A Cost Effective Way to Attract Prospects, Customers and Partners

Press clippings. Anyone who has worked in a large office as recently as the late 1990s knows what this means. “Back in the day, ” employees would receive packets of photocopied articles and news items related to their company and industry, delivered daily by the PR department.

This was not an inexpensive proposition, and companies needed to either have a dedicated department or hire a press clipping service.

Traditional clipping services still exist (and can run a company several thousand dollars a month), but in today’s digital age, monitoring and reporting on what’s going on in a particular industry can be affordable for any sized business. And that’s good news, because this kind of third party content can be a cost effective way to regularly attract prospects, customers and partners to your business.

Take, for example, Sales Renewal’s recently launched Sales Building Advice from Across the Web, where we offer actionable, practical marketing and technology advice to visitors. This broad-based content (sources recently cited include the NY Times, and Ted.com) is a perfect complement to the Sales Renewal focused content we also generate in our blog, infographics, and social media pages.

How It Works

On a regular basis, we review online publications, websites, blogs and other sources of information relevant to your company and industry and select the most interesting, informative and, sometimes, fun items, publishing them on a dedicated page on your website, as well as on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ pages.

So wherever your prospects, customers and partners come into contact with you, your industry knowledge and expertise will shine through (and is another reason for them to bookmark, like or follow your company).

The News Service not only helps demonstrate your firm’s knowledge, but also keeps your site and social pages fresh – providing a rationale to come back often (plus, search engines really like it too).

Think of it as a clipping service for the modern world. To learn more about this new, cost effective service, contact us .

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Quick Tip Tuesday: 6 Tips for Writing Better Headlines

Write for the SEO value, write for the reader. Write to be clever, write for clarity. When you’re writing a blog post, or a page on your website, finding the right balance between writing for SEO and writing to make your content stand out for the reader can be difficult. And nowhere are these decisions more manifest than in the blog post title or the “H1” of the web page.

Here are some quick tips for crafting better headlines that you can use before publishing your next blog post or web page.

First, start by writing for clarity

It’s an understatement to say there’s a lot of content out there on the web. How do you cut through the clutter?

Begin with a headline that clearly says what your article or post is about – the topic. This is not the time to use cute, clever, or obfuscated titles that don’t provide any clue as to what the reader can expect. Save clever for within the post itself. This method not only addresses search engines (the “topic” in essence is your “keyword”) but also gives your reader a quick insight into what the post is about.

Keep it short – use a 65-character rule of thumb (again, advice that addresses SEO and the reader).

For example, here’s a clear, straightforward headline: Tips for Growing Daffodils.

Then, add some “clever” to make your headline stand out

Writing a clear headline doesn’t have to mean boring. We’ll take our basic headline and demonstrate how, using one or a combination of the following tips, you can embellish and add interest to your headline.

Of course, we don’t recommend using all these techniques with every headline – a variety of well-written titles will also help your content stand out from the crowd.

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The Web Will Never Amount to Anything

At least that’s what Clifford Stoll thought in this 1995 column he penned for Newsweek. Among the many things Stoll was sure would never catch on:

• Online newspapers
• eBooks
• eCommerce
• Restaurant reservations
• Chat
• Online dating

To be fair to Stoll, he didn’t have Google. We forget how amazing search engines are and how critical they are to making everything else online work. He’s Stoll’s primary reason for being so pessimistic about the Web:

“Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them-one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question”

Predicting is a dangerous business; especially nowadays when the never-amount-to-anything Web remembers everything you write.

How to Write a Good Blog Post for Today’s SEO

Sales Renewal has a team of very skilled – and clever – writers who produce top-quality content for our clients’ company blogs. The fact that we have these great writers is critical in today’s online marketing world, because, as has been said repeatedly, “content is king.” But it’s not enough to rely only on “clever” to get your blog posts read.

Because while content may be king, it’s only half the story. If your great content doesn’t come up in an online search, it will most likely only be read by the friends and family who know about your blog. The other half of the story? SEO.

SEO is Half the Story

We used to see SEO as a separate beast that had to be understood and tamed. Keywords in a query had to exactly match keywords on a page, and they had to be repeated multiple times to be sure Google knew what your keyword was (remember keyword stuffing?) Submitting your site and content to hundreds of directories and sites to get inbound links was part of the game, too.

But the changes Google recently made to its ranking algorithm mean that SEO is now much more closely aligned with solid writing practices that any good writer would typically follow anyway. Google can now handle more natural language associations (score one for anyone who refused to fall into the keyword-stuffing trap). The number of sites that link to your site is not as important as what sites they are (gone are the days of linkbaiting and link exchanges).

So how do we incorporate today’s SEO into our editorial content? It begins before we put pen to paper (or keystrokes on a blank doc) and is easily incorporated into the basic steps of any piece of content creation. By answering the following questions, our writers can be sure their posts are written for readers and search.

1. What are you writing about (blog post topic)? In SEO terms, this is your keyword, or search term. As long as the post is focused on a specific topic, you can consider the post optimized. We have one caveat: Be sure to use the keyword in the headline. For example this headline – The Difficulties and Pleasures of Working in Wood – although clever, does not clearly define the keyword/topic of the actual article. A simple change to: Custom Signage Supports Corporate Identity: the Difficulties and Pleasures of Working in Wood, is a more clear indication of what the post for our business sign manufacturing client is about.

2. Who are you writing for (blog post audience)? In SEO terms, this is your customer persona. Once you understand who you are writing for, what they already know, what they need to know, and where they go on the web for information, you can target your post content and its distribution.

3. What do you want the reader to take away from your post (blog post goal)? Unlike traditional publication vehicles, publishing on the web comes with invaluable tracking capabilities, so whether you’re targeting sales, lead generation, or demand generation, you can write your post with the most appropriate call to action, whether it be contact us, download a tip sheet, or some other result.

Have you embraced the “new” SEO in your content creation process? If not, and you’re interested in finding out how it can benefit your business, Sales Renewal can help.

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How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 2

Choosing the Right Domain Name

Choosing the best domain name for your website is an important decision, as your domain name can attract or repel business: both for its impact on Search Engine Optimization and on the impression it makes on potential customers. A good domain name is the digital equivalent of a potential business contact approaching you looking put together, smiling with hand extended, instead of disheveled, confused, and dropping papers and notebooks. So what are some ways to make sure your initial approach is more Harvey Specter and less Saul Goodman?

1. Be Unique

This is an obvious one, but it’s an important place to start. Of course your domain name has to be technically unique, or you won’t be able to register it but it should also be unique in the sense that it won’t be easily confused with an existing, established website. In 2013, when Netflix announced that it was spinning off its DVD-by-mail service under the name Quickster, not only was it ill-conceived from a business standpoint, it was also a very poor choice of domain name, as there was already a web-based film-rental website called Flixster.com. Not only were they alienating their existing customer base, but a poorly chosen domain name would probably have ended up driving customers to one of their competitors. Fortunately Quickster.com was scrapped before launch, and Netflix.com is still the place to rent obscure French art films by mail, while binge-watching The A-Team through their streaming services. We can all sleep soundly tonight.

2. Gotta have .com

The number of top-level domains (.com, .net, .org, etc.) continues to grow, but when most web users type in the address for a site, they invariably use the .com extension. This means that no matter how perfect a domain name might be, if it’s only available in .net or .biz, or – let’s be honest – anything but .com, look for another one. Remember that you only have one chance at a first impression. Trying to find your website and getting a generic, advertisement-laden parking page is like a customer thinking they’re going to meet you, and instead meeting a guy twirling an arrow-shaped sign advertising discount electronics. Not having a .com domain is setting potential customers up to meet sign-twirling guy.

It’s also a good idea, if you can get the .com, to purchase .mobi, .net, .co, and .biz, and, depending on your business there may be others worth picking up as well. After all, if you don’t, your competitors might as a way to sow confusion or outright steal prospects who are looking for you.

3. Let it help you rank better

Your web address is a very important factor in search engine rankings, so whenever possible, use your most important keywords in it. This is often easier if you’re first starting out and naming your business because you can create a name that leverages your keywords (that’s why our business name is Sales Renewal). For an existing business there’s an obvious desire to use your business name as your domain name, and often, but not always, that’s the right thing to do (this stuff gets complicated). Regardless of which way you go on a keyword vs. brand-oriented domain name, the good news is that you can use the redirection trick we discuss next to get the best of both worlds.

4. To Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate?

If your domain name is comprised of more than one word, you have to answer the difficult question of whether to smoosh all those words together, or to hyphenate them. Each has its pros and cons. The un-hyphenated version is much easier to speak aloud and to type (instructing people to go to “my new website dot com” as opposed to “my dash new dash website dot com”), but is much harder to read, as Smug Marketer Sam nicely illustrates in today’s SalesMemes. Do you read bringslaughter.com as BringsLaughter.com or BringSlaughter.com? Your response may be reported to your local mental health authorities.

If humans sometimes have a difficult time properly dividing the words of your web address, you can be sure that search engines will have the same troubles. Since properly parsing your domain name will contribute to your search engine rankings, that’s a factor worth considering as well.

We believe your best option is to purchase both, and set up a permanent redirect from the un-hyphenated version to the hyphenated version. It combines the ease of communicating and typing the un-hyphenated URL with the ability for both humans and search engines to most easily read/parse the hyphenated version.

If you can only get the hyphenated version of a domain name… don’t.

5. Wee Cann’t Speel Withowt Spellchek

There are some words that most people – even those with a high level of education and/or intelligence – have trouble spelling. If you run a cocktail bar called The Fuchsia Daiquiri, I weep for you. If your business is related to one of these difficult-to-spell words, either go with the pure keyword approach – if, for example, you live in Asheville, North Carolina, instead of registering FuchsiaDaiquiri.com, you might want to go for the domain name AshevilleCocktailBar.com – or be sure to purchase all the common misspellings so people don’t meet that sign-twirler again.

On a similar note, if your domain includes words with alternate valid spellings (especially if you’re hoping to attract a diverse range of customers), be sure to purchase those domains as well. For example, if you purchase TheColorGray.com, you’ll also want to pick up TheColorGrey.com, TheColourGrey.com, and TheColourGray.com.

There are a lot of lists of useful tools that might help you with choosing a domain name (like this one and that one). If you’d like some expert advice choosing a domain name to grow your sales, contact us and we’ll make sure Smug Marketer Sam doesn’t answer the phone.

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Three Ways to Be Prepared for Google’s Penguin 2.0 Search Update

Nothing gets those in the business of SEO talking like rumors of a Google algorithm change, and it seems that this time around (yes, another change is on the way), Google is trying to preempt some of these rumors by clarifying, in advance, what businesses can expect. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, recently published a video explaining what businesses can expect in the next couple of months, including the algorithmic change called “Penguin 2.0, ” which is targeted to black hat web spam (watch the interview).

In the video, Cutts outlines several areas that businesses should pay attention to.

1. Stay away from link spamming

We believe that Sales Renewal clients can confidently disregard this warning, as we take a “natural” approach to linkbuilding – requests for links on relevant or complementary websites, guest blogging, participation in forums that are appropriate for our clients.

2. Set up Google Authority

While Google Authorship and Google+ may not have the visibility or popularity of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, rest assured that behind the scenes, Google is working to connect these two aspects of a personal and business profile with search results. Whether a business is highly active in the Google+ realm or not, we recommend at a minimum maintaining your listing, posting regular status updates, and working to increase your followers. Likewise, any blog post that can be linked to Google Authorship can only help your website, as Google looks for these connections as signals of your authority in your field. (Learn how to set up Google Authorship.)

3. Use Webmaster Tools on a regular basis

I know webmasters who are reluctant to use Google’s Webmaster Tools because of frustrating experiences when using it in the past. But Google has made periodic improvements to the tool, and it now has a more useful, more intuitive, easier-to-navigate interface. This is part of Google’s attempt to better communicate with webmasters, providing information about how to deal with a hacked site and more concrete details about ways to handle other technical issues as they arise.

In conclusion, Cutts repeats Google’s message that if you “create a great site that users love, tell their friends about, bookmark, and come back to over and over again, ” you have nothing to worry about.

– Audrey Trieschman