Aug 31, 2009

 

How to Develop a Natural Link Building Strategy


In SEO, link building is the practice of accumulating relevant links in order to build up site authority, and rank for certain keyword phrases on search engines. However, link building is often associated with questionable practices like link buying and link spamming. Too many businesses focus on buying sitewide static links, and building a specific number of links. Once they achieve that goal, they tend to forget about their link building efforts. What they have failed to discover is that a successful link building strategy is one that is natural, builds your web presence, and strengthens your brand.

In this day and age in the online world, there are a variety of effective ways to build your brand and links such as using video sharing websites, blogging, and participating in social media. The types of online brands with the most successful online strategies utilize all of these methods of brand building and link building. Sitewide links, or links that are placed on all pages of a website, have lost a lot of their value for the simple fact that they are unnatural. Sitewide links are the links in a template or sidebar under a section such as “friends,” “links,” or “resources.” Many websites get the majority of their inbound links from sitewide linking, but they must build a strong web presence first in order for those sitewide links to be credible and effective.

Tips for Building Your Web Presence

Foundational link building consists of building your web presence in order to really “earn” those sitewide links. You can build your web presence by writing and distributing online press releases, writing guest posts for well-known blogs in your niche, and participating actively in social media and networking sites to build your brand.

Many link building strategists get inpatient and try to build thousands of links in a period of just a month or so. Your ranking may temporarily improve but search engines will spot the unnaturalness in your site’s accumulation of inbound links and come to devalue it. Focus on building your online brand first prior to accumulating so many links. This can take anywhere from six months to a year. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but to ensure that your long term link building strategy is effective, it is a good idea to keep this timeline in mind.

Build a Diverse Link Portfolio

You can get real power from your links by diversifying your link portfolio. Sitewide links should make up only about 10% of your link building portfolio. Other methods of link building include the following:

Video – Videos can be uploaded to websites like YouTube. Not only will they include a link back to your site, they will show up in search engine results for searches of your company name, product, etc.

Press Building Tactics – In order to generate press and tons of links and traffic to your site, hold big contests and giveaways, and donate money to charity. Anytime you do these things, contact the press and let them know what you are up to in order to get some media attention.

Documents – Upload documents like ebooks, brochures, white papers, and marketing materials to document sharing sites like Scribd. If you upload a document to your own website, you can build links to it by writing blog posts and press releases about it.

In sum, focus on building your web presence and online brand so your links come naturally. No matter what kind of changes happen at Google and other search engines, as long as you focus on maintaining a natural link building strategy, you will not notice any effect on your ranking. A natural web presence will always persevere.



Aug 27, 2009

 

Tips for Promoting Your Site on Blogs and Facebook


Just like how ten years ago, companies were finally coming to understand the importance of having a website, companies are now grappling with the idea of social media marketing. Most people are very new to social media marketing so there are still many unanswered questions. Many people wonder how to promote a social media effort once it is launched. In this blog post, we are going to talk about the two basic forms of social media promotion: blogging and Facebook.

There are several questions that a company must ask itself prior to determining how it will promote its social media efforts. First of all, a company must determine its social media marketing goals, identify its target audience, determine what its budget is, and figure out if any new resources will be required.

Facebook Fan Page Promotion Tips

One way to promote your brand/product/service via social media is through building a Facebook fan page. There are several ways you can promote the fan page both on and off Facebook. On Facebook, you can promote your fan page by placing Facebook ads, participating in groups and other fan pages that target the same audience, holding contests and giveaways to encourage fans to share the link to your fan page, and taking advantage of mailing lists for other groups/fan pages for your brand. You can also create a useful widget that links back to your fan page that fans can use and share with their friends.

Off of Facebook, you can use other social media networks to promote your Facebook content, use PPC ads that lead visitors to a landing page, write and distribute optimized press releases, and do SEO/link building to promote your landing pages. Email promotion can also be effective.

How to Promote a Newly Launched Company Blog

Another important basic of social media marketing is promoting your company blog. When you launch your company blog, there must already be a good chunk of valuable content on it. Think around 5 to 15 posts to start with. There are several marketing tactics you can use to attract attention to your new blog. One of the most important of these tactics is blog commenting. Find blogs that are relevant to yours and influential in your niche and start commenting on them. Provide a link back to your blog on your comments. If you leave thoughtful comments, people are naturally going to click on your link and visit your blog.

You can also attract the attention of influential bloggers in your niche by creating a blogroll and linking to them. People will click on those links and the blogger is eventually bound to notice the source of all the new traffic. In order to build visibility, links to your blog, and a new audience, submit guest posts to influential blogs in your niche.

Make sure to include your blog URL anytime you mention your site URL online. Have all employees include the blog URL in their email signatures and social media profiles. When you write a particularly useful blog post, leverage the social media networks you participate in to promote your content. Most importantly, focus on providing excellent content on a consistent basis. By doing so, you’re sure to attract attention and links naturally over time.

So there you have it. How you promote your social media efforts will ultimately boil down to your goals, audience, resources, and the social media networks you are going to use. Just like you would with any other online marketing strategy, track and monitor the results of your campaign using analytics tool so you can tweak your efforts along the way.



Aug 24, 2009

 

5 Tips for Saving Money on Your PPC Campaign


Do you feel like you are spending a lot of money on PPC but that you are getting little in return? For small business owners and internet entrepreneurs, spending even a couple thousand dollars on PPC can feel like an incredible amount of money. To ensure that your ads actually bring your business results and to make the most out of your PPC investment, implement some of these money-saving tips.

1. Make sure your ads are geographically targeted. If you are a dry cleaner in Brooklyn, only place ads for people in your local area. This will help to lower ad impression, raise CTR, and give you better ROI and a higher quality score.

2. Use the negative keywords match feature to your advantage. When you use the negative keywords match feature, you can filter out keywords for which you do not want your ads to show. The words “free” and “cheap” are common elements of negative keyword phrases. For example, if you sell web templates, surely you don’t want people searching for “free web templates” to click on your ad. You will have to pay for those extra clicks and all of those unwanted impressions will lower your CTR. Use the negative keywords match feature to filter out such negative keywords. However, you may find that some negative keywords would be of benefit to your campaign. Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, choose “negative” in the drop down menu under Match Type, and determine which negative keywords may serve you.

3. Create separate ad groups, ads, and landing pages. Rather than targeting a slew of keywords with one ad and one landing page, group similar keywords in individual ad groups, create individual ads for them, and then point them to your designated landing pages. By doing so, you can improve your CTR and conversion rates because the landing pages will be more relevant to the terms that users are searching for.

4. Use ad scheduling. Ad scheduling allows you to control the day and time that your ads appear. For example, if your business offers a special Tuesday deal, you can schedule your ad campaign so that your ads promoting the Tuesday deal only show on Tuesdays. Or if you are running your ads 24 hours a day, you might find that by running them only during a certain time frame of the day instead, you get better conversions. Let’s say you have a health website. You will probably get more clicks and conversions in the morning for keywords like, “morning after pill,” “morning sickness,” “morning headache,” and “hangover.”

5. Don’t use broad match. Many people are simply unaware of the different keyword match features that are available in Adwords. By default in an Adwords campaign, your keywords are set as a “broad match.” The problem with broad match is that your ads will show up when people search for different variations of your keywords, even if they are not on your keyword list. Google is likely to consider many words as relevant when they are really not. Use the “phrase” keyword match type to ensure that your ads only show up when people search for the exact keywords on your list.



Aug 20, 2009

 

How to Create Linkbait for a Boost in Traffic and SEO


Linkbaiting is one of the most effective ways to promote your site, bringing you a boost in short-term traffic as well as a long-term improvement in SEO. Linkbaiting is essentially the same as building and promoting content but it puts extra focus on designing content that appeals specifically to bloggers who spread links and other influential web content creators.

An important part of creating successful link bait is to know what subjects and content are popular with influential folks in the blogosphere, aka the blogerati. To find examples of the type of content that is getting a lot of attention and press, check out the front pages of sites like Digg and del.icio.us. Technorati Popular and Google Hot Trends are also good places to get some ideas on trendy content topics. You can also get a good idea of what the latest crazes are in the blogosphere by checking out influential blogs like Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Boing Boing.

Hot topics for linkbait include announcing trends and how they are affecting certain industries, breaking news, and anything shocking, sexy, or humorous. In every industry, you can find such types of link bait. By simply gathering together a group of well-respected folks in your industry and having them write a how-to guide or talk about their opinions on trends and issues, you can attract a lot of highly relevant links.

After you’ve determined what your linkbait is going to be, you have to figure out how you are going to promote it. If your site already receives a lot of traffic, you won’t have much difficulty attracting a load of links. However, if your site is new or doesn’t receive much traffic, you’re going to have to work on promoting your linkbait. One way you can do this is by emailing some influential bloggers and content creators in your industry and asking them what they think about the linkbait you are going to promote. It’s not a good idea to outright ask for a link because most bloggers find it annoying. Simply contact a few bloggers you respect, tell them that you really enjoy their content, and ask them for their feedback. If they recommend a few changes and you make those changes, let them now. It’s highly likely that they will mention it in their blog and link to your content in the process.

Through social tagging and voting sites, your content will get mass visibility. Linkbaiting is particularly rewarding for those who work in industries where organic links are hard to come by, such as the pharmaceutical and e-commerce industries. Just make sure your linkbait is not manipulative and obvious to prevent your site from being delisted from Google.

Linkbait isn’t just limited to content like articles, blog posts, and videos. Custom applications and widgets can also become linkbait. Anytime someone uses your tool/widget on their website, your link will appear there, allowing others to go to your website and get the tool/widget as well. Your tool will gradually spread like wildfire, allowing you to accumulate several links in the process.



Aug 18, 2009

 

Facebook Marketing 101


Facebook is THE social network to be on. Re-connecting with your sixth grade crushes and sharing photos with your grandma – these are just a couple of the things you can do on Facebook, which has also become a virtual marketplace for business owners and advertisers. Businesses of all stripes can use Facebook to attract new clientele, stay in touch with current clients, and promote their latest products/services. Facebook is also a valuable PR tool that allows you to create a buzz around whatever it is that your business offers.

Facebook Pages

Although there are several tools businesses can use on Facebook to promote themselves, the primary methods of promotion are through Facebook pages and Facebook groups. With a Facebook page, your business can have its own profile in Facebook, and best of all, these pages are free! Your customers can become fans of your Facebook page, which enables them to receive any updates posted to your page.

The great thing about having a Facebook page is that anytime someone becomes a fan of your page, all of their Facebook friends can see it. This gives your business more exposure and the possibility of attracting more fans. You can use your Facebook page to share information about your company, and post videos, applications, photos, and messages.

When you sign up for a Facebook page, you will be given three category options and they are: a local business, a brand/product, or an artist/band/public figure. You cannot change your category later so be careful to choose the right one. Your decision will depend on how you want to promote your business. If you want to promote your business locally, sign up as a local business so you can reach your target market more effectively. If your goal is to spread brand awareness and image, display your page as a brand/product.

When creating a Facebook page, use a friendly, conversational tone. You don’t want to use a stiff, formal business tone on your Facebook page like you would on your normal company website. Facebook is all about building community, actively participating in discussions, and sharing information. You don’t want to come across as too stuffy.

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are similar to Facebook pages except that they are built around a group of people rather than your business. Unlike Facebook pages, people cannot become fans of your Facebook group. They must become members of the group instead. The downside of Facebook groups is that they are more private in nature, and thus do not share as much information with the friends of group members.

Which One is Right for My Business?

Facebook pages will give your business more exposure but Facebook groups are more effective if you want to connect with your customers/prospects on a personal level. When you send a message out to your Facebook page fans, they will only receive an update notification whereas when you send a message out to your Facebook group members, it goes into their inbox. As such, Facebook groups can be more appropriate if your goal is to provide better customer service and communication and receive feedback.



Aug 16, 2009

 

How to Write for the Search Engines without Becoming a Robot


Search engines are constantly improving their ability to index, sort, and categorize web pages in order to create good search results. In order to make it easier for search engine bots to do their job, you have to incorporate target keyword phrases into your content, title tags, and meta descriptions. Anytime people search for the keyword phrases, they are more likely to come across one of your pages than one of those of a competitor whose site does not contain relevant keyword phrases.

When you add keyword phrases to your site, you need to be sure not to add them so many times that it makes your content sound unnatural. For example, if you say, “wedding photographer in Los Angeles”, in every other sentence of your content, you are going to annoy your human visitors. The key is finding a way to write content that pleases the search engine bots as well as humans. After all, your content is ultimately meant for human eyes, not search engine bots! Mentioning a keyword three to four times per page is more than sufficient.

The Importance of Titles

For every page of your website, make sure to create unique titles. Make your titles read like catchy headlines so they draw people to click on them when they are seen in search results. Include a target keyword phrase in each of your headlines to please the search engine bots. Also, make sure that your titles are no longer than 75 characters long. Search engines and humans alike tend to stop reading after that point.

Tips for Creating Compelling Content

Even if your content is killer and your site is amazing, nobody will be able to find it if you don’t write your content with SEO in mind. When writing web content, you have to focus on providing informative, quality content to your target audience without neglecting to appease the search engines.
Content should be around 250 words per page. Both search engines and humans favor content that’s around 250 words per page. When it’s too long, your readers will get bored and move onto something else. You want your content to be informative but you also want to get your point across quickly to prevent snoring.

When you write website copy with Google in mind, place relevant keyword phrases around the main keyword phrases. That way when your site description appears in Google search results, people will see those relevant words and be drawn to your site.

When choosing keyword phrases to use in your website copy, make sure to think of the way people actually speak. Otherwise your content will sound painfully awkward. If you have to, add a word or two in a target phrase to make it sound natural. For example, if you are targeting the keyword “limos Boston,” feel free to use, “limos in Boston,” instead so your content sounds more natural and not like you are obviously trying to rank for a keyword.

Use keywords in an optimal way when writing your website copy. For example, instead of just saying, “our company,” say, “our Los Angeles loan modification company.” You can take advantage of such opportunities to incorporate target keyword phrases without being obnoxious.
Keep these tips in mind when creating content for your site so search engine bots can crawl your site and index your pages more effectively. Furthermore, visitors will be able to find your site more easily when they search for the terms you are targeting.



Aug 12, 2009

 

The Importance of Social Media in SEO


Social media marketing is becoming increasingly standard in online marketing campaigns due to its known ability to build website traffic and inbound links. Link-baiting, Digg-baiting, and submitting your site to social bookmarking sites has both short term and long term value. Nonetheless, social media marketing often gets criticized because its effects are sometimes only short-lived. Some common complaints about social media marketing are that it drives worthless traffic and none of the inbound links point to the homepage.

Despite all of the complaints there are about social media marketing, it can’t be denied that it has a direct effect on SEO. Furthermore, major search engines are now using social voting systems to measure the quality of websites. Here are some points that express the ever-increasing influence of social media in SEO and online marketing at large.

Social Media Voting and User Views on the First Page of Google

Thanks to Google Universal Search, which blends results from the web, images, videos, blogs, and other areas, social media voting and user views are of increasing importance since they help content get on the first page of Google. Comments play an important role in getting videos ranked because they serve as reviews. So if your company puts out viral videos, you will get comments naturally, which will come to boost your site ranking.

Videos are not the only forms of media that get comments. Nowadays, an increasing number of sites are using comments as a way for visitors to provide feedback, communicate, and build community. Google and other search engines may consider quality comments on blogs and news sites when they measure the importance of different websites.

The Influence of Social Bookmarking on Search Results

Search engines can benefit from monitoring social bookmarking sites because doing so allows them to index sites faster, define and measure the quality of various sites, and index websites more deeply. Humans can bookmark new sites faster than search engine bots can even find them, allowing search engines to index websites more quickly. Furthermore, pages of a site that are bookmarked are often deep into sites and thus not easily linkable, meaning that search engines can index website more deeply by monitoring what’s happening on social bookmarking sites.

When someone takes the time to bookmark a site, it usually is because the site is worthwhile. When a site has multiple bookmarks from a variety of different social bookmarking sites and by multiple users, it has more quality and relevance in the eyes of search engines. Similarly, the more votes that a page receives from multiple social voting sites, the higher the ranking it may have.

Implementing Social Media Marketing into Your Link-Building/Search Marketing Campaign

Social media marketing plays an essential role in search engine rankings due to its link-building power. Profile pages on social media sites often pass link juice and are highly indexed by search engines, especially when it comes to long tail keyword phrases. Netscape is the best social media site in terms of the link juice passed on. If you have a local business, you can improve your search engine visibility with reviews and ratings from Yahoo Local, City Search, and other services.

This is just the beginning when it comes to social media’s influence on search engine ranking. While all of these theories may not currently be implemented into search engine algorithms, all signs point to the fact that search engines will take advantage of social media metrics in order to provide search results that are more relevant to the user.



Aug 10, 2009

 

8 Rules for Social Media Optimization


Social media has come to play an incredibly important role in the marketing campaigns of a variety of different businesses. Here are 8 rules of social media optimization that you must follow to ensure that you maximize the results of your social media marketing campaign.

1. Increase Your Website’s Linkability

The problem with a lot of websites is that they are static. Their content remains the same and nothing on the site is updated on a regular basis. Increasing the linkability of your site is one of the first and most important steps of social media optimization and SEO. The easiest way to get started with this is by adding a blog to your site and updating it regularly.

2. Develop a Clear Social Media Optimization Strategy

All marketing campaigns have a strategy behind them and SMO is no different. Define your objectives and set goals that will help you reach your desired outcome, whether that is credibility, a boost in reputation, site traffic, or increased conversions. One of the biggest mistakes that many companies make is not approaching SMO with clear goals or a strategy.

3. Stay Fresh

Don’t be afraid to be different in social media. The social media landscape is constantly morphing and the companies that dare to be unique are the ones that end up with the most successful SMO campaigns and getting national PR. Keep up with all the new tools and products that pop up to stay on top of your game.

4. Make It Easy for Readers to Tag and Bookmark

When you add features like the “add to del.icio.us” and the “Retweet” buttons to your content, it serves as a direct reminder for people to share your content. Many bloggers receive a 100% increase in retweets when they add the button. When a lot of people tweet or Digg your content, you get a lot of social proofing. Nonetheless, you don’t necessarily have to make it easier for people to tag and bookmark since great content will be shared no matter what.

5. Help People for Nothing in Return (Yet)

To put it simply, in social media, you have to give value to get value. You can pass along links that would help someone resolve an issue or give them advice if they need it. Eventually, people will come to see you as a source of information. This will lead them to link to your site or tag it as being an authoritative site in your niche, gradually boosting your reputation and improving your search engine ranking.

6. Participate Fully in the Community

Participation is the core of social media. Social media is a two-way street. You must create awareness of your brand and spread your message by participating in social media outlets on a regular basis. Your reputation and message will spread faster and further if you actively participate.

7. Know Your Target Audience

In order to make content and market ideas that are compelling to your target audience, you have to know them well. You have to realize that you can’t appeal to everyone. That’s why it’s important to know who your main audience is so you can tweak your messages to appeal to them. In order to learn who your audience is, you have to become a member of the community yourself.

8. Be authentic

Social media users are becoming more and more skilled at spotting fakers so to avoid being shunned and prevent damage from being done to your reputation, be authentic in your interactions.

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Aug 6, 2009

 

When PPC is Better than SEO


When people in PR circles talk about search marketing, the focus is usually on search engine optimization rather than PPC. However, PPC can be a very valuable search marketing tool that creates instant search visibility and drives traffic to news-related content. For example, The New York Times is known to use Google AdWords to promote their news stories with hot, trending topics online.

Similarly, PR professionals can use PPC advertising to draw instant traffic to news items, content, and stories on a company website. PPC can be used to drive traffic to brand names, company names, and executive names in a PR campaign.

PPC VS SEO

Making the decision between using PPC or SEO will depend on your objectives. PPC advertisements are typically on-demand or react to content that is listed in the regular search results. For example, PPC can be a valuable resource in a reputation management campaign. If there are negative listings about a company listed in search engine results, a PR professional can created PPC ads with positive information about the company to attract customer attention away from the negative listings. PPC is a great way to counter negative search results because it is possible to track how effective your landing pages are and make specific adjustments to your campaign.

On the other hand, SEO is a long term PR effort that requires an ongoing investment of time and resources. SEO is very effective when you integrate it in your content creation and promotion efforts. When you do keyword research, add important keywords to your content, and ensure that your content is crawlable, you attract inbound links, which raises your search engine ranking and drives more traffic to your site over time.

Results from an SEO campaign are usually not immediate so SEO efforts have to be a part of an ongoing commitment to achieve results. The effects of an SEO campaign that includes continued content creation, promotion, and link building, are cumulative in that the more content you create and the more inbound links you receive, the more traffic you receive from search engines.

Although PPC is more on-demand than SEO, it does require several key components in order to be successful. Some important components of a successful PPC campaign include keyword research, proper account structure, landing pages, tracking and internal responses, and follow through post conversions. It takes time to develop an effective PPC campaign and it also takes a while to develop an ad quality score.

All in all, PPC and SEO need to be part of a bigger PR and online marketing strategy. PPC will bring you immediate traffic whereas it takes time build traffic via SEO. The important thing is for PR professionals to start testing out PPC and including in their standard mix rather than just giving SEO attention. In order to make the most of their search marketing campaigns, PR professionals should use both PPC and SEO together to achieve specific goals. PPC should be utilized to achieve goals that are on-demand and reactive whereas SEO should be used to achieve goals that are long-term and proactive.



Aug 4, 2009

 

8 Ways to Boost your Brand Online


In the social media age, more than ever, it’s important to pay attention to your brand online. Your brand reflects how you are represented in the digital world from both a business and personal perspective. Everyone from students to business professionals should pay attention to their personal brand because it has a powerful influence on how people feel about you and what you represent. Here are 8 tips for improving your personal brand online.

1. Build relationships.

Limit the amount of self-promotion and marketing you do. Focus on building relationships and adding value to your content instead. The foundation of a well-rounded brand is relationship building, which consists of building trust in your brand through selfless contribution to the community.

2. Recommend other people’s products, services, and content.

When you pass on goodwill by recommending other people’s products, services, and content, you provide value to your community while encouraging others to do the same for you in return.

3. Try a variety of different social networks.

Make sure you have an active presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook because they are currently the three biggest social networks. However, you should also build a presence on more specialist networks in your field and try out new sites that have potential. You never know when one of the big social networks will go out of style and be replaced by a new one. It can be beneficial to build a strong presence on a new network before it gets too big. Remember when Friendster seemed invincible? Then it was Myspace. And now it’s Facebook. Don’t spread yourself too thin but do try to maintain a presence on a variety of social networks, not just the big 3.

4. Monitor your personal brand.

Use an alerts tool to monitor what is being said about you online. Anytime your name is mentioned in tweets, blogs, and websites, you can find out through search engine alerts.

5. Self-censor.

Prior to writing anything online, think to yourself whether you would feel comfortable having your mother, child, clients, or future employer see what you are going to write. You have to realize that whatever you put out into the online world can potentially affect your personal brand and have repercussions. While you don’t want to censor yourself completely to the point that you can’t even be yourself, you should be cautious to some extent about what you do and do not reveal.

6. Stretch your presence.

Visit new blogs and leave comments regularly. Often, people hang out and comment on the same group of blogs but that will prevent you from expanding your network. Stretch your presence online by constantly discovering new blogs.

7. Make an effort to post content on multiple social networks each week.

While most of us tend to have a favorite social network that we stick to, it’s a good idea to post content on multiple social networks. It’s easy to get trapped in using one social network but this could be very limiting. Post content on multiple networks each week, such as Twitter, your blog, a friend’s blog, and a forum.

8. Respond anytime someone mentions you.

Anytime someone mentions you or refers to your content, acknowledge them. Don’t leave them hanging! For example, if someone tweets one of your blog posts or otherwise mentions your name, thank them for the recognition.



Aug 2, 2009

 

5 Big Reasons Why You Need to Build Your Online Subscriber Base


Subscribers are your life blood if you want to build a powerful online brand, generate traffic and links, and improve your overall search marketing strategy. It is important to develop a large and active base of online subscribers because essentially, online subscribers are your fans. One of the pillars of successful internet marketing is building a passionate, active community and this can be done by building your online subscriber base.

Here are 5 big reasons why you should consider putting a plan into place in order to achieve this goal.

1. As long as you consistently provide quality content on your blog/website, people who subscribe to it will begin to consider you a source of linkable content. People in the blogosphere and beyond are always looking for great content to refer to and link to. Having lots of subscribers to your content means that they are likely to link to your content and thus help you boost your SEO and organic link-building strategy. Building an online subscriber base is like building a long-term relationship. Your subscribers are more likely to share and spread your content than anyone else.

2. The rate of web users who utilize RSS is around 11% and this is considered the peak. The people who make up this 11% are more likely to be web publishers, since they are savvy about technology and information consumption. It should come to no surprise that these people are also savvy about information sharing. If you provide these influential web users with great content, it is likely to reach a larger audience.

3. A large online subscriber base serves as social proofing. When someone comes to your site for the first time and sees that you have a lot of subscribers, community members, fans, and/or comments, they are more likely to subscribe to your content because they will think that it is authoritative and relevant.

4. When you build your online subscriber base, it practically eliminates the need for you to pitch your content to media and bloggers for exposure. The returns will be visible over time. Media coverage will come unsolicited – you won’t have to rely on traditional PR campaigns and pitching to receive exposure.

5. When you have more subscribers, it motivates you to create better content. As more people subscribe to your content because they want to hear what you have to say, you will be more inclined to produce better, more relevant content. This happens because people will give you feedback about your content, allowing you to learn more about your niche and what your subscribers want to read.

So there you have it. Businesses that build relationships with specific audiences are more likely to be successful in their endeavors. If you want to build and grow your brand on the web, it is essential to attract an interested, active audience for your content. Building subscribers is equivalent to building relationships with current and potential customers. Come up with strategies that will help you build your subscriber base and put them into place.