Ah, yes. The wonderful world of online search and SEO. I’ve said it a million times and it’s worth repeating: it is no longer okay to put a website together without optimizing the site for local search results! With the economy the way that it is, business owners are forced to be smarter with how they apply their funds to generate leads and sales. Phone books are dead, and with billboards, direct mail, print & newspaper advertising, it is hit or miss at best and even then it’s nearly impossible to justify those advertising dollars with analytics / metrics that show what type of response, if any, that was generated. That’s the beauty of Internet marketing, and where we come in as developers to help these business owners and companies that depend on increasing web traffic to keep money coming in! (more…)
Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category
Overcoming an all too Common Content Development Block
Thursday, June 24th, 2010Why is it so hard to sit down in front of a blank screen and write an article to upload to the website? Your heart rate speeds up, your palms get sweaty, you can think of a million other things to do at that moment instead of sitting there feeling this way. Yet, we can discuss and debate the benefits of our service till the person we’re talking to has to fake a heart attack just to excuse them from the conversation.
It a hard thing to brainstorm ideas. To write, speak, or perform in front of a computer or camera is unproductive and time-consuming. The client or customer needs your service so why do you have to sit here and make yourself uncomfortable writing or recording content. (more…)
Using Long Tail and Short Tail Keywords when Blogging
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010When writing your posts around predetermined keywords and phrases, remember to use long-tail keywords for better search traffic to your website or post. For example, on a post about IT content relating to “Data Recovery,” instead of using “Data Recovery” for the title of the post, since you have an opportunity to use a valuable local search phrase in a title and file name, “Oklahoma Computer Data Recovery” would be ideal and more likely to become a search term by a consumer than the shorter keyword. This is easier to do in the title (or name) of your blog post than in the body content, obviously, because it doesn’t require any sentence or grammar / structure rewriting. (more…)
Online Video to Promote Your Site
Monday, May 10th, 2010Video is the fastest-growing online advertising format with estimates of about a 40-percent growth rate through 2010. And the marketers that have taken part in its growth are resoundingly satisfied, according to a recent study from video ad network BrightRoll.
More than 50 percent of the agency executives who participated in the study indicated that online video was the most effective form of advertising, and 83 percent said they were getting more value for their video advertising spend in early 2010 than the previous year. A whopping 94 percent revealed plans for spending more on online video ad campaigns this year than in 2009. (more…)
Social Media Marketing Tulsa
Saturday, May 1st, 2010I must admit that I was slow to jump into social media. A large part of me didn’t want to reconnect with my past – I knew that if I did get into it, I would purposefully use it as a tool and not a time waster. It wasn’t long before it proved to be a very effective way for me to be in front of thousands of people that would probably never Google us or go to our website.
Social media marketing is all about finding ways to bring content directly to the end user instead of finding ways to get them to search for it or solely relying upon people that would look for you anyway. It is awesome! I know for a fact that there are companies that are not taking advantage of social media to extend the brand of their products and services or to create leads or sales. At the VERY LEAST use it as a tool to change the way that you communicate with your CURRENT CUSTOMERS! I don’t even think a smart business owner should have to waste time trying to justify the usage of social media integration for company marketing for this simple reason: your customers are using social media to communicate with everyone. (more…)
More Businesses Going Digital in 2010?
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
The next trend in corporate marketing is going to be relying less on traditional advertising and marketing agencies, according to the latest State of Marketing Report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council. Continuing to build online awareness and generating higher digital demand were the top initiatives reported for 2010 by the global affinity network of senior marketers.
Nearly half of the members surveyed (46%) reported that their companies are presently undergoing a “digital marketing makeover” or will be sometime in 2010. Fifty-eight percent said they were going to train and develop existing staff specifically in this area, and 36 percent expect to hire new talent with digital marketing skills. Forty percent of corporate marketers will be adding or expanding their support from agencies that specialize in digital marketing while an all-time low eight percent plan to conduct advertising agency reviews. (more…)
Smart Business Owners are Marketing Online
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
I’m currently reading a book entitled The New Rules of Marketing and PR that my friend and local business owner Brad Johnson of Lawn America loaned to me. It’s quite good! I came across a story about a company that we all know and can identify with, and I found it relevant to many of the business owners that I speak to every week. So, I thought I’d share…
Century 21 Real Estate LLC is the franchisor of the world’s largest residential real estate sales organization, an industry giant comprising approx. 8,000 offices in 45 countries. You’ve seen Century 21’s TV ads before, but you haven’t seen them lately. In 2009, the company pulled its national TV advertising and invested those resources into online marketing. That’s a huge move considering the amount of TV they were doing. (more…)
The Power of the Online Review
Sunday, March 28th, 2010
How important is someone reviewing your business or organization online? I don’t know, because there is no way to put a number to it…but I’ll try. I do know this: I’ll listen to another consumer about a company rather than some form of one-directional advertising trying to get my business for the same company. Not that I don’t pay attention to advertising, but is that just because I look at it to critique it and draw ideas from it? Some advertising has turned into a form of entertainment, I think.
I look at it this way: the consumer was once in my shoes, performed a similar search for a local company that provided a service that they need(ed), and they made a decision.
How is their experience with that company captured? How can we, the other consumers, learn from their decision to choose one company over another? Well, (drumroll…..), enter the online review. (more…)
Your Homepage No Longer Does the Heavy Lifting
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Gone are the days of the homepage. True, every website has one, but the days when website owners expect their homepage to do all the heavy lifting are gone.
Thanks to the evolving science of search, the search engines have made our lives easier by providing the consumer with relevant search results for specific keyword queries. Visitors now stream directly into websites via side doors and back doors. They can magically teleport into a website without ever seeing the homepage; they are practically flying through the windows to land directly where they want to be.
For a consumer looking for a specific product or service, this is fantastic, but for site owners and operators, the importance of optimizing each and every individual page you would potentially want a searcher to visit is magnified considerably. When visitors can enter a site and land anywhere, there are brand implications. If it’s not immediately apparent where they are, and why, they might not stick around. The same thought and energy you put into the homepage of the site to brand the product or company must be put into each page that you intend to be searchable for the consumers that you want to be on your site. (more…)
Tulsa SEO & Internet Marketing
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
Search Engine Optimization is the foundation, the bedrock of online marketing. It is the foundation of all Internet marketing.
Launching a website without actively marketing it properly (and professionally) is like buying a new car, never putting gas in it, and then complaining that it doesn’t work. The potential for leads and sales certainly exists, but without some direct focus on Search Engine Optimization and Internet marketing, you’ll never see those leads.
You see, search engines have taught consumers how to search. They have redefined how people shop and find the services that you offer. And when someone types a keyword into the search box and presses that search button, there are only two possible outcomes:
- They will find you.
- They will find your competitors.
You can’t afford to allow your competitors to hog all of the search results in Google, Bing, or Yahoo while you spend advertising dollars on avenues that cannot justify a positive return on investment. (more…)