Here’s a great video that discusses “on-page SEO” …the coding factors of your site that can dramatically affect your search engine rankings. In Steamboat today, I see a wealth of website owners that don’t know or take the time to review and update their on-page SEO.
One of the many questions that Steamboat Springs marketing businesses have is how to lower their budget for Google Adwords. The truth is that for the same words and same positioning, different businesses and individuals will be charged different amounts. That’s why in Steamboat today you must learn how to take advantage of all of the tricks of the trade to see improved results.
A major determinant for the prices you end up dealing with is your quality score as determined by Google. Your quality score is a reflection of how your ads perform. What percentage of people click on your ads, and what percentage of people who do click on your ads end up as bounced, or one page, visitors?
When you write ads that are more appealing to people, and you provide them with the content they are looking for once they make that click, Google recognizes you as a quality source and improves your rating, thereby decreasing costs. Ultimately Google wants to provide consumers with the best and most relevant ads – because it makes them a more trusted and reliable service. That’s why they reward high quality advertisements and campaigns.
Besides writing improved and more appealing ads, you can reduce your costs by targeting more appropriate markets. The more specific you get with your campaigns, the more relevant you can be. Therefore if you’re a mechanic in Steamboat today, instead of targeting “car repairs” you may want to target “winter car checkups Steamboat” or something along those lines, which will guarantee you can provide a match for a consumer making a search.
There are many other factors that you’ll have to consider to help lower your minimum bids as well. One of these is ad grouping, which goes hand in hand with the market selection described above. You want highly specific ad targets that include the keywords you use, and ad groups that play off relevant words and targets.
Of course, don’t forget that you can also lower your budget by changing your bidding strategy. You can target less popular keywords to reduce your costs, and you can also aim for a different spot besides the number 1 position to greatly lower your budget.
Sometimes it doesn’t make monetary sense to go for the top spot or the most popular market, particularly when you’re just getting started with your Adwords campaigns. So choose your markets and your targeted positions wisely, and you’ll actually end up driving more traffic to your landing pages for a lowered cost.
Businesses in Steamboat today are looking for as many ways as possible to reduce the costs of their marketing while improving the results that they see. Steamboat Springs marketing services should be well advised to take a new and improved approach to Google Adwords. Focus on improving the quality and relevancy of your ads, and in turn you’ll be rewarded not just with traffic that can be converted easier but also with lowered costs for your campaigns.
The topic of Twitter’s use has certainly taken center stage over the last year and there is surely more to come. The fact remains that the landscape of Twitter is in constant flux. Meanwhile, as new features, uses, trends, add-ons and conceptual designs are released, the robust nature of this tool is becoming increasingly enhanced. Here are some reasons why marketers can no longer afford to ignore it.
1. Subscribed & Published Lists
Twitter “Lists” continue to mold the face of Twitter. With the widespread use of the Lists gadget, your tweets are bound to appear in many different places throughout the web. Tweets are now popping up in blogs and other sites related to your niche. This increases the mass reach of your tweets by an exponential number if you are effectively targeting the right audience on Twitter.
2. Complete Transparency and Openness
Twitter is now presented to other audiences such as Facebook and various social networks. With this in mind, your tweets are no longer contained solely within just the spectrum of Twitter itself. The sharing of valuable tweets amongst more people across numerous online mediums is more rampant than ever. This gives your tweets an even bigger pool of prospects from which to target.
3. It’s All About Relationships
The book ‘Twitter for Dummies’ states that your success with Twitter breaks down to 4 basic rules: listen, learn, care and serve. Twitter is very much a community and your ability to listen to it will create an opportunity to learn from it. Once you show you care about your peers (or your audience) you will better understand how you might serve them best. By “serving” your community we mean to say that you are contributing something of value. Without value, your chances of reaping rewards from Twitter are slim to none.
4. Targeted, Caring Traffic
Twitter will bring you a fair share of traffic “just stopping by” or those you might consider random. But the tool is also well set up to bring you a highly targeted audience that honestly cares about the niche you represent. The ability of users to “retweet” your information becomes increasingly important in this regard. If a person is willing to retweet your content, they are in essence giving you a testimonial of sorts. This form of public support goes a long way in attracting dedicated followers.
5. Always Current
Showing up in real-time Twitter searches, which is becoming an increasingly important area of focus for many search engines, provides a load of opportunity for added online exposure. The goal of remaining relevant in present time is becoming more and more imperative to the engines and Twitter is the best example of this today.
6. Attracting Local Customers
Yes, even Twitter gives you the ability to connect with a local customer base. Downloadable tools such as TwellowHood give you the ability to find and attract Twitter users in your immediate locale. Related to Steamboat Springs marketing, using Twitter could be as targeted as the Steamboat Today or Steamboat Pilot for advertising purposes. As the emphasis on creating better tools to target users locally increases (which it is, as seen in the Google “Social Search” example) people’s user profiles will naturally become another means by which savvy marketers direct their efforts.
7. Still A Young Gun!
Considering that Twitter is still being developed into an application that will ultimately fit into the grand scheme of overall search, its current state is still that of a fledgling. Even with the thousands of current apps designed to give Twitter more productivity, developers have only scratched the surface of what it might do. Everyday uses of Twitter by various people and businesses both locally and internationally is growing daily. Chances are good that if you closed your eyes and thought of what you might like to see from Twitter in the future, there is probably somebody already working on its creation.
Here’s a quick video with a few reasons I believe adding the occassional video to your blog is a good idea. Enjoy!
This post comes from Chris Crum of WebProNews:
Social Media policies of well-known organizations often appear in the news with commentary throughout the Blogosphere, the Twitterverse, etc. There is an ongoing debate about just how restricted social networks should be when it comes to employee use.
Bloxx, based in the UK, has released some research finding that 90% of IT Managers surveyed believe access to social networking site should be banned or restricted. 90%. That’s a lot. The managers surveyed came from across the UK public sector as well as private organizations.
The concerns addressed in this survey were the usual suspects: staff productivity, network security risks, and damage to the corporate reputation. Productivity was by far the top concern.
The Bloxx Report Findings
More Bloxx Study Findings
The research found that not only are an increasing number of organizations completely banning staff access from social networking sites, but it is also quite common for staff to post disparaging remarks regarding other employees, their boss, or the company on social networks.
Over 22% of respondents don’t have any controls in place for staff accessing social networks. 35% of IT managers believe staff are spending over 30 minutes each per day on average accessing social networks. The companies are potentially providing an additional 16 days paid vacation for each employee, Bloxx says. Still, the research also shows that social networking is increasingly being used as a valuable business tool. Obviously access is required to take advantage.
“UK businesses really can’t afford to underestimate some of the risks of Social Networking use in the workplace,” says Bloxx CEO Eamonn Doyle. “However, our view is that a complete ban is unrealistic and adopting this approach means that companies can’t obtain the potential business benefits of Social Networking and can alienate staff.” Among Doyle’s suggestions are increased employee education, “well-thought-out” acceptable use policies, and the use of Web filtering.
There are plenty of reasons why social network access shouldn’t be completely banned. We cover these reasons about every day. If your company completely ignores social networks, you’re ignoring a tremendous amount of opportunities for marketing, customer service, traffic, sales, communication, etc.
Social networks are not going away. The popularity of specific ones may change in time, but the concept of social networking is going nowhere. It’s not even a new concept. Forums and email are pretty much social media for all intents and purposes. Social networks have recently been blamed for $2.25 billion in lost productivity. I wonder how much money lost productivity from personal email and general web surfing accounts for. I wonder how much employees simply talking to each other at the workplace has cost companies. That’s not necessarily online, but it’s still socializing. How have you handled email and general web use in the past?
Reputation issues are one thing. Security is another (and I think employee education plays a big role there) but as far as productivity, I really don’t see that the use of social networks is really that different than any other form of simply not working. People can spend their time using the phone for personal calls, but you probably haven’t completely banned the telephone. You may need that to communicate with customers, drive sales, etc. I’m sure you see my point.
PPC advertising is one of the most popular and widespread forms of online marketing. Combined with SEO, it makes up the other half of the puzzle that goes into marketing your website in the search engines. With SEO, you work to produce organic traffic to your site. However with PPC campaigns, you work to generate paid traffic to your site, from visitors who click on your advertisements displayed on the results pages of the search engines.
Whether you’re a Steamboat Springs marketing company or you work in Steamboat web design, there are many different best practices that can help you make the most out of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns. The truth is that many companies waste a great deal of money through ineffective and inefficient PPC campaigns, and many companies also leave a great deal of money on the table by failing to capitalize properly on the potential of PPC marketing. If you learn the best practices that will enable you to instantly improve your PPC campaigns, then you and your online business will be able to take off.
One of the biggest mistakes made with PPC advertising is getting into a bidding contest for the top spot of a particular keyword. Unless you have a huge budget, this strategy is going to backfire. Save your money and see a higher ROI by bidding more moderately. Shoot for a middle of the road first page ranking, perhaps the fourth or fifth spot. Your costs will drop off by a huge margin, but you’ll still be able to drive a large amount of high quality traffic to your website.
Another best practice for making the most out of your PPC campaigns is to test different versions of them. The littlest factors can have an effect on the performance of your advertisement. The wording of your ad title, the page URL it shows underneath, the keywords you target, the way your landing page looks and what it offers and many other factors as well.
With all of these possibilities, the only way to find a working solution is by testing out different variables. Test one factor at a time across a series of similar advertisements and campaigns, take a look at the results and then optimize your campaigns with what you found out to work better. Your ads will become much more successful and cost efficient in the process.
Don’t forget that when you’re participating in PPC, you are providing an ad that people find when they search for something. Your job is therefore to make your ad compelling to that person, and to make your website compelling to the person who clicked on the ad. Therefore you have to provide the searcher with exactly what they are looking for. Target your ads as precisely as possible and strive to provide an exact solution to a specific need.
For example, people looking for Steamboat Springs marketing and Steamboat web design often are really looking for the same thing. They want to break their company out into the national stage, find new prospects and customers and ultimately bring in more profit and revenue. The same thing holds true from companies from all corners of the country and the world. Learn to maximize your PPC campaigns and you’ll be one step closer to accomplishing this goal.
Oct 8
If you’re exploring your options for getting your website ranked well with the search engines, you’re probably asking “Why should I hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm?” Your gut might initially tell you that you can achieve positive results from doing it yourself.
While anyone can certainly spend the time and effort it takes to submit a site to web directories and create some good backlinks, there’s definitely some skill involved in managing these tasks. I live in Steamboat today and work with clients throughout the country. I often encourage my contacts to weigh all sides of the issue before deciding to hire anyone to manage their SEO. So you don’t waste your valuable time, let’s explore the question of hiring a SEO versus doing it yourself.
SEO- The Breakdown
Hiring a professional SEO company can bring with it many advantages. Any SEO worth their salt has studied and knows what exactly the search engines are looking for. Not to bore you with too many details, this includes:
… and the list goes on.
Just like a lawyer needs to completely understand statutes and a doctor masters anatomy, SEO comes with its own set of rules. For a business owner pursuing SEO for themselves, and not as their full time job, this knowledge can quickly become cumbersome.
Believe it or not, the vast majority of active websites online today are optimized for the wrong set of information or not optimized at all. What a professional SEO brings to the table is the knowledge it takes to guide a site owner in the right direction so that all SEO efforts flow together toward the end goal (more traffic / more sales).
“Keeping Up With the Jones Family”
Remaining well versed in the most up-to-date and accurate information about what the search engines are looking for is the job of a full time SEO. I’ll go as far as to state that any business owner not pursuing SEO professionally is severely behind the curve.
Adjustments are constantly needed as entities like Google and Bing continue to revise their algorithms. It’s not best business practice, in any industry, to set the wheels of marketing in motion and never review the progress. Just like any form of advertising and promotion, regular adjustments are needed to maintain a websites’ competitive edge.
Well Researched, Professional Submission
Another advantage a business owner has when choosing to work with a professional SEO is the comfort in knowing their site will be submitted to the engines in the proper manner. This includes the research that goes into the marketing plan both before and during the SEO process.
As their customer, you should expect to receive timely reports on the status of directory and link submissions and the movement in your site’s search rankings. Reports should be supplied demonstrating where your site is positioned as well as where your traffic is coming from. If your site is positioned well for a keyword phrase and you’re happy with the traffic, there’s really no reason at that point to re-submit to the directories. A good SEO will rather shift focus to more competitive keywords and help a business rank well for multiple search inquiries.
Submitting your site manually, and not through the use of any “black hat” tricks or shortcuts is also something you should expect from your chosen SEO company. If you’re finding that too much of the work is being automated, the odds are good that its not being done properly.
Open communication throughout the entire process should be expected from your SEO as well. A good SEO should be able to explain his process in terms that you can best understand. Understanding what exactly you’re getting for your money is one of the most important things you should expect from your SEO firm.
DIY or Outsource?
So all of this might sound like a lot of work, and quite frankly, it is. Let’s face it, you’ve got a business to run and some things are better outsourced to professionals. A “do-it-yourself” approach in this aspect of your marketing is not always the best decision.
If you’re planning to hire an in-house employee to manage the job for you, first consider the cost of that as well. There’s salary, insurance, 401K, sick days, vacation days and liabilities involved in having a full time employee.
By outsourcing your SEO needs, you get skilled professional results but on a contract labor basis. Depending on your needs, a custom-tailored plan of action for your business may only run anywhere from $300-$1200 per month. It’s often far better and more cost effective to have a trusted pro manage your online campaign rather than retain another full time employee.
Your sales boost will also be a key indicator of worth. An SEO that’s getting your site ranked in the search engines and driving traffic to your website should often be seen as a “marketing expense.” As with any form of marketing, you should expect to see revenue increase above and beyond the expense you incur.
Oct 7
The co-founder of Twitter (Jack Dorsey) recently advised users to tweet about things of interest to your followers, the public and prospective clients. Finding things that other people will find useful is one of the best attractors when it comes to gaining more followers.
But let’s not forget the humanizing factor that Twitter offers as well. There’s a great potential for this interface to introduce your personality to clients as much as the utility to transfer information. The occasional tweet about a new dinner recipe you’ve tried or taking the kids to soccer practice might just be the perfect way to endear us to our clients. Ultimately, your current followers as well as prospective clients often look for more than just “business as usual.” Try it!
Sep 30
Pay Per Click At a Glance
If your considering whether or not to explore the realm of pay per click (PPC) advertising, let me tell you that there’s no more powerful way to achieve instant results. If you’ve got a website and need traffic, PPC is the most targeted way to capture the attention you need to market your product or services to consumers online. PPC combines targeted keywords and search phrases to serve up text ads at the very moment a prospective client is trying to have their needs served. Think of a typical online search as a conversation, question or problem your customers are trying to have solved. By properly planting your advertising at the right place with the right offer, PPC will be a winning strategy every time.
PPC- What Exactly Does It Include?
The concept of pay per click advertising is actually very simple to comprehend. There are a ton of tools online that can help you with your keyword research to find what your customers are searching for. If you’ve done your job, you’ll know exactly “where” you want your ads. The next step is of course to design your ads. Think of an Adwords ad as a one sentence summation of why a buyer should visit your site. Next you’ll need to set your bids. That’ right, gaining top search results takes spending a specific amount of money for every visitor you attract to click over to your landing page. While your first reaction might be to say that the highest bid always wins, this isn’t the case. As I addressed in a previous post, there are other factors (like Quality Score) that will affect what you have to spend.
In order to run a profitable PPC campaign, you’ll need to become master to skills like effectively writing ads, tailoring your ads to the right audience, choosing the most appropriate keywords to target and judging the competition. The next step of the process is to properly track your results so you can hone in on the gold and toss the junk. This is where many PPC marketers make their mistakes and end up pursuing more organic search engine optimization (SEO) instead. The immediate results aren’t there like with PPC, but the risks (i.e. throwing away your money on bogus ads & targets) seem to be less.
NEW Website – PPC Is The Best Initial Strategy
Once a new site is built, the litmus test becomes how it performs. The best way to quickly judge this is through immediate high traffic. There’s no better way to instantly attract visitors than with PPC. Besides, it will most likely take months of steady link building before a new website will even begin to see traffic from its SEO efforts. Simply put, PPC may often be the lifeline your business needs to drive the steady stream of traffic you need to generate immediate revenue.
As I advocated before, the reality is that using a combination of PPC and SEO tactics should be the keystone to any web marketing strategy. By initially pursuing a PPC campaign you give time to let the SEO endeavors take hold. In fact, the most savvy entrepreneurs tend to continue their successful PPC campaigns well past the time they begin to see results stemming from their SEO plan. A synergistic approach like this when approaching one’s online marketing will win the day every time! A well-rounded use of both PPC and SEO will ultimately lead to multiple streams of revenue for years to come.
Reason #1: Wasted Time Amongst Employees
Let’s face it, social media sites are becoming more mainstream and the talk around water coolers across the world. Employees are linked both professionally and socially across platforms like Facebook throughout the day, and mostly during work hours.
Whether employers block access to certain sites from the corporate servers or not, workers are using smartphones (i.e. Blackberry & Palm) to access the internet and the sites they want. Twitter “tweets” and LinkedIn updates occurring from these types of devices are happening on lunch breaks, during meetings, from the bathroom… and there’s no stopping it.
Bottom line, if an employee wants to access their social networks during the daily “9to5” there’s no way to stop it. Allowing workers access to the internet but trying to block these types of sites is simply pointless.
Reason #2: Social Comments Might Hurt the Brand
A question that pops up in executive workshops all the time is the threat of bad publicity spreading to the mainstream. This type of negative feedback about the brand is feared to ultimately hurt sales.
Well… that’s exactly true! But what CEOs don’t want to fess up to is that sometimes negative feedback is exactly what they need to hear. It’s easy for the “ivory tower” to forget that their company might have inherent problems or that consumers don’t absolutely love everything about them. As they saying goes, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists.
Besides, the upside of social media for honest and upstanding companies is that their supporters are online to support them. If there’s a negative statement about their products or service that aren’t true, the power of a client to correct the misinformation directly often holds far greater weight than a published corporate statement.
Companies need to monitor brand attacks but view them as opportunities, not threats.
Reason #3: Companies Will Lose Control of Their Brand
The fact remains that in this day and age consumers hold the power, not PR departments. Long gone are the days of “wag the dog” marketing tactics. With open access to the internet, the game has changed. If you think your customers aren’t already talking about you, you’re dead wrong.
Workers are spreading news about the company amongst friends and family through Facebook, emails and personal blogs. Clients are using Twitter and sites like Yelp (among others) to leave positive or negative feedback about your brand and there’s no stopping it.
So what do you do about it? Treat each and every employee and customer like an ambassador for your brand. Providing avenues to generate loyal and lasting customers have never been more important than in the internet age. And don’t fear the conversations, JOIN THEM!
Reason #4: Keeping Up With Social Media Is Expensive
There is a misconception that social media is absolutely free, and to some extent, this is true. The reality is that for an employer to effectively participate in social media and monitor their online presence does take at least some resources. But these don’t have to include a budget line item.
Whether it’s the time spent by staffers tracking feedback across different social media sites or hiring consultants to maintain your presence for you, there is a cost factor. But just because there are people highly trained in the art of social media science doesn’t mean that you should run right out and hire outsiders.
Many times an outsourced affiliate doesn’t know the inner workings of your operation and can post statements that aren’t all-together factual. And it is these same firms that will ultimately end up costing you the most money and risk hurting your brand. Corporations are often better served by empowering existing employees to make social posts. If they’ve done their job properly training their staff, there shouldn’t be a major concern of information leaks or negative comments. Chalk the time spent by employees on these social network sites as a necessary operating expense. Ultimately, the return on investment is well worth it.
Reason #5: With “No Control” They Risk a Lawsuit
This is the biggest fallacy I’ve ever heard. Social media was never meant, or presently considered to be, cold-hard fact. The entire basis of social media is the spread of opinion. Whether it’s stemming from a current or past customer or originating right within the corporate walls, it’s nothing that would ever give a plaintiff a leg to stand on!
Those that believe they’ll get sued for what’s posted in forums, blogs or other such sites are going to have a hard time coping in modern day since public opinion is now spread more rampantly than ever. Assuming your employees are spreading blatant lies about you (and if they are, you have much bigger problems to worry about!) then you simply don’t need to lose the sleep over it.
Reason #6: The Fear of Information Leaks From Within
The remedy to this concern is two-fold: