Category Archives: Internet Marketing

The Do’s and Don’ts List for Blogging: Brainy SEO Tips

The Do’s and Don’ts List for Blogging: Brainy SEO
It’s true. Blogging is one of the most effective search engine optimization tactics you can implement. Moreover, once you get the hang of it, it isn’t difficult to do at all. But no matter how easy it sounds, you may still end up not getting the most of it simply because you aren’t completely aware of its dos and don’ts.

Avoid getting yourself in such situation by remembering these do’s & don’ts:

Do: Add keywords in your blog post, but don’t spam.
Keywords still remain the lifeblood of both blogs and websites. Without them, it will be so difficult for you potential audience to find you, especially in search engines. However, you should also learn to put some limits. Keyword spamming happens when a key phrase or word is repeated multiple times in a blog post. You can think about keyword density and prominence, but here’s our friendly advice: write for your audience. Keep those keywords in mind, but make your audience’s interest and potential reaction your utmost priority.

Do: Give your posts a great title.
It’s like trying to pick a nice book in a shop. Unless you have a subject or an author in mind, your possible choice is the one with the catchiest, intriguing title. It’s the same thing with blog posts. You can’t get into first base with your audience if you have a lousy title. It’s okay to be quite mysterious, but make sure it doesn’t border on vagueness. Of course, it helps if you can also pepper keywords right in your title.

Don’t: Be lazy.
Blogging requires a good amount of commitment from you. You have to be consistent. Otherwise, your readers will not appreciate your randomness and settle for other blogs. It doesn’t matter if you post 3 to 5 blogs a week. The most important thing is you can produce almost the same number of posts every time. It may help you, though, if you can come up with themes. For instance, if you have a food recipe blog, Monday may be about meatless dishes; Tuesdays, seafood; Wednesday, poultry; etc.

Do: Allow people to interact with you.
The dynamism of blogging doesn’t stop once you include pictures, audio files, and videos in your posts. It should also extend to your readers’ involvement. In fact, they love to be very engaged with you. So turn off your comments, add some polls, create posts with questions in the end, encourage feedback, and be open to possible guest post.

Needless to say, as the owner of the blog, you should maintain peace and order among your audience. It’s always better to simply turn on your comment moderation tool (just make sure you check comments regularly) and emphasize you don’t tolerate spamming and flamebaiting.

Don’t: be spammy.
There’s really nothing wrong with adding ads, banners, and even Google AdSense in your blog. But too much of them can be so annoying and greatly reduce the power of your blog. Make sure nothing blocks the reading view, menus still remain accessible, and audience doesn’t feel forced to click on your ads.

The The Do’s and Don’ts List for Blogging: Brainy SEO Tips was written by the SEO experts with SkySpark marketing

E-mail Marketing: Etiquette for SEO Practitioners

E-mail Marketing Etiquette for SEO Practitioners
E-mail marketing should be part of your search engine optimization efforts. It is a way of introducing your potential customers into the sales funnel. It is in e-mails you are going to strongly promote your business so you can persuade them to buy your products and remain loyal customers. You can also advertise your keywords and links, as well as increase your traffic through e-mails.

But since e-mail marketing is like going door to door with your goods, you have to remain polite and ethical. You have to know the etiquette in the business, such as the following:

Do not spam.
It is already too much if you are sending two to three e-mails a day. In fact, the best technique is to properly space your e-mails. You can limit your company newsletters to perhaps twice a month. Your regular e-mails may be delivered at least 3 to 5 times a week. If you promised to send an e-mail daily, ensure you only limit it to one.

There are two main reasons. One, you do not want to overwhelm them with a lot of information. Second, you want them to look forward to your e-mails.

Stop hard-selling.
Would you like salespeople begging you to buy their appliances right at your own doorstep? Most definitely, you will shudder with the idea. You already have your first base by being given the chance to e-mail them. Do not let it go by hard selling.

Help your customers make the right decision when it comes to purchasing. Let them know why your products and services are better and, most of all, badly needed. Focus on the benefits rather than the features. Include studies, statistics, and testimonials. Get them through a mini course that will help them understand not only your business but also your niche.

Emphasize this: add your address to your white list.
Immediately after a person subscribes to your mailing list, inform him that he needs to add your address to his white list. This way, your newsletters and e-mails do not end up in the Junk Mail or SPAM folder. It also helps to let him notify his subscription. If he doesn’t receive any notification from you, you can then immediately tell him to check his Junk Mail folder.

Keep your e-mails short.
People don’t have all the time to read lengthy e-mails. Usually they’ll just scan the page looking for something very interesting. If you have to elaborate on something, you can create a page for that and add the link to your e-mail.

Create a good subject line.
Avoid very vague or spam-sounding subjects. You can’t expect them to open your page. Be specific without getting the mystery out of your content.

As much as possible, don’t send attachments.
Many e-mail users are apprehensive about opening attachments, thinking they could be viruses or malware. It’s better if you can already embed the photos directly in your e-mail. If not you can just add a link that points the main location of your supposed attachments.

E-mail Marketing Etiquette for SEO Practitioners | Tips by SkySpark Marketing in Calgary

Facebook SEO 101: Social Media for Search Engine Optimization

Facebook SEO 101: Social Media for Search Engine Optimization
Facebook isn’t only meant for connecting friends and family. The mega-social networking site can also be used for search engine optimization. After all, you can share a variety of multimedia, as well as links that point directly to your blog or website. In fact, your own Facebook page can have a page rank!

But how do you exactly do SEO in Facebook? Here are our tips:

Don’t spam.
Just because it’s your profile doesn’t have to mean you’re going to drown your feeds with a lot of links. Trust us, you’re bound to lose a lot of your contacts. If you can’t help it, limit your links up to 3 to 5 a day. Make sure that you can properly space them all throughout the day so you don’t end up flooding news feeds and your own profile.

Create a fan page.
If you’re using Facebook for business or any type of promotion, it’s best to use its fan page version. This way, you can take advantage of more features. For example, you can create a Welcome page, which may also be your very own mailing list form. You can also be the administrator of your own page and be more in control when it comes to who’s liking your page.

Develop a group.
Going to a much deeper level, to be successful in SEO, you need to be trustworthy. People should find you credible or authoritative, and that all your recommendations are noteworthy. Otherwise, no matter how much you share well-created content, hardly anyone is going to click on your link.

One of the best ways to be considered an expert in your field is to create a group. As the owner, you can then include individuals you think are deserving to be part of your group. Normally, these are your potential market. Make sure you can take the time to answer questions and clear out any issues related to your niche. You should also encourage interactions among members by posting worthwhile links, asking questions, or even creating surveys or polls.

Use keywords.
Yes, you can still use keywords in Facebook. Many are actually using the Search tab to look for a specific information, group, page, or individual. The keyword may be found in your profile name or Facebook URL. You can also pepper some keywords in your multimedia, as well as your status messages.

Upload your own media content.
Get great photos and videos, then upload them in your Facebook. This way, every time someone shares your content, his readers will be directed to your main website or blog. There are plenty of tips on how to produce stunning and well-optimized videos and images online. You can read them for additional knowledge.

Be open for comments.
Another way to engage your friends is to make your page open for comments. Allow them to say something about what you just shared. They may not like everything, but at least you are able to accomplish one of your goals: capture their attention. Just ensure comments remain objective—nothing personal or downright offensive to you or to anybody else.

How to Write Content Search Engines Will Love

Definitely, there’s a long list of tips, tricks, and tactics on how to do search engine optimization. But they are all worthless if you don’t have content.

Content is what people share to others. It contains all the types of information they’ve been searching online. Content drives traffic, increases page rank, contains keywords and phrases, and persuades readers to buy your products or subscribe to your mailing list.

Because of the crucial role content plays in SEO, you can’t do it haphazardly. You need to strategize and know the most ideal steps in creating one:

Begin With The Title

You can never force your potential readers to even click on your content if you don’t have a compelling or powerful title. After all, it’s the first one they see. Titles don’t have to be extremely long, but they shouldn’t be very short either. It must summarize the essence of the article without revealing so many details. Avoid being vague. If people can’t get the meaning of your title, they’d think they will feel the same way with the rest of your content.

Make it Brief

Unless you’re creating content for your e-book or a mini-course, there’s no need to produce very lengthy ones. In fact, you should try to limit your articles to around 300 to 700 words. People don’t just have the time to sit down and read everything you’ve written. Worse, if they see it’s extremely long, they would easily give up without even reading the first paragraph. Going for conciseness will also train you to focus on what’s the most important.

Spread Those Keywords

Since you’re doing SEO, you’re going to add some keywords in your content. The general rule is no spamming. A lot of pundits say keyword density should be around 1.5 to 2 percent only. Regardless, just include them only when they’re absolutely necessary. You may also want to include related keywords in your article. This technique is favorable to you since search engines such as Google like content that sound very natural.

Make Your Post Dynamic

How do you do this? Try to be bolder by adding images, videos, and even some podcasts in your content. You can even do that with e-books and courses these days. These media files break the monotony or the drabness of long content. They can also enhance the power of your message.

You can also optimize them too to further strengthen your SEO efforts. For instance, you can add alternative text for your images and add keywords in your video and podcast description.

Write For Your Audience

Many SEO experts are torn between creating content for search engines and producing one for humans. SkySpark says, go for the latter. After all, it’s not the crawlers who are going to buy your products or services. It’s your audience. If your content is really good, your link is still going to go viral, and you can move your way all the way up to top search engine rankings.

Transform Your E-book into an SEO Machine

One of the best things about e-books is besides being able to earn money from them, you can also transform them into an SEO machine. Simply put, you can create an e-book with links pointing back to your website.

This benefits you in a lot of ways. If your e-book gets shared multiple times, your inbound link also increases. Moreover, you can enjoy an increase in your web traffic.

Nevertheless, there are right ways to optimize your e-book. Here are 5 of the best ones:

1. Use Some Keywords

Since keywords are those that make your e-book viewable in search engines, you should never forget adding the most appropriate ones. If you are finding a hard time knowing what keywords to use, you can always use the various programs including Google Adwords Keywords Suggestion Tool.

Needless to say, never forget to use these keywords in moderation. The last thing you want to happen is for your readers to think you are actually spamming in your own book. Better yet, use a variety of related keywords.

2. Add Your Internal Links in the Pages

Instead of promoting other links, why don’t you use yours? You may want to include in your e-book links that point to some of your web pages, such as your blog. Besides being able to boost your search engine ranking, you can also increase your traffic considerably.

3. Create a Smashing Title

Though it is necessary for your keyword to appear on the title, it is also equally fundamental to come up with a really good e-book title. Whether you like it or not, people are going to initially judge your e-book based on what they see first, which is the title. If they do not like it, you can’t force them to download your e-book and give its internal content a try.

Since titles are very important, take time in creating one. It is advisable to come up with a variety of suggested titles. Ask your friends and family, even e-book experts, to evaluate them. Let them choose which ones they like. You do not have to follow their recommendations, but at least you will have an idea what will possibly work.

4. Make Sure Your Links are Working

One of the biggest mistakes you will ever do is to publish your e-book with links that lead to nowhere. If you are using a word processor such as Microsoft Word, to create a link, you need to find Hyperlink first, highlight the word, and then add your link. Always test your links too, making sure they do not lead your readers to an error page.

5. Create Quality Content

Please do not create an e-book for the sake of having one. If you want to increase your chances of earning money from it, as well as having it shared to a lot of people, give its content utmost priority. Provide information that isn’t usually shared yet or extremely valuable people are willing to download and or even buy it from you.

Video Marketing Made Easy

So how many people are watching videos online these days? Based on a ComScore report in 2010, in the United Kingdom, there were more than 5 billion videos watched. Now, that is only one country. So you can just imagine how many are actually checking out videos on a daily basis and not only in YouTube but also in other websites. In fact, videos have grown so much YouTube is already considered a search engine.

The good news is you can use videos to promote your products and services. A lot of people have already found success just by doing that. Think of Justin Bieber, for example, or BlendTec and its series of videos called “Will It Blend?”

You also can achieve the same status they are enjoying right now, only if you are willing to do the following:

Limit your video. Have you seen TV shows? A lot of them last for only a couple of minutes, 40 minutes max. Otherwise, it gets really boring. If you are creating a video, you should also limit its airtime. A single YouTube video normally lasts for around 10 minutes. If you can cut that to half or even a fourth, then better.

Do not forget your call to action. Sometimes you get too engrossed with the video’s production value you forget the most important thing: call to action. What is your objective for coming up with a video? Is it to convince your viewers to buy the product? Should they call your hotline? Must they anticipate your launch? The call to action should be very clear. If you have someone in front of your video, make him say, “Call us” or “Buy our product now.”

Come up with something ingenious. Seriously, this is the hardest part. How do you come up with a very original, fun, and worth-sharing video? But with a lot of brainstorming and coming up with a strong creative team, it is something that can be done. Here is one good tip: let them feel some emotion. Make them happy, sad, or even angry. The goal is to get into their psyche. Let them be inspired by your video they would love to hear what their friends and family say about it.

Allow embedding of your videos. Now that you have accomplished a video and you have already uploaded it, it is time to let your viewers do the job of marketing. One of the best ways to do that is including your embedding link or code on your video. It is the one viewers have to copy if they want to share your videos in their website or blog.

You can also turn on all those sharing buttons, such as Facebook and Twitter. That would also make sharing your content so much easier for your viewers.

Interact with your subscribers. If you happen to have some subscribers, take the time to be more engaged with them. Ask them questions. Let them look forward to more of your videos. You can even solicit ideas from them.