Most businesses and websites that invest in Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaigns know the basics of running one. They’d also know that the most important element of any PPC campaign is keyword research: spending time on finding out what phrases will be the most useful for your website when set against the cost of the most commonly used phrases in your business sector. Keyword research and keyword selection make up the single most important job for any website, and finding the balance between the most commonly used phrases and value for money when competing with your rivals can often make or break the performance – and value – of your campaign. Once you have mastered the basics of keyword research, it is possible to dig deeper into the more sophisticated arts of Pay-per-Click and hone your PPC strategies and skills even more. One way of doing this is through Pay-per-Click tracking. PPC tracking allows you to evaluate the Pay-per-Click campaigns you have – Read the full article
The E-commerce industry hasn’t only grown bigger than ever. It has also become more social than ever. Thanks to the constant evolution of the Web – and to the popularity of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter – businesses and retailers are now doing more than just catering to individual Internet users and online shoppers. They’re also marketing to the people’s friends, inner circles, and communities, with the aim of bringing in more fans, followers, and dollars. Yes, dollars. In a recent story by Mashable, Jason Taylor, vice president of Platform Strategy at Usablenet, wrote that, when it comes to marketing, it’s “no longer just about ‘liking’ brands.” With a social network like Facebook giving way to new sales opportunities, businesses and online retailers are maximizing their social presence to drive not just marketing and branding campaigns, but also additional revenue. “By integrating purchasing into their branded pages,” Taylor said, “businesses can effectively take advantage of Facebook as a – Read the full article
Google Analytics holds a wealth of information about your site. Within a few clicks you’ll have all of the metrics that are important to you: page views, visits, unique views, bounce rates, and conversions, etc. If you want to go a step further you can start to segment this information or create custom reports so you can look deeper into the data. Regardless of whether you are an e-commerce site owner, a marketer, a business owner, or a blogger, if you know how to interpret the data correctly, you will be able to make the right choices more often. The numbers don’t lie and if you can base your decision on what the numbers are telling you, you’ll be able to improve the performance of your website and increase the number of business opportunities you’ll get from it. Site Search: A hidden gold mine One of the most overlooked tools in your analytics arsenal is quite possibly the Internal Site – Read the full article
The Internet and smart phones are two modern inventions that most people cannot now live without, especially since the increased processing power of phones is being used to browse the mobile Web. Statistics reveal that more and more people are using their mobile phones to access the Internet. According to Bango, a mobile payments and analytics specialist, the number increased from 10.8 million in January 2008 to 22.4 in January 2009. These figures are hard to ignore and there are suggestions that these growth rates are set to continue for the foreseeable future. If you’re a business owner, a blogger, marketer, or brand manager, then check out your traffic stats and see for yourself the increase in the number of your mobile searchers. Unfortunately, not a lot of webmasters have begun to recognize the importance of optimizing their sites for mobile. After all, what works well on desktops won’t necessarily work – or look good – on a smart phone. – Read the full article
About a year back we compiled a list of competitive intelligence tools and it turned out to be one of our most popular posts. Well its a new year now and we thought you deserved an updated list. We went through the old list and threw out a few services that are no longer useful and added a whole bunch of new ones for you to check out. Some of the sites are more convenient than others depending on your needs. Some are free and some our expensive. Some of them directly monitor competitors’ advertising efforts while others track social media channels. Some of them offer several services and others only one or two. Heck, some of them aren’t even meant to be competitive intelligence tools, but we think each has something beneficial to offer. It was by pure coincidence that it came out to be an even 40 tools so let us know if there’s more we need to – Read the full article
In my experience with Internet Marketing and SEO, I have come across a multitude of Internet marketing and SEO terms. A lot of these terms usually have very vague or technical definitions that leave you confused and frustrated. I know how you feel, trust me, I have been there. Fear not, I have compiled a list of internet marketing and SEO keywords in layman’s terms for you people that are new to SEO and internet marketing. 1. Anchor text , anchor link – When you are reading content, and a word is clickable and contains a link. 2. Backlink, back-link – a link from an outside website (outside source) that points back to a website. (i.e. all the links that connect back to your blog) 3. Broken link – a link that fails to connect to it’s intended destination 4. Cloaking – When a website presents one version of itself to the user and another version to the search engine. – Read the full article
We all know that E-mail is one of the most potent tools for Internet marketing. And, thanks to the growth of mobile Web browsing, E-mail marketing is now bigger than ever. We’ve written about E-mail marketing before, focusing on things like: Starting your E-mail campaign How to write irresistible subject lines And E-mail marketing etiquette in the time of social media …but there’s something we haven’t yet touched on: video. That’s right. The Web has evolved well enough to more fully enable E-mails with videos – and we’re not just talking about 25 GB WMV attachments that take forever to download. There are a number of E-mail marketing-related products out there today that allow you, for example, to embed your YouTube videos so that recipients can watch it from inside the E-mail message. E-mails with videos significantly boost your click-through rates Not only does video E-mail marketing introduce new creative possibilities (no longer will marketers be limited to text and – Read the full article
It’s that time of the year once again: the time to make lists, review what has happened in the last twelve months, and look back at some of the year’s highlights. It’s no different here at Lakeshore Branding. As you probably know by now, we’re very passionate about all things online. And that’s why we work hard to bring you news, trends, tips, tricks, and the occasional top secrets on Internet marketing, social media, technology and apps, etc. So, as 2010 comes to a close and we herald the coming of a new year, we thought it would be a cool idea to check out Lakeshore Branding’s top 5 blog posts of 2010. 60 Awesome Small Business WordPress Themes This blog post was inspired by the small business owners who are dedicated to finding solutions to enhance their visibility online. And since we were getting a lot of questions about where they might find business-oriented WordPress themes, or how they – Read the full article
