Providing value and quality in your web content should be the most important task you undertake on the internet this year. That’s what the experts are saying, and it’s what I’ve been saying for some time now.

Being earnest, or sincere, in your efforts to provide content to you customers is perhaps your most important task. Until recent years, your “content” was advertisements, flyers, coupons and other promotional materials. Outstanding content today requires a new mindset and intent. You’re not selling your customers with your content, be it that from a blog, an email newsletter or a posting on a social network, but instead you are providing them with value.

 – Social Media Today

Just over a year ago (which shows you how quickly this has become a big marketing tool), I had a conversation with a client about getting some quality content on their website. I told her that she needed to put content that provides information of value on her website, and if that means including links to other helpful sites or ‘how-to’s’ so that visitors can learn how to do certain things, then that’s what had to be done. In order to gain trust, gain traffic, and gain conversions and customers, you have to give them something to get something in return.

Needless to say, she hated the idea and didn’t want to give away any ‘free’ information. Everything that was of value on her site had to be paid for, and it hurt her in the long run. This is not the way to market your site. Banners, advertisements, and sales chatter is probably one of the worst things that you can do for your site.

Sure, on your landing page or home page you can run your sales pitch, but you have also got to provide content of value to your clients. Just a few months ago I was working for a debt settlement company, helping them to market their websites. It was all sales, all advertising, and all boring chatter. It meant nothing to the visitors because they could get nothing out of it.

Through experience, I found that the sites that brought in the most traffic, and thus the most potential for customer conversions, were the ones that provided the most value. The sites with a blog or frequent content updates that helped visitors find questions to their answers got the most hits. The sites that provided value and information on debt issues brought in the most visitors, and it’s all about the numbers. The more visitors you have, the more possibilities you have for customer conversions.

Gone are the days of advertising chatter on your website. You will no longer get the traffic and conversions that you want if you only try to ‘sell’ them. These days, blatant advertising doesn’t work. You need referrals, branding on social media, and you need to provide something to get something. By providing information of value, you will get conversions in return.

How To Get Ranked On Bing

Bing might be new, and it might be a bit of an underdog right now standing up against the Goliath Google, but ranking on the first page of this resource will still get you plenty of traffic. While I’m still trying to figure out what works for Bing and what doesn’t, I’ve come to one resolute conclusion, which should come as no surprise. Quality content will get you on the first page of Bing.

Yesterday, I posted an article detailing the 5 simple steps to get to the top of Google in a few weeks. Google places a lot of emphasis on three things: quality content, links, and keywords. As I mentioned before, if your domain name happens to be debt program reviews, and your audience is searching for debt program reviews, you are in the money.

But, what if you want to rank on Bing and you don’t have a domain name that matches the keyword search? Simple, have quality content that does. My advice, do your research and find out what keywords your audience is using to find you or your product. Take those keywords and find some useful information that you can throw together utilizing them.

I always tell my clients to remember elementary school. Back in the day when you had your words of the week, and you had to write a paragraph or two including those words. Utilizing keywords for Bing, or any other search engine, is no different. Simply find one keyword, preferably a longtail phrase, and toss it into your content.

Back in the day, an SEO would tell you to saturate your article with that keyword, but today things have changed. There are Wordpress plugins that allow you to saturate your keyword and description information to where you don’t have to write the word 100 times in a 500 word article. That is definitely something that you don’t want to do. In a 500 page article, from my experience I’ve learned to toss in the word only a few times, maybe 3 to 5 times. It’s that simple.

Don’t forget to title your article using those keywords in the first word positions, and make sure your permalink uses those keywords. Another trick that Bing seems to appreciate is if you also take the headline and repeat it at the beginning of your article in bold. I did this not too long ago, and only because the title of the article was not as prominent as I wanted it to be so I repeated it in the article so people knew what they were reading.

If you are writing a single article to rank on Bing for a single phrase, then make sure that article is at least 500 words long. Most article submission sites will not even accept an article that is shorter (if you’re considering submitting to different sources). If you are hoping to rank your entire website for a specific term and don’t want to spend the time writing 500-plus articles every day, then I’d suggest writing 250-300 word articles twice a day. Bing, Google and everyone else still loves it when you keep your sites fresh. Plus, that gives you more of an opportunity to get your message out there.

And, as always, utilize social bookmarking to spread your article around the internet, and post to Twitter and Facebook. Every little thing helps.

If you have any questions or need some help with your small business marketing, feel free to contact me or look me up on Twitter at @LinwrightDesign.

Content is King. Every SEO and web marketer has heard these three keywords over and over, and do you know why? Because it’s entirely true. As a writer and web marketer, I can tell you from experience that if you can keep your content fresh, lively, and updated on a consistent basis, Google will credit you for that.

Sure, images and design grabs the first impression, and there’s always fancy script and embedded videos that can be used as well, but content is where you will either keep a customer or lose one. In the online world, there are many techniques to entice your customer to buy a product, or click through your photographs, but it’s the words that will assure them.

Content for Marketing

When it comes to social media marketing, content is your best friend, and your worst enemy. Google will not only crawl your site searching for keywords, links, and for cheating techniques, it will also decide if your content is worthy of a higher ranking. The less mistakes and more engagement, the more respect Google will give you. The key is to have something to say, or at least to seem to have something to say, that will engage customers to comment and other web owners to offer links.

Why do you want comments and links?

 Everything is interconnected in web marketing. If your content is engaging, then you will get comments, which Google loves and will give you more respect for engaging your audience. Also, well written content will entice other web owners, bloggers, and possibly competitors to ask to grab some of your content for their page, thus adding a link back to your website. Links are the magical key that will get you to the top of Google, which will probably make all of your financial dreams come true.

Why should I keep updating my content?

Refreshing your content and keeping things moving on your website is an all important factor of web marketing. The main search engines will give you that much more respect if you keep things moving and keep the content fresh. It’s simple, really, because every single time you add content to your page you are growing your keyword content (a big plus) and you are pinging the major search engines. A Ping to the search engines alerts them to come and check out your site (crawl your site) because you’ve just updated something. The more that you can get the engines to crawl your site, the more chance you will have of ranking better. Thus, keeping your content updated is crucial to marketing success.

Can I ping the search engines without always updating content?

It is possible to call the engines to crawl your website without updating your content, but it’s almost worthless. If you use a program that calls the engines to crawl your site, they will only find what they already have cached for your website, and will not give it any added respect.

How do I keep my content updated on a constant basis?

Keeping your content fresh is the easiest thing that you can do. For big and small business websites, a blog is always the best option. When most people hear the word blog, they think of mindless rambling and unorganized thoughts. Well, there are many blogs like that out there, but a business blog is an entirely different thing.

Instead of constantly changing your home page, or your about us section, it’s far easier and more engaging to keep your customers updated with a business blog. There are many ways of doing this; the corporate blog, which basically just keeps things stiff and gives constant updates of business happenings. It’s not very engaging; however it is a way to keep your content updated.

There is the laid-back blog with is a bit more humanizing and engaging. This type of blog will keep your customers interested by informing them of new stores and products or specials in an entertaining way. It will also encourage customers to get involved with polls and small contests or product reviews. The laid-back blog is still informative, but involves a lot more images of employees at work, company picnics, and other entertaining events. It also stays on top of what is trending on the internet and isn’t afraid to veer from the strictly business topics to dive into something on the side that people are talking about.

Can a company owner be a blogger?

The voice of the company can most definitely be the company CEO. In fact, this is one of the best ideas for the company, if the CEO has time. A small business owner can also benefit from doing the blogging themselves if they have the time. Simply writing about your ideas, your upcoming events, and products that you are excited about can put you at the top of your game among other business owners.

The blogger has the ability to transcend the blogosphere and become rather like an icon of his or her industry. If your content is engaging, and your topic informational, a following is just around the corner.

What is this talk about keywords?

Google had just recently announced that it no longer considers meta keywords a factor in rankings. While this has been known for some time now, it’s important to understand that keywords are still highly important in the content of a blog or article. Meta keywords used to be the ultimate factor in ranking well on the search engines, until Google realized that SEO guru’s were tweaking the system and stuffing their tags with keywords. This is why they’ve decided to completely disregard the keyword meta tag.

However, if you want to rank on Google for a certain word, it is still important to have a greater density of that work in your content, as well as have the links from other websites with that keyword as the anchor text. (Anchor Text: the word or phrase that is used as the link text.)

The moral of this dramatic story is that keywords are still useful in content, however, one great link from a great website will indeed dwarf any number of keyword density you might have, which is why link building campaigns are all the rage.

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Content for your website can come in many different forms, whether it’s a blog or simply development of your web pages. The key is to never be stagnant and always keep things moving. The internet is a busy place, and keeping up with the Jones’ is crucial.