As a father of two beautiful and strong girls this video spoke loudly to me. It affirmed the way my wife and I tried to raise them. For us the phrase #likeagirl means to put forth your best effort. When they were younger, we played football, soccer, baseball or swimming without holding anything back. Now, they can take on any boy in these sports. Oh, and not only sports! We are proud of you girls that you do things #likeagirl. You go girl! Like a Girl!
When thinking on an international level, I often recall one of my favorite authors, Jules Verne, when he wrote Around the World in 80 Days back in 1873. After making a wager that he could circumnavigate the globe in less than three months, a young adventurer sets off on his quest.
Using what was considered “modern transportation” back in the day, our hero Phineas Fogg, succeeds in his timely travels abroad by means of a hot air balloon, the railways, climbing aboard a steamship and even riding an elephant at one point. Today, we can visit as many countries as we wish in mere minutes with just one device connected to the world wide web.
The infographic below gives us three valuable tips on how we can gain global recognition in our business ventures all around the world. From setting up our international website to creating strong core citations and finally building our brand. Let’s look at some other ways we can make our businesses more profitable and recognizable in today’s global marketplace.
FACT, NOT FICTION – Stories from our own backyard
Many tales from the scientific mind of Jules Verne told stories of epic journeys under the sea and to the center of the earth where his characters grew stronger and closer in the end. Today, there are many real-life stories of businesses that were able to successfully grow their revenues, increase clientele and cut costs. Here are a few of those examples:
These entrepreneurs share their stories of success in video form rather than on pages in a book.
TALES OF THE UNKNOWN – Optimizing SEO
Jules Verne was said to have revolutionized the writing of science fiction just as the internet has forever changed the way that we do business. He took us to places beyond our imagination, showing us environments that we could barely comprehend, as some people are often challenged by the concept of SEO.
Some will say that SEO is dying, but it is actually evolving especially when you consider the Hummingbird algorithm that Google released back in August of 2013. The search engine giant will still rely on meta tags, keywords and links to gauge the relevance and popularity of any given website, but it has also added more data into their ranking equation.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY – How to conclude our success
To get our happy ending, boost our local and international ranking, succeed in growing our business online, we should pay attention to what matters in our triumphant story. We need to do our homework (check out the infographic), listen to the experts who are already on top of the world in their industry (success stories) and understand how to best utilize SEO to seen around the world online.
International Website SEO infographic:
Not every bandwagon trend pays off. Over the past few years, we’ve seen white papers and listened to podcasts advising thought leaders to set up their Google Authorship profile and start linking their content in order to drive up SEO, credibility, and clickability. But it just didn’t pan out. In late August of 2014, news came that Google will no longer show authorship results in Google Search or track data from content using rel=author markup. Why?
Google is renowned for testing. Every innovation or product is subjected to rigorous testing and reconsideration. If it doesn’t add real value to the user or doesn’t garner enough adoption, it is either thrown out or overhauled. And that’s what happened with Google Authorship. It’s that simple.
While the idea seemed like the next big thing, and many content creators and marketers were excited about getting author headshots and snippets added to search results, the fact is, nothing much happened. Click rates didn’t significantly increase, and very few people actually used the service. Studies have shown that approximately 70% of authors simply did not connect their published content to a Google Authorship profile, and searchers just never got the memo that they were supposed to place a higher value on search results featuring an author snippet.
The concept might have been valid. After all, we recognize that some people are more qualified to write on some subjects than are others. But maybe there is a better way to translate this to the virtual world. In fact, many marketers are now turning to Google’s Author Rank, which continues to be a factor for SEO and might provide a more stable answer to the problem.
What do you think? Are you worried about the loss of Google Authorship, or is it good riddance? Tell me in the comments below how this will affect your website’s traffic.
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/snakphotography/
Do you use the most effective social media channels to establish your corporate presence? You probably focus mainly on your Twitter, Google+, Facebook, YouTube, or Blogger profiles. But, what about LinkedIn? This, often underutilized, platform may truly assist you in building and maximizing your brand’s influence.
LinkedIn is more than a job-searching or career-networking place. With 259+ million users, 2.74 percent conversion rate, and 3+ million Company Pages, it’s become the biggest professional community on Earth. LinkedIn lets you connect to industry experts and start professional discussions, thus opening the doors to new business-expanding opportunities.
The following tips will help you build and maximize your brand’s influence, making it more visible, credible and marketable on LinkedIn:
Maintain Your Personal Profile
Know Your Audience
Manage Your Company’s Profile
Connect With People
Create Engaging Content
Bridge Accounts
Understanding LinkedIn and incorporating its features into your business plan can be a game-changing influence expander, one that clever marketers and savvy businesspeople aim for. So, don’t wait any longer and go experiment with LinkedIn’s offerings!
Browse our collection of search marketing articles for industry news, tips, and inbound marketing strategy ideas.
SEO:
The Benefits of Thinking Like Google. Looking at things from Google’s point of view can help us understand recent changes to their treatment of links and how to move forward with a link-building strategy that’s favorable with search engines (from SEObook.com).
A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization: How do I build the perfectly optimized page? Are you a visual learner? Rand Fishkin has complied a series of graphics to help visualize the types of on-page keyword optimization that are likely to lead to high search engine rankings, traffic on social networks, plenty of links and shares, and positive company branding (from Moz.com).
Social Media:
How to Utilize LinkedIn Groups for Your Business. Learn about the value of using LinkedIn Groups and how to beef up your business profile page before getting started (from SEO.com).
The Complete Guide for Finding and Sharing Better Content on Social Media. This guide offers a range of tips about where to find good content, and when and where to share it in order to reach the most people (from bufferapp.com).
5 Ways to Use Video to Improve Your Social Media Marketing. Video is user-friendly content that’s easy to share, and there are a lot of options for using video on social media. This post describes how to incorporate video into your social media strategy on five different platforms (from SocialMediaExaminer.com).
Content Marketing & Branding:
Content Marketing and Relationship Management. Brian Jenson argues that a holistic content marketing strategy includes the relationship management aspect of the process. He explores the phases of content marketing and the roles of relationships in each (from Social Media Today).
17 Compelling Stats That Make the Case for Smarter Site Design. These 17 must-read stats about website design and optimization will make you think twice about revisiting your site design strategy (from Hubspot.com).
How to Create a Content Strategy (In Only 652 Steps). This complete guide is long, but it’s main point is clear from the start: stop basing your content strategy on keywords and start creating content that establishes your business as a leading resource of information in your industry (from Portent.com).
Browse this week’s collection of search marketing articles for industry news, tips, guidance, and creative ideas for boosting an inbound marketing strategy.
Marketing & Branding:
How to Develop and Maintain a Content Team. “Content” isn’t just another buzzword when it comes to marketing. The importance of good content is here to stay, and more marketers are realizing that generating lots of high-quality content can be done more efficiently with a content team. This guide delivers tips for creating, managing, and tracking the efforts of a content team around marketing goals and strategies (from Distilled.net).
Customers Say iTunes Provides the Best Mobile Media Experience. PC sales are steadily declining, while tablet sales are rise. In less than 12 months, monthly tablet sales are expected to exceed monthly PC sales. It’s time for businesses to put equal effort into both the PC and mobile experience when it comes to customer satisfaction. Media companies like iTunes have nailed the mobile media experience, using tactics that can successfully transfer to nearly any business’s mobile marketing strategy (from Marketing Pilgrim).
SEO:
The 30 best new SEO tools. It’s a daunting task to stay on top of the ever-evolving SEO industry, but compilations like this one bring it all together for a snapshot of current SEO, which we can use to both measure and modify our current inbound strategies (from .netMagazine).
How 1% of your traffic can bring in 90% of your business. Traffic to your website is virtually useless if it doesn’t lead to conversions. Learn how long-tail keywords help target the searchers most likely to convert, making them an excellent way to drive the best kind of traffic to your website (from So What? Media).
Social Media:
7 Powerful Facebook statistics you should know for a more engaging Facebook page. These tips include some efficient ideas for boosting Facebook outreach, just by tweaking some of the social media strategies you’re probably already using. In a nutshell: post plenty of images, integrate an emotional element, pose a question, offer incentives, and keep it short (from Buffer).
4 Examples of Excellent Twitter Customer Service. 99% of brands are now on Twitter, but only 30% of them have a dedicated customer service strategy. Because technology makes it easy for consumers to publicly complain about problems related to a business’s products and services, addressing those problems using the same platforms is one way to both appease unhappy customers and maintain relationships with satisfied customers. Find out how four companies are successfully addressing customer service on Twitter (from Social Media Examiner).
This week’s collection of top search marketing articles includes insight on the latest Google updates, reasons for implementing SEO and SEM, and several perspectives on why marketers should be using the enigmatic Google+.
How fast do Fortune 500 companies adapt the latest web technology standards? Among their findings, INCORE discovered that over 30% of Fortune 500 companies use the latest HTML doctype and that the readiness to invest in new technologies might correlate with their profitability.
INCORE, a sister agency of IWW Interactive Agency, conducted and published the full research on their website. The infographic below is a representation of the research.
INCORE and IWW Interactive Agency are full-service digital agencies who joined forces to betterprovide web and mobile designs, copywriting, and other online marketing services.
Want to rank better in Google? If you’re an individual, you could build your own site and hope it does well. But you might have more success by creating a page for yourself on a social media site like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. BrandYourself.com is the first product that empowers you to control what people find when they Google your name.
This week’s collection of top search articles and resources on internet marketing includes tips about writing great headlines and social posts, going viral on slide sharing sites, and understanding and utilizing the latest services from Google.