It’s great to drive traffic – online and offline – from all corners of the world. But if you’re a smart marketer, you’ll realize you don’t have to be so international – at least not when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Thanks to local search, businesses don’t have to squander resources on attracting customers and visitors that are beyond their geographic reach anyway. One can instead focus on catering to the heart of the locals. Want to find out how? Here’s a list of 17 great local SEO and local search tips, tricks, and tools to help you get started. Claim. Claim your local listing on Google Places. While you’re at it, go to Bing Local and Yahoo Local and claim your listings there, too. Apply best practices. Read our guide on Google Places to put yourself closer to the center of the map. Submit your info to the online yellow pages. Sign up in online directories and – Read the full article
First of all, this is not a recommendation for Dreamweaver. If the title sounds like a covert suggestion to use Dreamweaver, please accept my apologies. All I want to do is tell readers why Dreamweaver is such a big hit amongst developers when it comes to creating websites and web applications. So without wasting any more of your time, here goes: Single Panel – Multiple Designs Dreamweaver CS5.5 offers you a feature known as ‘Multiscreen Preview Panel’. This feature allows a single panel view for styling and visualize rendering for not only the PC but also for smartphones and even tablets like the Apple iPad. This has made the job easier for developers to corroborate styles and data and ensure that a particular website design is compatible across various platforms and devices. Faster and Simpler Integration of Interactivity What do people want from their websites these days? They are looking for better interactivity, yet another reason why website developers love – Read the full article
So, you’ve finally decided to join the social media stream and now you’re looking for more creative ways to market your business. So far, you’ve built your Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and your newly launched corporate blog is receiving a lot of positive feedback from readers. There is one more thing that can boost productivity: social media applications. These apps can boost your marketing efforts and make the process even more efficient. Here is a breakdown of the five most popular social media apps that you can use to accelerate your marketing success: Networked Blogs Join an online family of over 500,000 blogs and build an active community around your own blog. With the Networked Blogs Facebook app, you can: Import the blog feed to your Facebook profile Share your posts with a huge community of bloggers Gain massive visibility Promote your blog on Facebook The first step is to add your blog to the Networked Blogs via Facebook. Once you – Read the full article
The following are some simple web marketing integration ideas that can accelerate your campaign efforts – and business. Share messages on several channels The first step in integrating all your Internet marketing efforts is to tell a message repeatedly across various channels. Let’s say you have a new product to announce. Make sure the news is on your website’s news page as a link to media coverage or as a press release. Re-communicate the message in your blog (in a conversational tone) and have it posted on your Facebook page, tweeted on Twitter, and E-mailed to the opt-in e-mail / subscriber list. In addition, you might want to showcase the news in your website’s home page, as a form of attention-catching headline or ticker. The truth is that customers will not get access to your information in the same way. They all have their own preferences, after all. By amplifying your message on several online marketing channels, it makes it – Read the full article
Over the recent years, consumers have been spending billions of dollars at e-Commerce sites. With the growth of online business, e-Commerce has become a very viable venture. Many people even begin an e-Commerce website as their main business. If you have a physical location where you operate your business from, beginning an e-Commerce website can provide an extra sales channel for you. Creating a site for selling coupons, services, or products online, however, involves a lot of research and planning. The following are steps you can take in starting an online business. Establish a business and marketing plan: Set up a meeting with your team members or business partners. Brainstorm together and write out all the plans in one document. The plan should include all startup and recurring expenses. Set up an overall sales forecast and expense budget. Choose a good domain name which will help customers find you: You need to choose a domain name for your website that – Read the full article
While the concept of online marketing can seem strange and almost unnecessary for the food and drink industry, there are a whole range of benefits that can come from having a good online presence. In this post I want to cover some of the most useful options available and how these can be applied to your business to help increase your exposure and ultimately lead to more customers coming through your doors. You’ll need a website Before you attempt any sort of Internet marketing you are going to need a website. This shouldn’t be a problem as most businesses nowadays have realized the need to have a website and have already got this step covered. But after investing time and money into a website to represent your business, doesn’t it seem wasteful not to get it in front of your potential customers? That’s where the next step comes in. Try out search engine marketing Millions of people use search engines – Read the full article
If you’re the type of person who can’t wait to open your E-mail and see the newly arrived daily deals in your inbox, well – you’re not alone. More than half of all Internet users in the U.S. find value in these E-mails, too – enough to make them subscribe to at least two daily or weekly shopping E-mails or newsletters. According to a report published recently by market research firm eMarketer, a surprising 56 percent of adult Internet users in America subscribe to at least two “daily deal” E-mails or online newsletters. 61 percent of these subscribers, moreover, said that they find enough value in these E-mails to open and read all the messages. And they don’t keep the E-mailed online deals, discounts, sales, and freebies for themselves, either. According to the report – which cited research from Yahoo! Mail and Ipsos MediaCT – 45 percent forwarded daily deal E-mails to friends and family at least once a week; – Read the full article
Paid search is a wonderful advertising platform because it gives you clear-cut analytics for ROI decisions. Twitter, on the other hand, is a wonderful advertising platform because it is still natural and fun. Both paid search and Twitter advertising differ in scope and functional use in the marketing mix; however, Twitter recently announced a tool called the “Follower Dashboard”, which, in conjunction with geo-targeted ads, makes Twitter a very attractive advertising medium. Twitter announced the ability for companies to pay for “Promoted Tweets” earlier in 2010, where Coca-Cola garnered 86 million impressions with a single promoted tweet. Holy! Okay, sure Coca-Cola probably paid out the “Wah-Zoo” for that tweet, but even if they paid half a million dollars (ex: cost-per-engagement, or CPE, at $.10 & $6.06 per 1,000 impressions) for that promoted tweet, it would still be competitive with a paid search of $10 CPA. Okay, Twitter is great, we know. But up until now it was only great for – Read the full article
