SEO Info – PR, marketing, and media production | Alchemy On Demand

Why Social Media is Important for Small Businesses

Admin — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 10:53:27 +0000

I hear this one often: you’ve got a small business, so why even bother with social media?

As much as we might like to ignore it, social media has become a major player in today’s internet. As a business owner, it’s not something we can ignore, and with Facebook’s Two Billion+ reach, why would we? Lamenting your lack of business shouldn’t be an excuse if you’ve got a decent product. How many times have you said to yourself “I know that people will want what I have to offer if I could only reach them.” Well, writing a killer blog and correctly utilizing SEO is essentially free advertising – as is maintaining a social presence.

Generating some quality content is a great way to let these people know what your business is about. Keep in mind, however, that it’s imperative that your social presence be a quality social presence, as this Neil Patel blog will tell you. It’s also important that you don’t hard sell your customers, at least not right off the bat – do this and you risk losing your fan base. What you want to do is engage them, build a rapport with them, and then link them to your services.

Start things off slowly, and give people some quality information. Think of this process as making the web the best possible experience and you’ll do just fine. A sort of “Give the people what they want” ethos for the long run.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

What should you pay for SEO services?

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 09:08:40 +0000

For most businesses today, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the marketing investment that yields the highest return on investment (ROI). The benefits SEO provides far exceed the value of other marketing approaches – print or broadcast advertising, online ads, direct mailing, etc.

Businesses no longer decide whether they need SEO services; rather, it’s how much they’re going to spend. How much is appropriate?

Since Alchemy On Demand is a provider of SEO services, we figured you should get an independent third-party’s opinion. Here’s what Jason DeMers at Search Engine Watch had to say about it:

Typical SEO Costs

So, what should you expect to pay? Here’s a survey of the range of the costs according to the various payment models standard in the industry.

Monthly retainer: $750-5,000 per month. Within this range, the amount that a client pays depends on the size of their business and the extent of services provided by the agency. On the lower end of this spectrum are small SEO agencies that offer a limited range of services. On the upper range are businesses with greater needs working with full-service SEO agencies. Most businesses pay between $2,500 and $5,000 for a monthly retainer.
Contract services at fixed prices: price variable. Businesses that are just testing the waters in SEO usually choose a contract service as an entry point. Typical contract services include things like SEO copywriting ($0.15-$0.50/word), site content audit ($500-$7,500), link profile audit ($500-$7,500), and social media site setup ($500-$3,000).
Project-based pricing: price variable. Since there are a variety of projects, there is a wide range of prices. Most projects cost from $1,000 to $30,000.
Hourly consulting rate: $100-300/hr. SEO consultants, whether individuals or agencies, usually charge between $100 and $300 per hour.

(Some of these figures are taken from a 2011 SEOmoz survey of 500 consultants and agencies.)

Things You Should Be Suspicious of

Any discussion of SEO agencies and pricing isn’t complete without a few warnings. To help you guard against indiscriminate SEO agencies with unethical business practices, read and heed. Be suspicious of the following promises:

Guarantees. SEO firms generally can’t provide guarantees due to the constantly changing nature of the industry.
Instant results. True, some SEO tactics can get “instant results” by gaming the system. Be warned that these can hurt you in the long run. Instant results often involve SEO practices that are against webmaster guidelines put out by search engines. Invariably, Google seeks out these techniques and penalizes them, resulting in lost rankings that can take months to recover.
#1 spot on Google. If an agency promises you the number one spot on Google, it sounds great. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get it. However, it’s not something that a firm can promise to hand over to you.
Costs lower than $750/month. When it comes to SEO, you aren’t shopping for the lowest price; you’re seeking the best level of service. Be wary of rock bottom prices or “unbelievable deals.”
Shady link building services. Link building is a crucial part of SEO. You can’t have a highly-ranked site without inbound links. But there’s a dark side of link building. Link trust is gaining importance to appear high in the rankings. Before you enter into an arrangement with an SEO agency for link building services, ensure that their link building services are ethical, white label services. You may even wish to ask them where they may be able to gain links for a business in your industry.

Things to Keep in Mind

As you begin shopping for SEO agencies and making your decision, be mindful of the following points:

SEO takes time. A monthly retainer is best. Think of SEO as a long-term investment. Aggressive campaigns and major pushes may have their place, but the most enduring SEO results come from a long-term relationship. In SEW’s Mark Jackson wrote, “The real value of SEO efforts are, generally, not realized in the first month(s) of the effort.” It’s true. SEOs don’t wave a magic wand and get instant results. Instead, they perform extensive operations that will produce results months down the road.
SEO changes, and your rankings will change, too. The field is full of competitors, and rankings rise and fall with the changing of algorithms and the entrance of new competitors. One-and-done SEO tricks simply don’t work. It takes constant monitoring to keep your website ranking well and performing at top-notch levels.
Not all SEO services are created equal. Again, SEO isn’t about shopping around for the lowest prices. It’s about finding the finest agency you can. Look for an SEO agency that defines its scope of services, and takes the time to educate you.
SEO is important. Do it. The point of your website is to increase and/or improve your business. Unless people are finding your website, it’s not even worth having one. The smart thing is to pay what it takes to keep your site findable by the people who are looking.
Hiring an SEO agency is best. You may be thinking, “Can’t I just do this SEO thing on my own?” A tiny percentage of business owners or professionals have the skill and savvy to do their own SEO. Even so, comprehensive SEO takes way more time than most business owners can afford. Even an employee who “knows a lot about SEO,” will be hard-pressed to deliver the level of services and excellence found in a SEO agency. You’ll rarely come out on top if you try to go it alone, and you’ll never get the same level of ROI that you would with a competent SEO agency.

You Decide

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Add Google Analytics To Your WordPress Website

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 07:46:18 +0000

Video Transcript:

“Hi Everyone,

Hudson Hornick here. Today I want to talk to you about something that every marketer or small business owner should know how to do, and that’s how to install a bit of code into your website.

This is very useful knowledge because it gives you familiarity with accessing your hosting files, as well as better knowledge of WordPress, which is great for SEO reasons, among others.

I’m going to show you how to do this two different ways.

First, the easy way, this is for all of you who have access to the header section of your site through your WordPress dashboard.

And Second, the slightly more involved way of accessing this information is through the control panel of your website’s hosting company.

Ready?

Ok. So first I’m going to show you the easy way, and to do that we have to 1.) have a WordPress blog, and 2.) access that blog via the WordPress dashboard.

So first, let’s do that. I’m going to navigate to the backend of my site.

Once I’m in the WordPress dashboard I’m going to go to Appearance => Editor and then I’ll be taken to this screen that shows me some of your website’s source files.

**VERY IMPORTANT!** This is very important! If you make any changes to these files things can go very very wrong to your site, so before you ever make any changes at all to any of your website’s files, you should back up your work.

How do you back up your files? It’s really easy. Just copy all the data and paste it into a plain-text editor like “Notepad” or something similar.

Not too bad, eh?

Ok. So now I’m going to look over here on the right-hand side of my screen where I can see files in blue that are in this column here under “templates.”

I’m going to navigate to the “Header (header.php)” file and select it.

Now, what WordPress is doing here is letting me access these files that are stored on our host server. It’s a relatively new feature of WordPress designed for those of us who don’t like to get our hands dirty with FTP transfers and accessing our hosting files directly.

Pretty nice, eh? It really helps simplify things.

Ok. So now that I’m in my header.php file, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to look for thetab. Then, when I find it, I’m going to look for the closing head tag, which looks like this:

Now, right before that closing head tag is where I’m going to need to put my google analytics/webmaster tools/Yoast SEO plugin code, you name it.

Why?

Because what these codes do is track users’ activity on your site. So you’re going to need to place this code information on every page of your site.

An easy and non-invasive way is to place that info in the “head” section of your site. Every site has one of these sections, and it’s common practice for WordPress themes to have a “header.php” section which is called on every page of the site.

So, if it’s a piece of code that needs to go onto every page of your site, the header is likely where you’re going to want to place it.

Make sense?

Ok, so now you need your Google Analytics code.

To get that, go to www.google.com/analyics and sign up. There you’ll be given your google analytics code.

You’re going to need to copy (Ctrl + C) and paste (ctrl + V) this snippet of benign code into your header file, right before the tag, like so.

Once you’re done, just click save changes, and voila! You have now successfully installed Google Analytics!

Ok, step two is for those who have to access their header through their hosting provider or FTP.

First, navigate to your hosting’s Cpanel.

Then go to File Manager.

From the File Manager, make sure that you’re in the public_html file, then double-click on the appropriate domain name for the website you’re trying to upload the Analytics code to.

Then, since this is a WordPress site, double-click on the wp-content folder, then select the themes folder (double-click that). Then select the theme your WordPress site is currently using, in this case, it’s “Vertex,” and then you’ll see a list of files. In that list, you should see a header file.

Right-click the header file and select “code edit.” Now, before you do any actual editing be sure to backup your work by copying and pasting all the text here into a plain-text editor – something like notepad or Simple Scripts.

Then, like in the Dashboard, you’re going to look for the closing head tag, the tag that looks like this: .

You can find this either by scrolling down or by using the search function (CTRL+F on a PC and Function+F on a Mac) and searching for the tag.

Once you find it, paste your Google Analytics code on a new line directly above the closing head tag.

Save your changes and voila! – That’s how you add a bit of code to your website!

Thanks for watching!”

You can also find instructions for adding Google Analytics here through their Support Site.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How to A/B Test for SEO

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 06:29:58 +0000

A/B testing (or multivariate testing) is good practice to determine which aspects of your site need tweaking. But running multiple versions of a website can get you out of Google’s good graces (mainly because serving up different versions of the same page to different users has, in years past, been used for nefarious SEO purposes).

So here’s what Google has to say about running split tests and maintaining good SEO:

Website testing is when you try out different versions of your website (or a part of your website) and collect data about how users react to each version. You use software to track which version causes users to do what you want them to do most often: which one results in the most purchases or the most email signups, or whatever you’re testing for. After the test is finished you can update your website to use the “winner” of the test—the most effective content.

A/B testing is when you run a test by creating multiple versions of a page, each with its own URL. When users try to access the original URL, you redirect some of them to each of the variation URLs and then compare users’ behavior to see which page is most effective.

Multivariate testing is when you use software to change different parts of your website on the fly. You can test changes to multiple parts of a page—say, the heading, a photo, and the ‘Add to Cart’ button—and the software will show variations of each of these sections to users in different combinations and then statistically analyze which variations are the most effective. Only one URL is involved; the variations are inserted dynamically on the page.

So how does this affect what Googlebot sees on your site? Will serving different content variants change how your site ranks? Below are some guidelines for running an effective test with minimal impact on your site’s search performance.

No Cloaking— Cloaking, showing one set of content to humans, and a different set to Googlebot—is against our Webmaster Guidelines, whether you’re running a test or not. Make sure that you’re not deciding whether to serve the test, or which content variant to serve, based on user-agent. An example of this would be always serving the original content when you see the user-agent “Googlebot.” Remember that infringing our Guidelines can get your site demoted or removed from Google search results—probably not the desired outcome of your test.

Use rel=“canonical”– If you’re running an A/B test with multiple URLs, you can use the rel=“canonical” link attribute on all of your alternate URLs to indicate that the original URL is the preferred version. We recommend using rel=“canonical” rather than a noindex meta tag because it more closely matches your intent in this situation. Let’s say you were testing variations of your homepage; you don’t want search engines to not index your homepage, you just want them to understand that all the test URLs are close duplicates or variations on the original URL and should be grouped as such, with the original URL as the canonical.

Using noindex rather than rel=“canonical” in such a situation can sometimes have unexpected effects (e.g., if for some reason we choose one of the variant URLs as the canonical, the “original” URL might also get dropped from the index since it would get treated as a duplicate).

Use 302s, not 301s -If you’re running an A/B test that redirects users from the original URL to a variation URL, use a 302 (temporary) redirect, not a 301 (permanent) redirect. This tells search engines that this redirect is temporary—it will only be in place as long as you’re running the experiment—and that they should keep the original URL in their index rather than replacing it with the target of the redirect (the test page).

JavaScript-based redirects are also fine.

Only run the experiment as long as necessary.

The amount of time required for a reliable test will vary depending on factors like your conversion rates, and how much traffic your website gets; a good testing tool should tell you when you’ve gathered enough data to draw a reliable conclusion. Once you’ve concluded the test, you should update your site with the desired content variation(s) and remove all elements of the test as soon as possible, such as alternate URLs or testing scripts and markup. If we discover a site running an experiment for an unnecessarily long time, we may interpret this as an attempt to deceive search engines and take action accordingly. This is especially true if you’re serving one content variant to a large percentage of your users.

The recommendations above should result in your tests having little or no impact on your site in search results. However, depending on what types of content you’re testing, it may not even matter much if Googlebot crawls or indexes some of your content variations while you’re testing. Small changes, such as the size, color, or placement of a button or image, or the text of your “call to action” (“Add to cart” vs. “Buy now!”), can have a surprising impact on users’ interactions with your webpage, but will often have little or no impact on that page’s search result snippet or ranking. In addition, if we crawl your site often enough to detect and index your experiment, we’ll probably index the eventual updates you make to your site fairly quickly after you’ve concluded the experiment.

That there above is a straight scrape from Google’s own Webmaster Guidelines. Let’s see what they say about duplicate content now, eh?

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

What Is SEO?

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 06:16:07 +0000

SEO, as a blanket term, can be roughly broken down into three categories:

On-Site SEO (crawlability) – This is how easily navigable your site is to search engines (and to users). Performing On-Site SEO involves taking a look at your site’s architecture and content to assess if the appropriate methodology is in place. This involves things like heading tag correction, metadata implementation, title tag correction, correct keyword implementation and making sure that the correct redirects are in place to reduce duplicate content.
Content – Content is what both your readers and the search engines are looking for. The best sites have the best content. Period. This gives the search engines an ability to see your site for certain key terms, and it gives your readers something to link to.
User Metrics – How the site is used is a big determinant in how search engines see the site. This includes things like bounce rates, click-through rates, how many people visit the site, and how much content is shared and linked to.
Other factors – Other factors of how a site ranks in search engines has to do with externalities like the age of the site, whether the site has a dedicated IP address, if the author of the blog has a high trust metric, etc.

For these reasons and others, we always ask clients how they feel about the design of their site. Web Design and SEO go hand-in-hand in that oftentimes a better website experience for a search engine is also a better experience for your users. And it’s your users who we’re really concerned with here. All the traffic in the world won’t help your business a lick if that traffic doesn’t convert.

How SEO Agencies Operate

The above is designed to give you an example of how the blanket term “SEO” works. This wasn’t always the case. Optimizing your site to gain a competitive advantage over another site has been around since the advent of the internet, and in the past, Google and others weren’t always so good at sniffing out the bad players. In recent years, however, that’s changed.

Black Hat SEO:

Google and others have gotten better at reducing the amount of spam that plagues the internet. But they’re not perfect. A system designed in code and made by humans is undoubtedly fallible. There are some that, through experience or otherwise, have found ways to shortcut the system. Here’s a brief synopsis of how they do it:

Link Farms: Without a doubt, the number one thing you can do to increase your site’s online presence is to GET LINKS. This typically requires hard work, however. First, you have to generate good content, and then you have to get your message out to people who will share it and link to it.

Alternatively, you can link to that content yourself through what is known as a link farm or a private blog network. In these systems, people generate tiered networks of websites. The lowest tier (Tier 3) has automated content and links and is the perfect example of a spam website. It’s a numbers game until Google penalizes these sites. The next tier up (Tier 2) has got some manually generated (or spun) content and some higher-quality links. These sites generally don’t provide great info, but they’re not overtly spammy to the search bots. The top tier (Tier 1) sites have the best content that is manually generated. These Tier 1 sites are the “money” sites. The Black Hat SEO genuinely cares about these sites.

When you contract with one of these SEOs, depending on how much you pay and how extensive their network is, the SEO will add links in their Tier 2 or Tier 1 sites to give your site some of their “link juice” or “Page Rank.” If Google comes along and slaps one of their lower-tiered sites with a penalty, the top tier will still be ok, and the SEO will have time to recover by generating another site in its place.

The Problem with Tiered Link Building:

Tiered link building can be a great way to see a near-immediate benefit from your hard-earned dollars. There are problems, however.

Main Problem 1: Google, Bing, and others are actively trying to prevent this sort of link building. This type of link building is in direct opposition to their main ethos – that is: let good content be rewarded with quality links. New algorithm updates are being rolled out all the time aimed at preventing just these sorts of things. Think your SEO is smarter than the kids over at Google and Bing? Willing to bet your online presence on that?

Main Problem 2: You can’t count on your links for long. Your SEO (not you) has total control over how long your links remain active. If things go south between the two of you, so do your links. Quality link building will get your links placed based on their content merit, not because you’ve paid someone to put them there.

Main Problem 3: If you get hit with a spam penalty it takes a long while to recuperate – many times it is better to start a site completely anew.

Main Problem 4 (The Big Problem): You just don’t know. Having given your money to someone who has put your links up on their network, you just have no good idea how and long they’ll be there and if they’ll ever hurt your online presence.

White Hat SEO:

Doing SEO the right way is hard work. Additionally, SEO work is an effort that takes months to see tangible benefits from. For this reason, many shirk it, though it’s their loss. Your online presence is the calling card of your business, so ask yourself this simple question:

Question: What’s wrong with dirty seats on an airplane?

Answer: People think that the engine won’t work.

It doesn’t always make sense, but people are emotional creatures. You’ve got to make them like you, and a dingy storefront won’t do it.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it. The quick and dirty explanation of how SEO works, and some of the techniques both sides of the aisle use. For the record, Alchemy on Demand never uses Link Farms or Black Hat techniques for the aforementioned reasons. Instead, we focus on content and let that drive rankings for us, and for our clients.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Why You Shouldn’t Use Fake Reviews For SEO

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 06:00:47 +0000

Fake reviews, while tempting, aren’t the answer to your lack of site interaction.

Aside from being a dishonest way to let your potential customers know about your goods and services, it hurts your engagement and is considered bad SEO practices.

It is tempting, however, because we know that Google (but more importantly people) take social indicators and reviews into account when tabulating its search engine rankings.

But a relatively recent update to Google’s spam detection algorithms has tagged and removed a number of reviews appearing on some Google Local pages.

Why?

Google warns business owners that “fake glowing testimonies” written by SEO or reputation management companies will be taken down.

Fake Reviews – They aren’t worth it.

They also recommend that if you’ve collected testimonials over the years that are on paper, to resist the temptation to post them all online yourself:

“if a business accepts paper comment cards it might be tempting to collect them and ‘digitize’ them by posting the reviews on Google Local […] We ask that all reviews come from first-hand experience and do not allow posting reviews on behalf of others.”

Also, the IP address from whence the testimonial originated comes into play: Google advises against companies asking customers to write a review on a computer or tablet located on the business’s premises.

Businesses should instead send reminder emails to customers encouraging them to review the business on their own time.

But DO NOT give free gifts or discounts in exchange for encouraging them to leave positive reviews. Google says this too, is a no-no.

Google also advises that business owners respond to their negative reviews honestly and openly and not try to take them down. Negative reviews are par for the course, so to speak, and it’s important that business owners respond to such reviews and address the reviewer’s concerns.

As for reviewers, they should write testimonials about one specific location, if a business has multiple locations, and not write reviews for a company they currently work for.

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

photo credit: CEE Bankwatch Network via Vecteezy cc

How to Optimize for Local SEO (6 Quick Fixes)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:07:17 +0000

Before we jump into the search engine optimization waters, there’s something that should be clear: there are two types of search engine optimization: There’s Organic Search and Local Search.

Organic Search is all about how people find your site in the search engine rankings.

Local Search is all about getting your business to rank better in the Google Places listings.

It’s an important distinction if you’re a local business because many small businesses get caught up trying to rank for big keywords and overshoot the moon.

Let’s face it – as a startup, you can’t compete with the big dogs that are throwing gobs of cash to optimize their online presence.

So how do you compete? You target a smaller pond.

Optimize your local SEO

Here are 6 quick local SEO fixes that will put you on the fast track to local SEO success:

Local search is all about how to rank better on Google Places. Aside from organizing your site well, there are really five main things you can do to optimize your site locally:

1.) Get a Google Business Page

2.) Put your business’s name, address, and phone number in the footer of your site

*Use microdata markup for that info

3.) Submit your business to local directories like the ones I’ve listed below

* Get Reviews on those sites

4.) Add testimonials to your site and use schema.org microdata markup

5.) Add images to the profiles you make on those directories and to your site

*Geo-tag your images *Add service & location ALT text to those images

6.) Get links.

It’s really that simple. And while the first five items are relatively easy to implement, the sixth takes a bit of effort to get moving. Link building is a process that can be simplified but just takes time. It’s something I’ll write about in a future post, but for now, let’s take a look at getting your site listed in the main local directories.

1.) Get Listed Locally

When you search for a business, oftentimes you’ll see a listing of the closest places in your region. Typically, Google will give you the top three or four results, then a listing of business places.

Something like this:

To get your business listed in these Google “Places” listings, you’ve got to have a Google Business Page.

*IMPORTANT: The categories that you select in Google Business are very important for how you appear in the listing results. Choose them wisely.*

Once you’ve set up your Google Business page, you’ve got to verify your business’s location with Google (typically they’ll mail you a postcard at your business’s location). After that, how you rank is in these Google Places listings is determined by a number of factors, which we’ll take a look at now.

2.) Put Your Business’s Name, Address, and Phone on Every Page of Your Site

First and foremost, you have to be sure that your Name, Address, and Phone are placed on every page of your site that you want to be associated with your business location.

The footer of your site (at the bottom) is typically a good place to do this.

You also want to be sure that your business information is placed correctly with the Google Business page you just made. What you’re doing here is listing your location information on your site so that the search engine bots can associate your Google Business page with your site. Google’s bots are smart, but they’re essentially just counting 0s and 1s. Different numbers and listings appear different to them, and you’ll need them to be as accurate as possible to help boost your rankings.

Bonus Points

Additionally, you can use a bit of html code that will further help the search engines. The Search Engine Journal did a great write-up on its implementation here. You can use these markups to add reviews to your site as well.

This microdata markup is a bit complex for newbie web designers. Google knows this, and so made a structured data highlighter tool in Google Webmaster Tools to help you out. It’s really just highlight and select – that simple.

3.) Get Citations

Which means, essentially, try to disseminate your business’s Name, Address, and Phone number (what’s called the “citation”) to other sites that the Google bots can crawl. Having your business’s “citation” listed on other sites (like local directories) exactly as they’re listed on your site helps Google link those addresses to your site.

This is why you should avoid using inconsistent abbreviations (St. for Street; Apt. for Apartment, 800 for 1-800, etc). Additionally, you’re going to want to add pertinent markup to your Title Tags, Meta-description, and website content. Don’t stuff keywords in there, but if you’re a business based in say, Ojai, California, you can usually find a way to insert the info organically.

As for local directory submission, here’s a list of the most commonly used directories to which you can add your information:

Yellowbook.com

Citysearch.com

Google

Yahoo (Verizon) Small Business

Additionally, here is a Spreadsheet example that will assist you in keeping your login info and notes organized:

Alternatively, you can use a service like Yext, Moz Local, or to do a power-listing for you, and though this is something of a pricey option, you can assure that your Name, Address, and Phone are listed correctly across a wide variety of local directories.

You can also use a site like Upwork to hire someone overseas to fill out your various information, but ultimately, take it from someone who has done this personally and who knows – it’s best to do it yourself. It’s unfortunate and time-consuming, but really the only way to ensure accuracy is to either hire a service with access to all of your information or to do it yourself. Sites like Synup.com know this, and so offer an affordable hands-on solution that covers 175 sites.

When creating these listings, be aware that some listings like Yelp require a phone call to verify business ownership, so whoever is doing your listing should be by your business’s phone line.

Ok! I hope this helps.

Do you have any other tips for me? Share them in the comments!

–Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Grow Your Readership

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:00:45 +0000

“At the ‘Tools of Change’ publishing conference in New York, Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler revealed a remarkably simple, effortless way for authors to sell more eBooks on Amazon… or in fact anywhere eBooks are sold online.

In a survey of Goodreads’ 15 million-strong membership, he found that the main driver of eBook purchases was, unsurprisingly, ‘referral by a friend’.”
–BESTSELLER Labs

How To Build Your Audience and Grow Your Readership

A sticky situation to be sure – you’ve got this great business and you’ve been growing, expanding, tackling great hurdles, overcoming every darn obstacle, but still… only 50 of your closest friends like you on Facebook! What to do?

Though it may seem hard, growing your readership is something that is doable. Clearly defined goals and sticking to a game-plan are key – but then again, you know this – you’ve got your own business, for crying out loud! So the discipline I leave up to you, but here are the beginnings of a successful strategy for building your readership.

Let me say first, however, that Content Marketing, as well as PR, SEO, and Social Media Campaigns, are all interconnected, and though the following proposal will suggest methods to increase readership, it will also inherently work to increase your Search Engine Results Placement (SERP) as well as establish your prominence in your field. The best approach to any marketing campaign is to achieve individual goals but act with them as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Take these tips to heart, and you should see a dramatic increase in traffic to your site.

I’d also like to outline the need for differentiation of social media and an on-site blog. Your on-site blog should be about pertinent information that other experts in your industry will find valuable. Think of it as a keynote presentation with “room for questions/comments” at the end. Your social media presence (Facebook, specifically) is the place for links to what you’re doing in the industry – a way for your fans to follow your progress and “like” your latest projects. Each fulfills a need, and the info between the two will sometimes cross over, but your blog should be about expanding your notoriety in your field.

First things first: Get some good blog posts (at least 5 [Why 5?]) on your site.

But before you do, read on.

What makes a good blog post?

Rough overview:

Find a topic you’re passionate about. It doesn’t have to be exactly what your website is about – make it some derivation. For example, if your site is about homeland security, you could write about security, weapons, technological advancements in the field, home security, foreign policy… you get the idea.

Content over 1000 words. Tests indicate that the longer, more in-depth content ranks better on search engines than shorter posts. They do better with social circles, and they tend to be linked more frequently.

Relate Relevant Content – use your spreadsheets to see what posts in your field are being discussed most frequently, then use that information to draft content and research on your own.

Use graphics and examples when possible. It’s important to include at least one attributable image to your blog post as it breaks up the flow of the words and looks better on the page (not as intimidating). Examples prove your point with specifics.

Create a catchy headline. Many posts have been written about how important it is to use keywords in your headline and to assure that it grabs your reader’s attention.

Promote content

Now that you’ve got some blog posts under your belt, it’s time to promote them. It’s not enough to just have social media outlets. As you may know, it’s hard to grow your readership. Not everyone will care about children’s eBooks, but many people care about parenting, technology, what their children are reading, and how to entertain/educate them. You can use these categories to start a list of potential network connections.

Create a long list (200+) of blogs, websites, and Twitter users that are active (tweeted in the past week, the website is regularly updated, etc.)

Make sure that no one on this list sells products or services (you are not, at this point, in the business of selling. You are in the business of establishing yourself as a presence, and if you come out of the gates with an obvious agenda, people will be reluctant to heed your advice).

Get the full name, email address, website URL, and name of their website.

List potential guest blogging opportunities and then email them and request to write a guest blog for them.

Be sure to solicit successful sites, but not industry giants. Alltop.com will give you a list of bloggers in various fields, and you can then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings to see what their traffic is like. (Aim for blogs with 30,000 – 300,000 readership hits.)

Consider linking to an internal page (not just your homepage). This encourages site click-through and promotes traffic and exposure.
Follow a template along the lines of:

Subject: you should blog about [insert your guest blog post topic]

[insert their first name], as an avid reader of [insert their site name]I would love to read about [insert guest blog post topic]… and I think your other readers would as well.

Your content on [insert existing post from their website #1, insert existing post from their website #2, and insert existing post from their website #3] are great, but I think you can tie it all together by blogging on [insert guest blog post topic].

I know you are probably busy, so how about I write it for you? Don’t worry, I’m a great blogger and have written posts such as [insert blog post URL #1] and [insert blog post URL #2].

Let me know if you are interested, I already know your blogging style, plus I understand what your readers love… as I am one.

Look forward to hearing from you,
[insert your name]

Create a list of all of the popular blogs in your target space. You can easily do this by searching Technorati (a blog and post search engine) and looking for target blogs on a specific topic. If there aren’t too many popular blogs in your space, list out all of the blogs that are somewhat in your space and are popular.

Now that you have a list of all of the popular blogs, make sure you browse them frequently (at least once a week). When browsing them, look out for social buttons on each post that shows how many people either “tweeted” or “liked” the post. The higher the number the better.

Take the posts that have over 50 or 100 social shares and list them out in a spreadsheet. These will become a resource to draw from when trying to write effective blog posts in the future and to see what your potential audience is responding to.

Spin the title. Don’t just regurgitate old information. Spin it. Outline the main points you want to touch upon, fill in the details, then revise and publish. Get a good licensed image, post, then share.

Comment – This cannot be stressed enough. It is tedious and time-consuming, but it shows your presence in your field, helps to establish notoriety and expertise and helps your SEO.

Use your real name and blog URL (not your website’s homepage). This helps give the impression that you’re “for real” and not just promoting your own agenda/business and it separates blog topics from immediate selling. In addition, Google is currently in the process of de-anonymizing the web, linking personal sites to business sites, Youtube profiles, Facebook etc. The goal of this is to increase accountability, and so it helps to establish YOU as an industry expert. Alternatively, you can create another author for your site, but keep in mind it will be this person who will be linked to the bulk of this content aggrandizement.

Respond to comments on your own blog, create a conversation, ask questions. (Pete Cashmore followed this strategy at Mashable, and successfully built it as a Mecca for Social Networking knowledge.) Social media indicators play a big role in SEO, and your readership grows when people see that this is a discussion, not a one-way lecture.

Get Reviews – Reviews are a large determinate of what sells products. Once your readership is up you can solicit other bloggers for reviews and assure them a link to their site, thus enabling cross-marketing efforts. If you have hard copies that you can offer as an incentive – a signed copy, for example – you can use this as payment for their review.

The Great Blog Post – Once a few guest posts have been written, begin writing posts on your blog that link to these sites. Write quality content, use metrics and examples when possible, and then whenever you have a particularly good blog with links to other blog owners’ sites, email them and ask them to share it in their social circles.

Make it memorable and keep business out of it… at first. You’ve got to begin, work on, and promote content that doesn’t sell your business at all. Just for a while. Nobody likes a hard sell and building readership is the same. If you begin to comment, share, and promote quality information that people genuinely care about, you begin to win what they call the long-tail game. SEO and circulation gains aren’t made overnight. Play the game as if you’re sticking around for a while.

You can really crank this up with StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. $100 here and they’ll direct over 1000 visitors to your post. The other blogs you linked to within your post will then see you as a referrer in their analytics reports and your notoriety in the field will grow.

Create a Reciprocal Tweet System – Every once in a while, with that really great blog post, you can solicit tweets directly. Using your list of email addresses, you can send them a short and sweet solicitation for a tweet. For Ex: “I would love it if you could tweet about [insert link]. Let me know if you need a tweet.” This direct approach is roughly 8% effective according to industry giant Neil Patel, so the longer the list of your potential network, the better.

Consider making a badge. Have a web designer make a badge something along the lines of “Top 100 Ebook Retailer”. Create an embed code. This not only creates perceived credibility, but you can now email out the embed code and create something of an inner circle for those that promote you and share content (and audience) with you.

Create/make images that would be useful to other bloggers. Images rank well in search engine indexing, so almost every blog has at least one. Still, it can be hard to find royalty-free images that relate to your topic. Creating infographics, photos, and Memes:

Use tools like Photoshop, Meme Generator, and Quick Meme to create your own meme like this one:

Once you have your own meme, you can start spreading the content using social sites where your target audience would most likely be on – such as targeted Facebook Groups, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Pinterest, 9gag, Tumblr, and Subreddits on Reddit. (This makes great Social Media fodder.) Using your memes on your other external content distribution campaigns (like guest blogs, slide presentations, ebooks, etc. is good practice as well.)

If you’ve seen improvements in traffic, links and brand mentions through this technique, you can start using Reverse Image Search to find sites that have used your memes but haven’t provided a link to your site. Reach out to them for easier link acquisition.

List potential website owners and make some suggestions for their site.
For example: “Dear Sir or Miss, I’m an avid reader of your blog and, being in the blogging field myself, couldn’t help but notice that you did [X] this when really you mean [Y].” OR “… did you ever think of [X]?”

Ask only for a link to your site as potential remuneration.

If All Else Fails – Buy followers. It sounds dubious, but you can solicit companies directly and pay them to write blogs about you. Many successful blogs make good revenue from this, but it should be a last resort unless you’re in a full-blown, no reservations marketing blast.

The above is an overview of the beginnings of a successful Content Marketing strategy. Social Media strategies are closely tied, but are beyond the scope of this document, though some themes like Meme generation would work well on crossover to Pinterest which, as several studies have proven, drive more sales than Facebook.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Harness Social Media to Boost Your Business

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 04:42:59 +0000

You constantly hear that social media is the way to build business, attract friends, fans, and followers, and “go viral” overnight. But as anyone who has waded into the web has quickly discovered, you can easily spend hours caught in this “web” with very little to show for your effort.

If only it were as easy as creating a Facebook page.

Don’t lose heart, however. As you’ve heard us say elsewhere on these pages, PR and marketing efforts are cumulative. They build over time. And over time, your investments will pay off.

Here are some bangarang ways to get readers interested in your business, whatever it may be.

Solicit Your Friends

Perhaps the hardest part about starting any new business is this: Owning It. Tell your friends and contacts about your new venture. Don’t be shy – they’re your friends and they support you. Twitter is built upon the reciprocal tweet system. Friend/follow someone and with about a 10% rate, they’ll follow/friend you.

Time your posts

Becoming something of an authority in your industry takes time and effort, but it’s what you want to do in order to assure your clients and customers that your product or service is coming from the best source. The key is consistency. Like the gym, gains aren’t made overnight but by sticking to a planned schedule. Time your posts and social media listings to publish at a set time 2-5 times every week, at least.

And when specifically should you publish your blog posts? Typically, the best time to publish your blogs is between 9:30am and 11am USA East Coast time. Testing has shown that this is the time when most Americans are up and running, but this data constantly changes. For Facebook, you can use their analytics tool to find out what time best suits your audience.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered, let’s look at ways you can go about drumming up that business.

Create Interesting Content

This is the hardest thing of all, right? I mean, if creating interesting content was so easy, we wouldn’t spend hours trolling the web looking for it. Well here’s the golden rule: do what your customers are too lazy to do. It takes work, but it isn’t necessarily hard. Once you know your business (and you do, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business) then all you have to do is tell your industry the best things about their business.

Take, for instance, flashlights. Now my girlfriend goes crazy over this, but I recently developed a thing for flashlights. Not a pervy thing, just an interest. So I poke about looking for which flashlight has the best throw, flood, spill, this and that, you know, whatever. Anyway, these people over at candlepowerforums have done more testing than you would’ve ever thought possible about flashlights, their lumen output, their lux output, their ANSI ratings, mods, you get the picture.

Still, if you’re looking into purchasing a light hand cannon, well then you’ve come to the right place. The font of information inspires you, engages you, and they sell flashlights.

Now back to your business:

Find interesting content that pertains to your field: this can be anything from ANSI ratings to the brilliance of radiant cut diamonds. Share this with your readers. It will boost your SERP (Social Engine Results Page) and help to define you as an authority in your field.
Make it new – Below, I encourage you to make a spreadsheet–a list–of others in your field. (That’s right, even your competitors.) Read their posts and spin their content. Take their nugget and add your own value to it. (It’s not stealing; all of society is built off a handful of great people and their work. We all pitch in incrementally, but we all had to learn something from someone.) See what’s happening in the field, what your customers are responding to (by checking out which blog posts receive the most shares) and see how you can add your own creative twist.
Give Away Free Stuff – I know that it’s hard to do this as a budding business, but here’s perhaps the most valuable thing you can give: information. (That’s what Alchemy On Demand is doing here, see?) Use that interesting content and create an eBook or better yet, a training course. Offer a service and have your audience pay with a tweet. Or with, say, a Facebook “like” or email address. The more creative you get here the better.

Get a list of others in your field

What? This is about me, not them, right? I know, I know. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I’m a big fan of lists–for a reason: editors, readers, and customers love lists – and you should too. For our present purposes, your list enables you to find out what others in your field are doing and spark ideas about what you could be doing to create interest. You identify opportunities to comment to their blog or Facebook posts, thereby alerting their friends, followers, and fans, that you’re a valuable resource too. You might even approach one of these businesses or social media sites with a request to author a guest blog on their site. And offer them the same on yours. Now you’re gaining access to their customers.

Google Alerts is another great way to stay up-to-date about what is going on in your field, but generally speaking, might not be focused enough to be pertinent in your niche. If you’re selling a product or service related to spiritual healing, for example, then you may have a hard time finding other blogs and industry professionals that are keeping you updated with breaking news. But you will probably find a wealth of information regarding healing, spirituality, holistic health, general health, Western vs. Eastern Medicine, etc., in general. Use Technorati to get a good list of 200+ blogs that pertain to your field and then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings and order them in order of their readership.

Something like so:

This will give you the contacts you need in order to stay up to date on what is happening in your industry. If you don’t like doing this yourself (after all, you’ve got a company to run), I’ve found some great help using Upwork in the past.

Well, there you have it. Some good info about the beginning stages of drumming up your business. I’ll conclude here with the firm advice to begin conversations with people, like them, follow them, +1 them, Link them, whatever it takes at this point. It’s hard to get your readership off the ground, but once you get rolling, you get rolling in customers, and ooh boy – what a feeling.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

Why Write a Killer Blogpost

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:59:48 +0000

Sure, it seems easy enough – all your friends seem to have started one, so why shouldn’t you? But with the advent of the internet and weblogging, it seems that everyone has become an expert and so it’s hard to separate the good content from dross, the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. There are plenty of articles out there from a great many web authors, but the question remains – what’s in a blog post?

Blog posts can be written for a variety of reasons – a blog about your new hobby baking cupcakes is one thing, but if you’re looking to generate some quality content for your business, then that’s a whole other bag. Businesses that maintain a web presence (and who doesn’t nowadays?) will benefit to have a blog that maintains a quality line of content. This not only shows your prospective customers that you are staying informed (as well as informing them) about current trends in your industry, but it also helps to make your site competitive on search engines like Bing and Google.

People are paying thousands of dollars nowadays to talk to search engine optimizers (SEOs), and it only makes good business sense – the better your site does on a Google ranking, the more potential customers will see it and the more business you’ll generate. And so getting back to our point, writing a great blog post not only generates visitors to your site helping to validate it, but it also allows you to add keyword-rich content that helps make your site better “known” to Google for these particular keywords. But writing a great blog post does more than this, it also allows you to establish a community and a relationship with that community.

According to SEO gurus like Neil Patel and SEOmoz, companies see a far better Return On Investment (ROI) when they have loyal, return viewers of their site. Thus, quality content establishes a rapport, builds a fan base, and imbues a sense of your competency in those who would visit your site. With the latest Google Algorithm updates, gone are the days of generating countless backlinks and keyword-rich nonsense content.

And thank heavens for that, eh? Let’s make the web better for all involved. Here’s to generating some quality content and keeping the BlackHats out of it.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand