Archive for April, 2010:

Map Optimization – Add youself to google.com/places

Did you know that approximately 80% of searches are looking online for a local business.

Search Engines are getting smarter at pinpointing your location, but even so, it would be best to optimize your website and local business on Google Maps. It’s probably the most specific way for a customer to find you. But the question is, how do you place your business on it.

This is just the first step to Search Map Optimization, but an important one. Get listed on google.com/places

Get your local business found on Google Map Search. It allows you to communicate with customers and get insights to make decisions.

Google Places allow you to claim your business on Google

Several key features are managing business information, posting coupons and live updates, and you can also see how you are doing.

Sign Up with Google Places and consult a Search Map Optimization (SMO) consultant today to find out how you can increase your local business visibility!

7 bad habits of SEO

The 7 highly non-effective habits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Getting your website to rank on the top of the most well known search engines is the greatest thing for your internet marketing. That alone will increase you websites visibility, but the hardest question is, HOW?

The process of Search Engine Optimization is complex and it raises many questions on how to properly optimize your own website or hire a specialist SEO agency. Fact of the matter, SEO is hard work and a very difficult process that takes time and a lot of analysis.

Here are 7 things you should not do when building your Search Engine Optimization campaign.

1) Putting search engines before users

First off, Search Engine Optimization is the process your website undergoes to help it obtain the best possible listings. You want to be at the highest ranking you can possible be to attract traffic from your target audience. But a main concern to remember is not to forget about the needs of the end-user when modifying your website for SEO. Is your website still visual appealing, use-able, and functional for the needs of your viewers. So when taking up an SEO campaign, remember to produce well-written and designed content to sell your website. Because at the end of the day, your website carries the image of what you do and is your 24 hour salesman.

2) Link spamming

Another main issue of bad SEO is link spamming. You don’t want your website chasing after as many links as possible that have no relevant use or value to the user. And more specifically, search engines now rank links based on the authority of the sites they come from. So spamming your links like all forms of spamming reduces the value of your websites presence. So Quality over Quantity is the idea here. Focus on link-building efforts on relevant websites so you can increase your ranking in the Search Engine Optimization game.

3) Disregarding link text

Anchor text of a link should be written very precisely. Search engines now use anchor text as an indicator of internal links (links from 1 page to another). Search Engines like Google want to list the best websites up top. So your user experience needs to be amazing. An example of what not to do would be using an anchor text like “click here”. It adds little information and value to where it’s going.

4) Not tracking progress

The best way to measure if your Search Engine Optimization is working for your website is to track progress from the beginning. This is probably the most crucial element of seeing what works and what does not. Adding collecting proper statistics can help you decide on what new changes to make, pointing you in the right direction.

5) Choosing the wrong keywords

Choosing the right keywords for your website is important. Finding keywords takes a lot of time and analysis to get the best keywords that people are using in search engines. It’s best to choose a few precise keywords that the content of your website targets than to overload your website with every keyword you can think of.

6) Overlooking accessibility

Accessibility is an important element of Search Engine Optimization. Crawlers look to see how accessible your website is to all users regardless of disability and impairments. The ADA stress on creating websites that are helpful for disabled people. Allowing a visually impaired person the opportunity to access your website by having it use-able for them now helps your SEO results too. But not only that, the screen readers they use to view sites can only read words so making a link text as descriptive as possible helps dramatically. It goes a long way to help someone these days.

7) Not planning your SEO strategy

Last, but not least…you can’t have an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign without plan or direction. Plan for a useful strategy and map out the points of interest. Set short term objectives that move you towards the number 1 ranking.

The effectiveness of blog marketing

Blog marketing has become an effective tool to bring your website viewers. It is an important area to grow your business. Why? It is because blogs improve the online experience by adding information in a comfortable way on a website. Blogs have made its way into the realm of marketing and if done correctly, it is a great tool towards the success of your company. A Blog success correlates to content, distribution, and frequency. The most popular blogs have a voice bring personality and keeps the viewers coming back for information.

Some blogs specialize in the whole industry that they are in, reporting on various things occurring in that industry. It stars with everything from competitor news, to industry events, and hot topics that might occur. This approach gives you probably the greatest amount of material to work with thus running out of things to write about doesn’t really happen often. Whether you’re starting out creating a blog on a specific interest you have or adding it to your business, here are a series of questions to ask yourself before implementing a successful blog marketing strategy:

• What are your goals?
• What is your social media strategy?
• What must happen for your customers before you meet your business objectives?
• What are the key performance indicators that will help you measure the buyer persona’s path towards conversion?
• Do you have the measurement tools in place to properly monitor and measure for research and to determine the effectiveness of your blog marketing?

Taking a look at Company Logo Changes

When looking back through time as companies grow, it looks like changes within a company go beyond structure. Within the long company life cycle, logo redesign seems to take a huge part of reshaping an image to fit a bigger audience. A logo redesign can be worth its weight if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign. A redesign can be small and simple, but other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and its goals. From Wal-Mart, IBM, Starbucks, and Apple, each company has taken the time to reshape their image. Could you imagine Apple selling an IPad or IPhone with their old logo?

A logo redesign can invigorate a company’s image or squander its brand equity. It takes careful time and thinking, proper exposure to their target group and testing. Here are a few well known companies that have changed their logo over their company life cycle.

The Search Engine Optimization Campaign

Getting your SEO campaign right is the hardest things to do. But get it right, as many as 55 percent of all the people who search for that specific term to click on your link. SEO works, plain and simple. It is more cost effective and delivers more of a long term benefit than paid advertisements in today’s marketing world.

But SEO is becoming more and more sophisticated. The search engines try to limit all that spam and useless content that no one wants to see.

So how do you start? It’s all about working smart. Start with a plan. Make short term objectives in order to reach those goals. Make small steps and track all your results.

Hiring an SEO firm or consultant or for this can help with all these steps. But in the meantime, a couple ideas to dwell on are:

• get your website indexed with all search engines
• use video to grab attention
• optimize your images
• make use of the location for your business
• get your content into the web news using RSS feeds
• submit an XML sitemap
• Be relevant and build authority
• Join the conversation with social media marketing