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How Reviews Affect Sales for Your Small Business

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Customer online reviews can influence sales.Online reviews are increasingly being consulted by consumers before making buying decisions. It’s important to appreciate how online reviews affect sales.

Here are a dozen reason they can affect your sales.

  1. Local sites featuring reviews are more prominent in search than in the past.
  2. Two thirds of local directory traffic comes from people searching for products & services. (source)
  3. Regardless of your SEO, local sites drive visitors to your site. (source)
  4. Each star in a review translates to 5-9% impact on revenues. (source)
  5. Local independent businesses are the most affected by reviews. (source)
  6. 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision (source) and Forbes says it’s as high as 90%.
  7. People are 63% more likely to buy from a site with user reviews. (source)
  8. Reviews are 12 times more trusted than your web site itself. (source)
  9. More reviews lend credibility to the ratings, driving visitors and sales. (source)
  10. The Harvard Business Review says that good reviews can increase sales 32%-52%.
  11. Negative reviews can cause a drop of 15% in sales (source)
  12. But for an unfamiliar product, even bad reviews can sometimes increase sales. (source)
12 ways online reviews affect your sales

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Do you have a process in place to increase the likelihood of getting good customer reviews? If so, let us know about it in the comments below.

Need better rankings or more visibility in local directories? Rank Magic can help!

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How Your Clichés Turn Off Potential Customers

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You probably don’t use clichés in the marketing copy on your website.

Or do you?

I learned a simple rule from a marketing consultant years ago that’s stuck with me ever since.  Don’t make your reader think “well, I should hope so”.  But I see that all the time in website copy  — empty phrases and promises that prompt exactly that response.  Here are a few I’ve seen recently:

Avoid clichés in your website content.

  • Quality service!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We do it right the first time!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We always honor our agreements.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We have expertise in [whatever it is we do]
    Well, I should hope so.
  • Free estimates.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • At [company name] you’re the boss.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We pride ourselves on working hard for our customers
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We provide a job well done and done to your satisfaction.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We respect our customers
    Well, I should hope so.
  • Fully insured!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • Your satisfaction is our goal.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We work to make you happy.
    Well, I should hope so.

You get the idea.

According to Writing 101 from Masterclass, Overused clichés can show a lack of original thought, and can make a writer appear unimaginative and lazy.

The next time you write or revise your web content, I hope you’ll keep this principle in mind.

Well, I should hope so.

Don’t make readers think “Well, I should HOPE so”.

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What are your thoughts about this? Let us know in the comments below.

Find this helpful? If so, we’d appreciate you sharing it with one of the share links on the left or the click-to=tweet above.

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4 Ways to Get More Readers On Your Blog

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Your Blog Is an Important Asset  — If It Attracts the Readers You Want

 

Promote your blog.

Your blog is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority in your field and to get your brand identity known broadly. It also allows you to receive and respond to feedback from people interested in your services and your blog topics. The more people who read and like your blog, the better known you and your brand become. It’s well worth the time and effort to promote your blog. Thanks to Endurance Marketing for the inspiration for this post.

1) Promote Your Blog Far and Wide

Shameless promotion of your blog on as many venues as possible will expose it to hundreds or thousands of new potential readers. Here are the most essential things to do:

  • Get your blog listed in the top human-edited blog directories. That includes directories like Technorati, Blogarama, Blogged, Blogernity, Blog Flux, On Top List, Blog Hub, and Blogger Now, among others.
  • Include prominent links to your blog from the main navigation of your website and also in your page footers.
  • Establish social media accounts at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, at a minimum. Include a link to your blog in the About section of each of them.
  • Include a Facebook Like button on your main blog page and on all individual blog post pages.
  • Make it easy for readers to share your blog posts on their own social pages to expand your reach to all of their connections. The tool we use here is from AddThis. It provides opportunities for readers to very easily promote your post to all of their followers on almost any social media site imaginable.

Blog2) Promote Every Blog Post Your Write

Don’t just write a great blog post and hope people will flock to it. Promote it in social media. At the very least, write about it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. And be sure to include a link to your post when you do that. For our clients, we typically promote each of their posts on about a dozen of the best social media platforms.

3)  Promote Your Blog On Your Emails

Don’t overlook the opportunity to include a link to your blog in your email signature block. That exposes your blog to anyone you correspond with.

Promote your blog! Here’s how.

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4) Promote Your Blog on Other Blogs

Many blogs have a blogroll  — a list of other, usually related, blogs that may be of interest to their readers. You can see an example of that over on the right, in the section called Other Blogs of Interest. Seek out blogs related to your topics and contact the owners of those blogs to suggest they add you to their blogrolls. You may be asked to add them to your blogroll in return, as well. If you create compelling blog posts with great information that’s helpful to your target market, similar blogs may be very eager to link to you from their blogrolls.

How do you promote your blog? Let us know in the comments below.

Like this post? Please Like it or share it with your friends via the links above, or click on the Click to Tweet above. Thanks in advance for helping us promote our blog!

Need help with promoting your blog and your website, and showing up prominently when buyers search for what you have to offer? Rank Magic can help.

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Do You Write Compelling Headlines?

/ blogs, copywriting, email, marketing, page content, social media / 1 Comment

Are you writing good headlines?

You need to write attention grabbing headlines!Your web page or blog post or newsletter may be astoundingly helpful or surprisingly informative, great fun to read and generally a gem that your target market really needs to know about and read. But if your subject line or headline isn’t good “click bait”  — something that will make it impossible to pass up without clicking on it  —  no one will know.

You need to grab them with the subject line. In an email newsletter, it’s the subject of the email. In a social media post it’s the headline you give the post or the first few words of the post. On a web page  it’s the page title that will show up in search results. And in a blog post it’s also the page title, but that often duplicates the primary headline of the post.

How to write good headlines for SEO.

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The Value of Good Examples

One thing I’ve often found helpful, especially when a headline or subject line seems beyond my grasp, is to look at some examples.
Info Marketing Blog reprinted 100 great advertising headlines with a brief discussion of each. Review them and you’ll get a sense of what elements go into a real compelling, click bait subject line.

The Financial Brand has s helpful set of rules for creating a killer subject line, even though their focus is financial.

From an advertising perspective, Crazy Egg has a list of nine steps to follow to create a compelling subject line or headline.

And Position Digital has an excellent set of seven steps to a compelling SEO-appropriate headline.

If you don’t get enough inspiration from these sources, try searching in Google, Yahoo or Bing for headline ideas or how to write a headline. There are some great ideas to get you through that writer’s block.

BTW, if you found this helpful, please share it with friends: Like it or tweet it with the buttons on the left or the Click-to-Tweet above.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Article Marketing Brings One-Way Links

/ copywriting, links, marketing / 5 Comments

Are you building inbound links to your site?

Link building is essential to good rankings in the search engines. The number and quality of other web sites that link to yours builds your link authority, and that affects your rankings. Especially in Google. While reciprocal links (you link to me and I link back to you) are excellent to have, one-way links are even more powerful. One excellent way to get such links is through article marketing.

Articles can make good inbound links

Published articles bring incoming links to your site.Webmasters are always in need of good, relevant content for their web sites. Do you have well-written articles about your area of expertise in one of the several article repositories on the web? If so, your articles will be found, picked up, and reprinted on other web sites. When those webmasters use your article they almost always include your own “About The Author” blurb at the end of the article. A blurb in which you just happen to include a link to your web site.

There’s no reason you can’t include such articles on your own web site, of course. But the links from marketing articles on other related web sites are what you’re really after here.

Article Marketing Can Help You Show up Better in Search Results

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Article Quality is Critical

Excellent copywriting skills are priceless.It’s essential that your articles not be commercials for you; they need to be useful and informative, with information that readers will find valuable. There are two very selfish reasons for this. First, articles that tout your products or services are least likely to be picked up for inclusion on anyone else’s web site. And second, a great article with lots of informative content is more likely to entice a reader to click on your link at the bottom and visit your web site.

If you have something unique to say about what you do and have expertise in, consider article marketing to get your name out there — along with a link to your website.

Need a little help?

Not all of us are capable of writing compelling articles that can both inform and entertain, but don’t let that stop you. We work with some excellent copywriters who can “ghost write” articles for you. The ideas, of course, have to be yours, but the words can be crafted by someone who specializes in that. Some of the copywriters we’re familiar with and can recommend include Anne Lazo of Eagle Soars Consulting, Scott Stadler of Words By Design, Chris Reardon of Reardon Commmunications, and Lisa Fahoury of Fahoury Ink.

Struggling with getting decent rankings in Google searches? Reach out for some help!