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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

By Nancy Fraser

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn’t get more traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces.

Effective websites should include the following:
1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do.

3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page’s topic.

4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial.

5. Meta titles need to include your keywords.

6. Organization of content should include headings and subtitles to make it easy for readers to scan the pages. Be sure to include your keywords in these headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information. If you don’t give them anything of value or entertain them, they will be gone, probably for good.

8. Use keywords in links whereever possible.

9. Include a call to action and,if possible, offer a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your website in various browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, etc.) to make sure it displays equally well in all.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly, have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype about overnight successes on the internet it’s difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and it isn’t happening, it’s easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some Other Important Web Marketing Tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you will rank in user searches. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html.

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked websites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You wouldn’t go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don’t work, tables and text that are out of alignment, old information, dated colours, and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a website they often find a website that looks good but is not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image and is technically sound and purrrr your way to success.

About The Author
Nancy Fraser of Nota Bene Consulting has been helping clients get better results with their marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Sign up for Notable News and get free marketing tips at www.notable-marketing.com.

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Posted in Brisbane Website Design, Caboolture Website Design, Caloundra Website Design, Mackay Website Design, Maroochydore Web Site Design, Mooloolaba web site design, New Zealand Website Design, Noosa Website Design, SEO, Sunshine Coast Website Design, Website Development | No Comments »

Good quality business cards, don’t have to cost the earth.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

A business card can tell your customers a lot about your business. When people hold you business cards do they get the impression that you’re a business that cares about your appearance, or do they get the impression you took the cheap and nasty option? All over the world everyone is talking recession and tough times, but your corporate stationery doesn’t have to suffer too. Quality business cards are not expensive, if you know where to go.

Devision will print you 1000 business cards on 420gsm quality art board stock printed in full colour and matt celloglaze both sides for $140 +gst (art and delivery not included).

For those of you unfamiliar with stock weights, 420gsm is just about as think as you can go through a standard printing press. It is certainly no flimsy and will not crease or fold easily. Devision will even ship your cards to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane or anywhere else in Australia.

If you don’t have your own artwork, we can design a card just for you, using your logo and corporate colours, to make sure your stationery fits nicely with your company brand.

Why not call us today to see if we can save you some money on your printing costs in these tough economic times.

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Posted in Brisbane Printing, Printing, Sydney Printing | 1 Comment »

Link Building – Now More Than SEO

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Success and failure in Link Building is more often determined by the rankings. Unfortunately, most of the Internet resources are giving the same advice “build links to enhance ranking”.

The bad thing about this statement is to assume that there is no other purpose of building links. But there is lot more to it than just SEO. If you don’t know the ultimate goal of building links then you won’t know how either.

So, there are the other benefits that can be attributed by building links:-

Brand Exposure: Brand exposure is what every marketer is keen to get in their respective field. For brand exposure, you must have to put emphasis on your brand name. Buy banner ads in highly visible sections on top sites in your niche, use a familiar logo in all banner ad creative, and place your brand name in link anchor text.
Authority site has itself a big brand value. Usually, people have more trust on authority sites what they are recommending. Thus text links on high authority sites will be especially valuable for this cause.

Direct Traffic: If you are aiming to get traffic to your website, not only rankings can drive traffic, but your links can directly send visitors to your site. However, you have to engage with social media and forums as these are the sources where you can put your content/comments or share your views which ignite others to visit your site by clicking your link.
Links for direct traffic usually need to use descriptive anchor text that explains your content and uses a call-to-action. The more alluring your link, the better result you get.

Lead Generation: Almost all the efforts we put in website promotion is intended to get business. There are marketers, who think that more traffic on site means more conversion. Not true, however. For lead generation, you must have to target classified customers rather than SEO professionals or SEO gurus. And you have to take a different approach than branding exposure.
The best way to target your customers is to post classifieds, distribute press release and get backlinks from thematically relevant sites.

Now, treat your every link as your currency on the web and use this currency to get multiple benefits from it. Knowing the benefits will facilitate the link building process.

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Posted in Marketing, SEO, Website Development | 3 Comments »

Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation

Monday, April 20th, 2009

By Kurt D. Lynn

So much SEO.

You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization – SEO – that it offers a cure for all the world’s business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google’s own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.
So Why All The Hubbub?
The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means “free advertising”, that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO “experts” that, variously, all claim to … (pick one):

  • Have SEO secrets that will help you get an unfair advantage over the next guy;
  • Guarantee you a first-page listing for an incredibly low monthly rate;
  • Provide hundreds of high page rank sites that will link to your site;
  • Give you 5/10/20 quick tips to immediately improve your rankings;
  • Tell you what Google/MSN/Yahoo doesn’t want you to know about SEO;
  • Tell you that whatever SEO you’re doing is all wrong; or
  • Some other variant of the above.

To some extent, this notion of “free advertising” is not altogether inaccurate. SEO can result in your site being found – free of charge – and it can result in traffic to your site that may, in fact, result in new business. But the reality of SEO is not quite that simple.
SEO Is Far From “FREE”
SEO takes work… often, hard work. For those that aren’t familiar with what’s involved in SEO, below is a list of some of the typical activities that when applied in a conscientious program will result in higher search engine rankings.

  • Researching and selecting keywords that are truly relevant to your desired audience;
  • Researching competition for desired keywords;
  • Researching and analyzing competitive websites;
  • Re-writing and restructuring your website to address desired keywords, to be more accessible by search engine “crawlers”, to have appropriate label meta tags, headings, and inter-page links;
  • Create a program to build links to your site from other sites (directories, exchanged links,article marketing, etc.)
  • Create a program to keep content on your site regularly refreshed and synchronized with all the above.
  • Regularly (daily or weekly) monitor all the search engines and your competitors positions

SEO Is Not Easy

Doesn’t quite sound as easy as some people suggest does it? That’s because it’s not. And it’s all the more complicated when you realize that every site on that first page, and on the second and third, is trying to do the same thing – but against you! You boost your rank above them. They go to work and boost their site back above yours. And so on and so on… It’s a war and the SEO “experts” are the arms dealers.
Your Goals And Those Of The Search Engine May Be Different
If you’re going to pay good money for SEO, it may also be worthwhile to keep in mind that search engines don’t necessarily have a goal of making you the most findable site on the web. The bottom line for them is making sure that their users find what they are looking for. Satisfying that requirement may mean that you don’t and should not come up first. Google is the number one search engine for a reason: Google users get results they want. Those may not be the results you want.

Short Term and Long Term
In the short run, there may be some serious benefits from investing in SEO to boost your search engine rankings. In the long run, however, there’s probably not much you can do beyond a certain point. Frankly, if you have a finite budget, altering the basic nature of your site and trying to boost how valuable your site is to others (as represented by links to your site) can only be taken so far. After a point, the perfect market characteristics of the search engine will prevail.
Balance SEO With Other Forms Of Traffic Generation
What this means is: yes, do make sure you do the essential SEO necessary to optimize your rankings in search engines. But do it in the context of an overall marketing program. Definitely use SEO to ensure that you get a fair and accurate appraisal by search engines. But also invest in other non-SEO lead-generation methods to bring traffic to your site and business to your table.

Above all, measure the results of your SEO and non-SEO activities carefully and frequently. When SEO reaches the point of diminishing returns, cut the rate in which you invest in it and boost your reliance on non-SEO marketing to reach your goals. In the long run, traditional non-SEO marketing may just be the most reliable and consistent way to boost traffíc to your site

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Posted in Marketing, SEO | 8 Comments »

New Twitter Users Biggest Mistakes: How to Avoid Them

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I am not usually a big fan of rules when it comes to social media, but I do think there are ways to make your experience using tools such as Twitter more beneficial to yourself and others. There are some common mistakes I see new users make that I want to share with you. The good news is, once you are aware of them they are really easy to avoid!

Mistake: Not using a real picture of yourself for your avatar.

When I first joined Twitter over a year ago I was guilty of using a cartoon-type picture of me for mine. I thought it was cute and it happened to be part of the design I had on my previous blog. However, I switched to an actual photo of myself a few months later, and more than a few people commented that they were glad to see the real me.

I feel the same about others now. A picture of you is a lot more personable than a picture of your dog or a company logo. People like to see your smile!

Mistake: Automating pushy direct messages for new followers.

Many Twitter users use a service such as TweetLater to set up automatic messages to go to anyone who begins following them. This is a bit controversial among people on Twitter. If you are automating a friendly message to just say thanks for following me, that’s one thing, but a message with a link to one of your products when we haven’t even connected yet is generally frowned upon.

Mistake: Starting to follow people without posting a couple of your updates.

It may feel like you are talking to yourself to do this, especially if you don’t have any followers yourself. But when someone comes upon your page and is deciding whether or not to follow you, they need something to go on. People are looking for some sign of life or personality.

Mistake: Not spending a good amount of time interacting.

There is nothing wrong with letting others know what you did last night or what your plans are for the day. Just be sure to intersperse your tweets with some two-way conversation. Ask questions, re-tweet others, reply to questions, comment on others tweets, etc. This builds community and keeps things balanced and interesting.

Mistake: Mass following right out of the gate.

My ratio of followers to those I am following is pretty even, mainly because I like to follow back most of the people who follow me as long as they don’t look like spammers.

However, I find it hard to follow others who, in addition to having only a couple of updates, are following thousands of people and have only a few people following them. It feels spammy, like they don’t have much interest in having a relationship or conversation with anyone.

Mistake: Doing everything from the web instead of using a Twitter client.

Installing a client such as Tweetdeck gives you more functionality than what you can do from the Twitter website alone. For example, Tweetdeck allows you to place people in groups which make it easier to keep track of them, especially once you are following lots of people. Plus, you don’t have to be connected to the web to use these types of clients. I find they make tweeting a lot easier and more convenient for keeping track of your replies, direct messages and followers.

Mistake: All promotion, all the time.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, no one likes to follow someone who is constantly selling and promoting without giving anything back. Keep things balanced and respect that others do not want to be pitched all of the time. That being said…

Mistake: Not leveraging Twitter as part of your business marketing strategy.

If you are in business and using social media, you are looking at Twitter as a tool to get results in that business, not to just socialize all day. Remember that it is a great way to reinforce your brand, form strategic alliances and build credibility and trust.

by Christine Gallagher

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Posted in Marketing, Social Networks | No Comments »

Personalise Your Marketing Materials With Variable Data Printing

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Have you ever thought about personalising your company newsletter or marketing materials? Imagine how its recipient will react upon seeing such a feature. If you’ve never heard how this can be done, well, it is now made possible through digital printing and the use of variable data. This way, the output will be directed person-to person. And your sales will definitely increase more than what you’ve added to the printing cost.

With this type of printing, you can change the name of the recipient for each newsletter. You can also interchange the graphics, the tone and the design to really suit the personality of the person who will be receiving such.

The wide stock choices is impressive, and the quality of digital printing is now almost indistinguishable from conventional offset printing. Why not ask Devision how we can use variable data printing for your newsletters or mail outs, and give you that edge over your competition.

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Posted in Marketing, digital printing | No Comments »