Using Video to Promote Your Business?  You Should Be.
Have you considered advertising online with video content?   If you aren’t using Video SEO to promote your business online, there’s never been a better time, and there never will be.  This is a great time to give it a try and start to establish a presence in the Video Marketing world.

Everyone from your little sister to your grandmother is online, and they’ve all shared or watched videos that moved them in one way or another.  By using this powerful medium, your business can harness that power to help promote your brand, sell a product, or even defend your reputation.

Some of the major benefits of using video to promote your business online:

• Videos are more engaging than other forms of online advertising – Because videos stimulate multiple senses they tend to engage the audience more than static images or text.    This stimulation leads to longer time on the website, increased page views and the ability to integrate more calls to action on your website.  Ultimately this increased interaction should lead to more conversions and sales.

• Search Engines are Hungry for Video – There is a relatively small amount of video online, when compared to text and images.   This is one of the reasons that search engines are hungry for more video.  The search engines have even adapted their results pages to include special sections for highlighting videos, usually appearing in the video results at the bottom of the SERP’s.

• Videos Rank Quickly in the Search Engines – A properly optimized video will rank for targeted keywords in a very short period of time, usually in several days, whereas a text file or web page may take months to achieve the same rankings.    This quick placement can help a business to get exposure early on, while their organic search engine optimization efforts are still taking hold.   As a secondary effect, the additional exposure can lead to more links from sites in your niche, and others looking to add content to their blogs and web pages.

• Video sharing sites allow you to reach more customers – Sites like YouTube are now getting more search queries than Yahoo and Bing.   This is a great indication that consumer behavior is changing, and they are now looking to the video sharing sites for more than entertainment, they are looking for how-to videos, and educational clips.    If you are able to give away a bit of valuable information, you will become a subject matter expert, and consumers will look to you when it’s time to pay a professional to do the work.

There are a myriad of other reasons to get started with a video marketing campaign but the biggest reason to start now may be the relative lack of competition.   In a couple of years your competition will have saturated your niche with online videos, and you’ll be playing catchup.   Take the leap and begin your video marketing efforts now while the market is new and mistakes are forgiven, and you’ll be far better off down the line.

-Chris

Delicious and Twitter CAN be used to Create “Followed” Links.

Social Bookmarking is one of the most popular link-building techniques around, and for good reason. The links from many social sites are “followed”, they allow you to control the anchor text of the link, and you get the added benefit of social promotion and the potential for your links to spread virally.

The primary drawback associated with the social bookmarking links in Delicious and Twitter is that they are not “followed” links.  This simply means that the links you post on these sites do not transfer link value or anchor text to the associated site.  I’ll show you how to get a followed link every time you post to Twitter or Delicious.

Delicious is probably the most popular social bookmarking site around.   It’s easy to use, integrates with your browser for easy access, and has the largest reach of any social bookmarking site.   It’s hard to find a social bookmarking site that has more reach and potential than Delicious.

Twitter is arguably the most popular social site around, rivaled only by Facebook.   It’s fun, interactive and has the potential to reach millions of customers, friends and others within your niche.   You can’t go anywhere without hearing about Twitter, so you definitely want to capitalize on this great social medium.

There is a very easy process that allows you to post social links on Delicious and Twitter, and get a secondary followed link on Mister-Wong at the same time.  This little technique will help you to save time creating links, and spreading the message on 3 sites at once.  This is no real trade secret, and I’m sure most people have already done this, but for the average business owner who wants to create some quick and easy links to their site, this is the fastest way to get it done.

So how do you use Delicious & Twitter to create followed links to your websites?

All it takes is the integration of your Delicious & Twitter accounts with your Mister-Wong account.   Here’s the process for setting it up:

1. Create a Mister-Wong account (if you don’t already have one)
2. Create a Delicious account and start bookmarking your sites with the anchor text, tags and notes that you want associated with the linked site.
3. Sync your Mister Wong account with your Delicious account so that all of your Delicious bookmarks are automatically imported into Mister-Wong.  Mister-Wong Delicious Import
4. Create a Twitter account (if you don’t already have one)
5. Sync your Mister Wong account with your Twitter profile so all of your links posted to Twitter will be automatically imported into your Mister-Wong account. Mister-Wong Twitter Import

This little technique will make it easy and painless to create a followed link from your Mister-Wong account, and transfer the link juice and anchor text to the linked site.

Hope this is a helpful little nugget of information that will make link-building a little easier on the average business owner.   If you would like professional help with your link-building efforts, contact Denver SEO company HighPoint Search Marketing to handle this task for your, and many others.

-Chris

Business Blogging for Success

Is your Business Blogging?  You should be.

Businesses should be blogging, it’s the best way to produce new content for their websites and allow them to target the audience associated with their business.   Businesses often feel that they don’t have the time or the content to build their business, and often don’t understand the importance of having a quality blog.   This is a huge mistake, but easily rectified.   We’ll share some of the benefits of having a business blog as well as some of the techniques for managing your blog and keeping it updated regularly.

Benefits of Blogging for your Business

One of our common practices with new clients is to establish a blog for their business.  This can be an internal blog that’s integrated in the website, or an external blog on a related domain name, or both.   There are distinct advantages to both methods, but regardless of which one you choose, it will help your search engine visibility tremendously.

Here are 5 benefits to running a business blog:

1. Content Creation- On the Internet content is king.  The more you have, the better.   Most business websites have a limited number of pages, and therefore a limited amount of content.  If your web designer hasn’t built your site with a good Content Management System, creating new pages or adding content to additional pages can be difficult, tedious work, and in some cases will require the help of your web designer, which will also cost more.  By having a business blog you are able to write about your topics quickly and easily, and generate pages of content that will have an equal chance of ranking in the search engines.  Again, more content is better, and a blog allows you to easily create the content that is needed to keep the spiders crawling your site.
2. Targeting Long-Tail Keywords – Because your website has a finite number of pages, and your on-site SEO efforts can include a limited number of keywords, a blog can greatly expand the number of keywords and keyword phrases that you can effectively target.   When you are writing an article for your blog, you will naturally cover different variations of the keywords associated with your products and services.  This is a great opportunity to build links that cover long-tail keywords that may not be targeted in your sites content.  For example, if you had a website about San Diego golf, your on-site SEO may target the keyword “San Diego Golf“.   However, through your blog you can also target terms like “San Diego Golf Gift Certificates”, or “Book Tee Times for San Diego Golf Course“, which would be more difficult to integrate into your site’s meta data.   Long-tail keywords are lower volume, but a much more specific search term, which will generally result in higher conversions than short keyword phrases.
3. Reaching a Larger Audience – If you website isn’t properly optimized for your keywords, or you don’t have a recognizable brand name, it may be a deserted island that never gets traffic.   Your blog allows visitors to subscribe to your posts via RSS feed, and the audience that visits your blog is more likely to share your info with others if they find it valuable.  By submitting your blog to the various blog directories, you can put your info in front of others in your industry, and more importantly you spread your message through the Blogosphere, and gain an audience that will visit your site repeatedly.
4. Natural Link-Building Platform – Blogs are a natural platform for link-building.  When you are writing articles about your topic, you will generally link to other related pages within your site, and you’ll most likely be using keyword targeted anchor text when building those links.    This not only provides your visitors with more information, it helps your search engine rankings due to the anchor text that is used within your links.   As your blog gains value and PageRank , it passes that value on to the other pages of your site, thus helping them rank higher as well.
5. Potential to go Viral – Never discount the power of the blogosphere.   If you write a particularly compelling article, it has the potential to be rapidly recirculated throughout social media site and re-published on other industry publications, and other bloggers websites.  If it’s an especially well written article, it could potentially be re-published on Yahoo news, or in a local paper, etc…  This is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website, as well as gain valuable inbound links from others in your niche.  As you continue to write valuable articles, you may well become a thought leader or industry expert in your field, which ultimately leads to more business via referrals etc…

Those are just a few of the reasons that your business should be blogging.   We’ll follow up this article with a few tips on using an internal blog, as well as using an external blog to promote your business.

If you don’t have a blog already, now is the time to get one.  Spending just three hours a week on your blog can pay off handsomely over time.  If you don’t have the time, or feel uncomfortable blogging about your business, contact a professional blog management company to do it for you.

Go get a blog on WordPress (my favorite platform), Blogger, TypePad or any of the other blogging services and give it a shot.

If you put in the effort you will be rewarded!

-Chris