What is the fastest way to write Engaging Email Subject Lines

Great post from Greham Jones about Writing the Subject line . An element most of us internet marketers struggle with ….

The Huffington Post writes several headlines for every article and then tests them to see which one works best. Over at Upworthy, they write 25 headlines for every article and will measure which one gets the most readers, ultimately sticking with that one. Headline writing for popular media sites is now as much of a science as it is an art.

But there is a message in their methodology. If your headline is not right, you won’t get readers in this fast-paced, distraction-heavy online world. These sites often spend more time on writing the headlines than they do on the article or blog post itself. Indeed, in the world of newspapers the people writing the headlines are usually paid more than the writers of the text below them. Not only that, big-selling tabloids usually have a couple of people whose sole job is to write the front page “splash” headline.

When it comes to email, the subject line is your headline. It is the first thing people see, and it is instrumental in helping recipients make the decision whether or not to open the message.

So the question is, how many alternative subject lines do you write for your emails? Do you split test your email subject lines to find the ones with the best open rates? It is also worthwhile reflecting on how much time you spend writing the subject line, compared with the text of the email itself. If you want the best open rates – particularly for marketing emails – you need to spend more time writing the subject line than you do in writing the email itself.

However, this all takes time. So, how can you write truly engaging email subject lines without spending hours on them? The answer is found in new research that investigated the engagement rate of different kinds of email subject lines.

The study looked at more than 9 million email subject lines in over 3,000 companies sending out emails to more than 2 million people. So it is a substantial study.

Contrary to popular belief, the research discovered that there was no relationship between the length of the subject line and open rates.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/emailreadrates.png.png

The study also found there were some real “turn-off” words in subject lines, including the often used word “free” as well as “secret of” – both words that so-called Internet Marketing Gurus recommend you use.

What is more important is that the “call to action” is at the beginning of the subject, rather than at the end. Furthermore, the study revealed that there were some words that had a positive effect on opening rates such as “still time” or “fastest”. This suggests people prefer saving time to saving money.

So how can you use this information to speed up your subject line writing?

The first thing to realize is that in spite of what many people say, stop worrying about fitting your subject line into a certain number of characters. Focus on the quality of your subject, not the quantity of the characters. That will speed your writing up.

Next, forget trying to squeeze in all those so-called marketing phrases such as “free” or “secrets” and so on. Again, you are less creative with headline writing when you feel compelled to use particular words. When you remove the pressure for specific wording, you’ll write more quickly.

You could stimulate your subject line writing by using some tools, such as Content Row’s title generator, the browser extension Headlinr or the WordPress plug-in KingSumo Headlines.

You could also check out each subject line you write using the Headline Analyzer or the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.

Three steps to fast subject line writing

1. Focus on the reader and tell them immediately what action to take.
2. Forget about the length of the headline or using so-called trigger wording.
3. Check you subject line using an analysis tool.

That’s it – do that and your subject lines will engage people and you will get higher open rates. However, it is worthwhile focusing more attention on the subject line than on the email itself.

http://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/fastest-way-write-engaging-email-subject-lines-01221972

The 7 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Naming Your Business

Choosing a name for your business is a crucial step in starting a company, and there are many mistakes you can make. A great business name is unique but easy to remember, and it should be able to carry your business into a profitable future. And because choosing a name for your company is so important, you want to avoid the most common mistakes.

1. Using a Name that's Less Available than an Uber on New Year's Eve.
Is the name you're considering already in use or otherwise unavailable? If it's already registered or used as a trademark by another company, you may not be able to use it. Check with the United States Patent & Trademark Office's website to see if a trademark is currently registered, although just because it's not listed on the USPTO's website, doesn't mean that it's available.

Trademarks can be Common Law, resulting from use, or Federal, resulting from both use and federal registration. In other words, trademarks don't need to be registered to be used as trademarks. Because of this, it's almost always a good idea to pay a company like Thomson Reuters to perform a comprehensive trademark search before filing an application.

The other consideration is whether the related domain name is available. (You can check availability by searching on GoDaddy.com or another domain registrar.) And yet, just because a domain name isn't available doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't use it. For example, Tesla doesn't own tesla.com, and yet, when you hear just that word, you likely think of Elon Musk's Tesla Motors.

2. Putting Your Secret Sauce in the Name.
Don't put your company's services, products or ingredients in the name. First, as your business grows and evolves (and it will), you may lose the interest of your customers or wage a losing battle to overcome dated notions of what it is you sell. CompUSA faced this issue and eventually saw its demise. RadioShack has also struggled to remain relevant as mp3 players and smartphones have taken hold.

Secondly, when you put general product or service descriptors in your company's name, you may face an uphill battle in obtaining robust federal trademark for your business. U.S. Federal Trademark laws provide significantly greater protection to non-descriptive, distinctive trademarks.

The United States Patent & Trademark Office can refuse to register your trademarkon its Principal Register if the trademark on the application includes words deemed "merely descriptive." This means words that describe an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of the specified goods or services. In 1986, "Bed & Breakfast Registry" was denied trademark registration because it was considered merely descriptive of the lodging reservations services the registrant offered. In 1987, "Apple Pie" was denied trademark registration for a brand of potpourri.

On the other hand, trademarks that are not descriptive of the products or services with which they are associated, can receive significant federal trademark protection. Because, for example, the word "apple" is not intrinsically associated with computers and electronic devices, Apple Inc.'s "Apple" trademark is afforded significant trademark protection. However, there is a fine line to walk between being distinctive and being too creative or obscure and irrelevant.

Additionally, you ought to avoid business-speak or buzzwords and clichés popular in general business forums. Think: Synergy, Leverage, and Apex. These terms can quickly lose all meaning and then you're left with an empty cliché of a name.

3. Letting the Name Grow Longer than Pinocchio's Nose.
The longer a name, the less chance that someone will be able to remember it. The most memorable brand names have one or two words. Think Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. Even PricewaterhouseCoopers doesn't use its full name, but goes by PwC.

4. Don't Choose a Seven-Car Pile-up for Your Company's Moniker.
While it may once have been cool or innovative to smash together words, without spaces, to make a business moniker - we're looking at you, RadioShack - it isn't anymore. Don't AmeriTech yourself.

5. Keeping it Too Close to Home.
Including geographical descriptors in a business name can be restrictive if you want or plan to expand out of a particular geographic area. There really is a fine line to walk here. While putting the business's town, city or state in its name might limit potential growth, it can also add charm and help distinguish the company from similarly named businesses in other locations.

6. A Name that Even You Can't Spell Correctly.
Spell-check your name choice, please. When a company name is spelled incorrectly, it can cause potential partners, hires, prospects and customers to lose faith in your abilities. Even if you explain the misspelling, your audience might be forever turned off. Whose Your Landlord, a site that allows renters to give feedback on their landlord, explains what looks like the improper use of "whose" over "who's" as an intentional choice signifying a return of power to the renter. And yet, for grammar fanatics, the explanation falls short.

In addition to avoiding the use of a misspelled or grammatically incorrect name, you should also avoid a name that would be hard for others to spell correctly.

7. Not Testing.
Find out what a large, unbiased group thinks about your name before moving ahead with it. Find out what potential customers and clients think. Create a similar logo featuring the different names you're considering for your business and share it on social media. Or use an even more scientific method to test your brand name. You can do this by creating one landing page for each logo/name option and run a highly targeted Facebook ad to gather metrics on which name/logo gets the best response.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-cook/the-7-biggest-mistakes-to_b_6994470.html

The Psychology Behind Choosing a Killer Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make for your business. Your domain name characterizes your business, labels your business, and will stick with your business for a long time.

In most cases, you should choose a domain name at the same time you choose your business name. When your domain name matches your business name, you have a far better chance of being remembered while at the same time keeping your branding cohesive and unified.

Make it memorable.

The brain has remarkable powers of memory, but the domain you choose should cater to these powers.

• Unique. The best domain names are not an ordinary combination of words or phrases. They stand out in the memory because they are unusual.
• Visual. The more areas of the brain affected, the more memorable something is. If your domain name suggests something that can be seen or touched, this enhances its memorability.
• Catchy. The easier it is to say, read, and repeat, the easier it is to remember.
• Ordered. The brain likes things to be organized. Memorization is basically the process of organization. The better a domain name is organized, the more memorable it will be. For example, “SellYourPhone.com” has order. But “PhoneYourSell.com” doesn’t make any sense.

Make it short.

Your domain name needs to be short if you want people to remember it or have the patience to type it in.

There are a few ridiculous examples of insanely long domain names:

• http://www.iamtheproudownerofthelongestlongestlongestdomainnameinthisworld.com
• http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.com

No business owner in his or her right mind would choose a domain name with that many characters. Unfortunately, some business owners do get greedy with keywords, and create domain names that are nothing more than a jumble of keywords -- lots of keywords and an agonizingly long URL. Don’t go that route. Choose instead a short and sweet name, even if it doesn’t have any keywords.

Make it relevant.

A domain name should reflect some aspect of what the company is or does. Good company names are unique and attention-grabbing, without being blandly declarative. For example, one company I helped start is called Kissmetrics. The name and domain has the word metrics, which describes the nature of the SaaS. 

Blandly-named companies run the risk of being forgotten. Worse, they may not find an available domain name. For example, a business called “Window Washing” will probably have to pay a premium for the domain, "http://windowwashing.com/."

Here are some examples -- one positive, and one negative.

• LifeLock, Lifelock.com.  LifeLock provides identity-protection services. Their business name and domain is a portmanteau of the two words “life” and “lock,” which describe exactly what they do as a business. Obviously, they could have chosen IdentityProtection.com, but as it is, their domain/business name is memorable and relevant.
• Screaming Frog, Screamingfrog.co.uk. Screaming Frog is a digital marketing agency which also provides a leading SEO spider tool. Their name, while creative, does not indicate either their service or the nature of their organization. Both the URL and business name don’t do much to advance their business’s online objectives.

If you are a little-known startup working in a crowded niche, relevancy is important. However, you don’t want to take relevancy too far. Keep in mind that some of the most valuable and dominant brands have names and domains that are totally undescriptive of their products or services -- Apple, Google, Bing, Yelp, Yahoo and Amazon, among other big-name brands.

You shouldn’t choose a business name simply on account of a keyword-dense domain name that happens to be available. Allow your business name to take precedence over keywords.

Related: New Yorkers Can Now Park Their Websites at .nyc

Make it simple.

The most simple domains are the best. Two or three words and a dot-com extension make the most powerful domains.

Here are some things that you should always avoid in your domain name:

• Dashes. Few people will remember if or when to use a dash in your domain.
• Numbers. No one can remember whether they should spell “five” or use the number “5.”
• Any extension other than .com. If you are doing business primarily in another country (e.g., .co.uk), then a country-specific domain is appropriate. There are plenty of creative extensions you can use including .tv, .flowers, .biz, .info and .ink. These are useless. Some extensions that provide word completion domain extensions may be acceptable. For instance, youtu.be.
• Abbreviations. Abbreviations will only clutter up your domain name, making it ugly and forgettable.
• Ambiguous words. Make sure your domain doesn’t have any ambiguity. For example, ExpertsExchange.com might look okay as two words, but does it reflect what the company does? This domain could also be ExpertSexChange.com.
• Creative spellings. Some businesses like to tweak the common spellings of words in order to make their business name creative. For example, “Doug’s Holesale Digging,” “Kleen Machine,” or “The Dzign People.” Those may work in an offline world of signage and print advertising, but they don’t make for effective domain names.

Domain name affects every area of branding. It could be argued that today’s domain name is one of the most significant aspect of a brand’s identity. If you follow these simple rules of domain name selection, you will come up with an effective domain name for your brand.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239872

How to Create A website or Blog

Tube Sniper Pro 3

If you are looking to build a high quality membership site, you have to make sure the right approach is being taken immediately. If you don’t do this, you are going to get stuck in a situation where the membership site does not attract a lot of people and does not make you the type of money that you are after as can be seen with a lot of people who go down this route and are never able to get high quality results. Rather than dealing with these kinds of issues, it is smarter to be careful with the results that you are getting and use the tips that are going to be listed here. One may visit the site of JVZoo Value AddOn to get more info on the product.

Plugins – WordPress is one of the main tools that you are going to come across and only when you have the right plugins will you be able to get the results that you want. The page of JVZoo Value AddOn may have some important info on the IM product.

There are a range of plugins that are on offer and you have to make sure the entire site flows. You should always go with these plugins because they are the easiest to trust in this day and age. If you take a look at all of the major membership sites, these are the ones to go with. It’s not a bad idea to visit the page of JVZoo Value AddOn before making a final call.

Aweber – You should also make sure the email situation is sorted out immediately because this is how you are going to remain in contact with your subscribers and clients. Aweber is one of the best tools online for such purposes and is regarded as a leader for all emailing purposes. One may choose to visit the page of Tube Sniper Pro to get some inside info on the IM software.

Don’t settle for anything short of the best because your site is a main moneymaker that should never be ignored. It is these details that end up pushing a great website over the top in its niche.

http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/abraham-enterprise-releases-info-on-membership-site-building-software/76398/

How to choose A profitable niche in 2015

Some tips on how to look for your profitable Niche :

How to find your Profitable Niche in 2015

A short video with some basic tips on how to find your profitable Niche using social media and proven steps of research and Stats about finding the niche that suits you. Taking into account the current market and the demands.

How to find Keywords People Use

Winning at SEO calls for outmaneuvering the field.

Let’s examine how to find keywords your competitors aren’t using—with tactics they don’t even know about.

“Keywords don’t matter much anymore.” You find it written everywhere lately.

I asked a friend who eats analytics for breakfast and snacks on SEO all day long, “Whatcha’ think about that man?” He smirked. Then he turned toward his massive monitor, typed “g-o-o-g-l-e-(.)-c-o-m” on his keyboard. The ubiquitous page with the crude, but familiar multi-color logo and single blank field popped right up.

He turned back to me and said, “What do I do now Barry?” His point was pretty clear. However all-powerful the search engine that changed the world may be, it can’t yet read your mind. Whether you choose to type or talk, you tell it what you’re looking for with a string of words.

Notice I wrote, “string of words.” I meant to suggest three, four, or more, words. These searches have come to be known as “long tail” and represent the majority of searches. It’s also important to note long tail keywords, being more specific than one or two word searches (or “head” keywords), have proven to deliver superior conversion

To illustrate, consider “acoustic guitar” vs. “Used Taylor 12-string acoustic-electric guitar.” It seems intuitive the longer, far more specific term suggests the searcher has a better idea of the product he seeks and is therefore closer to reaching for his wallet. Research consistently provides confirmation.

Perhaps an even more important reason long tail keyword enters the SEO discussion so often is because as an online marketer you have a remarkably higher chance of earning page one search results by developing content targeting the lengthier phrases. The “big fish in a small pond” metaphor applies.

By strategically implementing long tail keywords, you’re far more likely to rank high, attract the audience you desire, and show motivated prospects the way to your website.

Your challenge is to identify the right long tail keywords

How do you do this?

Almost anyone you ask will immediately cite Google Keyword Planner, a tool made available for free to anyone who registers for an account. As advertised, Keyword Planner will provide keyword ideas and traffic estimates. However, it’s a safe bet to assume your competition will be using the very same tool, get served the same data, and are likely to make similar decisions.

Consider the advantage you’ll seize if you’re able to identify untapped long tail keywords the competitors in your niche don’t know about or use.

The roads less traveled

Understand, Google Keyword Planner isn’t all that great about delivering new keyword ideas. The keywords you’re shown are of course tied to the term you enter and that’s that. However, if you want to explore the roads less traveled by competitors, it’s time to try alternative and smart ways to find niche keywords.

According to Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Backlinko, your goal is to identify niche markets, subsegments of larger markets. The eBook explains you begin by creating a niche cloud map. You create “clouds” that float around your industry.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/basketball-cloud.png.png

Maybe this cloud floating (or mind mapping) type of exercise will come easy to you. Maybe it won’t. The good news is there are quite a few useful hack-like approaches that will serve you well. And in fact, while niche hunting, you’ll find you’re conducting market research and getting inside the minds of your customers.

Start with Wikipedia

Maybe you curse Wikipedia for dominating page one Google results the way it does, but check this out. I entered “antivirus software” in Wikipedia.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Wikipedia-Antivirus-Software.png.png

The table of contents shows a plethora of related terms the Keyword Planner is unlikely to: “signature-based detection,” “rogue security applications,” “hardware and network firewall.” These could be niche keywords worth considering.

And that’s just the table of contents. The long and detailed article on the topic introduces hundreds of related terms, most of them linked to additional resources. For instance, I clicked “intrusion detection systems” and related ideas came flying at me.

Find common questions on forums

When your goal is to crawl inside the mind of customers and gain insights into topics being discussed in your niche, snooping around in industry forums can be enormously informative.

I did a search for “digital printing +forums” and selected the first listing, “Digital Printing Discussion – Print Planet.” Bingo. The forum site presented 408 threads.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Forum-Questions.png.png

I’d consider the titles (or at least, ideas extracted from them) from three of the four discussion threads above to be potential keyword possibilities: digital printer for rapid prototyping; high quality prints on a used color digital printer; color press on textured stocks.

Many forums are subdivided into a long list of niche markets. Print Planet, for example, included forums specifically for prepress and workflow, post press and binding, ink and substrates, wide format, etc. Each niche within the niche included a ton of threads likely to be ideal for mining ideas.

Just start typing in Google

Google and other search engines attempt to anticipate your search needs based on user history. As you see here, “home remodeling” invoked a trio of related ideas.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Google-Search-Keyword-Suggestions.png.png

Bing was even more prolific.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Bing-Search-Keyword-Suggestions.png.png

After performing your search, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page where you’ll find an additional, usually longer, list of suggested keyword strings. Some are related ideas, but don’t include the exact words entered, such as “bathroom” and “additions.”

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Home-Remodeling-Related-Search.png.png

eHow is a keyword epicenter

eHow, a popular site from Demand Media, can be a keywords goldmine. The website attempts to find long tail keywords it can rank for with highly targeted content. I put myself in the mindset of a massage therapist and simply searched “massage.” The following is a small sample from the many pages served.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/eHow-Search-Results.png.png

You might say, “Yeah, but with the might and technology behind the eHow site, I’ll lose the battle to them.” Perhaps not. In a helpful eBook from Wordstream, How to Find Your Most Cost-Effective Keywords, the author explains the content tends to be produced on the cheap and therefore, is often lame. Considering the many changes Google has made in recent years to favor deep and informative content, it’s possible, even with minimal domain or page authority, you can create superior content to rank on the first page.

Try Q&A sites

The keyword hunting strategy I explained above where you tap into forums can also be applied on question and answer websites including:

• Quora
• Yahoo Answers
• Answers.com
• Askville by Amazon

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Quora-Example-Search.png.png

On Quora, I searched for “Facebook advertising” and found questions about “advertising mobile apps” and “ways to track conversions” among a very long list of questions. The answers too, provide helpful hints. For instance, the first answer for the first question above included “promoting app downloads” and “algorithms for the optimization of ad programs.”

If you like this strategy, check out these tips for using Quora an SEO idea source.

Übersuggest is free and fab

At ubersuggest.org you’ll find a free tool that suggests a massive list of keywords for just about any term you enter. I tried “bifocals.”

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ubersuggest-example-search.png.png

The list here is for keywords where bifocals is followed by an “f.” The tool covers the entire alphabet. You can create a “basket” to collect the ideas you like. Also, you can click any phrase to invoke more. I clicked the plus sign for the first one above and got “bifocals fun facts” and more.

A similar tool, also free, simply called “Keyword Tool,” gives you up to 750 suggestions for every keyword and is free.

image: http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-01-10-at-10.04.48-AM.png.png

Happy hunting

If you take just one idea away from this post, let is be this: long tail dominates Google search activity and every form of search. In fact, CNET reported 15% of Google queries have never been seen before. That’s 500,000,000 searches per day.

Armed with an understanding of this reality, take a smart approach by finding niche keywords. Dig deep aiming to uncover real-world jargon. Try some or all of the six approaches I’ve suggested. Identify long tail keywords to inform your content development. Publish the best page on the web for the phrases you’ve chosen and we’ll see you on page one.

HERE’S A FREE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SEO.

image: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SEO-Simplified-300x241.png.png

Importance of SEO and SEM Software for Small Businesses

Search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine marketing (SEM). Is there a difference? And do real people really market to search engines?

If you’ve been in the SEO/SEM industry for any amount of time, you may have already rolled your eyes at the “market to search engines” question. Then again, it’s a valid question, particularly if coming from somebody who is new to the space.

Just so we’re on the same page here, let’s address the question, shall we?

First off, it’s not the search engines per se that marketers cater to. SEO and SEM are, in fact, a form of customer service, in as much as more and more people use the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others) to search for information, including reviews and expert opinion, about businesses, products and services prior to making a purchase or commitment.

All told, this type of marketing is bringing to people what they’re looking for through the search engines.

SEO and SEM – is there a difference?

Chelsea Adams, the Senior content writer of Bruce & Clay Inc has written an article about the eternal question: “Does SEM include SEO?”

She goes on to explain that when SEM was originally coined by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land in 2001, it was a term that included all forms of search engine marketing, paid or otherwise. Recently, however, SEM has come to mean paid search advertising, such as PPC (pay per click), CPC (cost per click), and geo-targeting, while SEO became more focused on the organic (or unpaid) side of search marketing.

So, yes, there’s a difference, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive, as most online marketers would suggest, If you’re about to squeeze the maximum benefit from your search engine marketing campaigns, you need to be aware of every Tips to drive traffic.

SEO and SEM software – the advantages

Because search marketing is undoubtedly a vital component of online marketing, it’s no surprise that the market is teeming with various tools to simplify the process and make it more efficient.

Here are some of the known benefits of SEO/SEM software:

1. Better search marketing insight through analytics

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Whether or not you subscribe to this premise, the fact remains that analytics is an indispensable feature of SEO/SEM software. In the case of web traffic analytics software, like Google Analytics and SimilarWeb, you’re afforded a clear view into how your website is performing in terms of traffic: which pages get the most views, where your site visitors are coming from, which channels (e.g., social media, search, and display ads) are sending you the most traffic, even the keywords searchers use.

All these are information to help you understand if your SEO strategies are on point, which keywords to target in your next PPC/CPC bid, among others.

2. Brand awareness/visibility

Brand visibility isn’t something that freely falls from the skies. It’s a result of careful planning and strategizing, and a combination of a whole spectrum of marketing activities, including SEO and SEM. As Neil Patel from QuickSprout describes in his article ” How to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business ”, there is no hard-and-fast rule to building brand awareness, as “it varies from business to business.”

But as the number of Internet users continually rises, not taking advantage of various online marketing platforms to boost your brand’s visibility can be a costly mistake.

3. Increase in targeted traffic

Visibility into the results of your search engine marketing activities allows you to take the necessary mitigating actions when your website traffic objectives aren’t being met. While backlinks are no longer the only factors to achieve optimum search engine ranking, backlink analyzers, such as Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer, help spruce up a site’s link profile by evaluating the quality of a link, anchor text variance and usage, total links versus linking domains, among others.

These, plus the information provided by your traffic tool, afford you the knowledge to better optimize your site for search engine users, a task that can ultimately bring more traffic to your website.

4. Better conversion rates

There are two types of traffic: traffic and targeted traffic. People may come to your site through the keyword “women’s clothing.” However, if your site specifically caters to “clothing for pregnant women,” expect some of them to exit the site as soon as they find there’s nothing for them there.

With targeted traffic, your conversion rates have a better fighting chance, and software can help identify the keywords to match your SEO/SEM objectives.

5. Lower costs

Although there usually is some form of financial investment involved when using an SEO/SEM software, the ROI benefits are far greater than when you’re blindly strategizing your search marketing initiatives, not knowing whether any of your previous and current efforts work or not.

SEO and SEM software – some examples

We have created our Cloudswave Awards 2014 for the 10 Best SEO and SEM Software but here a few of them to check out right now :

1. Ahrefs is a website analysis toolset with features that include Site Explorer, Backlink Checker, Batch Analysis, Domain Comparison, and Crawl Reports.

2. Moz Analytics. A marketing analytics software that provides robust API for social influence and link data, Moz Analytics is an all-in-one tool offering marketing insights, custom reporting, and actionable recommendations for better performance.

3. SEO Toolkit. Microsoft’s SEO Toolkit helps hosting providers, web developers, and site administrators via recommendations to improve their websites’ relevance and search engine performance.

4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop tool that fetches key onsite page elements (links, images, CSS, apps, and scripts) for SEO analysis. The data is presented in tabular form and can be exported into Excel.

5. Link Prospector. Link Prospector helps marketers find quality link opportunities via niche directories, link pages, sponsorships, guest blogging, and more.

6. Monitor Backlinks. As its name suggests, Monitor Backlinks notifies SEO practitioners and marketers when their backlinks are removed, changed, or about to expire.

7. SEOprofiler offers a suite of SEO tools for keyword research, link building and management, competitive intelligence, and website audit.

http://www.business2community.com/seo/importance-seo-sem-software-small-businesses-growth-01125204

Will backlinks lose their importance in ranking?

How To Use Google Keyword Planner

Google Analytics for Bloggers

This past weekend I was invited to Houston, TX to speak about Google Analytics to the first ever Blog Elevated conference. For a first time conference, I was very impressed by how well it was planned by Lisa and Bobbie. They had a great venue, big name sponsors and an amazing group of speakers lined up. You should attend next year if you can.

I knew all along that the presentation would be focused on Google Analytics and in participating in the#txbloggers chat before the event, Lisa and I decided that the audience would most appreciate a beginners guide to Google Analytics (aka Google Analytics 101). The goal of the presentation would be to both inspire bloggers to get more involved with their analytics as well as demystify the complexity of getting started. Given the reaction from the crowd and sheer number of tweets from the presentation, I think it went very well.

Google Analytics for Bloggers: Presentation Notes

While the slides should do a decent job of speaking for themselves, I’m going to use the rest of this post to put some “color” behind what you may see in the presentation for those who did not have a chance to see the presentation in person. For those of you who want to see me in action, in the next few weeks I will be giving a few more GA talks in Minneapolis and Indianapolis and they may borrow liberally from the concepts presented here.

This presentation was broken down into 8 quick hitting tips that any blogger could use to get Google Analytics on their site and start to find insights into the data that they collect.

1) Creating a Google Analytics Account

We start by walking through the shockingly easy process of creating a Google Analytics Account.

In addition to setting up the account, we touch on the difference between Universal Analytics and Classic Analytics tags

2) Placing Google Analytics On Your Site

Next, we walk through how to add this code to your site. Several methods for adding code are defined, including:

• You Can Put the Code In Your Template
• Add Google Analytics in Your Theme Settings
• WordPress Blogs can use Yoast GA plugin

The end recommendation is:

Don’t Be a Hero, Use a Plugin!

3) Getting Clean Data on your website

The key to getting clean data in your website is to make sure that you filter out the visitors that you don’t want to see in your reports. The most common visitor you want to filter is actually yourself!

You can create a filter in Google Analytics to blog your IP address. It’s actually quite easy.

4) Setting Goals For Your Website

Start by answering the question “What is the purpose of my website” and then set up goal tracking in Google Analytics to help you measure if you are achieving that purpose. Setting up goals is easy and can be done in one of 4 ways:

• A key page view on your site (like your thank you page)
• Time spent on site
• Total Pageviews in a visit
• Events triggered (like a video view)

The most common events for bloggers will be a key page view, with the next most common being time on site and page views per visit.

Another piece of advice is to group your goals into Macro goals (things that make you money) and Micro goals (things that are important, but may not generate revenue).

5) Analyze Content Performance

Perhaps the place where bloggers can go to learn the most about their writing is the content report, which provides insights into which pieces of content are receiving the most views and how visitors engage with those posts. In this section we define what some of the metrics in this report mean and I give advice for how to understand what you are seeing.

• Average Time on Page: Indicates How Long Visitors are Engaging with Content. Generally, more time is better
• Bounce Rate: Shows the Percentage of Visitors That Leave Your Site Having Only Viewed This One Page. Lower is better (but can be misleading)
• Page Value: Indicates the Relative Value This Page Contributed to Your Goals. Goals Must be Configured to Work

While these metrics can guide you in the right direction, make sure that you put your numbers into context. A long time on page could mean people are reading every word OR it could mean your content is confusing. Use these metrics to help piece together a story, but make sure you apply the appropriate context while doing so.

6) Tracking SEO Results in Google Analytics

The keywords report in Google Analytics is almost entirely useless since over 70% of all keywords are currently shown as (not provided). Fortunately you can use the Google Webmaster Tools reports in Google Analytics to try to piece together a story. Just be careful when looking at this data, because it does not match what your organic search traffic report shows you.

We walk through the process of configuring Google Webmaster Tools for those who do not have it set up yet. Signing up for Google Webmaster Tools is very important for all bloggers to understand how their site is viewed by Google.

7) Track Social Media Activity on Your Site

The Social Media reports are a great feature in Google Analytics that many people are not aware exists. We talk about 3 uses for these reports that everyone can use. This includes discovering:

• How Traffic is Driven to Our Sites Via Social Media
• How Visitors Interact With Social Sharing Buttons
• How Google Harvests Activity from Social Data Hub

The social data hub is particularly interesting for bloggers, because it harvests information from all over the web.

8) Custom Dashboards for Bloggers

Last, we talk about how to pull all of this information by creating a custom dashboard. Rather than looking over every report each time you log into GA, how about looking at a consolidated view of activity for the previous 30 days?

We start with a blogger dashboard by Portent and then graduate to the recently announced Google Analytics Gallery.

Why spend your precious time creating a dashboard when you can download a dashboard from an expert analyst like Avinash Kaushik? The Google Analytics gallery allows you to install reports from all kinds of sources.

Live Tweets from the Presentation

Before I was set to give this presentation, I scheduled several tweets that would accompany my slides as I was talking. It was my first time doing this and it was a fairly big risk to schedule tweets in the event that my timing was off, but I went for it anyway. The result? Some great engagement with my twitter account and some awesome shares and retweets. I’m definitely going to think about scheduling tweets alongside my presentation again!  Here are some of those Tweets.

http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-analytics-for-bloggers-presentation/