Link Exchange is Dead. Now What?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Gal Baras

Let’s face it. Search engines are not interested in making SEO easy. By definition, SEO is a set of ways to manipulate search results, so why should the?

Google has always made it clear that the best way to promote a website is by focusing on human searchers, rather than on robots and crawlers. In several algorithm changes, it specifically targeted links that serve no purpose other than SEO and content that serves purpose other than SEO and advertising revenue.

So basically, traditional link exchange – you link to my site and I’ll link to yours – is dead. Gone. Buried. No more. You get it.

What now? How should an honest small business use the mighty Internet for some promotion, then? Without swapping links, what CAN we do?

The answer is … (drum roll) … fresh content.

Rather than having a static website, have a content management system (CMS). This is a piece of software that allows you to create and edit the content of your website through your web browser. There are many free ones out there, each with its own following, its own community and its own add-ons. Personally, I prefer WordPress.

Once you have a WordPress site, publishing new content is child play. You log in, click “Add New Post”, give it a title, type in some new and interesting information for your clients and prospects – special deals, industry changes, responses to news items and stories about happy clients – and hit “Publish”. When set up correctly, WordPress will do the rest for you: it will notify the search engines about the new post, update your company’s Facebook page, tweet to your followers and add to the authority and search ranking of your site.

Because Google didn’t just kill link exchange and reconsider page optimization, it also started to promote fresh content and view your entire site as one optimization unit. If you consistently post on a focused set of topics, your site WILL rise, maybe even to the top.

Another important factor is Google+. By many accounts, whatever is shared on Google+ and/or given a +1 is considered favorably by Google and gets a higher search ranking.

So now, SEO is as easy as 1-2-3:

Post fresh, relevant and interesting content that people will read and share
Engage your audience on Facebook (for consumers) or LinkedIn (for businesses) and share your content
Build your network on Google+ and display the +1 button prominently on your site

Of course, you may not have time for all this, but that’s OK. With the help of SEO professionals, you can find the most cost-effective and time-effective strategies and methods for your business and generate high impact content the works for your business.

Have a great day,
Gal

2 More Clients, Anyone?

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Gal Baras

How would you like just 2 more client per month? How about just 2 more clients per week? Per day? Per hour? How would that affect your bottom line? Your life?

Too many business owners, when they consider taking their business online, can only think about costs and risks. They ask for detailed quotes and specific explanations of how each piece of work will be done.

What they normally fail to see are the benefits.

But realizing the benefits of an online business is really easy and, once you know what’s in it for you, it’s also easy to justify any cost that will leave you enough of a margin.

So how can you tell what good will come out of your new website or social networking campaign or paid ads?

The first thing you need to work out is how much money you make from an average client. This may seem like a simple question, but for most of the business owners I meet, it’s really hard, especially when their business is new.

Basically, you need to take all your business profits and divide them by the number of clients who have generated that profit for you. If you have more than one line of business or group of products/services, you will probably separate them online, so work out each one of them separately. This will also help you decide what is most likely to be profitable online, so you’ll do that first.

If your business is fairly young, use conservative estimates based on what’s going during the past year of a few months, because that’s the closest you’ve got to the future.

It’s important to take into account any additional value brought to you by your clients, such as joint ventures, referrals, barters, etc, because those are worth money too, although they may be indirect. However, if you want to stay conservative, you can just count cash.

Now you know your client lifetime value.

With this figure, most businesses can quickly see that getting just 2 clients – not per hour, not per day, not per week and not per month, just 2 clients – pays for a lot of Internet marketing. The implication of this is huge:

By taking your business online and getting just a small number of new clients that would otherwise not find you, your Internet-based business pays for itself over and over again!

Of course, every business is different, which is why I encourage you to do the math for your own business and see for yourself, but even if it takes 5 clients to pay for your Internet marketing and even if it takes 2 months to get them, you are going to earn back all your investment in 2 months and then again and again and again every 2 months afterward.

What would this do to your life? Could you take some time off? Could you relax? Could you take the family out to a nice place? Could you fix the deck or upgrade your car?

Come on, what are you waiting for? Contact me

Social Networking Success

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Gal Baras

In the past few months, I’ve gone deeper and deeper into social networking. As the Internet evolves, this medium now provides website referrals with implied trust. Basically, someone you “know” recommends something, so you are more inclined to go check it out.

When you sell something online, or just when you want to get your name out, social networking sites can be great promotional tools for you. Here are some of them:

StumbleUpon – very quick to bring traffic, but visitors only stick around if you can really grab their attention. Friends and groups are helpful, but once your page makes it into the SU database, it may get propagated by random users who “stumble upon” it with the toolbar
Digg – mostly news items and technology, but famous for bringing sites down due to the massive amounts of traffic sent over a short period of time. Requires time to build a following
Twitter – a “mini blogging” platform, surrounded and supported by a host of applications for filtering tweets, vetting friend requests and grouping friends. Tweets can go to and from your mobile phone while you are away, as well as to and from your website automatically
LinkedIn – invitation-only website for professionals and business people, featuring excellent group discussions and allowing you to build business affiliations, create joint ventures and find strategic clients online. Self promotion is frowned upon, so participation and adding genuine value are the best approach

Of course, there are others, like MySpace and Facebook, and the social interaction can quickly take up all of your time if you are not focused, so you must do your homework before choosing the best social networking sites to promote your website, pick the best tools and consider hiring people to help you do the work, while you are busy selling.

I’m doing quite well out of the social scene and getting good content, good referrals and lots of traffic for several of the sites I promote. If you’d like to get my help with your site promotion, let me know.

Happy marketing,
Gal