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What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are more than just links.
In general, “Links” refers to outbound links from the page, while “Backlinks” refers to links coming back to your web page (inbound links).
Backlinks also creates a relationship among different pages on the web as it allows Internet users to navigate from one location on the web to the desired page on your site.
So, when you are asking, “What are backlinks,” you should also understand:
Why Backlinks Are Important?
Backlinks increases exposure to your ‘original’ landing page. If you have a good blog post on a topic that may be of value to the other person, and if they write something similar and link back to you, your original document gets more exposure.
Knowing page’s Backlinks allows you to assess where and how your website and its pages fits within cyberspace.
On the other hand, if nobody links back to your content, the only way you can get Backlinks to your original content is from sources within your control. For example, you could create additional pages that will link to the main landing page, internally. Or you could create new website and link pages back to your original page.
This is totally acceptable, but the really ‘engaging’ stuff on the web usually gets linked from outside sources, or sources outside your control.
Internet Marketing is all about getting quality backlinks from outside sources.
Unless you want your users to remember and type the full URL of a web page on the browser, the only way they can travel to your landing page is by clicking through the links.
Remember that backlinks to a page are more important to that page than the outbound links present on that page.
How do you find a page’s backlinks then?
Well, to be honest, it very difficult and sometimes even impossible to find backlinks on any given page!
Using search engines you may be able to find some pages that link to other page on the Internet, but not all of them.
And other methods are complex and time-consuming too as you would need to search every page on the Internet to see which page link back to the URL you are interested in. Clearly, that would cost you plenty of time and money (among thousands of dollars).
Fortunately, there are few SEO companies that have already done the legwork and GetYourSiteRanked.com is one of them. We have one of the largest link map. Most small businesses utilizes GetYourSiteRanked.com SEO services to understand their link map on the Internet.
Click here to request for a free backlink report.
Reputation can either boost your business and raise your sales, or can just as equally leave you behind your competitors, so whether you are an individual salesman, entrepreneur or representing your company, you would definitely want to consider having your reputation monitored and taken care of. To find out what position your business holds in the world of online business, you can always use couple of solid monitoring applications, or even hire a marketing specialist to monitor your reputation and lead you to success with well-tailored analytics, if your budget allows you to.
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Good Online Reputation Can Make Your Real Life Business Flourish
If you get involved in your online business development, you will be able to get an accurate insight on whether your marketing strategy needs improvements, according to your site visitors’ feedbacks. The studies have shown that most people actually take feedbacks very seriously and usually take a friendly advice regarding products and services. So, the best way of making your business successful is to transform your strategy into more user-friendly approach to your clients and potential customers. If you try your best and get involved in online community via social networks and blogging, you will be able to follow up with real life opinions and comments and learn how to improve your business. The better the comments and feedbacks are, the more your business is growing.
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Reputation can Boost or Destroy your business
Internet offers many amenities when it comes to wide share of, both, valuable and trivial information, but overwhelmed accessibility to negative information can be a great downfall and devastation for business. Bad reputation is even easier to get than respectable one, for information spread quickly over the World Wide Web, and as your business arises it can also definitely fall. So, whether or not you are online, your reputation is being inevitably built. In order to prevent misleading info and bad online reputation, you should get involved on social networks and take care that your services and products are high-quality and professional.
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Understanding your customers’ needs
There is hardly a better way of making a perfect marketing strategy then by monitoring your targeted audience. The best way of knowing exactly what your customers need is to follow up with their comments and feedbacks, so you could focus on delivering services your customers require and make your business moves in accordance with market demand.
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Quick responses to comments can take you long way
By being involved with your customers and responding to their comments and promptly answering questions regarding your products and services, even the negative aspects and resolving technical troubleshooting, you will show your appreciation and earn your customers’ confidence. By monitoring your customers’ feedbacks, you will show that you are personally involved in your business and not just selling the services for plain profit.
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Stay ahead of your competition
Monitoring your competitors is equally important for your online reputation as any other aspect, for by tracking the factors of strategy your competition is conducting, you will be able to stay always one step ahead. Monitoring competition is also very crucial in order to avoid “badmouthing” and negative marketing campaign your competitors might get involved with. Soon enough your business will grow with your marketing strategy running smoothly and your priorities set to monitoring your online reputation, leading to inevitable prosperity and improvement.
Your online reputation is crucial for successfully conducting your business strategy and gaining more sales, which consequently leads to more profit. However there are some factors that you need to consider in order to make sure your online reputation can bring you progress and business prosperity.
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Stick To Your Idea
Business is plain and impossible to start without a motivational starter in form of your own idea. When starting a business, first you need to decide what sort of reputation you would want to follow you, so you need to come up with unique idea and develop it further in order to make it revive and start a successful business. To gain a flawless online reputation, avoid being a copycat try to be as original as possible.
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Make a great business plan
You should even consider hiring a professional to help you create great business plan which needs to be almost impossible to fail. If you, however can create your plan yourself, or your budget is tight, you have to study all risk factors, do a market demand research, get involved with your targeted audience and take a close look at your competition. By taking all of those factors in consideration, you will be able to create the online reputation you want.
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Hire professional SEO manager
Well optimized posts, blogs and website content are more than welcome in providing you with notable internet reputation and online presence. In order to put yourself out there and get the results you are hoping for, the best move would be to hire a professional SEO manager, who will help you raise your traffic and get better rates on Google and other search engines.
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Make multiple social network accounts
Social networks get millions of visitors on daily basis, so what platform is better for you to keep up with your targeted audience and gain an enviable reputation than Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and other social networks. It is also very important to be active on all of your profiles, which is often hard, so you can use help from several great Social Media apps or hire a professional to manage your accounts and help you build your reputation and assure your business growth.
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Build great website
Website serves the purpose of showcasing what your business is all about, so your website presentation should be flawless. That is why you should definitely hire a professional web designer and developer to make you a great web spot and get it fully optimized to increase your trafficking and assure the good sake of your online business reputation.
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Get involved in managing your reputation
It is always the best that you keep all strings in your hands and don’t let anything occurs by case and accidentally. You should always manipulate all factors that makes your reputation as it is and change everything you dislike or think can jeopardize your business. Get involved with your customers, be active and proactive and keep up with every post and comment that has to do with your business, so you could respond to it and preserve your reputation. The basic key is to get involved and don’t let anything to the faith.
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Get a Keywords Research
The way you are ranked on search engines, such as Google, vastly depend on the keywords which are used in making your web content, blog posts, tweets and shares. You should consider hiring a professional researcher to conduct market analytics in order to find the keywords which will increase you trafficking and help you establish your reputation.
It is very important that you put yourself out there and advertise your brand as crucial factor of successful business, so you could announce that your business is alive and working on delivering the top products and services. But, what can you do to get your brand seen and heard? Here are some directions on how to successfully imply your brand existence.
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Get involved on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +
Presence and unbreakable presence on social networks is crucial for your business, but can also be of great help in establishing your brand, so you just need to make few accounts and manage it effectively on daily basis, share your opinion, post and tweet. You can also hire a professional social media manager to manage your social network accounts for you.
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Post a video on your web site and on You Tube
You can always make a video where you can describe what your company is all about, which has shown to be very effective in establishing business brands and gaining more personal approach with your clients and potential customers. Since You tube is also a type of a social network with vast number of visitors, it would be great that you also post your video there and establish your brand name.
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Promote your brand
There are great ways of promoting your business and reserving your brand name, so you can print business cards, make flyers and other marketing material. It is also very effective that you promote your business brands across blogs, comments and by posting links to other friendly websites.
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Make marketing newsletters and emails
Newsletters and marketing emails are another great way of getting your brand seen and heard, for besides looking very professional it also help you advertise your business and engage your targeted audience.
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Make presentations
Presentations can really help you depict your business goals and stress out your company’s achievements, as well as aid you in establishing your brand and explaining wide public what your business is all about.
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Blogging
Blogging is a great way of getting your voice heard and at the same time presenting your brand in the best light, increasing your trafficking and advertising for free. Blogging can take your brand long way ahead if done regularly, so if you don’t have enough time to blog on daily basis, you should consider hiring a professional blogger.
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Partnerships and sharing ideas
Meeting new people from your industry and beyond its borders is very important, so you can establish your brand by starting a partnership with a company you have appreciation for, expand your targeted audience and show your capabilities and skills, that way helping your brand in becoming more popular. Always be ready to share your ideas, transforming them to great business opportunities and ventures.
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Make your brand name comprehensive and catchy
In order to make a perfect brand name you need to predetermine what are your business characteristics, list important things regarding your services, establish your company identity and decide what your company is all about. When taken all these factors into consideration, you can create your brand and make it sound catchy, but professional at the same time. You should also consider follow these directions when naming your blog and choosing your website host name.
Social media Networks count millions of visits per day, which makes it a great way to transform your business to more accessible service provider, but social network platforms can also assure your company’s brand identity, so it is very important to be actively involved with your targeted audience and potential customers. There are some places on the network which could effectively help you to claim your brand and reach out to your clients.
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Google Maps
Google maps are a great way to claim your brand and show your availability in form of address, country, phone number and email, so your clients can find you easily. Google maps can also help you increase your online visibility, consequently raising your Google rates.
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Google +
Google + is actually more than just a common social network, on which you can also share, post, advertize, announce novelties regarding your business achievements, and of course get +1’d. +1 ratings are considered as very favorable at Google, so the more pluses you are getting on your account, the more visible you get on Google search engine. Google + is maybe one of the best ways of starting your online business profiles, claiming your brand and interacting with your potential clients.
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Facebook
Facebook is maybe the best social network for getting socially involved as an individual, but that makes it also a great for business owners looking for potential clientele. There are some great apps on Facebook, such as Facebook Places, where you can easily state the place of your business and claim your brand in the way that everyone can see it.
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Foursquare
You might already have an account on Foursquare on your name, without even knowing it, so information entered by user can often be misleading and inaccurate. The best way of claiming your brand and preventing this scenario is to make an account on Foursquare, yourself.
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Yelp
Yelp is one of the most popular social review websites, where anyone can make reviews on any company’s products and services. If your brand is not registered on Yelp yet, you should probably go ahead and claim it, encouraging your clients to post reviews on your services.
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn is great place for presenting your business online, and of course great way of claiming your brand. You can make an account under your company’s name, announce goals and achievements, and share your ideas. You can also hire different LinkedIn account users or get in touch with other companies and start partnerships.
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Manta
Manta is very similar to Yelp, but if you have Yelp account and established brand, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make a profile on Manta, just the opposite. Apparently, the more your brand is talked about, the more you get popular with increased traffic along the way.
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Urban Spoon and Dine.com
If you are a restaurant owner or you are running a hotel with restaurant and bar, then Urban Spoon and Dine.com could really help you claim your brands and get your reviews, which might as well lead to more successful business. You just need to make a profile on one or both sites and you are ready.
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Blogs
Blogging is a great way of increasing your traffic and raising your rates. Be sure you are actively updating your blog so you could claim your brand and establish good reputation.
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Make your own Website
You can hire a professional web developer and designer to make your site for you, so you could claim your brand and showcase your business in any way you want. By choosing the right keywords for your web content and optimizing your site, traffic will be increased and you will be able to get more favorable ranks at search engines, as well as establishing your company’s brand.
Every company is focusing on choosing their brand name, but when you look at great companies’ logos, campaigns and advertisement, you can’t seem to stop thinking about how perfectly well established their brand name is. The thing we often miss on is remembering that even those big corporations had humble beginnings and had to work hard to come to the point of great success. If you are on the business market for a while now and all factors are going in your favor but your business is still at the same point where it was at the beginning, than you would probably want to change your strategy and start branding online.
What Am I Doing Wrong?
Small businesses, online shops and service firms are all doing branding online by blogging, optimizing, being socially involved, etc. But, those companies also have to work on establishing good reputation of the man standing behind that business. This is often very important because successful small companies are shown to have more personal approach in relationships with their customers, gaining their trust and making long lasting company-client relationships. If CEO standing behind a certain company is not reliable or if he is even involved in some obscure business, his company will inevitably fail. Announcing news as CEO, sharing ideas with your clients and by responding to their comments, feedbacks and questions about your services and products, you will certainly establish great reputation and gain new faithful customers.
Why CEO branding online is important?
Being a company CEO is very important role to have since most people are actually observing a company through the deeds and business moves of its leader. If you are struggling to get your company noticed and your good reputation established, then you should consider hiring a professional PR manager to help you with your reputation and commercial advertising. It is all about good marketing strategy and getting socially involved on number of social networks, blogging and owning a website. You can always get your accounts managed by social media specialist, which ought to give you great rates at search engines and increase your trafficking, leading to increased popularity of your services and products and your personal online brand established.
How to build your company’s brand
Online branding should probably start with making your personal website which ought to be designed to showcase your business goals and stress out your services, products and recent achievements. After your site is created and fully functional, next natural step would be creating and managing multiple social network accounts and starting your company’s blog. Besides providing valuable info regarding your company, you will also be able to directly interact with your customers, raise your ratings at search engines, get increased trafficking towards your website or online shop. You will, of course, be able to establish your online branding and enjoy all business amenities which great reputation can give you. If you think you won’t be able to manage all of your social accounts and blogs actively, you should consider hiring a professional, who will besides successfully managing your accounts also take your online brand to another level.
The most important thing when running a personal business is to own and claim your brand. This is very important, especially online, for by making your brand consistent you are in fact making possible for people to easily find you. You must have noticed that if you were looking for, let us take Nike for example, you will certainly find them easily and in just one search. That is mainly because their brand is claimed. You can also claim your business as your basic right and watch your business develop, as your company’s name is becoming more of a brand, rather than just a name.
Why Claim Your Brand?
It is crucial to establish your company’s brand name, so you can build up a good reputation on it and make your business more popular. Name you choose for your company should definitely sound good, and would certainly have to depict your business and professionalism. Studies have shown that people like to stick to one brand they choose in some area of expertise, and as they are motivated with need of certain service or product, their choice is often based on whether or not they find company’s brand appealing. You can hire a professional PR to help you work out your business strategy and do a research on the market your business ought to reach to. Besides from choosing your brand name, you should also take care that your company’s logo is in accordance with your actual brand, so the your next move should be hiring a web designer to make your logo appealing and loveable. Customers also choose a certain brand based on company’s logo, so the better your logo looks, the more chances you have in establishing increased popularity and claiming your brand.
How to Claim Your Brand?
You should definitely make sure that your brand is unique and avoid being a copycat. Why would anyone choose your brand over the original you have copied? By copying brand which is reserved by rights, you could also face a law suit, so instead you should come up with appealing and unique brand name and logo and get your own rights reserved to protect your brand. After you have your brand name created and your company’s logo designed, you should start your own website, blog and join social networks by making profile on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social platforms. Being socially involved with your clients and targeted audience is proven to be a great way of claiming your brand and interacting with your potential clientele. It is crucial that you respond to your customers’ questions, feedbacks and comments, as well as to actively update your blog, social network tweets and posts, and manage your site. If your budget allows you to, it is highly recommended that you hire a professional to help you claim your brand, increase your traffic and improve your ranks on search engines, so your brand could become easier to find.
Branding helps bring forth some of your unique qualities/strength to the masses, and help you stand out from the crowd. Branding helps you define who you are – your unique ideas and vision that makes you the person you are – and why you are different from the mass.
But most entrepreneurs start their business just like any others. They just try to do as much as possible, quickly, and then, settle for less by imitating others. Branding doesn’t work like that. If you want to develop a sense of trust among your visitors, you’ll have to think in terms of brand – i.e. being you!
Here are our top 10 branding strategies for small businesses:
1. Research
Go to google and type in search terms that you think people will likely search for your products and services, and then visit sites that pops in the 1st page. Analyze each page for all the positives and note down their weaknesses too.
See if you can capitalize on their weakness, or see ways in which you can offer the same services and products in a slightly different way. Finally, make it your unique selling point (USP). Of course at the same time ensure that your Brand is on the 1st Page of Google.
2. Unique Logo
Your business goal is to grow. Your logo definitely has a “wow” effect that compels people to remember it. When they remember their logo, they’ll remember you, and your business.
Put it simply – your logo is the summary of your overall brand image. Although designing a unique logo isn’t a easy walk in the park, but it doesn’t have to be a great ordeal either.
Get a help of a professional graphic designer to design your logo.
3. Tagline
Tagline is a short, catchy, and sometimes a vague phrase that describes your business. It’s an essential part of the overall branding strategy.
Although many people use a saying, or maxims, or a proverb, they’re certainly doing it wrong. Tagline should convey a meaning of your business mission, in less than 10 words.
4. Voice
How would you like to present yourself to your customers? Do you want to appear formal? Informal? Entertaining?
5. Target audience
Think about the people whom you will sell your products and services. Think about their age, gender, race, and interests.
6. Simple does it
You could be tempted to sell yourself with flying colors, but if you notice most successful startup, they all used simple branding strategies to make it minimal.
7. Be unique
The market is already filled with buzzwords like “become an industry leader,” or “great company that delivers what it promises” types of brand promises. To reach out to your audience and grab their attention, you’ll need to be unique.
8. Deliver
Branding is like telling your clients that you’ll fulfill your services. That’s the sort of promise people like to hold on to, and keep on coming back for more as they trust you. Be careful as not to overpromise what you offer.
9. Follow a Branding standard
Create branding guidelines with templates for all marketing materials like logo, business cards, website design, content, and rules and regulations that will help you maintain a consistent look and feel to your business.
10. Be Consistent
Your business site, blog, social profiles, and any other marketing material should be consistent in its voice, colors, promises, and commitment. Failing to do so will only create a negative branding image for your business.
Do you think branding strategies help you grow your business?
What type of branding strategies have you used for your business, and did it work?
Please share your comments, below!
Google yourself and see what comes up in the search engine display page(s). As a small business owner, do you have a reputation management strategy to keep track of those negative mentions about you and your brand?
Do you notice anything unusual – a negative mention, comment, or reviews about your product and services, or simply you? While it is possible to have a total control over what you post on your site, blogs, and social media profiles, it is very difficult to keep track of what other people are saying about you and your brand. As a small business owner, do you have a reputation management strategy to keep track of those negative mentions about you and your brand?
If not, then you should!
You see, your potential clients are always searching for products and services similar to yours through search engines such as Google. For example, they use keywords such as “your company name + reviews,” “your company name + discounts,” “your company name + affiliate program” to learn what other people have to say about your product and services.
And if they come across a negative mention about your brand, that you think isn’t valid, something posted by an online scammer or one of your competitors, it will spread a negative impression about you and people will likely hesitate buying from you. As a result, you’ll lose another customer, not to mention an online reputation that could cause you additional havoc.
Don’t worry about not converting, but you need to have ways to handle those invalid online mentions.
Here are top ways to monitor you online reputation using Google’s free tools:
Tool #1: Google Suggest
The best way to see yourself through Google’s eyes is to type your brand name on Google Suggest tool and see what other suggestions appear alongside your search term. For example, if your company is based in Singapore that specialize in SEO consulting, type the keyword “SEO company in Singapore” and see what other ideas Google will suggest. Go through each keyword suggestion and see if anything appears about you and your company on the search engine result pages (SERPs). If there is something you don’t want other people to see, then use Google’s content removal tool to stop them from displaying further in search engine result pages.
Tool #2: Me on the web
Google recently launched a free tool “Me on the Web”, inside Google Dashboard, which will help you keep track of your search results for your name. The tool is included between Google’s analytics and account information. You can use this tool to receive alerts whenever anyone mentions your name on the internet, either through blog posts, web page, social media updates, or any other online media channels. You can also set up when you would like to receive the notifications – within minutes, daily, weekly, or monthly – so that you can manage them accordingly.
Tool #3: Google Alerts
Go to google.com/alerts and fill up the 5 fields to set up Google alerts to send you notifications whenever someone mentions your brand on the Internet.
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Type your brand name or any other keywords and its variations associated to your business in the “search terms” field to set up an alert for each.
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Use quotation around two or more words. Google will look for two words as a single phrase.
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Select “Comprehensive” from the “type” drop down to include all types of sources.
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Select “as-it-happens” from the drop down menu “How often” to get alerts as soon as someone mentions you online. Not to mention, it will also help you to respond appropriately if the mentions are negative and invalid.
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Finally, enter the email address to send your “alerts” to.
Use the above three tools to quickly find out who are saying what about you and your brand so that you can quickly take appropriate action before it gets too late.
Which online reputation management tool do you use to monitor your brand? Please share and let us know below!
