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Social Media for Professionals: LinkedIn and Google+

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Social media has become an integral part of the personnel sourcing and job hunting process. Today, more and more companies rely on the Internet to research the candidates (including outside consultants) they plan to hire.  This makes it important to take a strategic approach when it comes to building your online reputation. Effectively leveraged, social media can help you create a strong personal brand and widen your reach across a wide array of job markets, industries, and organizations.

While there are many social media platforms that can help you build your network, there are two that all professionals should definitely consider and keep up to date – Google+ and LinkedIn. While the latter has now become synonymous with job search / hiring, the former can help you establish a strong online presence that you can leverage to enhance your reach. These two platforms alone can help you build a relevant network, and create and exchange information and ideas to give shape to your personal brand as a professional.

Linking Via LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become the most popular professional network in most parts of the world. Clearly, it has several advantages over traditional job portals thanks to its social media strengths and the fact that it is primarily driven by quality content.

  • LinkedIn allows its members to connect with each other. You can connect with like-minded individuals from the same profession and explore available job opportunities through this network.
  • It is a handy research tool. Most companies worth their name are present on LinkedIn with specialized digital marketing teams continuously generating content or strategizing to make their presence felt online. You can utilize this content along with inputs from your network to research a potential employer and their business before an interview.
  • You can identify the people that matter. Within minutes, LinkedIn can offer you insights into who the key persons in your area of interest are at a company you want to work with—as an employee, as a vendor, as a business partner, and so on. You can connect and engage with them to explore the possibility of a potential opportunity in their company.
  • You can build credibility. Your profile provides details about the people in your professional network, the companies you have worked with, and the capabilities you bring to the table, among other factors. Features like endorsements and recommendations add even greater credibility to your profile. 

How To Make The Most Of LinkedIn?

  • Develop your LinkedIn profile like you would your resume. Highlight your strengths and capabilities early in your profile page.
  • Create interesting content and share it with your network. This will help establish you as a subject matter expert. The more original content you post the greater the benefits, including search engine rankings.
  • Build your network. Identify people within your industries of interest and connect with them. Join relevant groups and make your presence felt within these micro-networks.
  • Post regularly on various forums and comment on topics that can demonstrate your expertise and show that you have a unique perspective on matters of interest to your network.
  • Use the right keywords while building your profile and even while posting in forums. This will help both, your search engine rankings and your association with certain specific skills and capabilities.
  • Let’s connect Luke Middendorf – LinkedIn

Enhancing Your Online Presence With Google+

Where do we all go when we want to search for information?

Google. Where else? No other search engine today comes even close. A strong presence on Google+, is therefore, a definite advantage. However, as Google says, Google+ is now more than a social media platform. It has integrated various other offerings from the Google stable such as YouTube, Google+ Communities, Hangouts, Google Local and Reviews, Google Analytics, Google+ Ripples, and Google Mobile to provide a single window platform that can have a significant impact on your SEO.

How can you take advantage of Google+?

  • Build a profile page on Google+ to let Google know of your existence. While there is no stated preference, there is enough evidence to show that Google does favour content hosted on its products when throwing up search results.
  • Create backlinks to your blog, website, and LinkedIn pages using Google+. Also ensure that these links can be shared by those who visit your profile.
  • Upload content and make it shareable on Google+. The more shares you can manage the better it is in terms of SEO for your profile.
  • Build the right connections. The Circle function offered by Google+ helps segregate your contacts. This is a valuable tool you can use to employ targeted messaging and relevant communications.
  • Let’s connect Luke Middendorf on Google+, WSI Connect 0n Google+

Contact WSI Connect to help you plan and leverage social media for businesses.  WSI Connect is a digital marketing agency located in Concord, CA.  We service the San Francisco Bay area and help our clients grow their profits through strategies such as search engine optimization, online advertising, website optimization and social media. 

Google Penguin 2.0: How Will It Impact Your Business?

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According to Google, the Penguin 2.0 update will penalize websites that adopt black hat web marketing techniques to rank high on search engines. Penguin 2.0 will identify websites that purchase links, employ spam, publish bad content, create low quality backlinks, and adopt other such questionable online marketing practices. The previous Penguin updates were also aimed at catching black hat techniques such as these. Penguin 2.0 takes this stringency several steps further, and is a much more comprehensive update that will test websites on several parameters.

What can you do to avoid a drop in your ranking?

If you have built a backlinks profile that that goes against Google’s guidelines then your page ranking can drop significantly. Key areas you need to watch out for are listed below:

  • Low-quality inbound links will be given less weightage, so you need to improve the quality of your links or face Google’s wrath
  • Start auditing your backlinks to ensure that they are aligned to the new Google standards
  • Your content needs to have depth and demonstrate industry expertise
  • All advertorials and spam links across your website need to be eliminated
  • Avoid heavy usage of exact match anchor text links
  • Become an authority in your target market: Build your online authority by offering a wide variety of content types. Websites that provide visitors highly authoritative content are likely to rank higher. Companies that are dealing in niche areas and targeted markets have an advantage here. Provide fresh, high quality content on a regular basis.
  • Leverage social media: Post links to your content on Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media sites relevant to your business; market your content using the Like and Share features most social media sites offer, and most importantly, build a strong online network.
  • Avoid Keyword Misuse: Penguin 2.0 will enable Google Web crawlers to assess the anchor text being used to link to your website. Avoid using too many keywords as your anchor text. Google could misinterpret this as a black hat tactic and lower your rankings.
  • Earn your links: Penguin 2.0 will strictly penalize sites that buy backlinks. Create quality, authoritative content to earn links.

How to Benefit from Penguin 2.0?

SEO Moving Forward

If you are building a new website or revamping your existing one, don’t wait till the site is ready before you call in an SEO expert. Your website architecture is integral to the success of SEO. Involve an SEO expert right from the planning stage to maximize benefits. Additionally:

  • Ensure your information architecture is intuitive: Your information architecture is as important if not more so than the web technology you use in the backend. Don’t focus purely on the aesthetics of the website. Take usability into consideration while planning your information architecture.
  • Eliminate duplicate content: Don’t deploy the same content for related webpages. If you are running an online campaign, don’t reuse the content from a related product or service description page. Create fresh content for each new page you add to your website.
  • Plan your keyword strategy: Align your keyword strategy with the needs of your business. Analyse the websites of your competitors. Don’t overuse your keywords in your anchor texts but leverage them effectively.
  • Content is still king: Ensure that your web pages provide relevant information with all the necessary information a potential customer is likely to seek. Think human—if you were the buyer what information would you require to aid you in your decision making process? Make sure that information is available on your website.
  • Website search functionality: If you have a comprehensive website, offering information about multiple products and services, you need to provide your visitors an internal search function. Don’t expect users to spend time hunting for information on your website. But if they found interesting information on your website they are more likely to run a search query for related information. You can also leverage these insights on search patterns within your site to refine your keyword strategy.
  • Analyse, analyse, analyse: Create dashboards, pull out site visit details, check which keywords work best, identify pages that are most visited and list the pages with maximum bounce rates. Now analyze this data to fine-tune your content and keyword strategy so you can make it more effective in driving traffic to your website.

Contact WSI Connect to help you plan an effective SEO strategy and stay on the right side of the Google Zoo!

Tips for writing a great press release

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Press releases have always been a useful marketing tool in building exposure for major events; and, they are increasingly becoming an important part of an effective off-page SEO strategy. While there are many different schools of thought on press releases, here are seven points to keep in mind when crafting your own, for any purpose:

Be concise

First and foremost, be concise. No one will read a three-page press release; shorten it to a page or a few paragraphs and get it done. Get in, get out, and let people get on their way with more information about your company or product without overdoing it.

Spell & grammar check!

It may seem simple, silly, or stupid, but it is critical that your press release is grammatically correct! Double check spelling and punctuation, and make sure you are writing like a true professional.

Tell them ALL the information

Press releases are not teasers – they are supposed to be chock full of information. Who, what, why, when, where, and how are the key points. Make it a point to include all of these points in your press release.  Leaving nothing to be desired, media and local journalists will not have to guess as to what your press release is actually about, or what it all actually means.

Leave your contact information

Another one that may sound obvious, but is actually done far less frequently than you’d think, is the idea that you need to leave your contact information after a press release is sent out! How will the media or others contact you if they don’t know what number to call or where to send the email? Many sites will even all you to include your LinkedIn profile.

Provide actionable items

Provide items that make sense and are actionable. Press releases aren’t announced and published from non-events.  Instead, make sure you are releasing information about specific things such as event announcements, product launches, and more. Providing an actionable item with a specific takeaway, allows media members and viewers to figure out why something specific matters to them and their needs.

Maximize it for SEO

Your press release may be for one specific event, but the content will live on in the Internet long after that event is over.  Be sure to include hyperlinks pointing back to the most relevant pages (no more than 3 links).  Include content about your company and relevant keywords that have the best performance for your specific topic.

Good syndication

There are a number of websites that will submit your press release for free or for a small fee.  At WSI Connect, we leverage the advanced syndication from PRWeb.  It allows our press releases to get maximum exposure while often being picked up by major online publishers.  Not only does this increase awareness of your event, but it also provides long lasting backlinks from authority domains.

Need help with your next press release?  We both write and syndicate them for many of our customers.  contact us today for more information.

Tips For Hiring A SEO Consultant

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There are plenty of different consultants out there when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and helping you and your company with getting noticed. But if you own a local business, chances are you have some very specific needs. That means you need to be smart about who you hire as an SEO consultant and what you end up getting as a final product.

So what can you do, and what can you ask when it comes to finding a good SEO consultant for your local or small business needs? Use the following questions as a road map about not only what you should ask a potential SEO consultant you are considering hiring, but also as a way to weed out impostors and find strongly-reviewed candidates to help you and your business.

What Methods Will They Use?

Off the bat, this may be the most important question of them all; “black hat” SEO, as it’s called, is the use of spammy or at the very least ethically questionable practices to get you to land on the first page of search engines. You may not care or know about that, or care how you get to the first page, but it does matter.

After all, if your business is found to use black hat tactics to move up in search engines, you can be penalized by Google and others. That doesn’t hurt your SEO consultant – that hurts your business. Make sure they use only acceptable and professional techniques to get on the first page.

Do You Have The Money?

You need to ask this question of yourself, but you also need to ask it of a potential consultant.  Figure out and stick to a budget with a consultant, so they know what they are getting, you know what you can expect, and more – right off the bat, without confusion or concern.  Keep in mind that there are a lot of consultants out there that offer super cheap rates.  The results are often even lower than their prices.  High quality SEO can feel expensive, but can often lead to a much larger return on your investment.

Do They Come Recommended?

Ask to see references, and ask for examples of work that they have done in the past and that they can push forward and prove as being part of their total package. A good SEO consultant won’t hesitate to provide references and past success stories, allowing you to figure out how well recommended they come, and if others are saying good enough things to work with them in due time.

What Success Have They Had In The Past?

Linked to the recommendation issue, has a potential SEO consultant you are tracking gotten good results in the past? Have they had success getting people on the front page of Google? If the answer is “no,” well, they may not be as good as they’d like to think! Ask them about their past successes and determine for yourself how well they have done, and if they can do work on your behalf in turn.

Contact us today to learn more about our SEO services.

Marketing Competition Analysis – Standing Out From Your Competitors

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Today, when it comes to the Internet, understanding your competition through a marketing competition analysis has become crucial. Just several years ago, the Internet was a diversion full of entertainment, fun, and confusion for most people. While that of course is still true today, there is one major addition that needs to be understood: the Internet has literally blossomed overnight when it comes to highlighting and showcasing businesses, and functioning as a platform to attract customers and clients.

Because of that, the ability and desire to gain new customers and clients over the Internet, and attract customers from search engines and social media sites has become extremely competitive. You may not see it or feel it, but your competitors are working just as hard as you, if not harder, to gain prospects and customers on the Internet.

For your business, no matter the industry, it’s necessary that you do the same when it comes to standing out from the crowd and showcasing yourself online so that customers and new prospects can find you with ease.

Crowded Marketplaces Mean Less Opportunity To Stand Out

As the Internet in general becomes more crowded and chaotic with businesses offering incentives and advertisements at every turn, it becomes more important than ever to stand out from the crowd and attract customers with your products and services. Otherwise you risk having your business being lost in the flood of countless other businesses just like yours.

Leverage a competition analysis to understand what your competitors are doing with everything from search engine optimization, to social media accounts so that you can differentiate and stand out. No matter what the industry, you have to bring your ‘A’ game online, lest you be bested right out of a job.

Online Presence Equals Offline Dollars

Being online doesn’t just mean getting people to follow you on Twitter, or having people check out your blog. Sure, that’s important, and they can lead to offline conversions and results. A strong online presence that puts you out ahead of your competitors can directly and swiftly lead to offline dollars and profits for your business.

As more and more people go digital when they are searching for products and services, and a greater number of people work to review and purchase products or services online, it’s critical that you get out there and have a lasting, visible presence on the Internet where customers can come directly to you. This, in turn, will rapidly improve your business while dramatically cutting a variety of your costs.

Need help with your marketing competition analysis?  WSI Connect has the expertise that you need.  Contact us today to learn more.