It’s Important to Appreciate People’s Sensitivities

Serranos 2It’s not your imagination: People today are more sensitive than they used to be. Things that you wouldn’t think twice about saying or writing even a decade ago can get you into heaps of trouble today, especially online. Places like Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms are filled with people outraged about something somebody else posted.

So rather than getting your back up and standing your ground, it’s better to accept the new realities and appreciate people’s sensitivities rather than ignoring them. It’s all about making your business appealing to the largest possible audience.

Easily Offended

In today’s online culture, a lot of people are easily offended. As a result, “red flag” issues like people’s sexuality, race relations, and especially politics are best avoided altogether in places like blogs, social media posts, advertising copy, and other marketing materials.

When you publish something online, it lives in the digital world forever. So if somebody somewhere out there takes offense at what you have written, it can come back to haunt you years later. So it’s important that you think twice before hitting the “Publish” button if anything in your copy could be construed as offensive — even if you never meant to offend anybody

Proofread Copy

If you hire somebody else to write content for you, make sure you have the opportunity to proofread what they have written before it is published because it’s your name on the company masthead. If a contracted writer posts something that someone else finds offensive, you are the one who will be held accountable.

The last thing you want in today’s digital business environment is to be on the defensive over something you wrote or said online. It’s bad for your reputation and it’s bad for business. So just be smart. Don’t say or do anything that people are going to object to. Instead, stick to the facts.

For On Page SEO Content Quality Is Still Top Priority

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There are all kinds of things you can do to improve the Search Engine Optimization of your web pages, including both on-page and off-page SEO techniques.

 

But there is nothing more important than providing your page visitors with high-value, helpful content that they can actually use. If you do nothing else, create high-quality content and your web pages will attract a lot of visitors.

 

Content and Web Crawlers

 

Search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google use a lot of criteria when judging the value of web pages. But the number one thing they are looking for is high-quality, useful content.

 

It’s simply supply and demand. People aren’t going to use search engines that don’t give good results they can use right away. So Google isn’t going to rank web pages high unless they meet this measurement first and foremost.

 

Your web page can have outstanding design, great embedded keywords, and every other type of SEO technique known to programmers worldwide, but if it doesn’t provide visitors with great content they can genuinely use, it’s never going to rank at the top of the search engine results pages for your keywords. It’s really that simple.

 

For On Page SEO Content Quality Is Still Top Priority – Measure Your Content

 

To ensure your web page has high-value content, simply ask yourself two essential questions:

 

Why are people looking for web pages like yours?

 

What do they expect to find when they arrive there?

 

If your web page clearly provides visitors looking for specific pages like yours exactly what they want when they land there, there is no way your page won’t rank high. Even if you do nothing else to improve your SEO, your page will attract the attention of the top search engines like Google.

 

Providing valuable content that people can genuinely use right away is the best way to get your web pages ranked at the top of Google.

 

Keep Content Short, Snappy, and to the Point

Keep Content Short Snappy and to the Point

One of the unintended consequences of the rise in popularity of the internet is a shortening of people’s attention spans. When you scroll through dozens of websites per day, you generally don’t have time for a lot of in-depth content.

 

So it is important to remember when creating content for your website that it should be as concise as possible. This will help keep people on your pages longer.

 

Two Examples

 

Sentences should be simple and direct. You don’t have the luxury of using a lot of descriptive words and phrases when visitors to your website can click off at any moment.

 

Whenever possible, use bullet points or phrases rather than long, rambling sentences. For example, consider these two content samples:

 

“When you visit the luxurious Comfort Spa, you can indulge yourself with many of our top-shelf amenities, including relaxing full-body massage, inviting mud baths, and professional quality all day cosmetic treatments.”

 

Or …

“Our Comfort Spa offers:

  • Full-Body Massage
  • All-Natural Mud Baths
  • Professional Makeovers
  • And Much, Much More!”

 

Most people landing on your website probably aren’t going to take the time to read the first sentence, even though it offers more details about the services you offer. But they can get the gist of your business’s offerings at a glance when they see the second example.

 

Keep Content Short, Snappy, and to the Point – Content and Context

 

Another consideration when creating your website’s content is how people are going to view it. Many people today use their smartphones to visit the websites they want to see.

 

If you include dense, descriptive sentences on your website, people may not physically be able to read them on their smartphone screens. But they will be better able to see bullet points or key phrases presented in a manner better designed for the devices people actually use.

 

Keep Content Short, Snappy, and to the Point – Content and Context – The best advice when creating online content: Keep it simple, brief, and easy to see at a glance.

 

Blogs Provide Continuous Contact with Customers

Blogs Provide Continuous Contact with Customers

For today’s businesses to be successful, they need to do more than just make connections with new customers. They also need to constantly reinforce that relationship so that they come back to your business again and again.

 

Most businesses won’t survive if they have only one initial contact with a customer and then never see them again. The key to profitability is to build long-term relationships with people so that they come back to your business every time they need the products and services that you offer.

 

And it’s even better if your customers are so impressed with the quality of your business that they recommend you to their family, friends, and social media contacts.

 

The Power of Blogging

 

If you want to maintain your customer base and nurture these strong loyalty relationships, you need to continually give your customers something they genuinely want and can actually use.

 

Blogs fit this bill. Blogs offer customers something they will always find valuable: Information. This can include news about your company or its product and services, but it also can include useful information about things that genuinely matter to your customers, even if it isn’t directly related to your business.

 

In fact, the fewer direct promotions you offer with your blog, the stronger your relationships with your customers can be. When you connect with people as if you are their friend rather than constantly trying to sell them something, they will be more open to listening to what you have to say.

 

Blogs Provide Continuous Contact with Customers – The Value of Blogging

 

Blogs are also one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing. Create them once and you can use them multiple times over a wide variety of different formats.

 

Blogs can be sent directly to your existing customer base via their email or RSS feeds. Or they can be posted on social media sites. Blogs also can be used to attract new customers.

 

At Lytron Design, we specialize in helping our clients develop effective blogging strategies that can help reinforce strong relationships with existing customers as well as broaden their client base.

With Today’s Web Design, Content Is King

With Todays Web Design Content Is King 1

In order for your web pages to be popular, they have to strike a delicate balance between search engine optimization (SEO) and giving visitors what they want. In effect, web designers have been serving two masters: The giant search engine algorithms like Google, Bing!, Yahoo, and others, and the people who actually visit their web pages.

 

Now, all that is changing. Google and others are realizing that the pages that score the best in their algorithmic equations aren’t always the pages people really want to see. So now they are changing their criteria to favor high-value web pages that provide users with genuinely usable content that looks and feels good.

 

Web Design – Content Is King – Give the People What They Want

 

Like any emerging industry, the internet is getting smarter as it gets older.

 

Consider the auto industry. Birthed in the first decades of the 20th Century, car makers built vehicles that were utilitarian but had few frills. As production became bigger and cheaper, however, auto companies started building cars people wanted, rather than simply stripped down cars they could use.

 

 Web Design – If You Build It, They Will Come

 

The internet is following the same path. Search engine optimization used to be highly formulaic: If you included these keywords, put them in these places, and added a few other SEO tricks, you could be assured of getting a high page ranking on Google.

 

Now that formula doesn’t work. A better plan is to create web pages that include useful content people actually want. Not only will you attract more visitors, but you will make the search engine algorithm gods happy as well and be rewarded with top rankings.

 

The web hasn’t stopped evolving. In fact, we are still in its infancy. But adapting to the changing times will help get your web pages ranked higher.

Keywords May Not Be as Important as They Once Were

Pretty much since the internet was invented, keywords have been the holy grail of most web page creators. That’s because search engines use keywords to scan through web pages, identify what they are about, and rank them according to how valuable they will be to their users.

 

Today, however, keywords may not be as significant as they once were. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others are more sophisticated than ever. And web users themselves are more advanced as well.,

 

What Really Matters

 

Make no mistake: It’s still worthwhile to include great keywords within your web content. But search engines are now looking for something more.

 

Specifically, Google and the others want to ensure that your web pages contain high-quality content that their users will find useful. Today’s search engines are getting much better at determining what users actually want.

 

So web users are now typing in longer and more detailed searches into their search engine queries. And the search engine algorithms are taking this detailed data to provide better results more quickly.

 

Keywords May Not Be as Important as They Once Were – The Appropriate Response

 

Tha means companies need to place value on optimizing their content based on intent, rather than simply finding great keywords. There are three ways to do this:

 

Investigate — How are customers finding your website? Why are they choosing your web page over all the others?

 

  1. Optimize — Based on your research, give people what they want. This will, in turn, attract even more online visitors to your web pages.
  2. Adjust — Continually monitor what is working and what isn’t on your web pages. Ditch anything that doesn’t provide you the results you want and double down on the things they do.

 

While keywords are still important, everything about the internet is more sophisticated than it used to be. Businesses that roll with these changes are more likely to succeed.

Blogging Keeps Customers and Clients Engaged with Your Business

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Blogs are short, informative articles that usually are distributed through social media to a targeted audience, such as to a mailing list of customers.

 

Blogging is a relatively new and highly effective marketing platform that helps build loyalty bonds between businesses and their customers. It both informs and engages people simultaneously by providing value to the business-customer relationship.

 

Creating Relevant Content

 

There are essentially two types of blogs. The first is original content that is either created by somebody within the business itself or by somebody hired by the business to provide informative articles for their clients.

 

The second is blogs that are composed of articles, links, and other content that originally was created elsewhere, such as on another website, in a magazine or newspaper, or a video that was posted online.

 

Generally, the content of these “secondary blogs” is somehow related to what the company does or the types of products it offers. For example, customers of a local car showroom might receive both original blogs as well as blogs that contain promotional videos from the major car makers.

 

Business – Why Customers Want Blogs

 

People are typically highly open to receiving and reading your business’s blog posts because they perceive it as receiving something of high value for nothing. Customers don’t pay for blogs. They are simply something they receive if they opt-in by giving their email address, cell phone number, or other contact information.

 

While the customer’s investment is minimal, the return from the business is high. Blog postings can often provide helpful and useful information they can use immediately in their everyday lives.

 

Business – Low-Cost, High Value

 

And the benefit to businesses also is high. Blogs not only make customers more loyal to the business, but they also can occasionally include promotional offers and information that can lead to short-term future sales and a longer term relationship with the customer.

 

If your business doesn’t already provide its customers with regular blog postings, it’s something you absolutely should consider.

3 Types of Online Marketing You Need to Be Using Right Now

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Most business owners today understand that many of their customers have migrated to the Internet and use their smartphones and tablets to do most of their shopping.

 

Yet many continue to pour cash into traditional marketing platforms that yield lesser and lesser results. These include buying ads in newspapers, TV commercials, billboards, and other 20th Century platforms that don’t attract 21st Century consumers.

 

If you aren’t using online marketing to promote your business and products, you definitely should be. Here are three types of online marketing you need to know about — and invest in — right now.

 

Marketing  – SEO

 

Search engine optimization describes techniques used to boost your websites ranking on search engines like Google and all the others. One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that most of it is free to do, yet can yield you enormous results.

 

When the link to your website is listed at the top of the search results for the keywords that describe your business or products, you can expect an avalanche of new web-based customers.

 

Pay-per-Click

 

Pay-per-Click (PPC) are those little ads that appear in the margins of the websites and pages you visit online. The biggest benefit of this type of online marketing is that you only have to pay when somebody clicks through from the ad to your website.

 

That means you are already likely to make a sale which can help pay for the PPC ad: Win/win!

 

Marketing – Blogging 

 

Blogging isn’t marketing. It’s writing, right? Yes and no.

 

Posting blogs can help promote your business directly. But it also can help retain existing customers longer by providing them with useful content. People will come back to your blog over and over again if you keep them entertained and informed, building customer loyalty at the same time.

 

If you aren’t using these three types of online marketing — as well as others like social media, contextual marketing, and others — you should consider starting right away.

Monetizing Your Website

Keep Content Short Snappy and to the Point

The goal of most websites is to attract visitors. After all, you wouldn’t go to the time and expense of creating and maintaining your site if you didn’t want anybody to see it.

For many websites, another primary goal is to make money. If your website is to promote your business or allow your customers to buy your products or services directly online, it’s already monetized.

But what about other websites that not necessarily commercially focused, such as blogs or fan pages? Is it still possible to use these sites to make money?

Monetizing Your Website – Making Money with Your Blog

If you have a blog and have attracted a lot of regular readers, it’s possible to monetize your website by promoting products or services related to your main topic.

For example, if you write a blog about cooking fundamentals or share recipes online, you can sign up to be an Amazon Affiliate and promote products such as cookware, utensils and even ingredient on your blog.

When you are in the online retailer’s web affiliate program, you can include links in your content to products sold on Amazon’s website. Every time somebody clicks through and buys one of these products through your affiliate link, you receive a small commission on the sale.

Monetizing Your Website – Making Money with Your Fan Page

If you maintain a website that celebrates a particular subject, such as a sports team or a celebrity, you can monetize your fan page by promoting products and services related to what you are promoting.

People who visit fan pages are often enthusiastic about your subject matter. That means they likely already are open to buying anything related to your subject.

Look for creative ways to promote or offer items related to your subject matter and you can easily use your website to make money.

How Do You Measure Success?

Tips for Optimizing Your Website

When it comes to effective web design, when it comes down to it search engine optimization (SEO) is really all about getting as many eyeballs as possible on your web pages.

 

SEO involves tweaking and modifying your website so that it can be found by as many people as possible. While there are a lot of technical things you can do to make sure Google and other search engines rank your pages as high as possible — especially higher than the pages of your closest local competitors! — the best way to attract the maximum number of page visitors is actually very basic: Provide great content that people love.

 

Content Is King

 

There are people online right now looking for products and services just like yours. But if they can’t find your web page, they aren’t ever going to know about your business.

 

And even if they can find your page, if they don’t like what they find when they get there, they aren’t going to stick around very long.

 

Today, online marketing is the single most important type of marketing in practically any business. That’s because more people are searching online for the products and services they want than any other platform.

 

How Do You Measure Success – Give the People What They Want

 

So when you can connect with page visitors by providing them with a visually appealing, content-rich experience that they enjoy, not only will they be more open to buying whatever it is you are selling … but they also will be more likely to share your page with their friends, family, and, most importantly, their social media contacts.

 

The reason why online marketing is so effective is that it’s so easy to expand the scope of your message exponentially using the built-in framework the Internet provides … mostly for free.

 

Lytron Marketing specializes in providing its client with the SEO-based web-creation services that get results.