Small Business SEO: Google My Business Or Pay For Performance SEO Pricing?

April 30, 2015 by  
Filed under Featured Articles

Small-Business-SEO

Small business SEO is the cornerstone of every small business marketing campaign. Organic traffic from Google can mean bank for your business. It can be a game changer.

Search engine optimization pays for itself. Think about traditional advertising — you pay for ad placement and hope to get results. If no new business rolls in, you’re back at square one.

The difference when it comes to small business SEO is that the investment you make continues to keep paying you back long afterwards. That’s the reality of ranking for a profitable keyword. When someone types in what they are looking for and finds you, what else can be better?

Used in tandem with on-page SEO, it’s a powerful strategy to add to your marketing arsenal.

Google My Business: Is It Good For SEO?

Google My Business is a free tool by Google aimed at helping small business owners manage their online presence easier. It combines Google Places and Google+ pages with Search and Maps to make updating your business information with Google a breeze.

Does it help your small business SEO campaign?

Sort of.

While it is important to optimize for your local market, Google My Business will not build links to your website or help you with on-page optimization. And those are the two areas to be concerned with the most.

What You Need To Know About SEO Services Pricing

Affordable SEO can fall into four different categories:

  • By the hour
  • By the project
  • By retainer
  • Pay for performance

SEO Services Pricing (Hourly):  

Hourly SEO pricing is typically the most expensive. This is usually reserved for SEO experts who work with an agency or are training a team or business owner over a set amount of hours. This is almost never a good option for small business owners because SEO takes time. A well optimized SEO campaign can still take around 3 – 6 months.

SEO Services Pricing (Project-based):

Project-based SEO pricing can be a good option for specific tasks. Say you need to train your in-house team or you want a consultant to lay out a strategy for you to tackle on your own. Projects typically fall into SEO audits, link building campaigns, or creating the actual strategy.

SEO Services Pricing (Monthly Retainer):

Monthly SEO packages are the norm. With this level of service clients are outsourcing strategy and execution. It’s very normal for monthly small business SEO services to require a contract of up to 6 months to a year.

SEO Services Pricing (Pay for Performance):

 Pay for performance SEO focuses on bringing results first.

 No money upfront. Here an SEO service provider will work to promote higher rankings for their client, and once that customer starts ranking for their keywords, they then would begin paying for the service.

Not too many companies offer this level of small business SEO service. Most SEO companies stay away from this pricing model because it makes them really live up to what they say. If a customer does not rank, they don’t pay. It’s for this reason that companies that offer pay for performance SEO truly must understand Google and how to rank websites because if they don’t, they don’t earn any money.

Which means they wouldn’t be in business for long.

How to go about printing business cards

March 18, 2015 by  
Filed under Featured Articles, Front Page

business_card_samples

KW: business card printing – PR 4 and above – Business

How to go about printing business cards

A business card reflects a number of things about the owner and forms a key element of marketing. The market value of a company can be imagined by taking a look at its business cards; the quality of paper, layout and design say it all.

Most businesses prefer inexpensive business card printing services since they need to avail these services too often. Identifying the specific business printing card companies turns easier as you conduct researches about them in details.

Such researches are likely to save much of your marketing expenses.

  • Conducting online researches yield better outcomes than consulting books and magazines.
  • Online researches save more time and curb your expenses even as they show you through numerous service providers under a single roof.
  • It provides you with an effective platform to search about a wide range of inexpensive printing service providers besides their business card printing options.

You may choose to go through the online testimonials shared by other users about a company. If it seems tough for you to identify a quality business card printing company, you may seek reference from your loved ones.

Business cards creative a very effective marketing tool; it reminds your clients about the conversation you’ve had. Your business cards help your company leave a prominent impression on the minds of your clients. The degree of professionalism concerning your business is reflected by your business cards.

Designing of business cards turns simpler when you follow the tips mentioned below:

1. Design of your business card may show a photograph, picture or a colored backdrop You may need a glossy paper for developing such cards. Popping of logos and images are made easier with these papers. Popularity of uncoated cover stocks has increased over time, since they are ideal for prominent presentations as well as sensible designs.

2. Avoid photographs with a lower resolution Designs that look sophisticated may even get unnoticed when the image quality is not so good with your business cards.

3. A business card should primarily focus on the name of the company It should also lay stress upon short tag, which is normally placed under the business name. This tagline must show the motto of your company besides a small description of the service your business provides. The name of your company should be depicted in a bigger font than your contact information.

4. Your design needs to be kept in mind under all circumstances Instead of changing the image, you must try out a variety of color schemes to develop a fresh look.

5. The name of your company, contact information and company logo need to be depicted on the front side of your business card Your services, advantages and product listings need to be mentioned at its back.

Prior to the next meeting, you must be prepared with a new set of business cards. You ought to follow the tips mentioned above.

How To Produce Consistently Great Content

Content marketing can produce tremendous results for businesses that engage in it. However, in saying that, there are still a lot of businesses who are finding it difficult to create high-quality consistent content for their websites. The businesses who are most successful with their content marketing strategy is the one who still manage to write and post content on a regular basis, despite their position in SERPS. This article will show you how you can produce high-quality content on a consistent basis.

blogging

Write About What You Know

The best way to get your creative juices flowing is to write simply about what you know or what is happening in your space at the moment. It positions you and your business as a thought leader and will attract people to your space to your brand. There is little point writing about something that has happened months ago as not only is it outdated, but it may no longer be true. Best to stick to topical pieces that add value to your overall content marketing strategy. As I said, write about what you know rather than what you don’t know, as this will require extra effort to understanding and researching what you are writing.

Write about What Your Audience Wants

This point, is a continuation of the previous point as to why you should specifically be creating content that you know, but also content that your audience wants. The question is – how do you know what your audience wants? All you need to do is find where your target audience is. Places such as forums and social media networks (Facebook, Twitter etc.) are a great place to start. If you search hard enough, you can find who and what you are looking for in an audience. When you visit these websites, be sure to read threads and posts so you can get an understanding of your ideal audience’s problems. Your content is going to be based on these problems and from there you can provide a solution.

Making Content Creation a Priority

Whatever your priority might be, it will always occupy your time. Likewise, when you make content creation your priority, you will always devote enough time to it. Make a point of writing content within the time you create for it. Eliminate any distractions such as answering emails, personal social media use, etc. and write until you get it done. This mindset will hold you in good stead for being able to create content consistently. You just need to be disciplined and resist all outside urges.

Get Into a Writing Habit

Habits are hard to shake. If it’s a good habit, then that’s not such a bad thing. Again, this comes back to what I was talking about in my previous paragraph about building that mindset. When you develop a habit of writing every day, it starts to become a routine and becomes part of you. Start with a small goal of posting every day for an entire month. It might seem like a difficult task to complete to begin with, but it will become second nature if you are disciplined and stick to writing a post once a day. If anything this is going to make you a better writer, which will in turn increase the quality of your content and that can only be a good thing for your overall goal.

Mix it up

While blog posts are a typical form of content, it can become a tad boring to be using blog posts as your only form of content. Start diversifying your content by creating other forms of content such as infographics, podcasts, videos, etc. It will give your audience a few options to choose from because some might not like to read as they prefer to watch. Great! Get cracking on a video. It doesn’t have to be very long. In fact, a 1-2 minute video talking about an aspect of your industry is all that might be needed. What about those who like to listen? Too easy. Recording a podcast and uploading it onto the YouTube or SoundCloud is very easy. You will soon discover what type of content works and what doesn’t. From the responses you get for each platform, you can tailor your marketing strategy according to that.

Breaking Up Your Content Creation

Creating consistent content can sometimes be an overwhelming task. You can reduce your workload by creating a quick note, then an outline and then write out the piece. The good news is that you don’t have to finish the whole task in a specified time, and you can schedule it over a period of a couple of days. For example, if you were writing an article on the ‘7 Tips on How to Create Consistently Good Content’, and you only had a couple of days to write it, you might write the first four tips on one day, and then come back to it the next day to write the remaining three.communication

Employing the Services of a Content Creator

Research carried out by MarketingProfs, and the Content Marketing Institute stated that 73% of all b2b organisations have dedicated personnel in charge of their content marketing strategy. They might be doing this in-house, or they might employ the services of a content marketing agency. Regardless, it is important to have someone looking after your content creation with the necessary resources and allow them to make decisions on your behalf. It frees up significant time for others to handle other important matters in the business.

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