Category : Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

Referral Marketing – How to Multiply Profits In 2023

Referral Marketing

Have you tried referral marketing? Marketing is the key to success for every business. If you are not promoting your business, it might not make any progress. Sometimes you may even be doing enough marketing but getting little or no results at a high cost.

A lot of businesses are struggling to win customers. Some even have good products but not enough customers to patronize them. If you are a startup, you probably experiences challenges in attracting more customers to your business.

However, the real problem with marketing is not the failure of marketing – but wrong marketing; especially if you have limited marketing funds. Your best marketing should be the one that wins you more customers at the least possible cost – or no cost at all.

So, what you need is a marketing strategy that’s both cost effective and result oriented. Let’s even look at one model that has proven to be the best solution for cost-free marketing.

✅ Referral Marketing for Beginners

Marketing for beginners can be complicated. They try to do so many different things that are either unproductive or causing them to struggle to sell. They end up wasting money and time. One of the key reasons many organizations are successful in marketing is because they can afford to hire the best marketers.

But for a small business, you probably can’t afford that. This lack on your part is what’s killing your business and not really the bad economy. The problem with the economy can mean low sales but not poor sales.

No matter how bad an economy is, people will always buy things. What changes is the strength of their purchasing power – or the more people that can afford your product or service frequently.

If your business is having poor sales you are about to get closed. It’s all a matter of time before you shut down. However, if it’s a problem of low sales, it’s a result of economic situation and you can sustain your business with low sales by cutting down on costs of transaction.

Low sales means you have the existing customer and the market to make more sales if the economic situations are alright. While poor sales shows you are doing everything wrong and haven’t gotten your marketing right. That’s to mean, you aren’t reaching the right customers for your business.

✅ Cost of Customer Acquisition

Another major problem with marketing is CAC. What’s your customer acquisition cost (CAC)? If you have been in retail business for a while you should be able to know how much it cost for you to win over a customer to your business. That’s if you have been using advertising.

CAC is the cost expended in the process of gaining new customers for your business. To get this calculation, divide your total marketing cost by the number of customers you have gained through marketing. The result is the cost of one customer in your business.

With this number in your head, how do you reduce CAC in your business? If cost of customer acquisition is high, it will increase the cost of your product, which may affect how many customers that can afford to patronize your business.

So, to gain more customers, your CAC must be the lowest possible. The less you can spend to win a customer the better.

✅ Why Marketing Is Challenging?

A lot of people are afraid of starting a business because they don’t know how to carry out effective marketing. And those who have businesses are constantly struggling over poor marketing results.

It’s either they are not doing it well, or the amount of capital they are investing in their marketing is not enough to create the kind of impact that would drive their marketing success.

Marketing requires huge funds, especially for startups. If well known brands still spend hundreds of millions in marketing annually, then a startup can’t survive without effective marketing.

You either market or die. But if you can’t afford to let your business die, I suggest you learn how to implement the best kind of marketing that works.

Here are key reasons why marketing is challenging:

  • If you are not a good marketer
  • If you don’t have the right marketing fund
  • Like if you don’t know the right marketing strategy for your business
  • And if you don’t know the best platform to market your business

 

 

✅ What’s Referral Marketing?

Referral means reference – and it’s a method of recommending someone to another person or business. It’s another way of using networking. By referencing or recommending a business, or its products and services to others you are doing referral marketing.

However, people often do this for free, without any payments for their referral efforts. And people can do it even without anyone asking them. The news media has been doing Referral for businesses as they publish news relating to those business.

As a business there are several ways you can tap into referral marketing. To tap into Referral marketing you will need to define the following:

  • Who can refer my business?
  • How do I get them to refer my business?
  • Who are those in their network?
  • What’s the size of their network?
  • How much would it cost me per referral?

Starting a referral marketing could change the way you keep winning new customers to your business. It also changes the way you spend on advertising.

✅ How Referral Marketing Works

You haven’t understood Referral marketing until you understand how it really works. It actually takes several shades of marketing models. In Referral marketing you have network marketing, direct marketing, word of mouth marketing, content marketing, and viral marketing.

When you use referral marketing you are unleashing one of the most powerful marketing combination in one. It’s a marketing tool box that’s all encompassing. You cannot control how or what marketing mix your referrers might want to use in achieving their targets.

To refer customers, a referrer would require his network, engage with them directly or indirectly, share the message as content (audio, video, or images), and it goes from one person to another as the referrer reaches more people and those reached might also join the referral to refer others as well.

This kind of chain reaction is what makes referral marketing effective. You can have a thousand, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of self engaged marketers promoting and selling your business at no cost to you.

✅ Why Referral Marketing Works

The biggest advantage of Referral marketing is that you pay only when a customer successful patronized your business. That completely eliminates the need for marketing funds. And you can start Referral marketing anytime without delay.

Here are inexhaustible lists of reasons why Referral marketing always works:

  • You can hire the best marketers at no cost to you
  • No upfront marketing funds required
  • Anyone anywhere can join your marketing team
  • There’s no limit to how many marketers you can hire
  • Your customers are the ones paying the cost of marketing to them

In Referral marketing it’s a do it for me marketing. You don’t have to be a good marketer yourself. The real power of Referral marketing is multiplying your marketing efforts using large number of people to reach those around them. And each customer gets to pay for the marketing that helped them purchase your product.

✅ How to Use Referral Marketing

The good news about Referral marketing is that anyone can use it. It doesn’t matter how small, medium or large an organization is. The power of Referral can work for any size of business.

How to make referral work for you is the reason for this post. This post makes it possible for any business to master and use the art of referral marketing to its success.

To achieve this some vital aspects of Referral marketing system must be applied. A referral system requires a management software or website to help it coordinate the work of the referrers – to identify their marketing efforts and reward each marketer from the sales they have brought to your business.

That’s where most SMEs find it challenging to implore Referral marketing to grow their profits. What you need is explained here.

You will need a system that helps you:

  • Constantly Find and hire motivated marketers faster
  • Auto Manage their marketing efforts
  • Auto rewards their marketing efforts
  • Give new customers opportunity to become referral marketers
  • And repeat the process over time

If all of these processes are automated, any business can plug into such system and explore referral marketing at its best.

✅ Cost of Using Referral Marketing

If you properly analyze referral marketing, it actually cost nothing. Yes, I mean zero cost in marketing. The best way to understand Referral marketing cost is to review how referral marketing works.

No company in the world pays marketing cost. However, the difference when it comes to referral marketing is that you don’t even have to worry about marketing cost. If you are using other marketing models, you will need to make provision for marketing cost and recoup later from sales.

But Referral marketing doesn’t need marketing cost and won’t require to recoup marketing cost. You simply add your defined referral bonuses (or the marketing cost of the product and as customers order the products from your referral links they are paying both for the product and the cost of marketing it to them.

However, this cost is little because each customer pays just a fraction of the cost, depending on your marketing cost. So these are costs you have to factor in when planning your referral marketing model.

✅ Your Referral Marketing Plan

Even though Referral marketing is the most effective marketing there’s in the world, it’s been very difficult for small businesses, and even large businesses to implement effectively. That’s the reason many businesses, especially SMEs have ignored it over the years.

It requires a system to help you both in recruiting the referrers, managing and tracking their successful referral activities, paying out bonuses, and continuously implement this strategy over and over non stop.

This kind of plan requires a dedicated platform, built at a high cost, requiring continuous management, and payment system that is cost effective and reduces frequent support services. Or you can use a third party platform and pay transaction cost for using then platform.

✅ Conclusion

The biggest advantage of Referral marketing is being able to measure your results. You can accurately estimate how much markup to expend on marketing and what the outcomes would be.

You also enjoy the advantage of only paying for customers already won and not just customers reached. So, each customer gained through referral marketing completed the required expectations.

As a business, using referral marketing is one way of having never ending marketing plan. You never get to stop your marketing at anytime or for any reason. Marketing funds can never be a hindrance – because you are paying only when the referral efforts results to confirmed sales.

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Internet Marketing

5 Expert Reasons You Need Your Own Website

Your own website

If you don’t own a website yet, this might be the best article you will ever read before getting one. There maybe hindrances stopping you from building your own website. I will help you touch base with some of them. Then, clear the air on why those reasons are too costly for you to keep paying.

A website is many things to a business online. In today’s world, you don’t have a business until you have your own website. It may sound strange, and you might even quote several businesses you know that doesn’t have their own website.

But do you know the huge benefits of having to own a website? Maybe you don’t, but I want to give you just a few to help guide you correctly.

How Website Works For Business

In today’s world, we practically live in two worlds concurrently. One is the physical world, while the other is the virtual world. This virtual world is the closet the natural man have gotten to the real application of the spirit world in the physical realm.

Your website is your virtual business in a physical world. It gives you unprecedented accessibility than the physical presence of your business. That’s why it’s too important to overlook or ignore.

Moreover, it works mostly without human interference. That means your business can be on 24 hours a day even while you sleep. So much gets done all day long, even without your physical attention.

Your website is your business in a virtual world that is larger and more accessible than your business in the physical realm. And if the virtual world is much bigger, why can’t pay attention to it more than the physical world?

Why You Need Your Own Website

A website is one of the biggest investment decisions for any startup. If you don’t plan for your own website, your business is not planning its growth future properly. Some have substituted having a website with social media pages. That’s a big risk.

In case you don’t know, many startups crashed when Facebook changed its algorithm. Businesses that earlier depended on Facebook, building large followers found the customers stripped from them and where told to reach those same customers on their pages by paying for adverts. The same thing happened with Instagram and the rests.

You may get started and build a sustainable online presence on social media but you don’t stake the future growth of the business on it. And there are reasons for that. You don’t have control over your presence on any social media platform. Whatever control you seem to have can be taken away without prior notice.

 

 

#1: Professionalism

Websites make businesses look trusted and big enough to do what they say they can do. It makes small business look competitive enough against well established brands. It’s your first step to getting the right customers who may not trust you if they had come to your physical office, to trust to do business with you.

Your company or business website makes you look professional and credible. It gives every business the opportunity to appear in their best form regardless of their financial status.

With your own website you can compete professionally with Fortune 500 companies and land yourself mega businesses.

#2: Easily Found On Search Results Online

The second important reason to own a website is even more important than the first one. It’s to increase the chances of appearing at the top of Google search result. Online visibility is the biggest investment any business can make today. And getting your website to appear in Google search results puts your business before many potential customers.

Yes, to show up in google search results is a big deal that should motivate you to get your own website today. You need to get more online visibility to attract potential customers.

But you will need to understand and follow search engine optimization techniques to prepare and position your website for Google search ranking. You can learn about SEO techniques from the articles on SEO. Starting from, SEO for Beginners.

#3: Your Competitors Have Websites

If there is one more reason to have your own website, it’s because your competitions have websites. If all your competitors probably have websites that gives them an edge over you. That’s not fair for competition. If you are wondering, what percentage of your competitors have their own website, you will be shocked to find out exactly how many of them.

But knowing that about 81 percent of the customers perform online search before making purchases that should let you know that your competitors won’t ignore this huge advantage either. As a startup, having your own website would give you an edge in the competition.

If you don’t have a website you will be losing out so much, and impatient customers may look elsewhere. Don’t forget that one of the reasons customers give for patronage is CONVENIENCE.

#4: Your Business Is Open 24 Hours

How much longer do you want your business open to customers? A physical location can’t give you that no matter how much you really want it. But your own website will never put up the closed for business sign. That means you are open for business round the clock.

Having a business website or eCommerce store means that you sell your products any time not just restricted to 9 to 5 working hours. If you are targeting a global audience that’s even more attractive. When your physical offices are closed in the country where you operate, your website is handling orders and requests from countries that are opened for business.

#5: Influence Public Perception

What customers think of you is based on what they know about you. Your website should be the most reliable information center your customers should know. It provides social proof and controls what customers should know, think and share about your business.

You business website can influence customers perception by creating your own message, mission and personality in front of your target audience. You can also influence any negative publicity about your business in the press by feeding your customers with your own position on every issue affecting your company.

It’s how the public perceive your business would determine how much of their patronage they would bring to you.

Conclusion

Sometimes the reason you don’t have a website may not be because you don’t know the huge benefits. It may even be because you really don’t think that your business needs its own website. If you already have a thriving social media page, it’s easier to believe that it’s the same thing as your own website.

Other major reasons you don’t have your own website includes not understanding how to get a website. You think it’s expensive, beyond your finances to get your own website. But there are cheaper ways to get a website. You can also find cheaper website developers on Fiverr.

Please tell me why you don’t have a website yet. Maybe I can help advise you on smarter ways to get your own website designed for you cheaper. Drop me a comment in the comment box below.

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Internet Marketing

How to Start A Successful Niche Blog In Nigeria

Successful niche blog

Do you want to start a blog? I would recommend you start a successful niche blog. In case you don’t fully know the benefits of a niche blog and how you can grow this type of blogs faster than general blogs, I will be showing you things you need to focus on more.

Starting a blog today is no longer an easy job as it was some decade ago. A lot of Nigerian bloggers are struggling with generating traffic for their blogs. The reason is not that blogging no longer works, but the game has changed. Even the SEO techniques has shifted from on-page to more of off-Page.

It takes a lot now to grow a blog. And the way search engines treat blogs now, it’s difficult for general blogs to grow their traffic faster than a niche blog would. That’s why it’s in your interest to narrow your niche and help Google understand your blog and help you grow faster.

Why Niche Blog

There are many reasons you should start a niche blog instead of general blogs. I know most startup bloggers think that writing on every topic increases your traffic. That’s a farce.

Having a general content makes it difficult for Google to properly rank your site under one topic. It would rather treats each post as a single topic, reducing the impact each post could have on the entire blog, since the contents are not directly related. That affects the traffic you get from the search engine too.

I’m going to break it down for you, in a way you will understand and take advantage. Most importantly, I will also remove the fears many have in starting a blog. Yes, blogs are still the fastest way to gain online relevance, as social media networks are now censoring and reducing the reach of users posts.

What’s A Successful Niche Blog?

Niche blogs are specialized blogs that addresses only a particular niche. It’s like a question and answer approach. So, a niche is the problem you want to solve with your blog. This gives you advantage with search engines.

Your blog is easily categorized in search engines and that shoots it up through the page-rank faster than general blogs. Your blog is only competing with other blogs in the same niche, which is limited, and not with all the billion blogs on the internet.

Examples of a niche blog are too many to ignore them. There are countless niche blogs online that you won’t have a problem finding your kind of niche to learn what other Before have done.

And you can easily know what niche would flow with you by knowing what natural type of intelligence God gifted you with. If you have a hard time figuring it out, I recommend you read this: 9 Types Of Intelligence In Smart Entrepreneurs.

 

How Niche Blogs Work In Practice

A niche blog is an information resource targeting at a particular audience with a focused need. It deals on a specific topic or content. Although, everybody has a different idea of what a niche should be, but that doesn’t change the fact that a niche is addressing a specific topic.

So, choosing the topic of your niche and focusing on that topic, by addressing every sub topic that exist in that niche is what makes a niche blog powerful. It’s like a compendium of specific information.

For example, football is a type of sports. It’s a niche in the sports arena. Doing a football blog is a niche. However, a football blog can also be a general blog when you now look at blogs that deals with only players transfer market, or fan clubs, or betting, etcetera.

Finding A Niche For Your Blog

In picking a niche for your blog, it’s not entirely a straightforward approach. Even after you select your niche, you still need to calculate the traffic volume, the revenue model and conversion funnel.

However, you don’t have to be a pro blogger to figure it all out. You can follow what existing blogs are doing well, and you will be just fine. The first step is in finding a profitable niche is finding your niche. It matters what you have enough motivation for.

Don’t do news blog if you don’t have the flare for news media. The same goes for gossip blog, etcetera. Remember, blogging is like teaching, you stay with the subject you are best at. That’s the only way you can create the best content and win the best endorsements from sites with higher domain authority.

Avoid trying to jump into niches that seemed to be attractive or profitable. The game of search engine traffic is changing everyday. It takes more efforts now to win in the online traffic war than was possible in the past.

Tips On Profitable Niche Blog?

To find a lucrative niche would largely depend on your target audience. The most profitable niche blog is that blog that provide answers to problems most people have in a way that’s helpful and easy to access to their benefits.

Nigeria is a complex online community. Most of what drives blog growth are freebie blogs. That’s why blogs like free music download sites are gaining momentum. But the real problem is also how to monetize them since bloggers don’t usually have copyright to those songs.

If you are to go by Google standard of a profitable niche, then you can just add problem with number of people who are looking for solutions online. Also know that it’s not every problem have large number of people looking for its solution online. But generally, any problem with large number of victims would make a profitable niche blog, and finding such problems won’t be difficult.

For a profitable niche blog, your concern should be to find the problem that the victims are capable of paying for solutions. Google search is built as a way for people to find solution or answer to their question. If your solution is worth money that’s a way to gauge the power of your content with search engine approval rating.

A comprehensive answers on a blog to a niche problem would get more searches than those in a general blog. You don’t need to start looking for a profitable blog in a niche you know nothing about. There are problems everywhere and you can find one that you are qualified to solve.

Focus On The Right SEO Techniques

In SEO, it’s a give and take kind of thing. You give the best solution and you get rewarded with more traffic. But there’s a lot that helps make that transaction possible. It’s not just about the best content wins. The battle is now beyond the cliché ‘content is king’.

That phrase ‘content is king’ is getting a new definition. Your blog also needs to be endorsed by top internet sites. Yet, it’s more so like how it operates in the real world. If you get endorsement from the big companies you can get virtually anything done in the business world. Google thinks that way with its search algorithm.

You can do your best in on-page SEO, but if your off page SEO sucks, you still can’t get much of a traffic from search engines. I made this mistake for over 2 years, working mostly to perfect my on-page SEO. But when traffic stagnates at the same level for more than one year, I knew something else has to be done. You don’t have to wait that long to find out the truth.

However, most of what you do to optimized for on-page SEO is now being done for you by Google algorithm. The search engine understands your content now more than even your keyword is trying to make it see. And because there are billions of other sites competing, Google pays more attention to site endorsed than your on page SEO.

How To Do Off Page SEO Right

The reason for off page SEO is to get the much needed endorsements from other sites. Think of it this way, that you have a book and CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, New York Times, etcetera are reviewing it on their networks. That’s a huge endorsement that your book is a best seller, and that would translates to more sales.

That’s pretty much what happens to your search traffic when big sites link back to you. Although, some are still thinking backlinks as in quantity. But Google values the site quality more than the number of backlinks you get from many sites. If you get more high quality backlinks that’s a huge win over your competitors. That’s how fast to get to the first page of Google ranking.

The theory of backlinks is based on MOZ domain authority ranking, which rate sites from zero (0) to hundred (100). The higher the number the more authority that domain commands. One backlinks from a site with DA 80 is more valuable to your site SEO than hundreds of backlinks from sites with DA 20.

How To Get High DA Backlinks

If you understand the power of backlinks, you will also know that it doesn’t come so easily. You are not going to get backlinks from sites like Amazon, CNN or New York Times just by asking. Don’t listen to the gurus. Those theories they preach doesn’t always apply to everyone.

Think of backlinks as a growth formula. If your site is still low in domain authority, start by attracting backlinks from site with much higher DA than yours. It’s a journey you are undertaking. So be patient to follow the routes.

Alternatively, don’t ignore this one as well, pay to get backlinks. I know it’s not something to say openly. But it’s a common thing happening online. People are selling backlinks. It’s a huge business. As Google tries to limit the use of paid backlinks, sellers are getting smarter and successful.

There are so many sellers on Fiverr where you can buy backlinks. Okay, don’t fret, follow this link to Fiverr site. I don’t recommend any other platform because it’s also so easy to get conned by spammers who sell bad backlinks.

Conclusion

Blogs don’t just grow online. It requires a lot of online traffic to grow. Unless you are willing to Invest enormously in advertising, then your best source of traffic is the search engines. To get search engines to trust you and send you traffic you have to play the search engine game.

While niche blog gets approval from search engines as authentic resource for that particular niche, you also need to prove that your blog overall content can be trusted. That’s why you need backlinks as online endorsement from high domain authority sites.

If you get things right fast enough, your blog grows. The idea that if you have many blog posts it’s faster way to grow traffic is not entirely true, but it does help. One blog post can get you more traffic if it has highest DA rating than all the entire traffic from Washington Post.

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Internet Marketing

How to Sell Anything In Nigeria

How to sell

One of the most important skills you should acquire in life is how to sell. If you know how to sell anything you are more likely to be successful in business than someone who doesn’t know. But when you don’t have Selling skill, you put your business in great danger, and you lack the ability to convert your products or services to a profitable opportunity for your target audience.

That’s because every business requires selling skills to succeed. The value of sales skill is a highly sort after skill in every business. No business can achieve greatness without the best sales team. Even on the internet, affiliate marketing, which is sales, has continued to dominate how to sell in a digital world.

If you want to start a business, the first skill you must have is selling skill. Don’t take it for granted. Sales is a skill you can acquire through learning. And there are many courses online to help you learn how to sell.

Furthermore, there are two important things you must understand about sales. They are the people and the product. If you don’t understand the people you are selling to and the product you want to sell, you cannot have a great selling experience. The people must be clear to you. And you must know the product like you know yourself.

How Sales Work In Nigeria

The most important part of any business is the sales. Businesses are setup to make sales. And if sales doesn’t work the business fails. So, in how to sell, it’s important that you properly understand how sales work beyond assumptions. And above all, you need to know the things that makes sales work.

Remember, if anything is working, it’s because somethings are responsible for making it work. You need to know how sales work for some businesses and not work for others. What are they doing to make sales work that you should know and do for your own sales to work?

Moreover, sales works better when it aligns with your marketing. (Read the post: How Marketing Works). Most startups misunderstand sales with marketing. Though they work together, they are not exactly the same. While marketing deals with interest of the audience, sales handles the activities to produces the sales. It’s a direct exchange of product or service with money.

Think of sales as a direct process a business follows to exchange its product or service with money. Once money exchanges hands with your product or service, sales have taken place.

 

 

How to Sell Anything

Now that you know how sales work, you need to know also how to sell anything to anyone. Your understanding of what you want to sell is key to selling it to anyone. The people who would buy your product or service would like to know what you are selling. It’s only when you know the product yourself that you are inspired to sell it to anyone.

However, to sell anything is not just about the product. You will need to know the product or service so you can sell it better. But what makes sales work is by knowing how to sell. If sales can be learnt then it has to follow a process. That means, there are sales guidelines one needs to follow to sell any product or service.

What are these guidelines? Based on this, let’s look at what to sell, things to avoid, what the buyer needs, and how to make your sales convincing. These four guiding principles is what would help you sell anything to anyone.

{1} What To Sell

In how to sell, even though it’s about the product or service, your focus should be on what exactly you want people to think they are buying from you. That’s very important because people buy value and not necessarily the product or service you offer. And it’s your job as the salesperson to sell them what they really need to buy.

To sell anything you have to know what you are selling. The primary reason people want to buy product or service is because they require solution for something. And what you are selling must be a solution that they need. This solution must also be the right or near fit to get the attention of your target audience.

However, there’s a right way to sell your solution. Your sales strategy must be clear and concise enough to get the buyer to make purchasing decision as fast as possible. Your marketing shouldn’t be based on complicated logic. It’s important to make the buyer see the reason he or she is buying your product, even on face value.

Moreover, how to sell should involve emotion, driven by strong desires. Even though selling shouldn’t include exploitation, but when it comes to buyers emotion, you need to get their emotion involved in the purchase. As long as it’s not deceptive, and forceful, but a subtle enticement that seeks to explore what’s already in the buyer’s desire.

Note that every purchase is driven by a desire. If you can find what those desires are, use them to drive your sales.

{2} What to Avoid In Selling

There are things you have to avoid about how to sell. because they can frustrate your sales and lose you clients. These things most be avoided like plague.

However, the first one I consider in the sales mistake is allowing prospect lead the sale. For whatever reason, you don’t let them control the sales pitch. Sometimes it’s not about what they say but how they feel about how you sell.

The second one is having ego problem. Some customers have ego problem too. How you present your product can be misunderstood by such type of customers. Your customers thinks they know more than you. They also don’t like to be corrected, it makes them feel offended. To sell to them you should be smart enough not to hurt their ego, while you can turn that ego into a selling point for your product or service where it applies.

{3} Identify Buyer Needs

The best part of sales is knowing what the customer really wants. If you can identify the buyer’s needs it makes it easier to win in sales. The customer needs to have better reasons to buy. It’s this buyer’s needs that you sell back to your audience.

You have to realize that customers don’t like to spend money or buy products. That may surprise you, but use yourself as an example. How easy do you like to spend money? And how often do you query a price tag on a product?

As people don’t like to buy product, they are rather forced to buy because of their needs. You buy a car because of the need to move around much freely, whenever you want to, without the inconvenience of public transportation. But considering the price of cars, you may not want to buy one.

That’s why how to sell requires the pushing of the emotional button. You make the customer feel the need to buy a car, irrespective of the cost consideration. So, rather than worry about the cost of the car, the customer is consumed by the strong desire to buy the car.

{4} Be Convincing

The power of sales is the ability to convince a customer to make the purchase now and with you. That’s why you need to understand the different kind of people to sell to. When you prospect for sales, always seek to end it with an actual sale. Sometimes after you have prospected a client, they might end up buying from a competitor.

You need to avoid this, by being not just more convincing but add a time frame. Your customers need to make purchases quickly and with you. But most times it’s not even about how convincing you are but the right kind of customers that you target.

How to Sell to People

If sales is exchanging products with people for their money, then you ought to know how to sell to people. Don’t assume that people will just give you their money because you have a product or service to exchange. Sales doesn’t just work that way.

There’s some complexity of sales you need to understand. If sales are not done properly they don’t yield the best result. And the only way to get the right result is to know how to sell to people.

Sales work when your product or service is properly targeted at the right people who really need it, who can afford it and who are willing to make the effort to get it. If these elements are present with your audience, it makes sales work better.
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First, you need to understand the 4 different kinds of people you can sell to. It’s not everybody that’s your target audience for your product or service. More so, even among your target audience you can further classify them into 4 groups. And you need to know this when you are conducting sales.

{1} People With No Job

The first category of people you need to understand when planning sales, is people that has no job. This category can cut across different audience categorization in your buyer persona. If your target audience are doctors, there are doctors who don’t have jobs.

The reason is, these people who don’t have jobs, even though they have time, may have no money and possibly can’t travel. By understanding the people you plan to sell to with this kind of buyer persona would make your sales directional. This category may not do much to help your sales.

Even though these category don’t have money, they may sometimes represent the largest buyers of certain products like groceries. And they mostly shop offline than online. They look out for huge discounts and clearance sales. They don’t mind traveling to buy the product. They also have time in their hands to visit the malls and walk through, looking for cheaper deals.

{2} People With 9-5 Jobs

The second group of people are those with jobs. These people are working, and that means they have money, but not necessarily time and possibly can’t travel too because of the tight schedule of their job.

If they have money that means they have purchasing power, but may not buy anything that requires their time investment. And so, will not travel to buy anything as well. These kind of customers are the large number of online shoppers. The enjoy the flexibility of online shopping.

{3} People Who’re Self Employed

This category are people who are self employed. That means they have money, and can possibly travel. But they have no time due to their daily engagement with their work. So, even though they have purchasing power, they may not subscribe to product or service that would demand for their time.

Forasmuch as they have money and can buy from you, they may not have the time to actually buy your product or service. Or even come to the location where the sale might take place. These consideration would help you package the right sales strategy for your target audience.

{4} People Who’re Business Owners

Finally on how to sell to people, let’s consider this fourth category, which are people who own businesses. This class of people have everything, including time, money and can travel. If what you sale requires the people to meet all the 3 conditions of the buyer persona, then, this people are the best fit for you.

However, all the different classes gives us an idea of the different buyer persona on how to sell to people. If doctors are your target audience, you will have all these 4 classes present. There are only a few of the buyer persona that you won’t find all these 4 different classes of people present.

How to Sell In A Digital World

You cannot talk about sales today without reference to the digital world. The highest number of sales today happen online. And every salesperson must focus on the internet. The huge potential provided by the internet for sales is unprecedented.

The most powerful way to sell online is through eCommerce. The power of online stores in managing sales is not only felt in the automation process, but also in the number of sales that is possible online than what is currently possible offline.

Moreover, here are the main types of digital marketing you should consider for your business when planning how to sell online.

  • Content Marketing
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Social Media Marketing (SMM)
  • Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Instant Messaging Marketing

These are just few of the ways on how to sell digitally. While these are digital marketing processes, they also follow sales process. The Balance Small Business Blog gave a 5-step sales process to follow on how to sell in a digital world. See the list below:

  1. Marketing/prospecting to your target market and audience.
  2. Building credibility and trust.
  3. Escorting and courting the buyer through the process.
  4. Presenting the product or service that meets their needs.
  5. Closing the sale.

However, customers are more likely to buy online when the order comes with free shipping, even if the shipping is bundled in the order than when a lower price is offered with cost of shipping charged separately.

Remember, we have looked into not allowing prospects lead the sales. This kind of scenario can achieve that either way. Customers can argue about shipping cost or get discouraged to buy. But if the shipping is free it eliminates arguments.

Conclusion

The success of any business is controlled by its sales. If you get sales right, everything will work effortlessly. Imagine if you know what the customer needs, it makes sales a lot more rewarding. And like I emphasized with different people to sell to, having money to buy is an important key in the buyer persona.

And from the 4 different types of people, only one didn’t have money to buy product or service. That means most of your sales work is not about looking for customers with money. Rather, it’s about finding the customer who is in urgent need of your product or service and is willing and able to commit to a sale. It’s this kind of customers that can quickly give you money in exchange for their need.

However, the biggest sales in history are now taking place on the internet. If you are selling anything, you should be selling it online.

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Business Management Internet Marketing

How to make Marketing Works For Beginners

How marketing works

Although marketing works the same for everybody, but there’s a way it can be well explained for beginners. That takes away the seeming complexity that most people associate with marketing. Even if you are an MBA student, this simple explanation about marketing will help you understand it much better.

As a startup entrepreneur, your understanding about how marketing works will give you an edge over the competition. Most times, startups see marketing as a subset of advertising. But marketing is the embodiment of sales. Sales happen as an effect of marketing.

In this post, we are going to look at what makes up marketing, by exploring the simple details of how marketing works, especially for beginners who know little about marketing.

How Marketing Works?

Marketing is not sales. Know what makes the difference. This must be clear to you. Because there’s a difference between marketing and sales. Because marketing deals with what makes people interested in the product or service being sold. While sales addresses only the activities that lead to the selling of the product or service. So, when you understand and able to differentiate these two, then you can properly articulate how to make marketing work for your business.

That brings us to the functions of marketing, which includes:

  • Distribution
  • Market research
  • Setting prices
  • Finance
  • Product management
  • Promotional channels
  • Matching products to consumers

Marketing involves every aspect of a product life, till it gets to the final consumer. But the main goals of marketing, which is to research, promote the product to increase target audience engagement that would lead to the selling of the product or service can be defined as:

  • Customer Service
  • Lead Nurturing
  • Lead Conversion
  • Brand Awareness
  • Upsell
  • Loyally

Who’s A Marketer?

By understanding who a marketer is, will help you grasp the Know-how of marketing. After all, the sole purpose of learning how marketing works is so that you too can become a good marketer.

So, the primary duty of a marketer is to present a product or service before a target audience, to win their interest and patronage, with strategic messages that raises brand awareness with the intent to drive sales.

However that duty includes finding the best distribution channels to market the product or service. Finding the finances required to run the enterprise. Also, conducting market research about the potential of the market for your product or service. While also managing the product or service, and utilizing all promotional channels available in the target market.

Note: You don’t necessarily need to become a member of National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria to perform marketing functions in your business. But membership of the Institute is compulsory for only practitioners of the marketing profession.

 

 

What’s Advertising?

A professor once gave a simple and educative illustration about marketing to his MBA students. This simple illustration will form the basis for explaining marketing in this article. I will start first by using it to explain advertising, and then the rest of the sub heads under how marketing works.

The professor began with the idea of how you with your friends being in a party, and you spotted a gorgeous looking lady. This scenario will form the platform for every of the illustration, with different reactions or statement to accompany each of the explanation.

Now, if one of your friends go up to our gorgeous lady and pointed at you saying, “he’s very rich. Marry him”. That simple illustration is what advertising means. You are the product, your friend is the medium, while the lady is the target audience.

Also, your friend in his words expressed a proposition to the lady, while prompting her on a course of action. His message was clear: he’s very rich. And what he wants her to do is also very clear: marry him.

This simple illustration explains advertising in a way that everyone can understand. Now, from the concept of marketing, which advertising is a part of, you can understand the role of advertising in marketing. The concept of advertising is to influence consumer purchasing behavior. This influence is induced by emotional force.

What’s Direct Marketing?

Using the same illustration of our gorgeous lady by the professor, let’s define direct marketing in simple terms. But this time, it’s different from how advertising work. Imagine you walk up to her and say, “I’m very rich. Marry me”.

Notice the difference between advertising and direct marketing. In direct marketing, you don’t need someone to do it for you as an intermediary. You are not using any medium or channel of distribution. You are selling directly to the target audience.

Examples of Direct Marketing

There are many ways you can engage in direct marketing. The following examples of a direct marketing would help you find what will work best for you. The most common forms of direct marketing are:

  1. Internet marketing
  2. Face-to-face selling
  3. Direct mail
  4. Emails
  5. Catalogs
  6. Telemarketing
  7. Direct-response advertising
  8. Kiosk marketing
  9. Flyers
  10. Phone text messaging
  11. Promotional letters
  12. Newspapers
  13. Outdoor advertising
  14. Magazine adverts
  15. Coupons
  16. Postcards

What’s Competition?

The next important aspect of marketing is the competition. It’s one of the major reason marketing exist in the first place. If there are no competitors, customers would readily find you when they need you.

Marketing is a way of maintaining your market share in a competition. But to explain market competition, let’s resort to professors illustration with our gorgeous lady at the party. But this time, as you got to the lady to say anything, another person got to her first to tell her: “I’m rich. Will you marry me?’ And she goes with him. That other person is the competition.

What’s Brand Recognition?

Branding is one of the biggest part of marketing because of what it seeks to deliver. It builds a long lasting relationship between the product or service and the target audience. A brand gives a product or service a lifeline.

And here’s how the professor illustrates brand recognition using our gorgeous lady at the party. This time, she walks up to you and says, “you are very rich. Can you marry me?”

She’s the one that spotted you. Also, by herself knew that you are very rich. And without hesitation requested to be married. That’s brand recognition. You are recognizable as very rich, to the intent of your target requesting marriage with you.

Any brand that can achieve this kind of recognition is powerful and cannot be easily defeated by the competition. Think of brands like OMO that has replaced the real name of detergents with its brand name – OMO.

What’s Market Restriction?

Moreover, markets can also have restrictions. And that’s our next topic on how marketing works. You need to know what are the restrictions in your market. Some business permits are there to restrict those who can’t meet those requirements from entering the business.

Let’s use the same professors illustration of our gorgeous lady to understand what market restrictions are like. Think of of it as you going up to her, but before you say, “I’m rich. Mary me,” your wife arrives on the scene. That’s like a restriction of entering new markets.

Restrictions exists to stop you. But it’s up to you to know what’s stopping you and how you can overcome those challenges to gain your place in the market.

What’s Demand And Supply Gap?

When you succeed in overcoming the restrictions to get into the market, then prepare yourself also for what could come next. The right thing to do at this stage is to supply your target market what you promised to deliver. And while your supply chain moves in, your marketing should as well address the demand side.

Things can get ugly when demand doesn’t seem to match with supply. There could be demand and supply gap.

In the professors illustration with our gorgeous lady, he made it very simple to grasp. It’s like you going up to the lady to say, “I’m very rich. Marry me”. But she turns and introduces you to her husband. That’s a typical demand and supply gap.

The competition is already present in the market. And your target audience are already in bed with them.

What’s Tele Marketing?

So, what can you do about your situation? Let’s consider telemarketing to understand how it works in marketing. The role telemarketing plays in how marketing works is essential in dealing with issues of demand and supply gap. It offers you direct marketing advantage that could help you woe customers to your product or service.

How would our professor describe telemarketing, using the illustration of our gorgeous lady? Imagine, you go up to her and got her telephone number. The next day, you call her and say, “Hi, I’m very rich. Marry me”. That’s telemarketing.

You are marketing to her directly through access to her phone. You could also use text messaging to do that. But the idea here is that you got her number for the purpose of reaching her with marketing.

Marketing Response – Customers Feedback

Now that you have access to your customers and they are convinced about your product or service, it’s your job with marketing to know what the consumers think about your product or service. It’s a great way to measure how marketing works.

You will love what the professor thinks about customers feedback, in our illustration using the gorgeous lady. It’s like you going up to her to say, “I’m very rich. Marry me!” But she gives you a nice hard slap on your face. That’s what’s called customers feedback.

Also, it doesn’t matter if she just smiled at you and kissed you. Whatever reaction you got from customers feedback is for your advantage. Use what you got to address your product deficiencies or shortsightedness. But the customers feedback is there to always point you in the right direction of what could keep your relationship with your target audience sweet with merriment.

Conclusion

You can understand better now from our professors point of view how marketing works. But by following the professors illustration we have explained in simple terms how marketing works for beginners. However, one thing is clear, marketing has several parts to it. And  to make marketing work for you, learn all about the things that makeup marketing.

The concept of marketing reveals how marketing works is to satisfy customers needs, increase sales, maximize profits and beat the hell out of the competition. But as a marketer, your job in the management of the business is to design best strategies that will create profitable relationships with target customers.

If you do that successful, you have marketing working for you.

Finally, the problem with a lot of marketing strategies by beginner startups is their lack of understand of the difference between marketing and sales. Their ignorance, often times caused by the lack of knowledge of how marketing works, is the reason they never get it right with marketing.

So, emphasis is placed on sales as though it covers the entire marketing. Yet, you can only succeed with sales if you make marketing work first.

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Internet Marketing

Search Engine Free Traffic 101 (Demystify SEO)

Search engine free traffic

If you are starting a blog, the biggest problem that you have is how to get traffic to your blog. I asked the same question. Almost everyone asked or will have the same issue. The answer is in search engine free traffic.

When I first started a blog, I had high hopes, but it all fizzled away as days go into weeks, and weeks into months, with no visitors to my blog. If you haven’t even started your blog yet, please you can read the startup tutorial here. It will help you set up your blog and join in this critical discussion on search engine optimisation.

So, I have good contents that provided help to my readers. And I even planned on powerful conversion strategy to get them hooked with the more juicy offer. But when I didn’t see the free traffic Google promised me, I had to ask questions.

If you are in the same shoes as I was then, I want to show you want I did that helped me. And I know it will help you too if you follow them step by step.

Other Topics In This Course

Meanwhile, here is what I discovered about blogging, how blog traffic works and the nitty-gritty of making money through blogs. But I will be sharing these secrets with you through the free course modules I have packaged for you. Below are links to each of the course module.

  1. What Is SEO?
  2. What Is Keyword Planner?
  3. What Is Content Marketing?
  4. What Is Monetization?

This free guide will shape your SEO strategy with an understanding you didn’t know was common.

Avoid High Fee Search Engine Traffic Courses

I’m not knocking off SEO courses. If you want to learn more, go ahead. But don’t go paying an enormous cost for it, unless you want to offer digital marketing as a service.

For me, it’s just about getting more traffic for my blog. And all I wanted to do was what will bring in the traffic and not to get another education on the simple subject. The truth is, SEO is not as so difficult as many think. It has defined means and processes, which makes it simple to follow. And it will produce the same result it did with anyone.

So, you don’t even need to be a pro in search engine free traffic. I wasn’t a pro when I used this method. And I don’t also want to claim I’m one now either.

Learn Search Engine Free Traffic

Sometimes, those who know too much will want to confuse those who know little. Avoid trying to understand everything people are teaching about search engine optimisation.

Don’t confuse yourself. That’s how some people get discouraged about search optimisation. The moment you start thinking you haven’t known enough, you will feel inadequate.

Moreover, I will suggest, that you stick to the basic SEO techniques. Google is not going to Rank your blog based on your SEO expertise. In fact, Google is not even ranking your blog based on trying to rank for keyword. You skip and see it here and return to continue.

But once you learn what matters in SEO strategy and apply it well, you will see free traffic every day.

The two main types of SEO knowledge are:

  1. On Page SEO
  2. Off Page SEO

How Search Engine Traffic Works

By the way, search engine traffic is not a mystery. In fact, it’s available for free to everyone. That’s the beauty of it. It’s the reason why you should go for it. But first, you will need to understand how it works. The search engine is designed to pull out search results for search queries.

That’s what bloggers optimise, to connect with these search requests from online visitors. Because the more traffic you can optimise for the more free traffic you attract to your blog.

The search engines are not there to send traffic to any blog. Rather, they only index blog posts with defined search terms. And when someone requests for results that relate to those terms, search engine presents sites that meet those requests according to their indexed hierarchy.

Generally, Google only matches search terms with the indexed contents in its database, according to visitors defined search terms.

 

 

Optimizing For Search Engine Free Traffic

That brings us to how to optimise for the search engine. Besides that’s what every new blogger should know. If your blog is not ranking, it will eventually die. Because It’s just the way it works. When you are not getting visitors, there is no purpose for your blog. It’s just a bunch of templates and words.

And from the explanation earlier, you can see that we have touched on crucial areas with optimisation. However, let me tabulate them for clarity.

  • Visitors are searching for an answer
  • They type in requests using strings of keywords
  • Google matches those keywords with content already indexed in its server
  • Google displays the best-related contents to the search request
  • And the results are presented in a hierarchical order, with the most optimised ahead of the rest.
6. And visitors scan through the list and click on what interests them or seems to answer their request.

You can see that from the table above we have simplified how Search Engine works. And how to optimise for traffic. It’s not as complicated as many think.

The question on your mind now should be, how do I write the best content in the niche I’m targeting? Your answer is to give Google what people are searching. And connect to search intents with your content.

What Visitors Are Searching For

Google is not interested in your blog content., but visitors are. The job of Google is to help visitors to your blog discover the best response that addresses their need. If your competitor is better optimised, Google will not be sympathetic with you but will send the available search traffic to your competitor’s.

Also, the Google algorithm doesn’t feel human. It’s a machine and doesn’t have to think to solve problems. If a visitor is looking for a shoe, Google will show the sites that optimised for shoes that best describes the search request.

Since Search requests often come as questions. Google is expected to answer them. But Google hopes that your blog would provide that answer.

How Free Web Traffic Gets To Your Blog

Moreover, if your blog present the right response people are searching for, you are more likely to get visitors to come to your blog. Google is just an intermediary here. It’s between the search terms and your related content.

I have also learnt that good blog content has its peculiarities. They provide the right answers in a way that is both simple and easy to understand.

Those factors are what drives search engine free traffic to your blog. And if maintained, they are what will keep bringing even more visitors to your blog.

As we know, search traffic can increase with time and when certain conditions are favourable as well. Google algorithm sees synonyms are related keywords. And it can increase the number of keywords a single post can rank for at the same time.

Where to Optimize For Search Engine

Now, let’s even drive it home to where this optimisation happens. We have gone from identifying the simplicity of SEO, to what we optimise. Also, we looked at the targetted audience, to determine what the sources of the traffic. But we haven’t said anything about where you do the optimisation.

Another factor, most optimisation for the search engine is on-page. You should carefully optimise each blog post before posting it to the public and letting Google index it. This takes care of the readability, keywords, tags, and images.

Optimizing all the areas that search engine will appraise for ranking. The critical areas of your post that must be optimised to include the title, post URL, and keyword density.

Also, note that this module is one out of five modules in this free course. More details and clarity are in preceding modules by topics. You can also use the comment box to drop your questions for us to answer.

Read the preceding post on Search Engine Traffic Optimization: What Is SEO?

Conclusion

In summary, SEO is not as complex as some may think. You need to start from the simple before you get to the a bit complex. For a beginner, the first SEO knowledge to get first is On Page optimization. It’s simple and you can easily implement it without guidance.

Most of what you will need on SEO will be covered in this entire course. If you study these materials carefully you will be able to know how to implement most simple SEO techniques without additional material.

And share your experience and knowledge of SEO with our readers on the comment box.

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Internet Marketing

5 Useful Tips to Create Blog Content Faster

Create great content

Do you want to be able to create blog content better each time? Content is the heart of successful blogs. You need to post new blogs as frequently as possible. But that also has its shortfalls because you need to create quality content for search engine optimization as well. That brings us to the question, what is the fastest way to create great content?

So, I want to show you how I create blog content fast. Although, you should pay attention to the crucial aspect of content marketing, like:

  1. Provide unique solutions
  2. Helpful and easy to follow
  3. Tutorial or step by step guide
  4. Readability and Storyline
  5. And search engine friendly content

I will start with the first point to explain.

{1} Provide Unique Solutions

Your first step to my fastest way to create great content is by identifying a problem you can provide a unique solution. It might be an old problem that may even have so many existing answers. Or maybe a new challenge. But you must be sure your solution is unique to the problem.

One thing you must know about the problem is that it mutates with time and become immune to existing solutions. A new solution is needed from time to time. It’s not only diseases that react this way, nature generally does.

{2} Helpful And Easy To Follow

You also need to find a way to make your solution valuable by making it easy to follow. People don’t want complicated answers. Their problem is involved already. So, they need what can make it easier for them.

If they can’t follow it won’t be useful to them, even though your solution may be what they need, but they can’t make use of it when it’s complicated. It will be as good as not having any solution. So, drive for easy to follow guide.

{3} Tutorial Or Step By Step Guide

Creating contents that are tutorial in nature makes them feel they are learning something. It’s also a way to provide a guide or process of doing something.

When people see a guide, it gives the impression that it’s simple to follow. And they can come back to it when they err trying it out. It also helps you to prove better content with useful subheadings. That way you show your readers process by process what is next.

{4} Readability And Storyline

People like stories. That’s why fiction is the fastest selling book. Apply this simple storyline trick to create high-quality content. Every content is a story. So, tell it well.

The good thing about stories is that they are easy to read as well. The more visitors enjoy your story content, the more they come back to read more blog. That’s a huge SEO advantage for you.

And don’t forget that readability is not just about storytelling. Your writing style, punctuation, phrase structure, vocabulary and expressions are all vital to a good story and search engine optimisation.

{5} Search Engine Friendly Content

The whole point of the fastest way to create high-quality content is so that you can satisfy your visitors. That brings in search engines to the story. If your content is not optimized, nobody may find it to read.

You should have the search engine in mind as well when creating those great contents. That means you should find out what content search engines want and how people are discovering similar blog contents as yours.

Moreover, what search engines want is not different from what people are looking for online. Google can show you what people are searching for so you can create great content for them.

 

 

Fast Way to Create Blog Content

If you have read up to this part, it means that you have read all the guidelines I have shared with you on what to consider when writing great content. Now I want to show you how to put all that together and produce great content fast.

I have done this severally, so I can make it so simple and easy for you to understand.

The first step I take when I want to create high-quality content fast is to identify my focus keywords. Most times, I use only one keyword. That way I keep my other keywords as close to my focus keyword as possible.

When I have my focus keyword, I type it into Google search to see what turns up. I look at the title tags of the first three results; then I scroll down to Related Searches.

The list shows me groups of keywords people are using to search for the same content. So, I copy all the related keywords and apply the relevant once for my blog content as subheadings.

How I Create Blog Content

Sometimes those related searches can give me so many keyword subtopics. I can also modify them to suit my content. But I make sure not to destroy their keyword relevance.

When I’m done putting them together in chronological order, I create my title tag with my focus keyword in mind. I also consider the title tags of the first three top result from the Google search.

After. My title tag, I start with my introduction. I keep in mind that my SEO optimizer plugin will be looking for my focus keyword appearance in my first paragraph.

My next part will be filling in those keyword topics with my solutions based on my previous research for my content.

And when I’m done, I create the most appealing conclusion that would make you go back to any particular part of my content that you may have previously skipped.

I can do all that in two to five hours of my day. That’s my fastest way to create great content for my blog. What’s yours? You can share with me in the comment box.

Conclusion

To create great content for your blog regularly may be a little challenging. Every blogger experiences that once in a while. Coming up with great content ideas is not always easy. And when you do, developing the idea into a great content presents it’s own challenge as well.

This post takes you through some of the little known secrets I have used to come up with great presentation for my content ideas.

However, when writing your blog content, understand the goal is to provide answers to possible keyword strings. If the content doesn’t present a clear solution to how someone could achieve a result, then you didn’t do a good job.

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Internet Marketing

SEO For Beginners: How to Get More Traffic

SEO for beginners

Do you want more visitors to your blog? How much traffic do you get daily? How long have you been blogging? Do you want to learn about SEO for beginners?

These questions are not new. Some of them you probably have asked yourself. The most common question on the internet is: how do I get more traffic to my website? If many people are asking this question, does it mean it’s very difficult? Most likely, yes!

Getting traffic to your website is not that simple. And if you want to share in the vast free traffic on Google, there are techniques you need to implement.

However, the problem of getting visitors to your blog, is a questions of what type of traffic do I want? What type of traffic is good for your blog? And how do I go about it? If you don’t know what traffic you need you may be doing things the wrong way.

There are two main traffic sources to grow a successful blog. And both of them can be easily implemented even as a beginner.

The options are:

  1. Paid Traffic
  2. Organic traffic

You need to define your growth strategy based on any of these two traffic sources. But you need to understand how they work and how you can implement any of them or both to your blog.

 

 

What Is SEO For Beginners?

As a beginner, you want to optimize your blog to get more traffic. But you have never done SEO before. It can be challenging for a beginner, not because SEO is hard, but because you haven’t done it before.

SEO is simply how bloggers prepare their blogs to make it available for indexing and easily located by searchers on search engine.

So, I’m going to be teaching you primarily two things. First, what to do to prepare your Blog for search engine. And secondly, how to make your blog post easily found in the search engine.

How SEO Works For Beginners:

Yours understand how SEO works will help you drive more traffic to your blog. The amount of traffic that comes to your blog is a result of your SEO work.

And SEO is the best form of driving traffic to blogs. Advertising your blog is not sustainable. You can advertise a product or service on your blog. That’s a revenue generation strategy.

But don’t depend on the advert to grow your blog.

You should learn how to implement SEO. It’s cost-effective and almost free. It’s your best way to promote your blog.

The process is systemic. And easy to learn. You will also have to accept SEO, omg term process. The result doesn’t come immediately. It takes a while. Sometimes, up to six months before results are noticed. But the real traffic will come around one year to two years time.

The reason every blogger is talking about SEO is that of the traffic power it possess. Once your blog starts enjoying the traffic power of SEO, it’s an effortless ride in blog money.

You just keep seeing traffic in their thousands and hundreds of thousand.
However, let me show you how visitors find your blog. And why SEO is important and still the best form of traffic optimization for bloggers.

How Search Engines Work:

Now, you need to know how search engines work. It will help you better understand how to prepare your blog post for them.

The first thing about the search engine is, they are like storage house. They collect all the information on every website and store it in a filing system. The purpose is to make it easier for anyone to locate any information on the internet.

However, locating this information is another aspect of how a search engine works.
And because they store the information in the same format we use in libraries, you need to request information by typing the name of what you want.

In the library, you ask for a book by the name or the author’s name. But in the search engine, you request by typing keywords that relate to what you are looking for online.
In another subheading, we will look at keywords as well, what they really are and how they work.

Google Search Simplified:

Now that you know how search engines work, let us look at how Google search works as well.

Google is the biggest search engine on the planet. They control much of search traffic.

But Google is a product, that is why I needed to explain it to you. A lot of people go to Google Search to look for information. In fact, millions of searches are queried on Google per day.

And Google is interested in satisfying every search request on its site. But Google doesn’t have its own information. It depends on information provided by other websites and blogs.

Google search is an interesting website. It doesn’t have a page for particular information people are searching for. But every time someone makes a request, Google creates a page to show the results of that request.

That page is called SERP – search engine result page.

Search Engine Free Traffic Myth:

I hope it made sense to you so far. If you haven’t learnt anything or you are not following it, let me know in the comment box. I will provide personal assistance to you.

Back to our discussion. You have read about search engines and Google. Now, let’s look at the traffic that comes from search engine.

The general idea about search engine traffic is that it’s free. Yes and No! It’s free but it doesn’t come cheap. Whatever you paid for it is not free.

The reason we use the word free traffic is because you are not paying something for the traffic sent to you. But we all know that the process of receiving the traffic consumed time and even money.

Also, Google doesn’t send traffic to your blog. Don’t wait on Google to send you traffic. And search engine traffic is not a miracle. It’s a result of your ability to provide relevant information to search requests.

The information should be good enough to make Google rank you above others in the same category. So that when visitors queries Google, your blog is the first they see on SERP.

Types Of Traffic Techniques

There is a little mystery about search traffic. They are available to the best information only. Your blog must be relevant to what people are searching for to compete for their time.

Google only display links to a website with the most valuable information. And it’s according to their hierarchy. It’s this positioning that every website is fighting to get.

However, research data shows that searchers only click on the first three link on SERP. That makes the first three position on search results the holy of holies of search results.

But how websites get to this position is the real topic of this blog post. While some play by the rules of the Google algorithm, others simply hack their way through it. Although, the consequences can be hash if Google finds out. But some don’t even know the right way and the wrong way.

We will look at the different types of traffic optimization. Just to guide you in the right direction. I’m the good guy. So, I want you to be too.

SEO Techniques For Beginner:

The success of your blog will depend so much on your SEO Techniques. SEO experts have followed these techniques for years with success. If you read through how Google rank websites you will notice that most of what it considers can be divided into two sections.

The first one will be on-page SEO techniques. While the second part is off-page SEO techniques. Off-page or off-site techniques contributes most of the basis for Google ranking. But without quality on-page success your off-page will have no result.

So, on-page SEO contributes 80% of your SEO success.

On-page SEO For Beginners:

On-page SEO is the most popular aspect of SEO techniques. They are also easy to Implement. An average blogger should be able to handle its blog On-page SEO. It’s also the most important part of SEO.

The good thing about On-page SEO is that you are in control. Everything happens on your site. You are responsible for the success of your On-page SEO. That means you are not depending on any external platform to do your On-page SEO right.

That’s good news from where I stand. I like to know I’m in charge. That’s what you get from On-page SEO.

However, let us look at the things that make up On-page SEO.

  1. Title tags
  2. Meta Description
  3. Blog content
  4. Alt Attributes
  5. URL Structure
Title Tags:

Your title tag is your SEO to your visitors. That’s what they will see when the search for your information on search engines. See your title tag as your headline page. It must be appealing, tempting, and juicy enough to provoke a click anytime.

If it doesn’t sell your content, visitors won’t click your link. So, craft a salesman kind of title tag for each of your post. You have just 75 characters to do this, don’t blow it.

Meta Description:

It’s like a preview of your title tag. A snippet of the real deal inside. So, tell the visitor what they would find out once they click the link. Don’t make it boring.

A good title tag should be equally supported by an even more appetizing meta Description. You can write up to 135 characters. You don’t get penalized if you write more. You just want to give a perceive info and you want all of your snippet to show.

Blog Content:

You know the drill on this one. That’s why you are a blogger. Your content is your product as a blogger. Your job is to sell this product well in every blog post. The reason you are a blogger is that you have something unique to offer.

We may all blog about the same topic, but each one of us blogs with a unique and powerful blogger DNA trademark. Give it your best shot always.

Your best content is the one you poured out your spirit. It’s not the one with the most intelligent words. You are the spirit of your blog. That’s why your audience followed you. Give it to them in each piece.

Google will rank you based on your content. And not because of anything else. So, this one product must be the best. Show Google you deserve a place in SERP first page.

Alt Attribute:

You need to use everything on your post to show Google that your content is all about your particular keyword. So, even your images should be optimized for that keyword. People also do an image search, just they do a video search. You can drive traffic to your blog from your images as well.

URL Structure:

If you are blogging from WordPress, this one can be set up once. Just go to your settings permalink, in the common settings select post name. That will structure your URL to SEO friendly link.

Your blog posts will now be showing URL Structure like (www.your-blog.com/posted-today). That’s if posted today is the title of your blog post. It’s important for SEO Techniques. And don’t forget, your URL for each post must contain the keyword you want to rank for on google.

Importance Of Keywords:

I have been mentioning the keywords from the start of this article. You may be wondering what exactly is a keyword. Let me explain.

Keywords are words typed into a search request box to query the search engine for information. Searchers use several keywords strings. It may be one word, two words, phrase or even a sentence request string – which is mostly referred to as long tail.

The most important part is that it must be words related to the information they need. You optimize your blog to respond to such request by providing the best possible solution to the search query.

Most of the visitors who would come to your blog would find you from search engines. They do so by entering a string of search words. For example: how can I get more traffic to my blog? Those are keyword strings.

If you optimized for the relevant keywords in that request, like more traffic or more traffic to my blog, or even my blog, it can trigger the search engine to show your post. Assuming your post is about getting more traffic to blogs.

You can also optimize for the whole search string: how can I get more traffic to my blog. That is known as the long tail keyword. However, you do not control what people will be searching online.

But you can control what information Google serves to them when they do. Your ability to get as much display on the SERP – search engine result page is what is called optimization.

The keyword is what helps you link your content to what people are already searching for on Google. You don’t invent your own keyword. You simply find out what people are already using to search for your kind of information and provide a more useful alternative for them.

If Google is convinced your content is better, it pushes it to the front page of SERP.

Off-page SEO For Beginners:

Off-page SEO is the opposite of On-page SEO. It happens outside your blog. And you don’t have control of your Off-page SEO.

Its the process of sending traffic to your blog from other blogs or websites using backlinks. This type of traffic is also called referrals.

The things you do for Off-page SEO includes:

  1. Link exchange
  2. Guest Blogging
  3. Content sharing
  4. Press releases
Link Exchange:

Link exchange is not dead as some think. You just need to learn how to do it well. Do you Want more people to visit your website? A link-building campaign could be just the thing to help you draw in visitors from other websites. Link exchange requests require minimal effort from you, but they can absolutely explode your traffic.

Google also rank your site based on links from other websites. You need a link building strategy to enhance your search engine optimization.

For an effective link building strategy here is a simple guide to follow.

  • Use Google search console to discover the keywords people generally use to find your site.
  • Also, make detailed notes about the sites that appear regularly in the top ten listings for your major keywords. That’s important.
  • Use the following sites Alexa Toolbar, link popularity or Q4inc to find out if there are other sites they are also linking to. Know whose linking to them and how much traffic they’re receiving as well. And then look up their contact information.
  • Then make contact with them. But make sure you know the correct URL of the site. And the URL of the sub-page that you want your link. Also, get the name of the site owner or webmaster, including the date you last visited their website. And write a brief description of the contents of the site.
  • To request a link from them, write it as a personal e-mail. But include some positive comments about their site, be honest. Add information about you and your site (including your URL). Also, adding an explanation of why a link to you would benefit them. And finally, leave an instruction on how they can contact you.
Guest Blogging Simplified:

Guest blogging is not new to SEO. Bloggers have been using it for many years. But the concept has changed over time. There are more and better platforms for guest bloggers.

The idea of guest blogging is to have your contents shared with more people through other web platforms. Some. Platforms offer both guests blogging and blog page to bloggers.

There is also the increase in Q&A sites. They offer bloggers the opportunity to respond to people’s questions that require answers.

They are also a source of new blog topics and ideas for many bloggers.

You should take advantage of the guest blogging sites. If possible create a blog on their platform to redirect traffic to your blog. A platform like Medium will let your reblog articles from your blog. Giving you all the juicy advantage of SEO links.

Quora lets you embed links redirecting visitors to your blog on your answers. A great source of traffic from every answer you contribute on Qoura.

In guest blogging start from where you currently understand and upgrade your activities as you learn more.

Content Sharing:

The reasons you should be sharing your content online are many. And every business can benefit immensely. It increases brand awareness, lead generation, SEO improvement, new user engagement, and also boost sales.

There are many platforms that you simply can’t ignore to share your content. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter, etcetera. You should explore all the platforms available online for content sharing.

Press Release:

The purpose of a press release is to pique the interest of a journalist or publication. A press release should be short, compelling and news story. It should most likely be written by a public relations professional and mailed to selected members of the media.

However, every marketer should know how to write an effective press release. It’s essential for ensuring the media and public know your latest news. Also, they can be cost-effective and beneficial to search engine optimization.

When To Distribute Press Release:

You should have a reason for distributing press releases, if not it may not get the attention of journalists. Remember, you want it shared as news. So, there should be an event or happening that is newsworthy to cause you to use a press release. See some few reasons below:

  • if you have a New product launch
  • When you are Updating an existing product
  • The opening of your new office
  • if you are Introducing a new partnership
  • when rebranding
  • To Promote/hire a new executive
  • When you receive an award

Tips On How To Publish Press Releases:

Writing a press release is only the beginning. You also need to get it published on the best platforms. Your distribution channel should be selected based on your specific targets.

You can start with the traditional way of publishing your press release on your website or blog. You can also share them on your social media or through newsletters.

But to achieve an effective result and get the maximum amount of distribution possible, you need to reach out to a larger audience with your press releases. And here are some steps you can follow.

  1. Reach out to specific journalists in your target niche.
  2. You can also go offline.
  3. And send the press release to top journalists.
  4. Also, avoid competition, publish unique content.
  5. Share your media coverage.

Social Media SEO For Beginners:

Social.media is another source of traffic for your blog. Also, search engines place a lot of importance on your blog social media activities.

Although, the emphasis is on likes and shares, not on the number of followers. But it’s also a source of referral traffic to your blog.

Maintaining active social media platforms will boost your SEO. Ensure to share your blog on all major social media platforms once you post a new blog.

Conclusion

You cannot achieve SEO success overnight. And at different times you might be more focused on some aspect of SEO techniques. Maybe due to limited knowledge or interests.

Like I have explained, you should give 80 per cent attention on content, even though backlinks determines over 50 per cent of your Google ranking success.

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Internet Marketing

Content Marketing: Search Request Optimization

Content marketing

Content is everything. And content marketing is the heartbeat of blog marketing. The reason for the proliferation of blogs all over the internet is marketing.

Everyone is struggling to get the large pie of consumer spending power. And since the internet is now at the heart of every transaction, blogs have become the tool. A lot of what we do with blogs today is content marketing. And it’s the difference between a successful blog and non-successful blog.

Also, Google has changed the way it views blogs. The new Google algorithm, RankBrain changes the way Google ranks Blogs. And if you are thinking of how to compete in the search space, you just found it.

In this third course module, we are looking at how search requests optimisation will affect both search trends and search revenue.

However, before we continue into the current course, you can take the first two course if you missed them. Here are the links: Course module one: What Is SEO? And Course module two: What Is Keyword Planner?

What Is Content Marketing?

The content market can be defined professionally or by common sense. But given between these two definitions is the message of marketing.

Content is king. That makes content marketing the king of marketing. The Power of blog content in influencing thoughts, beliefs and decisions, makes content marketing the most effective form of advertising.

Search engines are optimised to seek out the best contents of its library. That makes blogging a content marketing tool. And with the massive growth of internet searches, a blog is the most effective tool for marketing.

Also, blogs have become the credible, authoritative resource on topics that matter to the online audience. Providing many solutions to many problems and queries on search engines.

Blog Marketing:

Content marketing is the best way to get traffic over time. It has necessary components that make it both useful and relevant to SEO. It provides value and information that answers questions of its target audience.

The reason search engines are going to love your content it’s because it’s valuable to an audience. But what drives visitors to your site is that the blog contents are answers to their need. And content marketing brings this value and solution in a way that makes it unique from you to your audience.

That is why there are over 200 million blogs out there, yet your site is just what some people love to read.

As much as you provide value with solutions but in a way that is unique to you for them. And they could value it above what others offer. That’s what makes them your audience.

 

 

How Google Works:

Google work by basic SEO strategy. And that is content. As long as Google lives, content is 80 per cent basic. You must have content to be ranked on google.
Any other thing you have to do is secondary.

The reason Google keeps changing its algorithm is to emphasise its core value. And to create room to index the best content the web has to offer.

Every time Google changes its algorithm, so many websites lose their exalted rankings because Google found better content in those niches than it previously ranked.

Although, sometimes content and who owns it are significant factors. As long as we may deny, domain name plays a vital role as well in Google branding culture. If a domain has not achieved brand identity yet, it may have potential. And this potential may count for something.

It happened when I started a local online store with the domain name (mystore). Even though it was a country domain name, it got to the top of Google Search for some essential keywords within three months.

In fact, some people were asking me how I achieved it. I know we did some SEO work, but the domain name is a keyword in our niche as well. That played a crucial role in our ranking.

Effective SEO Strategy:

Content is SEO strategy 101. If you are doing core content strategy for your blog, you are not doing search engine optimisation at all. You have to retrace your steps.

Google will always change its way of ranking. But the core values can never change. Search engines work in the same concept as a library. A library is not a collection of keywords, titles and Meta Description. But a stack of books. These books have contents that make them the writing they are.

The reason for keywords, title, Meta Description and etcetera is to properly index the content to make it easily accessible to anyone who is looking for it.

In the six primary components of a robust SEO strategy for online retailers, Pablo Palatnik made a famous case. Pablo Palatnik is the founder and CEO of ShadesDaddy.com, one of the largest online retailers of sunglasses in the world.

Pablo SEO Strategy:

He gave us this outline for a robust SEO strategy. And I want you to see why he choose this and what all of them represents.

  • Keywords
  • Meta tags
  • Content.
  • Backlinks.
  • Social media.
  • Product images.

Now, look at the six components. All of them are content related. They all have substance. And there is nothing complicated or technical in all of this.

If you would learn this and master how to use them, you will rank successfully on search engines. You don’t need a miracle for this either. Just a simple strategy on how to maximise each one of them.

If you have read my article on how to create Stuff Google wants, you will learn how easy to get in the same bed with Google.

SEO is more natural than you think. Stop listening to experts. They are making money from it. SEO is the biggest milking facility for online traffic. Everyone wants a suck.

Content Marketing Keyword Strategy:

Keyword in simple terms is how people find your content on the search engine. The keywords that your content is relevant to determine how much traffic you are optimised to receive.

That is why content marketers pay much attention to keywords, even though Google would want them not to.

So, your keyword strategy is merely providing content for specific keywords. It’s not the other way round, where bloggers optimise content for specific keywords. They are not the same thing.

Implementing an effective keyword strategy is as important as the content. Although, Google is doing so much to deemphasize keyword SEO. They have done little to erase the need to optimise for keywords.

Of course, synonyms are still keyword strategy. Google wants you to be able to create good content without caring about keywords. It sees keyword as a significant distraction in content marketing.

As content providers target keywords, they sometimes lose the relevance of their content, and it’s divergence.

Google wants you to focus on your content more than how people are going to find it. In other words, your content should be your focus keyword. So, everything about your blog content should focus on the relevance of your keyword to the subject.

The Content Meta Tags:

The same applies to meta tags. Whether title tags, Meta Description, alt tag, whatever. Your content should be driving all of these SEO components. You are not writing your blog post for your meta tags. Instead, your meta tags should naturally come from your content marketing.

That is why SEO Plugin like Squirrly WordPress SEO tool focus less on how many more times your keyword appeared in your content. Instead, it looks at your title, description and image tag.

It’s checking for consistency in your content rather than keyword. It even alerts you when it noticed that too many keywords are found within a close range with each other – guiding against keyword stuffing.

However, the purpose of your meta tags should be to give relevance to your content and not necessarily for optimisation. They should follow your content plan.

Content Marketing Backlinks Strategy:

Again, we are dealing with backlinks with content. An effective SEO is content driven. Anything that you do should be content driven. And that includes even your backlink strategy.

Some bloggers try to get their links on any site to earn a backlink. It won’t make sense where you put your link unless it’s referring contents your blog content focus.

If you noticed, Google values .edu sites more. And the reason is simple, they are educational authorities and is considered quality content reference in any field.

Your backlink should follow a similar strategy. It doesn’t have to be education sites but any sites that are strictly related to your blog. The more related a backlink site is to your blog the more value you get from it.

Social Media Content Marketing Strategy:

Everything about the internet is content marketing. The very idea of the internet is advertising. And content is key to online advertising.

So, social media is no different from the rest of the internet. Your social media channel should also bring visitors to your blog from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

That could be the easiest and fastest channel with the most potential for your blog to drive instant traffic. But you should have a direction for your social media approach. You can use the post sharing feature to post from your blog direct to Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social Media Tips:

  • Your ability to stand out is your key to success. Your styles and content you share should be memorable and unique from others.
  • Variety is also important.
  • Use high-quality pictures
  • Deliberately invest your time on social media well.
  • Focus more on the social platform that gives you the most result. It’s best to do well at one network than trying to do a lot across several platforms.
  • Make your contents shareable on all platforms to give your followers access to share it as well.

Product Image Optimization:

One of the critical aspects of SEO is image alt tags. It gives the images on your blogs keyword link to your post and can lead visitors to your blog. Google also has pages for pictures and video.

So, when you optimise your images for the same keyword as your post, it gives you an additional ranking on Google for images. And it’s part of on-page SEO. All you do is to change the image description name and add your focus keyword as an alt tag on the image.

What Is Keyword Blogging?

Keyword blogging is a term I use in describing modern blog content writing. In today’s blogging, you blog to provide solutions. That means we write primarily to answer the questions people have today.

In the Google search algorithm, questions are keywords. So, for each subject, is a keyword linked to a volume of traffic.

Keyword blogging is how we identify those keywords with traffic volume and write our content to provide a unique answer to that keyword question.

Google is not different from any Q&A site. Although the concept of Q&A is slightly different, it doesn’t make Google any more different.

Basic SEO Content Marketing Plan:

One of the reasons for an SEO strategy plan is to achieve a long-term goal. And drive pre-qualified traffic to your blog. With improved conversion rates that boost your online revenue.

You should have a plan for your content is you plan to take advantage of search engine traffic. When we did Mystore, we used the category structure. That strategy works with every SEO plan. Build your content as a category structure.

Cornerstone or Landing Pages

Start with the cornerstone contents. Pick the main blog content that you want to drive your strategy. Develop great blogs on them and use it as your cornerstone articles.

Cornerstone contents are the blog posts that are more important in your keyword strategy. You develop your blog contents and link every related page to these landing pages. It’s like that page that connects to other pages or associated pages on your blog.

Develop Courses or Guides:

You can use a course or user guide content approach for it. People come to Google to find out what they don’t know. Focus your cornerstone contents on providing the best possible answers to search visitors.

Using a course model or user guide strategy gives you an advantage. The visitors automatically feel you have a grasp of the subject and can provide more detail. Also, it keeps them on yours. Log for a while and can even make it come back again. If your course or guide is detailed, it might not be able to read it all at the same time.

I usually convert such blog post to PDF and read it later when I can concentrate. But it’s a great way of selling your visitors the idea that you are the right place for them.

Focus on Your Most Important Keywords:

The subject of a keyword is the reason your content get found on the search engine. So, using appropriate keywords would help you are perfect your content marketing strategy.

You should be vying for the most critical keywords in your niche. The bigger the traffic, the more relevant.

I know these top keywords may be hard to rank for, but give it a try. Because it’s a blog, you have chances to rank for as many keywords as possible.

You should know that the money keywords you target the more traffic. And to target more keywords means writing more contents. Think of it as a content strategy for keywords.

For every keyword, you want to target, product a dedicated content for it. If you have around important 500 keywords in your niche, go for the while 500.

If you can, get the estimated volume of traffic for the 500 keywords. That gives you a potential idea of the web traffic you are vying for in your niche.

See Content Marketing As A Solution:

In SEO strategy you should create contents that are solutions to problems. The best content marketing strategy is the one built around a question or a need.

Blogs are successful when they are targeting a particular niche with a solution. Finding a niche to create a blog is another way of saying find a problem to solve.
If you can drive your content strategy around a problem, you are more likely to drive more traffic to your blog.

What some bloggers don’t understand yet is how some blogs are more successful than others. It shouldn’t be a mystery at all. There will always be blogs that are more successful than others.

And there will also be blogs that are successful because they found a better way to solve the same problem other blogs are explaining.

Find A Unique Solution To Old Problems:

Your blog should not be the same as every other blog. Find the key to success for your blog. That key is in the uniqueness of your solution.

It doesn’t have to be a new solution. But it might just be the way you offered it. Sometimes how you write maybe want makes the difference for the audience. If you are witting your blog contents yourself, it can help infuse a uniqueness.

However, creating a unique solution to a problem is not that simple. But you have to find your unique value proposition.

Examples Of Content Marketing Strategy:

I will like up to show you examples that resonate with you. These examples created a unique solution to old problems. They didn’t try to pioneer new ways; instead, they choose a fresh path to solving the same old issues.

Here are my few examples:

  1. Rich Dad Poor Dad
  2. Merch By Amazon
  3. YouTube
  4. Instagram
  5. WhatsApp

Rich Dad Poor Dad:

Robert Kiyosaki took the world by storm with his book Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it quickly became a brand. It rounded up several rich Dad investment strategies in a unique way.

It wasn’t the first time investment advice was packaged into a book. But it was the first time someone gave it in comparison with how the rich and the poor view investment.

Merch By Amazon:

Merch By Amazon is a new self-service program designed to help you increase revenue through the sale of t-shirts designed by you but produced, sold and shipped by Amazon.

This print on demand service sell only the t-shirts your customers want to buy. . It was a unique way of selling t-shirts.

Moreover, the t-shirt business didn’t start with merch. A zone wasn’t the first to sell print on demand t-shirt. But Amazon brought a unique way to make money with the t-shirt, leveraging its already colossal marketplace. That was a value proposition that is not available anywhere else.

YouTube:

We know how Google bought over YouTube from San Bruno for a record $1.65 billion. YouTube was designed originally as a video sharing site.

But today YouTube is more than a video sharing site. Google turned it into a video Channel. It’s worth much more now than $1.65 billion San Bruno sold it.

YouTube brought videos to us the way Television couldn’t do. The video wasn’t new when YouTube started. YouTube made video the most excellent tool of the internet.

Instagram:

Interestingly, this little app that started as simple as a photo sharing software took the world by storm when Facebook offered $1 billion for it in 2012. And by 2014, just two years after the picture sharing app grew by value to $49 billion.

But Facebook already existed before Instagram was born. What did Instagram do that was not already happening on Facebook?

It’s called content marketing when you take what is already there and make it into what people never even knew they needed until you did. Instagram is an excellent example of content that works.

WhatsApp:

Another product that is a typical example of content marketing is WhatsApp. Before WhatsApp, we already have a text messaging (SMS) feature in mobile phones.

Facebook bought over WhatsApp after it tried to offset them with its messenger but couldn’t. It resolved to pay a whopping $19 billion. WhatsApp messaging app was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, two former Yahoo! executives.

It changed the way text messaging works and how we choose to message ourselves.

Conclusion:

In summary, I didn’t just want to use apps and websites to demonstrate examples for you. But I wanted to use things that will resonate with you. It’s not just about writing content for your blog, but writing blog contents that provide a unique solution to already existing problem.

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Internet Marketing

How to Increase Website Traffic Using SEO Techniques

Website traffic

There are different ways to increase website traffic. And all of them are very good sources of online traffic to your site. Here is my list of traffic sources. You can implement any of them for web traffic.

  • Paid Traffic – your can use paid advertising like PPC to direct traffic to your site.
  • Direct Traffic – mostly as a result of an offline promotion, if you have any.
  • Email Marketing Traffic – email is another huge traffic source to drive repeat traffic to your blog.
  • Social Media Traffic – you can redirect your social media efforts to your blog. It’s a trending strategy you can adopt every day.
  • Referral Traffic – it’s usually a great source of traffic as well. If you are doing effective backlink, this would help with a good source of traffic.
  • Organic Traffic – the big one is organic Traffic if done well. It’s the source of free traffic for a profitable online business. Here is where SEO Techniques are needful and useful.

If you choose the search engine optimization its because you want organic traffic. Although, other traffic sources are good but organic is cheaper and sustainable.

However, if you choose to optimize your blog for a search engine, it’s a simple technic. Most people misunderstand SEO and believed it’s complex.

But I will simplify it for you.

Website Traffic – Meaning Of SEO

SEO means search engine optimization. In a simple explanation, it means preparing your blog for search engines to file them into storage to enable anyone to easily access them.

The question is how do search engines file your website and how would people access it on search engines?

 

 

How Search Engine Works

The answer to this question is exactly what you should be doing to your website to optimize it for searches.

Now, let’s look at how search engines store your website information. They use the same filing system as a normal book library. They file the contents of your website in different categories and sub-categories and sub-sub-categories as the case may be.

However, they employ a system that uses related keywords to retrieve filled information through search.

For example, a normal office filling system uses alphabets to arrange files. Like a cabinet. So when looking for an information in a file, you only needed to remember the first alphabet of the file name. That makes it easier to locate files in stack cabinet.

Search Engine System

Google and other search engines adopted the same system. They link your website information with keywords, phrase or focus sentence that describes the content of your website.

That makes it easy for anyone who is looking for an information that is related to your website to find it through Google search using related keywords, phrase or sentence, to your website information.

How to Increase Website Traffic

So, how do you now optimize your site for these keywords, phrases and sentences that your site is associated with? That is what you accomplished with SEO Techniques.

Let me explain it more briefly what you do when you optimize a site. You are ensuring that the search engine knows what the blog is about and what content it’s offering.
We do this by making sure the blog title page has the keywords, phrase or sentence we want people to find the blog with.

We also look at other areas we can enhance to further tell search engines that it was not a one-off thing or mistaken headline.

So we add the same Keywords in the body of the content. In fact, you do this carefully as in context and not stuffing it with keywords that is not relevant to the subject.

We do more by also writing a description for the site and including the same keyword in that description. This further enhances the relevance of the website to the keywords we associate with it.

Them we make sure that even the picture is optimized with the keyword.

On-page SEO

All these are what we call On-page SEO. It’s the most important aspect to of SEO. Although we do more, like URL structuring, robot text file optimization and even sitemap.

But most of what we do in on-page SEO can be enhanced with WordPress plugins. That’s what makes optimization easy and less complicated.

You can be guided by software on what to do. And believe me, even the experts use the software. And it works.

Off-page SEO

The other aspect is the Off-page SEO. But its what you do on other websites to make them authenticate your site by adding your links to them. It’s like a reference by another authority to search engine that your site is relevant.

For a beginner, this will help you get started. You can read Blogging for Beginners. It’s another simple explanation that will help you achieve success.

Conclusion

SEO technique is a process. Although it doesn’t have instant effect but the impact last for years to come. It’s a long term process of gaining significantly more traffic cost effectively than you gain from paid traffic.

However, Google is doing so much to reduce the impact on SEO techniques on search rank positioning. But there’s still so much SEO can do to increase your website traffic than not doing will do for you.

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