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Developing content for your business website is only one way your brand becomes recognized online. Article marketing will help your brand become more familiar, and provide healthy links back to your website.

Several online article submission sites exist, but I don’t recommend them all. You want your material where journalists, bloggers, and industry enthusiasts are more likely to pick them up.

Article submission is free for the submitter, and all articles have to meet publishing requirements before they’ll go live. Develop a smart resource or bio box with your website link (they’ll show you how to do that!), and write articles about things that connect what you know about your industry to those that information will help, instruct, or advise.

Once they’re approved, every time your article is picked up, your short resource box will go with it, multiplying those links back to your website wherever they go. I advise you to share them on social media sites and encourage reviews.

I use EzineArticles.com and EvanCarmichael.com for brand-building. They have extremely high standards and help my credibility. They both offer a badge to put on your website, and although that can sound like a good idea, I advise against it. You want those types of links to go one way only. If you add a badge, you then have a reciprocal link where the better advantage would have been the back link from a high authority location. EvanCarmichael.com also lets others download tutorials and books you may offer, and I think that’s great for any business selling exceptional product lines and services.

Used smartly, article marketing links will help your website rank in search results. Those articles can be used over again on your MerchantCircle post or email campaign, too. If you can write reasonably well, have something interesting and informative – even humorous – to share, start taking advantage of article marketing for online brand recognition right away.

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One of the many services we offer our clients is monthly website management that includes posting blogs, images, and videos to WordPress websites. I’m in a unique position to be very familiar with the internal dashboards of these sites, and have noticed an area that could use some attention.

First of all, have you ever heard of creating a search experience?

Most people are unaware of how to build a category structure for their blog that helps readers find things they enjoy. A category isn’t just a way for you to know where you put something, like a closet.

Search engines like Google and others use tracking devices called ‘spiders’ to learn from your website. They consider how easy it is to go from page to page based on many things, like links and words useage. You want to encourage them to crawl often and send back positive scores to the engines, but that won’t happen if visitors don’t go to your website and do certain things – like browse other pages or stay a certain length.

Categories should be a natural crawl for a search engine spider, and if your categories lack structure you risk visitor confusion. If your visitor doesn’t seem to find what they’re looking for in a recognized fashion, a spider may not recognize a valuable experience and send back lower scores. It should be very easy to determine what each page means to a visitor. The words you choose for your categories are important.

I suggest using keywords when you name your categories, and pay close attention to the types of information your visitor is looking for. When they look for particular information, depending on how they search and how you present your categories, they could end up finding a lot of unrelated posts in your blog. What you want is clarity.

Two categories I suggest leaving out are ‘About My Company’ and ‘Uncategorized.’ About information should be on its own About Page in the navigation of your website, not a blog category. Try to develop a structure that is truer to your brand and vision than that. Be specific. Using additional sub-categories may help you stay focused.

Some strong, easy-to-recognize category lists?

• Product items
• Brands
• How-Tos
• Services
• Money Savers
• Ingredients

If you need to go back and re-categorize: In the WordPress dashboard, go to ‘All Posts.’ Categories will be in that menu. Look at your overall categories and decide what is really helpful and what may not be working. You can develop your whole structure here. Make sure its a well laid out, predetermined plan.

Next, go back to ‘All Posts.’ If you hover over the titles, you get a ‘quick edit’ option. In that window you’ll be able to change your post categories to your better plan. You won’t lose your posts, they’ll simply revert to ‘Uncategorized.’ From here, you’ll be able to uncheck anything under ‘Uncategorized.’ Don’t forget to save your work.

You may have some link issues arise from changing your structure, but plan on going through your posts and checking your links for areas that need to be fixed a little at a time.

A couple of things to remember:

• Don’t forget to uncheck ‘Uncategorized’
• Don’t use more than one category per post

Keep your categories clean. It will make blogging so much easier when you know you have topics to fill. When more visitors enjoy their experience, more frequent crawling will naturally happen. That activity is so important for your website to rank highly on a search results page.

By the way, are you an Inside Line subscriber? Inside Line subscribers get all the latest Free Downloads and product offers. If you’re not signed up, you’re missing out. Be sure to sign up today! >>>>

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Every business that has been talked about even once has a representation on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Whether you have a website or not, search engines have made decisions about your company – specifically, where you are allowed to be on a search page and what you your business sounds like to others based on factors you’re not in control of.

Businesses that don’t know they are being determined by outside factors mistakenly ignore the importance of an accurate and claimed business listing.  

Yes, you have the right as a business owner to enter your information in the most flattering light, under the right terminology, and with as many helpful tools as you can think of to help your customers find you.

As a matter of fact, your involvement is encouraged by the search engines. When you claim your business and verify that you are the owner, you can add the things that really enforce who you are to your audience. Things like video, pictures, and location on maps – things that when missing, often leave your business image to anyone who would like to associate a name with a picture.

Once you claim your listing, anything you add overrides what they’ve previously associated with your company – they want accuracy. Unfortunately, they often make you pay for it through the nose.

That’s great news, right?

If you are a tech-savvy business owner with time on your hands, uploading the right information may be a breeze if you know what you’re doing. For those of you who are busy running businesses that require much of you, however, listing your company accurately can be a real pain.

Don’t let the aggravation stop you. To me, the difficulty isn’t so much the actual setting up, so much as edits don’t take well. You’re probably already listed inaccurately, and fixing it I find terribly time consuming.

It needs to be done, though. Directories that include your accurate company information are great reputation and link builders back to your website, showing up on search results before your company website does in most cases. Considering small mobile screens, you can’t afford to not show up in search results. Make it a point to attack one a week until you have a number of them finished accurately.

I seriously advise you NOT to pay for the additional listing services they offer. They mass-upload your information and then they charge to fix it. These fees can run thousands of dollars a year. The free listing will do a good job of representing you, but it will often take over an hour to get right as possible and verified. It’s not uncommon for them to hold an inaccuracy over your head and tell you only a paid service can address it. Once they get you to pay, you see, you can’t reach them to stop the monthly charges. I haven’t found one that could be reached, including my favorite locations. Some even have fine print that authorizes them to charge every time a spider or bot crawls the page, and call it a lead! Be listed, but be careful. Keep it free.

Don’t wonder if your company website can keep up with your competition. Take advantage of the resources available for your small business today.

MerchantCircle is my favorite directory, what’s yours?

Ever wonder why so many sites exist above yours in the search engines? There may be many reasons, but here’s one thing to take into account. Search engine directory listings – like Yahoo, Google and Bing – know the basic keywords that people search on to find information that companies use to describe themselves.

For instance, if you’re a fence company, naturally keywords used would include the phrase ‘fence company,’ and so on. What’s more, they know the location of the searcher and therefore will present, first and foremost, the businesses locally associated with those words. It is very important not to leave out location information when adding your business to ANYTHING online, especially directories, but also including all of your social media profiles. 

Use better keywords with the help of Market Samurai, and you’ll outperform competitors still using common and overly saturated verbiage. Better keywords keep you in focus of the searcher – especially the searcher who’s sick of muddling through the gazillions of companies who use the same terminology. Searchers will inevitably refine their search, like you do, for more precise terms. Using those refined terms on your Web site will improve the chances of your company being found, even in directories. And by the way, the more often you’re found, the sooner you move up the page. It all works together.

Yahoo offers a free version of their directory with organic options or pay-per-click, like Google does, and then monthly or annual pricing is additionally offered for listing in their premium page locations. Bing offers similar options. Finding these options is a little different with each engine’s navigation, and if you don’t know how to find them, it can be a little frustrating. It will take a little time, but don’t let that stop you.

Why not take advantage of free advertising where possible? Be assured, my friend, that other businesses will.

For more information, make sure you’re reading the what we’ve written in our related posts.

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