7 Ways Local Business Can Benefit from Paid Search

PaidSearchWhen you hear experts preach the gospel of local SEO, they’re often praising a mixture of on-page and off-page tactics that result in natural rankings. The organic approach always makes a fine option for the simple that it’s cheap (often free) and works incredibly well. With that said, local businesses should not dismiss the value of going the premium route. That’s right. I’m talking about PPC advertising.

If you’ve got the budget and could use the added visibility, paid search is a viable option to consider. Below I have outlined seven ways it can help your local business.

 

1. Deliver Instant Results

Despite what an aggressive SEO agency might tell you, search engine optimization is not a game of overnight success. The blogs and websites that consistently rank high in Google for multiple keywords — many of them are riding on years of hard work that finally paid off. PPC campaigns are generally easy to set up and deliver fast results. It is possible to see a huge traffic surge mere hours after deploying your campaign.

 

2. Increase Visibility

Local search grows more competitive by the day, which makes gaining a top spot in the SERPs an increasingly difficult chore. Even with all your hard work in creating solid content, building links, and convincing customers to leave feedback through review channels, there is no guaranteeing where your site will be positioned. Paid search can ensure that your site pops up in the results on the first page, and the better you are at it, the more visibility you create.

 

3. Boost Company Revenues

Some companies have a regular budget allocated to PPC advertising. These businesses have unlocked the secrets of using it to open another active revenue stream. Paid search is a proven way to create more exposure for new products, sales, events, and other elements that generate revenue. Behind a compelling call to action in your ad, an optimized landing page can be key in driving those prosperous conversions.

 

4. Align with Existing SEO Efforts

One of the most effective marketing strategies you can employ is one that involves mixing and matching different channels. Integrating your PPC campaigns with organic SEO efforts is a perfect example of this. Just think of the impact you could make if sponsored results are driving in additional traffic on top of the flow you’ve created from your long time optimization efforts.

 

5. Provide Access to Affordable Advertising

For years, local businesses have been relying on traditional advertising channels such as TV, radio, and newspaper to increase buzz and traffic. While these methods have worked for some, they are generally expensive and for others, questionable in terms of effectiveness. Paid search offers an affordable alternative to traditional advertising. In most cases, you can set your own budget and literally spend only what you’re able to afford on a day-to-day basis.

 

6. Create an Edge Over the Competition

A little competition is good, but you want to be on the favorable side more often than not. If you get behind too much, you could eventually find yourself out of business. Indulging in paid search advertising is essentially another way to distance your business from its competitors. It might not be a huge edge, but every visitor, subscriber, and customer that the campaign sends your way contributes to an edge you didn’t have over the competition before.

 

7. Support Local Initiatives                  

Search advertising platforms have advanced in ways that make them far more useful to digital marketers. A prime example of this can be seen in their rich targeting capabilities. Google AdWords, for instance, allows you to customize your PPC campaigns to specifically target search users in your area. This particular platform offers tools that let you craft your ads based on local criteria such as city, state, or ZIP code, ensuring that you target the right audience.

 

Keeping an Open and Opportunistic Mind

Most local businesses are small to medium-sized companies with very little extra cash to spare. However, marketing is one expense that can be considered a necessity. If you want decent to good returns, you have to make investments that give you something back. So if you’re writing off paid search, this is the part where I go: “Not so fast!”. Combined with what you’re doing currently, it can be highly effective at helping maximize your visibility and make the most of your overall efforts.

What do you guys think about integrating PPC into local marketing strategies? Is it worth the investment? Let us know below.

 

 Chiko Noguchi is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading provider of email marketing services.

 

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The Difference between Regular Site and Mobile Site Optimization

MobileSEODid you know that over 75% of people globally possess mobile phones? Did you also know that only 10% of businesses are mobile-ready? This is a shocking ratio for a company that wishes to market its products in the mobile sector.

having a desktop website that is compatible with a mobile device is not enough. Just like you optimize your regular website to rank on search engines, you need to optimize your mobile site, too. SEO tactics  and are not identical across mobile and web browsers. Read on to learn more.

The first step to creating a mobile site is to capture the essence of your desktop site. This means your basic framework will start with following familiar SEO rules. Once this is ready, you need to understand how mobile SEO differs. Keep in mind that mobile indexing and ranking depend on title tags, heading tags and alt tags that are modified for mobile, specifically.

The next step involves creating mobile-friendly content. For this, you need to understand how customers use your mobile site, i.e. what they are looking for and why. Once this is understood, you may consider creating a mobile style sheet which will allows you to format existing pages for viewing on a mobile phone without having to create separate mobile content.

However, some mobile search engines rank the traditional (desktop) site instead of the mobile one, even when there is a suitable mobile style sheet. In these cases, the content is transcoded. This means that it is temporarily hosted on the sub-domain of the search engine. But, this provides an under-optimized user experience. To avoid this, you need an SEO expert to include the ‘no-transform’ cache-control in the header of your content.

Another, desktop and mobile content optimization is  needed to have a separate mobile sitemap. If you are using multiple markup languages, for instance XHTML and WML, you should submit a separate mobile sitemap for each language that exists on the site.

The sitemap, style sheet and no-transform tag should be enough to optimize your site for mobile search engines. But, what about the risk of duplicate content, due to a copy on a sub domain? o use a canonical tag to help get the value from your mobile site to your desktop website.

Keep these tips in mind and create a mobile site that is optimized and user-friendly.

 

Written by Webmarketing123

 

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How to “Steal” Your Competitors Traffic

SpyPicI want to show a really awesome technic about how you can steal some of your competitor’s traffic and get higher ranking. And the best part is that it’s free.

I am not using any magic or black hat strategy. Yes all is white hat – and still you can steal some traffic to your own site.

Maybe your boss has asked you these questions –where do we get high quality links? How many do we need before getting our high ranking?

With this technique you can very easily and secretly check out how and why your competitor is getting their traffic.

So grab your coffee … ready?

 

Step 1) The James Bond step
First we are going to play a spy. We need to know why and how your competitor is getting all the traffic.

So we are using some reverse search engine technique.

So I am going to put on my eyeglasses. Well I will need some help from the free software called “SEO SpyGlass”. Just type “SEO SpyGlass” into a Google search and you will find it. Download it so it’s ready for use.

 

Step 2) Find your competitor
I have this website www.SeoCustomer.com – and this is a blog about Search Engine Optimization – so I want to outrank the website www.Seroundtable.com.

You can also just find a top-ranking competitor and try to understand why they are ranking so well.

 

SpyGlasses

Step 3) Time to spy

I will write www.seroundtable.com and click next. Now the software will collect search engine data for that website. I will just take a minute or two then you are done.

 

 

 

 

SpyGlasses

When it’s done click finish – and say yes when it will ask you if you would like to update your project for backlinks factors now.

If the website you are checking has a lot of backlinks this step can take a few minutes. So get yourself a new cup of coffee now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4) Investigate your results
Now it’s time to check out the data we found in step one.

SpyGlasses

Now you can see the backlink page, the anchor text and much more relevant data.

 

 

Step 5) Knowledge is power
Now you have the power in your hands. You know which websites that are linked to your competitors website. So now it’s time for some dirty work.

Check out the websites on the list.

Some of the websites could be some kind of an industry list with company names. So be sure you are on the same list.

Maybe there are some blogs where you also can make a comment.

Maybe you should write an email to the owners of some of the websites and ask for a backlink to your website – because you have some relevant information too.

Well I will have to check some of the backlinks now …

 

Grab this præsentation from Slideshare

 

Free SEO Guides for you
Did you grab my free Complete Seocustomer Guides with a lot of tips and tricks about SEO, SEM, Social Media Traffic and Link Building?

 

Have a great day out there..
Carpe diem,
Henrik

 

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Tips to make a corporate blog stand out

Java PrintingOne assumes that a corporate blog has more functions that a blog that is maintained by a hobbyist. The difference between a corporate blog and a commercial blog is that a corporate blog is not really set up in order to sell products.

It may have promotional content posted on it, but its primary aim is to keep interested parties up to date with current information, to keep investors in interest and to help maintain the corporate concern’s public image/online PR.

 

What can your corporate blog do for you?

It is able to keep investors interested, and there are certain things you can do in order to have investors sign up for your RSS feed. These are the same things that will have people set up Google Alerts in order to see posts such as the ones in your blog.

There are also things you can do to keep interested parties reading your blog. You can use your blog to help you attract new members of staff.

There are posts that you can create that will maintain the interest of your competitors, industry experts, academics and potential business partners. There are also posts you can create that will help to improve your public image and online PR.

 

Give information that downright blurs the line of insider trading

This will keep investors interested. The things you write on these posts are the things that people set up Google Alerts for, and people who are looking to buy stocks and shares in your company will sign up for your RSS fee.

But, to make sure this happens, you need to publish information that is likely to alter your share price.

You will probably be giving press releases on this sort of thing anyway, so adding posts to your blog should not be a struggle. The best thing however, is that you are able to be a little more creative in just how positive your blog post is.

You are allowed to be a little more biased in your direction than you may be able to be on your yearly reports and press releases.

 

Blog about how well you are doing when your share price starts to rise

This will have investors and interested parties frothing at the mouth. People often try to understand why a share price starts to climb.

People want to get in on the ground floor (so to speak) before the share price becomes too high.

They also want a little reassurance that the trend will continue to go up.

If you explain that your share price has gone up, and then give a possible reason, it will lull investors and interested parties into a belief that you control your own destiny (share price) and that future trends may be anticipated.

 

Create a blog post about how happy your staff are every two months

This is good for your public image, but is also good for HR purposes.

A post about staff parties, staff events, or staff initiatives will make potential new staff more interested in applying.

You may even offer a place to submit an application at the bottom of the blog post.

You will need to do this sort of thing every two months so that any temporary staff-moral problems do not appear to be as big as they possibly are.

Plus, six posts per year about how happy your staff are cannot hurt your online and offline reputation either.

 

Post blogs giving information about new developments in your market/industry

This will interest your competitors, industry experts, academics and potential business partners.

You will receive repeat traffic from the people that matter in your industry.

These are also the people who are likely to inform other people about your blog too.

 

Post a blog about your charitable work at least twice per year

This is a nice and inoffensive way of improving your public image and online PR.

It is not as exploitative as advertising your charitable work, and only mentioning it twice per year does not make it appear as if you are doing it for the positive attention.

You could also make yourself appear whiter than white by showing people how they are able to help the charity that you have been helping.

 

BIO: My name is Kate Funk. I am an expert in coaching individuals in business networking skills and math tutoring .

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Finding good web hosting is always important for any business

GoodWebServerWhen it comes to eCommerce owners, they expect everything to be perfect, professional and favouring them. Before you enter the online market, you must be aware of the fact that there is immense competition on the market and in order to survive it in a good and healthy manner, an individual needs to rely on the best hosting plan.

Gone are those days when you had to break your head for the right web hosting plan, today anything and everything is easily available and just a click away. There are different kinds of hosting plans catering to different needs but what is important to note is that each of these plans caters a particular clan. So, it all comes down to finding a good web hosting for your business. If you take random decisions, certainly it is not going to favour you, because there would always be a risk factor hovering around.

Business needs are best met by opting for a reliable business web hosting plan. However amidst all this, what’s most important is to choose the right hosting plan. Some people follow the recommendations or online search results blindly, which may or may not work in your favour.

The best way to find good web hosting for your business is by keeping a few factors in mind. Of what has been seen, some people had to pay a heavy price for taking a wrong decision, which was certainly due to lack of research. This is where you ought to understand that taking a right decision is always going to favour your business.

You can start by knowing all about the downtime being offered by the chosen web hosting plan. This factor is essential because in terms of good maintenance and healthy performance, reduced downtime is a must. It is certainly hard not to find any service without a downtime but you can surely find a feasible deal offering lowest possible downtime so that there is an easy access to the site.

Secondly, you must brush through the available features; settle down with a business web hosting plan that surely is going to benefit your business. If you can’t weigh on the pros and cons of different features due to lack of knowledge, start by getting to know the basics. The World Wide Web has immense literature on each of these factors, services and in general about hosting.

Ultimately, settle for a web hosting company that offers client satisfaction and high end customer service. It is not very hard to know if a company is good enough in terms of communication with the customer. The general tone of speech, presentation of services and discussions often give away enough about the company or in general the kind of web hosting.

So, if you notice each of the above mentioned factors or aspects holds a great deal of importance. Not being able to cater to each of them, you are going to find it difficult to get the best hosting on board. Truly, it would ultimately cause hurdles in your business dealings, therefore finding the best hosting should be your primary criteria.

 

Author bio: I am Michelle Ryan from Manchester. I work as a Freelance blogger. In my free time I review Software and gadgets. I enjoy writing and singing. This article explains about the importance of finding the right business web hosting plan for any kind of business.

 

 

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Want an Enhanced International Presence?

GoogleInternationalWant an Enhanced International Presence? Try Google’s New x-default-hreflang Annotation

If you are operating a multilingual website which targets audience across all geographical boundaries, then this news will certainly concern you.

Recently, Google introduced a new ref-alternate-hreflang annotation, which will aid site owners like you in displaying apt landing pages in front of their international viewership.

As a general practice, sites catering to multinational audience, direct users to pages which include content in their native language.

This is done either by redirecting users to the page in question or by translating the content into users’ language.

The newly introduced webmaster function, which is supported by both Yandex and Google, can be used to specify such landing pages.

And as webmasters put this function into practice, global brands will be able to generate search engine optimized content for their audience belonging to varied demographics.

 

How Can You Use the New Annotation?

To explain the exact action of this annotation, Google listed the following four examples on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:

 

mape

 

“http://example.com/en-gb: For English-speaking users in the UK

http://example.com/en-us: For English-speaking users in the USA

http://example.com/en-au: For English-speaking users in Australia

http://example.com/: The homepage shows users a country selector and is the default page for users worldwide”

 

The last two letters in each of the examples above denotes the national signal of the demography to which the page in question caters.

These letters enable the Google algorithms to display only the content which is meant for the mentioned geographic location.

For instance, gb (Great Britain) is used in the URL which targets the English speaking audience of United Kingdom and au (Australia) is used in the URL of the page which caters the English speaking users based in Australia.

 

How Can You Write the New Annotation Using HTML Tags?

According to Google’s Pierre Fan, the web master of example.com can use the new hreflang function to depict the aforementioned pages either using Sitemaps or through HTML tags, as depicted below:

 

“<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-gb” hreflang=”en-gb” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-us” hreflang=”en-us” /​>​

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-au” hreflang=”en-au” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />”

 

In Case You Don’t Wish to Target Your Audience Based on Locale or Language…

No issues! This x-default hreflang annotation tells the Google algorithm that the given page doesn’t target the audience based on their geographic location or native language.

Any site tagged as ‘x-default hreflang’ will be considered by Google as the default landing page for all international users.

Towards the end of March 2013, Google has released another function called the Universal Analytics, which aimed at aiding site owners understand the demographics of their visitors and prospective customers.

This function helped many business owners in gaining an insight about the online and offline interactions, evaluating the performance of mobile apps and manage interactions across multiple devices.

As the leading search service provider across globe, Google continues to render better tools and features which aid SEO teams and webmasters in acquiring the information, which is required to enhance the online user experience.

And the new new ref-alternate-hreflang annotation is also a part of this initiative.

 

About the Author – Lucie is a lead developers for Mobiers Ltd. A leading iPhone development company offerings iphone/ipad development, android, Blackberry & html5 mobile apps development services. She is specialist in iOS apps development and recommends hire iPhone developers  from Mobiers  Ltd. for your mobile app development.

 

 

 

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How Colors Affect Conversions

how-colors-affect-conversion-rates-lg_smallDo you know that colors affect the conversions on your website? They do. So maybe it’s time for some A/B testing now?

I just came across this awesome Infographic from KISSmetrics. You really have to test some different colors on your site.

If a different color can increase your conversion rate with just 1 percent – it could make all the difference right?

Time for a cup of coffee – take care out there, Henrik

 

 

 

 

Source: How Colors Affect Conversions – Infographic

how-colors-affect-conversion-rates-600

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I Want You to Join SeoCustomer on LinkedIn

I want you -seocustomer

Come and join the SeoCustomer on LinkedIn. Just click on the picture and join our group. All the best to you, Henrik

 

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4 Essential Pages That Every Blogger Should Have On Their Blog

cranialThere is a remarkable reason why blogging platforms such as WordPress allow for the creation of static pages. They are not the most visited pages but could turn into gems by getting a visitor to the site for the first time to try a product or subscribe.

As you consider these crucial pages, it is very important to step into the reader’s shoes and ask yourself what you would like to see; helpful content that inspires them to return or recommend the site to others.

These could be pages to know a little more about the owner of the site, contacts, subscribing to an opt-in offer or list, subscribing to future posts or simply accessing resources needed to understand the niche better. 

 

The essential four pages each new blog requires include the Home, About, Archives and Contact.

1. Home Page

WordPress bloggers should not worry about the creation of this page. It is the front page with all the latest content on the blog in a reverse kind of chronological order and usually automatically selected as the Home page.

You will also find a link created in the navigational bar to make sure visitors have found their way right back to the home page, no matter where they might be in the site.

In case you would like to have a static page, perhaps to introduce the blog to the visitors and let them discover what is in the blog later, you should create a new page right away.

This will make the blog look like websites with secondary content in blogs. If you decide to go for the static front page, include in the main menu a link to the blog so that it can be visible and to let every visitor know the blog is active.

 

2. About Page

After you have made up your mind on where you want the home page to be, visitors to the blog would like to know more about the owner or the blog.

Thus, an about us page is important, a popular page that will be clicked by visitors from social networks, search engine and other blogs. In the ‘about’ page, the visitor is told about the face behind the work on the blog.

This can be done through the creation of very short introductions to say who you are, the objective of the blog such as connecting with people of similar interest and sharing ideas. If you are an artist, it is the best place to have your statement, accomplishments and biography.

You might also want to add a number of links to a social profile you might be using to associate with your audience.

 

3. Archives Page

The archives page appears very dull as a garage shelf but plays a very crucial roll of having content at a central place.

Remember not every visitor to the site is human since search engine spiders will crawl the site to index the content, gathering information usually fed into a specific algorithm.

They evaluate the content of the blog and its popularity, before having it indexed the in the right way.

Archives page is the best place for a blogger to practice SEO (search engine optimization) strategies. This is done in the simplest way possible by making it easier for search engines to access the site and content.

For WordPress users, there are themes that come with archive formats. Other plugins make organization of content in terms of category or month possible, or pretty much the way you would like it.

 

4. Contact Page

Through the contact page, visitors are provided with various formats of getting in touch with the blog owner.

You can provide visitors with an actual email or contact form that cuts down spammy mail considerably as well as the place to socially connect with the blog or you, such as through Facebook or Twitter.

Once a reader had read something on your site and likes it, he or she might want to stay in touch or peruse more about you on Twitter or Facebook. After successfully starting the blog, you will find a number of things that should be done right before publishing the first post. This consideration is on the four pages any blog needs to have, which are extremely necessary.

 

Author Bio – Jason Smith is an online manager for SEO company. He likes to blog about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
PS Read also this article – Important Link Strategy for a blogger
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How To Check If Your Twitter Campaign Is Producing Results

TwitterCampaign

Unless one is measuring Twitter marketing efforts, marketing through this medium is a shot in the dark. It is through the analysis of data on Twitter campaigns that you will be able to evaluate and pull insights on whether the operation is benefiting your company or business.

However, Twitter does not offer any way of measuring how a marketing exercise is paying off.

If you are using Twitter, you should start measuring it if you have not already.

Avoid just measuring for the sake of the metrics.

Rather, measure your Twitter activities to learn what is paying off and what is not while at the same time how this can be improved. 

There are measurements you can use for your business. This can be done by addressing a number of issues:

* How effective are your Twitter activities
* How to choose the metrics to be monitored
* Calculation of the metrics
* Interpretation of the numbers after getting them

There are many ways of doing Twitter or social media measurement.

You can decide on ongoing monitoring analytics that tracks over time the social media activities. Metrics focused on a campaign can be used where the event analytics have a clear start and end.

Use of ongoing analytics is very important to keep the general impetus of general conversation on a business. After brand setting has been done, let it run; leave it to run on its own and pop in frequently to see what has been happening. 

Metrics focused on a campaign will help to understand the impact of targeted marketing strategies and variations from one campaign to the next, depending on the goals each has.

For an effective measure of whether Twitter campaigns are producing results, both measurements can be used. 


Establish social goals

Prior to measuring each tweet about your brand, have your social goals in mind.

Know what you are trying to accomplish though the channel. Generate a list of what you want to accomplish from Twitter usage.

It can be used to serve a number of purposes such as broadcasting information, answering customer queries and perhaps engaging a particular community.

Think through what you would like the targeted audience to do with the information; whether you would like them to engage, buy, click, reply, read or share by listing the goals. 


Make goal measuring metrics 

Match goals to real behavior and actual metrics that are measurable.

For instance, if you are measuring engagement, you must know the most pragmatic engagement form that should be tracked. 

Measure awareness by using metrics such as amplification, exposure, reach and volume to know how far the message has been spreading.

Measure engagement by looking at metrics around participants, replies and retweets, knowing how many individuals are taking part, in what form and how often.

In case your aim is to drive as much traffic as possible to your site, track conversions, clicks and URL shares.

Know what people do when they arrive at your site and if they are going there at all.


Measure

After listing the metrics to center on, find the tools capturing the metric and begin measuring.

Twitter lacks a unique analytic tool and you might be required to use third part analytic tools or building your own. Most of these tools deliver results in real-time.

Plan ahead by setting the tracking even before the

Twitter marketing campaign has started or before reporting on the same. You will make it very easy to access all the information needed at a later date. 


Monitoring and reporting

The results from the measurement must be reported.

The initial findings will set the benchmark for other measurements in future and the figures need to be shared if you are in a company that has stakeholders.

You need to know how the numbers compare with your expectations, your competitors, campaigns and related commodities.

The analytics are so crucial since it is possible to know how your competitor is doing. 

Keep a regular check on the metrics, whether you are busy or not, otherwise all your efforts could be going to waste.

As they accumulate over a specific period, the value of the data will be clear after a number of months have lapsed and new data to compare with it has been collected. 

Always remember to carry out careful review of the measurement to know whether anything is amiss, the state of the metrics and whether the entire or a part of the process was unnecessary or superfluous.

It will help in making changes and doing some improvements for the sake of your future Twitter marketing campaigns.

 
Author Bio – Jason Smith is an online manager for Inbound Marketing Company. Jason likes blogging about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
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