As the owner of a small business, you want people to buy your products or services – it’s as simple as that.

But why do consumers buy products? Features alone used to be the driving force behind sales, but in this digital age, things have changed. Consumers have the world at their fingertips, so it has become essential to do more than just convey what your product or service can do. To really sell it, you now need to connect with them and build trust.

Much of the reason why social media has become so successful and widespread is because it allows businesses to build trusting relationships with customers. Posts on social media can help you come across as far more genuine than mailers or even a television commercial; it’s important to take advantage of this when trying to influence a buying decision.

A Trusting Strategy

Social media allows businesses to post constant updates and images in real-time – this shows your current and potential customers the human side of your business. This content is shared in an effort to connect on a more personal level with consumers, and when done properly it has the added bonus of creating a trusting relationship.

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SEO blogging is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your site.

It’s not that difficult, but it is time-consuming and does require a bit of continuing education. Because search engines regularly change their algorithmic signals, you have to stay on top of the game.

Aside from those aspects, blogging for SEO purposes is a great way to get your site more traffic. And with increased visits comes more leads and of course, conversions. You ought to be aware that while SEO and blogging go hand-in-hand, there’s more to obtaining a higher organic rank than publishing new content; though that is a very big piece of the overall strategy.

SEO Blogging in Plain English

I have a friend whose considered a leading expert in his field. Some years ago, he put up a website chock full of information. And because it contained a large amount of content, along with original images, it got on page one of Google in short order. That lasted for several years, until the beginning of this year.

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Semantic SEO has gotten a lot of attention over the past several months. And with changes in search engine algorithms, along with the introduction of Google Authorship and Author Rank, content is clearly at the top of the list when it comes to on-site optimization.

What’s great about implementing it is that you don’t need to learn things like SEO semantic XHTML, but you do have to understand what it means to make SEO semantic copy readable and informative, yet still have all the necessary optimization elements.

Semantic SEO in Plain English

When a lay person first hears the term, most people probably have a misconception that it’s technical, like SEO semantic coding. But in reality, it’s about formatting copy in such a way to be attractive to search engines while still making it usable and share worthy to humans.

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Link building goes hand-in-hand with content marketing as a search engine optimization strategy. But since the introduction of Google Authorship and Author Rank, marketing content is changing. Now, the time honored method of link building strategies is coming to an end in a manner of speaking.

A favorite methodology many SEO teams use is a sort of online branding, which is done by creating articles, comments, and reviews, then inserting backlinks to their client’s site. Some link building services opt to have the copy written by a professional web content provider, so to up the quality and therefore increase credibility with the search engines. But you can do much the same thing and get the same results.

Link Building and Content Marketing

Lead generation marketing is best done online by creating a brand and surrounding it with useful information. If your site contains content targeted advertising, it begins to rise in organic search results. But with changing algorithms, content creation is becoming more and more important. Businesses can actually suffer from poor search results performance if they’re considered to be a thin website. In fact, it’s becoming imperative to put a name and face with what’s on your site and anything else you publish across the web. 

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Thin website? What’s that? Is that when a fan is looking for the Thin Lizzy website? Or does it mean a website that’s devoted to diets and health? Perhaps, it means a site that’s all scrunched together, where the font is squeezed so small, it’s barely readable?

Actually, a thin website is one that either repeats the same original text or has little to no content on it. And because the search engines can’t see images and other embellishments, it appears as a “thin website” meaning there’s too little to index or too little to assign a measured rank.

A Content Rich Property Versus a Thin Website

What search engines lack is reasoning. In its place are markers that are looked for when the spiders crawl a site. What those spiders or robots “see” is text and code. Now, every site has some type of code behind it or it wouldn’t appear on the internet. But what some sites lack is text or content–written content.

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Newsjacking is yet another way to optimize a website. It, as the name implies, one of the many online ways to generate business by inserting a company or brand into the news cycle.

There’s a ranking signal which Google applies to stories that show a sharp spike in popularity. The algorithm called, QDF or Query Deserves Freshness, is applied to search terms that quickly trend upward.

If you newsjack, you are essentially getting the advantages of that algorithmic tag. It helps to make a brand part of the news story, which in turn, assists a site in gaining organic search momentum. So, it’s a type of news content marketing that’s becoming a popular method in search engine optimization circles.

News Content Marketing

This concept certainly isn’t new, but it is new to search optimization. If you’ve seen any television commercials or heard any radio ads in the past decade, you’ve seen what could be described as newsjacking in action. A company will use a headline or storyline to tout their product or service. 

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Blogging and social media are two of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. What’s great is they don’t require a big amount of technical knowledge. Some might suggest that because social media trends  are so sharply on the rise because of their versatile by its mobile accessibility that even starting a blog isn’t going to bring your site much traffic.

And why social media today is certainly hot in the world of search engine optimization, a weblog is still very necessary. The reason being you can’t really expound on your point or tell people more about your new product, added service, or industry news in only 140 characters.

That’s what blog sites are for. Think of your social profiles as an elevator pitch, while your blog is a place that you can showcase your knowlegde and build your credibility with existing and new readers.

Create a Blog and Join Social Media Sites

Now is the time to make a blog and get onto social networks. Google and Bing have recently weighted up social sharing algorithmic signals, which means actions taken by other users in relation to your profile are a big deal. Every time someone retweets, mentions, shares, likes, becomes a fan, or +1′s your content, it’s an endorsement in the eyes of the search engines.

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Plagiarism is the ugliest word in the world of writing. And it’s a good idea to check, detect and avoid it when possible. Failing to do so invites disaster.

Be it fiction, fact, news, sports, entertainment, how-to, opinion, scholastic, government or anything else, avoiding plagiarism is always a good idea. Businesses need to keep a careful eye on such things because they don’t want to loose credibility with the public. But it isn’t just their real-world reputation that’s at stake, it’s a threat to their online presence as well.

If a business publishes content taken from another website, it’s marked as duplicate and the offending company is penalized in their organic ranking.

Should the practice become regular, outright removal from the search index could occur. That’s why unique content is so very important. Without it, there’s no way to establish authority and/or expand through content marketing.

What is Plagiarism?

The technical definition of plagiarism is, “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source,” as defined by Merriam Webster. That short definition entails many types of plagiarism, such as outright copying work, switching words around in an attempt to make it look original, or taking an idea and passing it off as one’s own.

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Content marketing is more than just publishing articles on your site and linking them to your company’s social profiles. It’s really about creating copy that’s interesting, contributes to the conversation, and gets shared on an organic level through various channels.

Trouble is, marketing content can be a difficult task to undertake because there’s often a “build it and they will come mentality” in the implementation. What business owners ought to be thinking is how they can be a benefit to others without putting a price tag on it.

Understanding Content Marketing

Lead generation marketing is the primary reason behind all types of campaigns. From advertising to search engine optimization to networking, business engage in many practices to expand their audience and entice more consumers. But there’s really nothing to be gained when it’s not all coordinated.

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QDF or Query Deserves Freshness is one of Google’s 200+ ranking signals. It can help a site rank higher organically in search. But it may not help your site. That’s because the algorithm is designed to put emphasis on “news” that’s breaking or being updated.

However, if in your particular niche you are publishing something that’s not yet been introduced, theoretically, it could show up first in organic search results. The trick is to write content that really gets things going–not just writing something that’s “new”, because new isn’t necessarily fresh–at least in the eyes of search query returns.

Query Deserves Freshness Explained

The mystery of QDF can be explained by simply following a common occurrence on the internet. Let’s take for example a blogger who writes about Widget X being developed by some company. That in itself isn’t QDF material. But then another blogger picks up on Widget X and writes about it, and then another blogger. Though Widget X is getting some traction, it’s still not QDF material.

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