There are a lot of places you can spend your money advertising on the web. Some places yield better results than others. Find sites that rank well in searches, and don’t forget you can advertise directly on search engines using Google Adwords or Yahoo Online Marketing. Often it’s easier to pay for an ad for a key phrase than to rank for it organically. This is especially true for highly competitive phrases. The best part is you get almost instant results with paid advertising, unlike link building, which takes months to see the full benefits of your labor. Also think about sites where your target demographic are. Facebook Advertising, for example, has a great advertising program that let’s you target specific demographics.
So that sums up our three-part discussion on online marketing. I plan to flesh out more specific details in future posts as well, so stay tuned!
Now we need to get a lot of high quality links pointing to your site. Start of by searching the web for your key words and see what comes up. Take note of which sites seem to come up again and again. Those are sites you want to get linking to you. Also look for local business directories or directories that specialize in your industry as well as forums where you can post as an authority on a topic. Put a link to your website in your profile and signature. Write up several articles about your industry, include your key phrases, and post them on the web at online article syndication websites. Make sure to include links back to yourself. Post online press releases. Sign up for social media sites and find a few you really dig and set up camp. Build a network of friends and colleagues and link back to your site. Find other companies that are synergistic to what you do and contact them to see if they will link to you.
One of the things we get asked a lot by business owners is "How do I get my website to rank well in Google searches."
I typically respond with "It’s kinda complicated, but here’s the basics…"
So, here’s that "basics" schpeel for those out there still wondering.
This is a large conversation that all falls under the umbrella of
"Online marketing." Online marketing is composed of three main subsets
in my mind: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) , Link Building, and Paid
Advertising. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to focus on each of these three areas.
Making sure your website
contains the key phrases that people will be searching for on a search
engine
Making sure those key phrases are in the right places
Come up with a list of key phrases that should land a potential client
or customer to your site. Go ahead…I’ll wait. You may come up with
10-20, if you’re good. Now we need to multiply that by ten 🙂 Think
like a layperson. You may need to include terms that aren’t really
accurate but they are what the general population might think to search
on. Now think like an expert…a person in a desperate situation that
may need your product or service right this second (Think emergency
24-hour plumber). Now look at your competitor’s websites. Notice any
key phrases being mentioned that you didn’t think of? Try viewing the
source of their site and look for key words in META tags, the title, or
as ALT names for images. Now pull out a thesaurus and come up with
alternate synonyms for your words or concepts. Now plug in some
adjectives that describe your terms like "free" or "best" or "cheap" or
"friendly." Now think of geographical names for areas you marks to. Now
mix and match all of the above. Your list ought to be rolling now.
Note, there are tons of tools on the web that help with combining
phrases or identifying new ones.
Getting keywords in the right places may mean checking with your web designer, but basically, it means putting them in body copy,
headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.), in the page title, as ALT tags on images, in TITLE tags for
links, lists, in bold and italic. Also, put absolute links on your pages to other
pages on your site and make sure each page of your site uses different keywords in the title and META tags. Many people use the same info for all pages and that is not ideal. Also, you may need to create "Landing pages" which are pages dedicated to talk about a particular group of related key phrases. You can’t optimize one page for all key words, so creating these landing pages is a must. And it’s not a bad ideal to link directly to these landing pages when linking elsewhere to your site, if you are referring to these key phrases. That would be called "Deep linking’ and it’s a good idea to link to specific pages when possible rather than your home page. It means more relevancy, and that is what search engines are after.
So now you should have a bunch of key phrases and your website should be optimized for those phrases. Stay tuned for the next post, where I’ll discuss link building!
When I first heard of Twitter a couple years ago I thought "Nobody will ever use that!" Apparently I was wrong, as Twitter has become the "Next big thing" in the social media arena and is poised to outpace Facebook in the next year. I get asked a lot from our clients what Twitter is, so here’s a brief explanation to the non-tweeters out there.
Twitter is basically a micro blog. So instead of writing a long, thought out post, you can keep it short and sweet. In fact, you have to, as each "tweet" is only allowed 140 characters. You can tweet text, links and even photos and you can do it from your computer and even from your cell phone.
So why tweet? Good question. It’s a great way to let friends and family know what you’re up to and share the little things that happen in your day. Often people use it for sharing a random funny thought or a great website link or a photo of their kids. Professionally it’s a great way to find other people with similar interests and learn from them and share things you’ve found to be helpful too. Often people use Twitter for posting questions to friends and colleagues as well.
Recently Twitter added the ability to search tweets. This is huge. Now you can see trends of what people are talking about right this second, unlike searching on Google and finding pages that were indexed days or even weeks ago. It’s like a giant, world-wide chat room. For example, your wife may be a huge American Idol Fan (This is all hypothetical, of course). You could search on the term "Idol" and find what a bazillion other people are talking about right that second regarding American Idol. And it’s usually pretty amusing.Will Twitter replace Google….I doubt it, but it does have it’s place for searching for things that are very time sensitive, like news.
In the web world there is a lot of buzz about "AJAX" technology and no, it has nothing to do with that cleaner you may have stashed away under your kitchen sink. AJAX is one of the key technologies behind the new term "Web 2.0" and stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. That clarifies everything doesn’t it? Basically it’s a relatively new technology for building websites that can have dynamic content, such as feature boxes, menus, or tabs that slide into place on your site with a groovy effect. It can also allow you to load content on your website without refreshing the entire page, which means faster loading for your visitors, which is always a good thing.You’ve probably ran into AJAX technology already on site such as Facebook, Youtube, or Flickr and didn’t even know it.
We’ve recently decided to up our commitment to this new AJAX technology. Based on the current trends of the web, javascript technology, such as AJAX, will play a large role in the future of websites. A big advantage of AJAX libraries such as jquery, is you can have neat animated effects on your websites without the use of Flash. Flash is a wonderful technology in itself, but unfortunately it does not perform well for search engine optimization and it is a pain to edit content developed in Flash. Since we develop many sites using a content management system, having the ability to edit this animated content is a big plus. So what does this mean to you? If you are interested in jumping in on the AJAX "Web 2.0" bandwagon, ask us how we can help!
Here are a few sites we’ve recently lanched that takes advantage of AJAX technology:
Now you can stay up to date with our news even easier than before. We have a web browser toolbar that you can install and it will give you instant access to our latest product and service updates as well as personal weather reports, an integrated popup blocker and new email notifier. Check it out here!
What’s even cooler is you can create a toolbar for your own website to keep your visitors up to date with your business! It’s easy, see how here!
I’d been counting down the days for the last 1.5 years and it finally arrived….iphone day! We’ve been Verisign Wireless customers for about 6 years and have had no reason to consider switching to another carrier, as the services was great, albeit a little overpriced. Here’s the story of our switch to AT&T…
Okay, I admit it…I’m an Apple fanboy. But I’ve used everything from Windows 3-Vista, MacOS 7-10 and even Linux and I have to say that the new MacOS has it going on. It’s more stable and reliable than Windows in my experienced. And Apple hardware is equally impressive. I switched to Mac again after years of using Windows a couple years ago and haven’t looked back. I don’t miss the blue screens of death or the slowness after 3 months of buying the computer, because the OS needed to be reloaded.No more daily reboots…
Okay, with all that said, when Apple released the iphone, sure I was like "That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I have to have one." The big problem was dropping $600 on a phone….a PHONE! So I put it out of my mind, and counted it as unreasonably expensive. Of course, then Apple cut the price shortly after, but we were under a 2 year contract with Verizon, so we couldn’t really switch anyway.
Well, our contract with Verizon ran up about 2 weeks ago, and I made the switch to AT&T, dragging my wife and parents along, since we are all on a family plan. I do have to admit, that we are getting more for our money with AT&T…400 extra minutes, rollover minutes, and a data plan for our iphone all for about the same price we were paying at Verizon. But the "More bars in more places" slogan from AT&T is simply not the case – big surprise. I host a guys outdoor adventure trip every year to the middle of nowhere and consistently it’s always ther Verizon customers who are the only ones who get a signal…and from what I’ve read, Verizon has the best network…so I wasn’t all that surprised. I’ve had 3 dropped calls with AT&T in 2 weeks and probably had 5 in 6+ years with Verizon…and there are times I get NO signal in my home, which is about a mile from DOWNTOWN Raleigh….so that wasn’t very impressive. But all in all, the signal seems clear and I usually have at least one bar. Most everywhere else I’ve driven in Raleigh I get a great signal with AT&T.
So on to the switching part: I knew that if I switched carriers, it had to be economically sensible…it couldn’t only be because I want an iphone. And I was particularly annoyed that AT&T decided to up the data fee for the iphone to $30 a month, AND get rid of the 200 included text messages that came with the old iphone. Sure the new 3G iphone is cheaper, and the sales reps were quick to point that out, but with a 2 year contract, any reasonably intelligent person can see that paying an extra $15 a month for the new 3G data and 200 text messages means the customer loses in the long run – big time. And when I’m sitting next to wifi 90% of the time, why would I want to pay $10 more a month for the 3g network, when many cities don’t even have 3G yet anyway. Sure, the new iphone has GPS too, but the old iphone has a clever way of getting your location figured out via looking at the data from the nearby wireless routers…so again, not worth an extra $15 a month. So, I pulled up trusty Craigslist and found a nice guy who sold me his old 2G iphone for $300…which is more than the new one, but again, with the lower monthly plan, was still worth every penny.
So I went to 3 different AT&T stores and it took multiple conversations to get a fair deal. First of all, I’m used to getting a $100 credit towards new phones every 2 years with Verizon, so I usually got a cool phone for myself and usually they would throw in up to 5 free phones for other family members – and not just 2 crappy phones….they usually had about 10 to choose from, all for free. This is not the case with AT&T. They have 2-3 free phones, at the time I was switching, and they were all dinosaur phones with no features and bad ratings. They didn’t even come CLOSE to the free phones we got at Verizon two years earlier. So, after a rebate, I had to pay $20 each for Motorola CU515 phones, which had a good rating on CNet, but honestly my wife’s phone was a downgrade from her 2-year-ago-free-Verizon phone. The camera had no flash, the phone was substantially bigger and the front outside screen was in monocolor rather than full color…..and NO VOICE DIALING…you have to pay $5 more A MONTH for that feature with most AT&T phones…HELLO….why has that feature been standard on every phone I’ve owned since 1999, but now I have to pay more for it!?! Lovely.
So that, combined with an $88 new customer activation fee (which is ridiculous anyway – carriers should be encouraging me to switch to them, not charging me extra, shouldn’t they?) and lack of features, the switch wasn’t looking so good. And my attempts at negotiating with the Garner AT&T location was futile. They kept telling me they had to clear any "special deals" with heir manager, and he’s out at the moment…blah, blah. And when I called their manager, he never returned my phone call…Gee, you guys really want my business, huh? *Tries to not be bitter* Anyway, after them telling me that there is no way to waive the activation fee, I want to the Cary location and the first sales rep I spoke to waived the activation fee like it was no problem. Yay. So we get the phones and switch….my wife got a bum CU515 so the call quality was bad until we switched it out, but now that it’s all done, my wife does actually like her phone.
Now comes activation and number porting. Switching over my wife’s phone went flawless and was quick. Activating the iphone was a pain, as the first sim card didn’t work, but luckily the sales rep gave me 2 just in case….then I could make calls but not receive, but a call and 20 minute wait with ATT porting fixed that….had the same problem with my mother’s phone too.
So in the end, was it worth it? Well, the iphone is unbelievable. it is so easy and FUN to use…it’s not a chore to send emails…browsing the web and viewing maps is very easy and intuitive…it has tons of space on it for music…and the new app store is awesome…there are a lot of free add on programs and games that are really fun to play with. I love this thing. But if it wasn’t for the iphone, I never would have switched. And after talking with other people who switched for the same reason – and believe me, the AT&T store is constantly full of people switching to get the new iphone, AT&T’s deal with Apple to sell the iphone had to be one of their smartest moves in years.
Basically it’s a relatively new technology for building websites that can have dynamic content, such as feature boxes, menus, or tabs that slide into place on your site with a groovy effect. It can also allow you to load content on your website without refreshing the entire page, which means faster loading for your visitors, which is always a good thing.You’ve probably ran into AJAX technology already on site such as 
Anyway, after them telling me that there is no way to waive the activation fee, I want to the Cary location and the first sales rep I spoke to waived the activation fee like it was no problem. Yay. 
So we get the phones and switch….my wife got a bum CU515 so the call quality was bad until we switched it out, but now that it’s all done, my wife does actually like her phone.