How to Create Evergreen Content That Helps to Earn Backlinks

 

 

Backlinks are still one of the most important factors for ranking well on search engines. Google had earlier said it tested both the search results with and without backlinks as a major factor for rankings Web pages and the results that were based on backlinks yielded better search results. Backlinks get counted as true votes for judging the quality of a website.

Earning backlinks is not an easy task. Webmasters often take the wrong turn and fall into the trap of buying cheap links that ultimately harms the entire site’s presence on Google. Preventive measures of link spamming taken by Google include the Penguin update that takes into account the entire link profile of a site before ranking them. The more natural the link profile, the better are the chances of ranking higher on Google.

Here are the top five strategies that will not only help you to earn quality and natural backlinks, but help your link profile to stay clean, thereby providing you better search engine rankings.

1. Research Content That Generates Natural Backlinks and Create a Comprehensive One
Studies have shown that content of at least 2,000 words tends to perform better in the search results. This means writing comprehensive content is a great way to earn more natural links. Companies often invest time and money in creating more and more pieces of short content but ultimately in the long run, they prove to be useless. Think about Wikipedia as a resource while creating content. A well written article will answer far more search queries and the search engines find it easier to measure the overall context of the article. If the content serves the user’s purpose, then it starts to receive a lot of natural backlinks.

Ever wondered why Wikipedia ranks so high in most of the search results? Simply because Wikipedia has content that is comprehensive and a lot of natural backlinks which it has acquired over the course of time.

2. Say More in Less — People Love Tables, Images, Videos and Infographics
People are a great lover of images and gravitate toward content represented beautifully and creatively in the form of images and infographics. Even videos are a great choice. Infographics are a great way to showcase your content to a wide audience. You can also submit the created infographic on infographic submission sites and that will help you to acquire some backlinks. Infographics can also serve as a great resource of referral traffic. Ultimately, the more traffic on your site, the greater are the chances of people linking back to it.

3. Write What People Want to Read and Not What You Want to Write
Make use of Google keyword Planner and Google Trends to find out the topics people are more interested in reading. Take note of the top landing pages on your site — those that are having the minimum bounce rate, in order to find out which content is receiving maximum user engagement. This will help you to write content that is well received by your audience.
Tommy Griffith of ClickMinded SEO training course, who had earlier served as an SEO manager for PayPal, believes BuzzSumo is a great tool in finding content that receives maximum social shares. As displayed in the below screenshot, you can simply enter the topic on which you wish to find the content pieces that went viral and BuzzSumo will show you a list. Producing content focused on such topics will help to earn more links.



4. Write Things Differently and Add Your Own UWP (Unique Writing Point)
All of us have heard about USP (Unique Selling Point) but very few of us must have heard about UWP (Unique Writing Point). An article with UWP tends to perform better in acquiring natural backlinks. People want content that is new and fresh — they don’t want to read something that has been said again and again. It can be difficult to bring something unique to each piece, but it is worth the effort to be creative and will pay off in engagement.

5. Think What Evergreen Stories Editors Look For and Create Content Based on Those Stories
Editors of esteemed publications look for stories that can generate buzz. Newsworthy stories receive a lot of attention, but evergreen pieces can be harder to pitch. If you are able to create an evergreen content piece that is able to grab the attention of the editors then you have found a jackpot. An evergreen article is one that will be interesting today, tomorrow, next month and next year. An article offering tips on potty training, saving money with DIY projects or reeling in a fish on every fishing trip will always be interesting as long as people are having children, doing home improvements and fishing.

Earning backlinks requires a lot of research and creativity. Hopefully the above tips will help you in your endevors. Do you have any other ideas for earning natural backlinks? Please share with us in the comments below.

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The Battle Between Search and Social: Which Is Best For Business?

 

 

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There is a battle for online dominance brewing. Google and Facebook are leading the charge, and emerging social sites flank both sides.
Social media networks even aid search engines. But is it a ruse? While Facebook keeps Google away from its top secret info, Twitter has deflected to the search engine. Is this a bid to defeat their rivals? It’s all very cloak and dagger stuff.

The fight of course, is for the biggest share of ad revenue, and while the corporations make battle decisions, they take casualties. Usually small businesses.

Both sides are readying new and more powerful weapons in the form of paid advertising, but not every online business has the marketing budget to activate these weapons.

Marketers, therefore, have to decide if search or social work best for their business.

The need for search and social
It is safe to say that both search and social have specific benefits for most businesses and, for optimum online marketing results, should both be included in your strategy.

However, some businesses will find that one or the other is more effective, while others may find both search and social work in equal measure. The question is, which option should you channel most energy toward?

The easy option, of course, is to go down the paid advertising route on both search and social, but if you have a limited marketing budget, a positive ROI is not guaranteed.

In the absence of a paid advertising, companies have to look at alternative methods of attracting customers. The main driver in this game is content marketing.

So let’s concentrate on organic visitors and weigh up the pros and cons of targeting clients through search engines and social media.

Social pains
For marketers to reach a full complement of connections on social media networks, paid advertising is the way to go. Otherwise, you only reach a small percentage of customers willing to engage in your content and visit your online store.

Facebook in particular has cut back on the number of “friends” that receive content, and gives users the option to stop receiving your posts in their news feeds. Tweets are typically gone in a flash.
To combat limitations, trimming the number of contacts in Facebook and Twitter enable you to identify customers that are engaging with your brand over those that are not. Your content is then at least landing in the laps of consumers who are more likely to buy.

In their attempt to accrue revenue through paid advertising, social media networks cut off your supply line to customers. And even with paid advertising, users have the option to prevent your content landing in their newsfeed.

If you already get a flow of organic traffic from Google et al, social channels may not perform as well for you as search engines.

Emerging social networks
There are social alternatives of course. Google+ performs well in Google search (no surprises there!) while B2B companies fare reasonably well on Linkedin. There is also a spate of emerging social networks worth checking out.

For businesses targeting an audience of 14- to 25-year-olds, Snapchat is threatening to challenge the top two for number of users. Furthermore, not many marketers have tapped into this social platform yet, so early adopters could get a clear run at users.

There are also a spate of networks that categorize content to target specific readers. For the time being, users are in short supply, but sites like Quora, Medium and Bubblews could grow if marketers and readers recognize the opportunities and benefits.

The major positive to this type of social media network is that your audience is genuinely interested in reading your content and is specifically looking for the subjects you are writing about. In this regard, there are parallels with search.

Social networks also enable you to connect with customers instantly and provide a human touch in a digital environment. It is worth investing in social tools that notify you when your brand or keywords are mentioned whereby you can be on-hand immediately to advise prospects.

Attracting buyers
For new businesses, social media networks will outstrip search engines in terms of reaching an audience and attracting customers. But the key is to find the right audience rather than accumulating as many followers as you can. The expression “quality over quantity” works well as a strategy to keep in mind.

If you have already been active on social media and have accrued a steady following, do some analysis to determine how many are actually interacting with your content, and what content is performing well.

Social media marketing requires finding an audience that genuinely wants to receive your content and actively engage with it rather than an account of random followers that do not show interest.
Is it time you trimmed the number of connections in your social accounts? If you have a huge following, but little engagement then, yes, it is.

Search engine upgrades
On the opposing side of the digital field are the search engines. Google has been the driver of online search for almost two decades, during which time the California-based company has endeavoured to improve search results for its end-users.

Whether Google has improved its service is open for debate. Which way the vote will swing depends on if you are a winner or a loser. Businesses that have a solid SEO strategy and persist with it for several years are more likely to give the search engine the thumbs up. Losers will, “huh.”

Personally, for ranking, Google increases the visibility of my site and drives more traffic than
Facebook or Twitter. But for research purposes, the quality of websites ranking in the top berths often leave a lot to be desired.

Marketers can also face a challenge from search engines. Updates to algorithms are performed every so often that forces them to change their strategy. To be fair to the search engines, this is because marketers are using “black hat” tactics that fall outside the guidelines in an attempt to manipulate search results.

If your digital marketing agency understands the best — and only honest methods of improving search results, you should never have to worry about algorithm changes unless it relates to your Web design like the recent mobile-friendly upgrade.

Attracting traffic
Search engines attract organic traffic based on intent. The advantage this gives online businesses is that a higher percentage of visitors are more likely to convert into sales because visitors are looking for specific products and are ready to buy.

In this respect, search engines have the edge on customers you hope to attract through social media. The downside, however, is that if your Web pages are not ranking, you do not attract much in the way of organic traffic.

Typically, if you rank outside the top two pages of search results, you cannot expect to receive many visitors, certainly not if your website and blog is fresh fodder for crawlers.

Start-ups typically need to attract new traffic through paid advertising, but AdWords can be an experimental process which is not always easy to master. If you do not have much of a budget, it is difficult to compete with larger companies affordable, yet effective keywords.

Essentially, whether search or social work better for you is a matter of metrics. Social certainly gets the nod over search for new starters while Web pages that rank well typically outperform social media marketing.

The battle for online supremacy between search engines and social networks will rumble on for many more years yet. In the meantime, online marketers have to continue fighting on both fronts.

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How to Lose a Prospect’s Attention in 5 Seconds or Less

When you make contact with a new prospect-either by telephone or in a face-to-face meeting-you have an extremely short window of time to connect with them. If you fail to achieve this they will quickly tune you out. Here are several things you can do to lose your prospect’s attention in the first five seconds of the conversation:

1. Start a telephone conversation with, “Hi, how are you?”
2. Open your conversation by introducing yourself, your company and what you do.
3. Make small talk about “stuff” you see in their office (awards, plaques, photos, etc).
4. Give them an overview of your products and services.
5. Explain how your product or service will benefit them.
6. Tell them what other companies you have worked with.
7. Show them the awards and accolades your company product has received.
8. Give them a brochure that outlines your key products or services.

Unfortunately, most sales people fail to effectively open the sales conversation with a new prospect. Most of the sales calls and meetings I have been subjected to over the years have started with one or more of the above. However, the moment your prospect senses that you are trying to sell them something that they don’t need or want they will tune you out and look for a way to disengage or disconnect from the call. They don’t care about you. They don’t want to know about your company. They don’t want to listen to you talk about your products or service. They want a solution to a problem. They want to know how you can help them improve their business. Here is how you do that.

Focus your attention on the prospect!
It may sound simple but most sales people don’t get it. They still believe that selling means talking at great length about their company, their product or their service. However, truly effective salesmanship is all about asking the prospect the right questions and demonstrating that you can help them solve a particular problem or issue. That means you need to direct ALL of your attention on their situation and resist the opportunity to talk about your company or your offering.

If you are making cold calls you can accomplish this by modifying your opening statement or voice mail message. State a specific problem they are likely facing (based on your experience or research). For example,

“Mr. Big, if you’re like other companies in ABC industry, I suspect that you (fill in the blank with the problem). If this is the case, call me at 800-555-1212 and I might be able to suggest a solution. By the way, it’s Kelley calling and my number is 800-555-1212.”

This also applies to face-to-face meetings as well. When you meet with a new prospect for the first time, the last thing you want to do is to start blathering away about your product or service. Instead, open the conversation by asking, “Mrs. Prospect, many of our clients are currently experiencing (insert the problem here). How does that compare to your company’s situation?” This demonstrates that you are knowledgeable of their business and/or the industry and it gives your prospect the opportunity to tell you about their chief concerns.

Over the last fourteen years I have learned that most people will tell you anything you want to know providing you give them a reason to do so. Launching into a product demo does not achieve this but showing interest in their business does. The key is to develop and ask high-quality questions.
Several years ago I worked with a company who regularly participated in industry trade shows. I observed them at one show and noticed that their sales reps simply talked about the products that people showed interest in. Not surprisingly, their closing ratio was low because in most cases they gave information that was not relevant to that prospect’s situation and that they talked to people who had little or no motivation to buy. After some training, they began asking people a few high-quality questions to determine the people who had problems, challenges, and were seriously interested in their products. They were instructed to let “tire-kickers” look around and focus their time on people who had pressing concerns. At the end of the show their sales were slightly higher but they also had a list of highly- qualified people to follow up with and many of these individuals ended up buying from my client.

Here’s the bottom line. The more time you spend talking about your product, the less inclined a prospect will want to continue that conversation. The more you focus your attention on their situation, their problems and demonstrating how you can help them improve their business, the more you differentiate yourself from the competition.

You only have few moments to connect with a prospect so keep it brief. Keep it focused. Keep it about them. And you will keep their attention.

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Google Soon to Show Site Name Not Domain Name in Searches

 

 

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Say goodbye to seeing URLs when searching using your mobile phone. On April 17, Google announced its plan to replace the once-standard domain name with the real name of the website on all mobile searches. This update will give mobile searchers the ability to more quickly understand what a certain site is about before clicking to open its contents.

Although this update is US-based only, it also will include a breadcrumbs update that will roll out globally and will use schema.org structured data for its algorithms.

What are Breadcrumbs?
According to Google, “a breadcrumb is a trail of set links that can help a user understand and navigate your site’s hierarchy.”

When breadcrumbs are used in the body of your website or blog, Google can pull that information and place it into the search results, giving searchers a better understanding of what your page is about.

Two Main Changes
Again, with this new update, there are two main changes to pay attention to:

1. Google will now show the Website name and not the domain name
2. URL structure will now feature breadcrumbs worldwide

Although these are seemingly two small changes, it is time to make sure your website is prepared to rank high on a Google search.

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
The push to have your website be mobile friendly is greater now than it ever has been – and for good reason! How many people do you see daily with their heads down and noses in their phones? Almost everyone you encounter at some point. Guess what they are doing? That’s right, reading and searching.

Regardless of the technology they are using, both Android and Apple use google as a default search browser and if your website is not mobile friendly, there is a good chance it won’t be found on a simple google search, even if your content matches exactly what they are searching for.
This is because Google now ranks mobile friendly websites higher on mobile searches, burying the non-mobile friendly sites at the bottom when they used to be higher in rank.

So what can you do to make sure your website is reaching everyone it needs to be reaching? First, you need to check to see if your site is mobile friendly. You can use Google’s mobile friendly test to see if your website is ready to go or needs some work. If you get the “Awesome, your site is mobile friendly” you have nothing to worry about and can rest assured that your site will continue to rank high on mobile devices. If the test tells you that your site is not mobile friendly, then you can follow the simple steps to make updates and changes that will it allow it to be mobile friendly. All hope is not lost.

Ok, I’m Mobile Friendly, Now What? 3 Ways To Optimize Correctly
Once you are all set to be mobile friendly there are three things to do to make sure you’re getting the best results.

1. Search your site. Run a simple Google search from a mobile device to see if your site is formatted correctly. If it is, there should be a mobile friendly label underneath the search results. If you see the label, you are good to go. If you don’t, it’s time to go back and do some more work!
2. Monitor your website. Searching one time should be enough, but let’s be realistic, with the way things change, small, seemingly insignificant changes can throw everything off. Even though your first search turned out exactly how you planned, you should search again during different times and dates, just to make sure you really are good to go. Your website rankings depend on it!
3. Still, remember desktops. Don’t ignore the fact that just because your site isn’t mobile friendly and won’t rank high on mobile searches until it is fixed that it won’t impact desktop searches as well. Although thought to be mutually exclusive, that is not always the case. As more and more changes roll out, website rankings that are not mobile friendly can easily drop on desktop searches as well. Google may downgrade the site across the board and you would be losing a lot of traffic, not just from the mobile crowd.

A Small Change Could Bring About A Huge Impact
What may seem like a small change to the algorithm for mobile searches and the way domain names are displayed may actually make a huge impact on your website searches. Now is the time to not only ensure your site is mobile friendly, but to make sure the name and structure are consistently updated throughout your site, reflecting exactly what you want mobile searchers to see so Google can accurately pull the information.

While it may seem minor if Google pulls the wrong name information into mobile search, it can actually significantly affect the traffic you receive. If the name of your site has nothing to do with what the searches are about, users are more likely to skip over your result because they feel there is nothing of importance to them on it. If your name reveals exactly what your website, and ultimately, your search is for, you are going to hit a home run in traffic and in mobile rankings.

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Should Your Practice Charge Patient No-Show Fees?

 

 

Despite your staff’s best efforts to remind patients of their appointments, you’re still likely plagued by one or two no-show events every day. The MGMA has estimated that medical practices average a 5% to 7% no-show rate.

But that’s not so bad, right? After all, you can’t expect every single patient to show up as planned, can you?

Perhaps you should. If the average visit in your office yields a $25 co-pay and a $90 reimbursement, just two missed appointments per day can cost your practice nearly $60,000 per year. And that estimate excludes the administrative and payroll expenses you lose scheduling and rescheduling that appointment.

Many medical practices realize the loss of revenue missed appointments inflict on their businesses. One Midwestern practice with an 8.7% no-show rate in 2010 started requiring patients to sign appointment agreements as part of a formal plan to fix the issue. The result? By 2014, their no-show rate dropped to 1.7%.

A pediatric practice also looked at their no-show numbers. They experienced 389 no-shows appointments from 310 patients (some missed more than one). At an estimated $112 lost per appointment, their total came to $43,568 in lost revenue that year. The practice administrator estimated a $25 no-show fee would recoup $9,725, but that assumes a 100% payment rate.
Taking a cue from the hair salons and hotels of the world, some healthcare establishments charge patients no-show fees for blowing off appointments or canceling at the last-minute. But should they? Loud voices in the medical industry argue both for and against no-show charging.

IN FAVOR of a FeePatients tend to see medical practices solely as healthcare providers, not as functioning businesses. As such, they’re far more likely to skip out on a medical appointment than they would be to dodge a rental car reservation.

So there’s definitely value in a policy that makes it clear to patients that a physician’s time, effort and services cost money.

“There is a belief that the doctor will not ‘miss the patient’ or time,” says Drew Stevens, Ph.D., president of Stevens Consulting Group. “However, there are two issues here: one, another patient could have taken this appointment, and two, that is lost revenue for the doctor.”

Charging a no-show fee is the only way to earn back even a fraction of that lost revenue. A blanket $20 fee for every missed appointment may not recoup anywhere near what your practice would have earned in the actual encounter, but in today’s healthcare environment, many docs feel every extra dollar helps.

If your payer contracts allow it, you can collect a patient’s credit card information while booking his or her appointment – communicating your no-show policy as you do – and automatically collect your charges when a scheduled visit gets skipped.

Part of the point of having a policy in place, though, is hoping you don’t have to enforce it. The threat of the fee may be all it takes to get patients who would otherwise stay home to show up.
Practices often find that no-shows are committed by “repeat offenders,” so a sudden change in your office’s policy could scare patients into changing their bad habits. One practice reported moving from a 17% no-show rate to less than 1% after instituting a fee.

AGAINST a FeeOr, a sudden change in policy could spur your chronic skippers to head for your closest competing provider organization.

“I worked with one practice that realized many of the patients they were charging for missed appointments also brought in the best reimbursement,” says Elizabeth Woodcock, a practice management consultant. “By comparing chart transfer requests and no-show charges, the practice soon realized that a significant minority of these more lucrative patients transferred their care after receiving a billing statement that contained a no-show charge.”

Even if perturbed patients don’t leave your practice due to the fee policy, they may still resent being charged and could publicize their displeasure to friends, family, or in an online review.
Plus, unless you have credit card on file as discussed above, it can be difficult to get a patient to pay his no-show fee at all. The expense of mailing a bill for the missed-visit charge and the hassle of repeatedly requesting that a patient pay up may be more trouble than the fee is worth.
No-show fees can also project an image of inflexibility to your patients. After all – things come up. Patients often have legitimate, unavoidable reasons for missing appointments or canceling at the last minute. A rigid fee policy can alienate busy patients.

You could always start a more lax policy – some practices waive the fee on the first instance or in extenuating circumstances – but that can open up its own can of worms.

What counts as “extenuating?” Who decides when not to enforce the policy? Are you keeping records of which patients have already received their one waived-fee credit? It can be easy for miscommunication to occur and for someone to incur charges they thought they’d avoided.
So is a partial reimbursement on lost time and revenue worth potentially upsetting your patients over? That’s up to you to decide.

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How YouTube Cards will Transform Marketing

 

Since the very first video upload in 2005, YouTube has become one of the single largest marketing channels and online communities on the internet. With over 300 hours of video uploaded to the website every single minute, the widespread use of the video platform is known and loved by all and has even launched personalities such as PewDiePie to internet celebrity with over 12 million subscribers.

For any marketer or business professional, YouTube annotations have been a well-known and highly regarded YouTube tool. For those that don’t know, annotations are clickable lines of text that overlay a YouTube video. These are used to drive traffic to various other videos or websites for further marketing and conversion opportunities. YouTube is now getting ready to abolish the text and replace it with “YouTube Cards”. If you missed out on the annotation train, however, not to worry. These new cards will be far more capable and appealing than the previous model, and annotations will still be hanging around for a short while.

Here is why YouTube is swapping out annotations for YouTube cards and how this switch spells great news for business owners everywhere:

The Problem with Annotations
The internet is a wildly interactive place, and YouTube is the pinnacle when it comes to live-action video. The addition of annotations on YouTube allowed the once-passive platform to become more interactive by allowing users to click through from video to video, playlist, or to the author’s pre-approved website. This ultimately proved to be a great tactic to drive interaction, traffic, and ultimately conversions.

The issue that marketers face is that annotations cannot be seen on mobile devices. This becomes a huge problem considering that 50% of content uploaded to YouTube is mobile specific. This means that not only can 50% of the material on YouTube not be branded with this marketing text overlay, but mobile viewers across the world are therefore impossible to convert or funnel. With one quarter of the 1.9 billion mobile internet users accessing the internet strictly from a mobile device, annotations are not looking so sweet to marketers anymore. Luckily, YouTube is now taking the bull by the horns to get this situation sorted out.

YouTube Cards: The Solution to the Annotation Problem
Meet the new YouTube card. YouTube cards are essentially nothing more than annotations that have evolved to become more effective, stylish, and versatile for the marketers who use them; not to mention intriguing to the viewers who see them. As of now, cards will not be wholly replacing annotations until “[cards] can do everything annotations can do today, and more. Until then, we’re looking forward to your feedback on cards, including what you want them to do for you in the future” stated YouTube.

What makes the new YouTube cards so exciting to marketers is the various new features and abilities of the amped up annotations. First, cards will now be visible on mobile devices. This fact alone doubles the number of leads and sales that can possibly be generated from seeing any given video. Additionally, YouTube has added 6 different types of cards for various marketing techniques to be employed. The cards that are currently available for utilization are:

• Merchandise: Images can be added and the creator’s merchandise can be promoted directly from the video.
• Fundraising: Allows video viewers to be linked directly to programs on approved fundraising platforms.
• Fan Funding: This card allows those who employ it to harness the power of the community by allowing appreciative viewers to make monetary donations to keep the page up and going.
• Video / Playlist: Serves as a direct link for viewers to find related videos or playlists associated with the current video.
• Associated Website: Link directly to the creator’s personal or business website. This is truly where mobile visibility plays an enormous role in increasing a business’s bottom line.

YouTube cards will now also display an information tab throughout the duration of the video making the card available at all times instead of appearing at a certain point in the video. These tabs are only able to be placed in the top-right corner as of now, but with the innovations YouTube aims to generate with cards, these will undoubtedly become movable.

YouTube cards are poised to become something much more than annotations could ever be. The previous version of the text was to be used sparingly to avoid becoming a nuisance. Cards, on the other hand, provide a stylish and retractable portal for anything from fundraising, to selling merchandise, to gaining more subscribers. This new form of annotation will take marketing on YouTube to a new level. Optimize your YouTube channel and outfit your uploads with these cards for a sleek new look that will no doubt boost leads and ultimately boost your sales.

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