Archive for the ‘ Marketing ’ Category

By John Black

Search engine optimization or SEO as it has become known by, is an essential ingredient for any website to succeed. However it can be very confusing for website owners particularly for those new to the whole concept of marketing online. There are usually three reactions the whole idea of SEO;

1. some feel that it is a waste of time and that merely the act of putting a website on the internet is enough.

2. Some feel that they can just do it all themselves and that there isn’t much to it.

3. Many feel that it is definitely something that should be delegated to a professional and that their precious time is better spent doing things for their businesses that they excel at.

All three views have merit, for a few businesses just having a website is enough. The type of business that this would work for is one that is unlikely to have people searching for their services online. For example a private Chiropractic practice in a fairly small town.

In slightly larger towns, depending on the amount of competing businesses have websites online, it may well be possible to get great results by doing a small amount of promotion yourself.

For the majority, however, getting it to work well really does require the services of a professional Search Engine Optimization specialist.
Search engine optimisation is a field that is constantly changing and the systems and techniques that need to be used to get good search engine visibility are also an ever changing phenomenon.
The great thing about using SEO to get your website to rank highly in the search engines is that it is advertising that not only is working for you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. It is a way of bringing in customers that are actively searching for what you are offering.

Consider the traditional types of advertising - newspapers, magazines, tv, local papers or radio. They are all a kind of shotgun approach, sending your advertising far and wide in the hope that your potential customers happen to be reading, watching or listening to them at exactly the right time.

hereas with search engine marketing it is easily possible, with good SEO services and a well set up website, to put your offering directly in front of the people that have purposely looked for your product or service by typing it into a search engine.

Another great thing about using search engine optimisation to boost your business, is that it is measurable. Unlike more traditional forms of advertising, it is entirely possible to track how many people come to your website. Not only that you can tell where in the world they come from, which keyword phrase they used to find you, which search engine they came via and how many came via each of the keywords.

With more traditional advertising not only is it a shotgun approach, in most cases it is not measurable and usually the costs involved are extremely high.

For cutting edge SEO services at a fraction of the cost of other Search Engine Optimization services contact the experts at LinxHurricane today.

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By Johnathon Black

As the internet has become increasingly sophisticated, the various professional fields in the internet marketplace have become more and more specialized. In each area there have been massive leaps in complexity, usability, design and technology.

Even just a few years back, there were relatively few separate specialties for people who work within the arena of the internet. These days there is a vast multitude of ways in which people can specialize online. These professionals include:

Web designers,Information architects,Google Adwords campaign managers, various types of program and software developers and last but not least, SEO services.

In my experience, most web designers these days don’t even know how to include search engine optimization in the sites that they design and build. There is ample proof of this; it is visible easily every day by just taking a look at what is out there. Sites that have empty, or in some cases, no Meta tags no headline tags and even in some cases, no title tags at all either! What is frustrating about this is that all of these are extremely easy to include.

So where does that leave the buyer? It leaves them with a website that will no doubt look fantastic; however the chances are that few will ever see it. Let alone become customers of whatever service or product the site is offering. This seems to be particularly true in the case of websites that contain a lot of flash, it looks great, but it is heavy in the browser and as it is purely images, the search engines cannot read it, even if there are words as the words themselves are rendered as images not text.

Therefore, when shopping for a website designer, be aware that though most will have the words ‘SEO’ or ‘Search Engine Optimisation‘ somewhere within their marketing or sales material. Take the precaution of checking that they actually know what that means, many don’t. The way to check it out is to look at sites they have already completed - particularly their own. Check to see if it has Meta tags such as the keyword and description meta tag, check to see if their title tags actually have something useful in them not just ‘welcome to company XYZ website’.

These things are simple for anybody to check out. The title tag contents are readily visible when you open any web page in your browser, you will see it on the very top of your screen. To check the other parts you will need to look at the source code, you can do this in Firefox by clicking on ‘View’ then on ‘Page Source’. This will show you all the code of the site, the meta tags should be near the top just after the the title tags.

Lastly, check to see if the site has headline tags. Between these tags you should see the main headline of the page, this should include the keywords that you want people to find your website with.

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By Lesley Komlos

Each and every business owner no matter how large or small the scale of the business, seeks to increase their profitability of their business. There are several ways to do this and the internet is becoming an increasingly popular and indeed vital tool for just about every business niche. The significance of marketing online is becoming accepted and understood more and more both by the general public and by business owners and companies. This daily increase in the awareness of the value of marketing an offline business online is seeing more and more businesses turn to the expert services of website designers, internet marketers and most importantly, SEO services offered by companies that specialize in search engine optimisation.

As a result, the amount of people competing for online trade is increasing at an alarming rate. What this means for business owners is that without the services of a good search engine optimization specialist any online marketing activities are unlikely to be very competitive.

Whether they are online or offline businesses, good SEO services have become essential for everyone wishing to increase their market share online. The internet is becoming the best medium to market any business globally. To be noticed by users of the internet, it is essential to have a first-rate website with excellent content for the target market.

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays an essential role in getting a site seen by the people that are actively looking for the product or service that it is promoting. There are certain systems and factors that need to be put into place that adhere to the guidelines adopted by the search engines. If done well, the search engines will see the website as important or relevant and will therefore rank the site highly in their search results. This results in more people seeing the site and in turn becoming customers or clients. The goal of SEO Services is to optimize websites in such a way that the search engines will place your site in a high ranking position for the keyword searches made by the target market. Good SEO specialists know the systems and techniques that will get a site ranking highly in the search engines.

The effectiveness of good SEO services has improved a lot in recent times and each and every small or large business needs to make good use of it if they wish to be at all competitive online. Finding a good SEO services company is becoming more difficult, there are a myriad of offers, pricing and ‘guarantees’ out there ready to confuse the uninitiated.

Good SEO services do not need to be expensive, what they need to be is effective. Look at the results companies are getting for their clients. That is generally a good indicator of how good they are at their job.

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For many internet business holders, the start is financially tough. Many start with little money and as a result have to do nearly all the work for themselves. Creating a product, creating the strategy for marketing, creating the website itself and doing the all the tasks involved in marketing their new business.

To begin with it may well be viable to build your own site, using templates and other helpful material. However as the business starts to grow, it is most likely that a simple DIY website will no longer work to support the growing business.

Does this sound like something that has happened to you? Chances are, that you are one of the many who started from scratch and have most likely become used to doing it all yourself, and possible loathe to part with any money for something that you think you can accomplish for your own business. Nonetheless, there is much more to employing a professional designer than just completing a job that you have no desire to tackle.

When you employ a website designer to do the task for you, you are actually doing much more than merely handing over the task to another person. In fact, by spending some money, you can allow the designer shoulder the responsibility of the project and you won’t have to think about the little irritations that always crop up when you’re part way through the task. What it means for you is that you can focus on more important things, such as strategies to grow your business.

In addition, good designers are experienced professionals so the result is likely to be far better than if you had tackled it yourself. By choosing to outsource your website design projects to a professional, you won’t have to be concerned when any problems crop up as you can always get the designer to sort it out for you. Also, they will be able to identify any issues very easily and fix it much more quickly than you are likely to.

All in all, hiring a professional website designer is the best thing you can do for your online business. The benefits are enormous, just make sure that any designer you hire knows not only how to build a great site, but knows how to incorporate good SEO practices into the site too.

For more help with SEO services including search engine friendly website design either from scratch or as a redesign.

Good Search Engine Optimisation will get you a ton of qualified targeted customers to your site.

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By Lesley Komlos

When it comes to selecting the best domain name for a new website, it is not as simple as just choosing a name that you like or your company name, although choosing a catchy name can be good for branding. The domain name itself, along with any page names within the site, can all help or hinder how easily your site will be found by the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are several factors to consider when first contemplating a new domain name.

The first consideration is to try and choose a domain name that sufficiently expresses your services and/or products; it also needs to be a broad enough term that will cover any expansion in the products and services offered by the site. Ideally it is best to choose a name that can be easily remembered by people, to encourage repeat visits from customers that come to know your website domain name, along with the products or services that you offer.

From a search engine optimisation perspective it is best to choose a name that contains your most significant keywords or keyword phrase. This is one of the factors that can help your site to be search engine friendly and therefore, along with other factors, be more easily found and gain higher rankings in the search engines.
So how do you determine which is the best keyword to use?

There are several tools available freely online that can help you to establish the best ones to choose from, my personal favorite is the Google keyword tool. To find this simply type, ‘Google keyword tool’ into the Google search box, and it should come up within the first few results.

To use this tool is very easy, simply type in the main two or three keywords or keyword phrases that relate to your business, for example if your business is security and alarm systems and you are located in Nashville, you would type in:

  • ’security Nashville’
  • ‘alarm systems’
  • ‘alarm systems Nashville’ and
  • ‘Home security Nashville’.

Then click on ‘get keyword ideas’.

The tool will then give you a whole heap of keyword ideas, mostly related to your business. Next to each of these will be numbers indicating the number of searches conducted each month on each of the particular keywords. There will probably be several that have a significant number of searches per month so if it is possible to combine them to make your domain name that is a good option.

So as for the example above, these may include ’security alarms’ ‘home security’ and ‘alarm systems Nashville’. A great way to include all three of these keyword phrases would be to choose the domain name “HomeSecurityAlarmSystemsNashville” if that is unavailable you could try putting a dash between each of the words.

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