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I get asked all the time, “What is the cheapest way to get my business online?” I believe, still, that it is some sort of local search campaign, not a website. In fact if I had about $200 to spend on a setup and about $99/month, I would go with a company that performs that service before I even built a website. It works well for companies with site, but it works nicely without one as well.
Can you do this yourself? Yes! You can go to Google and read about how to get your business on the local search results. Yahoo and Bing offer this service as well and it’s free from all, for now.
Truthfully you will get better results having a professional do it as they will also know how to optimize the listing and add your company to the important directories, or even add a video to YouTube that will get google ranking. But if you can’t afford it, at least give it a shot yourself!
Good Luck! Richard Uzelac, CEO GOiMarketing.com
At a recent seminar several of us were discussing the merits of Meta Tags and Search Engine Optimization.
A growing camp sees Meta Tags as almost worthless with Google’s new algorithm and Yahoo’s as well.
We believe a well created and optimized Meta tag still has merit, especially if the page content doesn’t have all the keyword density that we would like to have for design or content reasons. A well developed group of Meta tags can help a great deal with this situation.
All agree however that Title tags are VERY important and will always be important, well at least until the big three change dramatically.
Many people ask us how many characters we should add for their title tags and the best answer we have is go look and see what Google returns in the results and try to stay in that neighborhood. We’ve always said that the Internet marketing is in the pudding and Google and Yahoo are the puddings you should be spending your time consuming.
A well developed title tag should reflect brand, product, services, geo-target and other keywords to be most effective.
Descriptions are not a viewed by the casual user but they do show up on many Google returns and spending the correct effort on these is still quite rewarding.
Rarely do the “Big Three” Search Engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN agree on anything. Recently they agreed on the use and benefits of the Canonical Tag.
GOiMarketing.com has certainly been on board from day one and we have see positive results from employing this clutter clearing tag on our Client’s websites.
Canonical, according to Wikipedia means:
“Basic, canonic, canonical: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality, e.g., “a basic story line”; “a canonical syllable pattern.”
The reason for this tag is give the Searcher on Search Engines a better chance to find what they are looking for. The problem has been duplicate text on multiple pages or on the same page served by multiple URLS. On-line Retailers and - sites have this issue when multiple URLS feed into a particular product page.
When a search engine searches for say, a blue dress shirt, a clothier website could have a dozen URLS for that one page with the blue dress shirt. These could be special sales, partner site redirects, etc.
The problem is the Search Engines often only allow just so many pages of your site to be crawled per visit. If you have twelve pages of the same content, and they are all crawled, then other pages may not be crawled and your results will be incomplete on the search engines.
The Canonical Tag allows you to determine the Canonical URL for that item and to anoint it as such using the correct code. This allows you to help determine that most or all of your most important pages are crawled and that duplicate content isn’t re-crawled, thus wasting your chance for a more robust multi-keyword ranking on the search engines.
This Canonical Tag will also help sites that for some reason feel they must repeat the same main information on their site on multiple pages. Placing the Canonical Tag on the most correct and basic page will help that information to be posted in a high position.
GOiMarketing is committed to utilizing this Tag whenever we see a benefit for our Clients. You should make sure you are doing the same and not waste your opportunities on-line.
Richard Uzelac, CEO, GOiMarketing.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be easy if you understand the simple things that can improve your rankings. Here is a list of some of the most important ranking factors for search engines.
- Inbound links are a Huge Factor
The total number incoming links to your site influences your quest for high rankings on search engines. The links to your site show how important your website is to Google and the rest of the Internet. So the more important your website is, the better your rankings will be. If you have more links than your competition, then you will likely have better rankings on Search Engines. - Optimize Single Pages
Try and optimize one page of your site for a certain keyword or search term. Do not optimize the same page for more than one search term. If one page is optimized and highly relevant to one search term than it will rank higher than if one page was optimized for multiple keyword phrases. - Links from Quality Websites are Important
Although the amount of incoming links to your website are important, search engines also considers the quality of the websites linking to your website. Links from websites that have unrelated content will not help your search engine rankings as much as links from websites with related and relevant content. A link from a website with many links pointing to it will help your search engine rankings more than a link from a website with few inbound links. - Free Links are Good Links
If you pay for a link to your site Google and other search engines may penalize your website. A paid link is not editorial and many webmasters report paid links to the search engines. If your competitors report your paid links, you can end up in the Sandbox. - Keep all Your Pages in Mind
Even if a single page of your website will be listed for a single keyword phrase, search engines still consider all pages of your website. When you optimize many pages of your website for different keywords make sure that they are all related to a certain topic. Your website will be considered important to this topic and it will be easier to get high rankings for your keywords. - Don’t Quit Exchanging Links
To stay ahead of your competitors you should continue to work link building. If you don’t keep on working on your links, your competitors will pass you in the search engine results eventually. - Do Not Duplicate
Search engines do not like duplicate content. They want only one piece of the content and pages that have duplicate content will suffer in the search engine rankings. Unique content is what the search engines crave and will help with your results. - Steer Clear from Redirects
Redirects were used by spammers and that is why search engines do not like it.A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect so that search engines see it as a permanent redirect. All other redirects like Javascript redirects do not send the links from the old page to the new page and can even be interpreted as a spamming attempt. - Content and Links Together
Your rankings will be better when your website has includes content and incoming links that are optimized for the same topic. A web page optimized for Language Translation and that has many links from other web pages that use the term Language Translation as the link text is much more likely to get a top ranking than a page with just inbound links or the optimized content. - Age of your Website
The Age of your website or domain can not be changed. It is what it is. Usually the longer a website has been around the higher it’s ranking will be. If a website has been existence for awhile then search engines will think it is important if it has been around so long.
These are known as “White Hat” methods of SEO that highly influence your website’s rankings in search engines. Stay away from “Black Hat” methods such as Link Farming, Cloaking, Spamming, Hidden Content, etc. because search engines will penalize or possibly ban your website. The purpose of SEO is not to trick the search engines into ranking your site higher. They have become to smart for that. If you do the right things then you will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines.
Your website must have optimized content and high quality backlinks from other websites. Visit GOiMarketing and they can help you achieve your goals.
Marketing with Videos – YouTube Can Bring YOU Customers
You, too, can market your business via YouTube and other video portals.
Perhaps you’ve taken a short video with your cell phone’s video software of your baby’s first steps or your husband driving his new car, uploaded it to YouTube.com or Yahoo Video and then sent the link via e-mail to your family and friends.
And perhaps those friends and family members sent that link on to others. Soon enough you’ve noticed several hundred people have viewed your “home” video. (Go ahead, admit it – you check your little production’s hits stats….)
Now think of having a video about your services or products professionally done – and optimized for the keywords your potential customers use when searching for your products and/or services – and posted to the video portals with links back to your website.
Can you imagine the possibilities?
Here at GOiMarketing.com, we sure can!
A video can – and more than likely will – brand you as an expert, generate solid leads and build great, long term relationships with customers past, present and future. It’s a great marketing and sales tool adjunct to your print/text search engine optimization and search engine marketing efforts, especially for those visitors who are visually oriented– some folks just respond more favorably to visuals.
And videos tend to catch the eye of everyone – even diehard “readers.” Place a video on your website and you’ll help your visitors stick around longer to view your site’s offerings and products. Video is still different enough and “new” enough to pique – and capture – your visitors’ interest.
In addition to posting your video to the video sites, you can embed it into your electronic newsletters and business e-mails. Place your video on your website as well as your blog. Visit online forums your customers frequent and – when appropriate – place links back to your video in any threads you may start or comments you might leave (a link to it in your signature line is the etiquette to follow).
Here at GOiMarketing.com, we can create a video for you starting at $499. The price includes video design, creation and submission to sites such as YouTube.com, Google Video, Yahoo! Video and more. Hosting and maintenance are just $20 a month.
The video we create for you could be an animation (such as this example on our website; be sure to scroll down the page) or even a mini “infomercial,” where we could show how your product works or how your product or service solved a customer’s problem or made that customer’s life better.
You may have your own ideas about a video – or two or three or more – for your service, products and business. We’d love to listen; contact us via our website or call us at 1-866-736-1232 for a free consultation.
If you’re a personal trainer in Westlake Village, CA or a Law Firm in Agoura Hills, CA you may have been leery of forking out what could be quite a lot of money for internet marketing. “After all,” you may have said to yourself, “I don’t want to pay for ads that will be seen by people across the country – or even in the next state. My market is local.
“Do you hear me, Internet?! Local! My market is local!”
Well, the World Wide Web did hear you and the hundreds of thousands of dentists, Realtors, insurance agents, ophthalmologists, hair dressers, plumbers and other service providers who cannot perform eye exams, teeth cleanings, haircuts, drain openings and other work online can now market themselves online to customers in their local area.
So, like you, they may have stayed away from pay-per-click campaigns, submitting their websites to directories, etc. Instead – perhaps like you? – they put together a website, slapped the URL on their business cards and, except for referring potential customers to that slapdash website for “more detailed information,” left their web presence at that.
Local Search Engine Marketing
But there is a way to receive a nice return on your investment with a local search engine marketing campaign.
Actually, there are at least a couple of ways you can take on a local Internet Marketing program. And, of course, here at GOiMarketing, we can help you do so.
We can research the keywords your local customers use to find hair salons, plumbers, mortgages, insurance agents. For example, somebody needs to find an Insurance company close to their home so they go to Google and type car insurance in west chester, PA, they see 10 listings next to the map which shows up at the top of the results page, wouldn’t you want to be in those first 10 results if you were an insurance company? If you’re not, your competitors are.
And these local search engine marketing programs are much less expensive than those geared for providers who can sell their services to anyone anywhere.
With local search engine marketing we can help get you top positioning on search results pages on Google®, Yahoo®, MSN® and hundreds of others. This is not pay-per click – where you pay each time someone clicks on your link on the search results page – but similar to the organic results where no matter how many times your listing gets clicked on, you don’t pay anything per click.
The World Wide Web may be worldwide, but your customers are down the street. We highly recommend you use that World Wide Web with a cost-effective local campaign.
Yahoo!’s come out with a nice paid inclusion service. It’s called Search Submit and it allows you to pay for your site’s pages to come up in what is known as “organic” search results.
Normally when we talk about paid submission, we’re talking about pay-per-click (PPC), where you agree to pay a search engine such as Yahoo! a certain amount each time someone clicks on an ad that appears on the top or right hand side of a search results page.
This Search Submit service allows you to submit a certain number of your URLs (depending on what level of plan you purchase) per domain “for inclusion in non-sponsored search results Yahoo!, and other portals such as AltaVista and AllTheWeb,” Yahoo! says at its Search Submit Basic page. And they give you tools to use to help you choose which of your sites’ URLs are the best to submit.
Naturally, you could do this all on your own, using the tools and other tips they give you.
But like many marketing tasks, it might be better for you to pay someone else – like us – to do the work for you. By allowing us to help you by doing what we do best – Internet Marketing – you free up your time so that you can do what you do best – running your business. Truly, what is the most money-making way for you to spend your time? Spending it trying to figure out which URLs are best to submit? Or talking to you customers? Researching which keywords are best to use in your website copy so that more folks will find your website in organic search? Or making some sales calls?
Think of it this way. What if I need my house painted? Sure, I could do it. It would take me several days, plenty of headaches – I’m terrible at the prep work necessary – and Id probably do a rather bad job of it. Plus, I’d lose my precious weekends and probably several nights during the week while I got the dang thing done. I’d probably have to take some time off from work to get it done in a reasonable amount of time, and painting my house certainly is not my idea of a vacation.
But I’m a business owner and my time is valuable. I would better serve myself by hiring a qualified house painter to do the job. The job would be done quickly, I wouldn’t have the unpleasant job of all. that. prep. work. And I could concentrate on my business.
Let GOiMarketing be the equivalent of an experienced, talented house painter for your business. We do all. that. prep. work. And provide you with terrific results.
As a business owner looking to launch or increase your web presence, you’ve no doubt heard about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Such a campaign also can be known as a Google Adword campaign because Google is the pay-per-click giant.
You’ve probably been approached by marketing firms who can help you put together a PPC campaign. In fact, we may have approached you about a PPC campaign because we have the expertise and PPC wisdom honed over many months of helping clients large and small execute successful pay-per-click initiatives.
That said, I want to caution you about PPC. We have a nifty short overview on PPC on our website, yet I’ll paraphrase it here:
A PPC campaign can be very successful if you have the deep-pocket budget to pay for it. And I mean pay for it consistently, as in weeks and months A Google Adword campaign, as just one example – and this applies to other pay-per-click initiatives at other search engines such as Yahoo and Overture – can run you thousand of dollars a day. That’s right: Thousands. Of. Dollars. A. Day.
Continuing my paraphrasing of our PPC overview, once your daily “clicks” budget is spent, your ad no longer will appear on the search’s engine search results pages. You’ve spent the money for an ad, but no one is seeing it anymore.
Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another way to get visitors to your website, and it costs you nothing when a visitor clicks your site link when it appears in a search engine’s results page. I’ll talk more about this in another post because – of course! – GOiMarketing can set up an organic SEO program for you, too.
But back to Adwords and PPC. The really terrific thing about Adwords is that you can target the exact market you want to reach. Do you sell scrapbook supplies and you want to target, for example, the extreme niche market of adoptive parents who wish to put together lifebooks for their children? You can create a PPC campaign that targets just them. You won’t get the moms of newborns. Neither will you get the professional scrapbookers, nor the local scrapbooking club members (although you can target those niches, of course). No, you will only get adoptive families. And only those adoptive families looking to create a lifebook for their baby girl just arrived from China or their 8-year old son born in Moscow will see your ad.
Why? Because more than likely the scrapbooker in the family probably did a keyword search such as: “scrapbook adoption lifebook.” Or “scrapbook adoption.”
An Adword campaign allows you to pay for advertising that gets you in front of only those people who are interested in your services or wares. That’s the beauty of a PPC/Google Adword campaign: Your return on investment is exceptionally focused.
Let’s talk news. As in press releases.
As I wrote earlier, optimized press releases can go a long way toward helping people find your company and/or the services you offer.
And what’s really terrific about the Internet – you can write a press release, submit it to online release distribution service such as PRWeb, PRNewswire and others and then watch the inquiries to your website roll in – even if you never receive one phone call from a reporter.
I kid you not. Once your optimized press release hits the World Wide Web, it will show up in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. It will. Particularly if you have had it search engine optimized for the keywords people use when searching for the things your company sells or the services you offer.
Let’s say you’re a mortgage firm in Houston, TX. When people search for “Mortgages Houston” or “Houston Mortgages,” and if you’ve optimized your news release for those keywords, your optimized press release will show up in their keyword search for months, if not years. You easily could receive hundreds of inquires over time from just one press release – not just the one-shot instance when a reporter from your local paper calls to interview you and subsequently runs the article in the paper.
Submit a press release to the online PR distribution companies, and people will continue to find you. You spent the time (or perhaps the money if you asked GOiMarketing to write the press release for you), but that release still works for you.
Can an article in your local rag do that for you? Probably not. Nope, the newsprint that article was printed on was sent to the recycling bin long ago. The chances of someone finding that article in that newspaper months or years later is virtually nil. (That said, however, almost all newspapers place many – but not all – of their articles on their website. But what were the chances that that print reporter wrote that article with optimized keywords in mind? None, more than likely.)
So I recommend you spend your PR money wisely. By all means, send your release to your local and regional newspapers, but I would spend the bulk of my time putting together an Search Engine Optimized Press Release and submitting it the online distribution companies. You’ll get a lot more return on your investment (of time and money) online.
And one final note (and, yes, you bet this is a shameless plug!), all the SEO press releases we write here at GOiMarketing are written also to catch the eyes of journalists. So don’t be surprised if that optimized press release we wrote for you does garner you some ink in your local newspaper.
