Marketing any product or service online can be a daunting task for a marketer, especially when the competition is cutthroat and the attention span of audiences has been reduced to just a click. So being at the right place at the right moment is as good as going on the right kind of diet regime – one that would bring in results! One strategy to building a business online – specifically, link building – is considered one of the best ways to connect to the audience. Businesses around the world today rely on the Internet to expand and optimize their visibility for their potential clients and more. It’s a given that Google has set nearly an unbeatable standard for linking only those sites that are trustworthy and pass their acid test. The Web is truly a place where marketers can lose track as linking to sites that basically have no status or ranking by the search engines usually results into – Read the full article
A potential pitfall for many new Adwords advertising is simply the false pretense that Google’s default Adwords settings are in the best interest for all advertisers. That’s simply not the case. Here are a handful of tips that can take just minutes but provide a significant lift in your online advertising campaign performance. 1. Review your location and language settings Google defaults each new campaign to target theUnited StatesandCanada. If you don’t ship internationally, this is a clear opportunity to narrow your targeting. If you are a localized business serving a specific area there is further opportunity to narrow in your focus by targeting a specific state, city or even specific mile radius surrounding your business location. Advanced Tip* If you are targeting multiple countries, set up separate campaigns for each country. Each geographic area will perform differently due to variances in search behavior. Separate campaigns will provide you much deeper insight into each location’s performance and allow for smarter decisions – Read the full article
If you got a pretty good site, which shows up on the first page of Google, you ought to be cautious about some possible threats. Hacking might be a huge issue indeed, but there is another form of threat lurking on the Internet these days. This threat is not a virus or a bug or a worm, yet it is very potent and can cause chaos for you and your adored website. Beware of Page Jacking! What is Page Jacking? The attack called page jacking mainly involves copying the content on your website onto some other site, so that the user believes that the other site is your legitimate site. If proper measures are not taken to secure your content, you are bound to lose your privileged spot on the first page of the search engine. The Consequences of Page Jacking Because the page jacker uses the same keywords and the same content, with a few exceptions here and there, – Read the full article
UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who participated in the Lakeshore Branding Happy New Year 2012 Giveaway that we organized with UPrinting.com. You all posted awesome responses! Unfortunately, there can only be one winner. And we’ve chosen Andi Luther-Philippe of WeLoveSoap.com as the recipient of a custom set of 250 business cards from UPrinting. Congratulations, Andi! We certainly hope that the cards help you jumpstart your new handmade artisan soap company. (Hey, we might order ourselves some, too.) Again, thank you so much to everyone who participated. We’re liekly going to run more promos soon, so stay in touch and please do keep visiting our blog regularly for updates. *** We here at Lakeshore Branding would like to thank our clients and readers for a great year. Thank you! The year 2011 was an absolute blast, but 2012 is going to be even more fun. To celebrate the transition, we’re going to do something cool here. We’re going to run a contest – Read the full article
The Internet has definitely changed the way we interact with both friends and family and with businesses and consumers, with the Web becoming an important way for companies to target and advertise their products and services to customers. And if you’re looking for great ways to reach out to potential consumers, then the latest raft of current Internet technology could help you. The Internet has become our first port of call when it comes to accessing information, mainly thanks to its speed and ease of use. And with more homes, schools, and businesses making use of online services, online advertising is now big business. Gone are the days of mass print runs and expensive magazine and newspaper spreads. Now, with cable Internet providers offering fast connection speeds, E-mailing and mobile phones have become the new way to communicate. And the advertising and online marketing professionals have seen this change and made sure their campaigns follow suit. Advertising using the Internet has become – Read the full article
Social media advocates are often quoted as claiming that social media is the greatest form of advertising because it is free. At Silicon Beach Training we use social media in a big way; we use it to increase exposure for our training courses. We use it to build relationships with key influencers and our customers. We also use it extensively to promote and share our flow of content generated to inform and inspire our existing customers and potential clients. One of the most important paybacks for all of this activity is it seriously improves our ranking. I believe that Google is going to up the stakes on this one, too; social shares are going to become even stronger signals that affect page position. In order to sustain these benefits, however, we need to employ people. We employ full-time people and we need to tap many external sources for content generation, paid for in currency and in back-links. Time and people – Read the full article
Raising funds online isn’t easy. Thank goodness there are useful social media marketing platforms like Kickstarter and Twitter. (Check out our tips for fundraising on Twitter and our coverage of some of the most successful social media fundraisers!) But if these tools aren’t flexible enough for your charity organization, political advocacy, or religious community – and if you think you’ll need a bigger Web presence, like a website or a blog – then you might as well create your own WordPress site. WordPress is Lakeshore Branding’s recommended content management system (CMS). Why? Because it’s focused on aesthetics. Because it’s built on evolving and upcoming Web standards. And because it’s so easy to use. To help rally your cause, we compiled this list of 15 WordPress themes sure to strike at the heart of your online audience. These WordPress themes are great for non-governmental institutions, public sector groups, charity organizations, environmental organizations, fundraising events and committees, advocacy groups, political aspirants, churches, – Read the full article
While the traditional breadcrumbs are nothing but annoying, the term “breadcrumbs” in technology has a different reputation. For those who are unfamiliar, breadcrumbs are little words and phrases that some websites place at the top of a webpage to help the user follow where they are in the website. They work as little navigation tools to help someone stay organized when working through a website with many different webpages. Consider the example below: In general, only major companies use breadcrumbs because they seem so sophisticated. After all, a small business website can’t be that hard to navigate, right? Wrong. If you have more than one webpage, utilizing breadcrumbs has many benefits. Top 5 Reasons Your Webpage Should Be Using Breadcrumbs 1. Easier Usage – Visitors will likely have a much better experience on your website if they can get around easily. Sometimes users can get frustrated jumping from page to page because they get lost, but breadcrumbs help solve this – Read the full article
