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Archive for November 2010

Online Marketing for Google Instant Previews

November 29, 2010 Uncategorized One comment

It doesn’t take a magnifying glass to see Google’s new magnifying-glass-clad feature, Google Instant Previews. In fact, the aforementioned enlargement icons are rather distinct — and distinctly game-changing to the world of online marketing. Why? At the click of a mouse, Google Instant Previews transforms the search engine experience from verbal to visual, allowing users to eye before they buy.

What does this mean for online marketing? For one thing, it means that the Creative Suite 5-wielding Mac enthusiast you’ve been hiding in your utility closet has been right all along: design matters. And with Google Instant Previews, it matters even more.

Some simple tips for improving your website’s design — and making it snapshot friendly:

Stick to a color palette. Pick two or three colors to brand your site, creating a vibe of visual legitimacy for your search engine audience.
De-clump your text. It doesn’t matter how informative your website is: searchers are turned off by large blocks of text. Make sure the preview of your website shows short, easily digestible paragraphs for your visitors to enjoy.
Do some housecleaning. In web design, everybody loves doohickies — from Google AdSense to social media badges. But if said thingamabobs dominate your search engine snapshot, your website will wind up looking like spam. Be mindful of this content, and push it to the bottom of the page if necessary.

Need more help with web design? Check out www.ApplesCreations.com for affordable small business websites by the Ajax Union search engine agency.

SEO Company Woes: Help, My Business Has a Negative Review Online!

November 22, 2010 Business PR, reputation management, seo company No comments

Whoever said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” obviously never met Yelp. Or TripAdvisor. Or any of the other customer review websites that can make or break a business and disrupt an otherwise smooth sailing online marketing campaign.

If a negative review is showing up for your company on Google, this complaint is likely costing you business, and it’s in your best interest to counter or remove it ASAP.

How? You have a couple of options:

Contact the consumer. If your review comes from a consumer with a specific complaint, the simplest course of action is to correct the damage at your source. Are they mad that you didn’t refund their shipping? Refund their shipping. Do they claim their product was defective? Send them a new one. Spending $20 or even $100 pleasing a customer is a worthy investment, consider dozens of customers it’s likely scaring away.
Consult the Powers That Be. If your review includes information that you know to be false, you can try asking the website that hosts it to remove the offending content. You might even consider taking legal action.
Cancel it out. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, negative publicity cannot be removed. In this case, your best course of action is to counteract the bad press by promoting a positive company image. This means a company blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and positive buzz on other forums and customer review sites to help push that negative feedback off the front page of Google.

Whether you’re working with an SEO company or doing your online marketing in-house, it’s important to keep tabs on your business’s reputation online. Sign up for daily Google Alerts of your company name — including variations: Ajax Union, AjaxUnion, AjaxUnion.com — to monitor the web for negative publicity.

And if you need help countering bad press, trust PR United, our business PR service, to repair your reputation online.

5 Online Marketing Networks You Forgot to Join

November 19, 2010 online marketing, seo No comments

Facebook? Check. Twitter? Mmhmm. But online marketing is about more than these two biggies. Let’s take a look at five resources you might have overlooked.

FFFFOUND! — It’s like social bookmarking, but with images! Our SEO company loves FFFFOUND! — in part because it’s so fun to type, but also because it allows you to promote your company logo and other relevant images online.
DISQUS — A popular tool used by CNN, MTV, and similar, DISQUS allows you to add suped-up commenting to WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, and many other platforms, and integrate the aforementioned with other social networks, and the rest of the DISQUS community.
Vimeo — It’s no Youtube, that’s for sure, but Vimeo isn’t exactly small potatoes either. If your company has a lot of videos, you should promote them wherever you can!
Gather — This site makes it easy to share blog posts, photos, and videos online to its growing audience. Worth giving a spin, eh?
Mixx — The other other other white meat — or, um, social bookmarking outlet. Mixx offers all the standard stuff, and it’s another chance to reserve your company name online and create a profile.

Ever wish someone would create all of these profiles for you? Our SEO company will — it’s part of the standard setup on our off page SEO program, the AnewB Plan.

Search Engine Marketing News: Ads Are The New Sponsored Links

November 18, 2010 PPC, search engine marketing No comments

Done any Googling lately? If so, you might have noticed a subtle change amid your search results — the Pay-Per-Click search engine marketing advertisements, normally known as “Sponsored Listings,” are now labeled as “Ads.”

It’s short, it’s punchy, it’s vaguely hip. But what will the new “Ads” label mean for PPC advertising? Good things, apparently. Search Engine Agency reported that CTR (Click Through Rates) have jumped 11.4% since the switch. Nice.

Why would “Ads” inspire more clicks than “Sponsored Listings”? It’s hard to define exactly, but “Ads” just sounds better. The word “sponsored” has always had awkward connotations — as in, “And now a word from our sponsors…” — and we’re glad to see Google moving in a different direction.

Want to get started with search engine advertising? Ajax Union offers full-service Google AdWords management with no long-term contracts. To find out more, call us at 800-594-0444.

Is Your SEO Company Cool Like Facebook?

November 17, 2010 seo company No comments

Solid Cactus just posted a pretty neat article about the valuable business lessons contained in The Social Network — that movie about Facebook that isn’t Catfish. So put on your thinking cap and soak in the following business marketing tips, as culled from David Fincher:

Address a Need: Before you start a business, ask yourself, who are you helping? What do you have to offer that your competitors do not? In The Social Network, Zuckerberg saw a hole in way people communicate online and was the first to fill it.
Create a Need: In the film, we witness Zuckerberg’s a-ha moment when he releases that he his budding social network needs a Relationship Status function — a function we’ve all relied on, but probably didn’t know we need. Can you create a need for your customers?
Keep It Cool: Considering its C++(plus)-proficient founder, Facebook has maintained a rather cool reputation through a variety of factors — the initial exclusivity, the reluctance to commercialize. Think about what you can do to make yourself cool.

Facebook is one of our favorite online marketing tools, but we never thought we’d be taking notes on their business strategy, especially not the cinematic interpretation. But then again, it was a pretty good movie.

Sites Our SEO Company Loves

November 11, 2010 seo company No comments

Let’s face it — you can’t spend all of your time on AjaxUnion.com. And for those rare moments when you need to take a break from our SEO company, you might be wondering, Where should I go?

Well wonder no longer. Here are 4 of our favorite sites around the web:

Selma Deals — A budding deal site featuring multiple hot deals every day, Selma Deals is a shopper’s destination. Window shoppers welcome.
NY Sports Digest — Yankees or Mets? Giants or Jets? NY Sports Digest is the only blog online to cover ALL the teams in New York, even the little-known Brooklyn Nets.
Entertain Me Daily — Great blog about everything from Glee to iPhone apps. (Maybe even iPhone apps about Glee.)
Brooklyn Trends — Whether you’re looking for a BK bar or simply checkin’ in on the hood, Brooklyn Trends is an excellent resource for the intellectual Brooklyner (or the nosy Manhattanite).

Still stumped on where to go? You can always check out our search engine agency online on Facebook and Twitter! Or, you know, Bubble Spinner.

Online Marketing Tips: The Whole Kit and Kaboodle!

November 10, 2010 Uncategorized No comments

If you run an ecommerce site — or if your search engine agency is promoting one — there’s one website you should absolutely incorporate into your online marketing campaign: Kaboodle. A well-trafficked online shopping community, Kaboodle makes it easy for users to add and share individual products from around the web: items they own, items they wish they owned, and — in your case — items they’d like to promote.

Kaboodle comes with a handy drag-to-your-toolbar button that allows users to submit content directly from product pages. You can customize the title, price and description of the item, and even enter a comment to go with it. It’s a great way to tie individual products to keywords, and get your pages indexed faster on Google Products and other comparison shopping engines.

Note: When creating a Kaboodle account, it’s best to use your real name, then add your business as a Kaboodle Brand. This is in accordance with their TOS, so your posts will not be deleted as SPAM. (Remember, White Hat online marketing is always the way to go!)

Ajax Union: More Than an SEO Company

November 9, 2010 seo company No comments

At Ajax Union, we sometimes identify ourselves as an SEO company, but our online marketing offerings actually extend well beyond the realm of search engine optimization. Let’s take a look at some of our other services:

PPC Feeder
Offering professional Google AdWords management for small business, PPC Feeder delivers immediate results — that means more traffic, and more conversions. Our PPC management service includes strategic keyword selection, ad creation and optimization and statistical reporting.

EmailSpark
Business email marketing, simplified. EmailSpark offers full service email marketing — we write and design your monthly newsletters, send them out, build up your contents and send you comprehensive stats on how your campaign is doing.

PR United
Our business PR service provides press release writing and distribution for exposure all over the web, including credible news outlets like Google News and Yahoo News. It’s the perfect combination of SEO and branding.

ApplesCreations
Specializing in small business websites, ApplesCreations offers professional, affordable WordPress website design, a great way to give your brand a new look or build a new website from scratch.

That being said, Ajax Union does offer comprehensive SEO, including on page website SEO and AnewB, an off page SEO plan.

SEO NY Ideas: Deep Linking

November 8, 2010 Uncategorized No comments

If Hamlet worked at an SEO company, he’d likely encounter a familiar industry conundrum: To deep link, or not to deep link?

Deep linking, by the way, is the process of building links to pages on your website other than your homepage. Deep linking is useful to drive traffic to valuable pages on your site. Of course, you don’t want to direct too many resources away from linking to your homepage — the most important page on your site.

The compromise? Give your SEO plan a chance to build up some links to your main site, then make a shift to deep linking. (Take that, Prince of Denmark.)

Once you’re ready for deep linking, it’s important to choose your targeted pages wisely. Good candidates include:

Service/category pages
FAQs
Articles
Glossaries

Directing a bunch of links to a single product — a pair of neon pink fashion tights, for example — is probably a waste of resources. However, pointing your searchers to your main fashion tights product page is a worthwhile pursuit. Informative content like FAQs, articles, and glossaries can be similarly valuable, especially if these pages contain links to more specific products and services.

If your website isn’t set up for deep linking, you might consider restructuring your domain for more effective SEO, both on site and off. For information on this and other services, check out our internet marketing company at www.AjaxUnion.com.

Search Engine Marketing Playlist

November 5, 2010 seo company No comments

Do you work for an SEO company? Do you wish you worked for an SEO company? Either way, you’re probably curious to know the very best jams to listen to while engaging in the various forms of online marketing. Go forth!

Off Page SEO — “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers
Search engine optimization is all about going the distance — spreading your message far and wide via blogs, articles, classified listings, directory postings, social profiles, etc. etc. In fact, if we hadn’t chosen this Proclaimers ditty, we probably would have gone with “Going The Distance,” by Cake. The Proclaimers won out, though, mostly because this song was in Benny & Joon.

On Page SEO — “Do You Love Me?” by The Contours
Have you ever tried to change yourself to win somebody over? We have. Website SEO is sort of like the makeover scene from Pretty Woman, except you’re not trying to impress Richard Gere — you’re trying to impress Google. (So, yes, we could have gone with “Pretty Woman” here, but we’d prefer to honor a song that mentions a dance called the mashed potato.)

Pay-Per-Click — “Push It” by Salt ‘n’ Pepa
What is a click, really, if not the direct consequence of a forefinger pushing the button of a mouse? While we’re tinkering with the advanced settings of our Google AdWords management accounts, Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s “Push It” keeps us going strong. Ooh baby baby!

Email Marketing — “Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes
Let’s face it, email kicks snail mail’s butt: the formatting, the speed, the statistical potential — not to mention the lack of a physical postman. This Marvelettes tune reminds us of that bygone era before @’s and dot coms, reminding us to be thankful that, when we can’t find a message we’re expecting, we need only to open the folder labeled spam.

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