SEO World

When you have a blog, you’ll attract all different types of readers, from those who just pass through one time to casual readers who come by occasionally to dedicated readers who subscribe to your blog and read every post. Clearly, your goal is to attract as many dedicated readers as possible, but that doesn’t happen instantly. Typically, you have to work on turning casual readers into dedicated readers over time.

Here are 5 ways you can transform a casual reader into a dedicate reader.

1. Focus on creating a great reader experience—The quality of your content isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s the overall experience that keeps readers engaged and coming back. Your blog needs to have a clean, compelling design. You don’t want to annoy readers with pop-up ads, complicated registration processes, spammy comment section, etc. Focus on creating the best possible experience for your visitors.
2. Make it easy for readers to subscribe and participate—The easier it is for someone to subscribe to your blog, the likelier it is that they’ll do so. Make sure your subscribe button is clear to see, and you can even include a call to action at the end of each post encouraging readers to subscribe. Also, make it easy for your readers to comment and share your posts on social networks. Don’t require them to register or complete a CAPTCHA to leave a comment. It’s annoying and kills their drive to participate.
3. Interact with your readers—If you want readers to stick around and keep coming back, one of the best things you can do is interact with them. Respond to them whenever they leave a comment. Connect with them on Twitter and Facebook. This builds relationships and increases their loyalty to your blog.
4. Give your readers a sense of ownership in your blog—Make your readers feel invested in your blog so they’ll keep coming back. Allow them to submit guest posts. Highlight the best comments. Ask them to submit ideas for topics they want to see you write about. Hold a contest. All of these things will create a community and make your readers feel like they own a piece of your blog.
5. Be real—It’s the easiest blogging advice you’ll ever receive. Just be yourself. Write like you talk and let your personality shine through in every aspect of your blog. That’s how you’ll build a personal connection with your readers that keeps them coming back for more.

What’s your best tip for turning casual readers into dedicated readers? Share it by leaving a comment.

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Source
SEO Hosting Blog

I know I have a relatively small site, but if you can’t even get the trend right, why bother?

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Source
Local SEO Guide

Yesterday it was reported that J.C. Penney have showed signs that their Google penalty has now been lifted.

The original penalty was imposed at the end of Feb for “shady SEO practices”. Searchmetrics have published a report to show that organic search traffic is back on the rise again for J.C. Penney:

Obviously we can only speculate about the SEO activity that J.C. Penney have employed in order to get this penalty turned around so quickly. The obvious steps would be to clean up their backlink profile and remove any paid or suspicious links and then submit a re-inclusion request (which has been confirmed by Matt Cutts).

So when analysing J.C. Penney’s recent backlink history, wouldn’t you expect to see a drop in links?

No! Majestic SEO shows that they’ve actually had a significant increase in recent links. So what does this mean? Maybe they’ve bought more links Or perhaps they’ve had a very successful PR campaign? In fact, that is much closer to the truth!

So even when it’s assumed they’ve made large efforts to remove links, they’ve actually increased volumes by considerable amounts. But it’s not just about numbers - if you look deeper into the quality of these new links, you’ll find that the quality of these are very high. There are many global media and newspaper websites covering the story, along with hundreds of authority blogs such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Econsultancy, Techcrunch etc – as well as the huge number of SEO blogs picking up on this.

That’s all without looking at the PR value of how much coverage and brand visibility they’ve generated from this. Being from the UK, I’ve got to admit – I’d never even heard of J.C. Penney before this.

So what can we learn from J.C. Penney?

1. Admit your mistakes – it’s great linkbait! It would have cost them a fortune to buy links and coverage like this from the NYTimes otherwise!
2. Clean up your act, quickly – figure out why you were banned and fix it. In this case it appears to be more of a manual penalty than an algorithmic one, so it’s likely to require a re-inclusion request to make sure Google are aware that you’ve corrected any issues and can reconsider the penalty.
3. Make sure everyone’s aware when ban is lifted = more links! They didn’t even have to leak the news this time, there’s so many SEOs watching the outcome of this one that any change in rankings/traffic was always going to picked up on.

The end result: J.C. Penney have set a great example of how to turn a negative into a positive.

They’ve cleaned up their backlink profile, replaced these with a huge volume of very high quality media and blog links which are far more natural and defensible – and are likely to return to Google in a much stronger position than ever (certainly long-term).

© SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. How to Turn a Google Penalty into Great Linkbait, by J.C. Penney

Related posts:

1. How to Turn a Loss into Something Positive
2. How To Use Infographics for SEO & Linkbait
3. Is Your Content Great, Big or Just Long? Quality vs Size

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Source
SEOptimise » blog

Back in June, I discussed how Hispanic publishers had created Facebook communities to drive incremental traffic and engagement with online Hispanics. For this article, I provide a snapshot of how Hispanic publishers are using Twitter.

The success of some Hispanic publishers on Twitter should be a clear indication for marketers looking to reach Hispanics that Twitter is a viable option for reaching them.

Twitter resonates with Hispanics

It’s true, Facebook reaches more Hispanics than Twitter, but a larger number of Twitter users are Hispanic when compared to Facebook. Here are the facts according to Quantcast.com:

Facebook reaches 133 million US users of which 6% are Hispanic; this translates to a total of 8 million Hispanic Facebook users.

Twitter reaches 44.4 million US users of which 11% are Hispanic; this translates to 4.9 Million Hispanic Twitter users.

This data clearly indicates that Twitter not only reaches a critical mass of Hispanics, but the micro-blogging service resonates strong with this group.

Most Hispanic publishers have grasped the Twitter opportunity realizing that they can cost effectively reach their audience and drive incremental traffic to their websites.

Univision dominates the Hispanic Twitterverse

Similar to what I found with my Hispanic Facebook analysis, Univision and Telemundo are leading the way on Twitter.. The Twitter strategy of both companies is anchored by corporate Twitter accounts with several other accounts grouped by topic or Television show. Terra Networks has a similar approach while other publishers seem to have just gotten their feet wet with a single Twitter account

For an apples to apples comparision, I only included corporate accounts and topic based accounts and intentionally excluded Twitter accounts for TV shows, talent or regional affiliates.

Univision – 124,000 Twitter Followers

Univision’s Twitter strategy roughly mirrors the information architecture of the Univision.com website. Univision manages a corporate Twitter account and other accounts focused on key topics with News, Futbol and Musica being the most popular, by far. Here is a list of Univision’s current Twitter accounts and follower counts, excluding TV shows.

http://twitter.com/Univision – 78,048
http://twitter.com/UnivisionNews – 20,317
http://twitter.com/UnivisionFutbol – 12,541
http://twitter.com/UnivisionMusica – 9,921
http://twitter.com/univisionent – 1,935
http://twitter.com/univisionautos – 350
http://twitter.com/univisioncocina – 273
http://twitter.com/univisiondinero – 265
http://twitter.com/UnivisionSports – 256
http://twitter.com/univisionsalud – 200
http://twitter.com/UnivisionCasa – 142
http://twitter.com/UnivisionMujer – 137
http://twitter.com/univisioncine – 105
http://twitter.com/univisionvida – 83

Telemundo – 51,000 Twitter Followers

Telemendo’s corporate Twitter account has nearly 50,000 followers and their news account currently stands at 2,700 followers. Telemundo does have a large number of Twitter accounts for their TV shows and local affiliates, but I did not include those in this analysis.

The rest of the pack

Of the remaining Hispanic publishers, Terra Networks leads the way with 6,700 followers across various US Twitter accounts including Music, News and Entertainment. Here is how the rest of the pack stacks up.

Terra – 6,700
AOL Latino – 3,800
Batanga – 955
MSN Latino – 72

It is clear that Twitter represents a viable option for reaching Hispanics online. Like any marketing campaign, succeeding on Twitter requires a well thought out strategy and a continuous, two-way dialogue that provides value to a given target audience. It also doesn’t hurt to have a Television network that reaches millions of households.

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Source
Hispanic Online Marketing