Search Engine Marketing, Internet Advertising Services and more!
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Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is a useful tool for any business. It gets your name ranked in Google so that traffic to your site increases.  As you build an online presence it only makes sense that you keep track of it. You can use tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar to check on your current ranking. If you’re running a blog you should also notice which posts generate the most traffic and see where they rank and what keywords were used to get it there. If you’re in need of keywords to help advertise business, look toward Google Adwords.

Also, add your site to search engine indexes. Search engines use crawlers (sometimes referred to as spiders) to browse for pages. Basically if you’re generating good content, rankings, and linking the amount of times your site is crawled will increase. Overall this will help you. It’s a way of creating faster searches and up-to-date data.

However, keywords are your best friends when you want to get search engine’s attention. titles, content, links, and image names can all include keywords. Just be sure that you use them wisely. They must be appropriate and they must be used effectively. Too many will get your material labeled as spam, too little won’t get your page noticed. Also, link internally to pages with keywords or relevant text. The more you link to your own site, the more traffic each page will get.

Other good practices are to add image descriptions, avoid flash and other media that isn’t used by every format. Link to associates. Having an alliance will boost both of your reputations. When you’ve build yourself a cornerstone and these foundations it’s time to keep traffic going through social media sites, like Twitter. Good luck!

 

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Even those outside of the online marketing community were waxing SEO and such last week, when The New York Times (perhaps you’ve heard of it?) published an article about DecorMyEyes, an online eyeglasses retailer based in Brooklyn with a reputation for gnarly customer service.

Knockoff products? Sure. Fraudulent charges? Uh-huh. Threats and harassment? Yessir. And all over luxury eyewear.

Understandably, consumer review websites doth overflow with warnings and complaints re: DecorMyEyes. Bad for business, right?

Maybe not. In the article, the owner of DecorMyEyes, Vitaly Borker, explained the NYT that his company was actually benefiting from the negative press, as it was pushing his name up on Google. It’s like the SEO version of that old expression — “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

Like every part of the Google algorithm, whether or not the search engine factors in customer feedback into their rankings is rather mysterious, although the industry consensus is, um, probably not.

Still, Borker’s evil plan would only work for shoppers searching for keywords alone; run the company name through a search engine, and the results page practically explodes with DO NOT SHOP-aganda.

In response to the article, Google has penalized DecorMyEyes and resolved to investigate similar issues. Google reps reported the site was the exception, not the rule, in such matters. Borker was also arrested post-article, by the way, for fraud.

The moral of the story? For consumers, thou shalt Google the name of any company you’re (err, thou art) considering doing business with. And for search engine marketing folks — as usual – it’s always good to stay above board.

business marketingMost of us were first introduced to Facebook as, well, a way to see if that guy from your physics lecture was single. (Open relationship? That’ll do.) And even though Facebook remains an unparalleled resource for such canoodle-some pursuits, it’s also a very valuable business marketing tool.

And, guess what? Searching for a date and marketing your biz do not have many strategies in common. Thus, we must rethink the way we use Facebook.

Some ideas:

  • Make a page. For red-blooded individuals like you and I, a Facebook profile provides adequate representation, but every business needs a page. Setting it up will take some extra time, but it’s worth it — pages are much more customizable than their profile brethren.
  • Post photos! You probably already post photos on Facebook, but not with business marketing on the brain. Upload pictures of your company logo, your products and services, etc., and post them alongside keyword-rich captions. It’s SEO gold.
  • Interact. Reciprocal linking is a great search engine marketing technique, and getting your company’s fans to interact offers easy reciprocity. So ask questions, host contests, share your mundane thoughts… anything that will get those fans to comment and “like.”

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No business marketing campaign is complete without a LinkedIn account, or linking that LinkedIn account to a Twitter profile. But LinkedIn is about to up the live status ante with a forthcoming feature called Signal.

News of Signal broke today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, when LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner described the new service. Featuring live tweets and trending topics, Signal will allow those business-savvy LinkedIn users to filter their Twitter stream into easily digestible chunks. Users can filter tweets by network, industry, company, date, region, school, and hash tag.

Excited? We are.

Currently, we like to use LinkedIn Answers to respond to search engine marketing questions, particularly of the B2B variety. We also use Groups to expand our network and interact with users. But Signal could be a game-changer. It’s currently in limited beta, and we can’t wait to get our hands dirty.

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If you’re at all involved in the search engine marketing biz, chances are you’ve heard about the newly launched Google Instant, which provides live query predictions and results as users are typing.

SEO-ers reacted to this news in usual way — we sounded our “Change is bad!” alarms and braced ourselves for the inevitable collapse of our industry. But now that Google Instant is old news (read: one week old), most have come to realize that, although this technology may alter certain online marketing techniques, the changes will not be earth-shattering. They might even be good.

To us, Google Instant gets a big thumbs up, if only because it inspired this awesome video by Urlesque.

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Search engine marketing has evolved beyond conventional blogging and on-site linking to include social networking on services like Facebook and Twitter. Let’s take a look at some tips for creating a successful Facebook page for your business:

1. Design: Your Facebook page might not look like much when you first create it, but trust us — it can. Major companies like Starbucks and Skittles have set a standard among businesses by creating visually stunning designs. To truly excell here, you’ll probably need the help of professional graphic designer, but here are a few tips to get you started:

  • Use the FBML Facebook app to design new tabs using a combination of images, text, and links. Remember, this is also an opportunity for SEO!
  • Change your page’s default tab to one of your new tabs, as these will look better than the default wall tab.

2. Interaction: It’s called social networking for a reason, so start being social! Host contests, ask questions, friend new users — do whatever it takes to get people interested in your page.

Follow this advice, and you’ll be well on your way to business marketing with a Facebook page for your company.

internet marketingBing! The search engine’s trademark sound never sounded so sweet — not to the internet marketing community, anyway. Yesterday saw the debut of the revamped Bing Webmaster Tools, revealing a three-pronged focus on crawling, indexing, and traffic.

New features include:

  • The super-cool Index Explorer, which let’s you check out the Bing Index to confirm that the search engine has included all of your pages and directories.
  • Submit URLS, a feature allowing users to manually suggest URLs for indexing.
  • Another neat tool, Crawl Issues, which documents potential problems such as malware, redirects, and exclusions.
  • Last, Block URLs, a way to submit the pages and directories you DON’T want to see in Bing search results.

Also, Bing is going to roll-out additional tools all the time. Watch your back, Google!

Now for the bad news: The main downside to Bing’s new set of tools is that they require you to first download Microsoft’s Silverlight 4, a development platform most of us would rather get to… in our own time. You can’t even watch the new Bing Webmaster Tools’ introductory video without getting Silverlight.

Overall, though, Bing Webmaster Tools is an exciting addition to the world of business marketing. We look forward to seeing new features, and otherwise reaping the benefits of the ongoing Google-Bing rivalry.

business marketingWhen it comes to planning your business website, it’s important to remember one thing: everything. Every single detail — from font to slogan to color pallet — can help your business stand out from the crowd. Because internet marketing is about more than just SEO or PPC (or, OMG, any of the other acronyms we use). It’s about branding your site to match your business.

Today, we’re here to talk about logos. Not yours, necessarily, but the logos you can place on your blog and website to link to your Facebook or Twitter pages, or encourage readers to bookmark your content on Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

The standard approach here is to include each service’s standard icon, as in the group of pictures shown above. This presents your business as in-the-know, well connected, sleek, and modern, but it is not the most creative approach. Let’s take a look at some of our favorite specialty sets — all of which are available free from their creators:

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Woven Fabric icons by Dawghouse Design Studio — Perfect for clothing and fabric shops, organic food stores, maybe even garden supply retailers.
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Hand Drawn Doodle icons by Spoon Graphics — Any sort of office supply company would be write right at home with these, don’t you think?

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Old Bottle Crowns icons (also) by Dawghouse Design Studio — Vending machine manufacturers? Soda distributors? The business marketing possibilities are endless!

marketing companyWhat is Ajax? A figure in Greek mythology? A household cleaner? A programming technique? Yes, yes, and yes. But at the Ajax Union marketing company, we’re mostly concerned with the latter definition.

Short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, Ajax is a family of development methods designed to turn regular websites into online applications. With Ajax, the content and design of a website can update live without requiring new information from the server. That means no more reloading, no more hourglasses, no more pinwheels.

Google Maps is a good example. Thanks to Ajax, Google’s mapping software can update its information without constant reloading. Users toggle between various routes and forms of transportation (driving, biking, walking, public transit) and see live updates on the page as the highlighted route and accompanying directions change the match the new settings.

Can you imagine how tedious Google Maps would be if you had to wait for the page to reload every time you made an adjustment? There’d be a lot more aimless drivers and walkers roaming around, that’s for sure.

A potent force in business marketing and online development, Ajax is likewise a great reminder of the internet’s vast capabilities, and how far we’ve seen it grow since the days of dialup.