Category: Blog

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July 2020 IBS Newsletter

Making sure your site ranks at the top of search engine rankings is essential to getting your online business seen. That’s why here at the Internet Business School, we’re always keeping an eye on the top SEO techniques small businesses can use to get the edge over their competitors. So what should you be keeping in mind when optimising your site?

1) Find the Best Keywords for Your Website

Make sure to know what your customers are searching for before you optimise your site. There’s no point spending time and money on something that won’t even bring you more sales. There are multiple tools out there which will tell you how often people are searching for select keywords. Many of these tools are absolutely free and offered by the search engines themselves. Google will even calculate how successful your keyword choice is when you choose a listing. Investing time into finding the best keywords that generate the most leads is essential for increasing your reach.

 

When using any SEO tool for keywords research start with ambiguous searches, create categories and drill down to create smaller more specific groups of keywords. These groups can later be used as clusters of keywords for any Sponsored Ads you create. With SEO, these groups can also be used as directories of the content who will want to have on your website. Long tail keywords are ideal for generating sales. Rather than short vague keywords such as ‘kindle’, ‘brown shoes’ or ‘laptop’ use longer more specific keywords, for instance ‘buy used amazon kindle’ or ‘nike brown shoes size 10’.

 

2) Do Competitor Research

 

Search engines analyse incoming links to your website for their rankings. Therefore knowing how many incoming links your competitors have will give you an edge over their businesses. Of course the first step to this is knowing who your competitors are in the first place. When analysing your competition you should consider these very important linking criteria:

• Competitor rank in the search engines
• The quality and quantity of their incoming links.
• What keywords are they using in the title of their linking page?
• What percentage of links contain specific keywords in their link text?
• The Google PageRank or MozRank of linking pages.
• The popularity of the linking domain and the linking page (measured by links and mentions.)

Many SEO tools will provide you with quick and easy competitor research options. However here are some other factors you should consider when scouting out the competition:

• Click on the link to their Site Map page and see what keywords you can find their links.
• Look at their XML Site Map to find keywords in their page names.
• View the HTML title and meta tags of your top competitors and make a list of what you need to target.

3) Write Content People Want to Link and Share.

 

Just writing a generic article full of keywords isn’t going to automatically get you a high ranking. Link-building is essential for building up a good reputation with the search engines so it’s important to get people interacting with your content and sharing it. Keep the following checklist in mind to get a higher ranking in search engine results, many of the suggestions came straight for Google.

• The content educates the reader.
• The content is original.
• It’s exciting to share.
• There are supported facts and references.
• There’s enough detail that people will link it to come back later.
• There’s fun and interesting videos or imagery.
• It’s relevant and topical.
• It’s controversial enough to grab attention.
• There’s a discount or offer involved.
• It’s easy to link on social media.
• It establishes you as a figure of authority.
• The site thanks people for sharing or linking it.

4) Optimise your title and meta tags.

 

HTML titles and meta tags should be different on every page of your website if you wish for search engines to list them in their search results. Google does not use the meta keywords tags in their ranking. Google accounts for 64% of all searches, so do not dwell too long on your meta keywords tags.

 

Google only shows the first sixty-six characters in their search titles. Therefore it may be best to keep your titles to under sixty-six characters whilst still keeping the title relevant to the content. When it comes to the meta description, include your top terms in a description that reads properly and doesn’t look like spam. It should give a clear indicator as to what your site is about. Amazon’s meta description is a good example of a clear explanation that includes many keywords:

 

“Online shopping from the earth’s biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, jewelry, tools & hardware, housewares, furniture, sporting goods, beauty & personal care, broadband & dsl, gourmet food & just about anything else.”

 

5) Optimise Your Headings and Subheadings

 

Headings play an important role in organising information for search engines, so make sure to include online one H1 tag when creating a page, and optionall using one or more subheading (H2-H6). You can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), to make your headers more appealing. Here’s a piece of code you can use in your heading:

 

<style type=”text/css”>

     h1 font-size: 18px;

     h2 font-size: 16px;

     h3 font-size: 14px;

</style>

 

Since a page full of headings would be completely useful, add content between them, 400+ words per page is recommended.

 

SEO has never been more important for businesses of every size. From small start-ups to big corporations, everyone needs to rank highly on Google and they’ll pay large amounts to learn how. SEO experts are desperately needed to keep up with this demand. Now it’s your chance to make money off this panic. Discover everything you need to become an SEO consultant and learn all the tricks of the trade with our Professional SEO Consultant training course. Visit the course page to find out more! You can even get 50% off this amazing course with the code SEO50

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July 2020 IBS Newsletter

Hello fellow marketers and welcome to the brand new, weekly ‘DM Report’ from the Internet Business School.

 

We will be blogging about all things Digital Marketing and the new trends that are present today, tomorrow and into the future each week.

 

What can you expect from ‘The DM Report’?

 

The blogs will cover specific topics once a week that are trending within the Digital Marketing world. We want to ultimately inform you of what the new trends are, break them down so you can gain a better understanding of what each topic is, how it affects the rest of the marketing world and how it might affect you too.

 Let’s get reporting!

 

The first topic to discuss here is Artificial Intelligence Marketing or ‘AIM’. If you’re thinking robots like those in Steven Spielberg’s ‘A.I.’ or ‘I Am Robot’, it’s not quite that but the concept is kind of like a robot!

 

Let’s break it down, just what is ‘AIM’?

 

The trend around the World Wide Web is pretty much the same when you do a search for AI Marketing; it’s a way for marketers much like you and I, where large amounts of information are brought together through the use of algorithms. From searching things online, to how we communicate online and then compiling all that data into one report for marketers to formulate the best course of action for their campaigns. In essence ‘AI’ is generating a model that can predict your customers next move and help you refocus your campaign to make your customers experience stronger.

 

There are many companies out there that are leading the way for ‘AIM’ and the one that I referred to the most in my research is Emarsys.com, they helped this confused Digital Marketer gain a better understanding of what ‘AIM’ is and also gave some good insight on breaking it down.

 

Emarsys.com talk about 3 core elements when it comes to ‘AIM’:

 

1) BIG DATA: In basic form, what they are saying here is that big data is all the information that consumers and customers search for on the Internet, such as habits, likes and dislikes, activities, and personal preferences.

 

Social Media: (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and similar) Social activity, product reviews, ‘liked’ and shared content, loyalty/reward apps and CRM (Customer Relationship Management), these are all things that contribute to big data. All this information that the ‘AI’ gathers from the big data gets fed into the system and then it starts to learn from all that data, what we like to call ‘Machine Learning’.

 

2) Machine Learning: This is where AI gets to shine – so to speak – after it’s gathered all the big data it then breaks it down into four sub-categories; common occurrences, common insights, responses and actions.

 

All these compiled together help to draw conclusions for us the marketers, on where the marketers should be focusing their efforts to maximize their campaigns and reach the most people. Which leads to solutions that help AIM to help us.

3) Powerful Solutions: There really isn’t much out there about this core element at the moment, but I’m sure that as ‘AIM’ develops further more will come from it. However, what we can discern from this research is that the powerful solutions side of ‘AIM’ is what’s considered to be the human side of AI. It can understand and eventually learn from the way each and every one of us communicates via social media, blog posts, yelp reviews, even Google searches! Then it takes all that it has learned and sends it to us marketers so that we can compile the data and come up with strategies and campaigns to get our product and services out to the masses.

 

Those are the basic, core concepts of ‘AIM’ now let’s take a brief look at the five core benefits of ‘AIM’:

1) More Intelligent Searches: RFSE’s (or ‘Rapid-Fire Search Engines’, such as Google), this is where ‘AI’ is paying very close attention to what you are searching for everytime someone says “Google it!” or if you’re trying to find out something that you just don’t have the answer to.

 

With all these RFSE’s that happen on any given moment during the day, ‘AIM’ takes all that into consideration and it reports back to us the marketers to identify key areas that we should be focusing on when marketing to the customer.

2) Smart Ads: This ties back into the more intelligent searches as well as the machine learning and the powerful solutions mentioned above. ‘AIM’ is using all this information to attach ads to the sidebars of your Yahoo page or when you are Google searching. It places those ads in strategic spots so it’s more appealing to the customer.

 

Plus ‘AIM’ takes all this and puts it into the big data which in turn is giving us the marketers more insight into what ads can and should be running.

 

3) Refined Content Delivery: ‘AIM’ is taking all that information from the searches and the smart ads doing just what this benefit suggests, refining the content. It’s basically identifying potential clients/buyers to us marketers and then in turn either we deliver or ‘AIM’ delivers the content for us.

 

4) Relying on Bots: ‘AIM’ is always learning every second that we are online, chatting with friends, posting on social media. Today you may have noticed that some websites that you visit a little window pops up in the lower right hand corner.

 

Say hello to the AI bot chat function! Just when you think it’s an actual person on the other side of that box, guess again. It’s ‘AIM’ trying to figure out what it is the customer is there for and then directing them to the desired service that they are looking for.

 

5) Continued Learning: As mentioned already throughout this blog post, ‘AIM’ is always learning. It’s tapping into once-hidden insights that will give an advantage to us marketers, in coming up with new and insightful campaigns to spread the word about certain products and servers that we are in charge of.

 

More importantly it is optimising the outreach of just those we feel would benefit from the product or service we are marketing, but ‘AIM’ is helping us target the right customer – clever!

 

From this marketers viewpoint ‘AIM’ seems to be a good thing for us in the field of marketing as it will shorten the amount of time we spend in the office looking at mounds of data, and help us redefine how we go about providing the products and services to the general public.

 

Thanks for reading, there’ll be more form The DM Report next week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The author: Phillip Kirks is an Apprentice of the Internet Business School. When he’s not writing engaging, factual Blogs for our students, he runs his own production company and is a keen filmmaker and producer. He currently lives in Denver, CO.

 

Much like the famous Google updates designed to improve the quality of search engine content that gets shown to users, Facebook recently announced its own ‘meaningful interactions update.’ The goal here according to Facebook was to prioritise Facebook posts that fostered genuine user engagement, with emphasis on posts coming from family and friends – family and friends will most likely put up posts that connect to the user, Facebook is reasoning.

And they’re right; brands want to sell their products, marketers want to influence users and celebrities are hell-bent on boosting their fame. Friends and family, on the other hand, want to interact with their loved ones genuinely and this is what Facebook wants.

So, where does this reality leave the entrepreneurs and small business owners displaying their services on Facebook?

On New Grounds in the Facebook New World Order

Of the many things that affect a post’s visibility and ranking on Facebook, the new algorithm is tilting the oars to focus on signals, particularly signals that suggest such a post is delivering active interactions. Basically, ‘active interactions’ is fancy words for the likes, shares, and comments a post generates once it goes live on Facebook.

One thing to note, however, while it was formerly considered good practice to goad the target audience into doing one of the aforementioned three with like, share and comments bait, Facebook is upping the game significantly. Users must genuinely like or want to share and discuss content. A hint of any bait techniques with the new update will most likely attract content demotion.

The way forward

It’s however not all doom and gloom for business owners and entrepreneurs, there’s still a handful of things to do to adapt to Facebook’s user biased changes.

Here the most important tips:

1. Creating attractive yet valuable content.

This should come as no surprise. Content is king, and it is as simple as that. If you’re debuting relevant content, your audience will find it easier to relate and in extension connect with your post. And if they can relate to your content, their family and friends would in most cases find such content relatable. So more shares, likes, comments and invariably audience reach for you. You’re doing what Facebook wants – actively engaging its users.

2. Build a community of like-minded individuals who will always see reason in your posts.

While the average Joe might find your content seemingly uninteresting, there’s probably a Facebook user somewhere who’d give everything to have a sneak peek at what you’re presenting (assuming you’re churning out quality content). With every average Joe that scrolls past your post uninterested, the chances of it finding the preferred audience gets slimmer. This is where Facebook groups come in handy. They allow you pool together a community of like-minded users who are more likely to see the light in your content.

3. Now’s the best time to increase your ad budget.

It’s hard to admit, but the truth is the days of organic reach in the social media world are numbered. Facebook’s tacit ‘we want our users to see family and friends first’, unless you are paying us to put content ahead of family and friends resonates this fact.

Business owners and entrepreneurs looking to derive better results must now (sadly) hone in on their ad management skills. Thankfully, this is something that requires less effort than traditional methods of obtaining organic reach.

4. Finally, live videos.

One surefire way of leapfrogging the tactical embargo brought on by the new facebook algorithm is to invest more in live videos. Live videos are one of Facebook’s recent additions to its feature-rich ecosystem, so it comes as no surprise that they’re actively pushing for its adoption and success. What this means is that, unlike regular content, live videos are less likely to go through the laser-eyed screening of Facebook’s new algorithm. Whatever content you push through live videos Facebook will back you up on that (at least for now) because apparently, they want to further improve on the already record-breaking 3 billion live video views per day. Time to get that camera rolling!

There is nothing to be worry about this new Facebook algorithm, follow these helpful tips for publishing your content on Facebook and all the other social media platforms, keep providing the good value and the quality content to your customers and everything is going to be alright!

If you want to learn more about how to use Facebook Ads to reach your ideal customers, generate new leads and drive sales in your business, feel free to check out our Facebook Advertising Course here at the Internet Business School. 

 

Karina Motelli is a successful Online Entrepreneur and current Coach at the Internet Business School.  When she’s not helping her customers to become successful in the Online Market World, she’s mentoring entrepreneurs through the Internet Business School.  She currently lives in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

With the hassles of rush hour traffic and the politics happening in the corporate world, it’s not surprising for people to look for a more comfortable option without the pressure. Advances in technology have made the impossible possible.  In this day and age, you can now run your own business without leaving the comfort of your living room.   Who would have thought that would have been possible ten years ago?

With Fulfilment by Amazon and drop shipping dominating the online business world, selling something online has never been this easy.  You don’t even have to have the product on hand!

If there’s one thing difficult about running an online business, it’s the amount of work that needs to be done.   Product sourcing, SEO, and customer service are just a few of them. As tempting as it may be for you to try to do all these, it’s just too much for one person to handle.  You’ll be needing help from people who specialize in the said tasks.

Fortunately, there are virtual assistants who can help you with the tasks mentioned and more.  They all work online as well and can take care of the other tasks you need to maintain your business’ operations.

Below are ten virtual assistants you can hire to boost your online business and help you earn more profit.

1. Product Sourcing

When you’re in the business of selling online, one of the primary keys to your store’s success is the kind of products you offer.  Identifying products that sell and marketing them to the right audience is pure magic.  That’s the best formula for success in any seller’s playbook.

You can’t rely on your bestseller forever though.  You need to be always on the lookout for the “next big thing” because when it comes to selling products online, it’s usually about trends.

An efficient product sourcer can help you find that next big product by doing the research and communicating directly with warehouse owners and suppliers.  This VA can help you find that product by going through different channels, something you do not have the time to do.

2. Lead Generation

Part of the success of every online business is its reach.  The wider a brand’s reach is, the bigger the opportunity for growth and success.

When it comes to doing business online, you’ll need fresh leads to promote your business to and eventually, convert to sales.  The bad news is that it’s not as easy as it seems.  It takes a special kind of skill to run campaigns and get people to respond to them, or send engaging newsletters that people subscribe to. You need to focus on this, not on gathering emails.

The good news is that you can always hire a lead generation specialist to do all the prospecting, qualifying and generating of new leads.

3. SEO

When you’re in the online space, it’s not enough to have a well-designed website or content that provides great value.  All of this will amount to nothing if no one can find you. Searchability has become a crucial aspect of every online business because people are impatient.  If you’re not on the first page of a Google search, the chances of getting clicked are slim.

You need someone who knows how to make a site searchable.  One who has the ability to get your site ranked high on the search engines.  You need an SEO specialist who possesses the skills and techniques to get search engines to recognize your site without gaming the system.

There are a lot of VA SEO specialists you can hire on online hiring marketplaces who can help you get your site optimized.  They’re worthy investments you can’t afford to ignore.

4. PPC

An online business’ survival depends on the amount of people who follow it consistently enough to become potential customers.  It’s tough to get people to click on your website.  It requires some hardcore marketing skills and great content.

One of the ways to draw people to your site or to the page of one of your products is by running a PPC (Pay-per-click) campaign.   These paid advertisements designed to get more eyes turned to your website by sending them to a more targeted audience.

This is something a reliable PPC specialist can bring to the table.  They can bring in more fresh leads by running highly-targeted campaigns, something your brand needs to continue to generate profit.

5. Social Media

As of December 2017, Facebook’s active users have grown to a staggering 2.13 billion.  Instagram now has 800 million active monthly users. The numbers are undoubtedly phenomenal and it proves one thing.  Social media has become a major part of our lives. 

We all know how big of an impact social media has because most of us are on it more often than not. Whether you’re on the train, in a restaurant, or at the park, as long as there’s Wi-Fi, chances are you’re on your phone and on social media.  The next question now is, what will you do?

Leveraging the power of social media is definitely the way to go.  You need to hire a social media VA who will take care of your social media posts and reply to comments and messages from your followers. Social media is a powerful marketing tool, and it would be a shame if you didn’t take advantage of it.

6. Partnership Outreach

One of the tactics companies implement to widen their reach is by leveraging the huge following of people who are considered influencers.  The idea here is that if you can get these influencers to promote your business, it will give your brand a massive boost.

You need someone who can find the ones who are relevant to your business and find a way to contact them. It’s not as simple as sending out a pitch, though.  You have to build relationships with them, too.  To achieve this, you need someone with fantastic people skills.  You need someone who can reach out to these influencers and build relationships with them on your behalf.

It’s a task that will take a lot of time and effort, something you don’t have.  All the more reason to hire a partnership outreach VA to do it for you.

7. Customer Service

The customers are the life of every business.  Without customers, businesses would be nothing.  Just like any other business, you want to take care of them so they will always come back to you and maybe bring some friends along.

Hiring a good customer service specialist can help take care of your customers by providing timely assistance.  They answer customer inquiries, process follow-ups and in some cases, even process refunds and track orders.  And with a VA, this can happen around the clock, while you sleep, so your customers are always attended to.

You can’t just leave customers on their own after selling them your product.  You need patient and able customer service specialists to make sure that they are taken care of should they have additional, post-sales questions or even complaints to report.

8. Accounting

No business will ever be run properly without someone to look after the books.  To ensure progress and profitability, you need to be able to track where your budget goes and how much money is coming in.

There are accounting VA’s you can hire to help keep your books balanced and spend budgets wisely.  These VA’s can help you analyse potential financial problems and generate reports so you can see how money moves within your business.  A good accounting virtual assistant can spare you a lot of headache by helping keep your expenses in check. 

9. Product photographer / graphic designer

People are highly visual.  When it comes to stuff we see on the internet, pictures are still better for attracting engagement than plain text. There is a psychology involved in selling products online and it all begins with just getting people’s attention. The internet is so crowded.  People will only take notice if your content stands out.

This is why you need an experienced photographer and graphic artist.  You need someone who can create materials that capture people’s attention so you can increase your chances of getting clicked. If you’ve got someone who has a gift and is able to capture the best angles and someone who can create eye-catching graphics, you’re already halfway through to a successful sale.

10. Web Developer

Your website is the heart of your business.  This is where all the action happens.  It’s where people find your products and where they purchase them. This is where the daily action happens. You want to make sure that you give website visitors the best experience.  Make it easy for them to navigate the website and find what they’re looking to buy.

A proficient web developer VA does that for you.  Their job is to design a website that is user-friendly because this is how you’ll begin to gain a loyal following. 

People love to be spoon-fed and when they’ve got everything they need to buy a product online, you can almost guarantee that they’ll be back for more.  Spending on a good web developer is good investment, the benefits of which you’ll reap in the long run.

Conclusion

While online businesses present a unique model that people think is comfortable, the truth of the matter is, it isn’t.  Online businesses require a lot of work and more than a few skills to become huge successes.

By hiring the virtual assistants we mentioned above, you can rest assured that you have the most important aspects of your business taken care of by people who possess the relevant expertise.

You can’t do it all no matter how determined and hardworking you are.  Don’t be afraid to trust other people because they may just be what your business needs for it to grow and become more profitable.

 

Connor Gillivan is the author of Free Up Your Business: 50 Secrets to Bootstrap Million Dollar Companies, a serial entrepreneur, and the CMO and co-founder of FreeeUp.com. When he’s not bringing together hundreds of freelancers and business owners, he’s mentoring entrepreneurs through his site, ConnorGillivan.com. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado.