WordPress Multisite Can Be Structural Advantage For SEO

By Phil Singleton

WordPress is by far the most popular content management system for small businesses.  It’s super easy to use and when structured properly, great for search engine optimization.  WordPress also gives you the ability to create a ‘website of websites’ or your own network of sites, on a single installation.

You can find the official networking explanation of WordPress Multisite here.  We will not get into the background or specifics of WP Multisite in this post, but there are some great posts around the net of this topic such as this beginner’s guide.

In a nutshell, WP Multisite enables you to create a network of websites on a single installation of WordPress.  This means, you can have one ‘super admin’ with network wide control, then create an unlimited number of separate websites, each with their own unique moderators and users.  In one common application, for example, you could have a main domain with generic content and a subdomain with niche specific or geographically specific content.   OK, so what does that mean in real world applications?

The following is a practical example of a WordPress Multisite website.  This following link is to the main or ‘parent’ of a WordPress multisite installation website which shows content geared for a national audience:
http://bloggerlocal.com

Next, here is an example of a secondary or ‘child’ website on the same domain and WordPress installation.  In this case, all of the content is different from the parent website, including the content, images and meta data, and in this example, all content is geo-targeted for a city:
http://kansascity.bloggerlocal.com

Another example of a targeted use of WP Multisite is for niches.  So, as an example on the same domain, here is a child site niche-targeted for photography:
http://photographers.bloggerlocal.com

How does this help for SEO?
While there may be some subdirectory vs subdomain debate regarding the importance and influence of domain structure for search engine optimization, it’s pretty clear that subdomain structure is treated differently that subdirectory structure.  Regardless, using WP Multisite is not appropriate for all businesses nor is it pure SEO structure advantage.  The main benefits of using a subdomain structure in WordPress Multisite for possible SEO advantages are likely only realized when using this technology with a genuine and comprehensive approach, and for the following reasons:

1. The subdomain address is technically a separate website address.  Yet, search engines likely neutralize any potential benefits of trying to use subdomains in and of themselves as and SEO advantage.

2. The subdomain website is technically a separate installation of WordPress, meaning, it’s a separate CMS, with a separate blog and users.  Chances are that installing a full website on a subdomain shows this is a website and not a thin microsite or page.  This is why you can see that free Web 2.0 blogs on blogger.com and wordpress.com, etc. subdomains can achieve rank when they publish high quality content.

3. The child site content is quality and unique: this shows the search engines that the child site should achieve rank for its niche or territory.  Then each child site’s SEO potential can be further strengthened with unique social signals and NAP (name-address-phone number) citations if appropriate.

4.  It’s possible to map a unique domain, ie a separate domain to a child site.  Having a unique top level domain (TLD) mapped to a child is clearly be an SEO advantage as a child site with a unique domain to the parent site would have to be treated like a separate site by the search engines.

While WP Multisite may not be a fit for most small businesses, it certainly offers an awesome, cost effective structure for many types of businesses. Businesses such as restaurants, franchises, chapter-based organizations, property management firms, etc.  could all benefit from this type of “site of sites” networking structure.  By having the ability to carve out niche and geo-targeted child sites, there may be significant SEO benefits as well.

Nifty Google tricks you should know about

By Chris Smith

While most users know how to perform a search, use Gmail or navigate with Maps, they may not be aware of some of the nifty hidden tricks Google has included in its online services.

By adding “timer” after an amount of time, you can set up a timer inside the browser, and the alarm will sound when the time is up.

In case you don’t know how to say long numbers in English, all you have to do is type “=English” immediately after the number that’s giving you headaches, and Google will type it in English – you probably already know that you can perform math calculations and unit conversions (including currency) right inside the Google Search bar.

Is Social Media Necessary For Getting New Customers?

By David Cuevas

Being a successful entrepreneur requires the ability to develop potential customers by using any means necessary. If you are not currently active on social media marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you can bet your competitors are and they are producing significant results.

83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%.

Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

Still think social media is a fad? Here are some usage stats for you.

• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket. This demographic has grown 79% since 2012.
• The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+.
• For Facebook, this group has jumped 46%.
• For Google+, 56%.
• YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18–34 than any cable network.
• Every second two new users join LinkedIn.

Social media can also be used to help you find more details about your business than you ever imagined possible. An example of the power of social media is the use of hashtags and trending topics, which allow you to find specific information about your company, what people may be saying about it, or even find insights regarding the market in which you are involved.

Now What?

Social media is a vital tool that is readily available and will help your business reach new customers and grow in ways – and at speeds – that more traditional marketing can’t accomplish. As the statistics above show, social media usage has gone mainstream. Because people are spending significantly more time on social media sites, the battle for the attention of all of these eyeballs has also intensified.

Develop effective social media campaigns. 

Social media marketing is now becoming a necessity for most businesses.

Companies MUST move in this direction by allocating resources to sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. While costs have increased, the rewards are significant. Social media has quickly become the best way to develop social influence and increase brand awareness on the web.

Be sure to implement social media into your marketing campaign today, as it will be the best way to keep up with those around you.

5 Reasons Brand Strategy and Social Media Should Work Together

By Liz Papagni

While a social media department that exists in a silo is certainly better than none at all, it’s not nearly as effective as an integrated brand strategy.

Social media is now the most popular online activity, accounting for 27% of time consumers spend on the internet. 74% of marketers consider their presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other major networks an integral part of generating new leads. Simply put, the potential of social media is far too great to not use to its fullest potential. The most effective marketers today actively work to integrate their content marketing and communication across platforms, so their customers and prospects can benefit from their company’s consistency and clarity.

Consider the following reasons why your social media should be a cohesive component of your greater brand strategy:

1. You’ll Remove Inefficiencies

If your social media isn’t actively working to elevate your organization towards its larger goals and KPIs, the effort could be wasted. As Rocky Cipriano points out, integrated marketing communications are naturally a better use of limited resources: “your marketing is more powerful when every advertisement, every email, and every marketing piece communicates consistently.”

Not only will consistent brand messaging allow every Facebook post, Tweet, and Pinterest pin to further your company’s unique value proposition and personality, you’ll ensure that your social media inputs are aligned with your goals as a company.

2. You Will Achieve More Effective Content Distribution

While creating custom content is a highly effective way to help your organization increase lead generation and customer conversions, your blogs, whitepapers, and other forms of web content simply can’t exist in a vacuum. Every 24 hours, 2 million blog posts are published. The science of content distribution has become a crucial component of being noticed in an era of content saturation.

By aligning your social media with your content creation strategy, you’ll achieve more effective promotion and distribution of your brand’s content assets, allowing your organization to maximize exposure and ROI on major social networks.

3. You’ll Build Stronger Relationships

While the internet has drastically changed human behavior, the fact remains that trust is an enormously important factor in motivating human behavior. Studies have found that the average consumer doesn’t care if 70% of brands disappear tomorrow. The remaining 30% includes organizations who’ve managed to transcend transactional relationships and build greater trust with their prospects and customers. Your social media outreach should include the same messaging and strategy as your brand position, so your customers know what to expect and are able to begin trusting you.

Additionally, a social media strategy that’s integrated with your larger marketing goals will allow your social media managers to more effectively target their posts to your buyer personas. By tailoring your messages to you ideal customer, you’ll improve your chances of capturing the business of your most profitable prospect segments.

4. You’ll Avoid Brand Confusion

Brand confusion is a real and dangerous threat to modern organizations. Research by the Harvard Business Review has found that differentiation has become more challenging today due to a proliferation of new brands, and even worse, that most modern marketers are doing nothing to solve the problem. The key to eliminating this threat is to avoid thinking in a promotional or limited-time mindset, and focus on longer-term goals. If your social media posts are consistent with your brand’s personality or tone, you’ll likely achieve much better differentiation than your competitors who don’t have the same long-term outlook.

5. You Can Achieve “Triangulation”

Marketing thought leader Aaron Perlut believes that earned media outreach is effectively useless if you’re not moving toward “triangulation;” which is defined as the integration of social media, search marketing, and PR. Your social media posts shouldn’t just be viewed as updates to your Facebook or Twitter audience, because they’re so much more. Social media has the potential to be the cornerstone of your brand’s web presence, which is why it’s important to ensure that each piece of outreach is effectively targeted, and consistent with your brand strategy as a whole.

80% Of Social Media B2B Leads Come From LinkedIn

Social media continues to grow as a lead generation avenue, and according to a new infographic from Oktopost, 80 percent of B2B leads were through LinkedIn.
Oktopost is a social media marketing platform, and analyzed over 100,000 posts spread across four major social networks.

Here’s the percentage of B2B leads generated through each social network:

• LinkedIn – 80.33 percent
• Twitter – 12.73 percent
• Facebook – 6.73 percent
• Google+ – 0.21 percent

According to Oktopost, B2B leads are most likely to convert between 1 and 4 PM.

Here are the most popular posting methods on LinkedIn to generate leads, followed by conversions:

• Discussion Groups – 96.22 percent of posts, 86.30 percent of conversions
• Company Pages – 0.59 percent of posts, 10.07 percent of conversions
• Personal Profiles – 3.20 percent of posts, 3.63 percent of conversions

The average length of a B2B-related LinkedIn post is 248 characters, and one out of every three posts contains a question mark in its subject line.

Social Media B2B Leads Come From LinkedIn (Infographic)

What’s the answer to generating more blog visits?

11 Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Company Blog

By Carter Hostelley,

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/11-ways-boost-traffic-company-blog-0812475#h26bioVYPSU1Wvey.99

 

Writing more posts seems to be the new clarion call (with the disclaimer that it still needs to be quality content) since you can only break through the tsunami of content your prospects are drowning in by pouring on more of your own, right? While there’s some truth to this, not all companies have the budget to hire dedicated content creation teams like the folks at Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot.
What’s a content marketer to do? Here are 11 ways that companies of any size can use to drive much more traffic to their blog.

1. Start with SEO

I know you’ve got an SEO keyword list in someone’s Dropbox folder — you may even have an agency helping out to hone and manage the list. Just make sure whoever is responsible for writing blog posts has access to it and is referencing the list for headlines, section titles, links, etc.

2. Enable Social Sharing

Are you making it easy for blog visitors to share posts on social media? Are social sharing widgets prominently placed and easy to find? And don’t forget to offer the option to share on LinkedIn and Google plus. Include the sharing widgets on the blog summary page too, since many folks share based on headlines — even if they don’t end up reading the full post.

3. Write From Your Prospects’ Perspective

This one continues to be a struggle for B2B marketers. Here’s an easy way to think about it: write your blog posts from your target reader’s perspective (what helps them?) and write the call-to-actions with your company in mind (what helps you?). Making blog posts about prospects “pain” will keep them reading, and make them more likely to share with their social networks.

4. Focus on Getting Blog Subscribers

Over time, your most reliable source of traffic will be those that signed up to receive blog updates via email. Yes, email still trumps social media when it comes to driving visitors. So make email subscription your main call to action for the blog. Why not go further and set up a “light-box” to prompt blog visitors that linger on the page for more than 20-30 seconds to subscribe?

5. Leverage Social Media Channels

Your team has taken the time to build out a decent following on social media, so go ahead and use it. Share your company posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. And don’t think one-time. Instead, create a series of status updates and tweets for every blog post (think: three to five) and promote daily for the next week or so. This is where tools like Buffer come in.

6. Promote Your Blog on Your Homepage

Don’t treat your blog as the ugly stepchild and make it hard for people to find. Instead, it should be prominently listed and easily accessible from the main website navigation. Also consider highlighting the latest posts within a featured blog posts section of the homepage.

7. Make Blog Posts a Key Component of Email Marketing Efforts

Are you including your latest blog posts in your email marketing to customers, prospects and channel partners? If you haven’t been, now’s the time to start.

8. Promote in Relevant Communities and Forums

LinkedIn groups are a great place to showcase your thought-leadership posts. And most industries also have other communities and forums that reach your target audience. Make sure and share your latest blog posts in groups and communities that your prospects participate in. Having said that, just keep in mind the guidelines of any group on how best to share your blog posts.

9. Get Bylines and Do Guest Posts

While this is one is less about generating blog traffic, it’s still very much about getting your company’s blog posts read. In particular, those posts especially fine-tuned to help address the pains of your prospects. Industry publications and blogs that already reach your target audience are a great place to get a monthly byline or submit guest posts. Tip: run your post in the industry publication and then, a couple days later, drop it into your company blog.

10. Invite Your Employees to Share

I’m a big fan of employee advocacy. If your company is writing quality blog posts then why wouldn’t employees want to read and share them on Twitter and LinkedIn? Just imagine if you could get even 10 percent of your workforce to help promote your company blog. That could generate lots of traffic, right?

11. Post More Often if You Can

Not every blog post has to be about thought-leadership. For example, do a weekly roundup of industry news and other topics you found interesting and shared on Twitter. Also leverage your other content marketing and media campaigns for posts. You know, write blog posts about an upcoming webinar, latest white paper and company news. Just remember that every blog post should be written with “why readers should care” in mind. Don’t be surprised if you can generate three to five posts a week, or maybe even more!That’s our list, what’s yours? Any others you’d recommend or find work best?

7 Unbelievable Mobile Marketing Success Stories

Mobile is opening up a whole new landscape of communication that we can use to reach customers.

Have you thought about how your company can leverage mobile marketing to increase sales?
When the sky is the limit and the opportunities seem endless, it can be difficult to develop an initial strategy. Reading blog posts and reaching out to thought-leaders is a good way to gain knowledge, but how will you use that knowledge to craft a killer mobile strategy? Learning by example can help get you started.

Here are 7 mobile marketing success stories that will inspire your own mobile marketing efforts.

Google Tools You Didn't Know Existed

Webmaster Tools

Google's Webmaster Tools allows webmasters to monitor a site's health and traffic. Additional tools include a Structure Data Markup Helper and Google Places for Business.

Google Fonts

Google Fonts offers open source web fonts for all to use privately or commercially. As of now, there are 629 font families available. Filter fonts by thickness, slant, width and script.

Google Developers

Google Developers houses a plethora of resources that developers can use, tools such as internationalizing different websites and live presentations of tutorials. Developers can also join groups in a local area for meetups and collaboration.

Google Sky

A part of Google Earth, Google Sky allows you to explore space and star systems. In collaboration with NASA, using images from the Hubble Telescope, Google Sky is one of three subsidiaries of Google Earth, the others being Google Mars and Google Moon.

Schemer

Schemer is like a combination to-do list and social event planning app. Connect via your Google+ account, enter your preferences, and Schemer will offer some things to do around your area. A great tool for travelers who want to make the most out of a visit, as well as for locals who want to find something to do on an otherwise boring day. You can also collaborate with the friends in your Google+ Circles and see who wants to do the same things as you.