Links Talked About:Search Metrics 2014 Ranking StudyTranscript:Ok so you’ve got a website...now what? No traffic from search engines? Social media YEAH!!! ..Oh but nobody is clicking or liking. Uuuuhm, oh email blasts! Dangit nobody is opening or clicking on my emails. I know, let’s buy some Google ads...still...nothing...why doesn’t anyone care?FULL INTRODUCTION:Hi there I’m Greg Sargent and this is the Squarespace Guru show! The only podcast in existence not sponsored by Squarespace. On this show we talk about everything you need to know to create a profitable online presence. News, tips, tricks, but more importantly we talk about what to do with the tools Squarespace has so gracefully created for us. It is Friday October 31st 2014, Happy Halloween everyone! today we're going to talk about a word that starts with “c” no, not candy….content, what is it, why is it important and what you need to do create lots of it. Back in 2002 I lived on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, in a small town called Haleiwa. During this time of year things really start hopping. The waves are getting bigger and the crowds of surfers start pouring in. While I was in Hawaii, I discovered a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And in the book was a story about a village that had a water problem. And I’m sure I’ll butcher this story...but the mayor of the village hired two people to provide water to the village. These two guys started carrying buckets from a spring nearby to the village. They decided that they needed to bring in more water by hiring more people to carry buckets and by increasing the size of the buckets. One of them got an idea. He decided he was going to build a pipeline, and he envisioned this pipeline bringing in water every day all day and all night. Of course it took a little time to plan the pipeline and construct it. In the meantime the other guy appeared to be more successful with the bucket method. But ultimately in the end, the pipeline was finished and the water began flowing in. Without the need for extra manpower or ever bigger buckets.So why am I telling you this story...it applies to the internet in so many ways. Sure we could you could go out and tell everyone about your website, bringing in some traffic to our site… and time allowance would need to increase and increase and increase to bring in more and more visitors...but what if you could create a pipeline that would bring in visitors automatically...all day, every day and even at night. That’s what we’ll be talking about today.NEWS:News-wise there's really not much to talk about today. Everything has been a little quiet since the launch of version 7, but I have noticed lots of little bug fixes to the new platform including the unsaved versions feature is back, and the Sales Overview in the Metrics Panel has been fixed. Previously it would display sales figures without accounting for discount codes or sales used. And from what I can see, all new Squarespace accounts are now automatically being created on version 7. So whether or not that means version 7 is out of beta, I’m not sure...but since new accounts are now on the new platform, I think it is safe to say version 7 is here. Everyone on version 6 will probably be seeing these announcement bars at the top of your Squarespace Manager inviting you to upgrade to version 7.I came across a study this week by Search Metrics, and they ranked the top factors impacting how a website ranks on Google. Fascinating results and I’ll just share a few things that stand out to me, and I’ll have the link in the show notes for you to go get the full report if you want.There are over 200 variables that Google considered when providing search results, and while most of those variables or factors have very little impact on the overall rank of a website, this study indicates something that I’ve been thinking for a while...but is now confirmed based on this study. Your content, and we’ll define what that means here in a minute, but your content is so incredibly valuable...not just to humans, but to search engines. And more and more, search engines are thinking like humans. Of the top 10 factors impacting the way your website ranks on Google, seven factors consider your social media presence and impact. The number one factor impacting how your site ranks on Google is the relevant term used on the page. So if someone searches for a New York City wedding photographer, the most powerful thing you can do search engine wise is to have that exact phrase sprinkled throughout your website. The next most powerful thing you can do is to have a strong social media presence. We’ll talk about both of those things here in a second.First I want to just run down this list real quick, and you need to know this list inside and out. Ready? Here we go:Click through rate. So how many people when coming to your website, immediately leave withing just a few seconds. That figure is your click through rate. Obviously the lower the better.Relevent TermsGoogle plus ones (what is that you say? Google’s version of a facebook like)Number of backlinks. Or the how many instances another website is linking to your website.Facebook sharesFacebook total, or the overview of all your facebook likes, shares, followers.Facebook commentsPinterest presenceVisibility of backlinking URL. Not much you can do about this one, so I’m not going to explain what that means here.Facebook likesTweetsOk, so if you see smoke then you know a fire is close by right? Smoke signals a fire. Google is connecting your social media activity to your website. And these social signals are telling Google how authoritative your website is. So assignment for you: boost your social media presence. How do you do that? Well, create content that people care about. If you do that, and spend some time on social media everyday, your social signals will increase. Let me point out here, that your social presence will only increase if you have lots of valuable content for people to like, comment on, share, tweet, retweet, favorite, recommend, pin and plus 1. Not in that order though. So before you go out and hire a teenager to post memes up on your business Facebook page, let’s look at a few more factors on the list:number of internal links - in other words how many pages are linked together in your websitekeywords in the body of a pagehtml length, or how long or comprehensive a page istext character lengthword countword count in anchor text - anchor text is the text used to create links. So if you type a few words, highlight them and create a link pointing somewhere else on your site, that’s some anchor text.position of keyword in the titlelength of urlkeywords used with internal linksAnd then way down on the list, is image count and video integration. So, the takeways from this study are massive. You need to have valuable and powerful content on your website. So let’s talk about content.Definition: Content is the combination of the words, images, audio, animations...all the stuff that lives on the pages inside your website. Think about this for a minute. The best designed website can turn out to be unprofitable, while a poorly designed website can in fact be very profitable. Why? Because the content. The best designed website, without good powerful content will never motivate anyone to action. Because that’s what a website is supposed to do. Attract customers and then motivate them to action. Even poorly designed websites with great content can generate tons of traffic and in turn tons of customers.So often with tools like Squarespace, so many of us stress and devote tons of time and energy into the design of our websites. And then like an afterthought fill in the text on the pages. This is the wrong approach. Squarespace’s templates are already so beautiful, you can literally replace the images that come with the template with our own images...then replace the text with our own text without ever touching or thinking of the design elements and be able to create a profitable website.In most cases, our website visitors could care less about how many pixels your logo is from the top of the page. They could care less that the logo is above the navigation instead of to the left. They don’t care that you’ve built the website using Squarespace. They care about getting the information they are looking for. So give it to them! Stop worrying so much about the design of stuff. Just leave that alone. Fine if you want to change the font to be something more suitable to your personality...ok. But you should be putting so much more effort into the text on the page, and have a very small concern for the design of the site.Your pages should have more information. More text, more pages in general, more blog posts, more news articles...oh and more text. I’m not talking about the long 30 paragraph greasy sales pages. Just remember, word count is one factors considered when ranking your website. Just like in high school or college, if you turned in a paper with just a few hundred words your teacher or professor is going to think you don’t know the material and give you a failing grade. But having a substantial paper with lots of supporting paragraphs and points, it’s clear that you have mastered the material. Same goes for your website. Little content, potential customers will interpret that as meaning your offering isn’t the best place for their business.But don’t just slap up some garbage. Learn who your audience is, and give them such valuable information that they no longer need to visit any other website. You are the authority, and you will get their business. Accomplish this by publishing high quality blog posts, maintaining and building a library of high quality landing pages. Sharing that high quality content on your social profiles, in forums, on other blogs and anywhere else your audience spends time online. You need to be there sharing your content.Not sure what to say? You may need to hire a copywriter.Over time you will have built up a powerful collection of content. And you can continue sharing this content over and over and over again. The shelf life of a tweet is just a few minutes. The likelihood of all your twitter followers seeing all your tweets is so small. Tweet out the link to your blog posts over and over again. Several times a day even. Share is on Facebook a few times each week. Same with Google plus, linkedin and pinterest. As you provide these free resources, people will like it, they’ll share it, they’ll favorite it, they’ll retweet it, they’ll tell their friends about it and before long your social signals are loud and clear. And google will be sending you traffic night and day. Your content is just like that water pipeline to the remote village. The better, more high quality content you provide the stronger and wider the pipeline of visitors your website will see. And that always means more customers and more business for you.To wrap up here, I want to tell you about some things going on here with my Squarespace Guru business. I am in the process of finishing up over 200 videos that talk about everything you need to know to create a profitable online presence. My blog and this podcast are the what and why, but these videos are the how. I take you through the very basics of establishing an online presence all the way through setting up, maintaining and increasing this pipeline of visitors and profitability with your efforts online.I cover everything there is to know about Squarespace, search engine optimization, social media optimization and management, internet advertising, content marketing, email marketing and so much more.Sure you could get the same information for free on youtube and reading blogs all over the place. But it took me years to do that. And I’ve made tons of mistakes. You can avoid all those mistakes, and avoid all the bad advice I followed and instead of learning by trial and error like me, you can immediately jump in and begin building an online presence in the most optimal and efficient way.My clients have been hiring me to help them build an online presence one on one, and I’m happy to continue doing that. But these videos are a way for you to get the same information, on demand.So right now, the pre-order price is just $99 bucks. And as I get the videos completed, you’ll be able to watch them right away. Then once I get all the videos online, I’ll be raising my price to $325 dollars. Maybe more.Now you won’t need to watch every single video, so don’t get overwhelmed by the library size. But the videos are there for you if and when you do need them. I thought I was stopping at 199 videos, but I can’t it’s sitting currently at 204, and will likely go up.The internet is changing the way the world does business. Information is no longer valuable. The information age has already come and gone. Now we’re in the age of knowledge. Everyone knows everything about everything, thanks to the internet. The challenge is the filtering process. As a species, we have become expert filterers, if that’s a word. How long does it take you to determine if a website contains the information you are looking for? A second? Half a second? Most times you don’t even need to look at the website to make a decision. Why is that? Theres so many other signals that give you a clue as to what that website will contain. Clues such as Twitter following, how many people are engaged with a brand online. Reviews. Experts referencing the site...how many touches you have with a website over time… all these factors are considered, many time subconsciously within fractions of a second.So, we all need help, and my video library cuts through all the noise and is a source of pure internet business knowledge. And I hope you will consider purchasing my premium content there.My podcast and blog articles will always be free. Even my ebooks like my Squarespace Website Planner, all those things are free. The what and the why I give away...but the how. That knowledge is extremely valuable. Businesses are paying consultants thousands of dollars a year to teach and train their marketing staff how to leverage the internet. And things are changing quickly. What’s true today may not be true a year from today or even a month from today.I’m always making new videos and once these initial set of videos come out, I’ll be transitioning into a monthly membership arrangement. But for now, during pre-order you’ll get access for just $99 bucks. And because you are supporting me during these early stages of my online library, I’ll give you lifetime access even when I transition to the membership platform.To take advantage of the pre-order offer, just go to squarespace guru dot com and click on the tutorials button right in the middle of the page. Or if you get distracted by something else while on the site you can always click on the products tab in the main navigation and select Squarespace 7 tutorials from that list.Alright that wraps up the show for this week. Thanks so much for listening. I wish the best of success to you as you build your pipelines. And I’ll see you next week! Have a safe and fun Halloween.
Comentarios