Newsletters, press releases, success stories, brochures … the PDF documents on your website contain plenty of great content. But is that content visible to search engines?
If your PDFs aren’t created properly, search engines will have a difficult time indexing the document which can render all that great content totally invisible (yes, PDFs can and DO show up in search results).
Here are 7 useful tips for optimizing PDFs to ensure SEO benefit and search engine visibility.
It seems every bit of communication we see coming out of Sage these days has some sort of plug push promotion for Zift syndicated content.
So, what is syndicated content?
In a nutshell, it’s ready-made blocks of content that you plug in to your website.
But here’s the problem …
We do a lot of press release writing for Sage and Microsoft partners.
And once they see how powerful the combination of content, keyword optimization, and newswire distribution can be, they get excited and want to put more press releases out. But inevitably, they end up asking themselves the same question …
What the heck are we going to come up with that’s “newsworthy”?
You’ve heard that blogging is essential for small business, that it brings traffic by the thousands to your website, and that Google loves the fresh and frequently-updated content a blog offers.
So you went and got yourself a blog, posted a few entries and … well, nothing happened. No spike in traffic, no increase in revenue, and no improvement in your Google search results. So what’s the deal?
One of the most common issues is that your content sucks!
But assuming the content on your blog offers something of value to your readers, the lack of activity might just be as simple as this … no one can find it.
Even great content needs a little help getting found by readers and indexed by Google. So here are a few SEO tips every blogger needs to know.
In the beginning, there was keyword density, metadata, and other SEO tactics that were fairly easy to figure out and enabled you to dominate top search results. Sure, Google would continually tweak their algorithm and keep you on your feet. But achieving decent search results for your website was still heavily influenced by on-page tactics.
Then along came social media and, more recently, the Google Panda (aka “Farmer”) update. Almost overnight, SEO got a lot harder as Google got a lot smarter.
If you’ve asked yourself that question recently, your website may be a victim of the recent Google Panda Update … an update to Google’s algorithm that went live earlier this year with the intention of snuffing out Link Farms and spammy websites that were “gaming” the search results. One of the consequences (intended or not) was to penalize websites that contain what Google considers “low quality content.” If you’ve been to the Juice Marketing blog before, you know that we believe strongly that Content Is King. And with the Google Panda update, it’s the King, Queen, and the Castle!
Here’s a link to a video posted on the SEOmoz website that offers some interesting insights about how Panda has fundamentally changed SEO.
If you can’t see the video embedded below, click here.
So you’ve got a great success story … maybe even a few of them. Now what?
Too often, we’ve seen fantastic success stories and glowing customer testimonials get shoved to the back of a corporate kit or buried among thousands of files on a network. Success stories can be fabulous marketing tools if used properly. So we thought we’d share a few tips for putting those stories to work.
Sage and Microsoft Customer Success Stories
By now, most small businesses recognize that Content is King. If you don’t, take a quick look at 5 Reasons You Need Great Content. That said, most Sage and Microsoft VARs have trouble coming up enough content to consistently stay top of mind with customers and prospects. That’s why we thought we’d share the results of a recent survey conducted by Marketing Sherpa that identifies the most effective tactics for developing marketing content.
The Results
First, let’s take a look at the results in the image below …
Here’s what the chart shows as the top 5 tactics for developing marketing content …
This essentially means that you’re repackaging content that you already have. For instance, maybe you’ve put together a couple of blog entries around a particular topic. You can combine multiple entries into a longer white paper. Vise versa, maybe you have a Sage or Microsoft White paper and decide to break it up into bite-sized pieces and create individual articles. The basic idea here is to take a look at your library of existing content including press releases, white papers, blog posts, success stories, older articles, etc. and see if you can re-use that content in a different format.
This one is pretty straight forward. The more success stories and testimonials you have, the more content you can share and demonstrate your expertise.
This means that you’re looking beyond your marketing department and recruiting folks in other departments that may have thoughts or stories to share. We’ve seen Sage partners doing this on their blogs where they might have a consultant write an entry that shares an experience from the field or the details of a recent customer support request. It’s compelling content that demonstrates your unique experience.
At 27%, this isn’t the most popular approach for B2B companies. But Marketing Sherpa does point out that the challenge here is finding a marketing agency that really understands your market … particularly smaller niche markets. They need to understand the industry language and use it in the right context. A challenge that’s prevalent (technical jargon, that is) in the Sage and Microsoft VAR channel.
To be honest, I don’t know what they’re eluding to here and Marketing Sherpa didn’t provide details on this survey response. It sounds like marketing gibberish … but I’m guessing that the companies that responded with this answer are connecting with colleagues, customers, and other advocates through social media and encouraging those folks to write favorable articles and reviews.
At Juice Marketing, we’re cranking out content all the time for Sage and Microsoft resellers, ISVs, and channel partners. And since we specialize in VAR Marketing for technology providers, we understand the lingo. So check us out next time you need off-the-shelf technology articles, a success story, a press release, a Sage product newsletter, or anything else from the wide range of VAR Marketing Programs we offer.
Perhaps best of all, you save a bunch of dough because we’re a Sage Preferred Vendor and pre-approved for at least 60% co-op reimbursement (more in some cases).
How are YOU generating content to stay top of mind with customers and prospects? Do any of these tactics work for you? Do you have others that are effective and not mentioned here? We’d love to hear your feedback.
By now, you’ve probably felt the need to start blogging because everyone is doing it and experts say it’s good for business. But if you’ve dipped your toe in only to discover that blogging can be quite a bit of work (especially if you’re not much of a writer), you might be asking yourself, “Remind me again why this is good for business?”
Here’s why …
Simply put, a blog improves search visibility for your website because the continuous stream of fresh content (assuming you’re posting regularly) attracts search engines. Compare this against your home page content, for instance, that (in most cases) probably hasn’t changed much in years.
Fresh content and keywords = more visitors to your blog and website
Tip: It’s a good idea to keep your company’s keywords in mind and try to incorporate them in your blog content as much as practical.
A blog allows you to express your unique voice, personality, and thought leadership. In a lot of cases, this is a refreshing change from the more stoic corporate tone or product/service-oriented verbiage on your website. Engaging blog entries give your company a distinct character, unique voice, and competitive advantage.
Tip: A blog isn’t the place to post content that’s recycled from a brochure or another page on your website. Provide your unique perspective … and don’t “pitch” with every blog entry. Too many blogs are dominated by Sage product promos and boring corporate news.
Like most small businesses, you probably have customers and prospects that have visited your website once and haven’t been back since. And why would they? Once they found the info they needed, there was no reason to come back. But if you set up a blog that has Personality, demonstrates Thought Leadership, and is easy to stumble across on Google, you’ll get more traffic to your website and more repeat visitors. They may even subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed to keep tabs on your newest blog postings.
Another benefit is the ability for your readers to provide feedback/comments, creating a two-way dialogue that provides valuable information about the issues that are important to your customers and prospects.
Web pages = static with few repeat visitors
Blog = dynamic, two-way “conversations”
What was once just an online diary for personal use has become a critically important B2B marketing tool. But it takes time for your blog to get noticed, be indexed on search engines, and create buzz … so be patient and stay the course. As with ANY marketing initiative, consistency is perhaps the MOST important ingredient for success.
What’s YOUR experience … is blogging worthwhile or a waste of time?
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