Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

What’s better then testing out mobile marketing than with a new iPad 2?

This is my first post on a mobile device. After some hoops and hurdles in getting my iPad I’m now ready to give it a go.

Mobile Marketing and why it’s so important

As an online marketing expert I’m always watching what searches are doing on my web properties. A growing trend is the use of mobile devices to search for information and local interests. As i watched the numbers grow on my websites I thought it was about time for me to get in the game.

Now equipped with a new iPad 2 I find myself searching a lot more then I ever did before. I can now sort more clearly the information that interests me. So how does this impact SEO and my marketing efforts?

SEO for mobile devices

When creating content and dialing in on the keywords I’m beginning to think it is almost as important to focus on the reading medium. I thought smart phones would have launched a greater need for this type of content but as a user found it hard to read. Now with a range of tablets the content has becoming more accessible and readable.

In a way I’m glad for this shift as presentation of content is important both from a visual perspective as from a creative view.

Well I think it’s time for me to end this post and move on to another app on my iPad. Let me know what you think is the most important marketing need for the mobile market.

How to improve your website SEO 

How has the Panda update affected my SEO?

Oshawa Website Design Builds SEO

What is Social Media?

How can business use social media?

What Are Some Social Media Websites?

Social Bookmarking

Social News. 

Social Networking

Social Photo and Video Sharing. 

Wikis.

Bring In Customers

Increase Advertising Revenue

Build on your success

So what is Internet marketing? Once your website comes into existence you have to spread the word around. Although the best way of getting traffic is by naturally (or organically) appearing high on search engine result pages for keywords and key expressions relevant to your business, it takes a very long time and great effort. You must have an Internet marketing strategy along with carrying out your efforts to optimize your website for various search engines.

The primary components of an Internet marketing plan are:

• PPC (pay-per-click) advertising: In PPC advertising your links are displayed on various search engines and high-traffic websites and you pay for every click they send you. The best example is the Adsense links that you often come across on many websites. Even when you use Google to look for something you see those big boxes on the right-hand side or at the top; they are paid advertisements and if you click those links the advertiser will have to pay Google. Since the links appear at various places, the advertisers can bid for prime locations.

• Link and banner advertising: This is almost same as PPC advertising but in this case you can either pay a monthly amount to the publisher for publishing your link or banner or you can pay for every thousand impressions (an impression is when a page loads and then that page displays your link or banner).
• Publishing articles and distributing them: This is an inexpensive way of spreading your links around the Internet. 100s of 1000s of websites are constantly looking for content to publish and when they use your articles they have no problem attributing them to you along with publishing a link to your website since most probably they are using your articles for free. You can either approach individual publishers or you can submit your articles to various online article distribution services.

• Publishing online press releases: Just like you publish your press releases in newspapers and magazines you can also publish them on online magazines and newspapers. In fact there are many commercial as well as free websites that can publish your press release along with a link to your website.

• Generating highly relevant content for your own website/blog: The more content you have on your website or blog the more reason you give to people and the search engine crawlers to visit your link, and if you update your website or blog on a regular basis you can generate lots of repeat traffic (repeat-traffic is far more valuable than new traffic). Relevant content on your website or blog also encourages other bloggers and website owners to link to you. Besides it also gives more pages to search engines to index and display.

• Encouraging other online publishers to write about your product or service and link to your website: You can always request other online publishers and bloggers to write about your product or service; sometimes they do it for free if they really like what you have to offer and sometimes you need to pay them. Whatever method you follow the basic idea is people writing about you and linking to you.

• E-zine/newsletter publishing: This is definitely one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing. When people voluntarily sign up to receive your emails it means they are really interested in hearing from you and sooner or later they will do business with you.

• Social media marketing: Have you ever wondered why websites like FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube have become such a rage? They allow people to express themselves and exchange ideas and opinions. They can also help you increase your visibility if you can engage in fruitful conversations with the users of these websites.

We are an experienced web services and solutions company handling challenging assignments from all over the world. So far we have helped hundreds of online business owners dominate their respective industries by unflinchingly promoting the links leveraging all the legitimate channels provided by the Internet. With our proven Internet marketing and online advertising services we make sure that you can reach your target audience using some or all Internet marketing methods mentioned above.

Before formulating every Internet marketing strategy we carefully study your market and the kind of impact your product or service can have on different demographics. Since it is the human visitors who are eventually going to do business with you they are our primary target while we give shape to your Internet marketing plan.

By now everyone has heard of blogging, twitter, Facebook and other social media technologies.  The question many small businesses have is how does this help me?

If there was one tool or technology I would suggest ever company use it would be blogging.  Blogging is perfect for small businesses that want to reach a wider audience or to take on the big players.  When the Internet was first introduced to business at large the biggest benefit was for those who had limited budgets and limited resources.  Blogging is a perfect tool to help your business reach new customers by giving them insight to who you are and what you can do for them. 

Example of Corporate Blogging for Capital Equipment.

A great example of a Corporate Blog is the website Industrial Machinery News (http://www.industrial-machinery-news.com).  This website showcases industrial machinery utilized in many industries around the world.  Capital equipment sales has taken a big hit with the down-turn in today’s economy.  Many equipment manufactures are looking for new effective ways to drive traffic to their websites.  Industrial Machinery News has done this through targeted articles that enlighten the reader and helps to push them to the customer’s website.

3 Reasons Blogs help small business

What’s the quickest way to improve search engine ranking?

Blogs are search traffic magnets. By writing an article a day, a business can very quickly build up a massive blog archive packed with keyword rich articles! Content is food for the search engine spiders blog archives are an endless source for the spiders. If you feed them well they will in turn reward you with traffic!

Blogs build brand equity and establish you as a market leader.

People read a lot and a lot during the day.  When you blog about your business you continue to state what it is you do, why you do it and why you’re the business to go to. You build your Brand Equity and the view others have of you.  Leadership is easier to do online with a blog then by any other traditional marketing tool.

Blogs give your business a human voice

We all became a little jaded with all the sales and marketing hype over the past decade or so.  Blogs help to knock down those walls and open new doors of communication.  People are becoming engaged, passionate and motivated.

Corporate blogging does not only mean maintaining a blog, but also monitoring the blogosphere. At the rate news travel on the blogosphere, you need to be in at the right place at the right time to address any issues. Monitoring the blogosphere is no longer a choice, in my opinion. If you are not aware of what people are saying about you online, its time to turn your business offline.

 What other benefits are there in corporate blogging? Care to add to this list? 

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Lets start by what it’s not.  SEO will not sell your product or service, it will not phone you, and will not increase your bottom line and it won’t make your website look cool.  It will help you achieve your goals, and it’s those goals that need to be defined first to then know how to measure SEO performance. 

SEO Goals: What are they?

SEO is simply making search engines (mostly Google) place your company, product or service near the top of the search list.  In a way it’s a complex dance between you, your competitors, search engines and yea, customers. Often we forget the last critical part of SEO, customers, and how we can gain more.  Many SEO experts focus solely on ranking and keyword density for your target market.  But, what if no one calls you?  Is it optimized? Why are we optimizing in the first place?  Don’t get fooled in to thinking that we are optimizing for search engine’s, even though that is what we are doing.  Ok, that sounds confusing.  From my perspective any good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program includes as a critical measurable conversion or solid lead activity.  Saying that then I think we are optimizing search engines for maximum lead (or sales) potential.  I suggest this is where you start and not with keywords or other traditional marketing collateral. 

SEO Lead Generation: How many new customers will I get?

Leads will increase based on how knowledgeable you are of your target market.  It is the same for all marketing campaigns, are you targeting the right people, is your message focused enough that ‘they get it’.  First, start with understanding how your customers view and think of you and the products and services you offer.  Many businesses make the mistake of focusing on internalized self importance.  What I mean by that is companies often feel that they somehow mean a lot to the customer.  More often it’s the product or service you offer that is important, they don’t care what the company name is or how great you think you are.  They want your offering and want to know more about it.  Ask your customers why they bought from you, what they used to search for you and if they didn’t search for you online ask them how they would.  By getting inside the customers mind will get you to where you want to be faster and easier.

SEO Measurement: How to measure search engine optimization

So now we have a list of keywords or phrases from our customer base and hand them over to the SEO guru.  You’re told that it will take time and isn’t a precise science.  OK you have to wait.  How long, and what for? It does take time for the search engines of the world to pick up and rate, grade RANK your site and activity. While you wait for all this to work revisit the issue weekly.  Yes weekly and touch base with customers just to make sure you are targeting the right words.  Now don’t get me wrong here, don’t go changing every week just because a new customer found you in a way you didn’t know of.  Add it to your list so when you revise your strategy you will have historical data to work from.  Maximize your efforts; here is my simple search engine optimization list.

 Target keywords and phrases (your customers use not you)

Write good content that reflects these keywords

Don’t try to fool search engines, they are smarter then you

Understand and use Meta Tags effectively

Customers buy not search engines. design your site for people.
 

 So there you have it.  Quick simple no black magic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for small business.

If you want to improve your search engine rankings, first fix these critical errors that can make your site invisible on the internet. People searching for your products or services on the Internet can be an important source of new customers for you. Because someone searching for what you sell is already "sold"—they’re looking to buy. Where else can you find that kind of qualified sales lead? Since most people give up on a search if they don’t find what they’re looking for in the first three pages of the search engine results, your web site needs to get ranked in those top three pages—and the higher, the better. But there are five common characteristics that can relegate even the most attractive and compelling site to the search engine hinterlands. Many nice-looking sites show up on page 72 of the search engine results instead of on page 1 or 2 because they make one or more of the following five critical mistakes. 1. Insufficient content. Your web site needs to have at least 200 words of keyword-rich text per page. Search engines determine what your web page is about based on the words you use on the page. A page that’s mostly product photos may be very meaningful to someone shopping for those items. But the search engines have no way of understanding what’s in those pictures—they need text content to do their jobs. Your text needs to use the keywords that people will search for. If you’re an exterminator and your site talks at length about "exterminators", "pest exterminators", "insect extermination", and "rodent infestation," the search engines will understand that your site is about those terms. But if someone searches for "pest control," your site won’t show up unless you use that phrase on your site, too. 2. Use of frames. Creating frames is a technique that webmasters use to simplify their work and to help ensure a consistent appearance across all the pages of a web site. For example, your site designer may have created an outside "frame" for your page that has a top border with site identification, logos and so on. It may also have a left side border with links to the various pages on your site. And it may have a bottom border with contact information, a copyright statement and links to things like a privacy statement. In frames, the "meat" of the pages, where the real content is, is the area enclosed by those borders, and that’s the only part that changes as you go from page to page. Unfortunately, search engines may have difficulty moving around in a framed site and may fail to add all of your pages to their listings. And pages that are missed will never show up in the search engine results when people search for your keywords. A more important problem occurs when the content pages do show up in the search engine results’ pages. That’s because when a searcher clicks on the link in the search engine results, it brings them to the content part of the page. Just the content part, which doesn’t include the outside frame where site identification appears and where the links are that visitors need to find your contact information or the page where they can place an order. The simplest solution? Simply avoid using frames. 3. Graphics that include text. Because different visitors to your site have different fonts installed on their computers, the only way to ensure that the text on your web pages looks exactly as you want it—the size, font, line breaks and so on—is to include it in a graphic. And often such text looks really great. Unfortunately, search engines can’t tell if that graphic says "REALLY Cheap Widgets" or if it’s a photo of your new puppy. Words in graphics are wasted on the search engines. In order to understand that your page is about "really cheap widgets," they need to find those words in plain text on your page. In a similar fashion, navigation buttons that include words also can’t be read by search engines. So what should you do? Include keywords in the links to pages on your site. This will help the search engines understand that those pages are relevant to those words. So either replace your navigation buttons with plain text links to the pages on your site, or supplement them with a redundant set of plain text links somewhere else on your page. 4. Dynamic content. Dynamic web pages are most often found on e-commerce sites that have numerous pages featuring hundreds of products. (Dynamic pages are constructed "on the fly" from a database of product information and can often be identified by the presence of a "?" somewhere in the page address.) Regrettably, dynamic pages are often ignored by search engines for a number of technical reasons. One way to fix this problem is to create topical pages that aren’t dynamic. For example, you may sell many varieties of both tabletop widgets and portable widgets. By creating a static page (a "normal" web page that’s not created by your database) for tabletop widgets and another for portable widgets, you can use your essential keywords on those pages and still link to your dynamic pages to display individual products. Your dynamic pages are unlikely to be seen by the search engines, but your static, topical pages describing your selection of tabletop and portable widgets should. 5. Insufficient link popularity. Almost all the major search engines factor into their rankings some measure of the number and quality of other sites that link to yours. That’s a reflection of their belief that good web sites don’t link to other web sites that are worthless. If lots of high quality sites link to your site, the chances are that you have a better site than one without any incoming links. Of course, you might be comparing your well-established site to a brand new site no one knows about yet, but over time, it seems to work out that better sites have more incoming links. And all other things being equal, a site with a lot of incoming links will be ranked higher by the search engines than a site with fewer incoming links. And a site with no incoming links may be dropped entirely from some search engines. Try to obtain links from web sites that complement yours but that don’t compete with you. Investigate directories that list sites in your line of business. And be prepared to offer to link back to those sites in return for a link from them to you. If you can refrain from making these 5 critical mistakes, you can avoid earning an abysmal search engine ranking. Being visible on the web is the first step to being found on the web. And while you may still need search engine optimization to obtain rankings in the top three pages of searches on your important keywords, you first need to make sure you’re not condemned to page 72 by these five critical errors.