Why do you have a website for your business? You have it to draw attention to your company, introduce your products or service, inform your current and potential customers about your company, right? In short, it is made for people. NOT for Search engines. Read on and learn, how customer experience optimization (CEO) will make search engines happy as well as your visitors. I will explain why it is important to write for the people, not for search engines. Well, you might ask yourself: But how can it be any good, if I have a great website, but nobody finds it? or Why is everybody talking about SEO, then?

To answer these questions, you have to understand the goals of search engines. Google, Bing and all the other search engines have created a complex algorithm to find the most suitable and relevant content for the particular search query that was typed in the search field. This algorithm includes functionality of the website (how user friendly is your website), keywords, authority of the site (through back links t), recentness (regularly updated content) and some other ingredients that the search engines do not want to share.

In short: Search engines try to read the mind of the searchers and what information is most useful to them taking relevancy, authority and recentness into account!

While in the past some so-called “black-hat” SEO experts tried to cheat the search engines, for example by adding hundreds of irrelevant keywords to sites to draw traffic to the websites (they hid them by giving the keywords the same color as the background; Result: People searching for family vacations ended up on Viagra-selling sites etc.), and other shady techniques were successful for a short period of time. But guess what, Google and the other search engines figured that out pretty quickly and punished these sites by banning them from their search results. Why? Because it did not make the searchers happy! They did not get the results they wanted. And this made the search engines unhappy.

In short: Irrelevant search results will make searchers unhappy and the customer experience is negative. Search Engines want to make searchers happy by providing useful results!

So how do you make searchers and search engines happy? The first thing you should keep in mind is that not the quantity, but the quality of your traffic is important. Unless your website only makes money from selling banner ads based on impressions, you do not have to care about the volume of your website traffic. The important thing is what your visitors do when they are on your website. If you get large amounts of visitors that are not looking for what you have to offer, all you gain is a high bounce rate (visitors that only visit one page of your site and leave instantly), but in most cases, you will not convert them. Guess what, these visitors will not  have a great customer experience on your website, because you could not fulfill their expectations they had when they clicked on your result.

In short: Don’t worry about traffic volume, care about traffic quality! Focus on driving visitors to your website, that are actually interested in your company, product or service!

Customer experience optimization means that you focus on reaching people that already have an interest in your services, products or companies. Converting these visitors into customers and buyers will be much easier than somebody that was actually looking for something else and accidentally ended up on your website. Instead of trying to increase traffic, focus on increasing your conversion rates. REMEMBER: There are enough people out there that are ready to buy your product! It makes much more sense to invest in finding them, than to mass-market to everybody! Learn how to do keyword research and use it efficiently, on every single text you publish!

In short: Provide a positive customer experience to your website visitors by offering relevant content to them.Therefore, using keywords is important, but use the right ones to drive the right people to your website.

I still did not answer the questions from the top, so bare with me just a little longer, ok? As I mentioned before, search results are based on many different factors. The search engines give some limited insights on what they take into consideration, but there is no definite information on the details. They don’t want to share this information, as this would make it easier for “cheaters” to manipulate the results in their favor. So what do SEO experts do? They provide educated guesses on what works and what doesn’t. Nobody really knows, what the search engines take into account, so how can you optimize your website when you don’t know what is important? In addition to that, search engines constantly work on their algorithms and it changes all the time. This means, what your SEO expert found out the day before through an experiment, could be outdated today. Providing great customer experience to your website visitors on the other hand is the goal of search engines. Great customer experience is what Google, Bing and other search engines are striving for. When you write for people, search engines will find you. So why do you run after the search engines by doing SEO when you can lead search engines the way?

In short: Search engine optimization follows search engines, search engines follow great customer experience! Who do you think will win this race – SEO or CEO?

What are your thoughts on this? Do you focus on SEO or customer experience?

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How to Create an Online Corporate Identity for your Company?

Brand Recognition, or what is CI?

An important point about creating an online Corporate Identity for your company, is to make your brand recognizable. You want readers, followers to find and recognize you. But how do you do that? Well, that is why you need a Corporate Identity for. It includes your logo, domain, your company font, company colors and also your tone of voice  By following all the tips below, you do everything for readers, customers, followers to know who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Your online CI defines your company, and let your customers recognize you through different tools.

Your Corporate Identity defines your company. You need to choose it carefully and establish it strongly because it is attached to your company for its life time. It is what represents who and what you are on the web. Whether it is online or on the market your CI must have strong impact on your target market and be appealing. There are a few things to know on how to create an Online Corporate Identity for your Company to make the impact desired.

Avatar

To  create an online CI for your company, you need to create an avatar with your logo, preferably a customized logo for each profile, as the image sizes differ from profile to profile. You want to create a great first impression and not have a fuzzy or distorted profile picture ruin your grand introduction to potential customers. Make sure you create your avatar the way you want it, and take time to do it. Changing it will make your online CI weak and confuse your followers.

User Name and Logo

Select only one user name for different forums or when putting comment. An exeption might be when the Username is limited, so create a “short” version of your company and stick to that one as your alternative. Always write your username exactly the same way. Keep your logo the same. Don’t change the colors, the font nor the style. By keeping a steady image representation of your company, fraud is less likely to be possible, and you underline the cohesion and determination of your business.

Tone of Voice

When writing it is important to be consistent. You also establish an online CI for your company through your writing style and the tone of voice you use. Make sure to pick one that is appropriate with the image of your company you try to depict and adapted to the target market you go after. You can’t write very technical posts and then switch the way you explain things to a ” for dummies” style. If you keep one writing style and one tone of voice, your readers will always know you are the one writing , and you do know what you’re talking about. You want to make sure that every subject seems as important as the other ones.

Backlinks – Domain

Remember that the domain name you choose is the name that will represent your business. It is, after your logo,  the far most important part of your company’s CI  because it states who you are, what you do, and how you will be identified and recognized. When you state  your domain in backlinks, make sure once again to be consistent. Always use www.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainname.com – pick one and stick to it. You want to make it easy for people to remember it and recognize it. Also if you decide to use uppercase letters, make sure to always use them to write your domain the same way every single time. Your online CI will be stronger if you always use the same format and style – choose from www.yourdomainname.com or www.YourDomainName.com, and never change it. Show stability.

Remember in what ever you do, constancy in how you do it is very important to establish an Online CI for your company. Brainstorm, choose, and don’t change the tools you use to create it.

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Best Keyword Optmization Tips for Your Blog

Keyword Search – Keyword Search – Keyword Search!!! All Bloggers know how important Keywords are for any blog post to rank well with Search Engines. Keywords are your key to a good position on Google and other Search Engines and without proper keyword research and keyword optimization, your great and valuable content might be lost on page 276 of the search results. So here is some advice on how to do keyword research and how to optimize your content for your target audience!

Keyword Search Tools

There are many Keyword Research tools out there, some of them for free and some of them some offer their services for a monthly fee. I usually use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. It is a free and easy to use Keyword tool and definitely my most favorite keyword tool! Just select the correct language and location, enter your keyword or keyword phrase and the captcha and hit the button “Get Keyword ideas”. Google will then do a Keyword search for you and spit out a list of related Keywords, as well as how many searches were made for this keyword/keyword phrase in the past month in your defined language and location, as well as the global keyword search volume. Unter the Show/Hide Columns Drop Down menu you can also enable the “Estimated Avg. CPC”, so the estimated average Cost per Click, if you chose to run a Google Ads campaign. The great advantage of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is that it also gives you good results for other languages. On the negative side, though, when you export your keyword search results, it will only export the keywords and not the search volume. This means, you either need to have a brain like an elephant or if you are like me, just do it right before your blog post!

Long Tail Keyword Phrases

When you do your keyword research, you should keep in mind, that it will be easier to rank well for longer keyword phrases as for short one-word keywords. For example, when you search for Grand Canyon, you will have 17,400,000 search results, but when you search for attractions Grand Canyon, then you only have 1,200,000 search results. Of course, in your keyword research you will see that about 2,740,000 people search for Grand Canyon, and only 12,100 search for attractions Grand Canyon. So why would you want to optimize your blog post for the keywords attractions Grand Canyon when so much more people search for Grand Canyon? Well the reason is simple: When you optimize for Grand Canyon, you will have a very slim chance to make it onto the first couple of pages of Google, but when you optimize for the keyword phrase attractions Grand Canyon you will not only have a better chance on ranking high for attractions Grand Canyon, but also have the same chances to appear somewhere on the Grand Canyon search. So you don’t have anything to lose, right!

How often and where should you use your keywords in a blog post

When you use your keywords or keyword phrases, it is not only important to include them several times , but also, where and how you include them. Always remember to include your most important keywords in the headline and in the url (when you use pretty links), but also in the subheadings within your blog post. Also, try to make your keywords stand out, so make them bold. Google will recognize that this word has a special meaning and is important when you highlight it! When you include images or links in your blog post, include your keywords in the title.

However, it is also important that you do not stuff your blog post with keywords. You should also keep in mind, that you are writing for your readers, not for search engines. But on the other hand, it is also important to know, that most of your readers do not read your blog post from the beginning to end, rather they are skimming through your text. That means, they will most likely read over half your keywords and won’t notice if you use the same word or phrase within one paragraph. So as a rule of thumb on how many times you should use your keywords: Depending on the length of the blog post, but I would suggest you use your keywords and keyword phrases a minimum of 5 times for short blog posts and about 7-8 times for longer ones. This should not be to hard, if you include your keywords in your headlines, image and link descriptions and then also within your text. Important: Remember that one count is always for one version of the keyword! Your blog post will not be optimized, when you change the keywords and use several versions. For example, do not use keyword, keywords, key word, important keywords, best keywords, keyword search, keyword research, but all of them just once! This way, you will not be able to compete with a blog post that used fewer versions, but several times.

Including keywords and keyword phrases into your blog post is very important and you should not start writing your blog post before you did your keyword research.

Do you have any more questions about keywords, keyword research or have a fool proof tip that has brought you great success? Please leave us a comment! This is very much appreciated!

If you want to learn more about writing blog posts for your company blog, here is some additional reading:

Why you should avoid pushy sales talk on your business blog

Blogging for Business 101 Presentation

How to start your business blog

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What has changed in advertisement and marketing in the past 75 years? Well, a lot, to say the least! While people in the 50s and 60s were brand loyal, advertisement enjoying dream customers, people of today’s world suffer from over-exposure to advertisement. Advertisement is everywhere and marketers try hard to invade the last spaces that are still free of advertisment to get even more exposure for their multiple brands that have lost all of their competitive edge! Rather then following the old ways of mass-exposure, the new way is to provide relevant information to the people that are open to receive this information!

Check out this video by Scholz & Friends, a European Network of Marketing and Advertisement Agencies shows you the dramatic shift in marketing reality! Enjoy!

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How to Write Optimized Newsletters

Today’s technology offers many possibilities to reach more customers more rapidly. But this also means that customers are overwhelmed with all the information sent to them constantly and they can hardly keep track of all this information. So how do you get your subscriber to really read your newsletter? It is important that your customers get the information in a different way, more personalized, that will keep them interested and unique. Quality content is the principle behind email newsletter!
To write a good email newsletter there are a few tips to follow…. Here are the most important points to keep in mind when writing a newsletter:

Objective of the newsletter

The first important step to take while writing a newsletter is to ask “why am I writing a newsletter?”. You need to know the goals behind this letter.
A newsletter is written to communicate with the customer, to inform the customers and give them updates about products, services, or the company in general. A newsletter is an important marketing tool allowing you to promote your company, but also to stay in touch with your customers and keep them interested and aware of your products and services.

Top Quality Content

After determining the purpose of your newsletter, you are ready to select the content matching the goals of this letter.
- A good start is to present your business: maybe a specific area that needs more attention from your customers or that has been interesting more and more customers.
- Present a new product or service; or present a special promotion or event; but be careful to not be to pushy, you want the customer to keep reading your newsletter without feeling that he is encouraged to buy from you, but that it is up to him.
- Select an article about your company, your products or the industry you represent. Bring awareness to your customer about what is said and done. You can also select a few links to support the information given there.
- Bring up one or a couple “frequently asked questions” with a short answer for them.
- You can also include testimonies from customers.
- Last but not least, don’t forget to specifically ask for feedback from your readers. Don’t be afraid of negative feedback, but recognize this as a chance to improve and strengthen your company.
There are a lot more ideas to include in a newsletter. Try to follow a format and adapt it to the needs of the moment.

Section it up!

Then you need to organize the information to broadcast. Make it easy for your readers to find the information he or she needs. Highlight your main points and most importantly:  make the information accessible. Remember it is a newsletter… meaning you are giving just a few information, updates and maybe presenting a new product or service – but it’s not a whole newspaper: Get to the point! Be concise, clear and efficient. You must select the most important topics of the week, month, or quarter (depending how often you send out your newsletter). Rather than giving away all the information at one, include “Teasers” that will entice your readers to click on the link to read the full story on your website. The customer must be able to learn from that newsletter and not be overwhelmed with information, lose interest and not finish reading it. This is your promotion tool!

And finally: How to format a newsletter

Pick HTML or Text format depending on the impact you are trying to create. If you use HTML format you can use colors, pictures, even videos if you need, to present your ideas clearly and support the message you are trying to pass to the customer. And if you hesitate, use templates – why not?! They are there to be used and help you after all. I personally like the ones offered by ConstantContact for email newsletters. HTML Newsletters are more appealing to the customers that are interested in your product or service, but will have a lesser rate of return with customers that are not familiar with your company and do not yet trust your source as they have to download the pictures first. If you use the text format, you are more limited on the esthetic aspect but you may be reaching out more efficiently to customers who are looking for a more personal feel to it. You can balance the pros and cons of both format and decide which match best your goals (Mark Brownlow gives you a few tips in Chosing an email format.)

Re-read it from a customer point of view, be satisfied and click and sent!

In a nutshell: a newsletter is a strong marketing tool used to publish news about your company, announce events and or promotions, post articles and documents strengthening your place on the market and developing a mailing list while informing and reaching out more and more customers.

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Seth Godin’s Tribes Video

As promised, here is the video of Seth Gordin on his book “Tribes”! It is very informational and interesting, I watched it over and over and even bought the book! Enjoy!

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Seth Godin’s theory of tribes is a revolutionary new approach on marketing. In his book “Tribes”, Godin explains the nature of tribes, the characteristics of successful tribe leaders and most importantly, what the advantages of tribes are to organizations. In case you have not heard from Seth Godin’s Tribes theory, I will give you a short overview about his theory of building tribes for your buiness and also share his video with you!

Tribes have four main characteristics:
1. Tribes are communities with a common interest or believe that is shared by each individual that is part of this tribe
2. The individuals within the tribe are connected to each other
3. The tribe is dynamic and changes constantly and also promotes change
4. A tribe needs a leader

Tribes have many forms, but the individuals in the tribe all share at least one commonality. This can be an interest, believe or even something superficial as a certain style of clothing. Tribe members believe in the idea behind the tribe, the leader of the tribe and their fellow tribe members. People want to belong to a group that they can identify with and they are a part of. People want to belong and share their ideas.

Example: This behavior is very obvious when you look at the fans of a sports club for example. They wear the team colors on game day, some even go to extremes and paint their faces and color their hair. They do that so they can show the rest of the world that they belong to a certain group that supports a certain cause. The same is true for the military and a reason for their uniforms is that they need to identify in a split second, whether the person in front of them is fighting for the same cause or if they should shoot at the man. Their common “uniform” is a way to identify other members of this tribe and makes it possible for them to connect. It is very important that the members of the tribe are connected to each other.  The certain way of dressing, colors or other means of identification are symbols that make it easier for members of the group to connect with other group members to share and exchange ideas.

The internet and its many applications, such as Twitter, Facebook and hundreds of other platforms make it easy for tribe members to connect, but they are merely tools to make a tribe visible and accessible. In our “connected” age, people tend to be more willing to openly share their opinion, whether it is through blogs, profiles or tweets. This makes it easier to find like-minded people and connect with them. But what creates a tribe is the idea behind it, not the method of connecting the tribe members. Tribes are a movement that is waiting to happen and consist of people that want to be energized. It is essential to know that tribes are dynamic and constantly changing. People join a tribe as long as it represents their commonality and leave it, when it does not any longer. But while they are part of this tribe, they will do anything to promote the idea behind the tribe. The internet makes it easy to get things done, the only thing missing for a successful tribe is a great leader. The internet also makes it easy to grow tribes, but size is not that important, but interconnectivity is. Blogging and twittering tighten a tribe as ideas are exchanged, revised and improved, while other platforms, such as Facebook merely connect people. A blog that has 100 true followers and readers will be more successful than a person with 500 friends on Facebook when it comes to promote change.

Leaders:
Seth Godin says in his book that tribes need a leader and a leader needs a tribe. The difference of a group of people and a tribe is that a tribe has a leader, which motivates the tribe, creates a platform for the tribe members to connect, empowers them and uses the leverage of the tribe to promote the idea that stands behind this movement.
Movement – this word indicates change and dynamic. Tribes promote change through the constant interchanging of ideas and suggestions to improve. They have a dynamic that does not allow status quo. But this does not happen automatically. This group dynamic needs to be channeled into a certain direction and therefore needs a successful leader. As most people see change as a risk, they naturally want to maintain the status quo. But to achieve outstanding things, people need to take risks. Successful tribe leaders overcome this fear and do not care about the discouraging comments they receive from people that do not share their believe. Great tribe leaders all have one thing in common: they are the trouble makers within an organization. They are heretics that question the way things have always been done before. They have the courage to speak up against their superiors and promote change from with, often from the bottom up.

Furthermore, leaders need to be authentic. The tribe will feel instantly, when the leader uses the leverage of the tribe to promote himself rather than the cause of the tribe and will no longer support the tribe. Tribes cannot be bought and that is why they are so powerful. They are true to themselves and the cause they are supporting and so should be the leader of the tribe. A good tribal leader will use the power of his or her tribe as leverage to promote change and the cause of the tribe. Today, everybody can become a leader, even the smallest employee in a large corporation. All they need is a passion to change things, have great ideas and overcome the fear to take risks. True leaders are not managers, they do not tell their followers what to do, but encourage them to come up with their own ideas and share them with others to improve them constantly. Remarkable ideas will spread and if the idea was not that remarkable, at least you tried!

Advantages for Organizations:
Tribes can be a huge advantage for organizations, whether internal or external tribes. Internal tribes can promote organizational changes that improve and optimize the company’s performance. Every CEO knows, that status quo is deadly and will kill any company. Constant adjustment to the market’s needs and improvement are the only way to stay on top. But the fear of change often hinders them to promote change. This change is often brought up by people way down the organizational ladder, as they are closer to the customer and actually perform the work that was laid out in theory by the officers of the company. As tribal movement does not consider hierarchy, people feel empowered and will be more satisfied with their work. They have become part of a team that makes a company successful and want to excel in doing so to support the team. They are no longer human computers that perform mindless task and receive a paycheck at the end of the month for not thinking.
External tribes, which in most cases consist of customers of the company, also provide a huge advantage for organizations. A tribal customer base will be loyal to the company, in good times and in bad ones. Every marketer knows that it is easier and cheaper to maintain a satisfied customer base than finding new customers on a regular basis. But this external tribe will not only buy the product or services happily, they will also market it to their friends, colleagues and family. Word-of-mouth still is the most effective way of marketing and even Google will have a long way to go to become that efficient. Read here, what Seth sais about managing Tribes!

If  you want to learn more about Seth Godin’s Tribe theory, watch this video here!

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