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Driving Traffic To Your Blog

Driving Traffic To Your Blogdriving traffic to your blog

Many people wonder how they can drive more traffic to their blog. Just like any other website you must be prepared to do some promotion if you want to start driving traffic to your blog. Here are some of the top ways to drive traffic to your blog:

  • Read and comment on other blogs that are in your targeted niche. Be sure to always write intelligent, useful comments with a link back to your own blog.
  • Submit your blog to the search engines.
  • Submit your blog to blog directories.
  • Add a link to your blog in your email signature.
  • Put a link to your blog on every single page of your website.
  • If your business publishes a newsletter, make sure that you include a link to your blog in every issue.
  • Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as on sales letters and reports.
  • Print your blog’s URL on your business cards, post cards, brochures and flyers.
  • Update your blog often with relevant and interesting information to attract your readers to check back often.
  • Post a link to your blog on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It can take some time to attract a large number of readers to your blog. Staying consistent will pay off in the long run.

Alter Impact has many years of experience creating high quality websites and blogs. For more information about how we can help you create and maintain your blog, please contact us today.

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How a Blog Helps Your Business

How a Blog Helps Your Businesshow a blog helps your business

A blog, when done right, can act as both a direct and indirect mechanism to bring a large amount of qualified visitors to your website, many of whom might become loyal customers. This is due largely to the way that blogs interact with the search engines. Let’s take a closer look at how a blog helps your business.

When it comes to optimizing your website for the search engines it’s important to remember both on page as well as off page optimization. On page optimization refers to the elements of a web page that help it rank well in the search engines. These include keywords, headers, links and more. Off page optimization refers to things that are done outside of your website, specifically links on other websites that point visitors back to your site. In order to rank within the first couple of pages on the search engines you must work extensively on both your on page and off page optimization.

The search engines love to see fresh, original, quality content. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to add content to your website every single day, but rather regularly at the same rate over time. For example, if you add three pages every week then you will need to keep that pace up or decrease it slowly, preferably over a couple of months.

A regularly updated blog provides the perfect tool for adding fresh content to your website. When you add links within your blog post that point back to your other web pages, you can significantly improve your rankings with the search engines. However, keep in mind that the links must be relevant to the content in your blog post.

When updating your blog, remember that visitors are looking for useful, free information that they can use. The less you talk about your product or services, the better. For example, if you sell furniture, instead of writing about how your furniture is the best in the world, consider writing about how to find the best piece of furniture for each room. This is the type of information that will keep visitors engaged and checking back regularly.

Adding a blog to your business website is an excellent way to attract more traffic. You will acquire direct traffic from your posts which will be indexed by the search engines and you will also acquire indirect traffic from the links that are strategically placed in your blog posts.

Alter Impact can help your business create and update their blog. For more information, please contact us today.

 

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How Bad Grammar Affects the Success of your Website

How Bad Grammar Affects the Success of your WebsiteBad grammar

When it comes to the success of your website, nothing is more important than content. Spelling and grammatical errors on the pages of your website and in your blog not only look bad, but they cost you credibility with potential customers as well as the search engines.

Visitors to your website or blog will decide whether they will stay tuned in within five seconds. That’s not a lot of time to make a first impression. If your webpages are filled with spelling and grammatical errors, visitors will quickly move on to your competitor’s websites. This can easily cost you hundreds of potential customers every single day.

Search engines such as Google and Bing are also looking at the content of your website. If the search engines notice poorly written content with multiple spelling and grammatical errors they will begin to drop you from their listings. Another way to quickly lose credibility with the search engines is to simply copy and paste someone else’s article or description of their products and/or services to your website. In order to get the highest rankings, your web content must be fresh, original, high quality and free from any grammatical and spelling errors. Remember, the search engines are always looking to improve user experience. Web pages that do not provide a great experience for the user are not going to rank well with the search engines.

One exception to this rule is comments to your blog. Even though the search engine robots will crawl through the entire page of your blog, including the reader comments, you don’t have to worry as long as the article that readers are commenting on is well-written with correct grammar, punctuation and spelling.

If you would like assistance cleaning up your own website, Alter Impact’s content writers can help! We create original, high quality articles and webpage content that is properly optimized to improve your rankings with the search engines. For more information, please contact us today.

 

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WordPress and Search Engine Optimization

WordPress and Search Engine OptimizationWordPress Search Engine Optimization

There are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to search engine optimization. Keywords, web content and regular updates are all equally important parts of SEO. However, even the cleanest and freshest web content can’t help you much if you aren’t using the right web platform.

WordPress is a user friendly content management system. Professional web designers have been using WordPress for years to develop custom WordPress websites. In fact there are currently over 61 million websites powered by WordPress. WordPress websites can be designed with simple features that allow business owners to easily update and maintain their own website and blog. But the best thing about WordPress is how it works with search engine optimization.

Here are the top four reasons why WordPress is ideal for SEO:

  • WordPress starts with impeccably clean code
    WordPress templates begin with extremely clean code containing only what you need. WordPress sites allow you to add your own meta tags, categories, excepts, URL strings and titles. Experienced website developers are able to customize every single part of a WordPress site in order to utilize all of its SEO capabilities.
  • There is a WordPress template available for every need
    From eCommerce to blogs, there is a WordPress template available that is designed to maximize the SEO fundamentals for whatever niche it caters to.
  • WordPress offers some of the best plug-ins in the world
    Plug-ins are various services that can be added to your WordPress website to enhance its functionality. Many WordPress plug-ins are built around search engine optimization.
  • WordPress websites load much faster
    Search engines have begun putting a premium on the speed at which a website loads. Luckily, WordPress is an extremely fast content management system which can be made even faster with the addition of certain plug-ins.

Alter Impact has been designing quality WordPress websites for over seven years. For more information about how we can help your business with its search engine optimization, please contact us today.

 

 

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Effective Internet Marketing

Effective Internet Marketinginternet marketing

Internet marketing is an excellent way to make money on the internet. Internet marketing, or online marketing, refers to any advertising and marketing efforts that use the internet to drive sales via electronic commerce. Internet marketing is typically used in conjunction with other types of advertising such as postcards and press releases. In order to effectively market your business online, you must first learn the basics of internet marketing.

The most important part of internet marketing in Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Learning basic SEO skills takes lots of time and commitment. There are several online resources to help you learn, or you can outsource your SEO to a professional internet marketing firm.

Once you have figured out your basic SEO you can begin to consider your niche and your domain name. Even though these seem like relatively small decisions, they have the ability to make or break your online business. While money making niches such as insurance or credit cards might seem appealing, they can be extremely competitive. It’s usually better to choose something that is in demand, but not so competitive. Take the time to do your research and choose wisely.

The next thing to consider is the writing for your website. Writing articles for your blog as well as the actual content on your webpages is a necessary step of internet marketing. Text should be free from grammatical and spelling errors. If you need help, consider hiring a professional content writer.

Next you will need to create and host your website. Even though you can use a free template to create your website, consider enlisting the help of a professional website designer. A professionally designed website will not only look better, it will attract more visitors and have fewer problems than a free template. Many free web templates include affiliate links that can severely affect the overall performance of your site, and free templates are not coded for search engine optimization.

Alter Impact has over twelve years of experience designing and maintaining professional websites, implementing SEO features and working with other forms of internet marketing. For more information about how we can help your business, please contact us today.