Long Tail Keywords

Improve Search Results with Long Tail Keywords

Long Tail Keywords - you have probably heard this term before. still, chances are you are probably asking yourself, “What are long tail keywords?” They are keywords or key phrases that are more specific (and sometimes longer) than the more commonly searched-for keywords. For example, “SEO” is a very general search that will net you all sorts of results, but “SEO company Kansas City” is very specific, and will direct you towards VMA (and our competitors)! Long tail keywords usually get less traffic, but will have a higher conversion value, since they are more specific to a particular topic.

If you really want your business to profit off of long tail keywords, you first need to have a very clear vision for your company, your product, and your website. If you can do this, then you can go ahead and start using a keyword strategy by focusing on long tail keywords. Here’s how to begin:

Know Your Product and Your Business

While you are working to set up great marketing online for your business, you really need to focus on and understand just what you are selling and to whom you are selling it. Having a clear focus for your business will make marketing it easier and get you the customer traffic you want.

If you want to target the customer that knows exactly what they are looking for (and you can offer it), using long tail keywords is a great idea. But first, you need to know exactly how to use them and make the most out of it.

Customer Buying Patterns

A seasoned online businessperson knows the value in long tail keywords and uses them to his or her advantage. You need to get to those buyers who are being specific in what they want. There is typically a six-step pattern that someone uses when they go to buy something, and it looks a little like this:

1. The customer becomes aware of the product.
2. They seek information about the product as they prepare to possibly purchase it.
3. They will evaluate the alternatives to the product.
4. They will make the purchase decision.
5. They will pull out their payment method and complete the transaction.
6. The customer will evaluate the product after buying and decide whether to keep or return it.

Looking at this buying pattern, it is safe to say that as a business, you will want to really gain this customer’s attention around step 4. Sure, it’s great to gain their attention earlier by using short, broad keywords, but you can also focus on long tail keywords to really get their attention when they’re making the actual purchase decision. As they are ready to buy a product, the customer will start using very specific search phrases as they seek out their target purchase.

The Benefit of Using Multi-Phrases

Using a very specific multi-phrase is usually easier to rank and rank well with than using keywords that simply use a generic single- or double-word phrase. Making sure you get a good specific long tail keyword can be tricky, because you will always most likely be going up against big-name companies no matter what you are selling. Alternately, you could go too specific and end up using a keyword that is simply too unique and unused. Just remember these two things as you are sitting and thinking about your business and how you want to get it out there:

1. Long tail keywords are much easier to rank for, since they are specific.
2. People who search by using these long tail keywords are more likely to become a buyer.

By using long tail keywords, it is likely that you will need to create more pages within your website, as you are trying to gain a very specific audience and buyer. That is okay, because it turns out that Google likes a website that has many pages! This takes a special balance, as you build your website and those pages without adding too much junk.

Be careful to not completely neglect more common keywords, or you may not gain enough traffic. It is a balance for your business that needs to be researched and see which long tail keywords have the highest traffic and go from there. It is best to have a few pages that send you large amounts of general traffic and then also have a large number of pages with each one sending you a small amount of highly targeted traffic.

Research is Key

With SEO, it is always best to get in some good old-fashioned research as you look into using long tail keywords. This will help you determine which keywords will bring you enough traffic to sustain your business as well as help you rank higher based on the sites you are competing against.

Once you have these keywords researched and ready to use, make sure that the long tail keywords are well used within all the content on your website and the pages. Content is a crucial part of making the long tail keywords work well for you.

Using long tail keywords that work for your business should do three things for you over time:

1. You should have better rankings.
2. You should see higher sales conversions.
3. More of your pages will be indexed in Google.

Long tail keywords may not always work, and that is okay. It is not something you want to overuse anyway. You want these longer keywords or phrases to help push your business up, not bring it down. Sprinkle them in where you need them and figure out where to use them using trial and error.

Resources for Long Tail Keywords

Here are a few websites that are useful for finding long tail keywords for specific topics:

• Long Tail Pro
• SearchVolume.io
• Keyword Tool
• Answer the Public
• AgencyAnalytics
• You can also simply use search engine results by looking at what Google or other sites try to auto fill when searching for your product or topic.

If you want more SEO advice from Virtual Market Advantage, check out our other blogs, such this one that goes over how to best write Facebook Ads for your business!

Improve your Copy with these Copywriting Exercises

Our previous VMA blog defined copywriting and discussed what makes good copy. As a refresher, good copy will engage your audience and provide something valuable to make people want to buy your product or use your services. In addition to starting a conversation with your customers, good copy also needs to take web design and SEO into account in order to thrive in modern-age business.

The next question is:

How do I get better at writing copy?

Let’s go over some useful copywriting exercises to help you improve your copy and make you more comfortable with writing and creating as a whole. Practice makes perfect, so let’s go over some things you can do to develop your copywriting skills.

Re-Write Ads

Advertisements are everywhere. We’re bombarded with them constantly. As you interact with the world every day, pay close attention to the ads around you and try to re-write them. Can you figure out a way to make people crave that restaurant’s food even more with a better billboard slogan? Is there any way to improve that Google AdWord advertisement that came up on your last search?

Don’t worry about the quality of your fake re-written ads. The important thing is to constantly practice using different styles and methods to promote an idea or product.

Make a Swipe File

If you have a job that requires you to constantly produce new content, keeping a swipe file is a must. A swipe file is a collection of advertisements and copy that left a mark on you in some way. Even if it has nothing to do with your field, you can put content in your swipe file for any reason: great visual design, a clever turn of phrase, or even a cool font that you want to use later. Make sure to save anything that makes you click on a link, laugh, or even just pause for a closer look.

A swipe file can be either a physical file or digital file. You can even have one on your phone, which is a great way to keep up with mobile-responsive innovations. Screenshots are a great tool for easily saving digital copies. If you have a Mac, you can press command-shift-4, then drag a box around the desired image. By default, this saves the screenshot to your desktop, where you can drag it into your swipe file.

If you have a Windows PC, it gets a bit more complicated. Here’s an overview of several different ways to take screenshots in Windows. If you have Windows 10, by default one of the easier ways to take a screenshot is to press Windows-PrintScreen (usually abbreviated to something like PrntScrn or PrtScn and located near F12). This will save an image of your entire screen to Screenshots under the default Pictures folder.

So what do you do with your expanding swipe file? Use it for inspiration! If you need to make something, browse your swipe file for ideas related to that project. Need a clean-but-interesting web layout? Want to find phrasing ideas for blog titles? Check your swipe file and see if anything that popped out at you in the past can help with your current problem.

Copy Copy

A simple exercise for improving your content is to copy other people’s copy. While you’re filling your swipe file with fun ideas, physically write down advertisements, slogans, and other forms of copy that you think are brilliant. Copy them word-for-word, so you can get a better feel for how the sentence is structured and what makes it sound and look good.

Highlight the Benefits

When you describe the features of your product or business, don’t simply list them. You also need to let your customers know the results of these features and how they will benefit them.

For example, a feature of WordPress is the ability to publish content such as pages and posts without using code. This is a great feature, but on the WordPress website, the copywriter further explains that anyone who has created a document on their computer is already prepared to write a post, format it, insert media, and publish “with the click of a button.” Not only does the paragraph describe the feature of WordPress, but it also explains in simple terms how this feature benefits the potential user.

Keep in mind that you are most likely much more informed on your business’ field than your customers. They want to know how they can use your features to benefit themselves and why they should use your company over another. Most of them won't be drawn to a jargon-heavy list of features.

Be Concise

There’s a reason why social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram are so huge. People love taglines. A short, concise phrase such as “just do it” or “I’m lovin’ it” sticks in your head much easier than a longer sentence would.

When creating your copy, try to trim down the content and get your point across with as few words as possible. By sending out information more efficiently, you will get your message across better. Whether it’s text, video, or audio, spread information with fewer words.

This doesn’t mean that all of your copy should be cut short. Long copy can spread a lot of information, draw people in, and sell well. Longwinded copy, on the other hand, drives people away before they finish listening.

Read Out Loud

One of the best things you can do to improve your copy right away is read it out loud. Not only does this help you weed out typos and grammatical errors, but it also helps you make your content sound more conversational. It’s much easier to make a sentence sound natural if you hear it as you read it. It will also help you avoid being as longwinded!

Read aloud to yourself, record your voice and listen to it, or even force someone else to listen to you. You’ll see instant results.

Learn More

Many jobs require you to keep up-to-date on the latest news, techniques, or trends. Working as a copywriter is no different, especially if your focus is online. A copywriter who is good at many things is always going to have an edge over one who is only good at one thing.

Get experience wherever you can. If you want to work as a freelancer, it’s best to start out in an established company for a few years. That way, you can learn how many aspects of the business works, and it’s not as easy to get stuck in a rut of your own repeating ideas.

Constantly search for more ways to learn something new or improve an old skill. Take classes, join a discussion, read a book…the possibilities for new information are endless, especially online!

Hopefully these tips help you develop your copywriting skills a bit more in the future. If you want more information on SEO, web development, design, and many other topics, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

Content Marketing and Return on Investment

It can be difficult to calculate how much return on investment (ROI) your business is getting from your content marketing strategy. If done well, content marketing has a higher-than-average marketing ROI. This Forbes article contains an interview with Julie Fleischer, former Director of Content Strategy and Integration at Kraft Foods. Fleischer claims that Kraft’s content marketing gives the company a ROI that is, “among the highest of all of our marketing efforts.” So where do you start to improve your business’s content marketing strategy?

The first step is to determine your current content marketing ROI with these 3 components:

Cost

First you need to determine how much money is being spent on your current content marketing strategy. Depending on the size of your company and the amount of content it produces, you will either need a full audit or a smaller sample of the total content. Use average costs to get a rough estimate of content spending.

Utilization

You also need to figure out how much of the content that’s made is actually being used. Any created content that goes unused is a complete waste. Calculated a rough percentage of content utilization.

Performance

For the content that is created and used, you also need to determine how well it is performing. There are many factors to check, such as page views, likes, social shares, etc. But you also have to link these results back to the business’s content history. See which types of content marketing worked best for your company and review how the strategy developed over time as groundwork for moving forward. It’s important to continue checking performance regularly as you change your strategy.

Make sure your business holds marketing accountable for their ROI. Often a company will send out employees to produce content without fully keeping track of the investment. Request verified results that are measured and reported. Don’t let your content marketing go unsupervised.

How to Improve Your Content Marketing

Now that you know more about how your content marketing has worked up until now, it’s time to start improving it.

Reach Out to Early-Stage Buyers

Much of the marketing we see around us is overly promotional. For buyers who are not yet familiar with your brand, pushy advertisements tend to get tuned out. You need to find a way to make your brand noticeable, likable, and trusted enough that people will want to buy your product or use your services. Here are some things to take into account when setting up your online marketing:

Branded Conversations

Search the online conversations about your product category. What percentage of them mentions a specific brand? What percentage mentions your brand? If that percentage is much different than your market share in your category, it means your competitors are taking away potential prospects right from the beginning.

Unbranded Search Traffic

How many people are searching for your product category online? What percentage of these prospects end up at your website rather than a competitor’s? You can’t only promote your brand within your own website. You must branch out to other sources in order to draw people in.

Website Traffic

Be aware of the quality and quantity of traffic that flows through the websites you use for advertising and the cost of using them. High-traffic sites are great for spreading your brand quickly, but may come with a hefty price. Smaller sites with less traffic can be much cheaper for advertisement fees. Keep track of these costs as you determine where to show your ads.

Organic vs. Paid Traffic

Many companies pay for fake traffic in order to make their sites look more trustworthy and popular. Organic content marketing allows you to reach out to potential and existing customers, start conversations, spread the word about your brand, and gain additional reach without paying for fake viewers. In the long run, it’s always better to earn your customer’s trust and attention rather than buying it.

Unused Content

Again, any content that is created for your company that goes unused is a complete waste of resources. Keep a close eye on the percentage of content that goes unused and reduce that number as much as possible.

Banner Advertisements

You see banner advertisements everywhere you go online, but how effective are they really? Banner ads are actually shown to underperform when compared to almost any other kind of content marketing. Make sure that they are part of a broader marketing strategy. Think carefully about where you place them in order to get the most out of the investment.

Engaging Your Customers

There are several ways that you can monitor how well you are engaging your customers online. Resources such as Google Analytics allow you to easily keep track of various aspects of website viewership.

Bounce Rate

How many people who visit your site stay there for an extended period of time and click on several different pages within the site? The percentage of viewers who leave your site after viewing only one page is known as the bounce rate. As you alter your content marketing strategy, pay close attention to how each change affects the bounce rate, so you can focus on the changes that are beneficial.

Repeat Visits

Pay attention to repeat visits and extended time spent with your brand. By looking at repeat visits, you can measure the value of brand awareness and track how your content marketing affects loyal customers.

Subscribers

Calculate the value per subscriber. Determine the cost and payoff of bringing customers into the brand fold, and learn how to market towards these customers.

In summary, keep track of your content marketing strategy. Pay attention to where the money is going. Pay close attention to the cost of your content, and make sure that the content actually being used. Check on the performance of each type of content and constantly try to improve. Use a resource such as Google Analytics to help see what’s going on with your website traffic as you make changes.

Try to draw in organic traffic by starting conversations, spreading your brand name, and instilling loyalty in your customers. When trying to develop your business’s content marketing strategy, keep these factors in mind, and make improvements wherever possible for a greater ROI.

If you want more suggestions for developing your website, check out VMA’s other blogs. This one goes over how to keep your content fresh and up-to-date, or “evergreen.”

Social Media and the Unfiltered Internet

Do you remember The Dress? The one that no one could decide whether it was gold and white or blue and black. The one that was being talked about all over the place in 2015. Did you know that the original post for the dress was a Facebook post that got fewer than 20 likes? It was only later, when it was posted to Tumblr and Twitter, that the dress picture because the phenomenon of The Dress.

Filtered Internet Content

The Internet is a huge place that’s expanding every day. In fact, we can only see a tiny portion of it. And that portion is further shrunken by the social media platforms that we use to browse for entertainment or work. The general population adds to these sites constantly, providing an ever-expanding source of content. The question arises though: is there too much content?

Even if you browse social media sites all day every day, you won’t be able to see even a small fraction of their content. This poses a problem for the companies running these sites. They want people to stick around and continue to browse the site, because the more viewers they have, the more money they get from advertising. If a viewer’s feed is too bogged down by uninteresting or irrelevant content, they are more likely to stop going to that site altogether.

This problem has caused most social media sites to start filtering content in one way or another. For example, Facebook decides what to show on your feed based on many underlying factors, such as your sex, age, marital status, and the types of websites and links you tend to visit. In general this is a good thing, since it makes our feeds more interesting and pertinent to us. However, it also causes a sizable underlying layer of social media that gets lost and unseen in the shuffle.

Hidden Content

This hidden content is public and recognized by search engines, but it only reaches a tiny audience and is difficult to find if you’re looking for it. To give you an idea of how much content is hidden, here’s a study from 2009 that showed that 53% of YouTube videos had under 500 views!

Hidden content (besides the spam) often feels more honest, since it doesn’t contain the repetitive formulas of mainstream traffic that keeps those posts more visible to search engines. It also tends to be more amateurish, of low quality, be too short or too long, and have titles that are difficult to find in a search. In general, the hidden content feels more candid, intimate, and human.

If you’re interested in sifting through this forgotten content, several resources have popped up to help you. These include Oviews for unwatched YouTube videos, SadTweets for unseen Twitter tweets, and Forgotify for unheard songs on Spotify.

Using the Unfiltered Internet

As with every resource, some people have actually found a way to get money from the underbelly content of the unfiltered Internet. Some companies search through public photos that people post online looking for recognizable brands. They then sell the photos to the brand’s company for demographic information or advertisement.

Some of the unpopular content is eventually discovered and becomes extremely popular for a time. When content goes viral like this, the original poster very rarely profits from their fame, and sometimes it can even cause them harm. Imagine having a video you posted go viral to the point where you get hundreds of notifications per hour. It would get old quickly and make it impossible to actually find the notifications that you want to see. This is what happened to the girl who originally posted about The Dress. Her phone kept crashing from the influx of notifications. In the aftermath, BuzzFeed posted about a party they were throwing to celebrate The Dress as their largest post ever. It’s impossible to know exactly how much money BuzzFeed made off of that post, but it is known that the original poster didn’t really benefit.

What is interesting (and disconcerting) is that the biggest post on one of the most popular social media sites was taken from another site, which was also taken from another site, without the permission or knowledge of the act from the original poster. No one was compensated for this string of events, and the post was eventually taken down due to copyright infringement.

The Internet is becoming more and more centralized and controlled by corporations trying to subsist on other people’s content. Some of these companies last a long time, while others disappear and are quickly replaced by something else. The future of these companies and social media in general is unclear. It’s similarly hard to tell what will happen to the enormous amount of unseen content that makes up the majority of the unfiltered Internet as it continues to expand every second.

Check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here for more posts about SEO, social media, and various other topics!

Get your links indexed Fast!

If you want to know how to get your links indexed fast, you probably know a thing or two already about Search Engine Optimization. To make sure we are all on the same page, here are a few things you should have already done:

Indexed your website in Google's Webmaster Tools
Built a link pointing back to your website

If you've made it this far, Congratulations! If not, go back and do those two things.

Now, when you log in to your Google Webmaster Tools Search Console, you can click on the "Links to Your Site" menu option on the left in order to view the links pointing back to your site.

When you click on Links to Your Site, if your link building has been a success, you will see something like this:

That's a bunch of links - And it really is easy to get tons more quickly!

What's the secret?

HIRE AN INDEXING SERVICE!

Spend money on my business? Never! I know I know...I used to be just like you. I would work all day making backlinks that would not show up in Webmaster Tools. So Frustrating! I used to feel like I was on some wild goose chase. I could easily build dofollow links, but for some reason they never showed up as pointing back to my site. I grew even more frustrated as I employed more advanced link building techniques such as Scrapebox and GSA Ser. Why was I failing?!

Mainly because Indexing is a difficult and complicated process. It is a completely different level of SEO tasks. If you're like me, then you barely have time to make links, let alone spend your time pinging and sending social signals. So if you want to get your links indexed fast, you should use who I use:

INDEXIFICATION

HERE'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET

Add Unlimited Campaigns & Unlimited URLs per Campaign
Add 1.5 Million Links a month = 50K Links daily
Auto Shorten and Rewrite Links using a 301 redirect
Schedule Links for up to 30 days ahead
100% Guaranteed Links Crawling Rate
High Links Indexing Rate
Realtime Live Crawl Tracking & Stats on All Your Links
100% Automation - Submit Your Links and Forget!
Full Remote API Access for even more Automation
3rd Party Linkbuilding Services Integration
Automated Link Checking & Reporting Dead Links
Free Lifetime 24/7 Customer Service & Support

VMA has been using Indexification for the last couple years. The price is excellent - starting at $17.97 (which gives you more then enough links for any beginner to novice), and we thoroughly recommend it. Best of all, Indexification integrates with all of these 3rd party software applications:

• Scrapebox
• GSA Search Engine Ranker
• SEnuke XCr
• No Hands SEO
• Magic Submitter
• Ultimate Demon
• Backlink Monitor
• AIO Wiki Poster
• SE Demon
• Article Kevo
• Licorne AIO
• Wiki Robot
• Sweet Submitter
• SB Bomber 2
• 301 Nuke
• 301 Redirector
• Ultimate BookmarkR

If you are creating thousands of Profile Links, Wiki Links, Social Bookmarks, Article Links, Forum Links, Blog Comments, Web 2.0 Properties, and so on and so forth...you really need to index these links! You can make as many backlinks as you want, but if you don't index your links, you will never get them to show up in Webmasters Tools.

Adding new Links for Indexing is incredibly easy - you just paste them in a form. By default, the links are set to Drip Feed within 7 days, but you can customize that as well. Indexification specializes in providing 100% crawling rate and high indexing rate of your backlinks!

If you are serious about Link Building, Indexification is a must. We use it for every link we create. Have you ever tried Indexification? Let us know how it worked for you!

Spam Bot Traffic: What Is It and What Can I Do About It?

If you have a website and social media campaign for your business, chances are high that you’ve encountered spam bot traffic. Spam bots are programs that have been created to follow, befriend, comment on, or otherwise contact as many people or websites as possible as quickly as possible. Usually they are used in an attempt to bring more traffic back to their own site. Fake followers from spam bots are not actively looking at your site. They are not customers, and they can even be detrimental to your business.

Why is Spam Bot Traffic a Problem?

You might wonder how exactly spam bots affect your website and your business. The major problems have to do with reduced communication, security, server load, and faulty analytics data.

One of the most obvious problems is the flood of bogus comments onto your website or social media page. Comments sections are supposed to be a place where viewers can contact a business directly and set up a flow of conversation. A good comments section can genuinely benefit a website. However, if a comments section is overflowing with spam that advertises different sites, it cripples the ability to keep conversations going and takes attention away from the original site.

Spam bot traffic has gotten to be such a huge problem that many websites are opting to turn off their comments sections and user registrations entirely. Some are also forced to spend valuable time and even pay money to try to protect their websites from such attacks. Even large blogging sites such as CopyBlogger.com have opted to remove their comments sections, stating that only about 4% of the comments they were receiving were not spam.

If the spam bots get bad enough, your website can be greatly harmed. Too much spam can slow down your website, which affects how many people are willing to peruse it. Depending on what kind of outbound links the spam bots add to your site, it can even get flagged and ignored by Google, making it difficult for real viewers to find you. You might also lose your website to hackers who take it over themselves.

Spam bots also inflate your website’s statistics, making it difficult to use tools such as Google Analytics. If spam bot traffic is flooding your site, you can’t use statistical information to accurately give you useful information, such as who your viewers are, so you can focus more on those demographics.

How to Identify Spam Bot Traffic

There are two major types of spam bots that can affect your website. One kind is more visible, posting comments, advertising themselves, and directing traffic to their own sites. The other kind is harder to see and is designed to give a website more views or fake followers without adding any benefit to the original site.

A surge in traffic on your website might indicate spam bots. It might also just be legitimate, beneficial traffic. If you see a surge in traffic, consider whether or not you’ve done something recently that warrants an increase in viewership. If not, you probably have a spam bot problem. You can use Google Analytics to help identify malicious traffic by looking at the sources of the traffic before and after the surge. If the traffic is coming from a major website or social network, it’s probably legitimate. If it’s direct traffic, it’s probably from spam bots.

There are some warnings that can help identify spam bots individually. They spew out an excessive amount of comments on lots of websites. They also try to push their own links on viewers, even if they have nothing in common with the website they are posted on. However, being able to identify individual spam bots is not particularly useful, since hundreds or even thousands of them might affect your site at a time.

How to Reduce Spam Bot Traffic

There are several ways you can attempt to reduce or eliminate spam bot traffic on your website and social media pages. The most effective methods are to shut down communications, like CopyBlogger.com did when they shut down their comments section. Most websites allow you to shut off comments and turn off user registrations altogether. However, this is an extreme response, and many people want to keep communication with their viewers open.

Website can also offer options that allow for more restriction for commenting and registration. For example, WordPress has .htaccess files that restrict bots and several plugins that add CAPTCHAs, limit login attempts, and blacklist spam IP addresses. Also, Google Analytics allows you to filter the data, which can remove some of the effects of spam bots. For example, if a lot of spam is coming from a particular country, you can have the analytics ignore that area. Some websites, such as Facebook, are somewhat better than others at removing and restricting spam accounts without hassle to you.

Spam bot traffic is a huge problem online and will continue to be an issue for the foreseeable future. Not only do they slow down websites, but they can reduce beneficial communication and even be a security risk. If your websites or social media pages are plagued by spam bots, make sure you check for resources specific to those sites that might help reduce the problem. Don’t let spam bots ruin your site!

Digital Sharecropping: Why You Can’t Just Rely on One Website

What is Digital Sharecropping?

Sharecropping is a system where tenants farm on land owned by another person and give a portion of their crops to the landowner. In 2006, writer Nicholas Carr coined the term “Digital Sharecropping” to describe a phenomenon that has arisen among online businesses. It happens when a website relies on other users to provide the majority of its content.

According to Carr, “One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.”

While in traditional sharecropping, the landowner is in charge, online “landlords” are the websites: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

What’s the Problem?

Anyone can create content on these websites. However, the content ends up belonging to the website, not the creator. The more content we create for them for free, the richer and more valuable the landlord becomes.

With any kind of sharecropping, the landlord is in control. The landlord receives the majority of the profits. The landlord can dismantle the system at any time. Even trustworthy websites can suddenly go under or become obsolete. This leaves all of their users suddenly without their services. Most importantly, the landlord doesn’t really care about its individual underlings. Facebook doesn’t care if a single business page gets deleted.

Let’s take a closer look at this Facebook example. Most businesses these days decide to make a Facebook page and update its content regularly. This is a good thing and provides many benefits. It brings in new viewers and customers, raises awareness of their product, and opens a channel of conversation between the business and its clientele. But what if Facebook suddenly decides that you’ve violated its terms and conditions? What if your account gets deleted and you lose your one way to talk to your customers? Facebook is fast-paced and constantly changing. This can come back to haunt you if you rely too much on its services to run your business.

What Should I Do?

There are several ways you can go about making your online business presence stronger. The great news is that by taking these steps, you not only protect yourself from the hazards of digital sharecropping, you also make your business stronger now.

The first step you should take to protect your business online is to have a well designed website that you host yourself. This should be your most crucial business asset online, since it doesn’t rely on other sites. When you use other websites, make sure you link back to your own site constantly to bring in viewers to your own property.

Diversification is your strongest weapon against the downfalls of digital sharecropping. Use many platforms and systems. Provide content on many social media sites. By using a variety of tools, you protect yourself when one of them lets you down.

Another useful tip is to create an opt-in email list on your website. By providing content through an email newsletter directly to your customers, you cut out the middleman in the conversation.

A crucial aspect of building an online presence is to develop a reputation of trustworthiness and value. Provide high quality content, take Internet security seriously, and avoid spammy practices. If your customers trust your business and value your content, they’ll continue making purchases and spread the word about your product.

Following the most recent social media trends is a great way to bring in new business and keep the interest of your customers, new and old. However, you should never build your entire online platform on an asset that you don’t own. By diversifying and talking as directly to your customers as possible, you can create a strong online presence that doesn’t rely on a company that you can’t control.

If you want more tips about SEO, content marketing, and other topics, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blogs here!

15 Ways to Boost Your Online Sales Using Old Fashioned Methods

Even if you have an online business, there are many old fashioned methods that can greatly benefit your company. Check out these tips to boost your online sales. Even using a couple of them could greatly improve your presence and bring in new customers!

Sell a Unique Product

Having a unique and newsworthy product is important if you have a lot of competition. Try to stand out from the crowd so you don’t get lost in the huge amount of Internet businesses.

Build the Right Relationships

Whether it’s online or offline, building the right relationships is one of the best ways to develop your business. Ideally you want to establish such relationships with people who complement your business without being direct competition. Keep an eye out for bloggers, suppliers, and others who could help out your business, and make a connection with them.

Set up a Cartel

Small online cartels can be a great way to get support for your business. Find a small group of complementary businesses and agree to promote each other. Just make sure you don’t group up with competing companies!

Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers

Especially if you’re having trouble selling your product to enough customers, consider selling wholesale to other retailers. Even though you’re selling at a lower price per unit, you’ll get the cash flowing by moving more products at once. It will also get your product to more people, spreading the word about your business. You can also reach out to local businesses to see if anyone is willing to put your products on their shelves.

Send Free Samples

The Internet is full of people who influence many others, such as bloggers, journalists, and entrepreneurs. By sending free samples to people who can spread the word about your product, you can form a mutually beneficial relationship that helps advertise your business.

Offer a Contest or Giveaway

Contests and giveaways are great ways to spread the word about your business while also establishing trust in your products. It takes very little time and effort to set them up, and can bring in lots of new potential clients.

Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring an event can be a great way to bring in business, but it can also be waste of time and resources. Make sure you choose an event that will host people who will have interest in your business. Take into consideration how many people will be there, where it’s located, and how it will reflect upon your company.

Make a Pop-Up Store

Even if you sell online and don’t have a store, creating a pop-up store can help supplement your online presence. Pop-up stores are much cheaper than owning an actual building, and allow you to move to the locations that seem best at the time, such as farmer’s markets, fairs, or shopping malls. They help with marketing and bringing in new business.

Write a Press Release

A press release can be a great way to spread the word about your business. However, it can be tricky to write a press release that’s interesting enough for news outlets to actually distribute it. Besides being interesting, the press release should be concise, professional, and have a killer title to draw people in.

Pull a PR Stunt

Think about how fast videos that go viral can spread. If you’re feeling creative, utilizing a PR stunt can propel your business to fame by word of mouth (and keyboard). PR stunts don’t require a lot of money to pull off, but they aren’t guaranteed to grab your audience, so don’t rely solely on such tactics to get the word out.

Advertise Offline

Even in the current world of Internet advertising, it can still be useful to use more physical forms. This includes resources such as billboards, flyers, and newspaper or magazine ads.

Deploy a Sales Team

As your business grows, eventually you won’t be able to handle all of the sales yourself. Setting up a sales team will allow for sustained growth, especially if your product requires a bit of convincing to get people to buy.

Delegate

Starting your own business can be overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out. As your business develops and grows, you need to learn how best to delegate so that each task gets done quickly and effectively to maximize sales.

Start Word of Mouth

Family and friends can provide a great network when you’re just starting out. If they’re willing to help, they can help spread the word about your budding business.

Demonstrate Trust, Security, and Reliability

A small budding business needs to demonstrate reliability to its customers in order to grow. If potential customers don’t trust you, they are much less likely to make an online purchase. Make sure your website looks safe and trustworthy. Make an effort to follow through with promises. If problems arise, do your best to solve them (or delegate someone else to solve them) quickly and courteously. The more people trust your company, the more they’ll be willing to put money into it!

Looking for more ways to improve your business? Check out Virtual Market Advantage’s other blog that goes over ways to use your new website to boost sales.