It is getting harder - and harder ----- and harder to get traffic to our websites. Writing great content that is keyword optimized and engaging is only a small part of the overall strategy for your blog that you should be focusing on.
Once you are done with the post is where the hard work should really begin. Think about your after post strategy - does it contain things like sharing on Facebook, scheduling it on Twitter for a few times - and maybe a pin to Pinterest?
Those are all good - but with social visibility shrinking you have to think outside the box and find new avenues to not only bring you new fresh visitors - but to also build those backlinks.
Whether you are a blogger or a nonprofit organization - blogging is critical ...
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Snip.ly Users Stealing Your Content For Their Own Gain
The Good
Yeah, we got mentioned in a Tweet - admit it, we all love to be noticed. But today kind of threw me for a loop. I saw this tweet and of course was happy - I liked it, I retweeted it and threw a tweet back thanking them, you know because good social manners are important!
The Bad
After all this was said and done, for some reason I was inclined to click the link - even though I can see what they shared - I was drawn to that little ow.ly link that was screaming CLICK ME. So I did and what I found initially scared the hell out of me - I thought we had been hacked. I click the link only to see my page - my content with a big ugly ad in the lower left - you can see a screenshot of my worst nightmare below.
That big blue arrow ...
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Content Marketing Infographic – A Case Study
Infographics! We love 'em and you should too. Infographics are a great way to engage followers, brand your business, find new supporters and can ultimately help your SEO and organic rank growth. They are time consuming to create of course - but well worth the time if done well and actively promoted!
One of the biggest issues with infographics is that brands create them, post them - and nothing happens so they get upset that there were no real results. It goes back to that old saying "if we build it they will come" - which if you have been around the web a while you know that is NOT true!
Here is a recent completed Infographic done by the 2 Dogs Media team - next step, PROMOTION!
CASE STUDY (results coming mid-May 2016):
Over the ...
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Facebook Ranking Factors
First, we want to preface by saying that Facebook really does care about user experience, which is why they focus so strongly on how to balance your news feed with content you want and ads that they need (remember, they are a business!). They do a lot of testing and get real user feedback (rumor has it there about 700 reviewers called Facebook's "Feed Quality Panel") to determine what to change and how to build a better news feed. This is why things change so frequently.......if there is one thing constant about Facebook - it is change.
This post is a follow up to our post about Understanding Facebook Insights - if you are not familiar with insights, we do suggest reviewing that post first as it will help you better understand what is ...
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Analyzing Facebook Insights To Improve Your Brand Page
Facebook - you either love it or hate. We were always on the side of "We Hate It" - until we learned to better understand it - and although we feel we have a good grasp of it, we are still always learning and testing to improve organic reach for our brands. You can also read our post about Facebook Ranking Factors to get a feel for ideas you can use (or things to avoid) to increase your organic reach and bring more exposure to your page naturally.
Wonder why your Facebook posts are just not seen as often?
It is pretty simple you are competing with thousands of other pages that users like - Facebook, unlike Twitter who delivers EVERY message is trying to deliver the posts users are personally most interested in. Their algorithm takes many ...
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Monetizing Your Blog In An Ad-Blocking World
Did you know that back in the early days of the internet - back in the mid-90's that the average click through rate of a banner ad was estimate to be 50-90%? Oh, if we could only go back to the 90's!
If you are a blogger or publisher who relies on advertising to monetize your website then you know that there is a big uprise in people installing ad-blockers so they can avoid these ads. As a publisher it is a constant struggle to figure out how to balance profitability with user experience - what most readers do not realize is that it is those ads that allow you to continue providing your content!
One of the reasons people are so aggravated with ads is that they can make a website very slow to load and some publishers go to extremes ...
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Facebook Removes Pages – No Questions Asked
So I am off to attend a personal function and pull up my FB to do a quick scroll through my friends Facebook posts one night, and I am confronted with a blaring message that my business page for 2 Dogs Design has been removed because of a trademark violation. What? Really?
OK, so after clicking through the notice and seeing that I would need to jump through hoops to re-activate my page that was taken down - without Facebook even taking a look to see if the logo was the same or what the deal was - I decided Facebook is not worth my time from a business perspective. They clearly do not care about their users - so I will take my business and my dollars to other social platforms.
Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of that notice - since ...
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5 Creative Ways To Find Keywords and Content!
Finding the right keywords is IMPERATIVE if you want your customers/clients to be able to find you. But what I often find with clients is that they are so engaged with their business that the keyword terms they think are being used by customers are often not being searched for at all.
For example, I have a limousine company that I work with and have been for almost a year now. When he first gave me his list of keywords that he had been working with - one of his terms was "exotic limos".
As you can see on the attached - that term gets about 20 searches a month targeting New Jersey which is his location. Not worth optimizing for at all when you see terms lower on the image that have hundreds and thousands of terms. His thinking was that ...
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Facebook for Marketing Your Small Business
Do I like Facebook? Of course - who doesn't? I do not have a 2 Dogs Design Facebook page - I never really felt the need for one, (update: 8/6/16 - we now have one for 2 Dogs Media also) but I do have one for my CharityPaws website. Personally, I have seen a huge decline in the amount of comments and engagement on our pages. I refuse to pay for my posts to be shared (I tried this once, it was an epic failure) and try hard to keep my fans engaged, but if they are not seeing my posts, how can they engage?
I have done some advertising on Facebook and got some results - but nothing extraordinary. I may try again in the future so I can do a more in-depth evaluation.
But for now, I saw this post today about the statistical results of several ...
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I have no sales…is it my website?
This is a reprint from an email I recently sent to my clients, but I received so many emails about it I thought I would post it on the blog as well!
OK, so you just shelled out a ton of money for a new website, you launched - and to your dismay you have nothing in terms of customers or sales. I have clients that I launched a year ago who are disappointed in their lack of sales and questioned whether it was the website design.
That is what made me write this in a newsletter! I work hard at creating designs that work with your niche, that are clean and easy to navigate for consumers and that contain the latest in terms of design aesthetics.
Can I say for certain that it is not design related - absolutely not, but based on my ...
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So, was AnyLuckyDay.com Lucky?
So, on April 12, 2011 our store, Outdoor Play Toys was the featured store on AnyLuckyDay.com, and we are about to share our experiences with you!
Here is a link to our giveaway page on the site: http://anyluckyday.com/04-12-2011/outdoor-play-toys. You can see that our giveaway was pretty sweet! A 1948 Indian Electric Motorcycle for kids! Not too shabby right?
So here is what transpired and my thoughts on AnyLuckyDay.com
2/9/11 I signed up on the website to procure my selected date of April 12, 2011. There were a lot of dates sold already for April, so I did not have a lot to choose from, but I was happy with the 12th so it was good! I noted in the comments of my order to let me know if I can ship them the bike to do a review ...
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Will AnyLuckyDay.com be our Lucky Day?
So, on April 12, 2011 our store, Outdoor Play Toys was the featured store on AnyLuckyDay.com, and we are about to share our experiences with you!
Here is a link to our giveaway page on the site: http://anyluckyday.com/04-12-2011/outdoor-play-toys. You can see that our giveaway was pretty sweet! A 1948 Indian Electric Motorcycle for kids! Not too shabby right?
So here is what transpired and my thoughts on AnyLuckyDay.com.
2/9/11 I signed up on the website to procure my selected date of April 12, 2011. There were a lot of dates sold already for April, so I did not have a lot to choose from, but I was happy with the 12th so it was good! I noted in the comments of my order to let me know if I can ship them the bike to do a review and ...
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