Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: All About Websites

The nuts and bolts of your websiteToday, we’re going to talk about your website and SEO and all that fun stuff (that makes you want to pull your hair out if you — like me — aren’t much of a techie). This is going to be rough, so fasten your seatbelts!

First: improve your website. This article has 16 tips you can start with. Is 16 too many? Here are the five things you absolutely should have in your website.

Second: are you using meta tags correctly? Do you have good descriptive tags for your content, that will help users understand what your site is about (and hopefully, push you higher up search results as well)?

If you blog, claim your authorship on Google. I don’t hang out much on Google Plus, but this is one reason why you should absolutely be using it if you’re a blogger.

If you need to move your domain, here’s how to go about it. As you know, we moved a month ago from BetterMarketing.in to Markitty.com. In this post on Search Engine People, I explain every step of how we did it with minimal impact to our site or search results.

And lastly, if you’re also using WordPress, avoid these five mistakes.

Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: Let’s Say Goodbye to Google Reader

A sprained ankle, and then food poisoning. The last three weeks have not been good to me. And then I resurface this morning, only to be hit by the news that Google Reader is dying.

Yeah, yeah, it’s been on life support for a while, but still. It’s much too soon, Google. I’m not ready to say goodbye.

Mourning Google Reader

Continue reading

Interview with Anita Campbell, Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends

Anita Campbell of Small Business TrendsAnita Campbell is the Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, a popular U.S.-based site for small business advice. Small Business Trends has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and the New York Times, and Anita herself is a popular writer and speaker and is on several advisory boards. She talks to us about content creation, content monetization, and entrepreneurship.

My questions and comments are in bold.

Tell us a bit about Small Business Trends – I read you started it as a version of an email newsletter? Who was your first audience? Continue reading

Weekend Reads for Better Marketing: SMBs and Social Media

A new study of SMBs’ use of social media turns up some interesting results, among which are:

  • 36% of respondents spend $845 a month on social media management tools
  • 76% measure referral traffic from social platforms to websites
  • Facebook is the most popular social media site (73%), followed by LinkedIn and Twitter
  • The most common use of social media is to share information (91%); only 46% see social media as a place to handle customer service issues

Copyblogger has a comprehensive guide to formatting WordPress posts and pages — which also works if you’re using a different content management or blogging platform.

Lisa Barone tells you how to create an editorial calendar for your blog.

Lisa also explains how to use stock photographs better by telling you what not to do.

The Wall Street Journal takes on one of my favorite topics — procrastination — and offers four great tips on managing it.

So next week, stop procrastinating and work on improving your marketing! And if you see any good tips on the subject, don’t forget to let us know.