As the last quarter of 2013 begins, a lot of online marketers are already looking forward to what’s in store for them in 2014. In an article for Forbes, Jayson DeMers enumerates what he predicts will be the top online marketing trends of 2014.
The Importance of An Email List For Your Business
These days, promoting a business on social media is all the rage. For the past few years, businesses have been building their brand and selling their products and services on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all kinds of social media platforms out there. Of course it makes sense.
There is irrefutable evidence that promoting a business on social media is indeed effective. However, what many entrepreneurs tend to overlook is the fact that promoting a business on social media is not the only way to effectively market anyone’s business online. Email marketing was there way before social media ever became a reality, and it remains highly relevant today for some good reasons.
Filters and Comparisons Improve Google Knowledge Graph
Since Google added the Knowledge Graph display to its search engine in May 2012, users have been getting more structured and detailed information about any topic they search about. Now the Knowledge Graph search results have become even smarter with the recent addition of filters and a way to compare items side by side. Danny Goodwin talks about the newest Google Knowledge Graph innovations some more in an article for SearchEngineWatch.
Goodwin says a search for, say, “Impressionist artists”, using the new Google Knowledge Graph filter now yields a virtual gallery of artists associated with the 19th century art movement. A new results page then appears when you click on the pictures of any of these artists. Even more interesting is the fact that you can now make Knowledge Graph comparisons between things. Search for the difference between olive oil and butter, for example, and you’ll be presented with relevant facts placed side-by-side in card form.
Now if they could only make comparison charts between comic book superheroes, and we’ll have an idea who’ll win a fight between, say, Superman and The Hulk…
To read the article, click here.
Compelling Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Facebook
In a world where social media holds a very important place in every Internet user’s life, the question above shouldn’t even be asked. There are more than a billion reasons why your business should use Facebook. To be more accurate, those reasons number about 1.15 billion—the number of total Facebook users in the world, and still counting. In an article for SearchEngineJournal, David Wallace presents an infographic from GroSocial that lists even more compelling reasons why your business should use Facebook.
700 million daily users
Of its total number of users, 700 million people use Facebook every single day. The number of Friend connections between Facebook users is even more staggering at 150 billion. The most stunning figure of all comes from the fact that at an average of 40 likes per FB user, there are now a total of 1.13 trillion Likes on Facebook. Imagine if your business had a solid social media presence through Facebook and had even just a fraction of those likes.
The infographic further drives home the point that Facebook makes sense for business by indicating that there are more than two billion connections between local businesses and people. On average, local business Facebook pages get 645 million views every week. That’s a huge audience for promoting your brand using Facebook.
Influence of Facebook on buyers
If conversion is what you’re concerned about, consider this: About half of all social media users aged 35 and under are influenced by the product and service recommendations of their friends online. The influence of Facebook on business is also apparent on the younger generation. According to the infographic, 33% of millennial consumers are more likely to spend on products or services from a company that has a Facebook page. Most importantly of all, a company whose CEO and senior leadership have a solid social media presence is trusted by 82% of buyers.
If you have a business and you still aren’t promoting your brand using Facebook, let these statistics sink in and you’ll see what you have been missing the entire time you don’t have a solid social media presence via Facebook.
Click here to read the original article.
How To Profit From Your Website’s Great Content
So you think your website has great content. The question is, are you making money out of it? By now, many webmasters should know that having great content, while extremely important, does not necessarily mean profitability. Then again, anyone with good, quality content can profit from it if they want to.
It’s going to take some work, but you have nothing to lose if you give these ways a try.
Hashtags Now Supported on Google Search
In May, Google+ started supporting hashtags. Now the search engine giant has taken things a bit farther by adding hashtag support on Google Search results. That means people can now search for hashtags on Google Search just by typing in “#keyword”, much like they do with Twitter and other social media use that use hashtags.
Beware of Scams When Engaging SEO Services
The Internet is full of scams, and the world of search engine optimization or SEO is no exception. There are thousands of SEO companies out there who offer a lot of things that border on the ridiculous, but entrepreneurs who have very little knowledge about how SEO works might believe.
In an article for SearchEngineJournal, Jaydeep Dosi writes about a few of these SEO scams and how to spot them. Let me summarise and add to it.
What Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm Update Means For Content
Much has been said about Google’s Hummingbird algorithm update. Even before it was announced on September 26, 2013—coinciding with the search engine giant’s 15th anniversary—the SEO world has already been abuzz about it and treating it as the beginning of the end of SEO.
Some even went as far as saying that SEO is dead. This latest update is huge, and is being touted as the biggest to hit Google since the 2010 Caffeine update. The Hummingbird Algorithm update is said to affect 90% of queries, and that has gotten many SEO practitioners worried.
SEO (search engine optimisation) for Dental Practices
As with any business, a dental practice needs to be marketed to get as many patients as it can. For years, dental practices have relied on traditional advertising methods such as ad spots on TV, radio and newspapers, or billboards and brochures.
The advent of the Internet, however, has provided dental practices a new option for getting the word out about their business. As a matter of fact, many dentists have already taken to creating their own website for their dental practice. That website, however, still needs to be marketed itself, and this is where search engine optimisation or SEO for dental practices comes in.
What to do when your content gets stolen
Many people pride themselves on maintaining a website that contains mostly original content, so when Google Panda came along, they probably weren’t too worried. Then their rankings started taking a dive, and they have no idea why.
In cases where websites still suffer the consequences of Google Panda even with original and unique content, the most likely reason is that other people have stolen their content and posted them as their own and without any attribution. And since Google Panda frowns on duplicate content, the duplicates—and the original, unfortunately—are bound to take a hit.