Wordpress SEO and Search Engine Marketing
When it comes to search engine marketing, you can’t beat a web blog, especially a Wordpress self hosted web blog. It’s no secret that self hosted Wordpress blogs can be tweaked to become literal power houses when it comes to Search Engine Marketing.
Web blogs are especially powerful search engine marketing tools, but in order to get the most out of your Wordpress blog, you’ll need to tweak your installation.
Yoast has written a truly inspired The must read article about WordPress SEO. It not only has earned a place in my RSS feed… this article is bookmarked as well. He says it’s his best article yet… I say it’s the best article I’ve seen on the web on the subject!
Marketing Strategies Success Formula
There’s a formula which is used by marketing professionals to illustrate the three basic elements which contribute to marketing and advertising success. That successful formula breaks down successful marketing strategies into three basic components.
Formula for Marketing Strategies Success #1:
Make sure your marketing message gets to the right people.
This strategic step accounts for a full 60% of the Formula for Marketing Success. Getting your marketing message in front of the people who want and need your services is the foundation for marketing success. A great message delivered to the wrong audience is doomed to failure.
If you’re targeting businesses, use this reference to define your target market: SIC Division Structure
If you’re targeting consumers, pick up a copy of Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.
Formula for Marketing Strategies Success #2:
Make sure your marketing message offers the right message to the right people.
Once you’ve got your message in front of the right people, make sure your message makes people want to respond. Do this by speaking directly to their GDP: Goals, Desires and Problems.
Making sure you ask for action and create a message that speaks to your audience’s goals, desires and problems and then ASKS for action is the second most important key in creating a successful marketing strategy.
This strategic step accounts for 30% of the Formula for Marketing Success.
Formula for Marketing Strategies Success #3:
Make sure your marketing message looks the part.
This strategic step accounts for 10% of the Formula for Marketing Success… however it’s where many marketing amateurs spend MOST of their time and effort.
Think of the “creative” or artwork in the same way you’d link of a box in which you’d present a fine piece of jewelry. A fine piece of jewelry in a brown paper bag is still a welcomed gift… but one presented in a padded velvet box with elegant gold embossed lettering makes a much better presentation.
There you have it. A three step formula for Marketing Strategies Success.
Your Blog as a Marketing Tool…. How Far Can Your Blog Reach?
Your blog is a powerful marketing tool which is ideal for communicating with potential customers/ clients and is a great way to increase your marketing message’s reach.
Reach is the holy grail of marketing because it represents the number of different individuals (or households) that are exposed to a particular advertising message over a period of time. The more people who are exposed to your marketing message, the better your chances are of making a sale.
Of course, the flip side of reach is frequency. Frequency is how OFTEN those people who are “reached” are exposed to the message.
When you can raise both of those numbers, you have a marketing WINNER and that is the case for social media marketing tools… such as blogs.
Matt Dickman is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland and he makes an EXCELLENT point in his post:Redefining reach; the new marketing equation
He writes:
One of the ways that I tried to help guide them and explain why social media is so powerful is the following scenario. Look at these two equations and let me know which one has the most benefit to you:
- Message 1,000,000 to possibly reach 100
- Personally reach 100 who influence 1,000 who influence 10,000 who influence 1,000,000
They are two very disparate scenarios, but that is social media in a nutshell. You’re not wasting millions of untraceable impressions on TV, radio and print buys. You’re forming real relationships with people that spread their version of your message along the chain.
It seems pretty clear right? But this is a huge mental leap for most marketing organizations. The new model is about building relationships that grow and spread to new relationships.
Traditional marketing professionals love to talk about reach and in those circles, the message delivered to MILLIONS is of course a better path. However, a marketing message delivered once to one million is MUCH less effective than a marketing message delivered 10 times to an audience of 1000.
That’s the beauty of blogs as marketing tools. An RSS subscriber is someone who is asking to be REACHED FREQUENTLY by your messsage.
Of course, the key element for the business owner using a blog is to respect that invitation to REACH those RSS subscribers with a “to die for” FREQUENCY.
Ask Why…Questions About Blogs and Websites
Why do you want a blog for your business? For that matter, why do you want a website for your business?
A business website, whether it’s coded in HTML or is utilizing a CMS (content management system) such as Wordpress… is nothing more than a tool. Just as a rake does a great job of moving leaves but a terrible job of making holes… your business website can act like a rake or a shovel. You have to know which you need for your business.
That is why used the term “want” above…. because it’s possible that you don’t NEED a blog or a website for your business.
Yet asking the question, “Why do you want a blog for your business?” or the correlated, “Why do you want a website for your business?” reveals much about the structure your business web presence should take.
Both the rake and the shovel are useful tools when working in the garden… but both are lousy as cleaning dirt from floors inside your home.
So why do you want a web presence?
If you want a web presence to act as a way to communicate with potential clients and customers, that’s a GREAT start!
I love blogs. I adore them. I adore how easy they are for non-technical people to use. If nothing else, that is reason enough for ME to love blogs. That’s because for almost 10 years I ran myself ragged trying to piece together pieces of a puzzle for business owners who hadn’t thought to ask the question, “Why do I want a website for my business?”
As a result, the websites I created for these business owners would sit for MONTHS with empty pages which declared that they were “under construction”. Those were pages created because the business owner thought they should be there, but couldn’t provide any content to fill the page.
Which is why I began my love affair with setting up blog sites for clients.
Now, don’t get me wrong… there are plenty of GREAT reasons why you would want to choose a blog over a traditional “static” web site. Those reasons include:
- Self hosted Wordpress blogs are much more search engine friendly.
- Self hosted Wordpress blogs can have a plug in installed which automatically creates an XML sitemap which updates every time you post.
- Self hosted Wordpress blogs are easy to edit… creating new content and editing old content is a breeze.
But probably the BEST reason to have a blog as a website is how EASILY the site owner can not only change content, but also change the appearance of the blog as well.
As I look back on the hundreds of “first” websites I’ve created during my career… I can see that the reason my client was building the website wasn’t clear in THEIR mind.
Today, since clients can add and edit pages on their Wordpress blogs, they don’t feel the need to create empty pages that hinder their communication with their potential clients and customers. When they’re inspired to write about their business… their blog is waiting.
Best of all, what my clients have found is the ability to focus on the core reason they’re in business. I recently had a client who “got off track” in his focus… and it showed in his blog. He got his head back into the game and was stunned at how quickly things turned around for him.
Blogs as business therapy tools…. another reason to love a blog for your business!
Effectively Using Outrageous Acts of FUD to Promote Your Blog
In the online world, Amazon is to retail book sales as Google is to search. Sure, Barnes and Nobles has a significant “off line” presence… but when it comes to selling books online… no one does it better than Amazon. While Google is the 900 lb gorrilla of search, Amazon is truly the 900 lb gorrilla when it comes to online book sales.
Several years ago, Amazon quietly bought a small POD publisher called Booksurge. Recently, Amazon has decided to throw their massive weight behind this acquistion. The WSJ reports:
Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon’s Web site.
The move signals that Amazon is intent on using its position as the premier online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of book selling and manufacturing. Amazon is one of the biggest booksellers in the U.S., with a market share publishing experts estimate to be about 15%.
While Amazon appears to be doing all it can to keep this “off the record”…. they have been “caught” using the tried and true method exploiting FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) to boost their POD sales. Despite the fact that the “threats” have been made over the phone, small POD publishers are standing up and crying “Foul!” As a result, the blogosphere is responding in force.
I posted a list less than 24 hours ago that contained the first 62 responses to this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog in the post Amazon’s Blatant Disrespect of Their Best Customers. In 24 hours, that list has increased 100%. Here’s a link to the new list on Easy Author Web Sites.
Now, as an FYI for my readers of this blog…. the reason I’m not posting the 105 blogs reporting on this story is because most of the “uproar” over this situation is happening in the author/publisher arena. (I also didn’t “trackback” the link above so this post won’t appear in the comments section there.)
That’s one of thing most blogger’s don’t understand about link building. Google wants to see your site “referenced” by other SIMILAR sites. Since the main “topic” of this blog is marketing (thus the domain name… EZ Marketing Tool)… incoming links from other marketing blogs and web sites will “help” this blog. However, incoming links from author and publishing blogs might actually hurt… seeing as though this blog is relatively “young” and hasn’t established its “character” with the search engines.
Now, I did post this story on my Beyond Niche Marketing blog and my Virtual Impax blogs as a way to take the message outside the author arena. However, incoming links from author and publisher web sites will give little if any boost to those blog’s Page Rank. The link storm makes for a nice Monday morning greeting in the “incoming links” message delivered by Wordpress… but in the long run, in the search engine’s eyes… the incoming links to that post will have little affect on either blog’s stature.
Jumping on the bandwagon against acts of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) committed by corporate giants every now and again is GREAT exercise for your blog. It builds incoming links and helps to establish relationships with other bloggers. By taking a little time and compiling a comprehensive list which other bloggers can easily copy and paste into their own blogs, I’ve taken a major step towards establishing the credibility of a blog that is less than 6 weeks old. Admittedly, it took an investment of time to compile the list but so far, the results have been WELL worth that investment.
Oh, I should also point out that I don’t expect to “net” a single product sale from the visitors who come to the blog via this “activism” post. Those people already HAVE blogs which they are using. Definitely not my audience. This is solely a “link building” exercise which is necessary to develop respect from the search engines. These incoming links will help in the long run… as my blog matures and gains a Page Rank.
Why you need to find a niche market
If you look up "niche marketing" online, you’ll find a LOT of marketing "gurus" who will tell you that a niche market is one that has been overlooked by every other business owner on the planet. They’ll tell you that finding one of these secrete niche markets is your key to success and wealth. Just find keywords that no one else is using and VIOLA!
Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work like that.
Lucrative niche markets are those where the audience’s needs are concentrated. The internet allows us to focus on these ultra specific needs. For example, if you have a product or service that appeals to the owners of Cocker Spaniels, the internet allows you the opportunity to target PRECISELY these dog owners.
Of course, you could choose to target ALL dog owners, but if your product appeals primarily to the owners of Spaniels (Cocker Spaniels in particular), then you’ll probably find success in focusing your message on Cocker Spaniels.
Contrary to popular thinking on the net, it’s not neccesary that you be the only one TALKING to Cocker Spaniel owners. What is important is that you TIGHTLY TARGET your message to owners of Cocker Spaniels.
In other words, the key isn’t finding keywords that no one else is targeting, rather you choose a specific market and alter your offering to fit that target’s needs PRECISELY!
Blogs as marketing tools
Blogs are powerful marketing tools. They are one of my FAVORITE marketing tools for my clients for many reasons:
- They are easy to update.
- Clients can add content easily and quickly, without any knowledge of programming.
- The search engines love them.
When you think of marketing in the terms defined by the dictionary, "all of the activities involved in transferring goods from a producer to consumers, esp. including advertising" then marketing can be hard.
If, however, you take the approach that marketing is merely letting people know about the solutions you offer for their problems, then suddenly marketing doesn’t seem quite so overwhelming. And when you start to view marketing as communicating with customers, you can see why a blog is a great way to market your business.
Read more about blogs as marketing tools here.
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