One goal of your website should be to promote your products and services. Having a page for each product or service you offer will achieve this goal. A product page is so important because it showcases what you can offer your visitors. These pages are about educating visitors on the various ways you can provide successful solutions for your customers’ challenges. This will also help you to build trust and credibility, growing your brand identity. Aside from the website's homepage, the product and service pages are the most visited pages on your website. These pages are the virtual sales rep for your business, with an overall goal of educating visitors so they take some type of action. Creating pages that have a lasting effect are important for the potential of customer retention and sales growth.

Small business are always looking to increase their search engine rankings and website traffic through various search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. Link earning is a great way to expand your reach, bring in more website visitors, grow your rankings, and develop online authority. There are four simple steps that should be followed to help you earn inbound links and be seen as a credible resource by Google.

Inbound linking and off-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) make up 75% of your site SEO, with the last 25% being the on-page optimization. (HubSpot) Pretty interesting statistic, huh? Makes you think about stepping up your link building game and revaluate your plan, doesn’t it?

Earning links is so important not only for SEO purposes, but also because it builds your online authority. Being an online authority means you are considered a thought leader on a specific topic. If you’re an online authority, the odds are in your favor of increasing your search engine rankings. Search engines consider inbound links as votes – the more votes (or links) the higher your website will rank. If you have bad inbound links, it takes away from your authority, you’re no longer trusted as a credible resource, and your rankings decrease. It’s also important to note that not all inbound links are created equal. Links with online authority are going to have more value and help your website.

Examine your current inbound link building plan to ensure you’re not making poor link building mistakes, and retain your online authority.

• Submitting your site to directories isn’t necessarily a good tactic anymore. Avoid link farms (black hat links). Don’t post your content on article sites. Do not pay for links.
• Only submit your site to directories that are credible and will provide value to your company.
• These are groups of website that link to each other. They’re only going to hurt your website ranking because they don’t provide any value.
• Simply post your content on your own site and share it via social media. Use links within the article as well, to help it go viral.
• Don't pay for links.
• Google will catch you and your rankings will decrease. Google won’t think you are a credible source. Just don’t do it.
• If what you’re doing feels unnatural or wrong, that most likely means it IS wrong. And when in doubt, ask before doing anything you’re not sure about.

Let’s say that (hypothetically) you’ve made some of these mistakes. How can you recover your online authority?

• First and foremost, make sure you’re connected to Google Webmaster Tools and that you’re signed up to receive their email notifications.
• Webmaster Tools analyzes your site and lets you know of bad and/or broken links. They will show you any inbound links you are receiving.
• Cease and desist all unnatural link building. Just stop doing it if it doesn’t feel right!
• If necessary, deny any spammy links. Get rid of them!
• After completing the above steps, send Google your site for reconsideration. This can be done by using Google Webmaster Tools. Your site must be registered in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for consideration.

If you’re still not sure if you’re website has spammy links, look for a steady decrease of traffic or rankings around the time of Google’s Penguin release (first released in April 2012). The recent algorithm updates are related to inbound links, and attempts to remove any bad untrustworthy links.

Have you made any of these link building mistakes? How did you recover? Share your helpful tips with us!

P.S. Stay tuned for ways to earn valuable inbound links!

Are you considering redesigning your website? Be sure to think about it from a marketing perspective more than from an IT perspective. In other words, focus on the messaging and content rather than the functionality. 

According to CMI’s B2B Content Marketing 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report, 70% of B2B marketers find case studies to be an effective content marketing tool. Case studies do more than just tell what the services of a company are. They show how the services can work for you through revealing the success stories of current customers. Case studies increase potential customer confidence and show the value of your company.

As marketers, you want to stay on top of your game, keeping your content, calls-to-action, landing pages, etc., updated as technology and internet marketing keeps changing and advancing. Right now is the time to be going through your website and looking for ways to improve your marketing for the coming new year. Along with doing a website analysis and setting new marketing goals, doing a website audit is another great marketing action to take.

The New Year is just around the corner. Have you thought about your New Year’s resolution? Are you going with the traditional: “I’m going to lose weight” or “I’m giving up sweets” or “I’m going to save money” or “I’m going to be more adventurous.” Those are all great resolutions for individuals. But what about for your business? Is your business setting any resolutions for the New Year?

Have you been noticing the pictures of people that are appearing next to the search results in Google? Do you click on those results, as opposed to results with no pictures? Are you wondering how those pictures appeared, and how you can have your picture show up too? All of this has to do with Google Authorship. Google Authorship is set up by adding a “rich snippet,” a special code and link, to your site. 

The following infographic was created as part of our Inbound Marketing series focusing on the parts of the marketing sales funnel: TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.

With Christmas just over two weeks away, many people are preparing for the holidays – buying presents, sending Christmas cards, and planning the Christmas dinner. As a business, you should be included in the holiday festivities as well by developing engaging and creative social media campaigns. Online shopping, and even mobile shopping, is becoming increasingly more popular. According to AmEx Spending and Saving Tracker, nearly 23% of consumers polled plan to score deals and offers that they discover on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. It also revealed that 32% of consumers will look for deals on their smartphones, compared to the 24% last year.