How to improve SEO – that’s the question everyone is asking now that Panda and Penguin have marked their casualties. While Google figures out its next launch against internet marketers, we need to figure out how to outsmart their next moves. Unfortunately, what follows in this guide will show how much Panda and Penguin spelled death for existing sites, but in a way, what comes in how to improve SEO actually makes things easier for you as the site owner to please Google.
We all know that Google has wanted a good “user experience” for a long time now, and that they value this over how well we formulate our articles, work in backlinks, build anchor text and so forth. But Google has taken it to a new level and has slapped millions of sites that were once thought to be Google friendly and search engine optimized. Now, search engine optimization has taken a totally different look, and in some rather unexpected ways.
How to Improve SEO in Your Blog Posts
One of the biggest improvements you need to start implementing right away in how to improve seo is in the way you write your blog posts. Aside from seeking out keyword phrases for the sole purpose of catching a visitor’s eye in the search results, using keywords anymore for any kind of density or anchor text purpose is pretty much passé. If you’re planning on pandering to Google, you’ll have to first pander to the visitor or customer.
Google now despises it when you use your keyword phrase as your anchor text. So what should you use instead? For some reason, lingo such as “click here” and “read more” will now take precedence over “mac dvd ripper” and “ how to get rid of your acne.” Apparently, Google sees it as less commercial and more like what readers expect to see when they’re about to visit a new page.
Does this make your previous articles – which you spend hours analyzing for keyword anchor text capability – worthless? Perhaps not entirely, but the outlook for existing ones is pretty bleak. Article directories are now deemed of little value for backlinking purposes, and in addition, you certainly don’t want to be posting duplicate content of your articles all over the place anymore, either. So if anyone tells you that in order to know how to improve your SEO, you have to keep using article directories, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
Local mobile marketing takes your regular marketing to a new level.
Mobile marketing is now taking up over a 50% share of online profits in some niches, many of which are IM-related. More people than ever are searching from their iPads and other tablet devices, not to mention their Blackberry phones and iPhones. If your site is not already mobile friendly, you’re way behind the curve.
Local mobile marketing takes a little different perspective than regular mobile marketing. It will obviously be a little bit easier if you’re writing a generic blog about how to get rid of acne that is applicable worldwide than if you’re trying to market a small bakery in San Francisco. You still have lots of competition, but you’re marketing to a much more select crowd.
Local Mobile Marketing Strategies
Coming up with a local mobile marketing strategy takes a little bit of skill, but more than that, it merely requires looking at things from the view of someone on the go. If you’re trying to help someone find your location, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a Google Places page set up with a marker right over top of your business or the driveway to your business. On the website itself (the mobile friendly one, obviously) you need to have easy-to-find buttons for a map or directions, your phone number, hours of operation, and maybe even customer testimonials.
For the visual side, mobile-friendly pictures are always a must. Don’t upload images that take too long to download or that aren’t scaled for mobile use. Nobody likes to sit and see that little spinning icon on the screen when they tap a picture. From a local mobile marketing standpoint, that means death, because they’ll just hit the back button on their browsers and search for someone else with a more navigable site.
Additionally, you can’t have a website with half and half mobile-friendly and non-mobile-friendly pages. You can get a piece of code for your real website that detects when a mobile device is visiting, and it will automatically redirect to the mobile friendly version of your site. This is preferred to having a “mobile friendly version” button on a site that takes a long time to load that users must wait for to select.
Seeing problems as opportunities is not something
that we as humans are used to doing. We tend to try to see problems as something to overcome or something to have to fight. Sometimes though, we should try to see them as ways we can benefit from having to go through a trial.
For example, how do you think so many people are able to write ebooks on how to get rid of certain diseases or sicknesses? Some are charlatans, of course, and others just copied what existing books have to say on the subject, but many of them actually had to go through the problem in order to find a solution. Once they found a solution, they saw their problems as opportunities and found a way to make money off of their suffering. It doesn’t always happen like that, but that’s just an example of one of the many ways to make the most out of their problems.
Seeing problems as opportunities in Your Online Work
As an internet marketer, you run into problems every day. Maybe the guy in the Philippines that you hired hasn’t returned your work for two weeks, and you have to start over with someone new. Perhaps you’re struggling to learn CSS coding on your own and can’t make sense of online tutorials. What are you doing to overcome these problems? Are you seeking out help elsewhere, or are you finding a way through the problem yourself?
In either instance, seeing problems as opportunities will encourage you to help others to figure a way through the same problem – for a fee, of course. Or maybe not. Perhaps you could write a five-page how-to guide on solving a very specific issue and offer it for free to readers willing to give you their names and email addresses. Then you can sell something to them on the backend later. How’s that for seeing your problems as opportunities?
The Mentality of Seeing Your Problems as Opportunities
Many sales gurus and internet marketers will tell you that it’s just plain good salesmanship to start looking at your problems as opportunities. Part of the reason is this. If you don’t look for a way through your problems, you’ll just give up or you’ll look at them the wrong way. You’ll let them get you down, and that will reflect on your whole life, including your online business.
But you could really be missing out on opportunities to make money if you don’t actively look at the current problems going on in your life and figure out a way to capitalize on them. Do you keep getting told no to a job? Then document your methods of going about finding a job, and seek help with what you might be doing wrong. Then, document your journey in making it right, and use your findings to help others do the same. Trust me, you’re not the only one who has the very problems you’re facing right now, and there are others just like you who are hungry to start seeing their problems as opportunities, too.
Daily blogging is harder than it sounds
. Everyone thinks they have it within themselves to sit down and contribute one post per day to their blogs. But how many actually do? Not as many as you would expect.
The thing about having high aspirations for internet marketing versus the actual drive for it is that those with aspirations often put their goals on too high of a pedestal for human reach. Those with the drive, though, are often burned out quickly, so there really isn’t a good emotion to pinpoint as the one you should have as an internet marketer. Sure, you should be inspired and driven to succeed in daily blogging, but don’t fuel yourself with those, or you’ll run out of gas almost immediately out the gate.
How to Keep Up with Daily Blogging
Daily blogging is not easy to get the hang of. In fact, daily blogging is usually the first thing to go when something comes up in your schedule. No one wants to sacrifice happy hour or a sports game when they could be… well… blogging instead.
You may well prioritize, but until that priority actually takes place in your schedule as well as in your brain, or in other words, in practice as well as in spirit, you won’t get anywhere with your daily blogging. It’s that simple. You either do it every day, or you don’t, but if you don’t, then don’t call it daily blogging.
Now there is one way you can circumvent actually doing it “daily.” Daily doesn’t always mean seven days each week. You can do it Monday through Friday or Monday through Saturday instead. It will probably do you good to take a day or two off, as trying to post something daily usually results in poor quality posts and a lot of filler that no one wants or needs to read.
How to sell yourself in internet marketing 
or anywhere else is a skill that most marketers overlook. They spend so much time selling their product – or trying to – that they completely forget about selling themselves. In many ways, a product sells itself. If a prospect comes to your website as a result of searching for said product, chances are, they already know a little bit about it and are seeking to purchase it. This is especially true of big-name brands that don’t really need your help in selling their products. What you have to sell to them is YOU.
This might sound a little strange to your ears at first. After all, why in the world would someone want to buy you? Well, this isn’t exactly what I meant, although it probably sounds like it. What I mean is this: you have to sell your style to the customer. They will decide in mere seconds whether they like the way you come across online, whether it’s the layout of your website, the ad copy you or a ghostwriter composed, your bio picture, your money-back guarantees – everything they see will go into their decision. It’s up to you to know how to sell yourself such that they come to a positive conclusion and buy from you.
How to Sell Yourself: Believe in the Product
Maybe you’re selling the product out of obligation – maybe you got roped into selling someone else’s idea in a partnership, or perhaps you couldn’t find anything better. Odds are you started internet marketing without much purpose, so you just tried a few different things to see which ones stuck. There’s no problem with this initially, but herein lies the rub: a customer can usually sense whether you REALLY believe in the product or not. If you don’t, that will come through in everything you post on your website.
For a customer on the fence about whether to buy whatever it is you’re selling, words and video laced with disbelief really don’t give them much confidence that this product is for them. Or if they’re sold on the product, they’ll move on from your website and onto another one where the seller is feeding into their desire to buy it. Knowing how to sell yourself means putting enough believable enthusiasm into your sales efforts such that customers feel confident making a purchase through your site.
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