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Does your website feel stale and uninspired?  Have you avoided making any updates to your pages, due to a lack of time or technical “know how?”

Well, then, it’s time to move past these trite excuses and start updating your stale website!

In today’s digital world, websites must be more than simple, static billboards that telegraph the same information day in and day out.  Your users are expecting an engaging, dynamic presence – and the easiest way to convey this feeling is to regularly update your content.  At the same time, regular site changes are important from an SEO perspective, as the search engines value and prefer to reward websites that feature “fresh” content.

You don’t need to undergo a complete website redesign every month to keep things interesting.  Instead, consider the following strategies for ways to update your stale website without a significant investment of time or energy:

Tip #1 – Add a blog

Blogs are great from both a reader and an SEO standpoint.  When you install and regularly update your company’s blog, readers come back again and again to see what new information you’ve posted.  The search engines also reward your site, as the inclusion of more content naturally creates more opportunities to get picked up for different keyword-specific search results pages.

Installing a blog is easy when you use tools like WordPress or Joomla.  Truly, the harder part is setting and sticking to a consistent publishing schedule.  Though it can be a challenge to marshal the resources necessary for proper editorial standards, the effort is well worth the rewards of a regularly updated site.

Tip #2 – Revise your “About” page

Most companies slap together a generic “About” page – only to realize later on that it isn’t connecting with readers in a meaningful way.  If you find yourself in this position, don’t worry.  It’s easy to update your “About” page in order to make this content fresher and more engaging for viewers.

To revise this all-important page, start with the “5 Ws”:

• Who are you?

• What do you do?

• When did you open for business?

• Where are you located?

• How are you achieving your business’s aims?

It’s a simple framework, for sure.  But by following these guidelines, you’ll create the kind of punchy “About” page that both answers readers most pertinent questions and encourages them to dive more deeply into your other content.

Tip #3 – Add a new special to your home page

Want a quick and easy way to freshen up your website’s content?  Simply post a new special on your home page!  For example, you could:

• Offer a special discount on shipping costs to new customers

• Give away free product samples with purchases over a certain dollar amount

• Provide discounts in exchange for referrals to your business

Remember – your website visitors are always looking to get the best possible deal they can.  Adding any of the different specials described above to your home page both captures their attention and helps them to believe that their getting great value by working with you.

Tip #4 – Feature a new product or service

Similarly, showcasing a new product or service on your website connects with readers in the same way as featuring a home page special.  Most shoppers like to believe that they’re on the cutting edge – that they’re “early adopters” who try new things before others.  Featuring new products or services on your home page appeals to this instinct, while also putting different offerings in front of your regular readers’ eyes.

You don’t even have to launch a new product or service to take advantage of this effect.  If you offer a product or service that doesn’t generate many sales, giving it a spotlight on your website’s home page can help to freshen the look of your site while also raising the impact of underperforming offerings.

Tip #5 – Try a new template

Finally, if you want to go all out and truly freshen up your website, you can’t do much better than trying a new template.

If your website operates on WordPress, Joomla or any other popular CMS, updating your stale look and feel truly is as simple as purchasing and uploading a new template.  Of course, with any template swap, you’ll likely have to do a bit of clean-up work to ensure that your information displays appropriately within your new site.  However, the time and cost of doing so still comes in dramatically lower than having a custom site built from scratch, making this a smart way to update your stale website.

Do you have any other ideas for ways to freshen up the look and feel of a dated website?  If so, share your recommendations in the comments section below!

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – and that’s as true when it comes to SEO as it is with descriptions.

Images play a huge role in website development, as their visual appeal is a powerful way to attract and retain reader attention.  However, the way that you incorporate images into your site can also influence the way your website is handled by the search engines.  To get the best SEO bang for your image buck, consider taking all of the following steps to optimize images for your website:

Step #1 – Check your licenses

First – before we even get into the meat of modifying your images to make them more appealing to the search engines – take a few moments to be sure you hold the appropriate licenses to the images you plan to use.

Smart webmasters know that you can’t simply right click and copy an image from anywhere on the web to use on your site.  Instead, you’ll need to download royalty free stock imagery, find images that have been licensed for commercial use under the Creative Commons license or purchase images from stock photo websites.

Making sure that your image licenses are in order won’t improve your SEO, but it will prevent you from receiving DMCA notices from angry photographers who have the power to otherwise disrupt your business.

Step #2 – Resize your images

Once you’ve appropriately sourced your images, take the time to resize to the exact dimensions at which they’ll be displayed on your website.  Photoshop and SnagIt are two popular image editing programs that you can use for this purpose, although the PicMonkey website represents a great free alternative for beginning webmasters.

The reason that it’s important to do this before you upload your images is your site’s speed.  Forcing your website to reload images on the fly (because you’ve uploaded large images and told your site to display smaller versions) consumes digital resources, which can slow down your site’s operations.  And because site speed is becoming a major factor in your SEO performance, anything you can do to minimize the number of resources used is to your benefit.

Step #3 – Compress your images

At the same time, don’t just resize your images – compress them as well!

Both the size of your picture and the amount of information it contains (as in, whether it’s a high resolution image or low resolution picture) determine the number of resources required to load it to your site.  And since most websites don’t require the same level of photographic detail needed for art prints or printed pictures, you can safely compress your images without compromising their display value.

To compress your images for free, check out Yahoo’s smush.it tool.  With just a few clicks of the mouse, this service will remove unnecessary bits from your image without changing its overall appearance – speeding up your site and improving its SEO performance.

Step #4 – Add target keywords to your image file names

Once the size and compression rate of your images have been optimized, it’s time to start integrating your target SEO keywords.  One place in particular to do this is your image file names.

As an example, if you run a website that sells fine jewelry and are in the process of uploading a picture of a gold watch, don’t leave your files names in their original photographer formats (for example, “IMG_023490.jpg”).  Instead, replace it with a keyword-optimized version – for example, “fine-jewelry-gold-watch.jpg.”  Doing so will help the search engines to better understand the content of your images, as well as how they should be treated from an SEO perspective.

Step #5 – Add title and ALT tags to your images

In addition to optimizing your file names, you can integrate keywords into both the image title tag and ALT tag fields.  But that said, don’t treat these two areas as repositories for all the different keyword variations you can stuff into them.

Think about the original purposes of these fields, which were to assist both the search engines and website visitors using adaptive technologies to better understand what they were seeing.  For this reason, any optimized tags you add should be descriptive in nature.  Don’t stuff your keywords into these fields – instead, create natural-sounding image descriptions that include mentions of your target keywords when it’s appropriate to do so.

When it comes to image optimization, approach the process from a holistic standpoint.  Take as many actions as you can to improve your page load times and the ability of the search engines to parse your content, but don’t go overboard.  Including too many keyword repetitions or optimizing every single image on your site perfectly could set you up to experience an over-optimization penalty down the road.

Content marketing is the hottest marketing trend out there right now, as the regular publication of fresh content can be a huge differentiator for your website. From business blogging to “how to” videos, this engaging content comes in many forms.

However, most businesses find that it can be overwhelming to keep up with the demand for new content, as it takes time and effort to regularly develop high quality content. As a result, many businesses opt to have users generate content for them, either in place of or as a supplement to the content they’re already creating.

If this all sounds appealing to you, read on to learn about what user generated content (UGC) is and how to decide if it’s right for your business.

What is User Generated Content?

User generated content comes in many forms. This can include product reviews, guest posts, customer images and more:

Product Reviews

Product reviews are often used by consumer goods companies. If you sell a product or range of products, you may allow customers to review them directly on your site.

Some examples of companies using this tactic include Modcloth, Zappos and Babies R Us. Product reviews can include information on the quality of your product, how quickly it shipped and more. Some sites even provide categories for their products to be reviewed on “like,” “fit” or “ease of use,” depending on what type of good is being sold.

Guest Posts

Sites that include a business blog can rely on guest posts as a huge source of user generated content. Guest posts allow users to share their opinions and experiences on industry topics, easing the burden of regular content creation while also driving traffic from the guest poster’s site.

As a result, this technique can help you to create buzz about your blog and to enjoy the flood of traffic that comes when your guest posters promote their posts on their own social media profiles.

Customer Images

Customer images can be an especially valuable type of user generated content and involves customers posting images of your products – perhaps either using or wearing said products.

Alternately, you can create a meme encouraging users to interact with your brand by posting photos of themselves in a certain pose or location. A great example of this type of UGC is the True Blood “Show Your Fangs” campaign. Fans of the HBO show came out in droves to post photos of themselves “showing their fangs.” This helped to create enormous buzz for the show’s sixth season.

Finally, many brands also encourage fans to create their own content from scratch. This can include videos, artwork or comics that fans create based on your products or services. This particular type of user generated content has been extremely popular with brands that have cult followings, as it provides a creative outlet that allows die-hard fans to feel more connected to the company.

Pros and Cons of User Generated Content

Flow of Content

User generated content can significantly decrease the amount of content your team is directly responsible for creating. However, for this strategy to work, you need to have a strong base of users who are willing to generate this content.

Often, the first step to creating UGC campaigns is to find the most easily accessible way for users to contribute. You’ll need to decide which types of user generated content are right for your brand. From there, you’ll want to let your users know that you’re interested in seeing their content. Letting them know that you want their reviews, guest posts, photos or other content pieces encourages them to help support your content strategy.

From there, it’s also important for you to like, comment on and share the content they create. Users are most likely to continue to create and share content for you if they feel that you’re engaging back with them.

Ultimately, this strategy can be a time saver that also increases your reach by piggy-backing off the relationships you have with your followers. But that doesn’t mean that you’re completely off the hook. Without engaging with the users who are creating this content, it’s likely that the flow of content will trickle to a halt.

Quality of Content

Just because you’ve found users who are willing to generate content for you does not mean that all the content you receive will be of the highest quality. It’s very possible that you’ll receive fuzzy photos or guest posts that are inappropriate for your brand. In fact, you may even receive some poor reviews.

Before you launch this type of strategy, think about how you’ll address low quality content or negative reviews. It’s also important to decide whether you’ll share all the content that’s created by your campaign or only that content that you deem “worthy.”

Launching a user generated content marketing strategy without knowing exactly what your quality standards are can seriously undermine your campaign’s success. However, as long as you know how you’ll treat these situations, they aren’t a good reason to avoid user generated content.

Legal Concerns

It’s also important to determine whether user generated content raises any legal concerns for your brand. Some companies make users sign terms and conditions statements that release the brand from liability should the user post something inoffensive or inaccurate.

Speaking with legal counsel before launching any user generated content strategy can be beneficial. Again, this isn’t a reason to avoid this type of campaign. It’s simply something you’ll want to address before starting so there are no unpleasant surprises.

Is User Generated Content Right for You?

Given all these different considerations, how do you know if user generated content is right for you?

For starters, be aware that user generated content is beneficial for nearly all business in one form or another. If you don’t yet have a strong fan base, it may not be the right time to start a user generated content campaign. However, if you’re already up and running with a loyal following, this is a logical step for your business to take.

User generated content vastly increases your reach, creates positive buzz for your brand and can be a lot of fun in the process. If you’re looking to increase your web presence, it’s likely that user generated content is a good fit for you. Laying out your strategy and addressing any legal concerns before you get started will allow you to experience this new marketing strategy as a fun, innovative way to promote your business.

With Facebook rapidly approaching its 10th anniversary, it’s not that social media marketing is a new thing for business owners and webmasters.  But that said, there are still quite a few people out there making mistakes that could cost them both followers and sales.

To be sure that your social media strategy is as effective as possible, check your campaigns for the following mistakes:

Mistake #1 – Not customizing your profile design

All of the major social networks – including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – all give you different opportunities to brand your profile page.  Don’t miss out on these great opportunities to distinguish your company!

Mistake #2 – Not updating your design in response to platform changes

That said, keep an eye out for platform redesigns, as in the case of the recent Google+ overhaul.  The display issues that can result from failing to adapt your profile images to these new standards can leave your page looking out-of-date.

Mistake #3 – Only talking about yourself

Social media isn’t just about you.  Keep the self-centered updates to a minimum in favor of posts and content that puts the emphasis on your products and your customers.

Mistake #4 – Being overly-promotional

At the same time, remember that social networking websites are supposed to be, well, social!  If all you do is blast the same promotional updates over and over again, you risk being labeled a spammer and losing the following you’ve worked so hard to build.

Mistake #5 – Disappearing for weeks on end

One of the keys to proper social media marketing is consistency.  If you disappear for long stretches of time, you miss out on one of the major advantages of social media – the ability to keep your brand name in front of your followers.  Check in with your profiles at least once a day to give the appearance of being an active, engaged business.

Mistake #6 – Not investigating new social platforms

But while it’s important to have a social media posting strategy and publishing calendar, don’t let your schedule prevent you from investigating new platforms when they arise.  Early adopters of social newcomers Pinterest and Instagram benefited from being among the first on each platform, and your company can grab the same competitive edge if you remain alert to industry changes.

Mistake #7 – Focusing on vanity metrics

Newsflash – it’s better to have 100 highly-engaged followers than 10,000 followers who don’t know your brand from the next.  Stop focusing on your profile follower count and other vanity metrics and turn your attention to the statistics that demonstrate actual engagement.

Mistake #8 – Only posting automated updates

Automated posting tools like HootSuite and BufferApp can minimize the amount of daily effort needed to manage your social profiles.  But don’t allow yourself to become overly reliant on them, as only posting automated updates takes the life out of your profile.  Engage in person and use these tools as a way to supplement your primary efforts.

Mistake #9 – Cross posting the same updates to different platforms

Another temptation that automated tool users encounter is the desire to post the same update to all of their different social profiles.  However, every social networking site has its own culture and language.  Creating separate updates for each platform will allow you to engage each of your unique audiences is the most effective way possible.

Mistake #10 – Failing to respond to engaged users

If people take the time to reach out to your brand – whether through direct messages, update shares or other types of engagement – acknowledge their efforts!  Responding promptly demonstrates to your followers that their contributions are appreciated, which – in turn – improves your brand’s overall reputation.

Mistake #11 – Deleting negative comments

Finally, take a lesson from the recent debacle involving Amy’s Baking Company.  Receiving negative comments on your social profiles isn’t fun, but deleting them (or blowing up in response) makes your company look bad.  Respond respectfully and do everything in your power to make the situation better for followers who feel they’ve been wronged in some way.

Of course, the social networking landscape is tremendously large and the number of mistakes that can be made is correspondingly huge.  If you’ve seen somebody make a social media marketing mistake (or if you want to fess up to one of your own), share your observations in the comments section below:

Logging in to your Google Analytics account and seeing a sharp downward trend in your traffic stats can be scary.  What once looked like a promising trend in upwards traffic growth can quickly degenerate to visions of closed doors and scrapped expansion plans in the absence of the natural search traffic you once relied on.

Fortunately, some causes of traffic drops can be easily remedied, while others will take more time repair.  So before you start to panic, walk through the following diagnostic steps to determine exactly what’s caused your declining visitor counts:

Step #1 – See if your site is up and running

Though this first step might seem a bit obvious, your immediate reaction to a decrease in website traffic should be to determine whether or not your site is live.

Any number of things can take down a websites – from hosting issues to problems with your domain name registrar and more.  If you see that your site is down, contact your hosting provider immediately for information on what might be causing your current outage.

Step #2 – Make sure your analytics code is installed correctly

If your site is live, your next step should be to check your analytics code integration.  This is an especially important step to take if you’ve added your analytics code to your site using a plugin, as the presence of multiple plugins can cause conflicts in which one program interferes with another’s operation.

Additionally, making changes to your site’s code or introducing third-party analytics code modifications can all cause your site to stop reporting traffic data correctly.  Check this before you become concerned about more serious causes of traffic drops.

Step #3 – Determine whether or not your site has been hacked

Next, if your site is running and your analytics code appears to be installed correctly, you’ll want to see if your site has been hacked, as this may result in your traffic being funneled to an external site.

The easiest way to check to see if your site has been hacked is to enter the query “links:yoururl.com” (without the parentheses) into Google.  If you see any spam content in the snippets that appear, chances are you’ve been hacked.  Contact your hosting provider or a qualified website developer for help reclaiming your site.

Step #4 – Log in to your Webmaster Tools account

Another important step in the traffic drop diagnosis process is to log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account (assuming you’ve set up one before noticing your traffic decline).

Once you’re inside, navigate to the “Messages” section.  This is where Google notifies webmasters of major issues that have arisen; including sites that have become inaccessible to Google’s indexing programs, sites that have been detected violating the company’s webmaster guidelines and sites that have been issued manual penalties in the search results.

If you see a notice here, you may be able to gain some insight into what’s gone wrong with your site’s traffic and what steps you’ll need to take to repair the situation.  But if you have no new messages from Google, you’ll need to move on to the final step in the diagnosis process…

Step #5 – Check the SEO blogs for news of an algorithm update

Google and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms.  As a result, a sudden drop in traffic could mean that your site no longer meets the engines’ standards and has gone down in the natural search rankings – leading to a corresponding drop in traffic.

The easiest way to determine whether or not one of these updates has occurred is to head over to popular SEO blogs like Search Engine World or Search Engine Land, as these sites are often the first to report on changes within the major engines.  They’ll also be the first to report on the methods that sites can use to reclaim their lost rankings, which may be instrumental in your ability to regain the traffic your site has lost.

Be aware, though, that the process of recovering from lost traffic due to algorithm changes can be difficult and time-consuming – if you’re ever able to recover fully at all.  Because this type of traffic drop can be devastating to a business, it’s best to avoid using grey or black-hat SEO techniques, as these can jeopardize your site’s long-term stability.  Instead, focus on adding plenty of great content to your website and build links in natural ways – rather than using manipulative techniques to improve your search rankings.

Hopefully, the cause of your sudden traffic drop will be something that can be easily resolved, as in the first few steps described in this process.  But if this isn’t the case, know that recovery is possible, though you may be facing a long road to return your site to its former traffic patterns.

Odds are, you haven’t put a ton of time and energy into your website just to have it sit around gathering digital dust.  Instead, you want your website to do something – whether it’s to sell products, generate leads or just promote your way of thinking.

But given the amount of noise most internet users are faced with these days, you need to make it explicitly clear what you want your visitors to do.  This can be done using “calls to action,” which can be implemented with the following steps:

Step #1 – Define your target action

Before you can create a call to action, you first need to determine what type of action you want people to take after reading each page of your website.  As a general rule, it’s best to have no more than one major call to action on each page of your site.

Consider the following example target action and call to action combinations:

• Prompting a blog post reader to share the article on a social profile – “If you liked this post, take a second to share it with your friends on Facebook.”

• Encouraging visitors to sign up for a web design email newsletter – “Enroll now for free tips on creating cutting-edge website designs.”

• Provoking customers into purchasing weight loss products – “Start your new life today by clicking the ‘Buy Now’ button below.”

Because your call to action must be tailored to the individual target action it supports, you’ll need to have these desired outcomes identified before moving on to the next step.

Step #2 – Utilize copywriting techniques to write your calls to action

Once you have your target actions defined, you can begin writing your calls to action.  But keep in mind that plain language isn’t going to cut it here!  Your calls to action should take advantage of popular copywriting techniques in order to prompt as many users into action as possible.

A few of the rules you’ll want to keep in mind include:

• Make your “ask” obvious.  Be direct about the actions you want users to take – hedging and beating around the bush results confuses readers and prevents them from doing what you hope they’ll do.

• Use powerful words.  In the second example shared above, the words “free” and “cutting-edge” are designed to provoke emotions.  Using these types of power words inspires feelings and emotions in your readers – both of which can lead to eventual action.

• Keep it short.  Calls to action should be clear and concise, so avoid using any more words than are truly necessary to get your point across.

Don’t stress yourself out too much in this step.  There are hundreds of different copywriting techniques out there – mastering them all is pretty much impossible without years of study.  Do the best you can for now and we’ll discuss an easy way to improve the effectiveness of your calls to action in Step #4.

Step #3 – Place your calls to action appropriately on your site

Writing your calls to action well is important – but so is where you place these key phrases on your site!

For example, if you create a call to action that encourages website visitors to sign up for your email newsletter, but then place the statement below the fold on your home page, you run the risk of having most people miss your prompt altogether.  And really, your call to action can’t be effective if nobody sees it.

So once you’ve written your calls to action, take care to place them in the most appropriate places on your site.  Prompts to share your blog posts on social networks may make the most sense at the end of each blog post page on your site, but most calls to action need to be featured prominently in order to be acted upon.

Step #4 – Split test your calls to action for best results

Don’t leave the wording or placement of your calls to action to chance.  Although you can write words that sound persuasive to your ears or place your prompts in a way that you believe will generate the most follow-through, you can’t really be sure that you’re using this motivational tool correctly without data to back up your assumptions.

The best way to determine whether your calls to action are as engaging as possible is to use the A/B split test protocol to pit different calls to action against each other.  Test the exact wording you use, test the specific placement used on your site – test anything you think of that could make your phrases even more enticing to website visitors.  Sure, it’s extra work, but the difference in website conversion rates brought about by even the smallest call to action tweaks can be extraordinary!

If you spend any amount of time on digital marketing blogs, you’ve probably noticed by now that content marketing appears to be the “hot promotional strategy” of 2013.

However, what you may not have noticed is that content marketing is more than a fad – it’s a shift in online promotional paradigms that’s here to stay.  According to the Content Marketing Institute “2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” report, 86% of B2C companies plan to maintain or increase their content marketing investments throughout the year, with 54% of B2B companies sharing the same opinion.

 If your website doesn’t yet have a content marketing strategy, it’s time to create one.  Here’s what your plan should include:

Element #1 – A detailed description of your target audience

The first thing you need to know when planning a content marketing campaign is who you’re trying to reach.  The better educated you are about your target customers; the more likely it is that you’ll be able to develop content pieces that appeal to them.

 Specifically, try to find out your customers’:

• Age and gender distribution

• Geographic location

• Average annual incomes

• Education levels

• Personal interests

• Belief systems and personal priorities

• Online habits and activities

Your website’s analytics data can provide insight into some of these topics, as can customer surveys or simply tracking the behavior of your followers on public social media sites like Twitter.

Element #2 – The content channels you plan to utilize

As you learn more about your target audience, you should be able to get a feel for how they spend their time online.  Make note of the social sites on which they’re most active, as these key locations will provide the basis for your content promotion activities.

While you might think that it’s safe to promote your content on Facebook and Twitter and call it a day, you’re always better safe than sorry.  If your customer research efforts determine that your target demographic is hardly active at all on Twitter and instead prefers a niche forum for online engagement, it’s better to find this out before you’ve committed to a new Twitter marketing plan!

Element #3 – The content types you’ll produce

Another important component in a good content marketing strategy is a publishing calendar that details the types of content you’ll produce and when you’ll release each individual piece.

As an example, your customer research might indicate that your target audience prefers to share infographics and list type blog posts with others in their networks, compared with videos or long form, editorial-style blog posts.  As a result, you could create a publishing calendar that involves releasing one infographic a month and weekly blog posts that periodically utilize the list format.

Keep in mind that consistent engagement is critical when it comes to content marketing success.  By deploying content at regular intervals, you’ll expand your brand’s reputation and keep website visitors coming back for more.

Element #4 – The resources needed to create your content

 As you’re building your publishing schedule, be careful not to get too ambitious!

If you hate writing, you need to either focus your efforts on the kinds of content you enjoy producing or you need to hire an outsourced writer who’s familiar with your industry.  Similarly, if you love writing, but don’t have the time to commit to drafting regular posts, you’ll need to make the same type of decision.

Be honest with yourself.  It’s fine to be optimistic about your campaign’s potential outcomes, but leaving yourself without the resources needed to develop high value content pieces will doom your promotional efforts from the start.

Element #5 – A metrics-driven plan for measuring the impact of your campaign

Finally, be clear with yourself about what you want your content marketing campaign to achieve.  If you’re going to be investing either your time or your money, it’s important that you have a way to determine whether or not you’re achieving a positive ROI.

Potential goals for your content marketing campaigns include:

• More sales

• More website traffic

• Increased brand mentions

• New social followers

• Viral content shares

• More email newsletter subscribers

Whatever general goal type you choose, be sure to create both target milestones and a method for tracking your progress.  For example, don’t just say, “I want to increase sales through content marketing.”  Instead, say, “I want to acquire 10 new customers each month through content marketing,” and then set up a system (as in, Google Analytics Goals combined with Advanced Traffic Segments) that will allow you to determine exactly which sales can be attributed to your content marketing efforts.

Use the information your tracking program generates to regularly assess the success of your campaigns and to make adjustments as needed.  By continually measuring and reevaluating your content marketing initiatives, you’ll position your business well to see improved performance through this powerful promotional strategy.