This Product Sucks! How Opinionated Reviews Will Make You More Money

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

In 1979, Miller Beer released an advertisement featuring several men sitting at a bar, enjoying an ice cold Miller beer. Below the picture, which showed the men laughing and clearly enjoying their activity, was a very simple caption: Miller-High Life is America’s quality beer since 1855 and it is the best-tasting beer that anyone can find. An assertive statement, to say the least. There was no focus on the actual taste of the beer, beyond asserting that it was indeed the best. Instead, the advertiser simply asked readers to trust his opinion.

If you’ve had any part in advertising, particularly writing reviews, in the past couple of decades, you probably know that this ad wouldn’t really fly anymore. Today, the powerhouses like McDonalds use subliminal messages and invest millions of dollars in exploring “nagging” or the effect that a child can have on their parent by simply begging them to make a trip to the fast-food restaurant, or buy him the new Super-Awesome Ninja Play House. After all, a marketing professor at Texas A&M named James U. McNeal estimated that the total market for child “nagging” was around $324.4 billion in 2008.

But the average Internet reader is on to the whole scheme. There are certain things they expect from advertisements and, by extension, product reviews. If you can’t simply assert that a product is the “best” like our 1979 friends at Miller, how do you write a review that will convert visitors? To start, you could try being a little honest. You might be surprised at just how many negative reviews have a history of maintaining solid conversion numbers.

Considering Geography in Reviews

The first mistake you’ll make when writing a review is forgetting to consider what your readers actually want to know, not necessarily what you want to tell them. First of all, you have to reach them where they live. It’s no wonder that Google has placed such stock in localized search recently. If you can make a product more relevant to a person where they live, you lift your review from the anonymous environment of the Internet and place it directly in your readers’ homes.

Let’s consider an example using wireless Internet services, an easy way to get “geographical” on your readers. Obviously, coverage area is an important item to consider when choosing wireless Internet services, particularly those associated with mobile devices, like 4G services. You could simply make the statement that your wireless affiliate covers “nearly every area in Boston.” In the end, however, that really doesn’t tell your readers anything valuable, even though you might think it does.

But take a look at this page on Boston CLEAR 4G services at ClearWirelessInternet.com. It’s pretty clear (no pun intended) that the company doesn’t cover the entire Boston area. In fact, there are some pretty notable gaps in the service coverage. But contrary to what you might think, that’s perfectly fine. While you might not get many conversions from people in South Boston, you are being honest about your coverage area, and clearly demonstrate how the company covers the majority of Boston, without simply stating it. You could try to cover the missing areas with a bit of crap, but your honesty and specificity will go much farther in helping your readers make their decision.

What Readers Expect in Their Reviews

The closer you can get to letting your readers interact with your product in a review, the better. Sometime in the future, we can look forward to 3D models of products that project from your computer screen — allowing you to literally hold a product in your hands before buying it online. But until that day, you’ll have to rely on some compelling and honest content to do the job.

The best starting point is the five senses — sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. Be as descriptive as possible when talking about your product. One of the most brilliant developments in advertising was the Scent Strip, which like our Miller advertisement, first started appearing in 1979. These strips appear in magazines to advertise perfumes and colognes. Love them or hate them, and there are many people that do hate them quite a bit, they accomplish one important goal, engaging the reader’s previously unused sense of smell. And that smell is obviously the most important feature of the perfume. Nobody cares if it comes in a “bottle crafted by Italian artisans,” or that it looks like “bottled raindrops from a lush tropical island.” Readers care how the perfume smells, and with little exception, only how it smells.

You can take the same idea and translate it into your own product reviews. If you’re writing a review on bath soap, tell readers how the bubbles from the soap “soothe and exfoliate skin” and how the soap smells like “fresh lilacs on a warm summer day.” Be specific, but don’t engage too much hyperbole. A descriptive and powerful review walks a fine line with tacky and bombastic.

Finally, if a product sucks, let the reader know what you didn’t like about it, but highlight things that you feel make up for those deficiencies. Don’t be afraid to let your personal opinion bleed into the content. Readers will browse thousands and thousands of reviews and advertisements in their lives — yours needs to target a small, focused demographic with honest information. Your goal is not, or should not be, to trick your customers into buying one product from you and hope that interest in that one product doesn’t drop. Instead, you should be focusing on creating an overall product with your reviews — a community where readers will trust your opinion because you give honest information on products in which they’re interested.

We talk about advertisements a great deal when referring to reviews, and with good reason. An advertisement understands the natural impatience of consumers, and is really no different than a well-crafted product review. While this does justify keeping your written reviews on the short side, you should also consider studying as many advertisements as possible to get some ideas for your own reviews. If you can engage a reader in the product and form an honest opinion that a reader can trust, you stand to make more money on your visitors, and you don’t even have to abandon those pesky ethics.

Tags: business blogging, content, writing
Posted in Blogging Tips | 3 Comments »

3 SEO Factors to Consider While Redesigning B2b Website

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

The overall marketing strategy of a B2B business is based on it website. A professional, user-friendly, easily navigable website, with strategically located ‘call to action’ elements and content that addresses different requirements, appeals to site’s visitors.  Additionally, a website also needs to be relevant and updated from time to time, to keep pace with the latest trends. Since websites are constantly evaluated for their looks and recentness, they may need re-designing some times.

SEO initiatives are aimed at garnering the trust of search engines over a period of time.Therefore implementing SEO, when re-designing websites may seem like starting fresh all over again. Here are some useful hints to keep in mind and help you retain as much control of SEO during the process.

Re-implementing SEO on a re-designed site can be very daunting.Metatitles, descriptions, keywords, content etc., all need to be reviewed and changed if required. Furthermore, re-designing often implies new URLs, which in turn affects links that that inbound to the site.

However tedious it may seem, the best approach is to take up the challenge with enthusiasm. Using some tried and tested tips will also make the task much easier and help you retain maximum SEO for your redesigned site.

Implement 301 redirects

301 redirects enable search engines to know that the old web pages are now extinct and that they have now been permanently relocated to a new URL. Thus they are very important.  301 redirects offer you a way to uphold the same trust levels, including age and links, which the search engines had with your old pages. The re-designed pages are considered as new if a 301 redirect is not implemented on it, resulting in reduced credibility with the search engines.

Safeguard the test site with passwords

The team working on the re-design simultaneously works on a tests site, even as the old site is up and running. When re-designing your site, you obviously wouldn’t want both the old and new versions of your website to feature on search engine results together. Therefore take care to password-protect your test site so that it’s not possible to index and rank it.

Broken links should be fixed

Search engines follow links as they crawl the web and evaluate your website’s importance and relevance. Broken links lead to loss of trust and reputation that has been fostered over a period of time and can erode the overall value of your website. Therefore locating broken links during the re-design process and them immediately sorting them is very vital to maintain the SEO levels of the new website.

To conclude, every business needs to evolve and keep pace with the latest industry trends. This approach is key to survival and growth. B2B websites, by nature of their business, discerning audiences and steep competition levels, have to be more geared to embrace the changes probably a little more often than the other websites.  A checklist of ‘to dos’ make the process easier.

Tags: seo
Posted in Blogging Tips | No Comments »

7 Easy Steps for Getting Your Social Media Content Heard and Shared

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

It’s no surprise that social media sites are jam-packed with content and data. Often times, this is because people have so many friends and followers on sites like Facebook and Twitter. So, how can you break through the content -clutter to get your friends, fans, and followers to really pay attention to what you’re saying? These tips are great for anyone looking to brand themselves and be heard: small businesses, large businesses, and even individuals trying to become digital influencers.

Note: For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer to anyone you are connected to on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) as a “follower” and anything you put onto social media (Wall Post, Status Update, Tweet, etc.) as a “post.”

Define your brand

The first step is to define what you are offering your followers. Do you want to be the one they come to for the latest sports news? The latest tips and tricks for blogging? The hippest fashion trends? The newest music you might not have heard before? This is often easy to figure out because it stems for your passions and interests.

Once you’ve discovered what your offering is, commit to it and stay committed. Your followers value your opinion about your offering and the moment you start to stray from what they expect of you, you’ll lose them.

Always monitor and respond

You’ll want to stay up to date on discussion that is generated on your posts. After some analysis, you’ll realize themes that are consistently popular. This should give you some ideas for future content to share and how to remain interesting to your followers.

Additionally, responding on an individual basis as best you can will show that you appreciate your followers and aren’t simply trying to gain something from them. If you’ve been on Twitter before you’ll that fans always love it when a celebrity Retweets or @Mentions them. It’s okay, go ahead and make their day!

Keep it interesting

Nothing gets skipped over quicker on social media than a boring, repetitive, and unoriginal post. There are so many ways to add some life to what you share. Rather than posting a paragraph about something, for example, post a link to another article with a short description of why your followers will find value in it. This makes you seem knowledgeable and simplifies the process for your followers.

Also, maybe you’ve noticed that you’ve posted a lot of articles or linked to other blogs lately. Try throwing in an interesting YouTube video to give some variety to your offering. Content based around current events is also a great way to stay interesting and relevant. Basically, try to surprise your followers to keep them coming back for more!

Valuable content

Along with keeping it interesting, your followers will appreciate highly valuable content. Just like you, your followers are trying to brand themselves to their audience. If you can position yourself as a credible resource, your followers can advertise who they are by sharing your posts. Not only can this ultimately build your audience, but it can also cement you as a reliable supplier of valuable content.

Consistency works

You’re in charge of finding the right amount of content that doesn’t irritate your followers or make them forget you. I’ve discovered a user on Twitter that is great for finding marketing content. But, in order to do so, I have to search through over twenty of their daily Tweets that link to other sites. Their Tweeting might be a little excessive. Find the happy medium between zero and annoyance.

Simplify

It isn’t a shocker that today people have short attention spans. Try visiting a college classroom and counting how many people aren’t on a computer, cell phone, or some other digital device while simultaneously “paying attention” in class.

The point I’m trying to make is that people prefer to read messages that are shore and concise. The quicker you get to the point and give them benefit, the more likely they will read and share your post.

Try a different medium

Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social networks, but that doesn’t mean they are correct for everyone. Perhaps, the audience you’re trying to connect with finds Facebook to be “too young” and Twitter to be “too chaotic” for them. Maybe, a full-length blog or LinkedIn is more their style. With a little research and a good intuition into the way your audience thinks and feels you should be able to find a medium that works.

You can also port your posts between different social networks. Try to expand your audience by sharing blog posts to Twitter and Facebook.

About the author: August Drilling works in the marketing department at CliqStudios.com, the online supplier of kitchen cabinets, and is a blogger, social media enthusiast, and Apple aficionado. You can follow him on Twitter @ardrilling and hear his odd musings and insight.

Posted in Blogging Tips | 3 Comments »

Constructing the Perfect Home Page for SEO

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

No matter what niche you are in, your home page metrics and optimization will always be, if not the most important factor, one of the top factors for ranking in the search engines. It is important that your homepage is optimized to perfection.

Is there one specific keyword that you would like to go after and go after hard? Out ranking solid competitors is tough to do but can be done if you put the work in. Just make sure that the main keyword you are targeting is not too crazy in terms of competition.

Does HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Matter?

The answer is yes. Just like browsers, search engines are very friendly towards websites that can load up very quickly. If you have bulky coding, or programming that isn’t efficiently coded, your website will take a lot longer to load, and thus will not perform as well in the search engines. Also make sure any videos or photos are formatted as best as possible.

Keyword Placement

Keyword placement is very important. Many people say that placing your keyword phrase in an “H1″ tag at the top of the page (so that it’s the first thing that Google reads when it crawls the page) is getting less and less likeable by the search engines. This may be true, however it is still very obvious that this tactic is working, and performing well all over the Internet. If not the “H1″ tag you will want to include you keyword phrase in 1 or 2 “H2″ tags.

Another good placement of your keyword phrase would be somewhere in the navigation. Whether it be in the main navigation on the top, or navigation on one of the sides, it is best to put it in one of them so the search engines can see your keyword phrase in link form.

“Content is King” “Quality content is King”

Ever since Panda, the quality of your content has never been more important. That is because a big part of search engine rankings nowadays is what your bounce rate and time spent on page looks like.

You want to make sure that your absolute best content is on your homepage. Your goal should be to get the reader that is visiting your site to at least read the whole page before they decide to either jump ship or check out more pages of your website. This also makes link placement very important. Be sure to add in context links that make sense so that you can add to that pages viewed number.

Two Other Important Factors

One thing that is truly undervalued in SEO is the CTR on the SERPs page. The higher your click through rate, the better the chances that your website has to rank well. You can increase these odds by writing a very detailed and interesting meta description – one that also has the keywords placed within it.

Another thing that is popular and search engine friendly since the Panda update is user activity within the page. Does your website offer products or services like perhaps a link building service? If so, think about adding some sort of free quote form. If not it will be wise to find something else that users can interact with on your home page.

No matter what niche you are in, your home page metrics and optimization will always be

Tags: seo
Posted in Blogging Tips | No Comments »

Security Plugins for WordPress

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

In this day and age of the Internet, technology, and everything in between, more people are going online for a variety of reasons. Many will have their own websites or blogs, sharing thoughts, ideas, and abilities with the world at large. WordPress is one of the most popular places to not only host blogs, but that of websites as well.

WordPress itself started as a tool for those up and coming bloggers and has since not only become the most popular place for blogs, but has a decent interface for those that are looking to get a website started as well.

Just as computer users need to be vigilant in regards to keeping their files and documents safe from spam and viruses, administrators of their blogs and websites need to keep out spammers and those who would want to bring down their talents and hard work.

Most bloggers and web admins will no doubt be loading their content from their computers, so of course it is important to keep your computer safe. But what about your WordPress blog or website? Is there any way to keep that safe from the villains of the web?

The answer is yes and in most cases, WordPress will provide the plugins that are needed to make sure that your blog or website is protected. Here are some ways to protect your site.

Akismet - Akismet is probably one of the best plugins that is offered for anyone online. A spam blocker, for those using WordPress, Akismet is a free add on that will scan all of your comments to see if they are spam. While some mistakes can happen, Akismet has a high probability that it will correctly detect a spam message.

WP-Spam Free – an alternative to Akismet, this plugin basically does the same thing, filtering comments to discover which are real and which is spam. However, unlike Akismet – which still needs the blogger to state if something flagged for spam is indeed spam – Spam Free works in the background without having users go through captchas or questions to make comments.

Challenge - Challenge is another anti-spam plugin that requires a commenter a question that is needs to answer in order to get their comment to post. This might be a hassle for some readers, but depending on the question (which you can choose), readers won’t mind answering something quickly. It does of course keep out automated spam that may come in.

Did You Pass Math? – another plugin that requires legitimate commenters to solve a math problem. As with Challenge, the admin is able to choose the math question, as well as the difficulty level, in order to keep out spam bots.

These are just four of the free plugins that you can add in to your WordPress blog or website that will help keep out spammers. Depending on the size of your WP site, you may need to use only one or a combination of plugins, to ensure that you aren’t spending your time differentiating between spam comments and real comments.

I hope that with these tips your blog or website will be sufficiently protected. For further questions and suggestions don’t hesitate to contact me.
Margaret Saunders

About the Author: Margaret Saunders is a webhosting consultant for IXwebhosting – a Web Hosting company based in Ohio.

Posted in Blogging Tips, WordPress Blogging | 4 Comments »

5 Tips On Writing Tweets to Get Views: Improving Ranking of Blog Posts

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

After Google changes earlier this year, we have seen a huge drop in article and blog ratings in most cases. You can get around this hurdle by linking with social media and social networking sites. Most of all, this works well with Twitter. You can get the links, but how to you get the click-thrus to really boost your (SEO) search engine optimization. This article looks at five tips that really work.

Using Twitter will greatly improve your SEO and online marketing. After Google’s updates earlier this year it is important to get your blog content out via social media (except Facebook of course) to improve your article rankings. Without the use of Twitter, your articles will probably be lost in an ocean of competing content. If you are a researcher trying to find helpful articles on the internet, you will have noticed it has been a lot harder to find what you want since those Google Updates. I would like to argue as a user the resulting changes do not help us find what we want, and only give us highly specialized information that is often not what we are looking for. As this is the case, you can circumvent these Google changes by using other links, particularly with Twitter, to boost your article rankings. At the same time we create links with shortened URLs through Twitter, we also want to get those links acted upon. In this article, we take a look at some strategies.

• A Tweet is an Article Title. Promotion never works really well on Twitter. Everyone can see it from a mile away. If you want to attract click-thrus and interest, you must write your Tweets like your great article headings. The same principles apply.
• Dump Self Promotion. If you want to promote yourself, at least create a fake profile and do it from the third person. Social networking is all about recommendations and trust. If people see you are promoting yourself, they will soon leave you.
• Dump Abbreviations. There are so many abbreviations and acronyms these days many are doubled up. Writing clearly is what is important. Abbreviating could mean you are losing more than half of your audience. The acronyms you assume everyone will understand could mean something completely different, and you could be sending potentially rude, strange or even offensive messages.
• Writing Properly. If you are going to write, you need to write properly. The world might be turning all techy, but there are some principles that remain. Grammatical and spelling errors, even if they were stupid mistakes, make you look uneducated and simple. If you have trouble checking get some software like Whitesmoke to help you get it right. Before long you will have lost bad habits and stopped making those same silly mistakes.
• Discovery. Use software and Apps such as Hootsuite to track what you Tweet. You will have a much better idea of what is better, but you will still be left wondering why. This is just something you have to work out on your own, or go with your gut instinct.

All links to your blog posts will improve your blog post rankings. None will improve them like Twitter. Just like any other area of search engine optimization, quality content is King. Except if you are Charlie Sheen of course.

Posted in Blogging Tips | 1 Comment »

Getting the Right Domain Name for Your Small Business

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Despite all your effort towards great website design and both offline and online marketing, you could be fighting a losing battle if you do not have the right domain name. This is a very important issue to consider, and one you want to get right. Some business builders will even consider changing, or defining their business name, after they can get the URL they want. There is a lot to understand, from human to search engine optimisation factors.

There are a number of issues that you need to consider when setting up your domain name for your website design. If someone already has the URL (domain name) that matches your business name, depending on where you live, you might have some right over it. There are also other issues, your business name might not make a good domain name for you to come up easy in Google’s searches. Here are some of the issues to think about.

• Domain Name and Business Name the Same. This is a good situation in most cases. If your business is called  ‘Practical Movers’, it would be best to have your website as ‘www.practicalmovers’ in most cases. There are some other issues related to this (see below). In most cases, those who know your business will be able to find your business pretty easy when they get online.
• Get the Domain Name First. In some cases, it might be better to check if the domain name is available before giving your business a name. This might sound a little like putting the cart before the horse, but it might well work for you in the long run. You might find later it is very difficult to get the domain name that matches your business, so checking first or selecting the domain name first, might be the only option.
• Country After the Dot Com. The internet is more local than you might think. If you are in Australia, and you are looking for business in Australia, it will always pay to have the ‘.au’ at the end of your URL. This will mean that you will come up higher in searches that are for Australia. Having just the ‘.com’ will imply that you are in the USA, or you are making the whole world your market. This might not be a good idea if you are a small business and you are focusing on Australian clients. If you are looking for business from all over the world and Australia, it would be good to register both (and have them both go to the one address). Forget about the ‘.org’ and ‘.net’, these imply you are not a business blog hosting.
• Long or Short Names. Whether the name is long or short, in my opinion, does not really matter. What is important is if people can remember it. ‘phora.com.au’ will be much harder than ‘practicalhomeofficerenovation.com.au’. I think you can understand what we are talking about here. Be sensible about your choice, and just remember, we are all human.

SEO. If you don’t understand a little about search engine optimisation, you are going to have to learn. Alternatively, you can get some help from the professionals. Without this, your website will be a lonely orphan on the internet. Another complicated issue with domain names is related to SEO and website hosting.  It will have some influence on how easy your website is found. Let’s say you are in the business of renting apartments in Sydney, ‘sydneyapartments.com.au’ is an excellent choice. It has a certain amount of value already in the URL. ‘ourchoicesydneyapartments.com.au’ is probably not going to naturally work as well. The addition of the terms at the beginning of the name will greatly reduce the rank-ability of your site. Make sure you get your URL confirmed as being the right choice by professionals, before you go building your business and website around it.

Posted in Blog Design, Blogging Tips | 7 Comments »

Three Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Authors

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

While many bloggers tackle their individual blogs all by themselves, larger corporations and larger blogs may have anywhere from 2 to 20 additional bloggers that post on the site. Now while that may seem awesome to you, if you are not good at managing people and getting the most out of them, you can quickly see your bloggers work start to go downhill. I have seen this many times, and present a few tips to help you push your authors to produce quality work for your blog. (more…)

Tags: blogging, Motivation, Working with Authors
Posted in Blogging Tips | No Comments »

Who wins the blogging war – WordPress or Blogger?

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

There is an inevitable war going on in the ‘blogosphere’ and it starts with one blogging platform competing against another. The one who wins will get a control over the world of blogs. The Blogger and WordPress are unanimously acknowledged as the two most famous blogging platforms for all bloggers who are in search of web space without even purchasing a domain or a package. If you’re new to this field of blogging, it’s time for you to go through some serious comparisons between Blogger and WordPress so that you end up making an informed and measured choice. Read on to know about the comparison scale. (more…)

Tags: blog services, blogging platforms, google blogger, wordpress 3.0
Posted in Blog Philosophy, Blogging Tips | 19 Comments »

Is AdSense Right for Your Blog? [Series] What is Google AdSense?

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

In recent weeks, Blogtap has undergone some very large changes.

• A new partner has jumped on board and he’s brought with him a ton of experience from the Web and IT industry.
• DoFollow commenting has been enabled so that every user that gives something to Blogtap (in the form of a comment), receives something in return.
• AdSense blocks were installed for a few days and then removed.

In this post series, I’d like to discuss the last item on the list above.

(more…)

Tags: advertising, blogging for money, google
Posted in Blog Marketing, Blogging Tips | 63 Comments »

What’s So Funny About Writing a Humor Blog?

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

I’m Tim Jones. I write a weekly humor blog – well, at least that’s what I like to think I am doing each week. Some critics think I am wasting valuable bits and bytes of Internet bandwidth that could be put to much better use. Some people (and by some people, I mean my wife) wonder why I spend time on a humor blog in the first place (I assure you, it’s not for the money). And still others (and by others I mean my two teenage daughters) wonder when will I get off the computer so I can do their homework for them or take them to the mall. (more…)

Tags: guest posts, humor blogging, writing
Posted in Blog Philosophy, Blogging Tips | 1 Comment »

Why the Facebook Like Button Might Not Be Right for Your Blog

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I read a blog post today that distressed me greatly. The post was about the new Facebook like button and the poster was explaining to readers why the Like button was not right for everyone. Darn. I knew that. I should have posted it and explained why first! Maybe I can make up for being tardy on information by providing additional information that might explain better what has already been said on another blog.

What does the Facebook Like Button do?

The Facebook like button can be embedded into any website and allows visitors to share content over Facebook. When content is shared, the link is displayed in the News Feed (the ‘what’s on your mind’ field) with a thumbnail and description. Shared links have potential to bring in social networking traffic from the Facebook friends of the sharer or liker if you will.

(more…)

Tags: content, niche blogging, social media, traffic
Posted in Blog Marketing, Blogging Tips | 2 Comments »