SEMbyDesign

January 1, 2009

Setting Marketing Goals for 2009

Filed under: Content Development,Marketing Your Site,Optimization,Traffic Building — Tags: , , — admin @ 11:35 am

Hope you all had a great year on, and off the web! If you have not already stopped to reflect on 2008 and ponder some goals for 2009, it’s not too late. You should write a quick plan for each web site you own and plan to dedicate time to seeing the plan through. I am doing it today, even though I have significant work that needs to be completed for clients. I feel that this activity is an important part of my online success for the year. Also, I want to put many of the things I have learned, and the ideas that Chris – a colleague of mine at CGMTechnologies.com – have come up with, to work. We are truly motivated to lose the day job, and help others along the way do the same thing.

If you are an internet marketer, or you have a brick and mortar store, setting these goals is good – they help you evaluate where you wish to focus your resources.

If you have a desire to learn Adwords, need someone to help you implement an SEO strategy or need consulting to help make any of your goals happen, I am in Omaha, and happy to help. As you think about your marketing for 2009, think of a a few outside the box strategies – here are a few that I am thinking of for the new year:

  • Opt-in Text Messaging.
  • YouTube videos – I can help you produce these and place them on video submission sites.
  • Content Writing for SEO for local businesses.
  • Directory submission for local businesses.

Call me if you would like info on how any of these strategies can work for you – on or off the web. Steve 402-210-3283

December 22, 2008

The Nuts and Bolts of PPC

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Small Business Issues — Tags: , , — admin @ 12:43 pm

PPC is not new to most internet marketers, but it is a new concept to many small business owners I work with here in Omaha. I’ll give you a quick run down of how it works.

PPC or Pay Per Click is best demonstrated in a Google search. Typically the left hand side of the page is the natural results of your search, while the right hand positions are the paid positions – advertisers can place a small, 4 line text ad there – and they only get charged if someone clicks on the ad.

The nuance to this is that the advertiser has to bid on how much they are willing to pay for their ad to appear.

These ads are highly effective if done properly because they target the exact items and keywords that your customers are searching for. Also, you can see immediate results in traffic, and hopefully sales on your site.

Am an Adwords Certified Individual, helping businesses in Omaha, Nebraska, if you would like to learn more, please give me a call at 402-210-3283. If you become a customer, I have currently, a $100 credit to your new Google account waiting for you.

December 13, 2008

Do Follow Commenting on high PR blogs

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Optimization,Traffic Building — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:57 pm

Many times I get asked what the best way to get links from other sites. Do Follow comments provide some of the best links back into your site if done properly. Here’s a quick rundown:

Find some blogs or forums with high page rank that are do-follow (meaning the code is written such that the search engines will follow the link to your site)

Leave a comment or post with a link to your site, preferably in anchor text.

Things to do to ensure effective backlinks:

Leave valuable comments – there is NOTHING a webmaster hates more than spammy comments.

Comment on relevant posts to the content on your site.

Build slowly – Google looks at backlinks over time, if you all of a sudden have 500 in one day it looks fishy-spread them out over time.

How to find these links – I have launched a brand new site called SEMAddict.com – we have a free instructional video outlining a method on how to find the best pages for backlinking.

December 6, 2008

5 Quick (and cheap) Marketing tips

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Optimization — Tags: , — admin @ 10:51 am

Ok…lots of people wonder how to better market their web site. Today’s post is a quick and easy one – 5 quick and cheap marketing tips:

Put your web site address in your e-mail signature.

Join and become active in a forum related to your industry.

Post a comment in your favorite blog a few times a week.

Contact 3 websites related to yours and ask for a link exchange.

Write an article and submit it to several article submission services.

Bonus Tip – make sure you have installed Google Analytics or another traffic measurement system so that you can see the key words and origin of your traffic. In the future, this will help you focus your efforts on the best traffic sources.

November 23, 2008

Facebook Advertising – does it make sense for your Small Business

Filed under: Marketing Your Site — admin @ 4:58 pm

Facebook has an advertising system similar to that of Google Adwords, but with a twist. You can target your demographic using keywords that they have used to describe themselves, for instance, you could target a college educated crowd or a users from a certain city. Another cool feature is that you can actually use a picture in your ad – which makes this ad more effective. I actually have used this on a couple of my own sites, and found that this method of advertising is very effective. You still have to bid on keywords for placement, but I have seen this actually deliver a better return on investment than Google Adwords in some cases. If you have questions or are interested in this type of marketing, I would be happy to help you get it going. Just give me a call! 402-210-3283 Steve or email sm (at) messagedirect.info.

November 18, 2008

SEO for Long Term Success

Filed under: Building a web site,Optimization — Tags: , — admin @ 10:53 pm

To many, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is quite mysterious. Well, some of it is common sense, some of it is a science. Most of the process is technical and you need to hire someone with a good understanding of the big picture. I have studied for a long time, and had a few successes, but it was not until I got some training did the whole picture fit. Many people try to do one or 2 of the things but not the whole plan and expect it to work.

You really need to involve someone who knows SEO from the beginning of your project. It is a whole lot less expensive to build it in to your site from the beginning than it is to go back and try to fit it in after the fact. Your SEO program will be much more effective.

November 17, 2008

Local Search Engine Rankings In Omaha

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:49 pm

I went to search for a dentist today here in Omaha, online, as part of an experiment. Seems to me that the firms who design websites are actually doing a bad job – sure they are great at making things look nice, but they have no clue when it comes to the technicalities of SEO. Then, I looked up Omaha SEO firms – these same firms advertise that they are seo experts, when the sites they have done didn’t include the basics for SEO even for the local level. If you have a web site, you need to be seen. This is why you want to involve a professional who can assist in local optimization of your business web site. At the local level SEO for your site should be fairly easy if done correctly.

November 16, 2008

Make your Site Navigation Easy – Part 1

Filed under: Building a web site,Optimization — Tags: , , — admin @ 10:53 am

Today I will be discussing how to make your site navigation more user friendly and, as a bonus, Search Engine friendly. This is a large subject, and I will likely have to break it down into more than one post.

Create a natural breakdown of your information and make it flow. Make it easy for users to go from general information on your site to more specific information.
Don’t:
• Make it overly complex. All your pages linking to one another isn’t always the best.
Use mostly text for navigation – Text links make the pages easier for search engines to crawl and improve accessibility. Make sure you use css standards – you can do a lot with css to make your links look attractive.
Don’t:

• Have navigation based entirely on images or flash – this slows down the page, makes it less accessible, and often adds large amounts of code (one other trick to optimization is code to content ratio – a whole other post – coming soon!)

Utilize “breadcrumbs” – These are rows of internal navigations, leading the user back to general information, from the most detailed information. It shows a hierarchy of info.

Having good navigation on your site will improve your user experience, lengthen the amount of time your user spends on the site, increases the possiblility of your user finding exactly what they need while there, and as an added bonus, you get the benefit of a potentially higher position in the search engines because you took the time to implement it.

If you need help with your navigation, or any other aspect of useability or SEO of your website, feel free to give me a call at 402-210-3283 (Steve). Factors like these are reasons you should hire an expert to develop your web site. You want to be found, you want your users to buy or contact you once they have found you!

November 13, 2008

Landing Page Blues

Filed under: Marketing Your Site,Traffic Building — Tags: — admin @ 6:50 pm

Many of my customers who have tried Adwords with little success question me as to why they are not successful. Usually, it is the landing page.
A Landing Page by definition is a page on your domain where you land people from your adwords campaign or from an off site advertiser like ComCast – you can then measure the effectiveness of the ad or write copy specific to what the ad talks about. This results in a higher conversion rate for your visitor. Conversions might mean different things to different marketing campaigns. It might be a sign up, a page view, or an actual sale on an e-commerce site.

If you don’t send your visitor someplace specific, you run the risk of 1. Confusing the visitor, 2. Wasting your visitor’s time, because you don’t give them the SPECIFIC information that they are searching for.

If you would like to set up an Adwords Campaign, I am available for assistance, and I can give you $50 towards your first Adwords campaign if you set up a new account. sm (@) messagedirect.info

P.S. Another benefit of a good landing page is that it actually will decrease your Adwords cost per click! Almost always my services will pay for themselves in the cost savings you receive from my expertise – plus, you won’t lose sleep at night over your Adwords!

November 9, 2008

Convergence: Technology, Marketing, and Sales

Filed under: Content Development,Marketing Your Site — admin @ 10:30 pm

Like many small business owners, I want to succeed. I have to be nimble, and change with the times. If you are a small business owner who refuses to change their marketing plan with the times, you will be left in the cold. Technology and marketing have collided head on. The 2 together are here to stay. That is where SEMbyDesign can help – we are experts in Web Marketing, content writing, blog marketing, video for web promotion, and tailoring plans that will help you long term as your web presence grows with your brick-and-mortar business.

The thought of putting together all of this content for the web is daunting to most people, and understanding the things that you need to help you succeed on-line are often difficult. The younger generation is in tune with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – the convergence of marketing with technology at it’s height. There is a lot of opportunity for getting your word out about your newest product, your best service, or your latest business venture. You need to include the web in your plans for communication. Let the experts at SEMbyDesign help!

In Omaha, we are only a call away: 402-210-3283 – Steve

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