Building a brand online can be challenging if you don’t know what you are doing, it can even be more daunting if you have to shell out a ton of cash for it. But there is a world beyond costly PPC’s (Google’s Pay-Per-Click), and independent marketing companies that many of us aren’t familiar with. A world where having an identity or building a brand online can be cost-effective to virtually costing nothing. Here’s what you need to do to get frequent glimpses of this obscure world:
- Connect The Social Media Dots: Social media is a key player when it comes to building a lasting brand online, but many of us are doing it wrong. Merely having a presence does nothing significant for your identity. Your brand and identity can only flourish with the consistent use of social media not just for promoting products/services but for communicating with your target audience. To further boost your likelihood of creating a lasting brand, all your social networks must be linked with each other. Use the same logo and the same color scheme for profiles and backgrounds to remind your audience and visitors of your brand.
- Create Unique Content: It’s not a secret anymore that content is king, online businesses have been built solely on the back of content; and so can a brand. Social networks and content are like bread and butter, they go extremely well with each other and one makes the other better. With the forceful emergence of social networks, delivering content has become a bit effortless. Use this to your advantage and “get known for something” when creating and distributing your content. You can decide to go funny, goofy, serious, or anything else you want to be known for when people read your content. When your brand starts getting known for something, you are on the right path to creating a lasting impression online.
- Give Something For Nothing: If you have a product/service of great value, the fastest way to get a buzz around your brand is to give it out for free. People gravitate towards free stuff, and they talk about it even more especially if it’s worth something to them and they paid nothing for it. Word of mouth is the best form of marketing they say, a successful word of mouth campaign always transcends beyond marketing improving all other parts of the business including branding.
3 Main Components of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO Defined: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or unpaid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
–Wikipedia
Why is SEO important?
Search Engine Optimization gets you found on search engine by people searching for the information your writing about. When done correctly it will give you what seems like an “unfair advantage” over your competition.
To successfully SEO a piece of content online there are 3 key components that Google takes into consideration; Activity, Back-links, and Content.
The other search engines, Bing, Ask, etc., also take these 3 components into consideration, but their algorithm is not the exact same as Google’s.
Activity
Activity is an aspect that was introduced into the Google SEO system within the last couple of years. This component of Search Engine Optimization is based on how much interaction is going on with your site.
Activities that Improve your SEO ranking:
When a guest to your website…
- hits the “Facebook share” or “Facebook Like” button.
- tweets the post to their friends.
- leaves a comment
- posts your article to a social bookmarking site.
- The more activity on your site, the higher the site will rank on search engines.
- The logic is, if the visitors are sharing or commenting on the content of the site, it must be relevant to the topic at hand
Back-links
Back-links or Link-backs are inbound links to a website or blog.
The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page online.
You can receive back-links by…
- Posting Relevant information about a product in a Forum, and then linking to your article “for more details…”
- Writing or Rehashing Articles to EzArticles, PR Reports, and Squido. Link Back to your site.
- Having Others Re post your content to these sites.
- Listing your site’s url in your social media profiles, such as youtube, facebook and twitter. In fact, having listings on these sites are starting to be “expected.”
- Be listed in Other’s Blogroll’s.
Content
Create content that is relevant to your keywords, and site’s niche, and then use even more keywords in the text. Create content that you are passionate about, would even write about, on one of your best days. Use the longhand form of Nouns, don’t shorten them.
“For example, if you wanted to write a post that piggybacked the traffic of Tony Robbins, whenever speaking about Tony Robbins, you should use his full name, and not just “he.” The more times you were to use the name, “Tony Robbins.” the more the content would SEO for his name. If you are a success coach and wanted to have your blog show up keyworded to Tony Robbins, you should write sentences like this one: “Tony Robins is a success and life coach who helps people achieve personal breakthroughs in their life and business.”
Remember: Your content should be passionate, relevant and valuable to your readers. It’s not just about doing a sales pitch.