What steps are you taking to ensure the success of your business? Are you blogging? Have you started using social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn? Perhaps you are doing these business-promoting activities and want to do something more. If so, then why not take advantage of geotargeting? Geotargeting is defined as the ability to target users by city, state, country and zip code. And, while for those who specialize in internet marketing geotargeting is nothing new, its potential is rapidly being seen by business owners in the areas of SEO, Social Media and Pay-per-click advertising.
Businesses using geotargeting can ensure they are found quickly by consumers doing web searches. How? If you own an Italian restaurant and it is listed on the web using geotargeting, when a consumer types in “city + Italian restaurant” a map will show up with area Italian restaurants marked, as well as an assortment of information.
With the New Year just around the corner, perhaps you are thinking about the past 12 months and what changes there have been in your business. For instance, did your sales increase? Why or why not? What could you have done to attract more online customers? Perhaps, you had planned to start a newsletter, but…Yes, there are many aspects of having a successful business, and as the New Year approaches, this is a great time to set some new goals for 2011.
At Page Progressive we want to see your business not just survive but thrive. Our professional web designers can assist you in determining how to best use your time, efforts and energy to make your business all it can be. To get you started, here are 15 website resolutions your company may want to make for your company in 2011.
Ongoing social media maintenance. Just having a Facebook page is not enough. You need to spend time each week adding comments, polls, answering questions, posting promos, etc. This helps build a following and improves your presence on the web. Whether you spend time on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, the benefits are there. Just be sure that you don’t cannibalize other productive time.
Create link bait. Write (or have someone do it for you) informative articles that link to your website. Effective link bait articles can contain lists, eye catching titles that use high ranking keywords and contain useful information that others will want to link to or post on their site.
Newsletters and blogs. You want people to know who are and what you are doing. Whether you opt for a daily blog post, a weekly blog post, a newsletter each quarter or any other schedule, making yourself known through newsletters or blog posts is the online equivalent of a radio or TV commercial.
Implement SEO practices. Be sure your website is search engine optimized through keyword rich content, blog posts and new pages. Set aside time each month to explore additional keyword phrases you can optimize your site for. Use the new Google Instant Search or the Google Adwords Keyword tool for suggestions.
Think about the future. Spend time implementing long term strategies (white hat vs. black hat, link building) with consistent payoffs rather than short term goals with big payoffs.
Good Website usability is a must. Make sure that you spend time designing your site to be mobile device and local search friendly. After all, website usability by -regardless of the devices being used- will increase sales and keep your guests longer.
Make your site interesting to visitors by having tutorials, videos, infographics, e-books, and other features-this is especially helpful if these features are only available on your website!
If you already have a company newsletter, work on reducing your bounce rates by 20-40%.
Have a holistic approach to ecommerce. Combine SEO, social media and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to improve business.
Remember who and what is important. Spend time improving current projects and keeping current customers happy rather that chasing after new clients and beginning more projects.
Link building is a must! Focus on getting more organic links and less paid ones.
Get involved in your community, industry events, conferences, etc, so that others will know who you are and what you do.
Have back up. If you don’t have a backup system in place, make it a priority. Whether you opt for external hard drives or online back-up services, having backup copies of programs, sales, client info, etc. is vital. Also make sure your web host performs regular backups of all files and databases as well.
Delegation-delegation-delegation! Everyone has different skill sets. Some excel in writing, others in designing, some in programming, and so on. When people work on projects that fit with their strengths and skill set, then your company can more easily reach its full potential. If you don’t have the people to within your company, consider hiring someone else. If you don’t know what skill sets your employees posses consider purchasing the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, (Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton) so that you and your employees can take the Gallup strengthfinder.com profile test.
Pay attention to what is happening in the world of the web and how it relates to business. According to Adam Audetter, there are 3 primary focuses for business trends. Paying attention to them can make or break your business goals. These focuses are:
Prices– The Internet has made comparison shopping easier than ever and customers are moving away from brand loyalty and toward price loyalty. Today’s consumers are looking for deals, discounts, coupons, incentives, free shipping and other reasons to support a specific site or product. E-commerce sites need to do everything possible to reach and retain customers.
Use visual aids– A study by comSense showed that using video as a part of online shopping made sales 64% more likely to occur and that site guest stayed at least 2 minutes longer on the site.
Keep up with trends in technical SEO. Just as Google Instant was released in September of 2010, Bing is going to officially support the "rel canonical" Meta tag in January or February. Unfortunately, Bing is not likely to be able to support cross domain "rel canonical" implementations. The best tool for SEO in regards to Bing is the Bing Webmaster Toolbox. Companies who wish to have a visible presence on the web need to be aware of this and any other technical SEO changes, so they can have the greatest impact possible.
Depending on your business, there may be other new year’s resolutions you may need to include, these are just some to get you started. It is ultimately up to you to determine which of the resolutions you will focus on. According to PC World.com the following pitfalls should be avoided in making New Year’s resolutions:
Having too many. Rather than setting so many goals that you can’t keep up then feeling like a failure, pick New Year’s resolutions that are actually achievable. If you have a number of goals for the year, consider grouping them into manageable sets and focus on each group over a set period of time.
Be sure the goal is clearly defined and understood by all those responsible for accomplishing them.
Assessment. Take the time-whether weekly, monthly, or otherwise to assess how you are doing in achieving a particular goal. Make notes of what is, or is not, working.
At Page Progressive, we would love to sit down and help you assess your site and determine what your focus and goals for the New Year should be. We have the people available to see that your website meets all the latest web standards as well as writers, designers and graphic artist who would love to take your business to the next level. You can look us up on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or check out our portfolio to see what we can do to help you realize your New Year’s resolutions for 2011.
The world of technology is constantly changing. In fact, by the time you finish reading through this, chances are something new has been developed or released. However, here are some of the more recent advancements in technology, development and communication that you, as a business owner, might care about.
Google:
Google announced the end of the Real Time
Collaboration protocol WAVE which was introduced in 2009. WAVE was
designed to replace e-mail and change online communication but was
ultimately too complicated and confusing.
IE9 Beta was released
Sept. 15. It has better graphic capabilities and allows you to pin
websites to the task bar. In addition, IE9 offers improvements to CSS3
selector support and a ledge for HTML canvas. For many, these changes
are seen as too little too late as IE has slipped to 50% of the market share recently – a position it used to dominate.
Google Instant search- Search at
the speed of type. Released Sept. 8, Google Instant Search takes what
you have already typed, determines a likely completion and streams Real
Time results based on these predictions. Google InstantI offers:
Relevant results quicker, so you can get what you are looking for faster
Results are listed before you finish typing; just stop typing, select and go
You can scroll to search, then see results instantly
Time
saving-tests show that the average search saves 2 to 5 seconds per
search, which translates into as much as 11 hours per second.
Microsoft:
Bing Maps has a new interface with improved graphical tools for rich colors and better images.
Microsoft employees had a funeral procession for the iphone.Windows-powered phone and tablets are rumored to be on the way…somehow I doubt these new products will be sending the iphone to the afterlife, but it is good to see Microsoft in the news again 🙂
Research in Motion
Blackberry announced what appears to be the first serious competitor for the iPad, dubbed the "PlayBook."
Apple:
Apple recently recanted on their stance on allowing Flash to run on their iOS device. Now we wait and see if Adobe cares.
Apple
X Code IDE can manage all testing devices, packaging iPhone apps with
correct certificates, install apps on devices and has a remote debugger
which connects to the devices in Real Time to help developers manage
breakpoints as the app is controlled on the device.
Latest
version of XCode is XCode 4 which is bundled with Mac OSX V 10.6
allowing 7 new multi-tasking services which improve user experience. The
IAd displays interactive content without leaving the app and has 1,500
new APIs.
Adobe:
Flash Player 10.1 for the
mobile has been re-designed and optimized to reduce memory needs by 50%
and has hand held features like accelerometer and smart zooming which
scales Flash to full screen.
Adobe Air improvements provide
better applications outside the mobile browser and across multiple
operating systems. The key improvement is better working Flash on mobile
devices which pleases both designers and consumers.
Software & Development:
Magiq-This
marketing tool can be used on any system. It allows you to collect data
which can then be implemented into creating a site that is geared
toward specific guests. (e.g. Those who find your page by searching for
a keyword will get a different homepage-if you choose such an option.)
Or, you could base your homepages appearance on different text, images
or a different search variable. The program uses "gnomes" that perform
geolocation, image replacement and other tasks. Each time a gnome is
employed you are charged-its minimum monthly cost is only a measly $790.
Firebug1.5/Firebug Lite 1.3–
FREE! This can be used with Firefox, IE6+, Safari, Opera and Chrome.
The Firefox extension is simple to use and gives you an overview of the
page being considered. It has separate tabs for DOM, HTML and CSS so you
can find what you are looking for easily. Also, you can enable specific
panels to make checking JavaScript and others easier. On pages without
scrutinization needs, Firebug automatically removes itself.
SendFlow-
a web-based platform which allows users to design, broadcast and manage
interactive SMS text and voice messages. Two-way messages can be
answered in Real Time using land-lines, mobile phones and Internet
transports, like Google-talk.
Percent Mobile- A fully hosted mobile
analytics service that measures and analyzes mobile traffic to one’s
website. Percent Mobile is designed to help you understand your guests
so will better know how to serve them.
2nd quarter
data from NPD Group shows Android as the top selling OS in American
smartphones. Google says that 200,000 Androids are being activated
daily.
Social Media:
Recent studies
show that Twitter users are the most influential consumers on the web.
Daily Twitter users are, compared to non-Twitter users:
6x more likely to publish online articles
5x more likely to post blogs
7x more likely to post Wikis
3x more likely to post product reviews
FaceBook advertising has increased 10-fold in the past year.
FlowTown–
This web based tool allows clients to import and connect e-mail
addresses to real people on the social web. Flowtown provides profile
information such as location, age, and gender as well as any social
networks that current e-mail contacts are using. FlowTown clients can
use this information to better their marketing campaigns. MailChimp recently implemented a similar ability, called Social Pro.
Research by Nielsen Co. shows that Americans spend 22.7% of their time using social media sites.
Sources:
Website Magazine, October 2010; pages 6, 7, 42 & 43
Before you can determine if your site is being indexed by search engines, you need to have something that can tell you if your site is being seen by the search engines. There are many free tools to help with this: Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Microsoft/Bing Webmaster Center. In addition, there has recently been much in the news about the effects of social media on the search engine ranking as a result of Google’s recent move to "Real Time" search. But how can you use "Real Time" search to your advantage?
As you begin writing for Real Time search engines, keep in mind how they work. Remember, Real Time searches index comments and Tweets and then display them at the top half of the search results page. You want to be in this coveted spot. With this in mind, how can you make the most of your Twitter account so that your business gets the optimum exposure? Here are 9 ways to use Twitter to improve your business search engine ranking.
Keywords are important. Be sure that you use keywords in the links as well as within Tweets.
Tweet unique content, not just items cut and pasted from someone else.
Your choice in user name, like your domain name and key words, is important. Consider a user name that has your anchor text or keywords. In addition, be sure that your brand is your Twitter name; do not use a modified name on your Twitter account as this will not generate a posting above the fold in search results. If your name has already been taken you have two possible options. You can see if Twitter will allow you to register a trademark squatting complaint and give the name to the proper owner. Or, according to rumor, if an account is not active for 6 months, the name may be re-circulated.
The age of the account is thought to be a factor as "older" tweets will outrank those by "rookies".
Have a common theme in your tweets. If all of your tweets contain information about painting, then you are going to be seen as an expert in that field.
To improve your reputation, get external links from non-social media sites.
Tweet, retweet and tweet some more. The more you post the better your chances of ranking.
Close ratios between "followed" to "follow", like reciprocal links, may be seen as a red flag to Google. Be careful of auto-following.
Using lists, is thought by some, to be a great way to improve your Twitter reputation, especially if the lists are designed by a reputable Twitter user.
As you use Twitter to improve your business search engine ranking, consider your approach. There are 5 things to keep in mind in order to create a Twitter strategy for your business.
Choose your audience; pay attention to who in your audience has the influence.
Know what people are saying about you and your competitors.
Determine what you are after. Sales? Contacts?
Determine your goals and use metrics to track them.
Decide on your approach. Consider how formal you want to be, what your keywords will be, what your message will be and any other factors that represent your company and the chosen audience.
Since Google, Yahoo and Bing have all opted for Real Time searches, be sure to keep these tips in mind as you use Twitter. In order to promote your business, be sure you are taking advantage of the many tools available. Do it yourself, or have someone do it for you. If you don’t know where to start, talk to the pros here at Page Progressive, we’ll be glad to help.
Having become proficient in the use of social media, you are likely recognizing that a great deal of time can be spent maintaining a social media site. After all, tracking down hot topics, checking reports and doing analysis can be time consuming. Fortunately, others have already recognized this, and have created a variety of tools to help make managing a social site easier and more productive for the business owner.
Consequently, there is no need for you to spend excessive amounts of time researching,
tracking and analyzing your sites; rather begin using these 5 social
media tools:
MajesticSEO offers
link analysis and acquisition counts. Site owners can get full reports
on their website. There is also a paid version that gives you link
details on your competition and helps you find high impact links for
SEO.
Andy Beal’s Trakur monitors
social media sites giving you insight into what others are saying about
your brand, identifies their influences and shoes where they are
commenting
SocialMention is
a free Real Time and social search tool that crawls social media sites.
It has a variety of options, outputs and tools that help you create
spreadsheets to track your progress.
PostRank shows
you what topics are hot, so you can include information about the most
popular search queries.
bit.ly is
a URL shortener that allows you to create a domain name for Twitter and
Facebook that is recognized as your own.
Tips for Building a Social Media Network
Now that you have your tools and apps in place for your social media profiles, you will want to make sure your fans and followers know as much as possible about what your business can do for them. The tips below will help:
Make sure people know about your social media accounts. Link them through your blog, website, newsletter, signature line, etc. Pages such as Flavors.me are a great way to get all your sites listed in one location.
Pick an avatar or custom background that stands out as this will help people recognize you.
Be authentic and accessible- people want to know who they are dealing with.
Be polite and helpful- Offering a service or giving advice or free consultations shows expertise and builds a good business reputation.
If possible, spend some time each day (some people schedule a set number of minutes) on your social media account. If you can’t do this- or don’t want to, then consider hiring someone to do this for you. The more people see "you" the more they will trust you. Note that the more strategic time (NOTE: Not playing games or sending goofy messages to your high school buddies) you invest into social media, the more benefits you will rea. Just having the account and letting it sit won’t do you any good, as it is SOCIAL media after all…
Be persistent. Building business through social media will pay off, but you, or whoever you appoint, have to invest some time.
Using social media is proving to be one of the business owner’s best friends. Take time to make your business social media profiles benefit both you and your customers. You will soon see an increase in business. Whether you maintain the page yourself or hire Page Progressive to do it for you, you don’t want to miss the potential of social media – your competitors won’t. get started today!
Now that you have set up accounts at a few (or several) social media profiles, you will want to use it to its full potential. Of course, maintaining a social media listing takes time, so learning how to get the most of your efforts is important. Fortunately, making your company’s social media profile profitable can be done through the effective use of tools and applications that can increase your business while decreasing the number of hours you spend on your Facebook, Twitter, Buzz or other social media profiles.
7 Facebook Apps to Improve Your Business
As one of the most recognized social media sites, Facebook has massive potential for increasing your number of customers. Recognizing that a number of applications have been designed to assist businesses in customer services and product promotion. Some of the most useful are:
Contests, promotions and polls are a great way to support your business and encourage interaction with your fans, just be sure to follow the Facebook guidelines for using contests.
SocialToo allows users to update their profile pages and promote Twitter from their Facebook status update box.
SocialOomph provides update tools for Facebook, Twitter, and StatusNet.
Network Blog makes it easy to promote your blog on Facebook and connect with others.
JobMagic is a recruiting application that expands a recruiter’s range through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Social Store Builder enables a store owner to sell and display product from their Facebook page.
IAnalyst– This new Facebook app allows you to integrate HTML into your page. It is especially helpful for small business owners.
6 Twitter Management Tools
Depending on your business, you may have opted to set up a Twitter account. However, as you are limited to 140 characters per tweet, you will want to make the most of your text and Twitter time. Here are some tools to enhance your Twitter business account:
HootSuite.com offers a free tool to help manage multiple social media accounts. You can personalize columns, view multiple feeds, and create messages then select what social media accounts to post to. You can even schedule when tweets go out and have custom searches for topics that interest you.
CoTweet allows you to manage as many as 5 accounts with a single login; there are workflow management tools and the ability to take notes on Twitter for co-users to view.
EasyTweets is a low management tool for multiple Twitter accounts. It allows you to post and track RSS feeds in Google Analytics, set up continuous searches for brand mentions, and follow those users who mention your brand.
TweetDeck keeps track of multiple social media accounts. You can follow topics with saved searches, manage conversations and records, and share or watch video clips, YouTube and photos.
PeopleBrowser allows a visual browser based dashboard view of social activity and to create and manage groups by adding public/private tags.
Twitterfeed.com takes RSS feeds from a blog and posts them as a Tweet linking them back to your site. However, be careful not to overuse this automation tool as it can then be seen as spam and people may stop acknowledging it.
With the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, you can expect to find more and more tools to take advantage of these services. With the speed at which social media platforms are being developed, having tools to help automate and simplify things are almost essential! Stay tuned in for the next post where we will be exploring more tools for social media research and also tips for building a social media network!
As few as 3 years ago, the use of social media sites and their relevance to business was unheard of. Today, however, savvy businesses are approaching their advertising and marketing resources with a bend toward social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Buzz and others. In fact, according to the observations by the Center for Marketing Research, the Inc. 500 companies are outperforming Fortune companies largely due to the use of social media. In addition, Facebook recently topped Google as the most visited website on the internet. If you are not using a social media website, then you are missing out on a large customer base-and who wants to do that?
If you still aren’t convinced of the value of social media websites, consider these recent five facts:
There are more than 350 million active users on Facebook with 1.6 million active pages.
50% of active Facebook users log in on a daily basis, spend a minimum of 55 minutes per day and are posting 700 items per second
To put these numbers into perspective, consider these comparisons. According to a February 2010 report:
Google has 34,000 searches per second; 2 million per minute; 121 million per hour, 3 billion per day and 88 billion per month.
Yahoo has 3,200 searches per second; 194 per million; 12 million per hour; 280 million per day and 8.4 billion per month
Bing has 927 searches a second; 56,000 per minute; 3 million per hour; 80 million per day and 2.4 billion per month
Twitter reports 50 million tweets daily and Facebook shows 60 million per day.
In addition to these numbers, it should also be noted that in January 2010, Facebook passed Yahoo to be second only to Google. Then, during the week of March 7-13, 2010 visits to Facebook increased by 185% and Google by only 9% over the same week of 2009.
With these numbers in mind, utilizing the selling power of social media in business marketing is a must. After all, using social media sites is cost effective (usually free) and the ability to build one’s customer base is exponential. However, there is more to social media than merely setting up an account. To be effective, businesses need to combine SEO practices and customer interaction options in order to build trust and respect with their audience. This social media interaction has been shown to increase retail and e-commerce significantly. Many companies have recognized the correlation between social media and sales. According to a February 2010 Marketing Sherpa poll of 2,300 communication experts, "79% of experts of retail/e-commerce plan to increase their social media interaction in 2010" Simply put, if you are looking for a cost effective and efficient was to promote your business, social media is the way to go.
Uses of Social Media to Businesses
Because search engines are now using "Real Time" search results as well as crawling social media sites, business owners can promote their services in a variety of ways. Also some sites, like Facebook, allow you to target your advertising based on gender, relationship status, age, location, etc… so you are able to focus your efforts on those who are most likely to be interested in your services. Consider including any (or all) of the following as part of your business social media page.
Post questions that encourage fan response
Post a poll to garner customer feedback
Integrate apps like games or quizzes to encourage guests to spend more time on your page
Repost information from other users that is relevant and interesting
Promote your business through promos only available on your page (free shipping for fans only, exclusive product discounts, specials, etc…)
Social media is likely here to stay. Regardless of whether you are a small business owner or President Obama, choosing to use the tools available on sites like Facebook or Twitter, can be a big business benefit. Why not use it to your advantage and promote your business where you will be seen by the largest customer base available? You can do it yourself or hire the professionals at Page Progressive to do it for you. The sooner you do, the quicker your business can increase. Contact us today!
When building or redesigning your website, it is vital to do everything possible to make it rank high in a web search. After all, a website that is only visited by friends and family is not helping you increase your customer base. To help your site rank high in web searches, one of the most efficient methods is the effective use of SEO.
Coined in 1997, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of making one’s website more accessible and visible to search engines via natural or unpaid (aka- organic or algorithmic) search results rather than through SEM (search engine marketing) which is paid inclusion. When SEO is correctly employed, search engines will crawl your site and find relevance to a search term and the site will rank high at the top of search engine results. The higher your website ranks, the greater potential for business. It should be noted that writing for SEO should be done with social media groups such as Twitter, Facebook and others in mind as Google announced in December 2009 that it would be using the web histories of all its users to populate search results.
SEO is, however, more than stuffing your website with keywords. Paradoxically, too frequently using a keyword or phrase can work against you. To improve your website’s SEO, take these 4 steps (Steps 3 & 4 will be covered in subsequent articles).
Develop a list of keywords used to search for your webpage, products or services. As you begin creating a keyword list, be thorough but be sure not to only include your brand or company names. You may want to talk to friends and family for keyword ideas. Other ways to develop a keyword list is the use of synonyms (mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, etc.). Also, keywords don’t have to be single words; phrases with 3 or more words are known as long tail words or niche words and can bring more search engine hits than individual words.
Keyword Research and Development- After creating a list of keywords, you are ready to begin keyword research and development through the use of keyword research tools. You can use sites like Word Tracker, Google AdWords,Spy Fu and SEO Digger. These tools range in cost from free to a monthly or annual charge, but are well worth the time (and money) it takes to use them. The keyword research and development tools will show you the most popular search terms for your product or service and how often they are used. With these words and phrases identified you are ready to begin making changes to your website.
Intentionally misspelled words may seem an odd approach, but according to Gyutae Park of Winning the Web , there are 10 million misspelled search queries every day. To find high potential keyword misspellings check out Keyword Typo Generator. No, you don’t want to produce copy that is rife with errors, but including a statement like "Common misspellings are…" or turning a common misspelling into a brand name can make a difference.
It is also critical to look at web analytics such as Click Tracks, Key Word Discovery or Keyword Spy. Web analytics will show you how many times related words are used to find specific information.
Once you have your keyword research finished you will be ready to proceed to step 3…covered next post 🙂
What steps are you taking to ensure the success of your business? Are you blogging? Have you started using social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn? Perhaps you are doing these business-promoting activities and want to do something more. If so, then why not take advantage of geotargeting? Geotargeting is defined as the ability to target users by city, state, country and zip code. And, while for those who specialize in internet marketing geotargeting is nothing new, its potential is rapidly being seen by business owners in the areas of SEO, Social Media and Pay-per-click advertising.
With the New Year just around the corner, perhaps you are thinking about the past 12 months and what changes there have been in your business. For instance, did your sales increase? Why or why not? What could you have done to attract more online customers? Perhaps, you had planned to start a newsletter, but…Yes, there are many aspects of having a successful business, and as the New Year approaches, this is a great time to set some new goals for 2011.
The world of technology is constantly changing. In fact, by the time you finish reading through this, chances are something new has been developed or released. However, here are some of the more recent advancements in technology, development and communication that you, as a business owner, might care about.
As you begin writing for Real Time search engines, keep in mind how they work. Remember, Real Time searches index comments and Tweets and then display them at the top half of the search results page. You want to be in this coveted spot. With this in mind, how can you make the most of your Twitter account so that your business gets the optimum exposure? Here are 9 ways to use Twitter to improve your business search engine ranking.
