1. Ineffective Messaging

• Failing to understand who the customer truly is…Model your top two customers…create the “person” you’re speaking to
• Not speaking TO the customer’s needs, only about how great your company is.

2. Poor Content

• Blog might not exist
• Blog posts aren’t optimized for keywords
• Content isn’t fresh
• Spelling and grammar mistakes
• Having large paragraphs of text, long sentences, or long pages. articles/posts should be 400-750 words, 3-5 visual lines for a paragraph, and about 2-3 paragraphs minimum to 5-6 paragraphs at the very maximum.

3. Not being Mobile-compatible

• iPads are now in the millions
• Mobile phones are outselling desktop computers
• Mobile phone internet usage is surpassing desktop internet usage

4. Unprofessional Design and Branding

• Lot of dead space
• No information due to pushing info down on page
• Poor quality graphics/branding
• Important content Below the Fold
• Use of Flash, and (worse) Flash Landing pages.
• Poor usability and navigation
• Visitor can’t find what they’re looking for
• Navigation is hidden, not in the place the user is looking for, or is too clever for it’s own good.
• No search (if applicable)
• NEVER have a site’s navigation in Flash
• Never have auto-play music/sound
• Poor Conversion/Functionality
• Children pages are “dead-ends”
• Remove the clutter, make it simple but not plain, and obvious what action the user should take.

5. Not using a Marketing Company to handle your marketing needs.

• Trying to do it all yourself takes time to learn, and time away from running your business
• Just having a web site, but not updating it, creates a “dead” website and google will not give it high rankings
• Reaching out via social media, posting your articles on Fb, Tw, etc., Consistently creating blog posts, etc will help keep it relevant, fresh, updated, and give it better ranking results from search engines.
• Experts can help you form a short-term and long-term marketing/growth plan for your company.
• Experts stay up to date with the latest marketing trends, strategies,tactics, and techniques so you don’t have to. You can spend more time working in your business, like you’re doing now, and know someone is helping you work on your business
• Hiring someone with the knowledge of how to market your business can cost anywhere from $60,000-$100,000 depending on your market geography and what you require. The cost could be more if you require technical needs, or hire them on staff and need to pay insurance & benefits, etc….while hiring a marketing company can save you $50k-$75k minimum

NOTE: Reminder that this article was essentially a Part 2 to our original “Top 5 Website Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making” article. Please check that out, and let us know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for reading and sharing, we truly and genuinely appreciate all the support.

1. WRITING FOR SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS
Search Engines aren’t going to sign up for an e-mail list, and they aren’t going to buy your products and services. However, they can bring a great deal of traffic to your posts.

When someone writes for search engines, they predetermine their keywords, analyze their keyword density, and write out phrases exactly as they’d be searched for. These posts will have a great formula to rank well, but rarely will humans find them valuable enough to give backlinks or shares. They tend to be textbooky and (yawn) boorrrring.

2. WRITING FOR HUMAN CONVERSIONS
Knowing that humans will be reading these posts, some bloggers will structure their content around linking to services, encouraging e-mail list sign ups, and pushing their calls-to-action.

These come across very dry and informational. Kinda like sales letters. How many times do you jump for joy when reading a sales letter? That’s if you even stick around long enough to read the whole thing!

3. WRITING FOR HUMAN INTEREST
I see this one usually from the small business owner who writes well, but knows nothing about internet marketing. They’ll set up their posts with great care and structure their content like it’s going to be judged for a Pulitzer. However, if Search Engines don’t rank it well no one’s going to find it, and if you aren’t motivating your readers to action all you get out of it is maybe an appreciative reader.

Depending on your business and the kind of blogging you’re doing, especially copy writers and creatives, that may be acceptable and even viable, but for most businesses it’s mostly a waste of a good opportunity.

PUTTING TOGETHER THE PERFECT BLOG
Now that we know the Big Three, how can we pull them all together so they rank well, convert, and aren’t as boring as listening to your great uncle ramble on about the good ole days?

First, think what would your audience find interesting. Before what keywords you want to rank for, think about the human interest factor. What’s interesting to my readers? Now, think about how you can point that interest to how you stay in business (aka “sell stuff”). Finally, when you’re writing think about keywords, then go back and re-read the post and change a few words and phrases to contain the keywords and keyword phrases you want to rank for.

Thinking of human interest first and human conversions a close second, you’re taking a more effective (and opposite) approach than most do. You can always read through your post title and content and add in a search engine keyword phrase throughout your content (like I just did right there), but it won’t be as dry and boring as a grade school textbook.

So think about how to write great content with your own unique voice, but also how are you going to drive readers to contact you, and what keywords you will be targeting in your content. Happy Writing!

We all want to rule Google and Bing, right? We all want to be in the Top 3 results for all of our desired KeyWords, right? Well, in order to do that, you’re going to know some essential basics about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This post will give you a mile-high overview of SEO, and get you moving in the right direction. Think of this as a Top 10 Best Practices for how to begin to get those search engine rankings you (and all of your competitors) desire.

1. Write Great Content

If your pages contain great, relevant, useful content, search engines will be more likely to rank you higher for what you’re writing about. Visitors like fresh content, so they will visit your site more often. Content written both for search engine keywords and for humans to find interesting, then you’re going in the right direction.

2. Do Your Keyword Research

A KeyWord is basically anything you type into a search field on a search engine. Whether it’s literally just one word, or a string of words (KeyWord Phrase), it’s technically all still a “KeyWord.” When you want to rank “first in Google,” you want to rank first for the KeyWord most of your highly-interested targeted users will be using to search for your product and/or service. Don’t target a KeyWord just because it sounds right to you, or because it gets a lot of searches.

You want to target as specific as possible for Search Engine Optimization, because you want to be able to rank as high as possible as quickly as possible, and a realistically as possible. A shoe store in Houston will never beat out Zappos, Shoes.com or DSW, for example. However, you may be able to rank a lot easier for “Shoe Store in Houston” or “High Heel Store in Houston” for example.

Use tools such as Wordtracker and the AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool to find relevant niche keywords and estimate traffic based on research and not just guesses.

3. Use Your Keywords Wisely

Once you have a good list of KeyWords, deploy them sensibly throughout your site pages. To rank better for the KeyWords you are targeting, make sure they periodically and regularly appear in throughout the content of your pages. Use the KeyWords in the first and last paragraphs in the content of page. Strategically throughout the page content, but not stuffing throughout. Try the KeyWord Density ratio of about 2-3% of all content will contain the KeyWords you’re looking to rank for. Use KeyWords wisely, don’t stuff them all over the page, and make sure the KeyWords appear in strategic locations throughout your website.

4. Get Other Sites Linking To Yours

Most search engines rank sites higher if they’re linked to by other, well-respected sites. Writing good content is one of the best long-term strategies. The better the content, the more valuable the content, and therefore the more likely it is that another site will want to refer to yours as valuable to their readers and visitors.

A “link to this page” (or “share this”) function on each page of your site makes it easy for others to link to your content. Sharing your pages and posts on Social Networks doesn’t have a direct effect on your rankings, because of the way that the large Social Networks manage their links (search for DoFollow vs NoFollow for full explanation). Whether the site linking to your content directly passes through search ranking help to your site isn’t as important as getting as many links as possible, and spreading your content around to as many different places as possible. You want exposure and traffic. Over time, your rankings will rise the more exposure and traffic you get.

Get in touch with the site owner of the websites which rank in the Top 10 results for your desired KeyWord, and strike up a friendship. Don’t ask for links right away. Just compliment them on their awesomeness and nurture the relationship to eventually be in a possible to ask for a guest blog opportunity, or a link, depending on the situation as to what’s best for both parties.

NOTE: Do not take an article which is already on your website or blog and use that as a guest blog post. That will be seen as duplicate content by search engines and it will not be counted, at best. Yes, it’s more work, but the more original content that’s out there linking back to your site and content, the better rankings you’ll get over time.

5. Structure Your Site For SEO

A site map can really help here, as it lists all your site content on one, easy-to-use page. If you’re using a Content Management System like WordPress, then this is really easy. There are a number of free and pay plugins which can help you generate a Site Map automatically, and even give you links to submit it to Google and Bing to start the process of indexing your site and starting your rise. Make sure your website structure is developed to allow your KeyWords in the following areas of each of your website’s pages:

– The Title Tag
– H1 and H2 Tags
– Anchor Link Text
– Page URL (aka Permalink)
– Image ALT Text

6. Analyze Your Site

– It’s important to track your site’s performance to see if your efforts are paying off. Here are a few ways to use different metrics analysis tools. See which one/s you prefer:

– Google Webmaster Tools
– Google Analytics
– Alexa.com
– Bing Webmaster Tools

Pretty much all of these will give you useful information about how your site is faring in the search results. Obviously Google and Bing are the largest search engines, so sign-up for their Webmaster Tools areas to help get you on their radar in a more efficient manner than just waiting around and hoping everything will work itself out.

Also, install Google Analytics on every single page of your website and learn how to use every bit of it. Google is starting to use Analytics metrics more and more to determine relevancy, and knowing everything that’s going on with your site (traffic, referring sites, links, etc) will not only assist you with search engine rankings, but also with ensuring your website is delivering for you.

7. Keep Abreast of the Latest SEO News

Search engine algorithms change constantly. It pays to keep up to date with the latest changes. Subscribe to some of the biggest SEO Newsletters and blogs to keep up with the latest. Here are some sites, blogs, and newsletters which we have found to be helpful:

– SEO Moz
– Search Engine News
– Search Engine Land

8. Avoid Black Hat Techniques

SEO techniques and strategies come in 2 forms:

– White Hat techniques play by the rules of search engines, and aim to create high-quality, relevant content.
– Black Hat techniques try to “game” the search engines by using techniques such as keyword stuffing, back linking from “link farms,” etc.

When working on any search engine optimization strategies, make sure you’re always playing by the rules. Playing by the rules also means not just doing what Google and Bing recommend, but not over doing it, as well. If Google instructs you to do something for better SEO, and you go ahead and do that over and over and over again 50 times on each page, then you can bet that any possible search engine results you receive from that will eventually be removed with future algorithm updates. It’s always best to do what’s recommended, avoid what’s not recommended, and use sensible control when it comes to what’s recommended. If you play by the rules, and don’t over-do it, your rankings will be permanent and fruitful.

9. Watch Out For Duplicate Content

We touched on this above, but it’s important after the recent algorithm updates of the past couple years. Many factors can result in a search engine seeing 2 URL’s as duplicates of each other. Here are just a few of the most common culprits

– Articles and Content republished from other websites
– Print-friendly versions of pages
– Similar product info pages that contain unchanged content
– Displaying your site at multiple domains.

If you copy-paste the same Content from one place to another, the modern search engine will recognize this, and classify you as someone who’s trying to cheat the system. Whether the website which contains the original content, or the newer off-site posting of that content gets the negative hit depends on a few different factors. It’s important to know that when you control the Content distribution to external channels, make sure it’s all original Content everywhere and you’ll be OK.

10. Don’t Forget the Description and KeyWords Tags.

The description tag should be a useful, compelling summary of your page content. Don’t use the same description you use on your home page. Again, if you’re using WordPress for your website, then you can use any number of free or pay SEO plugins.

Most modern search engines don’t use the KeyWords tag like they used to (or at all), because the search engine algorithms are much more advanced to prevent cheating, so this is totally optional. There are some minor search engines which still use the KeyWords tag, so it’s not horrible to have that in your header, but these days is strictly optional.

However, the search engines will display your page when it ranks for what someone is searching for and will use the Description tag first. If there is no description tag, then the search engine will display the first couple lines of text it can read. The first two sentences of your blog post or page content might be a well-written lead-in, but not a very good description for usage on a search engine results page. Therefore, use a unique and well-written description for each page and you’ll get better click results from search engines when you do rank.

There you go! Yes, there’s a lot of information here, but also a lot of information we couldn’t get to. We do have a full Marketing Course you can sign-up for and learn many many more details and how to actually do all this great stuff, but this should get you started and familiar with the proper strategy for how to start to use the most effective SEO strategies to rank higher and higher in those Search Engine results pages!

Your Keyword Density Ratio would be the ratio of keywords-to-“normal” words in any particular page or post on your website. The lower the density, the less search engines will feel you adequately address the desired topic and search terms. The higher the density, and you could be down-graded or penalize for what is called “keyword stuffing.”

The bad effects of very low Keyword Density, or pretty obvious. If you don’t talk enough about the search terms your potential customers are searching for, then you won’t be helped in your SEO via your on-page content (which is paramount).

“Keyword Stuffing” is just as bad, because the search engines will know that you’re trying to fool them. It’s basically search engine spam. You might remember the older sites from the 90’s which featured, say, a white background, and after you reached the bottom of the page, you could scroll and scroll, but couldn’t see anything, then noticed one day that there were a whole bunch of seemingly random words at the bottom of the page in white type over the white background. This used to be a trick (bad SEO tricks are called “Black Hat Tactics) that website developers used to try to trick the less-advanced search engine algorithms of the day.

These days, search engine algorithms are highly advanced, and will easily recognize more Black Hat tactics and penalize a site’s ranking which uses these “tricks.”

A good rule of thumb for Keywords is around 3-5%. This is arguable, as some suggest keeping it between 1-3% of content, and other suggest going as high as 8%. So, we’ll take the middle road and recommend 3-5% keyword density. What does that look like for our auto mechanic friend? Take a look:

“ABC auto repair in Santa Monica is a family owned and operated domestic auto repair shop which specializes in fixing and maintaining all your domestic vehicle needs. No matter what issues or problems you’re having with your car, whether it’s low idling, or your check engine light suddenly comes on, or even if you just need a quick oil change, just come on in to our Santa Monica shop on Washington Blvd, and we’ll treat you like family! Our domestic auto mechanics are here six days a week to take care of all your repair needs. See you soon!”

That paragraph has a real keyword density of about 3%. You might read that and think “there’s 101 words, but 16 keywords, so isn’t it around 16%?” Good thinking, but when you group search terms together, they count as one instance, not individual words. Example, “Auto Repair” is one search term, so that will factor in the keyword density ratio. Likewise, so will “domestic auto repair” and “santa monica” which is individual search terms, at least in this case, and not three different keywords.

Now, all that being said, does it really truly matter? Only the geniuses who programmed the algorithm of the best search engines like Google will know for sure (even though they’ll tell you even they can’t predict 100% search result accuracy), but the results have suggested that when you keep the suggested keyword density for desired search phrases and keywords at 3-5%, your SEO will be helped out.

One last thing which is important to note. Yes, we’re mathematically trying to achieve an optimal keyword density for top rankings, but notice that the copy still read very well for humans. This is extremely important, because even if you rank number one on all the search engines, but have horrible content/copy which isn’t written for a human to read and be affected by, then you still aren’t going to see much improvement on the bottom line.

To summarize, always research your optimal keywords, and make sure above all else your content is written for humans first and foremost, then tweak the sentences and paragraphs slightly to achieve the optimal keyword density of 3-5%. Then, hope that you have many reputable backlinks pointing to your site for even better results.

Happy content writing! Please enter your thoughts in the comments below, or check out one of our other articles in the list immediately following this article, and as always feel free to contact us or download our free marketing ebook to help you out even more.

First, let’s quickly go over the modern phenomenon, first. It’s viral video at it’s finest. It’s actually better than the typical viral video, because this one is 100% created by fans, it’s only 36 seconds long, and is as good and creative as the person doing their personal take on the video. The “Harlem Shake” videos feature a “normal” setting which explodes into utter chaos in which hilarity hopefully ensues. Before we describe further, let’s take a step back to this viral video’s very close cousin, the spoken joke, “The Aristocrats.”

“The Aristocrats” is an old joke which starts off with a family walking into a talent agent’s office. The agent asks, “so, what’s your act?” One of the family members (traditionally, the father) goes on about the most crazy, and usually vile and outrageously disgusting, acts that one could ever imagine a family performing together onstage. The crazier and more outlandish, the better the joke. After the joke teller is done with the act’s description, the agent asks what their act is called, and the father replies, “The Aristocrats!”

In the video meme version of “Harlem Shake,” the video starts off with a person dancing (usually with a mask or covered head) to the dubstep song, “Harlem Shake” by Baauer. The person is usually dancing in a room with other people around them. The people are completely oblivious (or uncaring) to the lone dancer. About 15 seconds in, when the “bass drops” in the song, there is a jump-cut and everyone in the room is suddenly dancing and going crazy. The wilder and the more outrageous…the better.

Similar to The Aristocrats joke, the beauty of the Harlem Shake meme is in it’s simplicity and completely unexpected sharp U-Turn into silliness. The video’s success, much like The Aristocrats joke success, is purely up to the creator and their creativity.

Here is the trailer for the 2005 documentary for “The Aristocrats” (some language NSFW):

Here are a couple video compilations of “The Harlem Shake” to get you familiar with the fun (some images NSFW):

And, as a little aside, the original version of The Harlem Shake video which inspired the memes actually doesn’t even follow the rules of the meme and is completely silly and has no point…like all things funny. Enjoy!

Comment below what YOUR favorite version was, or link in the comments below to your own version!