As you go back and as you read through that, you’ll better understand what I’m gonna talk about in a second here which is – how to really create good local content for a massage therapist in Victoria BC.
In that last blog post and Soundcloud recording, I talked about how a massage therapist can create a good piece of content for the runners in Victoria BC. And I think I pretty much said write an article that targets “massage therapy for runners in Victoria BC”. But I didn’t really talk too much about what to put in it this piece of content. And here’s what you need to do to put in your content to make it really powerful.
While doing some link research last night for a client, I came across a fantastic website full of useful information. It deals with travel industry and that industry, along with real estate are two of the easiest to create useful content for prospecting.
Many people think of SEO and their websites as one page and that they can only attract people to that one page. That’s not the case at all. You can create so many webpages on your website targeting people at different stages of the buying cycle. You just need to sit down and think of the questions and information people are looking for at every phase of the buying cycle.
So what was this resource I stumbled upon last night?
It was a website created by a Victoria BC hostel, inn and suites property Ocean Island called Ocean Island Victoria Guide. It’s full of useful information for travellers to Victoria and even locals who are looking for things to do in Victoria.
The websites lack of optimization and lead capturing doesn’t hurt what a great resource it is and who knows, they probably have a different marketing strategy driving people to that website.
Now the main market they are targeting is people thinking about coming to Victoria and looking for things to do. If they stumble onto the Ocean Island Victoria Guide, they’ll be on the site for a few minutes. Eventually they will see an banner ad with rates for the Ocean Island Hostel.
Targeting Different Stages Of the Buying Cycle
It’s brilliant yet simple.
Here you have a lodging property trying to get their business and website in front of travellers. Most properties are trying to target people with their minds already made up they want to visit the city of Victoria and who would search “hostel Victoria BC”.
No doubt their website ranks high for that term. But only looking at this stage of the buying (decision in this case) process, they’re also targeting people who are thinking about coming to Victoria and thus looking for things to do. These people aren’t fully sure they want to visit the city. If they land on the Ocean Island Victoria Guide, they might be convinced to visit Victoria and will then look at booking accommodation. What lodging property is going to on the top of mind here? Ocean Island’s hostel, inn and suites!
Another market they seem to be targeting is locals and trying to get them to come down to the Ocean Island Cafe & Lounge for live music and drinks. I even found some cool things to do in the city.
Think Like A Consumer
So how can you emulate what Ocean Island has done and create useful content for your business and website?
Think like a consumer.
No matter what product or service you sell, people are searching for information at every step of the buying cycle. You have to create content in the form of articles or blog posts for every step. If they’re properly optimized, you will get targeted people to other webpages of your website outside of the main page.
You have to think of your website like a bike wheel with various spokes. Each spoke is a webpage (blog post or article) that targets someone searching about your product or service at a different stage of the buying cycle.
This content will also be helpful for people who land on the main page of your website. When they land on your main page and see that you have loads of articles about the product or service you sell, they’ll most likely read those to learn more. When they read more, they’re on your website longer and not on your competitors.
Information Is SEO & Content Marketing
People are looking for information. Give it to them!
Sit down and think about every step of your offerings in the buying cycle.
If it’s countertops, someone might be searching broadly for “countertop materials?” while another person might have already found the type they want are now looking at cost per square foot.
In this case you need to write one article on the types of countertop materials where you educate people on the materials and they’re pros and cons. Then you write another article on countertop material cost per square foot.
Another benefit of creating useful content is that you build trust and credibility with visitors. There are lots of people who are in business who are not trustworthy nor credible. This makes people skeptical. By having useful content on your website, you will turn skeptics into paying clients.
Not only are you building trust and credibility with website visitors, you’re also building it with the search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo want to provide searchers with quality websites that have lots of useful information so the searcher doesn’t have to visit the middle of the first page of their search result to find what they are looking for.
You don’t want to be the website at the bottom of the first page. You want to be the website ranking in the top 3. Take the advice of this blog post and you’ll be well on your way and ahead of your competition.
Every time it seems I sign up for something, I get new spam emails. It has caused me to be cautious of what websites I give my email too.
I’m not alone.
You are cautious. And so are your website visitors.
Enter the Canadian Spam Anti Legislation (CASL). As far as I know Canada is the first country to take such a stand. It’s not prefect however.
Why?
Because most of the spam we all get is from other countries. Very rarely do I ever get a spammy email from someone in Canada.
But it still has many Canadian business owners scared to use email marketing.
You shouldn’t be.
Read on to learn how to protect yourself from the CASL.
How To Protect Yourself from the CASL
If you have been collection email address from current and potential clients for some time now, it’s best to get people to resubscribe to your email newsletter.
Victoria Naturopaths Dr. Shannon and Dr. Alexis had close to 600 emails on their list. Then the CASL came in.
Cautious, they wanted to follow the rules. So they wanted to get people on that list to resubscribe. We drafted up and email and sent it out.
In doing so they and you need to have three requirements covered. So if you are starting a new email list, you must follow these requirements.
Obtain Consent
There are two types of consent, implied and expressed.
As you can see you want to get express consent from people. When building a list online, that’s easy to do.
If you get collect people’s email addresses in your store front, be sure to disclose what you plan to use the email address for. If you plan to add it to your database and market to them, tell that you you plan to email them about your businesses sales and promotions.
Provide Identification Information
At the bottom of your email that goes out to someone confirming their subscription to your emails, list who you are.
Provide your business name, address and phone number at the bottom.
Once again a provider like Aweber will get you to add that information when you setup your list.
Provide and Unsubscribe Mechanism
At the end of every email you send out, provide a link for people to unsubscribe from your list. Aweber or any provider will do that automatically when you setup your list.
Record Keeping
Once someone subscribes to your email list, keep a record of that.
Any email software program already has script double opt in requirements. But when someone does say yes to your emails, they’ll get an email confirming once again they want your emails. They’ll have to click a link again.
A record of that will be kept in your account settings. This way if someone does file a spam request to the CASL against you, you have a record saying they subscribed.
It’s highly suggested you use an email software program like Aweber.
The fines are extremely high, but by following the three requirements above, you will have covered yourself.
You’re about to or have already launched a new website.
Is it a redesign or is this a new website for your new business? No matter the reason you need to market your fancy new website. After all the point of having a website is to drive traffic to it so you can generate more sales.
Follow the 10 steps I’m about to layout. These steps will help you track visitors, get noticed by the search engines and let you know if the search engines find anything wrong with your site.
1) Install Google Analytics
I’m amazed at how many people don’t have Analytics setup on their website. Do you? If not, the launch of your new website is a good time to start.
Even if you were tracking data on your old website, you’ll need to set up analytics on your new website.
Analytics can give you amazing insights about your website visitors. I’ve already blogged about how to install and analyze Google analytics data. Read that post so you can ensure you’re tracking your website visitors data.
2) Install Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
Google wants to help you succeed. They offer lots of free services. Webmaster tools is one of those.
Webmaster tools provides information about the health of your website. They do this while their crawlers are on your site. They’ll let you know of any issues that might be hindering your search engine rankings.
You can read this post to set up Bing Webmaster tools. People do use Bing to search and you shouldn’t forget about them.
3) Add 301 redirects from old urls to new ones
Chances are good that the url structure of your website is going to change.
Let’s say your contact page has been at http://yoursite.com/contact-us/. That url has been indexed for years by the search engines. So if people search for your contact page a few months after your new website has launched, Google or Bing will display the above page as a result.
But let’s say your new website’s contact page is http://yoursite.com/contact/. Those people who searched for your contact page and click on the search result directing them to the http://yoursite.com/contact-us/url will land on a blank page.
Obviously, you don’t want to piss people off.
In this case, you want to use a 301 redirect. So people visiting the /contact-us/ url get redirected to the /contact/url.
This is very handy if you change your domain name and still own the old domain name.
4) Create new sitemap and Submit to search engines
A sitemap is a listing of all the webpages/urls on your website. Once your new website is live, you’ll want to create a new sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing using their respective webmaster tools.
This should happen before the website is live and being tested on an old server. But you want to make sure all your links to point to pages.
Use this tool to scan your website’s links to see if any are broken.
6) Test website speed
Your website’s new idol is Usain Bolt. Yep, your website needs to be fast like Mr. Bolt.
If your new website takes too long to load, Google will not want to promote your website to searches as they have to wait too long for your page to load. They want to provide searchers with the results they need fast. In saying so, having a fast loading website helps big time.
Everyone has a smartphone. And a good data plan to boot.
The chances are good 35%+ of people visiting your website are doing so on a smartphone. The question remains, is your website frustrating mobile visitors?
If your website is not a sieve and focused on capturing leads, you’ll have contact forms listed all over.
Make sure you test every webform and make sure the proper person is getting the email requests. For this website, I create a new form for each page I post a form on. That way I can track what url someone contacted me from to see what pages convert better.
9) Update website in business directories and Social Networks
This applies only if you have a new domain for your website. Make sure your website is listed properly in business directories and social profiles.
Simply search your business name to find all the business directories you are listed in. Then contact them to have the link changed to your new domain. This is important for backlinking and search rankings.
10) Claim new business listings
As I just mentioned backlinking is huge for your search rankings. You can get backlinks from business directories like Manta, Yellowpages and Yelp.
The chances are good that your web designer hasn’t properly optimized your website for search. From the content to the page titles, your website needs to be properly optimized so search engines can better understand what your website is about and what search terms you’re are trying to target.
Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. It’s my fifth post in a series of the ten best free Internet marketing tools you should be using.
This post will cover Hubspot’s Marketing Grader. It’s like Webmaster tools but it analyzes much more. It grades your social media, SEO, blogging, mobile and lead generation.
To have all those areas graded, simply head over to Hubspot Marketing Grader then enter your website and email. Give it a couple of seconds and you’ll see where you’re strong and weak. Then what to do about the weaknesses’.
Pretty simple and like I said, it’s a short post. But a useful one.
As a side note I want you to learn about how Hubspot markets.
While doing some link research last night for a client, I came across a fantastic website full of useful information. It deals with travel industry and that industry, along with real estate are two of the easiest to create useful content for prospecting.
