screen size and resolution matters. Test, test, test

20: Local search: Just because you are closest doesn’t mean you get the business. You need to build your brand too. Build trust.

21: Local search: Pull out your phone and do a search for your business. What happened?

22: Local search: neighborhoods matter

23: Local search: Pull out your cell phone and search for your business. What happened? (duplicate)

24: Local Search: neighborhoods matter. Are you optimizing for a "bad neighborhood"?

25: Local Search: point your browser to getlisted.org and follow the instructions

26: Local search: Add photos and video to your local search listing

27: Local search: include city & state in the title tags

28: Even negative reviews help your rank. It’s all about the numbers

29: Offer an Incentive for reviews

30: Sign up to watch a video worked much better than sign up to download a white paper

31: 80% of your visitors will fill out an "optional information" form after completing your call to action

32: Most visitors will not watch more than the 1st image of a rotating image.

33: Your marketing purpose must be the #1 goal of your website

34: 7 choices tops for your main navigation. Too much = no choice

35: Don’t use a final forward slash on your URL’s

36: Buttons should never say "Submit". Try "Download Now", "Start Free Trial", "Request More Information"

37: When building links make sure they have a random life

38: Link magnets are more productive than link begging

39: Local Search: Local business’s need local links

40: Text links in a page carry more weight than alt text

41: Link Building: No follow one link on a page and all become no follow

42: Link Building: The sequence of links on a page matters. Put the important ones on top.

43: Check your analytics for pages that are getting links and no traffic and redirect them.

44: Always be testing and measuring results. Before you change something get a benchmark.

45: The order of links in the code is more important than the order of links in the user experience

46: Surface conversations about your product, service or brand that are happening

47: Google’s technology is emerging to be able to read text in images. (Think picture of a newspaper page)

48: Google’s technology is also emerging to be able to understand words spoken in Video and index the transcripts.

49: If you are going to do video write the script with keywords in mind

50: If you use a map on your site embed a real map versus using an image.

Debunking the Top 10 Search Engine Myths

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New Jersey Computer Doctors
We've all done it at some point in our professional lives. We search a keyword that describes our business only to scratch our head as to how our competitor's website shows up on the top of the líst instead of ours. If you've gone one step further and read about Search Engine Optimization, then surely you have come across the conflicting information online.

One article tells you to do one thing while another tells you to do the opposite. Which one should you believe?

This gray area of what you should or should not do is much like the modern day "Bat Cave." If you are lucky enough to stumble upon it, chances are you don't quite know how you got there and if you had to go back one day you would probably just find yourself lost in the woods.

So what should you believe? The general rule is to combine what you read or heard with what you have experienced and somewhere in there lies the truth. To get you started, let's debunk some of the more commonly used myths floating around.

1) Use a Keyword Rich Domain Name:

It is widely believed that if you include your keywords in your domain name like www.professional-website-design-in-nj.com it will greatly improve your rankings. This is not true. It is best to choose a domain name that is short, easy to remember and if possible includes your company name.

2) Google Partnership:

If you are ever approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google, run in the opposite direction. There is no such thing as a "preferred" relationship with Google and in fact on Google's website it even states: Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

3) Meta Keyword Tag:

It used to be that the Meta Keyword Tag was given a lot of weight in the early days of Search Engine Optimization, but people abused it and now it does very little. You may still want to include your keywords here, but know that it will not do much and in fact most search engines won't even check it.

4) Bold or Italicized Text:

Adding emphasis to certain keywords like using bold or italics can make your text easier to scan for the reader if done properly, but has little to no effect on your search engine ranking.

5) Content Length:

There is no search engine rule stating that your content needs to be a specific number of words in order to get indexed. Any recommended length is more to assist the reader in understanding what you do than to aid the search engines.

6) Duplicate Content:

Posting specific content like an article or blog entry on your site and then on another site will not get you penalized. In the search results, Google will recognize that the content is the same and only choose one of the pages to display, but it will not hurt your overall search engine ranking.

7) Avoid Flash:

Any text that you place in Flash will not be readable by a search engine, but this doesn't mean you have to avoid flash altogether. You can still very successfully incorporate Flash into your site through rotating pictures or a header on the page. Just don't have an all Flash site or use a Flash intro if you are interested in increasing your search engine rankings.

8) Pay-Per-Click:

Some say that using Pay-Per-Click will help your organic listing while others say it will hurt. Both are false. The fact is that Google has gone to great lengths to separate the two departments of organic and paid listings to a point where the two departments don't communicate or even sit at the same table for lunch.

9) Update the Site Frequently:

Updating your site often is a good idea if you have something new to say. Just don't change around a few words to accommodate the search engines as that won't help your listing at all. Regularly adding legitimate content like articles, press releases and blog entries will help though.

10) Doorway Pages:

Many companies will sell this idea of increasing your ranking by creating hundreds of one page sites loaded with keywords that link to you from various domains. This is considered spamming the search engine and is not recommended. If you properly optimize your site and focus on the correct way to get listed, you will improve your ranking much quicker than these doorway pages ever could.

Of course there are many other myths out there confusing the general public about what works and what doesn't work. Some of them are spread by people who don't really know the truth and others are spread by SEO companies in an attempt to make search engine optimization confusing... mission accomplished!

Regardless of where the myths come from, if you or the SEO Company you hire use common sense and do things the right way, you will have no trouble finding the proverbial Bat Cave and when you get there please tell them that I want my utility belt back!
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