10 Free US Local Business Listing Sites

Local SEO is a must when you have a business with a physical location and expect customers to visit. You will need to pay special attention to location-specific SEO requirements for your site apart from other generic SEO essentials. In the WooRank Project tool you will learn a whole range of actionable SEO tips to get your business the online exposure it deserves. More than 20 percent of Google Search is local, as Google and other search engines sort location-specific businesses into localized search results. These results have much less competition than you would have with generic search results but it takes a few smart steps to rank at the top of them. One important step is to enter your business in local-business listing sites. In this blog we will consider the top ten directories that will help your local business acquire higher rankings in the localized SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

NOTE: It is important that you manually list your business in these directories by choosing the right business categories and entering consistent information throughout all the directories. Also, even though not all directories pass link juice to your site, search engines such as Google notice the citation of your business on these sites and this affects the local ranking algorithm.

1. Google Places:

To be accepted as a local business on Google, you have to make your presence known in three places.

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Places
• Google+

Google Webmaster Tools: When your site contains a generic top level domain and you intend to target a certain geographic location you need to follow these steps to submit your site to Google Webmaster Tools in order to appear in localized searches.

Google Places: Create an account with Google Places, fill in your local business information and submit it to Google. You will receive a PIN number that you must enter in your Google Places Dashboard for business verification.

Google+: Create a Local Business Brand Page on Google+ by clicking the Local Business or Place option, as shown below. Add your business information and you will be taken through a verification process to get started.

Local Business or Place Option on Google+

2. Yahoo Local:

Yahoo Local Listing is a great free service that displays your local business address, phone number and URL and gives you the option of choosing up to five business categories. The basic free listing can include additional information such as working hours, email address, payment options and years in business, and you also earn a link to your site. The paid listing option, which costs $9.95 per month, gives you added advantages; you can see the number of times your listing was viewed, you can  upload one small photo onto the business detail page and ten large photos onto a separate page, and you can use up to two text links in search results. To sign up, you need to have or create a Yahoo ID.

Basic Listing Option on Yahoo Local

3. Yelp:

Yelp has a large user-community which is independent from popular search engines. Hence, it is necessary for your business to feature on Yelp in order to gain attention from this completely different and targeted audience. A Yelp business account directs textual and visual representation of your business to the categories of Yelp users that are most likely interested in your business. You can also add a link to your website on your Yelp profile and there is no limit to the number of business photos you can upload. Yelp allows for customer reviews and gives you the option to respond to them. Moreover, you also get personalized analytics to monitor the traffic. Before you sign up, check to see if your business is already listed on Yelp. Sign Up for Free to either claim your existing business listing or create a new one.

Free Listing on Yelp

4. Bing:

For local businesses, being listed on Bing is as important as being listed on Google+ Local. You can claim your business listing that already exists or create a new one by clicking on the Get Started Now link shown in the screenshot below. To create a new listing you need to sign up for a hotmail account. After you pass through a series of steps for registration, you will be prompted to enter your contact information and communication preferences. Once you have accepted the terms and conditions, (called the Bing Business Portal Offer Guidelines), you will be prompted to fill in information about your local business, such as, name, address, city, state, business email, Facebook and Twitter address, zip code and a logo. In the subsequent steps there is an option to have a free mobile website and QR code. Your listing is finally verified by means of a postcard sent to you at the address you register your business with.

Free Business Listing on Bing

5. MerchantCircle:

MerchantCircle is a popular free American local-business listing service. It retrieves information from yellow pages listings. Check to see if your business is already listed by clicking the business page and finding the ‘Is This Your Business Listing?’ option on the blue box at the left column of that page. After signing up you get to access a comprehensive dashboard on your account that has plenty of editing options to add and modify your business details. The dashboard consists of options such as a blog, products and services, sales, deals and coupons, newsletters, pictures, videos, widgets, answers and advertisements. With a MerchantCircle listing you can network with other businesses and engage with potential contacts in your niche. Most importantly, this site allows you to post a link to your website, thus providing a high quality inbound link to your site.

Free Listing on MerchantCircle

6. Local:

Local.com is a search engine that lists local US businesses and currently is home to 16 million business listings. You can claim your business listing if it already exists on the local.com database or create an entirely new listing for free.

Free Listing on Local.com

7. ExpressUpdateUSA (InfoUSA):

Infogroup has a massive database of businesses in the US and also partners directly with top search engines and local business directories to provide information on local businesses. By claiming and optimizing your listing on ExpressUpdateUSA.com (previously known as InfoUSA), you can improve your position in localized SERPs. To get listed, you must first check your business listing and claim your business if it already exists on the database. Create an account for free with ExpressUpdateUSA and add the same business details that on your website. Here is the categorized database of businesses according to the city and state they are located in.

Free Listing on ExpressUpdateUSA

8. MapQuest:

MapQuest is yet another free local business listing service that has an audience of its own and helps people find local businesses on the web and mobile devices. You can sign up for free and add information about your business. Once again, if your business listing already exists, claim it. Add photos, hours of operation, parking tips and even mark your business on the map. Here is a detailed blog post by MapQuest that describes the information you need in your MapQuest Local Business Center profile to acquire maximum exposure.

Free Listing on MapQuest

9. InsiderPages:

This is a fairly new business listing site but popular among users to find health and medical services, home and garden businesses, hair and beauty services, auto services and pet related business listings in the US.Here is a step-by-step tutorial and video on how to add your business to the InsiderPages database. The live business page includes your local business contact information, physical address (the same as that on your website), hours of operation, business description, Google Map marker, plenty of reviews with star ratings and a Facebook Like button for users to ‘like’ your business listing. You can add up to 20 images. Most importantly, your business page on InsiderPages allows you to provide a link back to your website.

Free Listing on InsiderPages

10. FourSquare:

Although featured at the end of this list, FourSquare is no regular business listing platform but a mobile application that is the fastest growing small business mobile marketing platform. It provides businesses with free listings that connect to a widespread range of smartphone users who check-in to physical business locations. This application is not limited to US businesses alone but has an ever-growing community of 25 million users worldwide. It provides free tools that allow you to engage with your customers and fans. Claim your business on FourSquare and get started with a FourSquare business account for free. The Merchant Dashboard on FourSquare allows you to keep tabs on daily check-ins via the app, recent visitors and many more things.

Free Listing on FourSquare

If you want a single place to check your local listings on major search engines try GetListed.org.

If you want to add your business to more local listings, try these: YellowPages, WhitePages, Judysbook,Yellowbook, PrimePlace, Citysearch, MagicYellow, biznik, Brownbook, Local.com, MojoPages, Thinklocal,Yellowee, Bizjournals.com, YellowAssistance, Justclicklocal, Acxiom DiscoverOurTown, Metrobot,LocalSiteSubmit, Twibs, UScity.net, Manta, ZipWeb

How to Use Heading Tags for SEO

Heading tags, as their name suggests, are used to differentiate the heading of a page from the rest of the content. These tags are also known to webmasters as HTML header tags, head tags, heading tags and SEO header tags. The most important heading tag is the h1 tag and least important is the h6 tag. In HTML coding the header tags from h1 to h6 form a hierarchy. This means that if you skip any of the tag numbers (ie. jump from 1 to 3) the heading structure will be broken, and this is not ideal for on-page SEO.

Diagrammatic Representation of Heading Tag Hierarchy

For example, if your site is introduced with a heading in h1, and a sub-heading in h3, the hierarchy will be broken, meaning the heading structure is not SEO-friendly. The coding should be something like what is shown below:

<h1>Main Heading</h1>
<h2>Secondary Heading 1</h2>
<h3>Sub-section of the secondary heading 1</h3>
<h2>Secondary Heading 2</h2>
<h3>Sub-section of the secondary heading 2</h3>

The h1 tag is the most important tag. Every page must have an h1 tag.

Advantages of Using Heading Tags:

The heading tag is used to represent different sections of web page content. It has an impact on both the SEO and usability of your site.

Header tags from an SEO point of view:

• Relevancy: Search engine spiders check the relevancy of the header tag with the content associated with it.
• Keyword Consistency: The search engine spiders check the keyword consistency between the header tags and other parts of the page.
• The Importance of an h1 Tag: The h1 is the most important tag and it should never be skipped on a page. Search spiders pay attention to the words used in the h1 tag as it should contain a basic description of the page content, just as the page <title> does .
• Enriched User Experience: Heading tags give the user a clear idea of what the page content is about. Search engines give much importance to user-experience on a site, meaning the presence of heading tags becomes an important component of SEO.

Header tags from a usability point of view:

• For users of the web who must use a screen reader, it is easier to navigate sections of content by referring to properly structured headings on a page.
• The h1 heading tag (main heading) of a page gives users a quick overview of the content that is to follow on the page.
• By reading the different heading tags, users can scan a page and read only the section they are interested in.
• The primary use of heading tags is for SEO, not to gain the larger, more prominent fonts; but the presentation of a web page does look cleaner with the presence of these tags.

Things you should not be doing with heading tags:

• Do not stuff your heading tags with keywords.
• Do not use more than one h1 tag on a page unless really necessary. Usually pages will have a single h1 heading and including two might make search engines think this as an attempt to include more keywords for SEO in multiple h1 tags. It is better to divide the content into two separate topics on individual pages with their own h1 tags. This makes more sense to both readers and the search engine spiders, however, using multiple h1 tags is allowed.
• Do not use heading tags as hidden text. Any hidden text can result in penalties for your site, especially if the hidden part is a component that effects SEO.
• Do not repeat heading tags on different pages of your site. It is a good practice to have unique heading tags throughout your site.
• Do not use the same content in your page’s h1 tag as in your meta title tag.
• Do not use heading tags for styling text but use them for presenting organized and structured content on pages. Use CSS stylesheets for the purpose of styling.

20 Quick Tips to Optimize Page Load Time

Web page loading speed is the most crucial part of a site’s usability and SEO. Google considers page speed to be one of the 200 ranking factors that influence a website’s position in organic search results and is known to enrich user-experience. With numerous other websites in your niche the competition to earn site traffic and keep people impressed with rich usability is becoming more crucial every day. If your website does not load quickly chances are you will lose site visitors to your competition in a matter of seconds.

Here are 20 quick tips aimed at optimizing your website’s loading time:

1. Optimize Image Size:

The images on your site take up a lot of your page size and can eventually affect the loading time of your page. It is not enough to downsize your website’s images in the HTML editor because that only changes the appearance of the image in the front-end and not its actual size. Use external picture editor tools to resize the images, such as Photoshop.

Here are some online tools to optimize your site’s images:

• JPEG & PNG Stripper
• Smush.it
• Online Image Optimizer
• SuperGIF

2. Image File Format:

For optimized loading time of your page it is ideal to stick to standard image formats such as JPG, PNG and GIF.

3. Avoid Text Graphics:

Some sites may need stylized text to make the web page look attractive. However, you must remember that text in the form of an image can take up a lot of the web page size and is of no use for SEO. It is thus ideal to use the text styles in CSS and keep everything in text format instead.

4. Avoid Unnecessary Plugins:

A site that requires plugins may slow your page loading speed. Not all plugins are unnecessary, for example, social share plugins which are a must-have for every site these days. That said, always check to see if there is a better alternative to the plugin, for example, using a CMS with in-built social plugins.

5. Avoid Inline JS and CSS files:

It is a good practice to place your website’s JS and CSS in external files. When the page loads the browser caches these files externally and reduces the page load time. Moreover, having the JS and CSS files externally allows for easy site maintenance.

6. Optimize Caching:

Every time a visitor loads a site, your web page’s image files, CSS and Java files load as well, thus taking up a lot of page load time. When you use the HTTP caching system on your website it allows these file resources to be cached or saved by the browser or proxy. On repeated page loads these files can be retrieved from the cached files rather than downloading them all over again from the network. Moreover, by optimizing the caching system of your website you also tend to reduce the bandwidth and hosting costs on your site.

7. Place JavaScript at the end of the Document:

Ensure that your JS file is placed at the end of documents as JS file load may hinder the loading of the subsequent files.

8. Avoid Redirects:

Avoiding redirects increases serving speed. Some redirects are unavoidable and need to be in place but you must remember that this requires an additional HTTP which increases the page load time. Check for broken links and fix them immediately.

9. Reduce DNS Lookups:

DNS (Domain Name System) Lookup occurs when a URL (hostname) is typed in a browser and a DNS resolver returns that server’s IP address. The time needed for this process is around 20 – 120 milliseconds, however, multiple hostnames can be used for various elements on a website, which includes the URL, images, script files, style sheets and flash elements. With multiple unique hostnames the DNS lookup also increases thus increasing the page load time. Reducing the number of unique hostnames will reduce the number of parallel downloads, which may increase the page loading time.  It is thus ideal to use one host when you have less than six resources. You can also use URL paths instead of hostnames. This means that if you have a blog page that is hosted on blog.yoursite.com, you can instead host it on www.yoursite.com/blog.

10. Remove Unnecessary CSS and HTML:

Lighten the code of your website by removing any HTML or CSS that is not required. If your site is built on a CMS, chances are you have pre-installed CSS class and id ‘stubs’ that help design the theme. Remove unused class and ID declarations or combine multiple declarations into one.

11. Avoid Multiple Tracking Scripts:

While it is wise to keep tabs on your website’s traffic stats, it is not advisable to use multiple tracking softwares as this may hinder the page load time. If you are using a CMS such as WordPress, you could allow WP stats to run scripts on your page or Google Analytics, but never both. E-commerce shopping cart CMS tend to have their own default tracking script which cannot be deleted when you use Google Analytics instead.

12. Set up G-Zip Encoding:

Similar to files on your PC that are zipped and compressed to reduce the total size during online file transfers, heavy files on your website can be zipped with something called the G-Zip Compression. This saves bandwidth and download time and most of all reduces your page loading speed. You should configure the server so that it returns zipped content.

13. Reduce HTTP Requests:

Use CSS Sprites to reduce the number of image requests. Combine background images into a single image by using CSS background-image and background-position elements. Combine inline images into your cached stylesheets. HTTP requests are multiplied when there are duplicate scripts in the code so ensure that you identify and remove these duplicate scripts. To keep duplication under control use Script tag on your HTML page, as shown in the example below:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”menu_1.0.17.js”></script>

You may use an insertScript function in your PHP page, as shown in this example:

<?php insertScript(“menu.js”) ?>

14. Use Expires/Cache-Control Header:

You can use Expires headers for static components of the site and Cache-Control headers for dynamic ones. Using these headers makes the various components of a site, including images, stylesheets, scripts and flash, cacheable. This in turn minimizes HTTP requests and thus improves the page load time. With the use of Expires headers you can actually control the length of time that components of a web page can be cached, as shown in the example below:

Expires: Wed, 20 Apr 2015 20:00:00 GMT

If your server is Apache you can set the time for cached content by using the ExpiresDefault directive. This sets the expiration date as a certain number of years from the current date:

ExpiresDefault “access plus 15 years”

15. Place Style Sheets at the top of Documents:

It is standard practice to place style sheets at the top of a document. The page elements that are rendered from the server open progressively in your browser as initiated by these style elements. From the navigation bar and logo to the page content, the visual progression of a loading website gives rich user experience, even if a user has a slow internet connection. Style sheets also improve the page load time.

16. Minification of JavaScript and CSS:

Minification is the process of removing unused characters from the code which helps to reduce its size and the subsequent loading time.

The following are two such minification tools available online:

• JSMin
• YUI Compressor

17. Use GET Requests instead of POST:

It is found that using the html ‘METHOD’ attribute GET processes data much faster than POST when requesting data on a browser. Although both HTTP methods achieve the same result, POST sends the header first and then sends the data while GET takes only one TCP packet to send data. Also, GET is recommended for AJAX requests as it can be cached and remains in the browser history.

18. Avoid unnecessary DOM elements:

Crowded markups, for example, one with a lot of <div> elements, can significantly slow the Document Object Model (DOM) access in JavaScript. Instead of using nested tables for layout, you can use grids.css, fonts.css and reset.css. You can test the number of DOM elements by typing the following in Firebug’s console:

document.getElementsByTagName(‘*’).length

You might also want to minimize DOM access by caching references to accessed elements, updating nodes offline and avoiding the use of JavaScript to fix layouts.

19. Reduce Cookie Size:

The data stored in cookies is exchanged between servers and browsers. Hence, by reducing the size of the cookies you reduce the size of the data that is transferred and increase the page load time. Eliminate unnecessary cookies and set your Expires date to a sooner time period, or provide no Expires date at all to reduce the size of the cookies.

20. Update CMS Software

If you are using a CMS such as WordPress it is recommended to check frequently for updates in the software but do not load these on a live website. First carry out upgrades on a separate server to test them. Keeping abreast of software updates also improves a site’s speed.

You can test your website’s page load time and page size with the WooRank Website Review tool. A sample test is shown in the screenshot below:

Page Load Time Tested on WooRank

You can check for speed factors that are present or absent in your site with the same test:

Use WooRank Website Reviews to Check Speed Factors Affecting Your Website

For more tutorials on page speed optimization check out a list of related Google Articles.

Article Source: woorank.com

Google Penguin Changes are Coming: Will Your Site be Affected?

The SEO rumor mills are at it again…  At this year’s SMX West conference, Matt Cutts – head of Google’s Web Spam team – announced that webmasters can expect to see the latest version of the Penguin algorithm rolled out sometime during 2013.

Of course, Cutts wouldn’t clarify exactly what types of sites or activities the update would target, nor how big of an impact the rollout would potentially have.  But that hasn’t stopped some SEO pundits from speculating that this could be another “big one” in the vein of the original Panda and Penguin algorithm changes.

Currently, the most widely circulated theory regarding Penguin 4.0 is that it will go after the link networks that weren’t affected by previous updates.

According to Julie Joyce, writing for Search Engine Watch:

“Simply, a link (or site/blog/article) network is a group of sites that are connected. They can be owned by one person or multiple people, their connections can be as obvious as a badge displayed that proudly identifies the site as a member of X network or as covert as a footprint uncovered by lots of digging.”

Google has been going after these properties since at least March 2012, when it completely deindexed the popular “BuildMyRank” service, as well as several other prominent link networks.  Certainly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google take further action in these areas as the sensitivity of its algorithms at detecting networked sites improves.

However, there’s another interesting piece of evidence that points to Penguin 4.0 being tied to low quality backlinks in some way.  A recent studied carried out by Portent indicated that Google is becoming increasingly stricter in terms of the percentage of spam links that can be pointed at a site before Penguin filters are triggered.

After looking at the link profiles of hundreds of different sites – including about 20 that were hit by the initial Penguin updates – Portent found that, while sites were initially able to survive negative effects with as many as 80% spam links, that number has since dropped to around 50%:

The troubling thing about this data is that no one is certain how low these limits will go.  Could Google refine its algorithms to the point where as few as 0-10% of spam links will be allowed?  Though this outcome certainly seems unlikely, there’s no way to guarantee how far Google will take things.

This steady progress towards the minimization of spam link influence – along with increased murmurings about future link network action – should give webmasters pause.  Even if these Penguin 4.0 predictions don’t come to pass (whether the impact of the update is much smaller or it targets an entirely different area), it’s clear that webmasters need to be concerned about the quality of their backlink profiles.

This is especially important when you consider how few websites ever fully recovered from the impact of the first Penguin rollouts.  According to a poll of more than 500 websites carried out bySearch Engine Roundtable, only 6% of respondents were able to claim a full recovery:

In this case, the best defense against future Penguin actions is a good offense.  Consider taking all of the following steps to help minimize the potential impact of the forthcoming Penguin rollout on your own website:

Step #1 – Continue to clean up bad backlinks

Last May, we gave you a few recommendations on how to identify bad backlinks in your site’s link graph and how to remove them in order to prevent them from triggering Penguin’s filters.  Specifically, we asked you to:

• Assess the diversity of the domains linking back to your site
• Assess the PageRank distribution of all sites linking back to your pages
• Check for “bad neighborhood” links
• Assess your anchor text distribution to ensure high variability

All of these tips still hold up a year later and should remain a part of your site’s regular SEO activities.  At least once a month, check your site’s link profile using tools like SEOMoz and Majestic SEO in order to identify spam links (whether ones that you’ve created in the past or that your site has acquired as part of a negative SEO attack).  If you find these links, do your best to get them removed by contacting webmasters and link building services, or by using Google’s Disavow Links tool.

Step #2 – Think “natural” when it comes to new link creation

In addition, pay particular attention to the quality of any new link creation endeavors you undertake.  While it’s premature to say that you should avoid all link networks, it’s a good idea to balance any artificially created links with their naturally-driven counterparts.

So how can you acquire natural links?  Well, the easiest way is to simply do something link worthy!

For example, working with a designer and researcher to create a compelling infographic image that can be disseminated across industry sites could do as much for your website’s backlink profile as will hundreds of purchased spam links.  Writing great blog posts and engaging with followers on social networks can also help to create legitimate backlinks in a non-sleazy way.

Whatever you do, keep in mind that “natural” is the new name of the link building game.  No tool is ever going to be able to replicate the backlinking results generated by a committed group of readers and brand advocates.  Focus first on activities that will prompt link acquisition naturally and look at other solutions as nothing more than a way to supplement your main efforts.

Step #3 – Diversify your traffic sources

Finally, keep in mind that SEO should only represent one avenue of traffic generation.  If your site receives the bulk of its inbound traffic from Google alone, you’re setting yourself up for failure by placing all of your eggs in one basket.

For this reason, it’s important to make it a priority now to diversify your traffic sources.  In addition to Google, your site could receive visitors from:

• Other search engines
• Paid search ad placements
• Social media marketing
• Paid social ads
• Content marketing
• Media buys
• Guest articles published on other sites

Yes, some of these strategies may require more work than tweaking a few on-site and off-site variables (as in the case of traditional SEO), but the reassurance you’ll receive from knowing that your business is no longer vulnerable to Google’s unpredictable algorithm changes will be invaluable.

The best part about these recommended actions is that there’s almost no downside.  If you take steps to improve your site’s link profile and the next Penguin update winds up affecting only a tiny percentage of sites, you haven’t lost anything – in fact, you’ve improved your chances of staying safe throughout the next round of algorithm changes.

Remember, Google is never going to stop refining its algorithms.  Even if you’ve been safe throughout these tumultuous last few years, there’s no guarantee that your site won’t be filtered out by a future update.  Take the time to clean up your link building activities now – your long-term site stability will thank you!

Source: http://www.singlegrain.com/blog/google-penguin-changes-are-coming-will-your-site-be-affected/

Marketing Advice For A New Website: Starting From The Ground Up

It can be difficult for a new website to get off the ground and get noticed, especially if there is no prior platform for promotion, for example if the new website owners already have a good web presence and following to help with the initial promotion. If the idea for the website is new, it is often difficult to capitalise on existing search volume for industry related keywords.

It is often the case that these websites need a little ‘out of the box’ thinking so they can infiltrate existing communities that are likely to take an interest in their offerings.

On occasions, the website may not offer anything new per se in terms of the subjects covered or industry targeted – it could be that you feel that your offering is slightly different or that your implementation is different and this is all that sets you apart from the competition.

Whether you feel you have the most original product ever or not, this post will explore some of the areas, tools and resources a new website can exploit to help grow your audience.

Social

Social is one of the best ways to reach your target audience, and can be a lifeline for new websites/businesses. Aside from various types of paid advertising and SEO, it is the best way to create an interaction with your brand online that can resonate through the web and grow your online presence. If you have a thoughtful strategy, there are many web users poised to share what you create.

Social profiles

It may sound obvious, but having a presence on the popular social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and regularly utilising those platforms to interact within these active communities of users is a good place to start. You can have a company profile and individual profiles for each founder/employee. Generally it seems that people prefer to follow individuals on platforms such as Twitter and Google+, on Facebook however business associated ‘pages’ are quite popular.

Image sites

Some of the most socially shared content online is images; people like to share images that are interesting, unique, powerful, humorous, and educational and there are many platforms dedicated to helping users share and discover different images. Some notable platforms include:

• Pinterest
• Flickr
• Instagram

Depending on your individual industry, there may even be image sites or categories on existing platforms that are dedicated to the industry you operate in (or one with a similar target audience).

These platforms are good places to start interacting within the community. If you are in the position to be able to create your own interesting images that you think would interest your audience, you can easily become the originator of this content online that can be shared endlessly across the web.

Social communities

There are many different individual social communities full of regular users who are sharing and communicating within the platform. Here are a few examples:

• Vine (a video platform from Twitter)
• Bundlr (bookmarking and content discovery platform)
• Dribbble (designers can showcase portfolio)
• GitHub (open source software development platform)
• Quora (share content and knowledge, ask and answer questions on a variety of topics)

These are just a number of communities available online in different industries, if you can think of a good way you can exploit your own skills and expertise whilst adding something valuable to these types of platforms, it is a good way to get noticed and to start engaging within related communities.

Video

Video is a hugely powerful resource, one that many businesses are yet to exploit and is a new way of reaching your audience. Google is also a fan of video and regularly displays videos relating to various topics on the first page of the search results in an effort to create more variation for their users as different types of multimedia content is created and consumed. Millions of people also search, browse and share videos online each day as one of the most popular online media; they are also shared regularly via social media and on blogs.

It is therefore a great place to help market your business or website if you have the capabilities to create useful content that is related to your offering. The more helpful, interesting and unique the video is the greater the likelihood that it will be discovered and shared by others.

Contests/Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a great initial way to generate interest from a community that are highly likely to have a familiarity with your offerings. If for example interaction is required, you could gain a significant following in that time.

Popular platforms to host competitions include the above social networking sites ( e.g. “Tweet to enter” style promotions), email and on the site itself. Although it is definitely recommended that a social element is involved to reach a greater number of people.

Think about what you are giving away. Making sure that the prize is likely to draw in people interested in your services, they may then feel compelled to follow so they don’t miss out on similar opportunities in the future. A good example of a related prize would be an iPad if you run a mobile applications website for example.

On-Site

By having a website and setting it live, there is no guarantee that it will be easy to navigate, engaging to your target audience or fulfil its potential as intended. It is therefore important to consider on-page factors which will help give the site the best chance alongside the external work that is on-going.

Build a following

One of your goals in growing your online presence is to create a social media presence firstly; secondly you want to help users find those pages easily by building links to these platforms into your website.

Here are a few ways in which this can be done:

• Include links to these platforms from every page of your website. Make a point to highlight these on the Home page and Blog pages.
• Try to secure profile usernames that include your company name should anyone choose to search for you on these platforms or via the search engines.
• Create an email newsletter – highlight the benefits of signing up to build up an email list. This will give you a platform to reach an interested audience with business updates, news, new site features and more.
• Include a Twitter username in blog post Meta titles – Although I have not tried this myself, I have noticed a few sites utilising this method so that when people share a post from the site, it will add in a mention within the Tweet (unless the Tweet is edited to remove this).

Video

Video has been mentioned above as a good quality off page tactic to generate interest and help build your brand. It is also useful to include video content on your own website to bring more balance to the website.

Video is useful to educate and inform visitors about your site (which can help to create potential customers); it can also be used to highlight your brand values and display shareable media. Visitors are just as likely to discover your videos through your website and go on to share if they want to, as they are to discover them on video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Referral Programs

By referral programs, I mean employing a system whereby affiliates can promote your products or services and in return will gain commission towards the value of what was sold. You will need to have a system in place to be able to track these referrals and pay these affiliates; however there are plenty of third party platforms for merchants wishing to do this.

This is a great way of generating business on the site when starting from nothing, it gets people talking about your business and helps grow your brand. One factor to consider is monitoring the links affiliates use to make sure they are not damaging your website.

Blog

In my opinion, blogging is one of the best ways to grow your site if you are starting from zero. You will need to have a clear content strategy by establishing the type of content you would like to post and how often you may be able to create content. Outsourcing the content is a possibility (if you do not have the time) as long as the content is of a good quality and unique, it is however suggested that as experts in your industry, you find the time to put together a post once or twice a week.

Here are some pointers on getting a blog going:

• Include a summary of your blog, the topics you cover and what people can expect. This can be useful for those who are unsure if the blog has a theme that they might be interested in following.
• Create a variety of posts and topics; including generic industry related posts, tutorial type posts as well as business/news related posts.
• A lot of traffic can be generated by creating useful content that people are likely to be searching for and bringing in people that are essentially your target market.
• Try to create a blog schedule – once or twice a week is a good starting point.
• Make your blog social – include sharing icons so people can easily share your content.
• Promote your content using your social media profiles.
• Link to your social profiles from the blog, this way the visitors can follow you on these platforms and discover any new content you have created.
• Enable comments on these blog posts to encourage engagement.

Help users find the information they need

Online user engagement is key nowadays because the typical web user doesn’t have much patience when it comes to discovering new websites. When landing on your website, they will be searching for something specific and if they cannot find the information they are searching for easily and quickly, they are likely to leave and not return.

It is therefore important to have a clear navigation on the site and ensure you educate visitors as much as possible, especially if your product or service is new.

Review and optimise the landing pages

Following on from the above point, you will want to be careful to ensure that you review every potential website landing page. If a visitor was to land on that page, is the function of the page clear? Does it contain all the relevant information a visitor is likely to expect to see? Can they easily navigate to other pages on the site and find any other of your offerings that may interest them?

Each landing page is not static, it can be reviewed and optimised continually so be sure to install an analytics package to help you review the page performance, don’t be afraid to play around with these various page elements.

Off Site

Here we have included some off-site strategies that can help grow your online presence on top of what has been mentioned so far in the post. These are not directly related to the elements of the web page or utilising social media.

Infographics

Infographics are another popular and highly shareable form of packaged content. There are many of these around nowadays so it is recommended that some research is conducted as to what already exists for any ideas that you may have.

These have the potential to be shared across the web and can appear on some high profiles sites. These external sites should link to you as the source, however you can provide an embed code to ensure that the image links through to your site.

Become a community contributor

Earlier on in the post, I briefly mentioned a range of current site communities that have a thriving user base. By participating within these communities, providing good content and helping others out, you can easily start to create a presence within your industry. This can have additional benefits if requested to contribute on another user’s site or alternatively a link may even be generated naturally if someone discovers you through one of these platforms.

You can also allow employees to create a presence and become another face that represents the company on these communities, multiplying the benefits.

Press releases

There are a number of free and paid press release websites for the submission of newsworthy articles. Using a good quality press release site, you can secure a link for the site and reach additional web users (or journalists) who may have an interest in your website.

Contacting industry related blogs

Your newsworthy content can also be really interesting from an external blogs point of view. Some blogs are constantly on the lookout for new things to talk about – your new website/product/service may just be the type of thing that they would be interesting in writing about.

If you are already aware of some well-known blogs in your industry, it is worth contacting them to see if they might be interested. A large number of the more high profile websites will have a submission form for these types of enquiries.

Creating external websites, tools or resources

As mentioned previously, people love sharing any interesting or useful content and this includes useful websites, tools and resources. If the resources are available to you and you have the expertise in your industry to create something helpful and free for users, these can easily gain authority and an established user base that are at your disposal to help promote your main site.

Some existing examples include mortgage calculators, hex colour generators, online image editors, file converters, tutorial blogs and many others; the opportunities are endless as long as it is manageable.

Paid advertising

Paid advertising is a good way of instantly reaching your target audience via platforms such as Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter or through website banner ads and even advertising in traditional print media.

Despite the initial monetary investment, you can easily send some good quality traffic to your site.

Local presence

Exploiting local resources can be a quick, free and easy way to send traffic to your site. Here are some of the resources available to you:

• Local business directories (Yell.com, Yelp, Qype etc.)
• Google+ Local (previously Google Places)
• Review sites

By creating a presence using the above sources, people may discover you through these platforms. The search engines also likely to include local results within the search engine result pages and by having a presence on the above, you are likely to show up for these local searches.

Competitor analysis

In an existing industry, there will be a number of websites and companies that already have a presence. It is worth analysing this existing competition to see what they are doing to market themselves online and whether they are doing anything that is bringing them success. There may even be opportunities they are missing out on that you could exploit; this method is particularly good for generating ideas.

Please note that it isn’t suggested that you copy their strategy. This is just a good way of seeing what exists and spotting any gaps in the market.

Should you have a process/plan?

It is less important to follow a specific process or plan per se. A marketing strategy should and will be different for all websites. It is however important to establish what resources are available to you and form a strategy based on these (using the above information).

How important is keyword targeting?

SEO is a great way to bring relevant traffic to your site, when it comes to keyword targeting, this should be a consideration in the layout of your site. Make sure you have a clear page structure and assign a relevant keyword to that page to help users find you. Here are some helpful tips:

• Choose keywords relevant to each page (don’t force in keywords purely because you wish to rank for them).
• Each page should target one or two keywords, any more would be bordering on keyword stuffing.

Please note that SEO is a longer term strategy and that you are unlikely to see value from this straight away.

If you decide to create a blog for the site, keyword research can help generate ideas for blog posts – the longer tail nature of blog posts will increase the likelihood that they rank for related searches.

Inspirational example

I wanted to include an example where a new site quickly managed to generate a lot of traffic to their site which helped them secure an active user base.

Wish.co.uk is a UK based company that specialises in unusual experience days. One of their main offerings when starting up was a zombie experience and to capitalise on this unusual day out, they decided to Tweet the service to Simon Pegg (star of Shaun of the Dead) who then retweeted the link to all his followers. Various websites picked up on this and they managed to grow a user base quickly with this out of the box thinking.

See wish.co.uk for more information on the success of this story.

Key takeaways

Here are some key takeaways from the post:

• Create a social presence on the main social networks and any others related to your industry.
• Use resources such as video, images, Infographics and anything else at your disposal to help market your company, website, products and services.
• Optimise your website to engage visitors.
• Highlight your social media presence to visitors.
• Create a blog for your site to help generate additional visits and help grow the number of followers/regular visitors.
• Keep SEO in mind throughout so that you are gradually increasing your search engine presence.
• Keep an eye on competitors and look out for opportunities that they may be missing.
• Create a long term strategy for the website and stick to it.
• Think outside of the box wherever possible – some of the most inspirational examples have come from this.

I would be interested to hear your comments on the post and whether you know or have heard of any other strategies that may help a newly launched site.

Source: http://www.koozai.com/blog/branding/starting-from-the-ground-up-marketing-for-a-new-website/