SEMbyDesign

April 21, 2009

Email Marketing and The CAN SPAM Act

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 9:05 pm

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.

March 11, 2009

Is your Web Site Mobile Ready?

Filed under: Building a web site,Marketing Your Site — Tags: , , — admin @ 8:06 am

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.

March 8, 2009

Facebook – Social Networking and Marketing – do they go together?

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Traffic Building — Tags: , — admin @ 5:17 pm

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!

February 27, 2009

Limited Time SEO special

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Optimization,Traffic Building — Tags: — admin @ 10:21 pm

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

February 22, 2009

Permission-Based Marketing

Filed under: Building a web site,Marketing Your Site — Tags: , , — admin @ 9:27 pm

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

February 18, 2009

Your Website Code and SEO Part 2

Filed under: Building a web site,Optimization — Tags: , , , — admin @ 11:09 am

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.

February 2, 2009

Your Website Code and SEO Part 1

Filed under: Building a web site,Optimization — Tags: , , , — admin @ 8:37 am

One of the first steps in the SEO process (and I always check the code before I meet in person with a customer here in Omaha) is to make the code as SEO friendly as possible. A quick checklist:

  • Is there lots of flash code?
  • Is the site built in Frames?
  • Is there a lot of javascript, especially for the navigation

Those are the big 3. If Fireworks or Dreamweaver was used to construct the navigation, it is readily apparent, and very unfriendly to the search engines. Additionally, lots of graphic designers don’t know the difference between CSS menus and ones constructed from tables/javascript swap images – now, I am getting a little technical here, but these are important questions to ask your designer – it means the difference between a site that looks like a million bucks but gets no traffic, and one that can actually be indexed by Google efficiently.

If you have a web designer who is more designer than technical, that’s where I usually come in. I can fix some (but not usually all) without a major overhaul. Some issues require much more work, so I like to prioritize your changes, give some options, and work with the web or graphic designer to remedy the problems.

In my next post, I will address some other important code issues that should be addressed in the on-site SEO process.

I am an Omaha SEO professional who loves helping small businesses locally, give me a call if you would like to learn more about either do-it-yourself SEO or help with an SEO plan for your business.

January 27, 2009

SEO In Omaha – do businesses see the value in being found?

Filed under: Building a web site,Content Development,Marketing Your Site,Optimization,Uncategorized — Tags: , , — admin @ 9:16 pm

I have been working with several businesses in Omaha who have hired me for my online marketing expertise, either in the PPC arena, or for SEO services. Several things amaze me when I speak to new clients – usually, they don’t understand the value of the SEO process, since oftentimes it involves changes to their website. The average business owner does not understand the on or off site processes.

On site processes to SEO:

  • Tags, Titles and code changes
  • Content, copy and key words
  • links and urls

Off site Processes for SEO:

  • Backlinks
  • Directory Listings
  • Blog comments

These processes should both have attention paid to them as they are important to the overall site optimization.

All of these, of course, take time and energy to accomplish, and I always say you should put at least half of your online budget towards some form of SEO. It takes time and skill to get your site found on the net. Please call me if I can be of assistance in your SEO program. Steve 402-210-3283

January 21, 2009

SEO – The Good, Bad and the Ugly

Filed under: Optimization,Small Business Issues — Tags: — admin @ 9:26 pm

Ever got an email or phone call from a telemarketer that “Guarantees they can make you number one in Google”? Hopefully you are internet savvy enough to recognize that this is most likely a bad business decision at best and a scam at worst. I have seen too many people who are desparate to optimize their site who fall for this.

Bad SEO companies use black hat techniques that could get your site banned from the major search engines.

Good SEO companies: All I can say is choose one who can sit down with you locally, they are not doing black hat techniques on your site and they can do the appropriate research to help you. If you choose someone local, they can sit down with you and explain their methodology.

Yes, SEO is worth paying for, involve a local professional! I am in Omaha and willing to help! Steve 402-210-3283

If you are looking for a technology consultant in Lincoln, Nebraska, be sure to look up David Hefley at Meridian Consulting.

January 19, 2009

Are you building your email list?

Filed under: Email Marketing — Tags: , , — admin @ 7:00 pm

As the saying goes: ‘The money is in the list.’ The opt-in list is an excellent way for you to stay in touch with your customers, and here are a handful of ways you can build this list:

  1. Contest – have a contest and draw a lucky winner from the list.
  2. Free -Offer a free ebook, video, whitepaper or other information to new list members
  3. Coupon – percent off or $ off purchase at your eCommerce or Brick and Mortar store
  4. Free software – if you are a developer, offer a free utility or WordPress skin

Build that list! Once you gain a subscriber’s confidence, you can turn them into a loyal customer with subsequent email campaigns.

Check out my reviews of the email management companies if you need to get one set up for your web site – all of them include a method to add a form for signing up customers on your site – if you have trouble I am available for consultation!

Steve – 402.210.3283 in Omaha

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