Category: Newsletter Marketing

Local traffic is always more targeted, and thus more likely to result in conversions. That is, consumers will more likely purchase what’s being offered to them. Always remember that you have this great advantage over national (and thus non-locally-friendly) businesses.

If you missed my previous posts about local search marketing strategies, you can find them here and here. After you get caught up, check out the following additional suggestions.

Create a directory—or better yet, a portal—devoted to your location. You can base it on your own site or have it as a separate resource. If your marketing budget allows it, you might want to consider buying such an existing portal. This solution is great even though it takes time and can be costly. It will allow you to drive targeted traffic to yourself easily. And then you can sell to this audience all day long.

Create a newsletter about local news related to your niche, as well as news about your own business. This will definitely increase conversions or revenue. Even a monthly newsletter can bring great results—there’s no need to bother the people on your list too often.

A great idea is to always include your local data in your signatures. And I don’t just mean email signatures, but also in blog post signatures, forum signatures, signatures used when you write articles for external resources, etc.

The web is increasingly moving towards video. People like watching information rather than reading it. So it’s time for you to get involved. Start making videos about your local business, place them on your own site, and also promote them through a good number of video resources available on the web. (A comprehensive list of video-sharing websites can be found here.) By the way, a little-known fact is that video results in the general search results page (SERP) are clicked much more than the text results, no matter what position they take on the page. Little video windows do stand out from boring texts, and that alone attracts people to click on them. (Read more about this fact here.) Because of this, it may be worthwhile to use a solution that posts a video to all major sharing sites at once.

One more interesting trick you can use in local marketing: Offer a locals-only discount. This is especially good if most leads you get are locals anyway. They’ll feel special and that will increase their signup chances for you. When I planned to go to Sea World in Orlando, I was pleasantly surprised that there is a permanent discount to Florida residents. Of course, I purchased the tickets right away.

More strategies are coming soon! Until then,

Shavkat Karimov, Internet Marketing Manager, mobileStorm
“Every problem comes with a solution”
SEO Consulting

The success of link building depends on who is doing it and how it is done.

First, you need to understand the purpose of link building. Many non-professionals don’t build links because they just don’t get the point. Some people may think that optimized links in their content can be unnatural or disturbing for readers. This might be true, but it depends on how you do it. The links will be a natural addition when they help readers to explore a subject further.

One should understand that he/she is giving additional value in the form of external resources when readers want to learn more. At the same time, links save time for readers who don’t want a lot of information on one page. Links also help other pages on your site, and external sites with worthy content, rank high and be found by real people. They help the Web to be more organized for us all. Links are vital for SEO (search engine optimization)–they help the promoted page to rank high for its keywords and to be found by those looking for it. Link building is essential to increase anyone’s web presence.

It’s not just about sending out templated emails and sometimes responding to the replies. Moreover, we all should understand that spam is evil. There are plenty of ways to gain natural links from related pages, without getting on people’s nerves.

Link building requires some technical skills (to insert the link codes, for example) as well as extraordinary search skills (to find strong link partners for automated or manual link submissions).

A good link builder is the one with a “good eye.” This person is able to see the link value of certain pages within the enormous pile of worldwide Web information. Ideally this person will have wide interests,  is versed in hundreds of subjects, and is capable of identifying a great link partner on-the-spot.

Link building requires a creative approach. While everyone knows the rules, only those with original moves and strategic vision can outrank others.

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I’m a maaan, baby!

At least, in my writing I am.

The other day I came across an application called Gender Genie, which allegedy can suss out if a writer is male or female by studying a piece of writing . I tested several of my own samples, from this blog and others, ranging in topic from text messaging to acoustic music. And every time, the software declared, “The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: Male!” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.

Luckily it’s OK to be gender-neutral when writing about marketing technology or underground music. In these cases, knowledge about the subject, and the ability to make it easy to understand, are more important than whether the “voice” is male or female.

But I got to thinking that the Gender Genie could be a useful tool for other copywriters. It could help them make sure content is tailored to the intended audience. That’s something that marketers, especially, must worry about when creating copy–even for websites and SMS/email marketing messages. Recipients sign up to receive the latter; if they don’t feel like these notices speak to them, they will cancel their subcriptions.

My experience with the writing algorithm reminded me of jobs I’d applied for long ago. Gigs for which I was more than qualified, and which were in the city where I lived, meaning it would cost the company nothing to bring me in for an interview. I never got my foot in the door. These positions were at places like gossip websites and mid-scale cosmetic vendors–that is, businesses that catered almost exclusively to women. The person writing lipgloss ad copy or catty celebrity news would likely need to have a certain type of female voice. And according to Gender Genie, that is not me!

Certain marketing experts, especially those selling a product that only appeals to a certain demographic, should see how they can tweak their marketing copy to really speak to that audience. Now, I don’t think Gender Genie is all that. I mean, it categorizes the very common word “a” as male! But since it’s fun to use, copywriters might as well make it one more tool to help craft the tone of their content.

I ran this post through the Gender Genie one more time–and once again, I scored far more male than female. In that vein, I’ll just say: D’oh!

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”

This article kicks off a series of posts on website usability. While SEO is great to bring people to your site, WU (website usability) will make sure they enjoy their stay and don’t leave right away.

By focusing on WU, you will greatly increase conversions and sales since users always return, and will refer others to your site. You’ll also experience other positive side-effects when you show visitors that you care about their user-experience on your website.

Website usability includes almost all aspects of your site’s structure, design, programming, forms, scripts, layouts, and navigation. WU is closely attached to SEO; I am confident that many of its elements are built-in within search engine algorithms as ranking factors for websites. The more you take care of these elements, the better your rankings will be in the search engines. Note too that WU is more about converting the traffic, rather than just attracting it.

The first thing to do is to answer these three initial questions: What is the goal of your website? Who this website is for (target audience)? What are your resources?

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Universal search is here. Regular Internet users are enjoying it without even noticing that sometimes, along with the normal text results, they see links to news stories regarding their query; related images and videos; and even blog posts and books about what they were searching for. This is what universal search is about. It brings results in all different shapes and forms, thus making the life of a searcher easier.

Would that simplify the life of an SEO expert? Of course, not—everyone will have to become wiser about using optimization and link building techniques for not just textual content pages, but also for videos, images, blog posts, press releases, and books. We now need to expand our skills and be able to optimize external pages and objects that will eventually bring us traffic and leads. We need to expand our expertise to other fields and fight for rankings with all these forms in the SERPs (search engine results pages).The competition now isn’t the first ten places of text results on the first page. Now, it might be just four or six text results, plus image, news, or video results.

Other search engines besides Google are trying universal search. Yahoo’s cool-looking Alpha Beta is a strong competitor. Live.com and Ask.com are implementing universal search as well.

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Most sites have a “links page”; you have probably seen it many times. It links to other resources on the Internet considered useful or relevant, or with which the site exchanged links. However, most of the links pages out there are done wrong. Completely wrong.

Why? They just list sites. That’s it. It’s a very long list, and the sites listed are sometimes irrelevant and useless. Because of this state of things, I’d like to offer tips on how your links page can be modified to look natural and be useful.

First, never actually call this page “Links.” Don’t even use the word—it’s a red flag for Google. Call it “Resources” or, because the latter word is also quite overused, come up with something else, like “Web Map,” “Online Center,” or “Interesting Sites.” Even better is to call it by the name of your niche and adding the word: “sites”, “resources” or “websites”; for example, you can call it “Digital Marketing Sites.”

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There are continual discussions on the web about whether directory submissions are useful for SEO. I’ll add my thoughts to the mix: I think directory submission is a good strategy that should be a part of any SEO campaign. If it’s done right, it will get you rewarded with higher ranking and better traffic. Now let me explain why:

First of all, every good link counts. Directories’ links to your site are good because your link is placed under its own category among other links; the links you get from directories are related to your website. Of course, you shouldn’t submit to some FFA (Free-For-All) “linkfarm” directories—having your link there might even harm your site. Only submit to authoritative and reputable directories, like Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ, Business.com, Kahuki.com, BizFive.com, etc.

All these directories, except DMOZ, are not free, but in my personal opinion paid directories give many more benefits than free ones. The have less links in their databases, that’s more value for you; the sites they contain are in most cases good-quality sites, making these directories “good neighborhoods”; and they do care about their reputation, so you are in good hands.

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This is the final chapter on ideas for getting easy links. Let’s get into it right now! Here is what you can do to get more links:

Leave creative signatures with your inner links in the forums where you are active, if they are appropriate for showing up on your site, and also add the links to your personal profile page on the forums. If you make quality contributions to the forums, some of their users might follow these links and even “convert” for you.

Ask and answer questions on sites like Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups, and give some links to your site as a reference or otherwise. Get creative.

Encourage people to syndicate your RSS content; that might result in some additional “link love” for your webpages.

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I talked about link baiting ideas before and now I want to continue exploring this important topic. So, how else can you make links appear without too much hassle? Here are some more ideas to generate more links:

Interview big-time players in your field, real people with blogs. They’d love to link to your interview if it’s done well, and thus you will get quite some strong linkbacks.

Review products and services related to your niche. This method works as effectively as the one above.

If you sell products or services of your own, launch an affiliate program. Most of the links from your affiliates will not have any SEO value themselves—they’ll have unique affiliate IDs in the URLs or will use other identifications—but the added exposure will almost always lead to some regular links.

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In direct mail marketing, a “Johnson Box” is commonly found at the top of the letter. Its purpose is to draw the reader’s attention to the key message first, and then hopefully engage the reader for the rest of the letter. This view is also sometimes referred to as “above the fold,” in reference to printed material such as a newspaper or other folded item.

The Johnson Box/above the fold scenarios have also been adapted for email. Most email clients today offer a “preview pane” in which readers can see the first 20 words, more or less, of the message. These are the first words a reader will see, and will most likely be the words a reader will use to determine whether or not to read the rest of the message. To that end, it is critical that whatever content is used in that portion of an email contains the crux of the message.

Additionally, from an email delivery standpoint, another common practice for email senders is to include in the top portion:

• A message to recipients to add the sender’s address to their address books.
• A link to a web page version of the email.

In one test, response rate was increased by 220% when a sender modified the top of the content as directed above. As responsible senders, it is essential that you use this preview section of your message to your advantage. Doing so it will help to generate more response to your campaigns, as well as subscriber engagement.

Until next time,

Jaren Angerbauer, Director of Deliverability, mobileStorm
Eat Responsibly, Drink Responsibly, Email Responsibly