Below are several characteristics that distinguish a leader from a boss:

Leaders Lead

Bosses tend to rule and demand that the work is done. They will micromanage because they don’t have trust in the team to successfully complete a project. Bosses will also be very quick to analyze and criticize the team’s mistakes.

Leaders, on the other hand, are individuals who will assist their team with words of encouragement, ideas and suggestions, and positive feedback. They are not there to watch their employees fail but to help and lead them to a positive outcome.

Leaders Listen

Bosses will be quick to demand that tasks be done, but won’t be open to discussion or hear out their employees’ ideas. They expect them to just obey and listen and proceed with their job without mistakes.

A leader, however, is open to their team sharing their insights and questions. They are willing to advise and provide feedback to their employees. Leaders want their employees to develop and reach successful outcomes and are conscious that for that to happen, they have to be involved.

Leaders Learn

A leader is open to new ideas and learning from their team. They are not embarrassed to learn from someone in a position lower than them, as they understand there is always room for more growth. Not only are they willing to learn, but they also are pleased to teach. They enjoy sharing their knowledge and experience with their colleagues.

Leaders Love

Leaders have a passion for not only their job but also, to see their employees succeed. They are not afraid to step down and get involved with the project at hand.

Being a boss can be a rewarding job if you take on the characteristics of a leader. Your employees will respect you more if they know that you are not there to scold and criticize every move they make. Yes, as a boss you are in a higher authority, but be sure to do so in a way that is constructive for the company and your employees.

The post The Differences Between A Leader & A Boss appeared first on Rank Executives.

With the total number of websites having exceeded 1 billion as of 2014, trying to stand out amongst the crowd is a daunting task. Just having a website is no longer enough to say you have an online presence, and it has not been enough for quite some time. SEO, social media, content marketing, all are important to making your site stand out amongst the rest. However, you likely can’t afford to throw it all into a mix and see what comes out the other end. Establishing your online presence is a careful, long-term process, and you’ll be competing with many others in that process. However, this guide will get you a leg up on the competition, from web design, to web marketing, to maintenance. Remember: there is no end to establishing your online presence. Once you get your name out there, it is an eternal endeavor to keep from being replaced.

1. Know What You’re Offering

Before you can even get into web design or development, you have to know what it is you intend to offer. Websites do not gain millions of visitors merely by existing. Each website has something to offer to the world, and before you build you have to know what you want your website to offer. Just as bad is offering a generic version of something that people can get elsewhere. If you have no differentiator, why should anybody care?

Take some time to think about this. If you don’t know why you are building a website in the first place, you are doomed to fail. Start with the problem you want to solve, and then put together a solution. Your website should provide that solution by offering information, goods, or services. If you are not sure what you want to offer, then just spend a few days thinking about it. There are many ways to figure out what to offer, but finding out what you want to offer could fill an entire post.

2. Set up Hosting

The next step, one that is common sense but mentioned here so it is not forgotten, is to set up your hosting. You might not have a website yet, but many others do, and they are all seeking web hosting and buying up domain names that you may want to use. As a consequence, find yourself a domain and buy it up as soon as possible. The last thing you want is to create a website with tens of thousands of words of text, graphics, videos, and images all referencing a domain that is owned by somebody else. As such, make sure your hosting is set up BEFORE you dig into the design aspects. This also means the moment your website is ready your development team will have somewhere to push the site.

3. Website Design

Once you know what you are offering, you are ready to start designing a website. As you go into the design, ask yourself what you want your website to accomplish. While there are many web design tricks and techniques to create a more professional presentation, the content will be shaped by your end goals. Is the purpose of your website to get people to fill out a contact form? Are you trying to get people to call? Perhaps you have a physical location and want people to go to that place? Maybe you have an ecommerce platform set up and are using your website to sell directly.

Whatever your goal, your design should facilitate that end. In all cases there are design choices that will help and others that will hinder. The design should also keep the user experience in mind – you want navigation of your website to be intuitive, quick, and easy. At no point should a user click on what looks like a link and be taken nowhere. By the same token, you do not want your links to look too much like conventional text. A navigation bar that takes people directly to the pages they want to visit is also a critical feature, and locking that navigation bar to the top of the browser is also a recommended feature. You want your design to help people move from one place to another as effortlessly as possible.

Specific web design choices such as what images you use (though images should always be included), font styling and location, and use of parallax scrolling should all be influenced by the image you want to project for your brand. A common design employed by many designers involves the use of parallax scrolling with a video playing in the background, and the foreground offering explanation of goods and services offered.

4. Development

With the design out of the way, it is time to develop. Whoever you choose as your developer, you’d want them to make use of some form of CMS (Content Management System). We recommend using a CMS because, as time passes, you’ll want to make modifications to your website. Without a CMS, this would involve digging through thousands of lines of unfamiliar code to find the block of text you want to change, and then hoping for the best when you do change it. Using a CMS such as WordPress makes it far easier to make changes in the future.

While there are many forms of CMS out there, in our own development work we usually install WordPress as this is one of the easiest systems for novices to learn, allowing our clients to make adjustments to their site after launch without needing to call us. Whatever choices you make for development, just make sure that the developer can accomplish what you set out to do in the design, negotiate continued support in the event something breaks in the future, and learn whatever CMS the developer chooses to install.

Once the development is completed and the site goes live, it is time to promote!

5. On-Page Search Engine Optimization

After developing your website, it is time to go back through and optimize it. If you’re using a development team which has an SEO on staff, your website will probably come to you fully optimized. If it is not, then you’ll want to research the subject yourself or, better yet, hire professionals who can do the work for you. SEO professionals will make sure all of your target keywords are in the right place, that the keywords you use will accomplish what you want them to accomplish, and that your site is easily crawled by search engines such as Google.

This is an important step to establishing your online presence because if your site is not optimized, it makes it that much harder to promote successfully.

6. Online Marketing

With your website built and optimized, it is time to market it. Your online marketing strategy will ultimately depend on your overall strategy. If you have been following the advice in this guide, you know what you have to offer and you know what makes your website different from similar websites on the internet. Regardless of what methods you use, there are a few techniques that should be considered a standard part of your arsenal.

• Social Media: First on the list, and the most important. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are the big three you want to establish a presence on. Google+ is more important for search engine optimization, while Facebook and Twitter are fantastic resources for growing your audience. Look into other social media platforms as well. If you find you have primarily images to share, Instagram is a good resource, but only go with this platform if your website is visually based. An independent news site which is text heavy would not benefit as much from Instagram as an architecture firm.
• Content Marketing and Distribution: If you are a regular reader of this blog, you likely saw this one coming. Content marketing is an excellent way to grow your online presence because it involves just providing information people want to share. This is a good way to build your company’s image out on the internet, and getting into content marketing early one will ensure that you have full control of your brand’s image from the outset. Content marketing is a big umbrella, and incorporates tactics such as e-mail marketing, guest blogging, and even posting videos on YouTube.
• Reputation Management: Whatever your niche, there is probably a review site for it. We would never suggest creating fake reviews in order to promote your site, but you also want to deal with negative reviews. If you find a complaint on a popular review site (Yelp for example), first analyze the complaint objectively and determine if the complaint is valid. If it is valid, fix the problem presented, then see about getting the review taken down. The order is important because if you start trying to get bad reviews removed without fixing the problem, you’ll not only find the complaints outpacing the time you can dedicate to such efforts, you may also start seeing customers complaining vocally about the “censorship”, which just takes you out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire. Of course, not all complaints are valid, sometimes it’s just a competitor trying to make you look bad, just be sure and approach things with an open mind as it is hard to distinguish between a smear campaign and legitimate concerns sometimes.

7. Maintenance

Establishing an online presence is a time consuming endeavor, but once it is established you cannot stop. Even the best designed websites will have bugs revealed eventually, or at the very least require an update. SEO is a constantly changing space and what is a best practice today may be suboptimal tomorrow, and the recent mobile algorithm update reminds us that an optional feature at the time of design may become an essential element tomorrow. Your online presence is based on activity, and if you drop off the radar, you’ll gradually be forgotten. The internet has a short memory and is regularly seeking something new, and if you are not providing that something new on a regular basis you will not succeed.

Ultimately, establishing an online presence is a long and difficult process. It could take years before your name is on the lips of most of your target audience. If you are in doubt however, there is an old Chinese proverb that applies to internet marketing in general: “A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.” Thus, rather than lament at the challenge, take that single step forward, and then take another, and another, and before long you will look back and be amazed at how far you have come.

The post How to Establish an Online Presence appeared first on Rank Executives.

How Does World of Warcraft Relate to Marketing?

Note, I picked this game both for its familiarity and for its type: it is a roleplaying game, and it is online. However, there are hundreds of roleplaying games out there, both digital and tabletop. What binds these games together is that they all request the player to divorce themselves temporarily from who they are and immerse themselves in a fictional world with its own rules and laws. Not all role-playing games are set in fictional worlds: some are set in the real world, thus only requiring the player to become another person.

This is where modern marketing comes into play. As a marketer, your job is to get people interested in your product or service, and guide them down the funnel to purchase. You know where the consumer starts (doesn’t know your product exists), and you know where you want them (purchasing the product), the problem has always been getting them there. Though thousands of tried and true tactics and strategies do exist, the rapid nature of the internet requires marketers to adapt rapidly and come up with new tactics to make them stand out from the rest.

This is where that roleplaying ability comes into the picture. Many of the practices in roleplaying have a marketing equivalent. Coming up with a brand image or a buyer persona is just a variation of what roleplayers call character creation. Engaging with your customers as your company brand is just another form of roleplaying. Your content strategy and content marketing campaigns are all designed around the principle of guiding the consumer through your company story towards an end that promises to resolve a problem. In a tabletop roleplaying campaign, the game master guides players through a world story towards an end that promises to resolve the problem presented.

In short, the game mentioned above has very little to do with marketing on its own merits, it is the people who play the game who have skills and experience you can make use of.

What Skills do They Have Exactly?

OK, so I’ve shown the relationship, the question now becomes a breakdown of what skills they have to offer. We’ll list out the skills necessary to do well in this community, and how it translates into a valuable skillset for you.

Persona Creation – Critical for any marketing strategy is the creation of buyer personas. These are the people you want to market to, the individuals who would find your product useful. It is not enough to just identify by profession; an effective persona would get down to the details of who these people are, how they conduct themselves in their day to day. The reason you need to get so detailed is because you want your marketing efforts to resonate with these customers.

This is where the role-player comes in. When they go to start up a new game, whether it is a tabletop role-playing game or a video game, they are creating a character. This character is intended to fit in a fictional world, and support a particular style of play. Remember, this is a hobby, meaning that they spend hours doing this and figuring out what works and what does not. Hiring marketers who have created over a hundred characters across dozens of different fictional realities can leverage that ability to create the type of person who would be inclined to buy your product is probably the best possible move. The level of detail can get down to unique personality quirks that could make or break a sale.

Image Consistency – When your brand establishes a presence on the internet, the important part is to keep a consistent presence. This can be a struggle if when hiring marketers as they all have unique quirks, habits, and styles. As a consequence, they might have very different ideas about how to present your brand to customers. It is not enough to be able to create buyer personas or a company image; you have to be able to stick to that image and remain appealing to those target personalities.

This is a problem in many tabletops role-playing games as well. Players are expected, sometimes in stressful situations, to stay in character. This is an incredibly useful trait to have because you will not always engage with customers who are happy with your products and services. However, you can’t have a social media manager who will break from the carefully crafted brand image and get in an internet shouting match (often referred to as a “flame war”) with a customer using your company’s Twitter account.

Content Strategy – If you are looking to role-playing forums and sites when hiring marketers, then you want to find game masters. These are the people who put together the stories used in tabletop role-playing games. However, these aren’t stories on rails – the players are meant to be free to take whatever route they desire, which I’m sure you can imagine would be quite vexing when you spend hours crafting a beautiful tale and the people it is meant for go completely off the rails. This is much like when you craft what you think is a fantastic strategy, only to find your customers going in a completely different direction from what you expected.

This is where an experienced game master comes into play: they would have experience in guiding players along a desirable route while preserving the illusion of choice. Ultimately, this is what you want for your content strategy. You want your content to tell a story that moves customers down the funnel from when they first become aware of your brand to when you finally convert, whether that be through generating a lead or making a sale. So, when hiring marketers, seek out somebody experienced in this form of story-telling, and that person will produce strategies and content that will guide customers to your waiting website.

Creative Content Creation – This is the biggest advantage to seeking out role-players when hiring marketers. Regardless of their role within the game: game master, player, villain, all are storytellers. As we know, storytelling is the direction marketing is moving into, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In these tabletop games, each person is contributing to the overall story in their own way, collaborating with others to make that story come to life. This fosters a mindset of creativity and teamwork, both of which are essential elements in any business.

Where to go From Here

Hopefully, I’ve sold you on the usefulness of this unorthodox trait to look for when hiring marketers. The only question is: where does one go from here? Finding people who enjoy roleplaying games is easy, one just has to venture forth into the internet and search for roleplaying communities. Just don’t jump in and try to recruit right away, most of the people there already have jobs and even the ones that would normally be interested won’t appreciate the sudden intrusion. Really, who would enjoy somebody suddenly bumping into their favorite hobby just to try and recruit them for a job?

The trick here is to find people on your team who already participate in such hobbies (you have at least one in your marketing team already I’m sure) and ask them if they have any friends looking for a job. That is one of the methods we used to recruit some of our writers here. It is all about networking: just like any other recruitment effort. If you make the plunge into a world of fantasy to try to find your next marketing hire, you will get an employee who is creative, intelligent, and experienced with teamwork. We did it, and it has paid off very well for us.

The post Dungeons and Marketers: An Unorthodox Solution for Hiring Marketers appeared first on Rank Executives.

However, the value of taking a stand as part of your content marketing strategy cannot be overstated, but neither can the risk. Deciding whether or not to invest in taking a stand requires heavy research on your customer base, and in-depth knowledge of what they will tolerate and what they will not. If you miscalculate, you risk alienating your core audience, but if you play your cards right you can realize massive profits. This guide should help walk you through what you need to do if you wish to dedicate marketing resources towards activism. Final word of warning: this should never, EVER be your core marketing strategy. Courting controversy should be a supplement to an already established content marketing strategy intended to take things to the next level.

Separate Yourself From Business Values

This is the very first thing you must do: learn to recognize the difference between corporate values and personal values. For a marketer, this is just another day on the job, but for a business owner this may be difficult. It is YOUR company after all, you may be thinking that company values you should reflect your values. Although your values are what inspired you to provide whatever product or service you are offering to the community, there are many causes that are unrelated to that product that you need to read lightly on.

Never lose sight of the fact that your business is still a business and not a personal megaphone. Thus if you find yourself thinking about posting on your company blog about an issue that is very personal to a lot of people, ask yourself: if one of your employees posted what you’re about to post, how would you respond? Does it truly reflect the values and beliefs you want your company to be known for? Remember that if you do your job correctly, the views you project will be forever affiliated with your business. Make sure you do not find your company’s success stonewalled by an opinion expressed five years ago.

Avoid the Bandwagon: Relevancy and Timing

While fighting for a cause people care about is important and can yield massive dividends, any positive effect is lost if you appear just to be following the herd. You want to be seen as a champion, not a follower, and you certainly want to not be obvious about the fact that you are latching onto a cause for gain. Even if your feelings are sincere, and you genuinely believe the cause perfectly aligns with your company objectives, trumpeting that fact to the masses when there is no apparent reason to do so will appear to be a shameless attention grab. Looking like you are making a shameless grab for attention can, depending on the cause, be just as dangerous as picking the wrong cause or the wrong side.

So, when you are making content for a cause, first make sure it holds relevance to your established company values. You are not going to be able to inject yourself into every discussion: and that is OK. Part of the reason this works is for the same reason content marketing works: it makes your brand seem more human. Just like a person, your company is going to have issues it feels strongly about, and issues it does not wish to speak up on. People never condemn a business for being silent on a matter irrelevant to them. That being said, if it is irrelevant to your company, but the news is big enough, there is nothing wrong with offering a symbolic gesture of support. Once again, think of your company as if it were a person.

Just as you want the cause to be relevant, timing is also an issue. It is good practice to have a news feed dedicated to issues you want your business to be closely tied to, and wait for big news to break in that field. The moment the news breaks, you’ll have to be quick to get relevant content out there. If you wait too long and the buzz dies down, your content will not produce the desired impact. Even worse is coming in late while the issue is still relevant. During this narrow band where you show up late, but everybody is still talking about it, is when you are most likely to be accused of jumping on the bandwagon. As such, if you’re going to gear some of your content towards the issue of the day, and you find you’re coming in late, either add something new to the discussion or let it go.

Choose Carefully: Avoid the Red Zone

So, something has come up in the news. You believe that your company’s history and culture is related enough to the issue to speak out. You have staff eager to put pen to paper and churn out some great content that will add to the debate and let everybody know where you stand. However, there is still one final question you have to ask – just how bad is the debate? Remember what I said earlier about how you do not want to associate your brand with the wrong viewpoint? This becomes even more important if the debate is contentious.

I have a simple system for organizing things. Note the system is entirely subjective, and where an issue falls for you ultimately depends on who your target market is and state of the world at the time. A red zone issue today may end up becoming a green zone issue in the future. This is why, as with any other aspect of content marketing, it is essential you know your audience before you begin. The last thing you want to do is offend your core customer base thinking you were appealing to them.

• Green Zone: These are safe issues to comment on. Sometimes the safety comes from an obvious expectation of how you should feel, other times it comes from the fact that no matter what stance you take – nobody will be offended. Issues that fall in the green zone are things like free speech or supporting veterans. You probably already support these things, and people expect you to support these things. This also means there isn’t a whole lot of potential gain to be had from an issue in the green zone compared to others, since your voice will just be one member of a chorus saying the same thing. That being said, it can be a good way to secure customer loyalty.
• Yellow Zone: These issues are a little more risky. While the debate is largely civilized, it is still important to many people. Furthermore, unlike a green zone issue there is no clear, safe position to take. However, if you guess wrong, you can weather the damage and probably won’t tank your business. Another advantage of yellow-zone issues is that if you guess wrong, you may end up drawing in a whole other customer base in support. Even if you lose customers, you will not draw the kind of ire that more serious issues would cause.
• Orange Zone: This is when we start moving into genuinely dangerous territory. These are issues people feel strongly about, and misreading your customer base will cost your company dearly. Saying the wrong thing or taking the wrong side using your business’s voice will cause people to hold a grudge, and if the foul-up is bad enough a rebrand will become your only hope. However, what distinguishes ‘orange’ issues from ‘red’ issues is that it is possible to navigate successfully, and few make the attempt. Therefore, if you can succeed, your brand will get better exposure than you could have ever dreamed of with any other matter on any other issue, but failure can be catastrophic and take years to recover from. Note that miscalculation on an orange zone issue may also put employees at risk of having personal details leaked depending on what issue it is: my advice is to keep back unless you are incredibly confident.
• Red Zone: Stay away from a red zone issue. Don’t even try to navigate it successfully, you will almost certainly fail. These are the issues that some of your customers are willing to kill one another over, so it’d be even more disastrous if you should declare yourself to be against them as well. Having your company take a stand on a red zone issue not only potentially costs you customers, you may find your employees being harassed, death threats in your inbox, and become subject to a number of attacks from hackers. This is what ultimately distinguishes red zone issues from orange zone issues – whether or not you’ll find it worthwhile to invest in armed guards afterward.

Figuring out where an issue falls on this scale requires diligent research on the issue in question. If you are not sure where the matter stands then seek out information. Going in under an anonymous identity, locate message boards and meet-ups for people who stand for the same thing you are considering having your company stand for. Remain dispassionate, and remember that you are trying to determine how volatile the conversation is normally. A good rule of thumb: if people are willing to kill and die for it, stay away. Consider this part of your market research: something that any good content marketing tactic should have anyway.

In Conclusion…

Creating a content marketing campaign for the purposes of flirting with controversy is very much a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. This is likely why most marketers do not attempt it: we live in a very risk averse world. That aversion to risk is the reason this article is void of examples. Unlike general content marketing, I will not claim that ‘soapbox marketing’ is necessary in a modern business strategy: you can be incredibly successful without it. However, if you do choose to go down this road, hopefully the guide above will guide you to success rather than ruin.

The post Associating Your Brand with a Cause: Content Marketing and Politics appeared first on Rank Executives.

Facebook marketing has been a somewhat controversial aspect for marketers. Last year, AdAge reported that blank ads get a higher CTR than actual ads, leading many advertisers to believe that Facebook is an ineffective spend of their budget. To combat this sentiment, Facebook introduced promoted posts, launched timelines for brands, and adjusted the layout of their ads to increase user interaction… Still, only 37% of marketers felt that their Facebook marketing efforts were effective.

Unprecedentedly low click through rates and low ROI’s are common complaints from Facebook advertisers. Many speculate that the cause of these low metrics is not due to an ineffective platform, but due to ineffective targeting. AdRoll combined their Facebook Exchange partnership with their retargeting platform to help offset this targeting issue, allowing advertisers to target users that previously visited their site. While this sharply improved results, these retargeted ads are still located in the sidebar, surrounded by half a dozen non-relevant ads.

But the game is changing.

Aside from the occasional promoted post, users do not expect to see ads in their Facebook news feed. When ads do appear, they pay attention. Previously, you could only advertise promoted posts to people that like your page and their friends. But since many of these users already like your page, paying Facebook to “promote” your post is almost like giving Facebook your money for free. In May 2013, AdRoll launched a DIY platform that allows you to retarget your visitors through the Facebook news feed, even if those users are not following your company on Facebook.

News Feed Ad vs Standard Sidebar Ad (Courtesy of Adroll.com)

Five Game-Changing Uses for Internet Marketers:

Promote Facebook only discounts. It’s no secret that Facebook promotions perform exceptionally well for brands that already have a large following on Facebook. However, if you don’t have any fans following your page, it can be very difficult to launch a Facebook campaign. News feed retargeting changes this.

Split test promotions before launching them on your brand page.  Detailed analytics allow you to get explicit analytical data on click through rate, share rate, and conversion rate. Try out multiple images, different text options, and promotion variations to see which combination performs best. Then, use this framework for future promotions.

Seed your viral content (infographics, videos, case studies, etc). Viral content is a great way to boost your social presence, but you need a starting set of people. People need to see your content before they can spread it. News feed retargeting is a great way to do this. People seeing your content are familiar with your brand and more likely to share it. Once it’s shared, those clicks are free.

Increase your social branding. A user landed on your page once, imagine what they will think if they continue to see your ads throughout Facebook. Your brand presence will skyrocket, thereby increasing the likelihood that they share your content on the social-sphere.

Interact with clients to gain feedback and perform market research. The opinion of your potential customers matters. Ask a question, find out what your users want. If you are launching a new product, ask your Facebook audience what product they would like to see. News feed retargeting makes market research incredibly affordable and rapid.

Integrating Retargeting with Your Current Marketing Efforts

News feed retargeting is powerful, but it is only truly effective if your website already has a pool of visitors to retarget. This is where traditional online marketing comes in. It is important that you target qualified visitors. Buying 1000 visitors from a low cost traffic source is not ideal for retargeting, since these users had no reason to see your site in the first place.

Step 1: Driving initial set of traffic.

Pay Per Click – Depending on your niche, this is the quickest way to drive traffic to your site. It is costly, however, and not typically regarded as a long term solution. The visitors you buy from PPC tend to be fairly qualified and work well for retargeting.

Search Engine Optimization – If your site ranks well, you can see a huge supply of targeted traffic through SEO. This is the ideal source of traffic for retargeting. That being said, it is a significant time investment and involves quite a bit of effort to produce content and build links.

Facebook Ads – Buying traffic from Facebook Ad’s isn’t a bad strategy since these visitors actively use Facebook. Even so, traditional sidebar Facebook ads are not generally regarded as a great traffic source.

Press Releases – For a relatively low up-front cost, you can get a fairly large amount of visitors to your site. Keep in mind that visitors reading your press release may not necessarily be as targeted as users that found you on the search engines.

Display Advertisements – These involve negotiating banner ads on other websites. If your niche is large enough, we suggest messaging bloggers or webmasters in extremely similar audience’s. This way, you know that your traffic source is targeted.

Step 2: Increase Your Branding (This is where retargeting helps)

Social Media Marketing – It is crucial that you grow your social media presence. Facebook retargeting is excellent for doing so. You can convert your current visitors into followers on Facebook, allowing you to directly market new products and services to them without having to pay for new visitors.

Standard Retargeting – “I see your ads EVERYWHERE” is quite common to hear if you use retargeting. Integrating FBX News Feed retargeting with your existing AdRoll ad’s creates an unprecedented level of branding.

Create Viral Content – Infographics, viral blog posts, videos, and giveaways are a great way to improve branding. While you can seed these in any way you are able to, it makes sense to promote them on Facebook. If your budget allows, news feed retargeting can help boost the presence of your viral content.

Build An E-mail List – Most companies understand the value of having an opt-in E-mail list. If you’re not already pushing users to join your E-mail newsletter… now is a good time to start. More often than not, users do not sign up for newsletters on their first visit, which is why retargeting visitors helps.

Step 3: Conversion Rate Optimization & Market Research (Retargeting also helps here)

Split Testing Ads – High click through rates and an optimized advertisement can work wonders for your brand. Since AdRoll’s platform provides detailed analytics, you can split test advertisements. If you find one that works, you can extend the ad to other platforms.

Determining New Products – Interact with your followers, ask them questions. People are responsive to news feed posts. Ask your visitors what they want, offer a chance to win a prize for responding. You will be surprised at the response rate.

Improving your Brand – Boosting social media followers, increasing the visibility of your logo, interacting with your brand. Retargeting is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it can definitely help get you closer to becoming a fully branded company.

Implement your Findings on Social Media – When you figure out exactly what slogans and promotions increase click through rate, and you’ve figured out the next product or service that you are going to offer, you should implement your findings on social media. That is, post on your Facebook and Twitter accounts in a much more optimized manner.

Repeat.

Final Thoughts.

Retargeting is powerful and changing the game. In my opinion, it is just as important as social media marketing or search engine optimization. AdRoll’s news feed retargeting is adding an additional dynamic to Internet marketing, and perhaps saving Facebook from becoming an advertising black hole. Since you are reading this article and on our website, you will likely be seeing our ads in your news feed, we are firm believers.

The post Facebook News Feed Retargeting: A Game Changer appeared first on Rank Executives.

Not too long ago, conversion rate optimization rarely crossed the minds of web designers and marketers. But the last few years brought an array of changes to the world of web design, conversion rate optimization is now crucial to the success of your website.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies reports that over 14,000 advertising companies are actively accepting clients. Faced with growing competition, AdRoll developed an innovate retargeting platform for online advertising. Despite creating new technology, they were still a startup, they had no branding, credibility or users. By implementing incredible conversion rate optimization techniques, they launched themselves to the top of the online advertising industry.

Some of the key components of AdRoll’s Conversion Rate Optimization:

• They establish credibility by showcasing awards and repeating that they are “#1″.
• “Free Trial” is highlighted in the menu bar.
• A video explains their service in a casual manner while giving an inside look of the company.
• Their phone number is in the header of every page.
• Social media icons are always visible.
• An omnipresent chat bar stays at the bottom of the screen.
• They feature their top brands from a variety of niches.
• Press coverage is highlighted on the homepage.
• Numerous case studies & testimonials are available.
• They have a “Meet the Team” Page.
• The bandwagon effect is introduced by saying: “5000 brands choose AdRoll”
• They appeal to viewers emotions with a visual connection to Silicon Valley.
• Pages are organized nicely in their footer.

Building Credibility

Modern design tools allow practically anyone to launch a website. Since websites are all created on an even playing field, businesses must place significant focus on establishing credibility to set themselves apart from dubious competition. AdRoll makes a clear effort to demonstrate their trust and authority by drawing attention to an abundance of awards, case studies, a strong client base, and press coverage.

Use of “#1″ Above the Fold

AdRoll uses “#1″ three times, before users even scroll down.

Before even scrolling down, three instances of “#1” appear. A banner at the top of the page proudly showcases themselves as the “#1 Advertising Company by Inc. Magazine”; the largest text on the homepage defines themselves as the “#1 Retargeting Platform”; a box beneath that proudly describes why they are “#1 on FBX”. The visual redundancy of “#1” clearly serves as an indirect approach to condition users into believing that they are actually the best platform to use. While their claim of being the “#1 advertising company” is backed by Inc. Magazine, the other two claims are not backed with any support; yet, seeing “#1” combined with additional ethos building strategies serves as a powerful method to convince visitors of their credibility.

Reassurance Through the Bandwagon Effect

AdRoll builds their credibility by making it clear that established brands already use their service.

AdRoll showcases the fact that over 5000 brands use their service. They not only present this as a way to reassure visitors that the service is well established, but it also initiates the psychological concept of the bandwagon effect. Users will have a larger tendency to use AdRoll because individuals generally prefer to conform to social norms. Additionally, in the business world, the term “brand” typically correlates with successful companies. AdRoll understands that they are primarily targeting business owners, CMO’s, and marketing directors; in an effort to flatter this audience, they replace “companies” with “brands” to make potential users feel as though using their service classifies their company as a “brand”.

Inclusion of Recognized Brand Logos

AdRoll carefully picks a select few companies to represent their service.

Any business that does client work should be sure to include the logos of their biggest clients, this is crucially important to increase conversion rate optimization.

Out of their 5000 customers, AdRoll displays only a select few, choosing clients from an assortment of niches to make it clear that the service is effective across all markets. Silicon Valley tech startups are placed at the top as a means to introduce the concept of status leaks – business owners are more likely to use AdRoll if they respect the marketing decision of these companies.

In order to not isolate traditional business owners, national brands such as Nestle and America Apparel are featured as well.

They proudly display press, select particular quotes, and only show news from business outlets.

Carefully selected Press Coverage

Further down the page is a separate area featuring news snippets from Forbes, Business Times, Bloomberg, and an array of news other press outlets. They choose to only feature the business related news outlets to better appeal to their target audience since business owners will respect these sources more than non-business sources. The fact that AdRoll demonstrates their credibility with such a broad set of authoritative sources sets them apart from their competition, creating an extremely successful homepage. By virtually saturating their website with press, big brands, testimonials and awards, they leave no room for viewers to speculate that they are anything but the most authoritative advertising company.

Appealing to Users Sense of Logic

They Make it Clear that Support is Standing By

AdRoll Keeps their phone number in the header, a live chat box is always present at the bottom of the screen, and all their contact information is in the footer.

Coupling their awards and authoritative sources with an appeal to the viewers sense of logic reinforces AdRoll’s credibility and creates an extremely powerful argument. As users scroll down the site, a live chat box stays omnipresent at the bottom of the screen, comforting customers that helpful support is always present. Unlike most companies, their customer service department is called the “customer delight team.” This euphemism serves as a subtle indicator to help potential users feel that they will be “delighted” with support, given the poor quality of traditional customer service.

AdRoll Uses Warm Sounding Words

Positive sounding words replace any harsh terminology. “Contact us” replaces “connect with us,” implying a personal connection with customer support. “Pricing packages” replaces “pricing made simple,” followed by a subtitle stating, “You have complete control.” Generally, potential users become apprehensive around pricing; they make multiple references to the fact that they work with any budget and that there is no minimum monthly spend. This directly appeals to low budget companies and small businesses, however, large companies will feel that AdRoll is not solely focused on making money.

AdRoll makes a clear effort to display subtle indicators of comfort, conveying the fact that there are humans behind their product by placing their toll free support line at the header of every page.

They Associate Themselves with Recognized Companies

Page space is limited above the fold, but AdRoll still makes an effort to associate themselves with major partners. Their video still rests on an image with the logos of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; AdRoll builds logical appeal from the fact they work with these authoritative companies, supporting their claims of credibility. As users scroll down, we see an array of case studies and testimonials. In this instance, AdRoll relies on the testimonies and opinions of expert opinions to support their claims of being the best company. They create an authoritative group of businesses to show that the general public, and their current clients, support the service.

AdRoll Makes a clear emphasis on displaying their social media presence

Their Social Media Presence is Proudly Displayed

Further scrolling down reveals a strong social media presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, and Twitter – all of which are paired with a numerical value that indicates a wide following of everyday people, not large brands.

AdRoll includes these to appeal to the average, non-executive, consumer.

They knows that some users can connect with their social media presence better than they can connect with a list of large brands. AdRoll effectively appeals to logic by presenting the testimony of their clients, changing verbiage to sound helpful, accentuating the presence of customer service and connecting with users through social media; all of which serve as a direct support to the claim that they are the “#1” advertising platform.

Incorporate the Viewers Emotions

AdRoll makes a straightforward appeal to the emotional side of the viewers, directly displaying the success and relaxed environment that many business owners aspire to create. This appeal to pathos plays a crucial role in the development of their homepage.

They Show an Inside Look of Their Office

AdRoll Shows an Inside Look at their office, support team, programmers… and still places a conversion button near the video.

The speaker in the video is shown wearing a t-shirt, the traditional laid back attire of the Silicon Valley atmosphere. When viewers click the video, they see the young speaker in an office that is quite different from that of traditional East coast companies. A young front man is not unlike other Silicon Valley companies, but is certainly unique to the advertising market. The AdRoll staff does not wear uniforms, they are not working at cubicles, people are chatting in the background – it simply looks like everyone enjoys their job. The fact that AdRoll can afford such a relaxed work environment reflects upon their success as a company.

Visual Connection to Silicon Valley

AdRoll appeals to the readers design emotions by keeping the golden gate bridge image present in their footer

The footer shows a distant illustration of the golden gate bridge, allowing visitors to clearly see that AdRoll is not only based in San Francisco, but also that they embody all the principles and business practices of Silicon Valley. Even the meet the team page helps bring the staff down to a friendly level. The president is described as an “avid surfer,” while the COO is described as someone that enjoys “tennis on the foggy courts.” By dropping the formal outward appearance of traditional advertising companies and displaying their company in a welcoming manner, AdRoll convincingly appeals to the viewers emotions, perfectly supporting their appeals to logic and credibility.

Conversion Rate Optimization: Take Home Points

Rather than displaying the advantages of their service, AdRoll appeals to users judgment of credibility by displaying their awards, press coverage, testimonials, client base, social presence, and client base. Their primary focus rests with increasing credibility, setting them apart from the other 14,000 advertising companies; but this seamlessly couples with direct appeals to logic and emotion, creating a compelling homepage that effectively convinces business owners to use their service.

Traditional marketing companies tend to characterize themselves with formal outward appearances – but this does not apply to AdRoll. The homepage of AdRoll is dependent on the full spectrum of conversion rate optimization techniques, all of which are based on the conventional rhetorical appeals. They display their association with big brands; provide a wide selection of press coverage, and present lengthy testimonials to build credibility. They accentuate this with an appeal to logic, showcasing their awards, social media presence and an array of support options. While subtle, their friendly tech voice, casual visual connections to Silicon Valley and inconspicuous graphic design details build emotional appeal.

AdRoll’s immense success in the advertising market privies them to take a powerful approach when marketing their product; rather than simply showcasing their service, they overwhelm users with awards, press coverage, testimonials, and an array of large clients, all in a “friendly” voice that epitomizes the Silicon Valley vibe. Combining these factors dramatically improves their overall conversion rate optimization.

Personal Note: We use AdRoll’s service for our own website, our E-commerce sites, and for some of our client’s websites. They are an excellent company and we would highly recommend their service. I’ve never had a problem with their customer support, their user interface is second to none, and the results are unmatched for online ads.

The post Conversion Rate Optimization: AdRoll Case Study appeared first on Rank Executives.

Blogging is crucial to a strong online presence.

8 Main Categories for Success:

There are 8 Aspects for Success Online:

• Search Engine Presence (SEO & Adwords)
• Social Media Presence (Twitter & Facebook)
• Building Connections Blogger Outreach)
• Visitor Engagement (Blogging & Content Syndication)
• User Experience (Conversion Rate Optimization)
• Promotion (E-mail Marketing & Advertising)
• Interaction & Feedback (Listen to Visitors)
• Ease of Accessibility (Mobile Site & App)

True marketing works best when you do them all.

The 37 Proven Ways For Online Success:

1. Start a Blog

2. Create a Twitter Account. Add the “Follow Me” Button to your website.

3. Tweet more often. Tweeting a few times per DAY is optimal. (Remember, tweets fade quickly!)

4. Update your Facebook page more often.

5. Hold a social media contest. (Giving away downloads & pre-released content works great!)

6. Use press releases. Plenty of free PR distribution sites are available.

7. Outreach to bloggers, ask for backlinks.

8. Build a user friendly landing page.

9. Install an analytics & tracking platform such as Google Analytics or StatCounter.

10. Invest in Search Engine Optimization.

11. Track your rankings, make sure they steadily increase.

12. Post helpful content for customers in your niche. (How-to guides, tutorials, instructions, tips)

13. Allow comments on your content. (Watch out for spam)

14. Interact with people, answer their questions. Make people have a reason to follow you.

15. Add a feedback from on your site. Actually use the feedback you get.

16. Collect E-mails and start E-mail marketing. Offer great promotions to yield higher open rates.

17. Split test your E-mail marketing campaigns.

18. Try Pay Per Click advertising. Don’t give up early, it takes time to refine.

19. Create an infographic. Share it on infographic distribution sites.

20. Post to your blog more often. At least twice per week is ideal. (see number 1)

21. Use conversion rate optimization tools to improve your website.

22. Call SEO Companies, ask them to do free reports on your website. You’ll love their feedback.

23. Keep a closer eye on the online marketing efforts of your competitors.

24. Write better title tags (Remember: These show up in search engines)

25. Use better graphics on your website. Make sure to write great alt-text for better SEO.

26. Install social sharing buttons on your blog. They are quite effective to increase fans & followers.

27. Use keyword research tools to see how people search for your niche. Google offers a tool for free.

28. Outreach to bloggers. Think of good ideas for partnerships.

29. Use advertising retargeting software to pull back visitors.

30. Create a mobile friendly version of your website. (Consider an iPhone/Android App, if possible)

31. Proofread your website. Spelling errors are present on nearly all websites.

32. Add a landing page video that describes your product or service.

33. Address all negative reviews. Invest in reputation management services if necessary.

34. Reward your biggest & fans and followers with free products. They’ll help you even more afterward.

35. Ask for feedback from friends & family about your website. Listen carefully to their criticisms.

36. Attend meetups in your area. Connect with other people in similar niches.

37. Promote OFFLINE. A strong offline presence radiates into a powerful online presence.

If you do all of the above. You simply cannot fail.

It’s as simple as that. Increasing your online presence is as easy as following all 37 tips above. Think about it… when was the last time you saw a website that does all of these things, but lacks online success.

The post 37 Proven Ways to Increase your Online Presence appeared first on Rank Executives.

1. They Do Actual Work

Truth be told, you are probably competent to do most jobs related to your business. You should be doing all the work you can. Hiring someone else is an easy way to feel in charge and get things done faster… but get a lesser quality job. This is especially important in funded startups (and all startups for that matter) — Founders and managers are quick to hire people to do takeover their work so they can sit back, relax and make “decisions”. This is a quick way to stop the growth of your business. Do the actual work.

2. They Forget about Opposition

People are always going to tell you that you are doing something wrong. Competitors are always going to be “more successful” and other ideas might pan out faster than yours. That being said, letting these things stop you from following through with your goals will ultimately result in a quick demise to your success. Even the most successful business owners are faced with myriads of opposition… but they forget about it. You should too.

3. They Form Great Partnerships

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve probably thought this question once or twice: “I wish there were a couple other people as competent as me” — It’s not arrogance, it’s an issue. You can’t run a business by yourself and you can’t hire someone to be a partner. Partnerships are crucial to success. You need a parter to stay up late with you, working on ideas. You need someone to feel the pain when times are bad, and rejoice when you’re both doing good. Stumbling blocks happen. Trying to run a business alone is a quick way to get discouraged and move on to a regular job. Entrepreneurs don’t do that.

4. … But they Don’t Over-Network

Successful entrepreneurs form great partnerships, but they don’t over network. Everyone knows the feeling of networking. You’re talking to another businessman, having a good conversation and suddenly… they ask for something. They want you to do something for them. Next time you go meet people, forget about networking, just meet them. The best business relationships are those that did not form under pressure.

5. They don’t speak or write in “sales-speak”

Lets face it, salesman are a bit sketchy. The moment you start using sales talk, customers will quickly write you off. There is no way to lose someones interest faster than with sales-speak. If you’re business truly is the highest quality, explain exactly why. Let them figure it out for themselves, dont tell them “we are the number one, highest quality vendor”. Stop thinking of pitches, instead think about better ways to communicate your business. Any intelligent person will be able to see the value in your business, you don’t have to “sell it” for them to see it.

6.  They Turn Away from “Traditional” Marketing

Buying a billboard, getting time slots on TV, mailing out flyers… This is not how modern businesses become successful. Interruption marketing is a thing of the past. All successful businesses are now investing in “inbound marketing”, search engine optimization, pay per click, internet marketing, etc. You don’t have to be a marketing guru to invest in the search engine presence of your website. Most quality agencies offer free on-site reports, filled with dozens of tips and guides to make your site rank higher in the search engines.

7. They Know Their Limits

I knew I was never going to be the world foremost expert on video production, but I needed a video made. Rather than try to hire a video producer, I simply went with an agency. Picking a good agency will save you time, money and a hassle. They’ve got a system to make sure they deliver high quality work, they’ve already established a team, and they can likely perform a better job for cheaper. Since many entrepreneurs are working on web-based startups, they often think it is in their best interest to learn the ins and outs of the Google algorithm to get better rankings. This is absolutely not the case. Google specifically looks to penalize people that attempt to increase the rankings of their own website. Instead, it is usually a good decision to talk to a professional agency about your site first. Most offer free 60-minute consultations. You would be surprised on how non sales-oriented the consultations are. I’ve tested a few dozen agencies, the vast majority gave actionable, high quality advice.

8. They Sleep

You need more time, I know. Sleep is not the place to withdraw time from. Track your life, there are apps to do it. See what aspects of your life are wasting time, cut them out first. The most important thing for success is sleep. If you’re reading this now, and its past 2am… go to sleep. You’ll thank me in the morning.

The post 8 Habits of Remarkably Successful Entrepreneurs appeared first on Rank Executives.

SEO Checker: How Many Indexed Pages Does Your Site Have

Do you want to know the best way to find out how many pages in your site Google is indexing? Ask Google! Simply visit Google and type into the search bar site:yoursitename.com. This is the first SEO checker tactic I recommend,  use Google to gauge how many pages are ranking. For this example, I used Workfloworlando.com. This makes for a perfect example because the site was only built in October of 2012 and has not yet began any SEO efforts. The image below details what will display:

Right underneath the search bar it reads: “About 14 results.” This means that this domain has 14 different pages that can rank in Google. Try it on your site, you should want all of your content pages to rank. A common question my clients ask is, “Should all of my pages show up?” The answer to that question varies. In some cases, not every page of content will rank, for example if you have any pages that are password protected or require a login to access – these pages will not show up in the SERPS. Typically you want all of your pages to show up. This means the Google crawlers can access your site properly.

What If I A Substantial Amount Of Pages Are Not Being Indexed?

Uh oh! You’re ship has sunk, hang up the towel. Call it quits! Just kidding – this is quite a common problem with multiple solutions. Lets dive into the most common error that could cause this to happen.

Robots.txt file is blocking pages

The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) is a group of web standards that regulate Web robot behavior and search engine indexing. The way its configured may prohibit access to the directory in which this URL is located; or it might restrict crawling to the URL specifically. Robots.txt file can list the directory or the files that need to be restricted from crawling. Carefully check that the robots file does not contain any important page entry that should be crawled and ranked in search engines. How do I do this? Go into the root folder of your website and check the robots.txt file. Make sure its placed in the top level directory.

Anything with User-agent: * Disallow means Google is not crawling. Change to: user-agent:* Allow

If this seems a bit too complicated – no worries! It never hurts to consult a professional to assist you in these matters. Properly configuring the crawl structure of a website can be rather complicated. This is just a simple suggestion to remedy a very common flaw.

SEO Checker: Manually Check Your On-Page Content

Another great do it yourself SEO Checker I recommend is check your on-page content! Oftentimes the content on the page to totally irrelevant to what you are trying to rank for, in other cases it is totally overstuffed with the keyword. From my experiences, its always one of the two polar opposites. I wrote a program to simulate Google’s indexing and retrival system, best known as LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing. Basically, it goes through and analyzes the semantic structure of words in the body and extracts the meaning on its own. For my clients, I run this program on each page and mathematically craft each article to rank higher. But there are still other basic guidelines and principles you  can follow that will get you very close to a fully optimized page!

My Suggestions:

• Make the 7th-10th word in each paragraph your main keyword
• Use an H2 that contains a variation of your main keyword
• Set your Title Tag to this format “Main Keyword for Page | Description of Page – Site Name”
• You can use your main keyword about 4-5 times per 500 words, and 8-10 variations of that keyword.
• No more than 2 keywords you want to rank for per page
• Spread the keywords evenly throughout the article
• Somewhere in the first 5 words of your last sentence, you should put your keyword
• Images help! Just make sure they are properly tagged.

Conclusion

In a digital age, we should never fear a little manual labor. Yes, there are countless amounts tools and software and using them can indeed be very beneficial. It’s important to remember the Rank Executives SEO Checker when assessing the SEO of your domain. Follow these actionable tips to systematically go through and check your site, and you will be one step closer to achieving the goal – dominating the search engines! Building a higher Google ranking will increase your sites visibility both locally and nationally, the more and more people know about your product, your brand name will only grow bigger and bigger.

Special Thanks to Work Flow Employer Services

A shout out to WorkFlowOrlando. Thanks for allowing me to use the domain as an example. They offer same-day appointments for DOT Physicals, Pre and Post Offer Physicals  Drug Screening both random and employer ordered, and workers compensation care. Visit their site at Workfloworlando.com

Special Thanks To Lakewood Ranch Acupuncture and Wellness

Their mission is empower others to achieve greater health. They provide support and inspire them to maintain their health in a harmonious and balanced way. Their services include homeopathy, chinese medicine,  bradenton acupuncture, and more. Visit their site here

The post SEO Checker appeared first on Rank Executives.

Over this past weekend, I was getting a haircut and chatting with my stylist about some of the difficulty he faces regarding getting new clients to walk in unsolicited, he has never really considered local business seo. The business is called Velvet Lab Hair Studio and it is a small business located in Lake Mary, Florida. A small town of about 16,000 located in Seminole County, Florida – about 30 minutes North of Orlando. He was telling me his main strategy for generating business is by hiring experienced stylists that already have a deep clientele – hoping that word of mouth will bring in new business. Naturally, I asked him what he thought about generating clients through the search engines. He told me that he always interested, but never knew where to begin.

Search engine optimization can seem a bit daunting for a beginner, especially with large companies and established brands dominating the search. But you have a small business, in a small community and want to know if it is still possible to reap the benefits of SEO? The answer is yes! Optimizing for local search terms is a fantastic way to learn SEO, simply because there is less competition and it is easier to maintain a more direct and focused scope.  Getting your business listed on the first page will not only will it bring more attention to your company, but allow you overpower your competition. Did you know that approximately 70% of all searchers on Google do not venture past the first 3 search results?

I began telling my stylist all about the wonderful world of search engine optimization, and offered up a few pointers to get him rolling. This made me realize that there are small business in local markets everywhere that haven’t even begin exploring the possibilities of SEO. This blog post will discuss some of the tips I gave my stylist, and detail a few easy steps to begin your quest to the top.

Step 1: Get Your Business Listed In Google Places

Begin by making a Google Places account with Google +.  Then “Add A New Listing” in the options menu. They will mail you information to your physical business location with a PIN to ensure the basic information you submit is complete and accurate.  You can also verify the PIN with a phone using SMS. It could take up to a week after verification for your new business listing to appear on Google. Once signed into your Google account, in the business information column on the left side of the screen, there will be an “Edit” button underneath your business’s basic listing information. Click the Edit button to make all of the proper adjustments. You can add and remove photos, manage reviews, and post a link to your website.

Step 2: Brainstorm and List All Possible Search Queries

Now its time to get in the mind of the customer.  We need to think about what words a person searching for your local business may type into the search engines to look for your company? For my example, I came up with “Lake Mary Hair Salon”, “Lake Mary Haircuts”, “Women’s Hair Lake Mary” “Barber Shop Lake Mary”. You will also want to expand out to some surrounding towns to try and pull those potential clients as well. “Heathrow hair salon”, “Sanford hair salon” “Altamonte Springs Haircuts” . Finally, you always want to encompass your region as well – this is the most broad area surrounding your business, like “Orlando” and “Central Florida”. 

Another strategy I recommend is listing all of the major goods/services your business provides. For my example, I came up with “hair coloring”, “hair dye”, “perms” ,“blow-dry” ,“damaged hair repair”, “color treatments” “hair extensions”, “face waxing”. The list could potentially go on and on, and it differs with every niche. After you have compiled a sizable list, you will have a solid understanding of what people who could potentially be looking for your local business are searching for.

Google offers information called Google AdWords. These metrics show the most popular keywords that are relevant to your product or business and approximately how many monthly searches these keywords are getting. This service gives you good information that will allow you to reach out to your desired target audience in ways you may not have originally thought was relevant or possible!

Step 3: Analyze The Current Search Results and Scout Out Your Competition

Who is ranking for your keywords? Analyze the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and find out! See what those competitors are doing effectively and ineffectively. Understand and investigate and your competition. Make a list of all your competitors and see what they are doing to get into the search engines and how they were able to target their traffic.

Step 4: Fill Your Site With Unique Content About Your Products and Services

Your business offers a myriad of services, products, goods and more. What are they? I’m sure your potential customers would like to know. Take the time and write good, unique content fully detailing and describing all of the products and services your business offers. Its a good idea to incorporate some of the search queries we listed off in your content pages. For my hair stylist, I recommended writing a full page (approximately 200 words) detailing all of the major services his hair salon offers. This serves two benefits – the first, it provides a better experience for the user and lets them get to know a little bit more about your business. Second – its indexable content for the search engine crawlers! If your site features loads of good content about what your business offers, this means the search engines will have an easier time indexing your website for those very same terms!

Step 5: Take It To The Next Level and Consult An SEO Professional

After taking these steps to begin your journey to the top of the search engines, it never hurts to consult a professional SEO Agency. Most professional SEO Companies will be able to provide services outside what is attainable for the average local business owner. The list of potential ideas to help boost your search engine ranking performance is quite lengthy. Some areas where a professional agency could be of the most assistance is submitting press releases, writing guest posts for blogs in your niche, submitting to local business SEO directories, conducting webmaster outreach to other site owners in your business niche in hopes of gaining targeted backlinks, and building links with a viral and social media campaign. SEO is something all successful business must invest in at some point. This investment will definitely be profitable in the long run for your business. As your traffic and popularity increase over time, your local business will begin attracting a large audience and allow your company to thrive!

Rank Executives offers surprizingly affordable rates for local and small business SEO. Our plans are focused on proper organic SEO for small business in order to help grow your company into a local brand name.

Special Thanks To Velvet Lab Hair Studio

A shout out to our favorite Lake Mary Hair Salon, Velvet Lab Hair Studio in Lake Mary Florida, and a special thanks for letting me use your company as inspiration and  an example of how other local business all over the country stand to grow by taking the proper steps toward a perfectly optimized website. Velvetlabhairstudio.com

The post Local Business SEO appeared first on Rank Executives.