5 Steps to Becoming an Influencer in Your Business Field

It is no secret that influencer marketing has the value and power to earn just about any company superstardom in no time at all. Similarly, everyone is aware that the world’s most popular influencers are right now raking enormous sums of money, for simply recommending the services and products of the brands they’re working with.

On one side, you have businesses which are desperate to work with successful and established influencers. On the other side, you have influencers with the power to drive public opinion through positive or negative publicity. 

So you can argue that the Holy Grail will be for the company itself to become an influencer in its field. After all, who could be better to promote whatever it is you sell than you yourself?

Unsurprisingly, becoming an established influencer is not an easy job. It is far from impossible, but it is quite the undertaking. In most cases, influencers do what they do as their full-time job – not just a fun side project. Therefore, managing a business and being a successful influencer can be viewed as the ultimate balancing act.

Nonetheless, if you consider you have what it takes to be an influencer in your field, here are five steps how to get started:

1. Build knowledge

Nearly 90% of the working hours of an influencer are spent carrying out research. If you want to be an influencer in your field, you will first need to develop comprehensive understanding of said niche. Additionally, you will need to be close to the cutting edge of the field so that you can accurately tell what is coming next. If there is even a single person out there who understands the industry better than you, you will struggle to establish yourself as a key authority.

2. Make your voice and face known

Even with all inside knowledge in the world, you can’t just burst onto the scene and expect to become an instant authority. Instead, you will need to spend time becoming an essential part of the community, making your voice heard and offering people the opportunity to get to know you. Create and publish high-quality content on a regular basis, while gradually building both your business identity and your audience.

3. Network like crazy

Always keep in mind that no influencer has ever succeeded by living in a vacuum. Instead, established influencers network like crazy and try to surround themselves with individuals who could help them achieve their goals. Especially in the early stages, you are going to need all the help you could get.

4. Dedicate your time to the cause

Don’t even consider approaching your influencer efforts as a side venture or something to do when time permits. Just as is the case with any other occupation, you will need to set aside some time in your schedule every day to dedicate to the cause.

5. Have clear goals in mind

Last up, along with a strategy in terms of how precisely you want to progress, you will also need to determine your main objectives and goals. It is crucial to consider carefully why you have decided to do this in the first place and when you will consider the whole venture successful. Like any other business idea, you will need a set of KPIs to be able to measure your performance and progress along the way.

5 Timeless SEO Strategies You Will Always Benefit From

In the ever fast-paced world of online marketing, SEO strategies come and go all the time. What is supposedly a sure-fire method for success this week often becomes entirely ineffective next week.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean there are no evergreen SEO hacks you simply cannot go wrong with. The kinds of evergreen tactics you will always benefit from if you dedicate to them enough time and attention.

So beyond the temporary trends and passing fads of SEO, what follows are five times strategies that will always benefit your marketing campaign:

1. Publishing Quality Content

The important keyword in this case being “quality” – as in the type of content that holds some kind of value and purpose. It is perfectly possible to post a compellingly written article on any topic and gain precisely nothing from it. Quality means thinking about what matters to your audience, as opposed to your company or the SEO bots you are trying to win over. Just as long as the content you create is relevant, fresh and of interest to your readers, there is no such thing as producing too much of it.

2. Enhancing the performance of your website

Similarly, there is no such thing as a site that performs too well. The fluidity, the speed and overall consistency of your site will all play a role in determining its SEO prowess. If there is anything you can do to improve or speed up the way your website functions, it is something you should be doing. The same also applies to any improvements that can be made for mobile audiences – also a guaranteed SEO element for the indefinite future at least.

3. Focusing on backlinks of value

We are unlikely to see a time when high-profile backlinks will not add up to serious credit in the eyes of Google and co. The days of getting away with low-quality links are gone for good – backlinks of value are the only links that can benefit your SEO campaign. Building a contingency of quality links is not easy, but can benefit your site and your marketing strategy indefinitely.

4. Optimising your social platform activity

While it is true to say that social media does not directly influence SEO, it is nevertheless a strong contributor to your promotional efforts. Posts on the most popular social platforms can drive as much traffic to your website as links positioned elsewhere on the web. Additionally, the more interest you are able to generate, the more likely the major search engines are to also take note.

5. Website improvements and updates

Lastly, there is always something that can be done to update and improve your website. Whether it is a visual design overhaul, simplification of your navigation system or update to the static text content, , it is an effective way of boosting your SEO. Always keep in mind that whatever you could do to improve things for the end user would have a knock-on effect on your overall SEO strategy. Offer a flawless experience for all visitors and the rest will take care of itself!

5 Key SEO Tactics and Trends in 2019

Looking ahead to this year’s upcoming online marketing trends can be daunting and exciting in equal measure. Visualising your success and planning your strategy, though also accepting you are not in for an easy ride.

Nevertheless, the better idea you have of what is to come, the better your chance of making it work in your favour. With this in mind, here is a brief overview of the five key SEO tactics and trends to keep in mind going into 2019:

1. Increased Visibility Competition
The first entry is also the most obvious and arguably the most important of all. Every year, visibility competition grows at its fastest rate. And 2019 looks to be no exception. The search engines are evolving and space at the top is becoming ever more confined. In online marketing stakes, the phrase
survival of the fittest” has never been more appropriate.

2. Old School SEO Tactics Will Lose Value 
You will still need to have a strategy with your on-page SEO, but relying exclusively on old-school methods is just not going to cut it in 2019. Instead, it will be more about the all-round customer experience and the level to which you can foster a sense of genuine engagement with your web audience. On-page SEO will always play a role, it is simply a case of accepting you cannot rely on it alone.

3. Growth of Voice Search
As far as the industry watchers are concerned, more than half of all online searches will use voice search by 2020. Which is only a year away. Which should be a concern for anybody who is yet to give any thought to voice search optimisation whatsoever. Incredibly, the most popular voice assistants on the market today have achieved an understanding accuracy of more than 90% on average. If you are not yet giving thought to voice search, you are in danger of falling behind.

4. Mobile-Optimised Websites Will Gain Value
What this means is that Google and the other major search engines have begun the process of assessing pages and websites firstly from a mobile perspective. This essentially means that if you want your website to rank higher in 2019, you will need to give mobile SEO more time and focus. If you don’t, your content will not add as much value as it could and your SEO performance will suffer.

5. There Is Life Beyond Google
Last but not least, it has never been more important to realise the fact that Google is not where the buck starts and stops when it comes to SEO. It is the biggest and most important by all means, but it is not the only search engine at all. What is more, Bing has started gaining significant traction by occupying a bigger share of the search market in 2018. Therefore, you may want to stop putting all your SEO eggs in the same proverbial basket.

Six SEO Myths to Ignore

SEO may have been around for decades now, but the concept remains a subject of confusion for millions of businesses worldwide. Every year, we’re bombarded with a completely fresh set of ‘rules’ and ‘best practices’ that can supposedly maximise the value of an SEO strategy.

Not to mention, all manner of myths and untruths – some of which are downright dangerous.

So just to illustrate how things are looking from a 2019 perspective, here’s a brief rundown of six dangerous SEO myths that are still doing the rounds with gusto right now:

1. Quality content alone is more than enough

First up, you cannot and will not achieve SEO glory without plenty of outstanding content. Nevertheless, you cannot run an effective SEO campaign on quality content alone. Content matters – and matters a lot – but is nonetheless just one of many components you need to address. Try to avoid putting all of your eggs in the same proverbial basket.


2. It’s all about the keywords

Likewise, getting too bogged down with keywords in general isn’t a good idea. Keywords are a critical element of the successful SEO strategy, but cramming in as many as possible and damaging the quality of your content in doing so is a risky tactic. Not to mention, the kind of tactic that doesn’t tend to curry favour these days with any of the major search engines.

3. More pages = better rankings

Contrary to popular belief, more pages will not necessarily guarantee more prominent SERP positioning. Unless the pages add genuine value and quality to your website, they won’t do a great deal for your SEO profile at all. Creating more pages simply for the sake of it is a common tactic, though one that’s unlikely to do you any favours.

4. Pictures are pointless

Just because search engine spiders cannot yet crawl the content of website pictures doesn’t mean they’re without value. The reason being that all major search engines now take into account various aspects of the user experience, which includes the provision of a rich mixture of media. What’s more, SEO-rich file names and alt-tags can and should be used to your advantage.

5. Mobile focus is overrated

If anything, it’s the exact opposite. Evidence suggests that not nearly enough business owners worldwide are yet giving mobile focus the attention it deserves. With mobile web traffic having comfortably overtaken desktop traffic, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the importance of mobile SEO focus.

6. It’s not necessary to hire help

Last but not least, it’s highly unlikely that any in-house effort that lacks extensive specialist expertise is going to get the job done properly. It just isn’t going to happen. Contemporary SEO is an infinitely more complex and challenging concept than it was even just a couple of years ago. You can’t make things up as you go along and expect to get by – nor can you rely on a half-cooked strategy to deliver positive results. If you’re serious about making the most of your SEO strategy, hiring help comes highly recommended.