What is a 301 Redirect?

A "301 redirect" is a permanent redirect from one URL to the other. A 301 redirect can be described as a "change of address form" similar to what you will get from a post office. Simply stating, it ensures that those who do not know that you have moved that they can still find you.  And for web visitors it forwards them onto your new address.

For example, if your previous website was www.oldwebsite.com and you wanted to change it to www.newwebsite.com,  you'd implement a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Now whoever typed in your old URL (or clicked on a leftover link to your old URL), would automatically appear at your new URL.

So what does this mean to marketers and business owners?  

Here are two insights to better understand how a 301 redirect will help you be seen by your best leads and customers.

1. Set up a 301 redirect between the http:// and http://www versions of your domain.
   Here's something surprising ... Did you know http://newwebsite.com and http://www.newwebsite.com are considered two different websites? It's true! Even though in passing we may consider both versions the "same URL", they're actually different and could hypothetically lead to different content.
   
   FYI... Make sure you have a 301 redirect between the http:// and the http://www versions of your website. If you don't, all the inbound links that point to http://www.newwebsite.com won't pass authority over to http://newwebsite.com and vice versa.
   
   What about link authority (link juice)... Imagine http://www.newwebsite.com has 10 websites linking to it and http://newwebsite.com has 10 inbound links as well. The internet will view your business as having two URLs both with only 10 links. That's a lost opportunity to rank just a little bit better in the search engines!  By creating a 301 redirect, now the internet will see a single URL attributed to your business with 20 strong links.
   
   For current Umbrella CMS clients we programmed this feature to be automatically taken care of for you.  For potential or new clients looking to leave your current website's CMS (legacy platform) do not fret we handle this for you as well during website development.
   
   See how we handled 1100+ 301 redirects without any loss of website authority or inbound links!!!
   
   
   
2. Don't move to a new domain without setting up a 301 redirect first!
   Thinking about rebranding? Revitalizing your image? Getting a website facelift? Perhaps, you're also considering changing your website domain.
   
   Sounds reasonable, but make sure you do it the RIGHT way! Otherwise, you're shooting yourself in the foot. But perhaps you're thinking, "But wait ... I don't WANT that URL anymore. Why would I want to use a permanent 301 redirect to connect it to my new URL?"
   
   Why?
   
   Because without it, you will be throwing the web authority your previous domain collected right out the window. Any inbound links your old domain earned will lead to no-wheres-land--and worse, they won't be passing SEO credit to YOU any longer.
   
   Don't you want to keep them? Links are gold!
   
   FYI... Don't start from scratch when creating a new domain. Set up a 301 redirect from your old URL to your new one so the inbound links to your old domain will send the same authority to your new domain. 
   
   
   

Umbrella Consultants is a web development firm with two offices in San Diego, CA and Kitty Hawk, NC.  Would you like a Free Demo of Umbrella CMS contact us or give us a call 252-573-8027.  

Does Cornerstone Content Really Work

Cornerstone Content is a key component to today’s content marketing strategies, as businesses use their websites and blogs to demonstrate their own expertise. Publishing powerful cornerstone content helps your business sell its services and builds your status as an expert.

"Content marketing is the only marketing left." Seth Godin.

Business owners and marketers today know that, in terms of marketing, the world has changed dramatically. Many activities for getting a client’s attention just don’t work like they once did:

• Advertising rarely gets enough response to justify the costs
• Telemarketing efforts often get stopped before they even get a hello
• Websites that you invested time and effort in creating just doesn’t generate the leads you need
• Your trusted network isn’t delivering the same opportunities to keep you going anymore.

You are an expert in what you do and know and there are clients out there who would really value your assistance.

Buying behaviors are always changing in our web-driven world

For the past ten years, the web has transformed buying behaviors. In the past, if a potential client wanted information on your services they would call your office and engage you or one of your sales team to better understand your services or offerings.

Today, the first place a client looks is usually the internet. They’ll search Google, check out websites where they expect to sign up with their email for article updates or follow your social media feeds to find out more about your company.

As you can see potential customers are looking to see who they can trust to solve their problems.

And by now you know that your clients are in control and you’d better make sure that the information you publish about your company answers their questions.  You must position yourself as “the trusted resource” they seek.

On the internet, effective marketing is all about creating cornerstone content and sharing this content across the web.

By cornerstone content we don’t just mean information that is well-written or artfully created... we mean information that is first and foremost of real value to your client’s.  You must:

• Educate your clients
• Show them best practice
• Tell them what to look out for
• Give them valuable tips on how to achieve success
• Demonstrate how you’ve helped others in their shoes
• Answer their problems and open their eyes.

When you create and distribute this kind of relevant and compelling information, you will help turn browsers into buyers and buyers into long-term customers.

1. Engage your Community with Cornerstone content…

   Create the type of information your buyers actually want to consume. Marketing with quality cornerstone content is a win-win for your company and customers — your potential clients get the information they require and you get to demonstrate your expertise and usefulness to them.
   
   Cornerstone content will help you sell. It helps your ideal clients find you and makes it easier for them to buy from you. It’s an opportunity to position your company as the “go to” place to turn to when the time comes to buy.
   
   

2. Take a different approach to client communication…

   If you want to reap the rewards that cornerstone content brings you need to start communicating differently. Understand that there are different rules of engagement.
   
   Using the cornerstone content approach is not about telling how amazing your service or product is as we all did in the past. You should be not “look how great we are” (like in a brochure) but “look how useful we are – we can answer your problems.”
   
   This method is truly customer-centered. Creating content that is genuinely useful to your customers, makes your services or products indispensable.
   
   

3. What is easy is not always the best…

   Creating and consistently delivering this type of information takes a good amount of effort. You will need to build a deep understanding of the needs of your target customer base and where and how you can add value.
   
   Cornerstone content may not be easy but it is an essential tool if you are going to continue to grow a successful business in today’s web-driven world.

At Umbrella Consultants we help businesses, brands and marketers grow their online presence daily. Don’t be shy contact us and speak to one of our experienced marketers or see how our development team will help create the right face for your business online. Our specialty is putting your business in a manageable box so you can get back to your day to day operations.

Want to demo Umbrella CMS

Last Monday we discussed 3 Tips to Share Your Cornerstone Content to the World.

This week we are sharing...  "Content Marketing and Your Data Insights" ---

This is Post #5 of 5 in our 5 Steps to becoming Great at Online Marketing...  Enjoy!!

Good content attracts visitors, but great content keeps readers engaged.  

A good content marketing strategy must deliver the right content to the right person.  Ensuring that your content marketing efforts are effective, you need to understand the data that relates directly to your content.   

Understanding Your Content Promotion…

Sharing your content is imperative to the success of your content marketing strategy but just as important is being able to understand the data.  Your business should be utilizing analytic tools that enable you to glean valuable insights into how you should focus these efforts and where your content is gaining traction. 

Knowing where the majority of your traffic is coming from be it social, search engines or other types of websites can help you identify the channels that are best utilized to engage prospective customers.  

Does Your Content Increase Engagement…

Creating high-quality content goes a long way towards increasing the engagement and distribution of your content but your content should also be optimized for lead generation.

Understanding who your readers are allows you to tailor your content to solving your readers specific problem which results in higher engagement—and, better yet, higher conversion rates.

Also, when you continue to analyze your content’s performance over time, you can constantly improve — drawing in more traffic, more engagements, and more conversions and customers.

Content Marketing… Can it lead to business growth?

Most businesses create content as a way to generate awareness and position themselves as thought leaders in their niche.  However, you must remember that the ultimate goal of your content marketing strategy should be to drive business growth.

Gaining insight into the metrics that are indicative of your contents' performance while being able to answer with compelling data, like number of leads generated is a strong KPI that can help guide your creation and distribution strategy.  

Having your data at your fingertips in a visual format will help you get to the bottom of issues that need resolving, as well as identify big opportunities you may be missing out on.

For example, you may conclude that you should:

• Post more content on Monday and Friday because community engagement has typically been higher on those days
• Get “so & so” to write more content, or use their writing style to guide the efforts of your other content creators due to the engagement her content continuously receives
• Increase your creation of certain niche-related content posts.
• Reduce text based status updates in favor of more photo posts on your Facebook stream
• Consider creating more content on one subject, as that subject seems to be a topic that brings in higher than average interactions, with less competition. 

Even though these are fairly simplified examples, but even from insights such as these you can start to draw out some insights that may make all of the difference in generating engagement from your content.

Key Data Takeaway…

By constantly scrutinizing the wealth of data you now have at your disposal, your business can create a robust plan that can refine key components of your content marketing strategy --- while making it stronger and one that everyone can believe in.

Looking for help and want to speak to one of our consultants about your content marketing and how it will help your business grow... contact us, today!

Last Monday we discussed Create High Quality Content, better yet create Cornerstone Content.

This week we are sharing...  "3 Tips to Share Your Cornerstone Content to the World" ---

This is Post #4 of 5 in our 5 Steps to becoming Great at Online Marketing...

The Right Cornerstone Content

Publishing the right cornerstone content is a big part of the process of being successful with online content marketing. 

Now that you have published your content, you will need to allow your content to gain its maximum exposure. 

Promoting or syndicating your content on a daily basis can be a big challenge but informing your community and potential customers about your published content will enable you to:

• Build traffic to your site
• Promote yourself as an expert
• Receive quality links back to your site
• Increase your search ranking
• Build the number of your followers

1. Enable Visitors to Share content on your website
   
   Adding social sharing buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google + is a great way to encourage your site visitors to share your content in social media.  Add these buttons to every landing page, web page, blog article, and other piece of content you create. 
   
   

2. Send out an email to your customers and newsletter subscribers, early
   
   Even though your customers and newsletter subscribers are expecting information from you, you must continue to provide high-quality content that solves your readers’ problems.  By sending a link to your published content early -- your valued customers and subscribers have the option to read and provide feedback and comments for your content. 
   
   Obviously, good feedback is not only validation for you as the author but if the person commenting is an "influencer" in your niche, it can show new readers that your content is worth reading.
   
   

3. Create Snippets for Social Sharing
   
   Review your content and pull out at least 10 snippets that will entice your social media community to click on the link to your content.  Your piece of content should produce 10+ snippets that you can share on your social media streams. 
   
   Snippets can be:
   
   

• Short statements from the content
• Short quotes from the content
• Statistics from the content
• Mention and #hashtag sources who helped you develop your content

Utilizing your snippets, should enable you to share your content for several weeks across all of your social media streams.

What’s Next…

So where you choose to promote your content helps to define the measurable success of gaining traffic and exposure of your brand and business.  In next weeks post we will discuss Content Marketing and Your Data Insights.

Looking for help and want to speak to one of our consultants about your content marketing and how it will help your business grow... contact us, today!

Last Monday we discussed Understanding SEO in Content Marketing

This week we are sharing...  "Create High Quality Content, better yet create Cornerstone Content" ---

This is Post #3 of 5 in our 5 Steps to becoming Great at Online Marketing...

What is Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone content is quality content that draws visitors to your site, provides info to solve their problems and builds trust with your potential customer.   

Many understand that company blogs are continuing to be a growing source of valuable information and with potential customers searching Google for answers to their questions -- your business’ quality content must be able to provide answers to their problems.   

When planning your cornerstone content, a few of the most popular styles of content to create are:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Whitepapers
• e-Books

Blogs and Articles -- Cornerstone Content

The voice of your blogs and articles should feel like a conversation that you are having with your visitor.  You should link, when possible, to other blogs and articles on your website that relate to your topic and that ensure a thorough understanding of your knowledge of your visitors problem. 

Using Whitepapers and e-Books -- Cornerstone Content

Whitepapers and e-Books are unique content pieces published by your company and are ideal to hide access behind a sign-up form, so you can begin collecting lead information from your readers as they are educating themselves. 

A better educated visitor means a higher qualified lead which usually leads to a better conversion rate for your website and business.

Provide the solution to your clients problems

So as you begin to plan and create a strategy for your company’s cornerstone content, know that potential customers are hungry for solutions to their problems and your cornerstone content is the perfect opportunity to provide information that will solve their problems and build trust with your visitors.

"Learn 3 Ways that Cornerstone Content will help you Corner your Market"

Looking for help and want to speak to one of our consultants about your content marketing and how it will help your business grow... contact us, today!

Last Monday we discussed "Understanding What and Who You are Marketing For"

This week we are sharing "Understanding SEO in Content Marketing" ---

This is Post #2 of 5 in our 5 Steps to becoming Great at Online Marketing...  Enjoy!

You do not have to be a great writer to become a great online marketer.  

Remember in our first post, Understanding What and Who You Are Marketing, in our 5 part series, 5 Steps to Becoming A Great Content Marketer, we gave you a quick exercise that you could use to clarify why you are in business and what problems you solve with your business.

Now, that you have better clarity in your company’s messaging throughout your marketing strategy,  you will want to create content that closely resembles the vocabulary of what your community will be searching for.  

You want to really get in the heads of the people that are searching for your website and the product or services that your business provides. 

• What terms will people use? 
• How do people search for my business? 

This is the content that you will want search engines to index in their crawls of the internet, so they will deliver potential customers to your site   

The following is a tool and a term that you will need to keep in mind when preparing content for your business' online growth.

Utilize Google’s Keyword Research Tool

In the past you were able to see the Keywords that people searched for to get to your site…. (See Keyword not provided) We like to use Google Adwords Keyword Planner to find new and related keywords (http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/) 

Do not worry about the search volume data unless you are going to actually spend money and utilize those keywords to advertise (PPC, adwords, etc…).  These search results are known as “head terms”.

What are long tail keywords… Are they worthwhile?

Long tail keywords are longer keyword phrases that are more specific and are actually what people are searching for, this is why you want to get into the heads of understanding your potential customers that are searching for your products or services is key!

Did you know that long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.

and...

People who search by using long tail keywords... are farther along in their buying process and are more likely to purchase from a long tail keyword search.

As you can see, it’s imperative to take a mindful approach to your business’ content marketing strategy. 

1. You must gain clarity on what your marketing message is and to whom you should be conveying that message.  
   
   
2. You need to research and figure out which keywords and long tail keywords you want to utilize.
   
   
3. You must understand how SEO plays a pivotal part in your content strategy.

Looking for help and want to speak to one of our consultants about your content marketing and how it will help your business grow... contact us, today!

The next 5 Monday's we will be sharing a blog series covering "5 Steps to becoming Great at Online Marketing" 

This week we are sharing...  "Understanding What and Who You are Marketing For" ---

This is Post #1 of 5...  Enjoy!!

Are you new to online marketing? 

Or

Are you wondering why your website or ecommerce site is not getting the traffic you want?

Do you understand what you are marketing? Obviously it is your business or brand -- But do you really know how to convey that to your visitors... Do you speak in a voice that they will understand?   

I have a quick exercise for you that will give you insights into your customers and the voice that you can best relate to their needs and wants.

Take a few minutes and answer these questions about your business, your hobby or idea.

1. What does your ideal customer want?
2. What’s the main problem they have that you believe you can solve?
3. What’s your method for solving that problem?
4. What do you love to talk about more than anything?

OK… Now combine them all and:

1. What does your ideal customer want?
   A software that is easy to use, allows them to market and share their content to their visitors & customers, while enabling them to make better business decisions from their data.
   
   

2. What’s the main problem they have that you believe you can solve?
   I believe there are many tools out there to market your business but not one that has all of the tools in one platform that is economical for small and medium sized businesses or agencies.
   
   

3. What’s your method for solving that problem?
   By developing tools that we utilize to develop our own scalable growth, then sharing with our many clients.
   
   
   
4. What do you love to talk about more than anything?
   We love to help small businesses to market their businesses the right way!   Our motto is “A rising tide, lifts all boats!”

And this is why my business partner and I created RevSocial.

We wanted to create a software that is easy to use, allows you to market and share your content to your visitors & customers, while enabling you to make better business decisions from your data.  We understood that there were many tools to help you market your business but not one that has a lot of the tools in one platform; that is economical for small & medium sized businesses or agencies. 

However, by developing the tools that we utilize to ensure our own scalable growth, we are now able to deliver a platform that our clients could utilize as well.  We enjoy helping small businesses to market their businesses the right way with the right tool set! 

The best thing about this little exercise is that what you plan on becoming known for ends up being so specific that it creates a very specific content path to follow. 

Don’t worry about pigeon holing yourself in the beginning—because following these next few steps you will see how you create a sustainable content path as you grow.    

Over the next few weeks, I will give you a few steps that you can follow to get started on the right path to becoming a better online marketer. 

Looking for help and want to speak to one of our consultants about your content marketing and how it will help your business grow... contact us, today!