October 16th, 2009 by Bruce

Practically all organizations these days either have an internet site or think that they should arrange one, but how many of these organizations are actually wasting their budget?

Some organizations that rely on localized trade from a small area, and sell products or services that are available on every main street like for example a news agents, may feel that they need a website when in reality the only trade they will ever attract is from the local community, who will not be attracted nor their numbers increased, by a website. In reality they probably would not even be aware that the website was there.

Other goods or services plainly cannot be bought from the internet either because they should be seen and felt, or discussed face to face, and so a full blow internet site for these sorts of companies would not be worth the money either.

What could be of some use to these sorts of business is rather a listing or listings on sites such as Yellow Pages providing information on local services, or simply a one page site that indicates the kinds of products on offer and directs the customer to visit the shop or office.

The organizations which do benefit from a wideranging website are the ones with a precise set of products or goods that can easily be detailed on the pages of a website and which will be required by customers on the net and consequently bought. If these organizations can get their site and it’s Search Engine Placement correct then they will hit the jackpot.

It is easy though for these businesses to waste their marketing allowance on the website alone and it seems more tragic as the opportunities are really there. The website may be very well designed and built but if website optimization has not taken place then no new customers will find it, and a large chunk of investment has gone down the drain.

If though a KW3 actually optimizes the site so that it reaches the first page of searches then all the spend will be worthwhile as new customers should come flooding in.

So the internet can be a great place to sell your goods but you must ensure that you first of all have the right product; secondly that you design and build the website in the right way; and finally that you use Online Marketing to ensure that the site can be found on page one of the top search engine rankings. Otherwise large amounts of marketing budget simply disappear down a large black hole.

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October 16th, 2009 by Bruce

There are reasonable costs attached to Online Marketing and companies often think again about spending on the service as it comes to the end of a lengthy process which has already seen them spend a large chunk of their marketing budget.

The cost of a graphic designer for the visuals and then a web designer for the structure can often cost into the thousands of pounds depending on the intricacy of the website. Then there is added to that the cost to the company of personnel taking time to collate the site with the two experts, and then to fill it with all the information about the products or services available. At the end of this process most organizations hope that all bases have been covered, staff can finally get back to their day job and the sales or enquiries should start pouring in.

Alas. The likelihood of you having a product so rare that it has very limited internet competitors is small, the competitor websites are recognized and know to the search engines. They have usually been optimized themselves as the businesses have arrived at the same position as you at some earlier point in time and have taken on board valuable lessons. It therefore really would be a waste of time, money and effort to go to the trouble of getting this far and then simply failing to complete the task.

Your internet site will still probably be practically invisible to new customers looking on the net as it will be listed so far down the Search Engine Placement rankings that no searching customer will ever reach your page. The websites that get hold of 95% of seaching customers are the ones that appear on the first page of the search engine ranking list and these sites achieve it because they have gone on to the final part of the process of Website Optimization.

By using a SEO Company to provide Search Engine Marketing services they should make sure that your well thought out, planned and relatively pricey website is actually accessed by people other than your existing customers. Try to choose a company who will charge you only on delivery of page 1 ranking results as these are the only ones that are useful to your site. Some organizations can claim seemingly impressive improvements to your Search Engine Placement, possibly from a ranking of page 25 originally to a vastly improved page 15 ranking. This unfortunately is still practically useless, think about the last time you trawled through to page 5, especially if you located what you were looking for on page one!

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September 30th, 2009 by Bruce

For quite some time now, article marketing has been widely recognised as being one of the most effective strategies for online business. This means of marketing can help develop reputation, improve SEO, and also provide back links to your website for the article readers – who in some instances, might well represent partially qualified leads. The Internet thrives on the presentation of quality information and well written articles can be your organisation’s key contribution. The major search engines value good articles highly, and it’s essential that you compose focused and optimised material for your project.

Once you have compiled your comprehensive list of appropriate keywords for your niche, you should prepare articles accordingly. Invest the necessary time to write truly informative pieces which include your keywords, and then ensure that they’re distributed to an array of top notch article directories and blogs across the Internet. Anchor text-based hyperlinks within the article resource boxes should point back to the landing pages, as specified, on your website.

You should keep in mind that you’ll need to concentrate on your website development, in addition to your article content and distribution, as this is just as important in the grand scheme of things. Your website must be adequately optimised to enable you to get the most out of any article marketing campaign, and to ensure this you should concentrate on several areas:

1. Don’t ever forget that the main reason why people visit your webpage is because they’re looking for information. You should not spend too much time on fancy presentation, complex graphics and flash animation, if it detracts from the overall message.

2. The navigation of your website should be clear and easy to understand. Ideally, your visitors should be able to move from one point or page to exactly where they want to be without any confusion, and for the most part, there should be a fairly logical progression with regard to the presentation of your information.

3. In a Perfect World, it’s best to create a separate page for each and every keyword that you’re focussing on in your article marketing campaigns. In this way, the search engines will match the keyword contained in your article’s anchor link with the keyword optimised on each page.

4. Always make sure that the content of the page is as closely related to the content of the article as possible. Remember, that the reader of the article is being encouraged to visit this webpage by the content of the article itself. He or she should be able to continue this process of discovery, which may be leading them further into your sales funnel!

5. To make sure that the search engines recognise the landing page you have specified as relevant, you should make sure that you:

* Put the exact keywords in the title of your page, as well as in the description.

* Repeat the keywords in the body of the content on the page. It is suggested that you do this to no more than a density of 1%, i.e. 5 times within 500 words of content, so that it appears natural.

* The H1 tag is very important and the keywords should appear here too.

* Specify the keyword and related keywords (sometimes known as secondary keywords) within your meta-data keywords tag.

6. There is increasing evidence that Google is placing a lot of emphasis on synonism and latent semantic indexing. This means that they will be looking for the existence of certain words and phrases within your content, relating back to their large databases of information, so they can accurately judge whether your content is indeed relevant to your primary keywords.

As you roll out your article marketing campaign, there’s a lot to concentrate on. Make the most of each article that you compose and distribute by ensuring that every element of your campaign is optimised. To make sure that you do not miss any of these crucial steps, consider using a Virtual Assistant to make the most of your initiative.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Executive Virtual Assistant who assists businesses and individuals with achieving their professional goals. Want to find out more about online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

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September 24th, 2009 by Bruce

Internet marketing has been changed completely over a just a few short years by a trend commonly known as social networking. You probably wouldn’t have needed a crystal ball to imagine that the Internet would develop its social theme as more and more people realised the reach of the web, and became increasingly connected through the use of smart phones and other new gadgets.

It seems that quite a few people consider MySpace to have been the one who started this trend, but recently, the buzz has all been directed at Facebook, and to a large number of people MySpace has become “so 2006.” At this point, Facebook is the number one social media site around. Its stunning dominance seems to originate from its dynamic platform and its clean and organised appearance; many individuals also even see it as more upscale than MySpace.

Facebook was developed by Mark Zuckerburg, Justin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who were students and room-mates at the prestigious Harvard University. The site was initially intended for use by college students, but it quickly expanded nationwide through the school system, and eventually to everyone else. Zuckerberg’s original “Facemash” has now expanded to encompass more than 200 million users. Incredibly enough, there are even some people who put its present value at around $5 billion.

Facebook is, quite simply, networking at its very best. Not only can you use the platform to interact with family and friends, but from an online business point of view, it’s great for marketing as well.

The first thing that you should apply yourself toward as an internet marketer is to create a first-rate profile. You should give this a great deal of consideration as your profile is essential to your success in this venture. Incorporate a branding strategy, but make sure that you understand what environment you’re working in. Within social networking of any kind, commercial branding and marketing has to maintain a far more subtle approach, and it shouldn’t ever be “in your face”.

Facebook allows you to expand your network of friends infinitely. Begin by building your network up with your current friends, and then try and connect with the establish contacts of “friends of friends”. You’ll soon realise that with a sustained effort, your contact list will increase rapidly. Make sure that you never spam, and always temper your enthusiasm. Build quality relationships – not just a long list of faces.

Within Facebook you will find that there are many, many online groups and there will certainly be groups which are associated with what you do. Every type of professional service provider has a group of some kind, and you should belong to all of these in your field. You can make tons of contacts this way.

If you cannot find a Facebook group that fits your vision, you can always create your own. You will need to be very proactive here to solicit members, and you should publish articles and give a lot of good information away, essentially for free, to create some buzz. You can create a Facebook “fan” page, especially if you find that your original page has reached its limit for membership, which is currently 2000. The fan page creates an additional subtle marketing opportunity, and it’s all a part of the process of getting people into your sales funnel and ultimately to your checkout.

If you have a blog or some form of website development which you regularly update this with great information, tips, tricks, solutions, assistance and generally good stuff – then you should syndicate it so that your posts appear on your Facebook profile page. The goal is to get as much exposure as you can, which in turn of course converts to readers, visitors and potential sales.

If you’re holding any events or creating a milestone of any kind within your business, you should create an event page within Facebook. By sending an open invitation, you solicit people to go to your events page and find out what’s going on, and they can then advise their friends, creating even further exposure.

Facebook should be an integral part of your business strategy, but you must also have your “fun” face on when you’re there. Warning – Facebook is addictive (not to me of course – but to many), so don’t let it take over your marketing programs altogether!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

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