Everyone who owns a website often wrestles with the idea of keeping their visitors to their site as long as possible, i.e. make them “engaged” longer.

When people stay longer on your site …

1.    Your site/ page will have low bounce rate that suggest search engines like Google that it MUST be valuable, and you’re your site better for search terms.

2.    Plus, when your visitors spend more time on your site, they will likely buy something for you.

But, how do you make your content more engaging and lure them to click through the links and ads on your page?

10 Ways to Stay Engaged with Your Web Visitors:

1. Give Away “Useful Content”

Generosity can bring several benefits to your website.

Blog articles, Infographics, free eBooks, video tutorials on topics that are relevant and of interest to your visitors will make your readers feel that there is something in it for them too.

Sharing your insights, knowledge, and ideas on important aspects of your business will help build a “formidable” authority, and thereby, increasing people’s interest on what you have to say.

2. Embed Videos and Slideshows – Recently, we found that using slideshows, unlike creating an article/ page to give helpful information, often gets our message across more effectively.

In other words, slideshows help convey message better by adding visual element to your content. Your website visitors get an opportunity to learn more about the topic in a different way (through visuals), rather than reading through “block of text” they see on the screen.

In addition to slideshows, you can also use video in order to enhance user engagement.

Not only you can use videos and slideshows to “showcase your product or service,”but you can use it for several other purposes, like

1.    Introducing your company,

2.    Getting testimonials from customers,

3.    Teach people “how to” do stuffs, or

4.    Even create a video blogs, etc

Just remember to keep the length of each video and slideshow short as you don’t want to lose the attention of your visitors.

Doing it right (both videos and slideshows) can keep people hooked up in your site way longer than usual.

3. Breakup Long Posts on Multiple Pages

Do you have a really long article? Well, do us a favor – break it down (500 to 600 words each) and then place it in two pages.

Not only your visitors will look at more pages on your site, but it will increase the ratings (page rank) of your site/ page too.The more people spend time on your site, the more chances they get to become engaged with your brand.

4. Re-Format Your Content

Make it easier for your readers to read your content and digest them.

1.    While crafting/ creating content, think about using headers, sub-headers, bullets, and numbered lists.

2.    If your site has tons of posts, create a “most popular” or “most recent” list and place it on the sidebar.

Newspapers use this tactic all the time!

Just visit NYTimes.com and check out how they’ve used “Most E-Mailed” tab listing stories other people have shared.

5. Place Dynamic Content on Your Site

As discussed earlier, I encourage you to use different sidebars on each page of your site. Make it load relevant content based on the content of that particular page.

For example, if your site is a forum, pop up live replies and updates from other members on relevant topics. This gives your site an “overall busy and lively look.”

1.    Show up updated polls, rotating lists, videos and photos of other recent posts in order to BOOST your visitor’s stay on your site.

2.    Place a quick and easy comment system like Disqus to foster two-way communication!

6. Carry outPolls andSurveys

Add polls and surveys on your site. Period!

They offer an “easy and quick way” for your visitors to voice their opinions and get involvedwith your site.

Ensure you publish polls and surveys that are HIGHLY relevant to your target audience (market) in order to keep them “interested” and find out MORE about the results.

7. Start Quizzes and Games

Imagine!

How many people leave your site without posting a comment just because inserting name, email, and comment is a “BIG hassle?”

Instead, why don’t you gauge user interaction by providing them a very interesting yet easy way of entertainment?Hold competitions, or even games, and award the high scorer to keep them trying to earn the prize again.

8. Update your site/blog frequently

You can update your site/blog often with “useful,” “fresh,” and “engaging,” content so that whenever new visitors come back to your site, they will always have something new to read through it.

This method is effective as it attracts returning visitors, but most “lazy webmasters” don’t usually carry out this step, and as a result, lose a lot of customers to their site.

Just consider, would you go and browse a site that looks the same and its content never change over 10 years? Of course, NOT!

So do me a favor – “keep your site/blog frequently updated” with content that talk about new insights and perspectives of your market.

9. Connect with Your Readers

If you want to enhance your website engagement, make sure you’re generating content that are highly relevant, useful, and interesting to your target audience, and not just to your editor.

The content may take the form of articles, blogs, whitepapers, product descriptions, or simply product reviews.

Before sitting down and writing a content, step back and think about all the conversations you had with your customers:

1.    What are they interesting to learn about?

2.    What problems are they facing?

Once you have figured out some good topics to write, make it extremely user-friendly (easy and fun) for them to consume your content.

1.    Use bullets, videos, slideshows, games, and other tactics we discussed earlier to tell your story in an engaging way to your customers.

2.    Make it short, simple, yet be YOU.

Not only this will make the content highly original and personal, but it will also make it easier for you to sit down and write.

10.Use Plenty of Whitespace

It can be very overwhelming to click on a link and come across a page with wall of text all over.

Online content isn’t like essay writings or writing a novel.

People want the best information that is“user-friendly,”“easy to consume,” and “inviting.” If not, they’ll often hit the “back” button and find other sites that are “more welcoming.”

Use plenty of whitespace!

It may appear counter-intuitive to use whitespace but it helps to “remove the clutter” off your content and make it more inviting for those reading it.

Likewise, use your creativity to enhance your content and build more engagement. Underline your key points, bold to place emphasis on important points and make things stand out.

10 Ways to Stay “Engaged” with Your Web Visitors - To Sum It ALL

There you have it! We just discussed 10 ways to stay engaged with your web visitors. What about you? Which different strategies you employ to build visitor’s engagement on your site? Please comment below!

 
While SEO is very crucial to help your online business perform (rank) better in search engines, if you (or your SEO consultant) have been doing it the “wrong way,” it could be worse than doing nothing at all.

In recent years, Google have rolled out several “Penguin” and “Panda” updates that you may be already aware of. These updates have forced SEO consultant to revise their SEO practices and utilize only that abide by their guidelines.

In this article, we’ll be discussing top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid in order to be considered for better rankings or stay away from your site getting “penalized” for search engines like Google.

Top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid:

1. Keyword Stuffing

Many beginner website owners make a mistake of stuffing their keywords in their content – blogs and videos – thinking the MORE they use it, the BETTER the result will be.

There are 2 major problems with “keyword stuffing,” and both are serious!

1.    Firstly, stuffing keywords in your content will “lower the quality” of your site. Your readers will likely smell something “fishy” about the content as it doesn’t reads “natural.”

2.    Second, search engines DISLIKES “keyword stuffing.” Most sites often get penalized when webmasters perform keyword stuffing on their site and its content.

Google, for example, sees it as if you are playing games with their SEO guidelines and it raises a “red” flag.

Instead, focus on using moderate amount of keywords in the right places (in the post title, headlines, headers, and first and last paragraphs of your copy), and, of course, make a habit of writing content that sounds natural.

2. Duplicate Content on Your Site – There are several ongoing debate among veteran SEO experts as to how detrimental a duplicate content could be.

However, you still need to be aware of 2 types of duplicate content.

1.    The first type of duplicate content is when you post content that are also present in other sites. For example, you may publish an article on your blog and then publish in it Ezinearticles.com.

Although this type of duplicate content isn’t beneficial for SEO purposes, search engines won’t penalize you site for it, though. There are several high ranking sites, like news and online magazine sites that frequently republish their stories.

Ensure that you only post “unique” content.

One popular method is called “content curation” where you place short excerpts and links from other articles and insert your own thoughts, ideas, and expand it.

2.    Another type of duplicate content is when you publish the same content in several location of your own website. This method could be disastrous for your SEO purposes.

You have to make sure your post titles and pages don’t have duplicate names.

This type of duplicate content often happens on BIGGER sites, which, of course, is very easy to overlook as there are tons of articles on it.

Duplicate content on a site will detract its value and hence results into “lower search engine rankings.” This often happens on an e-commerce sites where owners usually generate a single product description for variation of it – i.e. the size, the color, etc.

3. Building Poor and Mass Backlinks

Are you trying to rank your website quickly by purchasing backlinks in bulk that are likely to be of “low quality?”

It’s one of the surest ways for Google to indentify your site as utilizing “black hat” SEO tactics, even though you may not be aware of it at all. These low quality backlinks usually comes from sites selling links and “link farms.”

Likewise, avoid building mass profile in forums in order to get “backlinks.” You or your SEO consultant could sign up in tons of forums, create profiles, and build backlinks through signatures box.

Why should you avoid it?

1.    Forums have become smarter ever than before, and they can catch this tactic as being “black hat SEO”, and quickly delete your profile.

2.    Secondly, generating tons of backlinks from forum, especially “low-quality forums,” will eventually raise a RED FLAG to the search engines.

You MAIN objective are to get variety of backlinks from “different sources.” Plus, the linking must appear natural.

4. Using Limited Keywords in Anchor Text

This is another common SEO mistakes you must avoid – creating anchor text using the same keyword over and over again. Of course, this method looks suspicious to search engines.

Instead, use wide variety of anchor text. Just don’t only use your primary (main) keywords, but use its variation as well, like several long tail keywords that have “high search volume” but also has “low competition.”

This will make your site not only more natural, but you can also gain high ranking quickly for those less competitive keywords too.

5. Lack of Internal Linking

Not only you need to build backlinks from other sites, but also take time to “inter-link” content on your site too. That means you will link one post to another page/ post published on your own site.

In a small site, internal linking may not be beneficial as there may not be much content, however, as your sites grows, it become imperative and beneficial for you to perform internal linking.

It is okay to put couple of external links on your page or post, but it would be even better if some of those links take your readers to other places on your own site.

Not only your reader will stay LONGER on your site, but it also tells search engines that your site/ page are really valuable. Guess what? Once you make a habit of building internal links, it gets even “easier.”

So before you write content, make sure to look for other relevant posts and link to them.

Common SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - To sum it all

Search engine optimization is vital when you want to rank your site better. However, most beginner site owner makes these 5 commonly made SEO mistakes, as we discussed in this article.

While some of these mistakes are made because people aren’t aware about it, (like the “internal linking” method), but most SEO mistakes result from when people are looking for “shortcuts.”

Examples include “keyword stuffing” and “buying bulk backlinks” from “low quality sites” in order to “rank higher in search engines” like Google.

However, if you focus on creating valuable and original content using moderate amount of keywords (along with its variations), search engines will automatically “reward you.”

 
In the world of marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) continues to be one of the most mysterious and misunderstood techniques but it has also been the most effective way to generate MORE leads.

While there are tons of organizations getting interested to include SEO as their online marketing campaign, there are still few aspects of it that remains to be elusive or sometimes even difficult to execute correctly.

Most of our clients always seem to struggle with one thing – i.e. choosing the “right” set of keywords to rank better in search engines and build their brand.

Selecting the “right” keywords isn’t a one time job where you begin an SEO campaign, set it, and then forget about it.

Keyword research is an ongoing process!

It is continuous, something you would constantly analyze, tune, re-assess, and then, frequently update because the “right” keywords will help bring high quality traffic (relevant leads) to your site, while “unattainable” and “ineffective” keywords is simply drain of efforts.

So how do you choose “profitable” keywords for your business?

1. Ignore your brand keywords for a moment

First, just get one thing straight: you don’t have to target for your company name keywords in your SEO campaigns.

“Company name rankings” happens automatically so you can skip this step.

2. Select keywords that you have high chance for ranking

I have seen most organization making the same mistake: they attempt to shoot for the moon by targeting the most “broad” keywords that have high competition and impossible to rank for very quickly.

As a result, most firms end up in “disappointed” when they never see any footing in their SEO campaign.

For example, if you have been ranking lower than, let’s say, 100th position for a set of keywords, it is high-time that you look for better alternatives.

You may want to find keywords that have a …

1.    Decent ranking for, although it may not be on page 1, and

2.    Those that isn’t highly competitive

You can use free tools, like Google Keyword Tool, to analyze these attributes of keywords you choose.

Don’t know where to begin? Simply, contact a professional SEO consultant!

3. Go for keywords that are “in demand.”

I get upset when I find many so-called “ethical” SEO consultants use “unethical” SEO tactics in order to rank their client’s site/blog on Google’s 1st page.

Yes, these keywords may land you on the Google’s first page, but it will have little or no benefit for your organization when you realize no one is “searching” for them.

Instead, don’t you think you would have a better chance to bring quality traffic if you could go after keywords that are in “high demand” (high search volume) so that you are certain people will actually search those targeted keywords?

4. Choose Keywords Your Customers Use, Not Some Internal Jargon

Over the years, I have found that many organizations make a HUGE mistake: They target keywords that are known as “industry jargon keywords” as they’ve been used to it, however a first time reader won’t have a clue to its meaning.

Instead, try to find out keywords that your customers talk use while searching for your products and services and target those keywords!

5. Take a “Holistic” view with your keywords

Many companies “choose” keywords and sprinkle them all over their website – title and Meta tags, page title, headers, and so on – and they think their SEO work is “complete.”

Hardly! In fact, it’s only the beginning in your SEO work.

You still need to use these targeted keywords in other places as well, like your blogging campaigns, guest posts on partner sites (using proper anchor text), your landing pages, other inbound links, videos, and even in your social accounts.

And SEO doesn’t stop there too.

It’s an “ongoing” process and MUST be an important part of your overall online marketing strategy.

As you have already seen, the “right” keywords for you may not be “right” for your customers.

In this guide, we discussed why you need to avoid using brand keywords and internal jargon keywords, but go after keywords that are “relevant” and are in HIGH demand (means your customers are searching for it) so that …

You can hope to bring traffic (lead) to your site and increase conversion but also remember to tune, measure, and optimize your SEO campaigns so that over time you will improve the lead generation efforts for you business! Got that?

If going over these steps seems overwhelming to you, or you simply don’t have time or don’t want to put effort, then you can hire a professional SEO consultant, right now!

Okay, over to you!

Share us few tips on how to choose the right keywords for SEO (mention any tools or techniques) … any comment/idea is welcome and we’ll reply to each of them. Promise!

 
Should you do SEO yourself or hire an SEO agency/consultant? Do you know 7 top qualities a Great SEO consultant should possess? Keep reading on!

After you have set up your blog, you need excellent search engine optimization of the site in order to expand its reach. These days, most clients use the Internet in order to find out products, services, and information regarding companies before making their buying decision.

So, if a customer cannot find your site, they won’t have an opportunity to buy from you too. Optimizing your site for search engines and making it user-friendly is more than a requirement– it’s a MUST now.

We agree that you can get by dong a bit of SEO yourself without taking a help from a SEO consultant, there are certainly lot of SEO aspects that you, a internet marketing novice, would need help with.

It would be best to admit that you cannot do everything yourself. You need to seek out for help in areas where you think you require help on. So like with everything, there’s always 2 sides to every argument. Let’s go over each of them, shall we?

Doing SEO yourself – What does it entail?

1.    By doing SEO yourself, you will save money. Most SEO agencies aren’t cheap, and doing SEO yourself lets you save a bit of money.

2.    You have complete control over everything on your site – the content, images, optimization techniques you will use, etc

3.    During the process, you will also learn a great deal about setting up and running a website too, no matter how LONG it takes

4.    You will have to sit down and research everything yourself to figure out what to do for your site’s success, which will take TIME

5.    After research, you still need to SPEND a lot of time tackling SEO

Having assistance from an SEO agency, on the other hand, will give you more time to focus on important things such as running your business.

Hiring an SEO Company – What does it entail?

Hiring an SEO agency or a consultant can guarantee few things:

1.    The internet marketing of your business will be taken care of … completely

2.    You have more time focusing on the logistics aspects of your business

3.    If you want to expand your services, or venture into a new niche, or participate in a creative marketing scheme, you know you have a company you can depend and trust

4.    The only disadvantage of hiring an SEO agency is that you will have to spend money and give a little bit of control to them

From all these above arguments, you can clearly see that hiring SEO consultant far outweighs arguments against it. So it would be wise to spend a little bit of money to reap benefit in the long term.

Now you see have seen how hiring SEO company over doing SEO yourself would benefit your company, now let’s look at what you need to consider before hiring a SEO consultant.

7 Top Qualities a Great SEO Consultant Should Possess:

1. Success Rate of the SEO consultant – You might be tempted hire an SEO company offering services for $50/hour thinking it’s cheap. But cheap doesn’t always translate to be the best. Before hiring a professional SEO consultant, make sure you are aware of what they bring to the table.

For example, you can ask them to show their portfolio, or their previous SEO performance reports to make a wise decision.Sometimes an SEO consultant may possess 8 to 10 years of experience, but look for other things as well. Know about their “success rate” with their previous projects.

2. Highly Creative – You need to remember that SEO isn’t a pure science. Although there are certain key SEO strategies everyone has to follow, nonetheless, SEO is still an art and a science.

Optimizing a site, for example, is more than just “keyword stuffing” and “inserting tons of links.” You need to be creative and think outside of the box to make your sites content truly unique and outrank many competitors within your niche.

A professional SEO consultant knows this and he/she will continue to do trial and errorsuntil they come up with a customized solution based on your project.

4. Not Hesitant to Perform Extensive Research – Without an extensive research, an effective SEO plan can never be achieved. Whether it’s optimizing the site and crafting the content or link building to find out profitable keywords, an “extensive” research is necessary.

So, before you make a decision to hire an SEO consultant, make sure he’s willing to do in-depth research for your project.

5. Good Analytical Skills – Just like web design,SEO strategies varies from one project to another. SEO techniques and strategies that worked well for a site may not work for another. It’s imperative that you hire an SEO consultant who has good “analytical skills.”

In other words, they must be able to look at your site closely and come up with an effective SEO campaign to make it work.

6. Up-to-date with Current SEO Trends – SEO is going to stay for a long time, that’s for sure. In few months, yesterday’s best SEO practices will also become obsolete.

So indulging in aggressive SEO by participating in link schemes, manipulating anchor text, or any other black hat SEO methods to influence search engine rankings will only land you into trouble.

On the other hand, a great SEO consultant always follows the white hat SEO techniques accepted by Google. If he/she isn’t sure about specific SEO strategies, they’ll spend time keeping themselves informed about current developments, upgrades, and trends in the industry.

7. Result-oriented – A great SEO consultant can deliver the “result” your business is looking for within a specific period of time. They have the right tools, expertise, and the know-how to formulate an effective SEO plan, implement them, and follow up with necessary steps to make your site climb higher in search engines and get highly targeted traffic.

Remember, if they can’t show you their progress, they are not a professional SEO consultant. Period!

In this guide, we first gave you few benefits of hiring a great SEO consultant over doing SEO yourself and outlined 7 top qualities a great SEO consultant should possess.

Over to you! Tell us few qualities you consider a top SEO consultant must possess? Please leave a comment below. Every small or big idea is welcome and we’ll reply them … promise!

 
It’s tough to find a genuine SEO company because there are SEO Linkbuilding scams, everywhere. But if you are asking us to give you a specific name for a SEO Linkbuilding company, certainly we won’t be able to tell you. However, keep in mind the following points to be aware of SEO Linkbuilding scams that many cheap SEO company apply, and you should completely avoid.

People consider the first page results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to be a genuine SEO Company. Therefore, they blindly trust them, entrust their website to them, although they may be a complete stranger, thinking that they’ve found the best SEO Company, and nothing will ever go wrong. But simply choosing a SEO service based solely on the sales pitch or high search engine ranking, rather than the actual work, often ruins business reputation because they aren’t the ones who imply genuine SEO Linkbuilding strategies.

Many of these so-called “affordable SEO Company” often turn out to be scammers, if you know how to spot them. Pay attention to these points to easily find out SEO Linkbuilding scams and take proper steps to avoid them.

Link Building Scam # 1 – Want Fixed Price for X Number of Links

Quality, rather than quantity, matters the most when building search engine rankings. So when a “cheap” SEO company promises to post X number of links (quantity) on a fixed price, then understand that it’s a SEO Linkbuilding scams. Just consider, how can they even fix a price before when they don’t even know anything about your business at all? There reason, of course, is that they want to make quick bucks by offering low quality, and mostly crap, SEO tactics and strategies.

Remember, when it comes to building search engine rankings, the price must not be the factor and certainly not depend upon number of links, but on the competitiveness of the keywords and quality links from relevant sites.

Link Building Scam # 2 – Will Get You on Page 1 of Google, Within a Month


If someone tells you they will get your site on Google’s first page, within a month, particularly for high competitive keyword, DON’T believe them. Nobody, not even a genuine SEO company can guarantee higher search engine rankings on Google’s first page, with a specified positioning 1st, 2nd, 3rd position and within a specified time such as a month.  A promise on the first page of Google, without subsequent investment of time, money, and manual effort, is nothing but a SEO scam. High search engine ranking for competitive keywords without significant investment of SEO efforts, not to mention thousands of dollars, isn’t possible. There are several factors that governs high ranking, like authorship, authority, credibility, and trust, which takes years to build.

Link Building Scam # 3 - Build Links through Ethical and Legitimate Ways

When a Link building company says, “We build links through genuine ways and following Google’s rules and guidelines,” don’t believe them, too. The very fact they are using Link building services to influence search ranking is against the rule. In fact, whenever you pay someone to put a link back to your website, it is considered as “paid link building”. Google hate paid linking practices to influence search engine rankings and consider this type of SEO tactic as Black Hat. However, Google will forgive a paid link as long as there is a “nofollow” attribute applied to the link.

But most link building company usually find a random forum, blog, or article directory, and submit links on off-topic sites to build a link back to your site. These article directories aren’t real directories, though. They are “link farms”.  At first, “link farms” may seem like a “business directory” containing long pages with business names and links, but they aren’t. Link building services submit links to these “Link farms” without using the “nofollow” attribute to trick Google into believing it’s a genuine backlink, and therefore, give it a vote. However, Google is smart and when they find list of link without a “nofollow” tag, they will consider it a Black Hat SEO technique, and therefore, blocks a site, completely.

Link Building Scam # 4 - Adding Links to a Bunch of Directories

Here’s how to spot Linkbuilding Scam and avoid it: Avoid SEO companies who consider submitting your site into bunch of directories as Linkbuilding. But the fact almost all directories - 99.9% to be exact – are junk, a favorite place for spammers. Anyway, you site won’t be submitted to any a directory. They will be more likely some kind of link farm that appears as a directory. Also and submission isn’t a guarantee for acceptance. Note that they won’t say ‘add’, only ‘submit’.

Link Building Scam # 5 - Article Submission Scam

This is another Linkbuilding scam most website owners get sucked into. Scammers often write low quality articles that add “zero” value to its readers and end up submission on link farm – not a real article directory! Article sites, itself, have been used for link building and guess what? Google have been hammering them.

Link Building Scam # 6 – SEO for Link Building Only

Don’t pour in money for SEO if all they want to do is build links. Most SEO has nothing to do with link building. In fact, link building is just a part of the whole SEO process. You still need to create quality content to add value to the readers. If they find your content is worth a share, they’ll automatically like, share, and tweet them. Likewise, link building is also a responsible task.

SEO companies need to figure out your target audience, visit where they hang around (relevant forums, blogs, and article directories), read each post and reply accordingly. This way, each comment and thread will actually add value to the discussion. This will ultimately make your link more valuable for readers, and they’ll visit your site, regularly.

Link Building Scam # 7 – Putting Resource Layer To Your Site

Don’t pay for anyone if they try to put link page, blogs, or any other sorts of resource layer to your site, ever. Since Google are dropping sites using normal link building methods, many scam SEO companies are turning towards unethical ways to add blogs, comments, threads, and links to site that has nothing to do with your site. For example, if your site is about ‘pool pumps’, but these scam SEO companies put links on sites or categories that specialize in, let’s say, ‘weight loss program.’

Not only it’s a hoax, but also a waste of your precious time, effort, and money. Most importantly, your site may get penalized for it if Google suspects the links are used only for search engine ranking and not to add value to readers. Google is rigid about this type of SEO Link building method and they keep off site using these methods. In fact, the process isn’t even maintained by real people – it’s an automated process.