Although it is important for Internet marketers to know why mobile optimization is more important than ever before, it is more important to know why.
Mobile Optimization
Since 2014, most businesses have realized that mobile marketing has become a significant priority. Businesses have correctly been putting more focus on mobile optimized content and social media marketing. This year, mobile strategies have moved beyond just having responsive mobile applications and web sites.
Recently, Google has taken a special interest in the sites that it displays in its search engine results.
Their testing of “not mobile friendly” icons next to poorly optimized sites and the fact that for over a year now, Google has been penalizing sites that generate errors for mobile users leads observers to believe that mobile optimization is more important than ever.
Sites with videos that are inaccessible on mobile devices, and sites with erroneous redirects are being downgraded or de-prioritized in Google’s search engine results.
When Google included a Mobile Usability feature in their newest launch of Google Webmaster Tools, it became obvious that Mobile Usability was much more relevant to optimal search engine results and that it placed more emphasis on the “friendliness” of mobile sites over conventional web sites.
The Mobile Usability feature allows webmasters to see how their websites perform on mobile devices and gives specific warnings that indicates what areas potentially need improvement. It can be viewed by looking under “Search Traffic” and then “Mobile Usability”.
This leads us to believe that Google has apparently made mobile usability a huge Search Ranking Factor
By the end of 2015, most businesses should understand the necessity of having a mobile social media strategy that is geared to how mobile users consume and interact with social media.
They will hopefully be incorporating mobile users into all areas of digital marketing by furnishing them more fully responsive websites, better mobile advertisements, and content specifically geared to mobile website consumers.
Mobile optimization and creating an effective mobile website will now be more important than ever.
Pinterest Marketing is just another way to market your business brand online.
Pinterest is a social networking site that allows its users to create image collages online and share them with other users on “pinboards”.
When it comes to social media, its always important to be aware of where consumer dollars are being spent. Pinterest has almost five million users and is growing by leaps and bounds. Almost 1.6 million unique users visit Pinterest daily and spend an average of 15 minutes a day on the site.
Pinterest users are active “pinners” and tend to follow specific brands. Why is this important? Well “pins” go viral just like YouTube videos and Twitter “Tweets”. In fact pins go viral over 100 times more on Pinterest than on Twitter. In addition, over 15% of Pinterest users never use any other social media site.
By putting the right offer out there for Pinterest users, you can potentially create a viral marketing solution for growing your brand.
There is a Right way and a Wrong way to optimize images when you are marketing with Pinterest, so pay attention to the following recommendations to get the best “bang from your buck” out of the images you post on Pinterest from your website.
Pinning will give you the best opportunity to get your image to go viral. Its perfectly alright to upload and pin your own images but don’t do it exclusively.
Optimize your image file names. The file name becomes your image file, so name your images with a description of what they are and optimize them accordingly. A file named “gibson-guitar.jpg” will rank much faster than “Dec_136856_2014.jpg”.
Liking, re-pinning, and commenting affects how your images appear on Pinterest, so don’t pin from only one site. Use a variety of sources. The more re-pins you get, the more links you get to your site. Re-pins keep the original source link intact.
Pinterest does not add any links to uploaded pins. You can drive traffic to your site by editing your uploaded pin and adding an appropriate link. Although most of the links on Pinterest are no-follow links, socially they are still a factor in the search engine algorithms.
Use short captions and include major keywords. You can always add more information in your pins comment section. Comments are a great way to connect with people.
Although Pinterest descriptions can be up to 500 characters long, keep them brief. Long descriptions can annoy some pinners.
Remember that Pinterest is a social media site so like Twitter or Facebook, engage your followers. The more followers you have with an image, the more power you have.
It pays to do some research to determine what draws you toward an image and then try to mimic those qualities.
Pinterest is not an advertising platform, so like, comment and re-pin other people’s images. Treat the site like it is, a social media platform.
When creating additional boards, optimize their titles. Use keyword rich names that are specific to the content of each board. “Things I Enjoy” is not as specific as “Mosquito Lagoon Fishing” or “Playalinda Beach Surf Fishing”. Remember that the title you named your board becomes part of the Pinterest URL. Use good keywords in both your Title and Description.
Pinterest allows the search engines to crawl their entire site. This means that search engine optimized boards will show up in Google’s search results.
Facebook does not do this.
Pinterest marketing is all about getting people to share your content. You can assist by adding a “Follow” and “Pin It” button to your websites.
You can also pin YouTube or Vimeo videos to your board for pinners to watch on the site.
The term “evergreen content” is thrown around quite a bit by blog management experts who are tasked with keeping blogs current.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen Content are the posts and articles made on your blog that remain current and relevant over a long period of time.
Some topic contents will change over time and lose relevancy. This type of content is not considered to be Evergreen.
Knowing what Evergreen Content is does not explain why it is important to your blog’s success.
First of all, Evergreen content can take a number of different formats. It requires some advance planning to determine what content you write will remain unchanged over time and continue to be relevant to your audience.
These post formats can help you create good “evergreen content“.
- Posting “How to” tutorials and “How to” guides
Assuming that the processes or techniques you are writing about will not be significantly changing in the near future, writing guides on “How to” perform an act, or tutorials on “How to catch fish” etc. are great evergreen content.
Learning how to ski or teaching someone the basics for catching fish does not significantly change, therefore it is considered evergreen content.
Writing blog posts about frequently asked questions on your subject matter will provide guidance to newbies in your field of expertise and a significant amount of evergreen content. These posts are considered evergreen content because the questions are unlikely to change in the immediate future.
- Posting about Industry wide definitions
Writing blog posts about common phrases specifically used in your area of expertise that will not likely change in the near future is great evergreen content. Definitions that are not likely to change can be written about once and forgotton about. This type of content never needs upgrading and will benefit you over time.
- Posting lists Industry resources
Posting resource lists to newbies in your niche market is another type of evergreen content. You will need to periodically ensure that your links are still current, but the list of resources should remain unchanged over time and still be of benefit to your audience.
- Posting on unchanging definitions or positions
Posting on broad topics that are unlikely to change in the near future is another type of evergreen content however, this can be difficult to determine since very few things in life remain unchanged. Political positions should be considered evergreen content, but are they really?
Posting text is not the only way to provide evergreen content to your blog or website. You can also use audio or video formats to post evergreen content.
The point is that in order to be considered evergreen content, the content must be kept up to date.
The goal is to provide content that will remain relevant over a longer period of time than a time sensitive post on a current event. This is of course a goal not written in stone. Very few posts created remain relevant over time without some future
modification. As SEO changes, so will the relevance of your blog post.
Even the most relevant “evergreen” blog posts have to be revisited and modified from time to time to stay current. But, you can minimize the amount of follow up that is needed by selecting posts that require minimal future changes.
Blogging “experts” tell you that more is better but don’t let evergreen content get buried under a ton of blog posts. Place evergreen content “front and center” on your blog. Don’t let it get buried in your archives.
- There are a several ways you can do this.
The easiest and most obvious is to create a “Start here” page on your website and list all important evergreen posts. This can serve as a reference point for new visitors to your blog.
Depending on your market niche, you can create pages for training guides on your site that direct new visitors to evergreen resources. This will help them get up to speed with the basics.
You can use the sidebar on your blog to create a section titled “Top Posts” or “Featured Posts” and list your evergreen content there. The top left sidebar is the first thing readers look at when they visit a site and is a good place to list your “Top Posts”.
You can periodically re run evergreen content to increase the exposure to your readers however, you can run into a problem with duplicate content if you’re not careful.
Regardless of which format you use for evergreen content or how you place it on your blog, the important thing is that you create it and occasionally monitor your content for relevancy.
If you take the time to create valuable evergreen content for your site and make it strategically prominent to your readers, it will help improve the authority of your website with the organic search engine results and increase the overall perception of your website as a leader in your niche market.
Evergreen content is important and goes a long way to improving both.
