As the search engine marketing industry grows, there continues to crop up various web-based apps and tools for rank monitoring. But the simplest – and perhaps most talked-about – of these is a service called AuthorityLabs, developed in Phoenix, AZ, by a developer named Chase Granberry. “Rank monitoring should be effortless,” so goes a line on the AuthorityLabs website, and it’s one echoed by small businesses, enterprises, Internet marketers, and agencies everywhere. Indeed, there’s a great deal of demand for a simple, easy-to-use, and affordable solution that allows customers to track and analyze their ranking performance on search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) without wallowing in confusion on how to use the tool, or squandering their resources just to pay for a premium service. It’s to no surprise, then, that AuthorityLabs positions itself as a service for “rank monitoring made easy”. The question is, does it deliver on its promise? Pricing: AuthorityLabs readily admits that its service is more expensive – Read the full article
Web analytics doesn’t sound like fun. The minute you see those charts, tables, numbers, and geeky acronyms, it will sound even less fun. But analytics – or the analysis and reporting of Internet data with the objective of understanding web usage – delivers information that is essential to all businesses with some form of presence or another on the Web. It helps you understand what you’re doing right, what you’re not doing right, and what you can do to improve. Enter Clicky at GetClicky.com. Used on about a quarter of a million websites, Clicky is a web analytics tool that is, at the very least, on par with the biggest and most comprehensive analytics tools out there right now. But it’s not that which makes Clicky unique, for what really sets it apart is that it makes analytics fun. Easy to understand. Easy to manage. Oh, and unlike the traditional favorite Google Analytics, Clicky measures data in real-time. You won’t – Read the full article
When researching or choosing a product or service, visitors typically follow a keyword path. This keyword path can be used to help inform your SEO campaigns. For example, let’s imagine we have an imaginary visitor who is trying to choose a digital camera. Our visitor might start off by researching digital cameras. In Google, they will search upon the keywords “digital cameras”. They might complete some research, read some reviews, and decide upon a make of camera – let’s say they have decided upon a Nikon. Let’s now imagine that our visitor will now carry out a search for “Nikon digital cameras” and following further research, eventually decides upon a Nikon P100. Finally, at this stage, the visitor will carry out searches for “Nikon P100 prices”, which now indicates they are ready to buy and are carrying out price checks online. This keyword path will typically apply in most sectors, and your job as a website owner is to figure – Read the full article
Something big is going to happen this October 14 to 16 in Las Vegas. It’s called the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the first and only tradeshow, conference, and media event created for the rapidly growing industry of blogging and new media. We here at Lakeshore Branding are going to attend the event, but if that’s not enough to convince you to come and join us (it should be more than enough to convince you, though!) then here are the top six reasons why BlogWorld & New Media Expo is a can’t-miss. Money? Influence? Or both?: If you’re a small business owner, Internet marketer, e-Commerce store owner, corporate executive, online journalist, podcaster, broadcaster, or personal or professional blogger who has some form of stake in the web, then surely you’ll have plenty to gain by attending the event and learning more about the top strategies, tools, and technologies used in developing content for the web today. BlogWorld 2010 is where – Read the full article
Missing more than hitting in your E-mail marketing campaign? Don’t give up on it just yet. First of all, before you continue reading, you may want to check out our previous post on how to start an E-mail campaign. We hope you’ll enjoy applying the great tips we’ve listed in there. After the tips come the tools. We’ll let you in on a little secret: here at Lakeshore Branding we use something called MailChimp. So MailChimp is basically this cool new E-mail marketing service that’s simple and easy to use. It’s fairly new, but the service has grown to have more than 400,000 users (including us!) and 20 million emails served daily. If you’ve never launched a marketing campaign through E-mail before, then you might want to consider using MailChimp to make the whole process easier for you. Yeah, sure, the name sounds kind of quirky, but don’t be deceived: MailChimp has a powerful, developer-friendly product that definitely makes E-mail – Read the full article
One of the most exciting milestones that can be achieved by any business owner or retailer is a product or service launch. It marks the fruit of all the hard work that had been done. A launch, however, can also be one of the most terrifying, stressful, and expensive projects that you, as a business owner, will ever have to take on. So why not do it via social media? Traditionally, product launches feature a mix of advertising and PR efforts, pushed by a huge corporate event, media banquet, or some kind of conference. Yes, these still work. But what if you ran a business that was Internet-based? What if a great deal of Internet usage is critical in your day-to-day operations? What if you want to test the waters of Web 2.0 and use social media as your platform for launching a product or service? Don’t think it’s not possible. While many perceive social media as something that only – Read the full article
Critics are quick to point out that the Apple iPad isn’t exactly a replacement for your laptop. More than a mobile business platform, it’s a sleek tablet device for consuming content on the Internet. This doesn’t mean, however, that the iPad can’t increase your productivity while on the go. As the Apple commercial goes, “There’s an app for that.” Below you’ll find a list of essential iPad apps for small business users of the device. GoodReader At 99 cents, GoodReader is an affordable app for viewing PDF files and important business documents in other formats – like Word, Excel, PNG, PPT, TXT, and JPEG. It also supports high-resolution images, and can even do audio and video – perfect for opening and viewing all kinds of files, regardless of size. Need to download a presentation or a report from Google Docs for offline reading? GoodReader can also do that, and can even unzip those files and folders for you. Memeo Connect – Read the full article
E-mail: it’s one of the earliest and most widely used forms of communication on the Internet, even in the age of Twitter, Facebook, mobile apps, and social media. It can also be one of the most scandalous – and potentially one of the most embarrassing – sources of personal information, or just plain bad manners. Indeed, a lot of people can do with a little primer on E-mail etiquette in today’s world – regardless of whether they’re corresponding for business purposes, sending important information to various recipients, or marketing through E-mail. So for the sake of those who aren’t quite sure whether or not they have been misbehaving on E-mail, here are a few must-follow tips on E-mail etiquette: Keep it short and sweet E-mail marketers should be familiar with this rule. The longer your E-mail message is, the higher the chances are that your recipients are not going to read all the way through it. It’s a sad fact – Read the full article
