Do This Not That Marketing

Marketing Advice, Grow Your Business

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25 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress in 2016

SEO is still super important, but you don’t need a PhD to improve your Search Engine Optimization.

When I find useful information, I like to share it with you. I just ran across this blog post and thought of you. It’s got good information and it’s worth a read.

I use the Yoast plugin and I’ve used the All in One SEO Pack on some of my sites. I find them both valuable. I will be experimenting with other plugins on this list and let you know what I discover, in the meanwhile, click through and check out this list.

25 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress in 2016

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Content Strategy to Help Build Your Business

DoThisNotThatMarketing.com Content StrategyDeveloping a Content Strategy Can Help You Make Money

Recently I’ve written a lot about blogging to improve SEO, blogging to help your potential customers know, like and trust you, etc. As valuable as it is, though, blogging is just a part of marketing your business with online content. You can use articles, newsletters, blog posts, social media updates, FAQs and more to help bring traffic, but there are ways to do it so that you can grow your business the right way. Remember: having a lot of followers isn’t indicative of success. Earning money is. So, if you want to grow your business effectively you have to know which resources to leverage. The best way to do that is to have a content strategy.

Content Is Still King

Sharing information with your audience so they will get to know, like and trust you is vital to growing your business. Everything revolves around content and content is needed for every aspect of your business. Whether you sell products or services, you need to be producing content in order to educate, engage, and encourage your audience to buy from you.

Forms of Content

There are many different forms of content that you can use, such as blog posts on your website, guest posts and articles on other websites, articles in print publications and online newsletters. Content can be text (articles, tweets, Facebook posts), audio (podcasts, internet radio, audiobooks), or visual in nature (YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, Instagram, Pinterest). Having a combination of different forms of content will help you reach more of your audience.

Have a Plan of Action

The other key to ensuring that you are leveraging the right resources is to have a plan of action. Don’t just create or have content created without a point of view, voice, and the goals for the content in mind. One way to begin this process is to create a Core Content Strategy Statement which encapsulates your business goals, your target audience and your audience’s needs. You can find out more by reading here.

Create an Editorial Calendar

When you know what content you want to create, it’s important to spell it out in an editorial calendar (sometimes called a publication calendar) so that you will do first things first. For instance, if you are launching a new product in three months, you can start whetting the appetite of your list now. I’ve recently written an article about creating an editorial calendar which you can read here.

The Email List Is the Most Important

They say the money is in the list, and that’s as true today as it was five years ago. Social media marketing hasn’t replaced email marketing; it has created another way to lead people to your email lists. Leverage your content, your blog, your social media posts, your videos, and everything else you do to build your list.

Develop Incentives to Collect More Email Addresses

The point of your blog posts, social media updates, and even webinars is to share your message with your audience and then collect information from your target audience so that you can build your relationship with email. Host webinars, ask for sign-ups on social media, and incentivize lists with free give-aways or low-cost entry products and services.

You may be wondering if email still works as a marketing tool. The short answer is YES! While it’s not as easy to engage your audience as it was when email was a big deal (I remember being excited when I heard AOL say, “You’ve Got Mail!”), email is one of the most cost-effective ways to build and engage your audience. These people are sharing their email addresses with you because they are hoping you can educate them, entertain them, solve their problems, make their lives better. And if you do that, email marketing will work for you.

All Content Should Work Together

Starting with the product, service or event that you want to promote, work your way back to today to decide the different types of content that you will use to get more email subscribers to whom you can market and promote your business. Decide what type of content they need to become educated and informed about your products and services so that they will 1) know, like and trust you, 2) purchase from you when it’s the right thing to do, and 3) recommend you to others who might need what you have to offer.

Consider Drawing a Workflow

Looking at how all your content works together to bring in buyers, as well as encourage the purchase, may help you identify gaps in your content needs. Your content workflow might look like this: Email Subscription Incentive > 7-Day eCourse > Webinar > Short Report > Long Report > EBook > Coaching > etc. — Seeing it written out should help you decide what you need.

By knowing what your goals are for the content that you create, you’ll be able to use it more efficiently to grow your business far beyond what you thought possible.

If you have more suggestions or questions about creating a content strategy that meets your audience’s needs, please comment and share them below.

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How to Pick Keywords That Will Bring the Right Customers to Your Website

DoThisNotThatMarketing.com Keywords

Keywords will help the right customers find you, but picking the right keywords can be difficult. Here’s how to get started.

In my recent posts on search engine optimization, which can be found here and here, we talked about ways to be found by your audience and why that’s so important. As important as those are, and they are important, it’s critical that you get to know and use the right keywords in your content and marketing strategy. Keywords and keyword phrases are those words that target relevant traffic from search engines to your website. If you select the wrong keywords, any search engine optimization you have done could be a waste of your time and money. So, how do you find those keywords?

Keyword research, or optimization, is crucial to driving the right kind of traffic to your website. To do that, you need to think about your target market. Learn how your potential customers would describe your product or service and what words they would use to search for it. Perhaps you sell purses or handbags. Some people call them pocketbooks. You need to really delve into the different ways of describing your product in order to pick up on the different ways that your customer will be searching for it.

Here’s my recommendation: ask your customers or potential customers, “If you were searching for this online, what would you type into the search box?” It may be a physical product, an electronic product, a service—whatever your customers or potential customers tell you is valuable feedback you can use to choose effective keywords. If you sell a service or solution, you might think about how a customer would search for the solution to their problem rather than your service. For example, instead of searching for “pest control” your potential customer may search for “how to get rid of roaches.” If you use keywords to position your website to come up when someone searches for “how to get rid of roaches,” you’re likely to win some customers who don’t want to deal with the problem themselves.

Depending on the type of business you have, you will either need more specific or more broad keywords. If you sell only handbags, you may describe all the ways that handbags would be described, as we previously mentioned. However, if you sell only Dooney & Bourke handbags, you would want to be more specific. You might also want to include competitive keywords so that if people usually choose between Dooney & Bourke handbags or Michael Kors handbags, you are including Michael Kors in your keywords. If your keywords are too specific, however, you may miss out on reaching potential customers. Think about the keywords that would be most helpful in bringing the right customers to your website and choose accordingly.

Grouping your keywords into themes may also allow you to target a specific ad groups. If you sell handbags, you can have a separate targeted ad for evening bags and one for regular handbags. This allows customers to find what they’re looking for without having to wade through those websites that don’t provide their specific needs. Be sure to analyze your keywords regularly to see how well your keywords and keyword phrases are working. Language can be trendy, and your keywords might need to change to stay current.

Finding the right keywords and keyword phrases can a bit daunting. Thankfully, Google AdWords can help. Within Google AdWords exists the Keyword Planner, a free and useful tool for conducting research on keywords and ad groups. You don’t have to buy Google ads to use the Keyword Planner. You can figure out what people are searching for and how often. If you already have a list of keywords you’d like to check out, the Keyword Planner allows you to upload them. Furthermore, the Keyword Planner in Google AdWords will show you the traffic forecasts to your website based on budget and other configurations to your ad. I would NOT encourage you to buy Google ads without help unless you really know what you’re doing, though, because you can spend a fortune for no return if you aren’t careful.

When your site has been optimized for keywords and keyword phrases, your traffic will be more relevant to your business. Thinking like your customer, actually asking your customers, and checking Google Adwords and its Keyword Planner will help you in your search for the right keyword campaign to reach your customers. Finding the right keywords and keyword phrases is an ongoing process and good marketing people refine their keywords as necessary. Honing in on the right, relevant traffic to your business will improve your business and help your customers at the same time.

I picked “local business marketing” and “small business marketing” as the keyword phrases I wanted to build this website around. What are your keywords and keyword phrases? Would you like some help figuring out what they should be? Comment below to share your ideas or let me know if you’d like some help.