Three Part Advertising Success Strategy
A small business can dominate local, regional and national markets using a three pronged strategy:
1) Infomercial + TV Commercials
2) Website
3) Search Engine Optimization
Archive for the ‘Web Development’ Category
Dominate Your Markets for $40 a Day
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010Use Your TV Commercials on the Web
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
If you have run TV Commercials in the past or planning to do so with a TV production company, make sure you offer the commercials on your website, as well as, distribute them throughout the web. You will get a big bang for the bucks you spent and pull in more customers to boot, for a very low acquisition cost. Here are some tips to help you pull off this strategy of combining TV with the internet.
“Blogs are built for SEO,” Rebecca Lieb
Thursday, August 12th, 2010“Blogs are long form, mature. So why should we still use them in our organic search strategy or SEO?”
Tweets, YouTube, Facebook, and LindedIn. They seem so wonderfully short form and new. But, experience and research both prove out that blogs, as SEO expert Rebecca Lieb puts it, “are built for SEO …Their structure and architecture offer a baked-in SEO platform” [http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Search-Engine-Optimization/dp/0789738317].
Lieb is on the money. That’s because text, which dominates blogs, exerts a pull force on search engines. Great graphics might attract readers but not search engines which favor words. There’s more.
Done right, blogs attract inbound links and allow for plenty of outbound ones. Search engine algorithms are programmed to follow links [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization]. See, linking flags, in the spirit of the wisdom of crowds fashion, what’s popular. In addition, blogs can be updated often, which excites search engines the way blood does sharks.
A 2010 survey by Toprankblog.com of communications/marketing leaders in corporations and outside in agencies, and consulting firms found that 95% use blogs as part of the SEO strategy. Of those, almost 88% increased measurable SEO objectives through blogging. Here are details of that study [http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/01/survey-seo-blogging/].
But not all blogs are created equal. Here are the best practices to make blogs get attention from search engines and readers as well as influentials online and offline:
- Keywords. These are the words which search engines and readers look for. With SEO, words must have a topical tie-in [such as the mid-term elections] but relate to the subject matter [following them on Plasma TV] smoothly. For readers, they must be aligned with their thinking. For example, customers for fish oil have in mind curing their depression, not improving their nutrition. Front-load the words in the subject head and first few sentences of text. Review competitors’s sites for their keywords. This is must-have intelligence to achieve higher rankings on search engines.
- Unique Voice. Blogs as a medium are personal. That means they must have a strong voice. That becomes the blog’s brand identity. Test out a number of tones before going primetime.
- Unique Content. Blogs should provide information, perspective and/or entertainment not easily available elsewhere. That’s the value the site creates. Get lazy or stale and SEO results will plummet, immediately.
- Links to influential sites, topical material. What’s linked to provides a form of added value that search engines and readers notice. It also gets the blog on the radar of those linked to.
- Frequent postings. Search engines note this and return often to check out what’s new. Continual updates also provide incentives for readers to bookmark your site for easy access throughout the day.
- Course Correction. Decrease in the measurements important to blog authors is a red flag to analyze every aspect of daily operations, from topics to keywords to tone to content. Experiment with changing what might not be effective any longer. Failing fast is the new rite of passage in business [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/]
Everything is in flux, including digital best practices. Stay up-to-date by keying in “SEO blogging tactics” on the web.
Five Questions to Ask Before Updating Your Website
Thursday, June 10th, 2010All organizations should update their websites on a regular basis. How frequently depends somewhat on changes in your industry, but you should also consider the overall quality of the website you have now. Is it technologically out of date? Does it look “home-grown” compared to those of your competitors? Is it failing to meet your expectations in terms of generating revenue? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, it’s time for a complete website overhaul. Here are five questions to ask before choosing a company to update your website.
1. Will the website you build for me be built from the ground up, or will you use a template?
Select a web development firm that will build a completely unique website for your company instead of simply plugging your content into a generic template. You’re paying for a professionally-done, distinctive website that features your products or services in the best possible light, so don’t accept any less.
2. Will the website you build for me be search engine friendly?
Some web development companies give little to no thought to how search engines will rank your web pages. Ask the vendors you are considering if they build sites with an eye toward search engine optimization (SEO). It’s best to start working toward a high search engine ranking from the very beginning of the design process. This will help you maximize your ongoing SEO efforts to achieve that much-coveted top spot in search engine results.
3. What is the charge for making changes after the website has been published?
Ask prospective website builders if minor changes can be made to your new site without charge within the first 90 days after publication. It is not uncommon for new websites to need minor changes, and some issues may not be noticeable until you’ve had a chance to work with the site. Obviously, you will be charged if you decide to remove and recreate an entire page, but simple changes, such as tweaking a sentence here and there or replacing an old photo with a new one, should be included in your initial fee.
4. How much will all of this cost?
As with anything else, you get what you pay for – if you make a buying decision about your new website based purely on price, you are not likely to be happy with the end product. A five-page HTML “brochure” website from a reputable website development company costs between $1000 and $2000. This typically includes the first year of web hosting and several email boxes.
5. How will I make payment?
Never pay the entire cost of a website development project up front. Reputable firms will require you to pay a 50% retainer and the balance when the website is published, or for larger projects, one-third as a retainer, one-third on proof, and the balance on publication.
Choosing the right web development firm can be a difficult task, but it requires careful consideration because it’s one of the most critical decisions you will make for your business. Asking these questions will help you find a reliable and professional web developer who is easy to work with and has your company’s best interests at heart.
How to Hire the Right Web Developer
Thursday, June 18th, 2009Every business owner knows that to be competitive in today’s market place they must have a website, regardless of how large or small their business. When consumers begin the buying process, the first stop they make is the internet. Consumers spend time online, researching the products or services that they are interested in purchasing long before they ever make the purchase. If you want to make that sale, you need to be the online source for the information the consumer is seeking.
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