How To Create a Mobile Friendly Responsive Website?

Choose a Content Management System
Unless you have prior experience building websites, you probably want to use a content management system (CMS) to build your website. There are many options, but you probably want to go with either WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. These are the most popular CMS systems to date, and have a tonne of useful plugins, and templates for beginners.

Create a Website Header
Keep your website header as slim as possible, and test it on small screens to ensure it scales properly.

Outline the Main Site Navigation
It is important that you keep your navigation as simple, and organized as possible. Use drop-downs to group pages under parent tabs, and apply internal linking to navigate to less trafficked, supporting pages through body text.

Create a Website Footer
Don’t underestimate a website footer’s effect on conversion. If your web page’s content is compelling this is where all your visitors should end up after reading the page, so use footer elements to continue the user’s experience.

Create Your Home Page

1. Theater, Carousel or Slider
2. Slogan or Tagline Header
3. Brief Company Description
4. Product / Service Page Links
5. Promotional Materials: (videos, images, testimonials etc) 
6. Call to Action Button

Create Your Contact Page

1. Title: Contact (Company Name) – (Service Area). 
2. Full Contact Details: Address, City, Country, Phone Number, Email, Fax, P.O box. 
3. Map: Google Embed or Custom Design. 
4. Operating Hours: Normal hours and holiday hours. 
5. Email Contact Form: Collect at least: Name, Email, Message.
6. Location Images (Gallery) or Virtual Tour: Check out Google’s 360 tour. 
7. Social Links & Handles: Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat.
8. Leave a Review Prompt: Link to Google Maps, and other Directories.

Create Your Service / Product Pages

• Create product titles, and keep in mind how they will be read in search engines. 
• Add your service area / city in your product titles to help get more local traffic. 
• Create clever product descriptions that answer the following questions: Who can benefit from this product / service? (usage examples) What are the product / service features? (specs and options) How much does it cost? Where can I buy / pay for this product / service? Product / service specs PDF. High Quality product images from multiple angles. 
• Product videos and that highlight key features. Customer reviews / testimonials. Social sharing buttons.

Set up a Company Blog
Company blogs are an easy, and great way to keep your website updated with fresh content! One or two posts a month is more than enough for the average small-medium business.

Install Google Analytics

How to Increase Your Website Traffic by 100,000

If you want 100,000+ visitors, you have to perform tremendous task for next 9-12 months, after one year you may see steady traffic from various sources.

Lets Increase Your Website Traffic Now!

No matter what you think you know about blogging and website support, there is always room for improvement, right? After all, you always wish you can increase your website traffic. If you aren’t already following these 7 simple rules, take a gander and give a lot of consideration to following them. They’ve worked for many successful bloggers, including me, and they’ll work for you, too!

Rule #1: Mood is Everything

Setting the right mood for your article is crucial to a successful blog post. If your reader can tell that the information you are giving them will be credible or useful based on the mood of your blog article, you’ll have a more successful blog post. For example, opening a blog post with the promise that you can help a retailer multiply their sales is much more compelling than one that simply opens with telling them you hope their last big sale was profitable.

Rule #2: Data is Everything Else

To build credibility and establish yourself as an expert, you use data. Whether it’s your own data or someone else’s, if it supports what you are promising or saying, it helps you build the case for what you say. It’s the difference between sound advice backed up by experience and research versus something that was just made up on the spot.

Rule #3: The Hook Brings You Back

The average person’s attention span is a mere 8 seconds. That means you have to snag more of your reader’s attention quickly, like using your headlines. Your headlines are your hooks, and they need to be designed to drag people kicking and screaming, if necessary, into reading what you have to say.

Rule #4: Show Some Love

If you love your readers enough to do just about anything to keep them happy, they’ll reward you with staying with your blog for a long time and support. They’ll comment on your content, share it with the world, and tell everyone they know just how great you are.

Rule #5: Put Your Heart Into It

Don’t just blog about any old thing you can think of. Blog about something that you truly care about, something you can really put your heart into. This will help you write consistently and keep up the momentum that draws readers to your blog. Nothing is worse than a blogger who only blogs once a month out of necessity, instead of out of love. Write about what you love, and that love will help you write more (and get more readers.)

Rule #6: Make a List, and Check It Twice

Collecting emails is essential to successful blogging. This is so true that some blogs out there rely on email for up to 28% of the total traffic to the blog. If you’re blogging, make sure you offer something to entice people to give you their email address, like an eBook or an online course of some sort. That way, you can utilize your email marketing to its fullest potential, pulling in the traffic and ad revenues that you want and need.

Rule #7: Keep it simple, silly!

This rule refers to your vocabulary. Maybe you know the longest words in the dictionary, but most of your readers probably don’t. What’s more, when you use those long words, they feel like you’re talking down to them. Don’t talk down to your readers, or you’ll lose them! Instead, use simple, down-to-earth language that everyone can relate to.

5 Ways to Attract Readers to Your Small Business Blog

So you can write compelling blogs, and you’re up to date on your social content calendar, everything is going dandy, but there is just one thing you’re missing – you need to attract blog readers.

Some people think coming up with fresh topics to write about or finding the time to write regularly is the challenge but actually, it’s getting enough viewers to engage in your post. So much so that people are commenting, asking questions, or your blog has been shared across numerous social networks. That’s what the end goal for your business’s blog should be.

Add a “subscribe” button
If you attracted a reader, why not ask them to come back. Adding a subscribe or signup button gives the customer an option to be updated on your blog is the best way to grow your following.

Ask customers to visit your website and follow your blog
If a customer is showing interest in shopping in your store or visiting your beauty salon, they could possibly be interested in seeing what you have to share online. It certainly won’t hurt to ask!

Have your website appear on your business card and share it with your customers before they leave and simply say, “When you have a chance, take a look at our blog, I think you’d find a few articles helpful when using our products” or something to that effect. People won’t know to read your blog unless they know it exists!

Follow and engage with others in the blogging community of similar interests
Not everyone that would be interested in your blog are customers or buyers. It’s mostly other bloggers and business owners in the same industry looking to network, grow, share likes, comments, follows, etc. Pass by other blogger’s pages and share your comments and likes. For the most part you’ll find they’ll return the love!

Share Blog Posts to Facebook,
But not every post, or you’ll come off too pushy. Every week you should try to post a “highlight” article, perhaps highlighting the best moments or topics shared over the week. This is the kind of post worth sharing to Facebook without flooding your friends pages.

Monitor your Blog’s analytics
Just because there aren’t any comments doesn’t mean people haven’t visited or read the article. Get familiar with your blog’s analytics and see what topics gain the most traction. Follow the trends and post more about what people seem to be interested in.

What are the most important first steps in marketing a new iOS App?

There are a number of pre-launch marketing activities you need to ensure you have done:

Buzz, buzz, more buzz. No hype.
There has never been an easier time to create an online business. But, equally, there has never been a more difficult time to grow one. Build as much hype as you can, you’ll need it.

The most effective pre-launch campaign has got to be the application Mailbox. They absolutely nailed it. I’ve tried to dig deep into the actual activities they did for people reading and I have simplified it into a list for ease of implementation.

These activities are not unique to Mailbox, so test parts of these and see which convert best for you.

Social Media
Grab your social handles. If you can get a decent name for your application on Facebook and Twitter, that’s brilliant. Similarly, to future proof yourself from changes in the social paradigm, keep an eye on new social networks like Snapchat. People will soon find a way to utilise that effectively for mobile app promotion.

Now you’re signed up, get talking. Create a spreadsheet where you pinpoint the influencers in your area and connect with them. Post content related to your product and build reputation. It’s very important to realise that you shouldn’t use social to directly sell your product. You must add value to the conversation that is already happening around you.

Now you have started to create some noise on social, don’t be afraid to put some modest PPC spend behind it.

Join HackerNews/Reddit and start to join and add to discussions which are based on a similar niche to your products. You’ll earn Karma, which means when you eventually come to pushing your content - you have gravitas. This is an interesting post on HackerNews.

Get active and provide brilliant content on other forums and social sites (like Quora) to post on topics related to your product. Again, don’t overly push your content but add real value to the discussions that are already taking place.

Your own blog can become one of your most effective user acquisition channels. Buffer have had incredible success with it and we see a similar trend. Your customers, who are humans, like to talk with humans, not brands. Check out what Buffer have achieved here.

There are many clever/smart growth hacks you can utilise on these social networks to maximise your newsletter sign ups. Mr Ryan Hoover discusses a pretty cool little hack he used here and, of course, I wrote personally about growth hacking on my blog here, which was very well received.

After you have spent some time establishing yourself in these various distribution channels, you can now start to connect the dots. However, even after you have spent time establishing yourself, you must tread carefully. Don’t oversell yourself.

Setup the funnel
One of the most important things you must ensure is installed and tagged correctly from day one is that your conversion funnel is measured. We use Mixpanel here at Tapdaq for our conversion funnel and we think it’s pretty good. Your conversion funnel is needed to continually iterate your product to ensure you maximise the hits you generate on your landing page.

A Guide to Establishing Online Presence on a Budget

Getting started with a new small business can be an upward climb. But, as we all know the view from top is so rewarding. It’s certainly challenging when you have high hopes and goals you want to accomplish; only to realize you’re stuck with a tight budget.

Understandably you want to start making sales, gaining clients, whatever it is you do so that you can grow your budget and do more with your business. How do you get people to seek out your business? How do you get people to notice you?

While posters and handing out flyers might be the first thing you think of, it is a great idea however, since the print and design could get costly and only reaches people in that specific area. With a limited budget you want to extend your reach without spending too much to start.

Here’s how:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is an internet marketing strategy that you will use to be found online through search engines like: Google, Yahoo, or Bing. To optimize your business’ organic search results will be based on how well your SEO strategy considers how search engines work. For example, the content on your website should contain keywords or terms that your targeted audience would be searching. For example, a restaurant in Niagara Falls would would contain content on their website that some way or another mentions key terms like, “things to do in Niagara Falls” or “places to eat by the Falls”.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social Media marketing is an essential part of any marketing campaign. It is one of the most effective ways of marketing, advertising, or communicating with people and potential customers online. An important element of social media is the way people can follow and like your posts further increasing your social popularity online.

Blogging

Invest time into your website by creating intriguing content. Remember the purpose of content is two-fold:

• It is engaging, educational, relevant and timely to the intended audience.
• To ensure Google values the content that you have published by being SEO-friendly, to increase organic search results.

How Blogger Outreach Can Grow Your Restaurant Business

Getting influential bloggers to feature your restaurant on their blog is one of the best ways to promote your business for little to no cost. After all, blogs are said to be one of the most influential digital resources people turn to when making purchases.

Have you ever heard of a “foodie”? It’s not just a person who loves to eat all kinds of foods for fun, it’s a food blogger, a person with an interest in gourmet cooking, blog writing, and photography. The notable ones are those with a substantial following and are desired to be enlisted by other successful restaurants. If you haven’t already, you should get started with a blogger outreach campaign for your restaurant.

Here are tips to reach restaurant bloggers:

Build Connections
Turn to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google + profiles, etc. Search for hashtags #foodie #FoodBlogger #FoodPhotography #FoodForThought #FoodDiary. This may bring up a ton of results but it’s a good start to finding the perfect foodie.

Start following the bloggers that share a lot in common with your brand, like their photos, and share comments. Get to know the types of food and beverages they tend to post about. This is a good way to get on the bloggers radar before formally contacting them.

Take note of the number of followers, likes, or shares the blogger may have. You’ll want to consider reaching out to bloggers that have established a good following. Working with a new blogger could also benefit you both mutually. You could never build too many relationships and connections.

Reach out
Your first contact should be personable, light, and conversational. Keep in mind that influential bloggers get a ton of emails and requests like this often. You’ll need to stand out from the crowd. Start with introducing yourself and tell them a little something about your restaurant.

Start your pitch with inviting them to visit your restaurant, mention some dishes, and beverages you think they’d love to try. Mention ways you both can mutually benefit from connecting.

Follow and engage with others in blogging communities of similar interests
While it is the bloggers role to come up with the content, it is always a bonus to suggest creative new blog ideas.

1. Invite the food blogger to attend a special event: A wine tasting, oyster fest, taco Tuesday, etc.
2. Ask the food blogger to post about a daily menu by inviting them to dine at your restaurant everyday (at no cost, of course). This way, you’ll guarantee a full week of posts by the food blogger, attracting all of their followers to take notice of your restaurant.
3. Share a specialized recipe
4. Suggest a “look-book” for food lovers. Similar to a fashion look-book, but for food. The food blogger could feature their best photography on your featured dishes, cocktails, and desserts.

If the blogger doesn’t show immediate interest, that doesn’t mean they won’t consider it at another time. There is a huge community of food bloggers out there. Just remember to show your personality, share your story, and be unique.

6 Lead Generation Strategies Using White Papers

It’s clear that white papers are a great way to open doors and make the sales process easier. At this point, you’re probably excited about using white papers. Once you have a quality white paper written, it`s time to use it to generate leads. Use these proven lead generation strategies to attract interest from qualified prospects.

Build an email list with your white paper.
Email marketing remains one of the most reliable ways to make sales. There`s just one problem: how do you get relevant prospects to sign up for your email list? There’s a simple solution: offer a free digital copy of your white paper to each person who signs up.

You can then reach out to each person who signs up for the white paper. Pro Tip: Experiment with different services such as the Hello Bar or SumoMe’s Scroll Box to increase the number of email signups on your website.

Introducing a new product to past customers.
How often have you heard the advice – which is absolutely true! – that selling to past customers than gain new ones? Yet many companies fail to make the most of this opportunity. Here’s how white papers help. Let’s say that you’re launching a new product and you think a few past customers would be interested.

How do you start the conversation? Offering a white paper to your past customers is a great move. Psychologically, you’re showing them that you can bring insight and knowledge to the table in addition to your products. This approach is especially helpful if the new product (e.g. a complex marketing application) requires significant background to understand.

Present a Seminar.
Delivering a presentation in front of a live audience remains an excellent way to build a business. How do you come up with what to say? Easy: adapt your white paper into a presentation!

How do you generate leads? On the last few minutes of the presentation – during the Q&A time – tell audience members how they can receive a white paper that summarizes the key points of the presentation. Pro Tip: Not sure where to present about your industry? Review the Association of Association Executives (http://associationexecutives.org/) website. There’s a conference and association for practically every industry category you can think of!

Present a Webinar.
Sometimes you can’t afford the time and effort required to present at a conference. Or maybe you just missed the deadline to submit your conference application.

Don’t’ worry – there’s another approach. You can give a web seminar (i.e. “webinar”) using tools like GoToWebinar. (https://www.gotomeeting.com/webinar/features) to your prospects based on the white paper’s content. For the best results, offer your white paper as a free download at the end of the webinar for those who email you to request it..

Following Up On Networking.
How do people make complex decisions when it comes to making major purchases? According to consulting expert Alan Weiss, referrals from a peer (e.g. one manager to another manager) are the top way to land high value business opportunities. Let’s say that you’re already proficient at networking and meeting new prospects.

How do you stay in touch without coming across as annoying? Add a step to your follow up process where you offer your white paper to prospects. Then, a week or two later, you can get in touch again to discuss the white paper’s findings. For this method to work effectively, it’s vital that you have a detailed white paper that speaks to the pressing needs of your market.

Enhance your Trade show Marketing.
Trade shows offer an interesting sales opportunity. On the one hand, you have the rare chance to meet with hundreds of potential buyers in one location! That’s hours of travel time and hassle saved. On the flip side, you may be seated right next to all of your competitors! That makes standing out from the crowd more difficult.

There’s a way through the noise by using white papers. Think about the tradeshow from your buyer’s point of view – they came here to stay informed about trends and share their insights with colleagues.

Listening to one more sales pitch doesn’t help them look good in front of their boss who paid to send them on the trip. What’s better? Coming back with a white paper – your white paper! – that provides valuable information about the industry.

What you need to know about lead Generation

Lead generation doesn’t matter for every business. Before you invest in lead generation, read on to find out if it is right for your company.

If you’re selling candy at the local convenience store, then you can aim for an immediate sale. Likewise if you sell other low price products like a $2 pen, your customers are ready to make a purchase right when they walk into your store.

If your business sells complex and high price products, it doesn’t make sense to ask for a sale right away. Instead, lead generation is the better way to go.

Let’s quickly define the term lead generation:

Lead generation is a method of “warming up” potential clients to your business and moving them on the path to eventually buying.

Contrast lead generation to retail sales at a store in your city. For most stores, you probably walk in and buy a magazine or chocolate bar and continue with your day. There’s not much of a “warm up” process in that case.

If you sell to businesses or offer high price services, lead generation becomes much more important. Why? Only a few prospects you encounter are ready to make a purchase right away.

What about all the other prospects that have a “passing interest” in your business? Perhaps they visit your website today on a quiet Friday afternoon, read about some of your products and then disappear. That “drive by” visitors could translate into a sale in a matter of weeks or months if you had a lead generation process in place.

Avoid these common Lead Generation mistakes.

No Lead Generation
If you have high prices products to sell, you can’t expect that many customers will be ready to make a purchase when they first meet you. Without lead generation, only “I need it right now!” prospects will convert to sales.

For everybody else? You’ll just have to pray that they remember you when they eventually decide to make a purchase.

No Lead Nurture Process
Let’s say that you are starting to generate leads. That’s an improvement. It’s not enough. Here’s a common scenario: a prospect receives a white paper from you as a gift for joining your email newsletter list.

What happens next? All too often, it’s radio silence… Until you decide to offer a sale or some other promotion. The missing step is a “nurture process” – a series of messages that build a connection between you and the prospect. Example: Prospect receives a white paper explaining the latest challenges in iPhone cyber-security problems.

The nurture process in this case could be a series of five pre-written emails that provide additional examples of cyber-security failures and explain how difficult these challenges are to solve.

The final message in the sequence would incite the prospect to your monthly cyber-security webinar (or to a sales call). By nurturing the lead over time with valuable communications, the lead will become more open to buying from you.

No Lead Generation Experimentation
In business, it’s easy to get stuck using the same method over and over again. If the method is generating sales, there’s some wisdom to using the tried and true. However, the marketplace doesn’t stand still.

Years ago, FAX marketing produced results until the authorities clamped down on that practice. Regulations and competitors are making different moves every day. That’s why you need to include experimentation in your lead generation.

For example, consider using A/B testing on your website to generate leads – test headline A (“Get A Free White Paper On…”) vs headline B (“CIOs – Read This Whitepaper to keep your iPhones secure…”).

Use the 80/20 rule for experimentation – 80% of the time, focus on proven strategies. For the remaining 20% of your time, experiment with different lead generation techniques. Resource: For an in-depth explanation of A/B Testing and how it can be used to increase sales, check out Nick Disabato’s book “The A/B Testing Manual.”

Build A Lead Generation Strategy.

Lead generation is a tested way to increase sales but only if you do it strategically. To create a lead generation strategy, you need to understand a few key facts about your business:

Customer Lifetime Value
Over a two year period, how much revenue does an average customer generate for your business? For example, if a typical customer makes three $10,000 purchases over that period, then they are worth $10,000. Resource: For additional guidance on understanding this importance metric, read How To Calculate Lifetime Value.

Cost Per Lead
How much money (or staff time which can be translated to money) is required to generate a qualified prospect? If it takes a week of full time sales effort to generate a lead for your consulting business, then your cost per lead may be well over $1,000.

Document Typical Sales Objections
Nearly every sales conversation involves objections. Your prospects express a doubt or concern about the product and it is your responsibility to address that. For example if you sell accounting software, a typical customer objection may be that the software may not meet the customer’s cyber-security requirements.

Document Your Sales Process
Using three recent sales as a reference, write a one page summary of the steps you go through with each sale. How many phone calls does it generally take? In the case of B2B sales, also take note of how many different people you have to meet during the sales process.

Questions to ask.

What lead generation processes does my business have in place?
At one end of the spectrum, you have a basic process like handing out a business card at a conference and “hoping” the prospect calls you. At the other end of the spectrum, you have content marketing assets like white papers and a fine-tuned nurture process.

Do I have a reliable process to communicate with prospects?
A reliable process means that you know approximately how long it takes to guide a lead from walking in the door to making a purchase. Remember that larger purchases typically take more time to build trust. In the airplane business, the sales process typically takes over a year from beginning to end.

If your sales staff are currently manually nurturing leads (e.g. calling them once a month), it is still important to have a systematic process in place. Ask your sales staff to track their engagement with prospects and report to you on a monthly basis on the success of their activities.

How can I earn permission to stay in touch with prospects over time?
Permission to stay in touch is important. Otherwise, your prospects may mark your messages as SPAM.

The best way to earn permission to stay in touch with prospects is to use a double opt-in email marketing system. Email marketing providers like ConvertKit, Aweber and MailChimp make this easy.

10 Social Media Posts Ideas to Keep Your Small Business Internet Presence Fresh.

Many small businesses find a lot of value in building their internet presence through social media. It gives them a way to share a side of the business that is not all about products and promotions. The best way to establish and strengthen your brand is to share the story that comes with it.

Humanize your business, put a face to the name, and tell people what there is to love about your work besides the features and benefits. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap-chat give you the tools you’ll need to tell your story from a personal perspective.

Check out these 10 Social Media Posts Ideas to Keep Your Small Business Internet Presence Fresh.:

1. Post in real-time
People are now breaking news in real-time before it becomes official news. It’s no wonder Snapchat is an ever-growing trend. Remember, your posts don’t have to be directly related to your products or services however, what you share should “talk” around your brand. Embrace the rise of real-time social storytelling!

2. Engage With You User
Share articles and interesting finds from all over the web, whether it’s an image, a how-to guide, current news, etc. Again, it doesn’t have to be about your business, it can be anything that speaks for your brand or has something in common with it.

3. Create a Contest
Who doesn’t love the feeling of winning? Host a contest on Facebook or Instagram and offer your followers a chance to win something enticing like a free product or service. Encourage your followers to “Like”, “Share”, or “Comment” to increase their chances of winning.

4. launch a New product
From time to time, you can post about new and exciting developments like, new products, flavours, styles, and more. These posts can be of a promotional nature if you’re introducing fresh new content.

5. Use Multimedia
It’s no secret that multimedia gains more traction and engagement than even the most insightful articles. Boost your social voice with interesting images, memes, and real-time videos.

6. Use Hashtags
Use hashtags to link your posts to people who share similar interests. #seo #google #googleseo #localseo. Online resources can help you Find trending hashtags in your area and industry.

7. Share tips, how-to guides, and DIY projects
People are always searching the web for new ways to be inventive and creative from home. Did you know you can learn to be a professional makeup artist from YouTube? Or how about learning to change your own car battery? Show up in search results by sharing this type of content.

8. Occasional offers
Offer your customers discounts or promotions from time to time however, do this without coming across as too promotional. As much as people enjoy getting a good deal, they also don’t like seeing it flood their news feed. In fact, turn to influential bloggers with a substantial following and who you believe would speak strongly for your brand. Ask them if they’d like to feature your business and your current offer to their followers. Share their blog post on your business page!

9. Share customer photos
A strong online reputation is important for all businesses and what better way to build on your reputation than with popularity. If your customers are posting about their recent purchase from your store, share their post! It not only shows your business is desired by others but it inspires trust. Every time a customer proudly shares something about your business, think of it as another positive review.

10. Poll
You can create a poll directly from your Facebook business page. Ask for your customers opinions and you may even be surprised with some of their answers. If you own a restaurant, ask your customers what soup of the day they prefer? Or what they prefer a cocktail, beer, or wine with their dinner.

Believe it or not, social posts may turn out to be your most effective marketing strategy for your small business. Keep in mind, you wouldn’t post the same material to every social platform as each has it’s own tone and environment. Learning how to effectively fit into each social environment is key to social success.

How can I get readers for my blog?

Use Social Media
Social media can be a very effective way of getting the word out about your blog. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram etc can be brilliant at driving traffic.

Just posting your blogs onto social media won’t work very well. Using social media to promote your blog means you will need to put in some time to create genuine and thoughtful posts and connections.

Guest Posting/Blogging
Contact sites you feel you could write a great, interesting post for that would interest their readers. Contact the editors of those sites with a personal, engaging and unique message complimenting them on their site and pitching some ideas for articles.

Make sure you make it clear why you think you can add value to their readers with your guest post. The more information you can provide about what you plan on writing the more likely you are to get a positive response, it’s all about making it as easy as possible for them to make a decision.

Commenting and Connecting
Another great way of promoting your blog is to comment on the blogs of others in a similar niche (but not in direct competition with you). Like and comment on their blogs, offer to link to them (or even better, DO link to them and alert them you’ve done it).

After a period of time of interacting directly, post an article into the comments of one of their most relevant blogs with a link to your article and an explanation of why you think they will find it interesting. The link may not be a “do follow” but you’ll be presenting your blog to an audience who is already reading the kind of content you offer.

1. Create compelling unique content that fosters growth: contests, reviews, controversy, etc. "Link bait" 
2. Link from your posts to other blog posts. Not other websites, not other blog homepages. Link to blog posts which often automatically link back to you while pinging the author to which you are linking.
3. Post to Twitter
4. Post to Facebook
5. Post to G+
6. Comment on a bunch of commentluv blogs so people can see your recent post.
7. Deep link to other bloggers posts so they will be sent trackback notifications, getting them to your site might get it mentioned elsewhere - engaging with other bloggers is the best way to get your content promoted.
8. Mention other people and products in your post and send out tweets letting them know they were mentioned.
9. Get guest bloggers who will often promote the post to their audience (ex / current journalists have a healthy audience).
10. Send an email newsletter to your list with a personalized intro and a link to the blog post (I use MailChimp it's great).
11. Go into forums that are are active in and look for threads that your post relates to, if rules permit reply with a link to the post.

How To Find Out How Much Traffic a Website Gets

There are numerous reasons you might want to find out how much traffic a website gets. Perhaps you are interested in researching websites that compete in the same niche as a website you own. Maybe you are considering starting a new website, and you want to research the niche to see if there is enough interest in the topic for your new website to be viable. Perhaps you want to grow the traffic to a website that you own. Maybe you’re curious about how much traffic some of the big media publishers’ websites get.

When I visit a website for the first time, I don't look the design; look at something else. In less than few seconds, I get a estimate of how much traffic that website gets which helps me decide whether or not to stay.

Knowing how much traffic a website gets help me validate the website’s content and let me know how much traffic I need to get to see similar results.

Here are My 7 favorite techniques for figuring out how much traffic a particular website gets.

1. Alexa
The Alexa Ranking isn’t exactly “little-known,” but it is the best-known metric for ranking websites. Alexa tracks stats for everyone who has the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser, which accounts for less than 1% of internet users. So it’s not very accurate, but it’ll give you a rough idea of the website’s popularity.

• If you use Chrome, install the Alexa Extension.
• If you use Firefox, get the Alexa Add-On.
• If you use Internet Explorer, switch to Chrome. If you insist, you can download the Alexa Toolbar.

Alexa data is not completely accurate, because it involves flawed methodology. Alexa ranks websites based on how much traffic they get from users who have chosen to install the Alexa toolbar. Alexa toolbar users are a small minority of website users, which makes the data somewhat skewed. However, basic Alexa data is free to the public and easy to obtain, and it does give you insights you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

2. Compete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of U.S. visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites.

Based on checking my sites and Income Diary, the “Unique Visitors” stat that it generates is much lower than the actual traffic.

3. SimilarWeb.com
SimilarWeb is another website traffic checker that’s similar to Alexa and Compete, except, it’s got a lot more detail put into it, so it’s more accurate!

The main takeaway is that it gives you a line graph with values for the number of daily unique visitors and the sources. You can see the countries that your traffic comes from, top referring sites, the top destination sites (sites people visit after yours), display ads, audience interests, and up to 10 organic keywords with the free version.

4. comScore.com Reports
comScore is an American global media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to many of the world's largest enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers.

Comscore publishes a number of different traffic reports. Their reports tend to cover only the largest publishers, and they include metrics by country for websites with the highest traffic numbers. This can be useful if you are interested in learning about how much traffic the most prominent websites on the Internet are generating.

5. Traffic Estimates by TrafficEstimate.com
This free resource gives you a bunch of data in one place, although some of it is inaccurate. You’ll be able to find out some basic Alexa rankings, keyword phrases the website is targeting, other websites targeting similar keyword phrases and websites with close relationships.

If you’re researching smaller or newer websites, you might not get any results from this tool. The closely related websites report is flawed; in some cases it does find closely related sites, but in other cases the sites it shows are all unrelated.

6. quantcast.com
Quantcast is an American technology company, founded in 2006, that specializes in audience measurement and real-time advertising.

Quantcast offers you a multiple opportunities to discover a website’s traffic measures. If you are interested in finding out metrics for your own website, you can subscribe to their services to receive detailed insights.

Quantcast also offers website owners the choice to make selected analytics data publicly available. Many website owners take advantage of this because they think it benefits them to show potential advertisers their site’s metrics as verified by an unbiased, trusted third-party source. So you can check to see if the website you are interested in researching has a public Quantcast profile available.

7. searchmetrics.com
The Searchmetrics Suite for enterprise companies is the global leader in SEO marketing and analytics, SEO optimization, social and content marketing.

Similar to SEMRush, Searchmetrics will show you the organic search visibility for a website and also some of their top keyword terms.

Unless the owner of the website reveals exactly how much traffic they’re getting, every other figure is a best guess. Most tools are surprisingly inaccurate when it comes to generating stats. They are good, however, for comparing yourself against others.

Do you know of any other ways to figure out how much traffic a website gets?

How To Increase Organic Traffic From Google To Your Blog

Traffic is one of the most common issue every internet marketer and website owner concern about. If you are an website owner then you definitely want people easily find your website or blog on google rather than your competitors. And when they find and land on your website, depending on the traffic source we called it Direct, Organic, Paid and Referral Traffic.

What is Organic Traffic?

"Organic traffic" is traffic that comes to your blog as a result of search engine natural/free/unpaid search results. When a search engine like google returns its search results, it usually gives us two type results: organic and paid.

Organic search results are the webpage listings that most closely match the user’s search query based on relevance, also called “natural” search results. Paid results are basically advertisements — the Web site owners have paid to have their Website display for certain keywords, so these listings show up when someone runs a search query containing those keywords.

So when anyone click your webpage link from the search engine “natural” listings and reach your website, your website get a organic traffic.

How to Increase Organic Traffic From Google?

So, you want to get more organic traffic from google to your blog?

all you have to do is make sure your blog is displayed in google organic search results. Everyone wants to achieve higher google organic rankings, That’s because google organic search traffic is a proven.

The only trouble is, SEO keeps evolving, and no-one wants a penalty because of practicing the tricky methods. Google has been rolling out updates, ranging from Panda to Penguin to Google EMDs (exact match domain names) and just recently, the (PBN) Private Blog Network deindexing updates to prevent search spam.

So what I'll do to increase my blog google organic ranking?

I'm not going to suggest you to hire SEO Professionals, instead I would suggest you to do it yourself. Whether you’re an internet newbie or expert, the following actionable tips will increase your blog google organic ranking:

Focus on 'long tail' keywords

Long tail keywords are phrases which can be very specific to your business. For example, if you blog about office cleaning and janitorial service in Toronto, trying to target ‘cleaning Toronto’ will have high competition levels from other blog and achieving a high google organic rank for this keyword will be difficult.

Instead, aim for long tail keywords which relate to a specific product or service, e.g ‘office cleaning service in Toronto’. This is more likely to target searchers who are using specific search terms to find the exact service they need. These specific, or niche, long tail keywords tend to have low competition levels and are therefore easier for your blog to gain high google organic ranking.

Consistent and Fresh Content

If you’ve decided you want to dedicate time to your blog, then it’s vital to make sure you are able to do this consistently. If you have written 5 blogs then don’t publish these all at once; instead, stagger them regularly across several weeks. Google rewards content which is fresh and provides useful information for users. Plus, regular blogs/articles positions you as a credible resource and enhances the authority of your website.

Create Valuable Content

Content, is ultimately what every user is searching for – in some form or another. It may be articles, video, wikis, blogs, or other social media, but it is all content, and the Useful and informative of it you have, the bigger your slice of the Google pie will be. If you have More valuable and useful content than other sites for a given search keyword, which site do you think Google is going to send its organic traffic to if its desire is to give the user the best results and experience possible? to your website.

Google is always going to remain committed to providing the best experience that it possibly can for users, and if your content is deemed as ‘low quality’ by Google, then its ranking will drop as they will see it as being of no use to their search engine users.

The key to creating a great website is to create the best possible experience for your audience with original and high quality content. If people find your site useful and unique, they may come back again or link to your content on their own websites. This can help attract more people to your site over time.

Ethical Link Building

There has been a lot of chatter about link building following Google’s crackdown on the spammy links which previously dominated SEO. Keep in mind when you build links for your blog:

• Avoid spamming 
• Aim to provide value to users of the sites you want a link from 
• Provide links to content relevant to the site you want a link from 
• Prevent stuffing the anchor text with lots of keywords 
• Avoiding being too promotional on Social platforms 
• Aim to contribute

There are many ways of finding ethical link sources around the web, here are a few different types of websites that could provide a link opportunity:

• General directories 
• Local business directories
• Bookmarking websites
• Social websites
• Reach out to related bloggers to write about your blog
• Participating on related community
• Answer question on Q&A sites like quora
• Write Guest Posts

You can also assist in effective link building without the help of any other sites, simply by building internal links within your own website. If you are creating content about a specific aspect of your business, then link to the related page(s) within your site. This shows Google that what you are talking about is relevant and can encourage visitors further into your site.

Pay Respect to Google Webmaster Guideline

Some people think that they are clever enough to outsmart Google. But they’re not. Though underhand tactics can gain momentum for a site, this is always for the short term. Google inevitably finds out, punishes your site and you end up in a far worse position than you were in initially. Dedicating time and planning to a well thought out SEO Strategy will see your blog reap the rewards in the long term.

Optimize for your Blog Reader not for Search Engine

To do everything you possibly can to improve your website’s SEO, optimisation needs to be a priority when you create, edit or update any of your content. This starts by writing meta tags for each page of your site which gives search engines a clear description of the content on each page. The most important meta tags are meta titles and meta descriptions.

Optimize your blog post title
The title provides a short description for each page which tells the search engine about the content of the page – this should contain keywords as near as possible to the start of the descriptions.

Optimize your blog post description
Descriptions are for search engines too, but they also provide info to users about the content within each page. This is your chance to entice search engine users to click through and browse the services or products that you have to offer.

Try to Lower your Blog Bounce rate

As usability is at the heart of Google’s SEO practices, their algorithms monitor how long users stay on a site – widely known as a website’s ‘bounce rate’. A high bounce rate indicates that the page didn’t contain content that was relevant to the user, or that the page offered a poor user experience. You should continue to strive to keep your website's bounce rate as low as possible by identifying factors which could be causing your users to leave your site.

Make the most of Google's Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner provides a fantastic starting point for businesses that want to find out which keywords they should try to rank well for. Google’s Keyword Planner was originally created for their AdWords users, but you can still use it without paying to advertise.

Simply type in some key phrases that you think your customers will use to try to find you. Google’s Keyword Planner will deliver a list which details the number of monthly searches for these terms, as well as the competition level for each. This helps businesses to identify the most beneficial keywords to target throughout their content.

Find and Get involved in related online community

Providing useful content to your online customers cements your authority within your company’s niche. Invite your online audience to ask questions and provide feedback to gauge opinions about the products that you deliver. Not only does this give you an insight into what your potential customers think and what they want, it also gives your website authority within Google rankings as you are providing what users are looking for – useful content.

Get Social

Social signals are already impacting Google Organic Rankings and many industry experts believe that will only increase. In a study conducted by Searchmetrics, seven social media activities ranked in the top eight factors that contributed towards SEO – particularly Google Plus.

Constantly Test & Optimize

You’re not quite done yet! The web is a living medium, and it’s never too late to better optimize your blog and content. There is always room for improvement, so don't be afraid to test and make changes in your blog. You would be surprised at how the smallest change can often result in the biggest change.

That's a pretty good start covers tactics that can help you increase your blog google organic ranking and traffic. Hope you find this post helpful.

5 Objects Your Business Should Be Tracking

There are tons of valuable stories in the data about your brand. Stories that can inform you about how your brand is perceived by the public. Stories about what your potential customers really need. Stories about how your competitors connect with the marketplace.

No matter how big or how small your business is, there are data sets that you should be tracking on a regular basis. This article will highlight what your business should be tracking, and how that information can be tracked.

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is simply an indication of how well known your business is in your industry and in the general public. Tracking this important information can be tricky and is often difficult to place a value on. Although it is important to gage how you brand is growing over time, awareness is only indicative of business potential and not a particular sales conversion in itself. For this reason, many brands don’t spend time and resources tracking what they consider to be a soft metric. But without awareness, there is no further potential for business. Brand awareness is what gets the ball rolling.

Tracking Brand Awareness

• Growth of social following is an indication of awareness. Digging into the specifics of who is following your brand is an indication of how you rate within certain niches. Are your followers really potential customers? Are they useless bot accounts? Don’t simply count heads and call it good for brand awareness, determine who exactly is becoming aware.
• Growth of searches for branded terms is also an indication of awareness. Keep track of how you rank for your branded terms on both desktop and mobile. Depending on you business, even though mobile visitors might not convert, mobile traffic on branded terms may indicate people in research mode. Dig deeper to understand how people get to know your brand.

Reputation (Brand Sentiment)

Any brand that has had issues with maintaining a good reputation will tell you very quickly that negative brand perception will have a negative impact on your ability to do business. The flip-side of that coin is that when there’s lots of positive buzz about your brand, people actively making the effort to sing your praises for excellent service, other potential customers are drawn to your business. It is important, therefore, to regularly monitor brand mentions for both positive and negative sentiment.

Tracking Reputation

• Keep an eye on both tagged and untagged mentions of your brand across social media. This may mean tracking channels that you aren’t active on. Remember to check common misspellings of your brand name when tracking these mentions. Tools like Buzzmetrics, Trackur, Brands Eye, and Nuvi offer a variety of options and price points to fit your needs.
• Keep an eye on what else might show up in search for your brand. Has a seriously disgruntled former employee or customer started a website bashing your brand? What about blog articles mentioning your brand are they positive or negative? It’s not enough to simply track your page rankings for branded terms. You need to watch what the whole page of results may be communicating about your brand.

Competitive Intelligence

Take reputation monitoring a step further by keeping an eye on your competitors. This information will give you insight into where your competitors are successfully spreading their messages. It can also highlight where the gaps in their communications open doors of opportunity for you. Public sentiment about these brands can also guide you to more and better opportunities within your industry.

Tracking Competitors

• While the process is much the same as tracking your own brand reputation in social with both tagged and untagged mentions of your competitors, this is STRICTLY a listening exercise. Do not use this exercise to bash other brands in your space. This information should not be used directly against a competitor in the public eye.
• Make sure that you are tracking how your competitors are ranking in search on the keywords and terms most important to you. Regularly research what other relevant terms may be driving traffic to competitor sites rather than yours.

Community Discourse

People and search engines are becoming more sophisticated about how they interpret online conversations. Those conversations beyond the direct relationship with your brand or your competitors are critical to understanding the deeper needs of customers and advocates. Social listening has evolved beyond listening to conversations about your industry to include other items of interest common to your communities.

Tracking Community

• Time should be devoted on a regular basis to understanding new and existing followers. Sort existing followers into Twitter lists and Google+ circles so that you can get a custom feed from your community. Read and engage with those feeds. When someone new follows your brand, take a moment to add them to a feed and investigate some of the content they’ve shared in the past. Community is more than just how this group gathers around your brand.
• Based on your wider social listening, what sets of keywords can you begin to track and optimize? What are the common terms used for voice search on a mobile device? How well does new content that includes broader community topics drive traffic? Are there co-created content opportunities surfacing in the listening process?

Influencer Authority

A critical aspect of link building is the influencers working to link to your brand. Those influencers need to truly know their stuff and demonstrate that both their social communities and the search engines recognize their relevant contribution on important topics.

Tracking Influencers

• Keep tabs not only on the active social channels and number of followers for potential influencers, but how truly relevant those audiences are to your brand. If a potential influencer has a huge following of cat lovers due to cat memes, your accounting software isn’t going to get much traction with that community even though the influencer is an accountant. How actively does an influencer’s community share content? Do they just consume or do they share?
• How does search-driven traffic stack up to social-driven traffic? Does a potential influencer have the search clout for the long haul or does their influence only last as long as there is social buzz?

All of these data points require tracking and reporting of search and social data. Make sure that you have the tools for the job.