6 Types of Free Gifts that Can Get you…

Free gifts, who doesn’t like them? “Leading with value” is a catchphrase and business core value – where business (both small and large) desire to give to their clients and customers by providing value even before they purchase from the.   You can see this in action at a Best Buy tech desk, where you can go in and ask a question about an electronic that you have and they’ll freely give you as much information as they can. From there sometimes they can fix the problem on the spot free of charge. What a great way to get people to both come into the store and to interact with your personnel.

It’s much the same way online. You can easily give away “free” value to help people see more of what you have to offer as well as insight into an area they are in need of more information. Everything from how-tos all the way to where-tos (Places to visit) to tips   Here’s a list of 6 items that you can give away to add value and gain trust and following.

1. EBooks – One of the earliest online items for people to be able to buy, eBooks offer something that most people are already acquainted with as well as something that has become even more accessible with the availability of tablets to the masses on which they can be reading these books. It can be even more powerful If it’s something you normally sell on your website or elsewhere, then the visitor feels a lot of incentive to get the free item.
2. Software – The barrier to entry used to be so high for software. Now you can often easily and cheaply build plug-ins, apps, online tools, downloadable tools, if you use the right tool or have the right connections. In addition you can purchase private label rights software that you can utilize to add value to your customers.
3. Reports – Have some time on your side? A report is just a short eBook that is more focused on solving one problem, instead of an overall “how to” like a book would be. If you can do the leg work and the research work, the report could be an ideal offering of a smaller portion of what you have. It can also be more niche specific to target new verticals that you may want to bring into your funnel. You can also produce a report from software – similar to a FREE SEO report from an SEO agency in Salt Lake City.
4. Coupons – This one is a stead standby. People do love being able to get a deal and what better way than by getting it right from you. While you may want to watch out for discount seekers, as they may not make good long-term customers, you can still benefit greatly by reducing the barrier for people to try out your service or product by using a coupon. Don’t misuse the coupon though. Be sure that you have a strong follow-up plan in place to build a relationship with those that use the coupon. Sites like Groupon and Living Social were raving successes because people love coupons, but most businesses who offer deals there have done poorly at building a relationship with those that bought a coupon for their business.
5. Videos – Offering a video lesson or videos of a live event as a freebie is a great way to repurpose videos that you’ve made. Just load them up to deliver to the people who sign up for your list. People love video and YouTube is continuing to be one of the leading search engines in the world over all. You can choose to deliver the video after sign-up or offer free podcasts or videos to build a relationship before purchase and give even more reason for them to sign-up, whether it’s to get additional videos, further insights, or just to be mailed links by which to watch the next video.
6. Checklists – Checklists are so simple and yet, many people crave them. Why? Because there is so much information out there, we need someone to take it back to its basics again and a checklist is a great way to do that. The top 10, 5, or whatever number you choose will often be great intro information, however, if you want to make a bigger impact, get a little crazier and go for 50 or 100.

Utilize the ideas above to bring in even more people to your funnel. Use them to bridge the gap of trust and value and show potential clients and customers the value you provide. As you can see, there are so many different ways to go about this, that you can really decide which one fits best for you and your potential customers.

How to Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

In recent posts, we’ve talked about the upcoming Mobilegeddon (which is already upon us) and how to determine if your site is SEO friendly or not. Today we’re going to give a couple of resources to look at if your site comes back as not SEO friendly. With most things, there’s an easy way and a hard way.

Too note, there are several ways by which you can make your site mobile friendly – the two main styles are making it responsive (creating a fluid like design that responds to the display/media type) and making it adaptive (creating several different designs with specific sizing for different designs). That discussion of which is better can be left for you to choose. Hear, we’ll largely be talking about responsive solutions.

Easy Way – WordPress

While some may debate whether WordPress is the best platform or not to host your site on, we have to say that from personal experience we strongly agree. Having worked with several different CMS platforms as well as several different types of static sites, WordPress continually appears as one the easiest to implement and use and yet one of the most dependable and powerful. You can do everything from host a simple blog to turn it into a robust eCommerce site. WordPress is also so easy to update and add further capabilities to – such as easy social sharing, list building, SEO compatibility, and even mobile responsiveness.

Yes, in many sites, mobile friendliness can be attained simply by adding a mobile plug-in. With a little bit of work to make it look good and unique, your site could be mobile friendly very quickly and can often be done by even a novice to web design with a WordPress plug-in. Some of the most common WordPress Plug-ins for making a site mobile friendly are:

• Jetpack by WordPress.com
• WPtouch Mobile Plugin
• WP Mobile Detector
• WordPress Mobile Pack 2.0

Hard Way – Any Other Way Than a Plug-in (Via WordPress)!

Yes, for novices, any other way than a plug-in or a simple line of code will be harder to implement, but doesn’t make it any less important or needed on sites outside of WordPress (or other comparable CMS platforms with mobile plug-ins or extensions.) A great place to start here is to look again to our favorite search leader Google. Google actually has a pretty thorough explanation of creating mobile friendly websites as well as some of the common pitfalls mobile friendly coding can create for search engines. Very nice of them to give us such insight into the design and implementation. They have a solid section of mobile information at https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/get-started/?hl=en.

In addition, another great resource in helping you understand mobile design experience even further is https://www.edx.org/course/building-mobile-experiences-mitx-21w-789x. That mobile course is offered by MIT for free through edX. However, this is not really an easy to get going course for newbies, but is great for developers or intermediate coders.

For novices, we can’t help but recommend simply using the WordPress platform and implementing one of their plug-ins to make your website SEO friendly. If you want to keep your current platform or straight code, then the Google and MIT resources are great to help you understand the most important elements and even a little deeper. With that being said, the importance of simply partnering with an agency to cannot be understated. Use their skills to help make the process so much easier and more pleasurable for yourself as well knowing that the design is done in the best way for both your rankings and your users. Check out Barking Frog SEOs mobile website design capabilities as well as their solid local search engine optimization abilities if you’re looking for an agency that can truly get you the rankings you deserve and ensure that your site is mobile friendly.

How to Animal Proof Your Website

“Animal proof?” you ask. Yes, animal proof, in particular panda, penguin, and pigeon although we’re sure more. What are we referring to by naming pandas, penguins, and pigeons? None other than the almighty Google’s algorithm changes. While each change effects different aspects of the web and search, all of the changes are focused on done with the same intent. To improve the quality of results and reduce spam. Google’s focus since their inception is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Therefore they are constantly trying to figure out how to do that more effectively and efficiently. One of the reasons that they have to work so hard is because so many people are trying to “game” the system and thus the reason that many sites were hurt by the updates. Outside of technical errors, which Google has had, most of the search results changes have been in an effort to control or eliminate spam and provide better quality results. Here-in we can put together an animal proof plan for continuing to grow and market your website. Think of it like a coin – heads and tails, but they both part of the same coin.

1. Heads – Content is still King

Unique and useful content is still the king of the internet. People are looking for it and Google wants to serve it up. The problem sometimes arises that we have different meanings of useful and unique content or trouble figuring out how to create it. For instance, many stores sell the same item and yet Google can’t just provide a list of stores and say you choose. They want to try to organize the information to help you make the best choice with the best information. Therefore they can’t simply provide results that all say the same thing. They need information that is unique. Those stores which take the time to make their information more unique than others will often find it being crawled and indexed more relevantly than those whose content is left as the manufacturers description only. Here’s 4 rules of thumb to keep in mind for content.

• Unique. Don’t just use the same description everyone else uses – or the same information that you give to your sales reps or affiliates. Create content that is unique to your site. Don’t be afraid to include your personality or experiences within the content as those are parts of what make you unique.
• Staleness. Nothings worse than opening the bag of potato chips and going to take your first bite and finding out the kids had left them open and now their stale. Google feels the same way…. at least about content. They don’t want to serve content to a user that is outdated and doesn’t contain fresh information. They want to see you actively adding relevant content to keep things fresh and to prove that you are continuing to provide up-to-date information for their users.
• Focus. It never ceases to amaze me when non-writers go to put together some information. It’s usually just ambiguous information without a clear cut focus or it is all “corporate speak” and doesn’t pertain to the needs of users. Just because you know your industry jargon for instance, does not mean that your potential client does. We need to create content based on what the user is looking for. In addition, content needs to be created in a focused direction, which should cover topics, keywords, or lists that the user would be looking for. Now don’t go keywords stuffing your articles or creating spammy content, but do take the time to actually look at what people are searching for and then include that within your content.
• Great Content. Engage, entertain, and educate. Keep those three rules in mind when you create your content and you will fast be on the path to creating great content that both the user and the search engines will love. Don’t make the content all about you, but rather make it all about reaching “them”.

2. Tails – Authority (links)

Yes, Google wants great content to serve up but they also want it to be correct content. The way that they determine the authority of the content is still largely based on the links that you have. Think about it, if you have something that is really beneficial to people (like great content) they’re going to be more like to tell each other about it – hence the links. And of course if you can get a brand or noted authority to tell someone else about it, it is valued even higher. Hence why .gov and .edu links tend to carry more weight. They are from more highly trusted resources in Google’s eyes. Of course Google has worked hard to determine what links look good and what don’t but here’s 3 rules to keep in mind when thinking about links.

• Natural. You need both the link and your link portfolio to appear natural. Therefore you wouldn’t have all the links coming back to your site using keywords as anchor text, nor would you want them all using “click here”. A proper balance of your URL, business name and keywords should be used when possible. You can even include your geography, for instance, a phrase like Utah SEO, would bring in both the location you serve and the type of service you offer.
• Lead with Value. Give people something to link back to. Provide a valuable resource, tool, or report. Something that takes some time and effort and can provide great value to another person – but give it away for free!
• Bad Neighbors. Nobody enjoys bad neighbors and neither will your rankings. Take the time to look at the links that you have and make sure they’re from good neighborhoods. Don’t be fooled into thinking that every link is a good link. On the other hand don’t be fooled into thinking that every link has to be the perfect link. Just be sure to disavow any of the poor ones and don’t try to get anymore of those.

There you have it, 7 rules based around the two sides of the coin will keep your site animal proof and your site in great shape to continue to grow and provide more and more value to people. Take the time to implement each one into everyday procedures on your site and you will soon be gaining the rankings you have been looking for as well as making the world a better place!

Top 4 SEO Strategies.

SEO or search engine optimization is a new and exciting way to get your blog or website more incoming traffic in the form of views.  Are we utilizing the this free marketing tool to its fullest potential?  Here are the top five strategies to get your site going.

Number One: Get Quality Links

The first step is to get good quality links.  Part of running a good blog or website is to have good links that people are going to want to share and that they can relate too.  These should be  links that have some good substance be relevant to what your posting about.  Part of this could be posting on a bigger site as a guest.

Number Two:  Get Google Authorship

Google is the biggest search engine out there.  There is a good chance that this is where most of the optimization is going to happen.  Google plus is a great tool.  Have all the authors that write on your blog start a Google plus profile so people can see all the writers.  That way others will see what that they are real people and not a computer.

Number Three:  Set a Canonical URL

This means the single best URL.  If there is more then one you need to note which one is preferred.  So you can get the hype for the right website.   This also helps to get the full value out of the website.  A good URL can also be used as a hook to get more viewers or traffic to your page.

Number Four: Responsive Design

We live in a world where data is at the tips of our fingers with tablets, smart phones.  Not to mention all the data and Wi-Fi that is available searches can be done anywhere and at any time.  With this knowledge your website needs to be compatible with all forms of technology.

If this seems over your head then you can hire a SEO company who will do it Al for you and who have the expertise to get the job done the correct way.