I sent an email off to a business acquaintance who had some questions about his web site this morning.
Some things that you can do to help get targeted traffic:
Write in your blog frequently – link a short blog post describing a product to the item in your shop. The post contains valuable keywords for search engines to get ahold of and if the blog is updated frequently, Google will come back and index your site frequently. This is probably the most important thing you can do – 2-4 times a week at a minimum – you have a topic and products that online consumers are searching hard for.
Put those videos from YouTube on your site, embed them directly from YouTube – this is simple to do – just put them right in a blog post. It’s great content, establishes credibility and encourages the visitor to stay on your site longer.
Submit your RSS feed to FeedAg.com: this will distribute your Blog content around the web via RSS-the more spots you can get this, the better.
Hook your RSS feed up to a fan page in Facebook – this will make your facebook page look updated, and will automatically update every time you update your blog. Social Networking and gaining friends via this method is a great medium for your store – it really helps that customer relationship.
Submit your product list to Google Base: This will get your items into Google’s comparison shopping engine. You’ll need a plug in for OScommerce or whatever shopping cart you are using to generate an XML product list that can be submitted – you’ll want to regenerate on a monthly basis, or as often as you change your shopping cart and submit it every 30 days to Google.
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These are just some of the things that you can do, all simple, but require time spent on your site, working on it. But this is what will separate your site from others, in terms of traffic.
For several years I have been helping small businesses in the Omaha area with online marketing. Many small business owners are interested in Google’s Adwords program but just don’t know where or how to get started.
I have an exciting new service that I am offering – a 3 hour on-site Adwords training session for up to 2 employees of any local Omaha business. For just $199 you’ll get quality training on the basics of the Adwords interface, training on picking out key words, and setting up your web site for maximum conversions. If your Adwords account is new (within 2 weeks) I have a $100 new account credit that can be applied as well.
Here’s a basic overview of the session.
Intro to Adwords – why the marketing works.
Setting up your account.
Setting up your first campaign
Proper targeting geographically
Proper key word research and bidding techniques
Proper landing pages on your web site.
Effective Ad writing.
Please contact me if you are interested in setting up a time for me to come train you or your employees. You’ll need a computer with a connection to the internet and a quiet spot with no interruptions as I cover quite a lot in 3 hours of time.
Steve 402-210-3283
So, you want to have a better online presence, you just invested in a new web site, or you just plain don’t know where to begin marketing your site online? If you haven’t heard, Google’s Adwords program is still considered one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. And it’s not just any traffic, it is very targeted traffic – the kind of buyer who is researching your product or service and is ready to buy. You don’t have to show up at the top of Google’s organic search (though it can help) in order for this type of marketing to work wonders for you. That is what makes this a great option for even the smallest of businesses – no contracts, no minimum payments, just try it, and if you see the ROI on your advertising, then continue using it.
Some tips:
Optimizing your landing page – not only does this help with the conversion rate of your visitors that have been directed to your site by Adwords, it helps with the natural search. It will also benefit your advertising campaign with a higher click through rate and lower cost per click.
Writing a great ad – and using keywords within – this will also help clickthrough rate and help with your cost per click – it ultimately will help your conversion rate.
Selecting targeted keywords – the bottom line – these are what trigger your ad. If you don’t do the research to find what your customers are searching for, you will not have a very successful campaign. Most small business owners either lack the skill, or the time to do the proper research – which is why it is best to hire a Google Qualified Individual to assist in setting up and managing your campaign. I have found that many times, I can pay for myself with a combination of increased conversion rates and lower cost per click.
I am an Omaha, Nebraska Google Qualifed SEM professional.
This is an excerpt of an email I sent to a friend about SEO on their Wordpress site. They had the XML Sitemap Generator installed, and the All In One SEO pack, so the assumption is that you start with this.
1. Make sure you go to Google Webmaster tools and acutally submit the Site Map. I can expand on this if you need me to, it will require a small amount of technical knowledge to complete it.
2. Make sure you fill out the All In One SEO pack info by: 1. Setting the default Title, keywords and Description for the home page – you should do some key word research to find out what people of this demographic are searching for on the theme of your site, ie. if the key phrase is “Christian Child Rearing” you should be including that phrase in your posts on a regular basis. For the Title, use only 90 characters, For the description, use only 160 characters, for the Key Words, use only 6 to 10 of the most important ones, nothing extraneous, the second part of this is, for each post, do the same thing, by clicking on “All In One SEO Pack” at the bottom of the post page, and fill in the information using key words specific to your post.
3. Make the title of your post contain key words, and repeat them in your post.
That’s the “On-site” optimization.
Off-site:
Submit your RSS feed to FeedAg.com and other RSS feed aggregators – if you google you will see many of these.
also, you can use a service called Pingoat.com – do it after each blog post.
Join Technorati and BlogCatalog – these are pretty good ones.
Send your feed to your Facebook profile – each new post gets put up for all your friends to read.
Leave Comments on other people’s blogs with a link to your own within the key words that you are trying to optimize for – ie if you were trying to optimize for “baby devotions” you would link the words “baby devotions” by using <a href=”http://www.excellentbabyblog.com”>baby devotions</a> – Do this as often as possible – it really does work.
That’s the quick rundown – it’s not easy, and I don’t know what kind of traffic you are getting now, but if you do all that you should see an increase. Also, consistency in your blog will get you a following, especially if it is a niche topic – lot’s of times a broad topic will not attract loyal followers – try picking 6 topics, rotate between them – if you post 3 times a week you will write about each topic 2 times in a month – continue with the same 6 topics (which – if researched to find out what people are searching for-say “baby strollers”) you will start to see the site come to the top for those specific topics, rather than if you only write one post every 6 months on any given topic. Keep in mind that “Content is King” in the internet world and it does mostly come to that. Frequent updates (3 times a week is good) and 300 words or so per post are good.
I recently had an Email marketing clients had some questions about the CAN SPAM Act. In a nutshell, here are some of the high level things that you must do to comply with the law:
Your email’s To and From must match with the header information and domain.
No deceptive subject lines
You must have an opt-out method clearly available.
Clearly marked as an advertisement
Include the marketer’s physical address
Complying with these basic bulk emailing rules will help you both in the eyes of the government, and your prospective clients you are marketing to – they will see your emails as professional and thus your emails will be more effective.
For even greater effectiveness, make sure you are using opt-in or double opt-in with any of the excellent email systems available on the web.
I am increasingly noticing mobile browsers showing up in the stats of my local web sites. Is your site ready and available for mobile – iPhone, Blackberry or other phones?
A mobile site is a good thing to add to your existing site for your mobile user’s convenience. A mobile site is much lighter in its code and graphics. This makes it load faster and delivers to the mobile user only the most pertinent information about your business or service. The mobile site should also be designed to fit the variety of screen sizes for mobile users.
Adding a mobile site to an existing site is perhaps the best way to make your site mobile ready, with a button on your home page to direct the user to the mobile version of your site. There is also code that you can put at the beginning of your page to detect a mobile browser – also a good solution.
If you have questions about getting your site up to speed, allowing it to be seen clearly on “the third screen” give me a call!
Steve – 402-210-3283 in Omaha.
Lots and lots of blogs have been written about this medium of marketing – I really don’t know where to begin.
I recently helped a non-profit ministry get started with a Facebook profile, and helped them start a group. One notable problem – the gentleman had not taken other advice about being consistent with e-mail newsletters, blogging and other types of on-line presence. He was thinking that Facebook would be the “silver bullet” so to speak.
Well…suffice it to say, it still takes consistent effort to gain friends and update your group page, etc. Not something that this person is willing to commit to, unfortunately. If you want to do some of this type of marketing, you must be willing to put effort into it and grow your online reach by working it several times a week – it is a social medium that builds relationships. If you, as the principal of your business can not commit to this, you should consider appointing an employee to do it, or hiring it done. Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks can be a very powerful medium for your marketing without a lot of expense if implemented properly. I know of several local Omaha businesses who are doing this very successfully.
Hope everyone has a great week!
Right now I am offering an Search Engine Optimization Package that is Available for a Limited Time Only.
For Just $599…
You get:
- A 1 hour Face to face meeting
- Page Title Tags Generation
- Keyword Research and Selection
- META description and marketing tags
- Geographical target market tags
- Main Content Suggestions
- 1 Custom Written Article & Syndication
- Submission to top search engines and directories (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
- Entry into Google Maps
The above steps will drastically improve your site’s overall “search engine friendliness” as well as letting the search engines know your site even exists!
It will also help drive quality, targeted traffic to your site – which turn into quality, targeted leads!
This is a trial promotion that I am offering to only a select few and it is available through Friday, March 6th!
Call me at 402-210-3283 for this special package – Steve
Permission-based marketing is kind of a buzz-word in the marketing world these days, but it is a truly important concept to your business.
Opt-in email lists are one source of marketing that should not be overlooked. When a customer opts in to your list, they are granting you permission to market to them. The customer has initiated a relationship with your business and wants the information, products, or services that you have to offer.
The concept is powerful because the customer has requested the relationship because of their interest in your orgainzation and will respond at a much higher rate to your advertising and marketing directed at them because of this.
I won’t speak much about Text Message Marketing, but it is a growing concept in marketing, reaching a different demographic. Convergence of technologies is making the cell phone a viable marketing medium.
Please contact me for a free consult on your email marketing plan, or even the text marketing idea…you will be hearing much more of this very soon! Steve 402-210-3283
It’s been a while since I have posted, but I wanted to follow up on this topic that I started about SEO and your website code and how they are inter-related.
In part 1 we covered SEO as it pertains to some of the code to display javascript and flash. Let me preface this post with the statement that nothing can replace good text content with any type of coding when it comes to SEO.
Today, I will cover some of the basics of Tags and Titles and why they are important. Several tags that are important are: <title>, <meta name=”description” content=”your page description”/> and <h1> – These tags provide crucial information to search engines as to the topic of the page and how it should be indexed for relevancy to the searcher. They should all support each other (and the content of the page) and not be “stuffed” with irrelevant key words.
If you need help with this, I can provide an overview of your site and some suggestions for optimization both on-site and off-site, which we will cover in another post. Please contact me if you are in Omaha, Nebraska and want an SEO evaluation of your site.