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Small Business Owner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

One of the best ways to achieve top rankings with local SEO is to claim your business on "Google My Business". The first important search engine-marketing tip is on-page signals. There are 3 components linked to on-page signals. First, you must have consistent name, address and phone number listings across all citation sites like Yelp, Google My Business, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. Second, the use of keywords in your titles improves your ability to be found in local search. Every page of your website should have your name address and phone number in addition to using keywords that people typically search in your body text. It is a great idea to include your contact details in the masthead of your website or the footer or better still both. Third, the concept "Content Is King" needs to be a top priority for each and every page you create on your website. Google has placed a high priority on this concept and it will help you get ranked on page one. The second search engine-marketing tip that is importat right now is external location signals. Make sure you have the right name, address and phone number across all citation sites. This may seem like a small thing, but it can be a major problem when you are competing against small businesses that do it right. "Google My Business" will list your business once you have established a phone number. The third search engine-marketing tip that will be important in 2015 is domain authority. The first component of domain authority is to make sure you have consistently solid SEO on your entire website and not just on your homepage. The second component is to get higher PageRank websites to link back to your content. The simplest way to achieve this is by making sure you have content that other websites want to reference. The third component is to link to other pages or posts you have created on your website. Internal linking can help boost your rankings on local search. If you own a small business or a local business that needs page one exposure on the major search engines in 2015, you will need to be dialed into the three search engine marketing tips discussed in this article. Your goal is to be found on page one of every search engine for local search. If you make sure your on-page signals, external location signals, and domain authority are spot on, you will win.

It's not enough to just have email marketing in place - you need to make sure you do it as well as possible. A quick Google search will show you that hundreds of people are out there giving it a shot on a regular basis, but if you're even remotely serious about making a profit with an affiliate marketing campaign, you want to put your own strategies into high gear. So, without further ado, here are 5 highly successful tips that I've been using for the last few years to turbo-charge my email marketing campaigns. 1. Brevity and the Hook It's no secret that people these days have less patience than any other generation in history. They're used to seeing what they need, absorbing what they can from it and moving on in a matter of seconds. The average piece of text has between 3-10 seconds to hook a reader and an email has, at most, 51 seconds to make its point. That's not a lot of time. So, an email newsletter is not the time to write an epic report on the advantages or value of any given tool you may have developed or an article you wrote. To start with, you need to hit your readers with a powerful hook. The place to do this is both in the subject line and in the first line of your email. Too many people assume that a powerful subject line is all they need, but the subject line only gets someone to open the email, not read it. Then, use a hook that speaks to the needs of your reader. Questions, bold statements, or lists of valuable topics can be good hooks, but the simplest and most successful method is simply to state how the email will benefit them. On top of capturing attention, don't expect to be able to hold it for more than a minute. Keep your message short - less than 400 words and oftentimes much shorter. With a webpage, you can use images and links to hold attention, but in email, text is all you get and it needs to be brief. 2. Make it Scannable Along the same lines as brevity, you need to make sure your messages are nice and scannable. This should be easy enough - it's the same rule you use for your landing pages. The good old fashioned wall of text doesn't get the job done in the modern world of short attention spans. Use short lines, line breaks, and hyphens to break up text. Here's a good example for you: Dog training is no walk in the park. You're probably ripping your hair out right now trying to figure out how to get your dog off the couch or away from your trash. But, it doesn't need to be like that. It starts with taking control of your dog - being the alpha leader and holding their attention long enough to instil confidence. First, you need to create a pack structure in your home. Then, you need to develop a training routine to show your dog how to respond to your commands. Then, you need to be persistent. Click here for my free report on finally taking control of your house as the alpha leader. This wall of text is full of information, but someone just scanning their email might completely miss it. Here is how it should look with the right formatting: Dog Training is No Walk in the Park You're probably ripping your hair out right now trying to figure out how to get your dog off the couch or away from your trash. But, it doesn't need to be like that. It starts with taking control of your dog - being the alpha leader and holding their attention long enough to instil confidence. 1. You need to create a pack structure in your home. 2. You need to develop a training routine to show your dog how to respond to your commands. 3. You need to be persistent. Click here for my free report on finally taking control of your house as the alpha leader. It's broken up, the headline is underlined and the key points are numbered out to see exactly what the reader will gain by clicking on that link. They can scan it in a few seconds and decide whether to read the whole thing or click on the link. 3. Active, Action Oriented Voice I can't count how many newsletters I've read with passive, boring voice. If you plan on telling someone to do something at the end of your emails, you need to keep the voice active, pumping energy into your writing. What do I mean by active voice? Here's an example. The first one is a passive voice You will want to spend time trying to teach your dog to respect you. Now, look at the exact same sentence with active verbs Train your dog to respect you. It's that simple. Instead of all the qualifiers and wishy-washy sentences you go straight to the point and share an action your reader can follow. This way, when you say "visit my site", it appears more natural and they're primed to follow your lead. 4. Enough Content...But Not Too Much Email marketing is a tricky business because it needs to be full of useful information, but too much can water down whatever you're trying to sell. My usual advice here is to provide a single, tangible piece of advice in every email you write. This ensures that you always have a piece of valuable information, but not so much as to overwhelm your readers or dilute what you're selling. It also ensures your messages are never too short. Sure, they need to be less than 400 words, but 150 words is too short if you're trying to offer sound advice. 5. The Call to Action Every single email you write should have a solid, powerful call to action. I know what you're thinking - "but I thought I wasn't supposed to hard sell in every email". I'm not talking about hard selling. I'm talking about a call to action. Not every call to action needs to say "buy me". But, every email needs to elicit some reaction from your reader to keep them engaged and prepare them to make the big leap when you finally do say "buy me". Examples I've used before include calling someone to return to your blog for a long article that wouldn't fit in an email or having them visit a news site to read about a niche related topic. You could also call them to take action on a particular piece of advice you wrote in an email, or solicit them to keep reading and check for your next email in X days. Marketing via email is an extremely powerful tool. But, it needs to be done in a way that speaks to the needs and desires of your readers. They're short on time, limited in patience, and only willing to do so much at your command. So, be brief, make it scannable, provide value, and always give them a tangible action to complete. I can all but guarantee that if you do that, you'll see higher conversion rates and lower unsubscribe rates

Publishing fresh content on your sites on a regular basis is important for bringing new and returning visitors to your sites. With the new Schedule Blog Post capability, you’ve got a content management tool built right into your blog. Use it to set up blog posts in advance, so you can plan your content strategy, manage resources, and keep your sites filled with fresh, relevant content. 5 Benefits of Scheduling Blog Posts in Advance 1. Enables you to manage content and plan ahead When you schedule posts in advance, you have one less thing to worry about, because you know the content will go live when you want it to. 2. Easier to maintain a consistent blog schedule Keeping a consistent blog schedule - posting once a day, once a week, or twice a week - is important for any content strategy. By scheduling posts in advance, you ensure that they go live according to that schedule, even when you’re not there to post them. 3. Great for collaborating with team members & freelancers If you’ve got someone on your team dedicated to blogging, this tool enables them to set up several blog posts for a single site, then move on to another site. It boosts efficiency and often leads to better quality content. 4. Post at the best time for your visitors The writers on your team may not be working at the same time that site visitors are reading content. Set the time when you want your posts to go live to coincide with the best time for your readers. 5. Reduce stress during your busiest seasons Once you have a line-up of blog posts set to be published at a certain date and time, you won’t have to write under stress to meet deadlines. Blog writing is an excellent service offering For many of our partners, blog writing services are a great way to increase their service offerings. If you’ve hesitated to do this because of the increase in overhead, this tool can seriously reduce the stress, by enabling you to prepare a content management strategy and stick to it with advance posting. To explore this new capability, open the blog on any site, go to blog settings, and click Schedule post. Available for unpublished posts only.

Retailers in Ireland are migrating online as the outbreak of the coronavirus has fueled ecommerce. Online sales are now a significant part of the retail offering for thousands of Irish companies. That’s what Danny Hughes, CEO of courier company Fastway Couriers, has told the Irish Independent. His company saw an increase in the volume of 70 percent this year. Although most of the growth was from UK shipments to Ireland, there was also a part coming from an expansion of domestic-only shipping. 1,200 new customers for courier company The courier company has added 1,200 Irish business customers to the 3,000 it already has. According to Hughes, most of these companies are transitioning to online sales channels. Some customers even increased their ecommerce shipping by 80 percent. Some Irish businesses increased their ecommerce shipping by 80 percent. Sales are still 15-20% above expectation Starting in March, the courier company saw a significant surge for three months. Now sales have fallen back, but are still 15 to 20 percent above expectation. People are still buying online, as retailers have been promoting ecommerce in light of the pandemic outbreak. Relatively low ecommerce penetration in Ireland Hughes thinks the high growth rates of Fastway Couriers are due to the relatively low penetration of ecommerce in Ireland, in contrast to other markets where it operates, such as the United Kingdom. “Most business-to­consumer shipping in Ireland still originates in the UK, which makes up the bulk of online retail sales we handle here.” Most business-to­consumer shipping in Ireland still originates in the UK. Ecommerce share: 4.4% in August The Irish Independent writes that ecommerce in Ireland fell back nearly to pre-Covid levels in August. This suggest consumers are not fully staying away from physical retail stores just jet. And data from the Central Statistics Office show that the ecommerce share of total retail sales went from 3.5 percent in February, to 15.3 percent in April to just 4.4 percent in August. Reference: https://ecommercenews.eu/irish-retail-moves-to-ecommerce/

We have had the chance to look at lots of websites over the years. While you can't always tell right away why a site might not be selling the way it should... most of the time, you can spot the reasons why right away. There are 3 very common reasons for why sites don't sell and we are going to explore them right now: 1. The targeting is all wrong. You really have to dig in deep and know your audience. You can't take a guess and assume that you know what your audience is comprised of. You have to really dig in and find out. The good news is that it's far easier to do that today than it was just 10 years ago. The bad news is... most folks just kind of do a little bit of superficial research and so... they end up missing their audience by a fair amount. When that happens, you wind up with most of your traffic not really being a good match for whatever it is that you are selling. 2. The offer is not interesting enough. Consumers today have a wide variety of choices for most products and services. They don't have to do what they did in the pre-internet days. Back then, you tried to find the closest location and that was about the extent of your "search" as a consumer. Today, you can have things shipped to you from all around the world. Folks can provide a plethora of services from wherever they are. They don't have to be located close to the consumer. Of course, there are still some services and products where consumers are going to pick the providers nearest to them. But... if your business is selling a product or service that someone doesn't have to be located near in order to buy from you... they have plenty of options. So your offer really needs to stand out and "pop" more than just a little bit. 3. The website's copy is not written to sell. The number of "writers" out there has exploded in the last 10-15 years. Just about anyone can start publishing a blog or whatever on the internet and call themselves a writer. But here's the thing. Not every writer knows how to sell. Website writing isn't meant to win awards, unless the site is a news related site. In a consumer context, website writing has to sell. But it can't be the cheesy hard sell that some folks come up with. No, your visitors are too wise for that. It has to sell while at the same time it also has to be interesting. Engaging. Show off a little personality and have a strong call to action. So when you look at your site, if it isn't selling the way that you know it could be... read your site's writing. And see if it sells or if it just kind a takes up space.