Promote Your Business With a Blog

Starting a blog to promote your business doesn’t have to be complex and costly. As a matter of fact, lots of people start their own blogs every day. The cost is minimal, and the entire process should only take you an hour or less.

Travis Beauchesne here talks about setting up a blog on WordPress, which is the most popular blogging platform. If you want, though, you can shop around for others.If you’ve never started a blog before, you might be feeling overwhelmed at first. But if you’re in a hurry, here’s the shortened version:

Step 1 – Choose a Domain Name and a Web Host

Before you start blogging, you’ll need a couple of things first:

A Domain Name - Make a list of domain names that are unique and accurately describe what your business is about.Make the names on your list as descriptive as you can, while still keeping them short and sweet. You want your readers to easily recognize what your blog—and your business—are all about. Some bloggers use their own name as their blog name. That way, they prevent other people from registering their given name. You can try to do the same with your business, and register the name of your business before anyone else does. This will be easier to do if your business has a one-of-a-kind name.We’ll talk a little more about domain names a little further on.

A Web Host - Your web host will store your blog’s files and deliver them to your readers when they type your domain name.When it comes to web hosting, you’ve got lots of choices. The top 5, according to PC Magazine, are HostGator, 1&1, InMotion, DreamHost, and GoDaddy.But if you’re operating on a shoestring budget, you might want to look at free web hosting. You’ve got your choices there, too. Take a look at Wix, 000webhost, x10Hosting, Weebly, and AwardSpace. Look for a web host that offers free, simple-to-install blogging tools and around-the-clock customer service. The best ones even offer a money-back guarantee.

Step 2 – Set Up Your Blog

As Per Travis Beauchesne, Start by typing the first name on your list into the search box on your web host site. Don’t lose heart if you find that someone else is already using that name. Your web host will offer similar names for you to choose from. Try to find one that is similar to the one you had your heart set on, but if you can’t, move on down your list, and try the next one. Use your imagination. Get those creative juices flowing and find a domain name that’s right for your business.

Remember that if things go well, you’re going to have to live with this domain name for a long, long time. Next, you’ll need to choose a domain extension, such as .com, .net or .org. After you’ve chosen your domain name and extension, you will be directed to a registration page and asked to give your billing details. Here is where you’ll choose from among the various hosting packages and options.

Once you’ve set up your account, you can log in by going to the web host homepage and clicking the login tab. The next thing you should see is a control panel for installing WordPress. Click on the “install” option and get started.

Step 3 – Time to Blog

Now, you’re really on your way. It’s time to start blogging. In the editor section, you will write your thoughts and ideas. A menu gives you choices about whether and when to publish what you’ve written. If you want to add pictures to your blog post, click “add media” and browse to upload images from your computer.

Step 4 – Pick a Theme

You’ll want to pick a theme for your blog, but WordPress makes it easy. 

Step 5 – Promote Your Blog

According to Travis Beauchesne, Tell people all about your blog via email, online forums, social networks, links to other blogs, and guest posting on other people’s blogs. The most important thing you can do to promote your blog, though, is to post amazing content frequently.

Source URL : http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2017/03/18/start-blog/

About Travis Beauchesne

Travis Beauchesne was born in Maine on Nov 29, 1976. He Grew up in the tiny town of Bath, Maine. Bath is situated on the banking institutions of the Kennebec river, rich in maritime backdrop deep fishing heritage.

Travis Beauchesne enjoyed woodworking and carpentry from an early on age and apprenticed in a cabinet shop in Yarmouth. He enrolled in college or university in southern Maine but quickly decided institution has not been for him and dropped out. After a few years as a carpenter and contractor, Travis Beauchesne decided to go west. Loaded up with surfboards and a carrier of clothes, He established a course for Santa Claus Cruz, Ca. Maine has waves from time to time, but hot water and regular waves beckoned.

A single of the stops along the pilgrimage west was the great state of Utah. Travis Beauchesne linked with some ski bottom friends while stopping to do laundry. Utah was unlike anything he got ever seen. After a very short 2 week stay in California and on his way back again to Maine, Travis Beauchesne yet again stopped in Utah. What started out as a 3-day pit stop, has converted into an 18-year residency. He decided to make Utah home in 1998 and never viewed back. Travis Beauchesne is married to the love of his life and has 3 incredible children.

Over the past 18 years, Travis Beauchesne has operated many successful businesses, including an internet marketing companies, skateboard shops, a merchant processing business and more.

Travis Beauchesne discovered internet marketing early in his career and has become a part of since. This individual enjoys creating opportunities from inception as well as making an existing idea better. The idea of solving a marketing issue is what he was delivered to do. Travis Beauchesne enjoys his downtime as much as crunch time, and these days he can enjoying being a lot of the time father. Keeping up with his kids and making dinner are long his greatest successes.

Important 5 SEO Experiments That Will Blow Your Mind

In SEO, there’s no shortage of theory and best practices. But experimentation is what really keeps this great industry moving forward.

All of today’s best practices came as a result of past experiments – both failures and successes. Everything we do in SEO is an opportunity to learn and improve.

That’s why I love doing experiments. While Google may reveal a few bits and pieces of information, they’ll never tell us everything we need to know to evolve our SEO strategies from the ordinary into the realm of unicorns.

Today I’d like to share six mind-blowing SEO experiments we did this year, what we learned from them, and what it all means.

1. Does Organic Search Click-Through Rate Matter?

We know that machine learning – including Google RankBrain – is changing SEO as we've known it. Already, Google uses RankBrain for every search, and it impacts "a lot" of queries.

Is RankBrain (or other machine learning-based elements) impacting rankings? If so, how? Well, that’s exactly what wanted we wanted to find out: what’s a good click-through rate for organic search.

For this experiment, we looked at a set of 1,000 keywords from Google's Search Console for the WordStream site. What we found is very interesting. In April, the average CTR for the top position was 22 percent. That increased to 24 percent by July and 27 percent by September.

So our data clearly showed that are top ranked results had its highest CTRs by September. Meanwhile, on the other end, the data showed that lower positions (4-10) were being clicked on less than ever.

Clearly, the click curve is bending. I believe this is exactly what you would expect to see from a machine learning algorithm – it’s about providing the best answers (based on the highest user engagement), which means fewer people will need to scroll down and click lower results.

So does organic search CTR matter? YES! More than ever before.

2. Is Organic CTR an Organic Search Ranking Factor?

So we’ve established CTR is important. But what’s the relationship between organic CTR and organic search rankings?

Numerous people who work at Google have said they don’t use click-through rate for the purposes of ranking. But when they say this, they mean they don’t use it as a “direct” signal. Could it be that clicks have an indirect impact on Google’s search results?

We decided to find out the answer to this question with an experiment designed to figure out whether CTR impacts SEO rankings.

The goal of this experiment was to see whether there was any clear relationship between organic search CTR and organic search position. The biggest challenge was that separating CTR and ranking is like separating Kanye West from his ego.

So we attempted to isolate the natural relationship between CTR and ranking by taking the difference between an observed organic search CTR minus the expected CTR:

After looking at our data, we found that, on average, pages that beat the expected average organic CTR for a given position were far more likely to rank in the top four positions. These are unicorns! For example, a page that beats the expected CTR for a given position by 20 percent will likely appear in position 1.

Also, pages that failed to beat the expected organic search CTR were more likely to appear in positions 6–10. These are donkeys. For example, a page that falls below the expected CTR for a given position by 6 percent will likely appear in position 10.

So, based on the data, does CTR impact organic search rankings? It certainly seems that way!

3. Can Rewriting Your Titles Boost Your CTR?

So if you’ll be rewarded for having a higher click-through rate, what’s the best way to raise your CTR?

If people see nothing else, they will see your headline in the SERPs. Your content may be totally awesome – but they won’t click on it if the headline is boring.

SEO has evolved. It’s silly to write title tags like it’s still 2008!

WordStream has been trying to move away from overly “optimized” “SEO titles” like this one: "Guerilla Marketing: 20+ Examples and Strategies to Stand Out."

That old headline followed “SEO best practices.” The most important keyword was at the front and everything fell within 60 characters. But it’s kind of a snore, right?

So we ran a little CTR optimization experiment. Our content and SEO manager Elisa Gabbert changed only the title of the post – to “20+ Jaw-Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Examples.” The new headline is closer to this super-successful headline template that foregrounds the list format, the emotional impact and the content type (examples):

The article text, images, links, or anything else you can think of were left untouched.

After updating the headline, the article CTR increased to 4.19 percent (up from 1 percent) and it ranked in position 5 (up from position 8).

So can you increase your CTR just by changing your title? Yes!

Don’t be boring! Write brilliant headlines that people will click on like crazy. (Just make sure the content behind them backs them up.)

4. Do Website Engagement Rates Impact Organic Search Rankings?

It’s super important to create clickable headlines, but the goal isn’t just to create clickbait. You also must have great engagement metrics. If people feel cheated and go right back to the SERP, Google can detect that.

Dwell time is really the thing that matters. And time on site is a much better proxy for dwell time than bounce rate.

My theory is that Google uses dwell time (which we can’t measure, but is proportional to time on site) to validate click-through rates. These metrics help Google figure out whether users ultimately got what they were looking for (i.e., a successful search).

So do engagement metrics (bounce rates, time on site, conversion rates) impact organic search rankings?

To put this theory to the test, we gathered some engagement rate data. First, we looked at whether the bounce rate of the pages/keywords we rank for had any relationship to their ranking:

See that “kink” in the graph? Kind of hard to miss, right?

Landing pages that had a bounce rate below 76 percent were more likely to show up in one of the top four positions. But landing pages that had a bounce rate of 78 percent or higher were more likely to show up in position five or lower.

What about time on site?

This graph shows that if your keyword/content pairs have decent time on site, then you’re more likely to be in top organic positions 1–6. If engagement is weak on average, however, then you’re more likely to be in positions 7 or lower.

And how about conversion rates? This data shows that higher CTRs tend to lead to higher conversion rates:

Why is this? Because if you can get someone excited enough to click on your offer, that excitement typically carries through to a purchase or sign-up.

Higher CTRs, engagement rates, and conversion rates lead to more leads and sales. But I believe this data clearly shows proof that improving engagement metrics and conversion rates will also lead to better organic search rankings.

5. Do Engagement Metrics Impact the Selection of Featured Snippets?

Google's Featured Snippets, which appear in so-called Position 0 above the organic search results, come in the form of text, lists, images, and charts, among others. But how does Google's algorithm pick Featured Snippets?

First, I wanted to find out whether Google's traditional organic search ranking factors impacted whether your site gets snipped. So I looked at data for 981 snippets that the WordStream site has earned.

Clearly not. Otherwise, the top ranked position would get the snippet every time. Google is featuring snippets from content that ranks on page 2 to as far back as the 71st position!

Having on-page copy that is clear and concise is also clearly important. But, again, word count isn't the full picture.

So we dove deeper and investigated this page after seeing it as a snippet for searches relating to getting Bing Rewards points. We discovered two interesting things from our Google Analytics and Search Console data:

•             An unusually high CTR (21.43 percent), even though it had an average position of 10

•             Unusually high time on site (14:30), which was 3x above the site average.

So do engagement rates play a role in the selection of Featured Snippets? I absolutely believe so!

In other words: Optimize for PEOPLE! Write headlines that will make them click and then reward them for that click by publishing amazing and memorable content that will make them want to stay on your site and share your stuff.

Did any of these experiments surprise you? What SEO experiments would you like to see next?

Source Links: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/11/22/seo-experiments