Archive | April, 2014

Three Ways Content Writing Can Help Your Website with WordPress

How Content Writing can Help Your Website with WordPressIf you have a website, you may have created it for many reasons, some of which are to write a blog with your opinions, post interesting photos, educate others, promote a business, have a social cause, or trying to make money through an online store. Either way, you want to attract as many people as possible to your site so they can read your blogs, shop at your e-commerce store or contact your company to engage in new business. While you may have created a great, easy-to-use site, and offered great insight or top-of-the-line products, one piece of advice I offer to my clients is to have relevant content. Content is very important for your online site, and I will give three reasons why in this blog.

Three Ways Content Writing Can Help Your Site

1. Keywords, keywords, keywords – Many website owners spend hundreds, even thousands, of dollars every month on advertising. There are various ways to do so, with ads running on other sites, or with pay-per-click advertising. However, there is a great way to see more traffic come to your site without spending any money, just some time on writing. Content writing is an underused, but very good way to help your website. All it means is that you create regular, quality, relevant content in the form of blogs or articles, and update them on your website.  If you use WordPress, it is very easy to maintain your blogs as WordPress is a content management solution with a system to publish blogs in an organized way.

The most effective way to incorporate content writing in your website is to do keyword research first. There are various ways to do keyword research, with paid and free programs. The most popular is Google Adwords, which will give you statistics for how often each keyword, or term, is searched for every month, and whether the competition for each term is low, medium, or high. You want to try and pick terms that have the lowest competition and the most possible people searching for them. This way, whether you advertise as well, you will have many keywords right on your site that will help new visitors find you.

Another great aspect about using content writing is that you can tailor the blog and the keywords to your city or neighborhood, if you have a local business. Say you sell bicycles in Chicago. To attract local clients to come into your store, you can write articles about different types of bicycles, and include keywords, such as purchasing bicycles in Chicago, or Chicago bike store. You can also write blogs about local events for bike riders, which will definitely get you some new visitors that may be searching for those same events. Those visitors can turn into potential new customers.

content writing2. Relevance – So you have a website, but how do you compete with other sites and help people find you online? Before, all you needed were keywords and links throughout your site, which was pretty easy to do. But times have changed, and Google has gotten smarter. Now, for your website to have a chance to come out and beat the competition, and come up in the first few pages of the Google search, you need to have current and relevant content. That means that you need to spend the time to update your blogs and articles regularly, so that Google can sense that you have the latest news about your particular product. So spend time writing, and see your website gain more and more popularity with each month.

3. Expertise – “Demonstrate your expertise through content,” says LunaMetrics. ” A pizzeria near my house in Pittsburgh has an alternative menu on their site for people seeking gluten free pizza and Italian food and they’ve received press/links because of this. What’s your specialty? Blog about it, include it on your site and tell others.”

What sets you apart from all the other pizza places in your city? Through content writing, you can let potential customers know what your niche, or specialty is. You can write that you make your own sauce, or offer gluten-free pizza varieties, or even import cheese from Italy. Just having a regular site with your menu and address will not let individuals searching for a new pizza joint truly get to know you, but with some articles, you can make them feel like they’ve been to your spot already.

Are you selling vitamins online? It’s crucial for you to write credible blogs and link them to other expert sites. Write about the latest health news and breakthroughs, and include keywords and links to the products you sell. Chances are someone that is searching for an answer to their health question can come upon your article, and then may purchase one of your products. Wouldn’t that be great, without you spending a single dollar on advertising? Remember, the more in-depth and relevant your articles are, the more probability that someone will trust that you’re an expert in your field, and will come back to your online website again and again.

The team at Behla Design is dedicated to creating visual experiences that effectively tell our clients’ stories while engaging, exciting, and enticing their customers. Our firm consists of the top web design and development, WordPress, search engine optimization (SEO), and copy writing professionals. Our founder, Andrew Behla, has worked in the graphic, print and web design industry for over twenty years.

If you’d like to discuss creating content writing for your website, contact Behla Design.

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Increasing Your Site’s Visibility Online

Increase your online visibilityIf you have a local business, such as a hair salon or restaurant, chances are you have created a website for it. Nowadays, most customers find businesses online, even if they don’t sell any merchandise on the Web. Google states that 97% of people search for businesses online. People will use the Internet to find a local business or service that they need, and a functional website will play a major role in helping to promote your business. However, just creating a site is not enough to play a crucial role in increasing business, there are several other steps you need to do, and keep doing, to increase your local business’s visibility online so it gets picked up by search engines. In previous articles, I wrote about the importance of good, quality content and social media. In this blog, I will discuss how to go the extra mile for your local business to to increase traffic to your site.

Here are a couple of steps that will help promote your website’s visibility.

1. ShareThis – This is what the creators of ShareThis say: “Whether you want the simplest, most robust tools to turn your media social, or to find the right audience for your advertising message, ShareThis puts sharing to work for you. Use the most innovative social media and sharing platform for the Web, ShareThis.” Simply put, this is a widget that you can customize for your blog.

ShareThis button

ShareThis

When visitors read your content, they can click on the button, and choose which social media forum they’d like to share your blog on. The options are Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Myspace, etc.

Additionally, ShareThis provides you with analytics of your site. The analytics allow you to:

  • Unlock the social value of your website with SQI (social quality of a website)
  • Discover your most shared content
  • Evaluate the top outbound and inbound social channels

By checking your analytics, ShareThis allows you to see activity that is happening on your site, find what content is the most popular, view which social media sites and other referrals direct traffic to your site the most, etc. This will allow you to see what sites help your business’s visibility the most.

2. Yelp – Yelp is quickly becoming one of the main ways people find businesses, events, and lists. It was founded in 2004, and since then, has seen about 108 million unique visits per month (stats from the second quarter of 2013, according to Yelp.)

Yelp site

Yelp

The way it works is that that visitors can search for a local business by name or category, and then read information about the business, write a review, or check in. Yelp claims that the site boasts over 42 million reviews. Yelp’s premise is simple, the more good reviews your business gets, the more clients it should attract, increasing your site’s visibility online.

Yelp is crucially important in attracting people to your website, and ultimately, your business. You can create a free account, or you can pay for advertising to promote your business in searches and attract greater visibility. You can also offer deals, coupons, and sell gift certificates.

If your business has various locations, you can create a Yelp page for each location. This way, search engines can point to a specific location if someone is looking for a dentist in Santa Monica, or one in Sherman Oaks, CA.

3. Facebook for Business – While having visitors share your site with their friends on social media sites is great, having your own presence on Facebook is also very important. You probably already have a personal Facebook account, but did you know that you can create one for your business? Facebook states that “over one billion people like and comment an average of 3.2 billion times every day. Over one billion people like and comment an average of 3.2 billion times every day. When you have a strong presence on Facebook, your business is part of these conversations and has access to the most powerful kind of word-of-mouth marketing — recommendations between friends.”

Facebook

Facebook for business

Facebook allows you to create a page for your business, add photos, relevant information, and any coupons or specials you would like to offer to promote it. Then, you can have individuals check into your business, or post on your wall. Plus, it gives you an opportunity to connect with your clients. As long as people have clicked Like on your page, they will get your updates. So, you can use Facebook as a channel to promote upcoming sales and specials, new products, or just mention a topic important to you. And you don’t even have to use the page to just discuss your business, specifically. Engage visitors with unique content, interesting stories and photos, or just events in your local neighborhood.

 

4. Twitter – Twitter is another great social media site to help you connect with people and increase visibility of your site. The website has over 200 million active users. This is what Twitter states that it can do for your business.

Connect in context

On Twitter, people talk about what they care about and what’s happening around them right now, including your business. This gives you powerful context to connect your message to what’s most meaningful to your customers in real time.

Engaging with real-time Tweets can influence conversations in a way that can help build your business.

Twitter for business

Twitter

Listen and learn

See what your competitors are tweeting about or search for industry keywords to listen and gather market intelligence. It’s an easy way to get insights that you can use to inform your strategy.

Grow and succeed

Want to grow your business, run exciting promotions, strengthen your brand and engage with your customers? Twitter Ads can amplify your efforts in these areas and more.

Learn from others.

See how these businesses used Twitter to drive transactions, connect with customers and grow.

5. Google Places for Business – Registering here allows your business to be found in search engines through Google Search, Maps, Google+, and mobile devices. You need to sign in with your Google account, and then set up Google Places for free. By setting up a free account, you can allow clients to not only search for your business, but make sure they have the correct information about it, such as contact information hours, etc. You can connect with customers by responding to Google+ reviews.

Google Places

Google Places For Business

If you set up a premium account, you can promote your products or services through AdWords Express and Google offers. AdWords Express allows clients to click on your ad, call you and get directions to your business. “Google Offers connects you with customers who are nearby. Create an offer (i.e., 20% off a pepperoni pizza) to highlight your business across Google properties, including Google+, the Google Offers website, and mobile apps for Offers and Wallet.”

6. Google Analytics – One of the most important things you can do for your site is to check its analytics. Google Analytics analyzes your site’s engagement and reports back to you. First, Google Analytics helps familiarize you with their plugin by offering a setup checklist and a getting started guide. This way, even if you’re never analyzed your website’s traffic, with Google Analytics, you will

Google Analytics for WordPress

Google Analytics

easily be able to learn how to start. Second, if you still have questions, you can visit the help center to read articles that can help you along the way. Furthermore, you can visit the Google Analytics YouTube Channel to watch helpful videos.

“Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back,” according to their site. What that means is that Google Analytics will show you how many people visited your site, how they found your site – through keywords, or through another source, and if they clicked on any links on your WordPress blog. This way, you can see what content on your site is the most popular, and which social media sites are bringing the most traffic to you. Having this knowledge will help you get even more visitors, because you can see which topics are most interesting to your readers, and focus on writing about them. Or, when you see which social media sites, for example Facebook, direct the most people to your site, you can focus on promoting your content on that site through paid advertisements or giveaways and promotions.

7. Directory websites – Below are directories that are free and also help with search engines and getting more traffic. These are beneficial for all local businesses.

http://merchantcircle.com
http://manta.com
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
http://citysquares.com/

In summary, there are many ways to promote your business’s visibility online. Some are paid, and others are free, but overall, the more time you spend helping visitors find your site, the more business you are likely to get. Behla Design can help you set up any of the plugins or options discussed in this blog.

The team at Behla Design, Graphic Design & Web Development, is dedicated to creating visual experiences that effectively tell our clients’ stories while engaging, exciting, and enticing their customers. Our firm consists of top web design, web development, WordPress, search engine optimization (SEO), and copywriting professionals and has worked in the graphic, print and web design industry for over twenty years. Contact us today to find out how we can help your next project.

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