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What Is The Importance Of Unique Website Copy?

November 5, 2015/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

As an entrepreneur, your job is to set yours apart from your competitors if you want to succeed. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you probably already have taken pains to organize your products in an appealing manner and make your signage and other advertising compelling and attractive to prospective customers. It is just as crucial that you distinguish yourself if you also operate online. One of the best ways is by having content that is unique to your website and immediately grabs the reader’s attention, urging him or her to click through to your site and ultimately buy what you are offering.

What makes good website copy? As with any other form of written information, it should be clear and accurate. No one will purchase a product if the information about it is confusing. Much like the papers you were asked to write in high school or college, achieving precise, on target information often involves careful and thorough research on your part. Although it requires some intellectual elbow grease, the results are worth it when the customers start rolling in. Although it might be tempting to cut and paste someone else’s content because it so elegantly captures what you want to say, this practice will get you removed from the search engines. Follow the same rules of ethics your high school English teacher ingrained in you.

Another must is that you update your content on a regular basis. No one responds to old news, and the Internet is so dynamic that it is literally changing by the minute. That means that it is incumbent on you to keep your content fresh and relevant. Highlight new specials; adjust your copy with the season. Whatever you decide, take steps to make a regular customer’s experience different most of the time he or she enters your website.

Use the vehicle of your web page to let your followers know some interesting things about you and your business. When and why did you form it? What marketing techniques have you used in the past to appeal to customers? What challenges has your company overcome? What are the highlights, and perhaps even the lowlights, of your history? Do you have any compelling personal details that will endear you to potential customers or make you stand out from the rest?

Although you may have a lot of interesting, funny and compelling things to say on your web page, don’t lose sight of basic organization. Rambling and wandering from subject to subject will confuse and ultimately bore your readers, causing many of them to surf to another site. Set up category pages to make it easier for viewers to see what you have to offer. The more comprehensive and organized your copy becomes, the better your chances that other websites will send their links to you.

Customers are constantly looking for the best, the boldest and the most innovative businesses. Ensuring that your website content is snappy, precise, alluring and interesting will help you to set your enterprise apart from and above the rest. Isn’t that what you need to succeed? Take steps to optimize your web copy today!

Does Having A Content Management System Help Your SEO Ranking?

November 4, 2015/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

Getting the word out about your business is vital. You need to find ways to rise above your many competitors regardless of what products you sell or services you provide. Because online exposure is one of the vehicles you would like to use to tell the world about your company, you need to find a way to raise your rankings in the search engines. Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques is one of your best bets, but how do you go about it? Contrary to what you might think, it is not always the best idea to rely on just any content management system (CMS) to meet those needs.

First, let’s clarify what a CMS is. A CMS is an application that allows you and those with whom you are collaborating to publish, edit, organize, delete and maintain the content of your website from a central location. A CMS can enable you to create, archive and distribute press releases, web pages, articles and blogs as well as record and track inventory information, invoices and much more.

In many cases, content management systems were not created to be vehicles that would help businesses rise in the SEO rankings. Often, a CMS will use dynamic page URLs that contain special characters like equals and percent signs. Another red flag that CMS platforms often display to the search engine spiders is bad meta tags, faulty HTML codes used to describe the nature of the page in question. Frequently, CMS systems prohibit you from assigning relevant, unique tags to the titles and descriptions of their pages.

Another problem is that often, CMS systems will not allow you to create URLs that are rich in the keywords that will drive people to your website. Through CSS-based navigation and Schema markup, you can actually create content that the search engines will respond to. However, following the prohibitions of your CMS might render your page virtually invisible to the Google search robots.

Fortunately, it is possible to have the best of both worlds. CMS applications are now available that implement commonly requested SEO tasks “out of the box.” These include URLs that search engines will recognize, 301 redirects and proper meta tags included, with no need to make additional modifications to your server.

Once you have these more user-friendly tools in place, you can begin to accentuate your SEO content to bring the maximum amount of traffic to your website. Online tools abound that will help you analyze the strength of your content and predict how well received it will be by the search engine bots. For the best results, you and everyone with whom you are collaborating should be able to create content and simultaneously optimize it.

A search engine optimizing CMS is just what you need for this purpose; it will enable users of all skill levels to easily insert URLs that are rich in relevant keywords, descriptions, titles and image alt texts. Ideally, your system should provide real-time feedback that will enable you to know just how effective your content will be.

Sure, all of this might seem a bit complicated at first. However, taking the time to learn the basics of CMS platforms, particularly search engine optimizing CMS platforms like WordPress, could catapult your business to a new level of popularity. After all, getting the word out is a vital first step. Use these tools and run with them, and you just might be amazed by the results.

Tips On How To Handle Bad Yelp Reviews

November 3, 2015/in seo blog /by Arsen Rabinovich

With its ever-expanding population and its preponderance of restaurants and other businesses, Los Angeles is a challenging area in which to start an eatery, bar or retail store. Competition is cutthroat, and many similar enterprises already exist.

Now that you have jumped through all of the hoops and hurdles required in starting a business, you may be dreading something that no entrepreneur would have even heard about just a few years ago: the bad Yelp review. Exactly what do you do if a customer trashes your restaurant or store online? You know that Yelp is widely read and consulted by consumers. Is there any way to counteract the sting?

First and foremost, don’t let a negative Yelp review stand without responding to it as quickly as possible. Doing so gives you the opportunity to directly address a disgruntled customer’s concerns in a public way. Most Yelp reviews are written soon after the experience; negative rants are generally used by customers as vehicles to lash out and vent their frustration. In the best-case scenario, you can transform discontent into satisfaction before much damage is done.

One source of negative reviews may not even come from actual customers of yours; your competition might be attempting to discredit you and stir up trouble. If you respond quickly by filing a fraud notification with Yelp, you can set the community straight as to the facts of the situation. By stating facts including dates and other relevant details, you can reaffirm your credibility and give readers all of the information they need to make an informed decision.

But what if your negative review stemmed from a real customer experience that went awry? Even the best-run establishment or contracting business will inevitably make mistakes. If you are in the uncomfortable position of being called to the carpet in public by a customer who has genuine reason to be unhappy, it is incumbent on you to just as publicly answer each and every one of the person’s complaints with a detailed response. Take the time to explain all of the facts involved, and don’t leave anything out.

If, for example, you own a business and someone complains about your prices compared to what they paid for a similar service several years ago when they lived in Ohio, take pains to explain the cost differences between the Midwest and California. Whatever the details of the situation, always offer to correct the problem. If applicable, let the customer know that you would be happy to meet in person to rectify the difficulty.

Using these strategies can usually diffuse the majority of bad Yelp reviews that you may encounter.

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