Archive for online marketing

The Benefits of Blogging

 

What is the importance of a blog for your online marketing strategy? There are several reasons to create and host a blog for your business. Aside from SEO, when utilized correctly hosting a blog can help boost your rankings, but it can also create an informed fan base for your business too. Here are three reasons a blog is beneficial to you and your business.

- Blogs that are updated regularly with fresh content can be utilized to create links to your business website. They can also be used to create keyword-rich content. Producing new content through a blog is beneficial to you website, which may not need to have content changed quite as often.

- Maintaining a blog allows you to casually inform potential customers and clients of new products or services, up-and-coming industry trends, and promotional sales and giveaways.

- Linking your business blog to your website is a must, and linking your blog to your social media outlets is a just as important. Creating social media links makes it easier for your followers on Facebook and Twitter to read the fresh content produced on your blog and keep informed about your business and industry.

Lastly, creating a blog as part of an online marketing strategy is simple enough and there are a variety of  blog hosting websites that make the setup and maintenance even easier.

The Basics of Social Bookmarking

What is social bookmarking and why does it matter? Simply put, social bookmarking is the practice of collecting and organizing a series of websites that share a common theme. This practice can also be integrated into online marketing. The organization of the websites by tags helps make it easy to manage and search for specific keywords. Social bookmarking takes place on platforms that are public websites, such as Pinterest, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and Stumble Upon. None of these websites should sound too unfamiliar to anyone who regularly surfs the web.

So why does it matter? Social bookmarking is a hybrid of social networking, search engine optimization, and internet marketing. For networking, social bookmarking allows you to share your stored bookmarks with followers, thus creating a fan base. Through organizing your bookmarks by tagging them based on subject, you will attract followers interested in the same tags. As for SEO, social bookmarking can help boost search engine ranking through creating backlinks to your personal or business website. Through utilizing linked keywords in the text of social bookmarks, social bookmarking can be useful for the page ranking aspect of internet marketing.familiar to anyone who regularly surfs the web.

Keeping Track of Your Keywords

Generally, utilizing internet marketing and Search Engine Optimization to boost your website’s ranking is great for climbing up the search engine pages and making your online presence stronger. Fostering higher rankings also makes your business website more visible to users and drives site traffic. But what happens when keywords start to hurt your progress and your website slips down the search engine page?

Using keyword tracking software, like RankZen, you can keep track of which keywords are helping, which ones aren’t doing anything, and which ones are actually hurting your chances of making it to the coveted number one spot. To get rid of the keywords hurting your online marketing efforts, research alternative keywords that seem to be tracking fairly well and replace the bad with the good. Sometimes keywords that are dragging down search engine rankings  are being used too often within the website content, or are not customized enough for the website content. SERP tracking tools to keep tabs on more than just your own website and keywords are available with various levels of subscriptions, depending on how much you would like to track.

How Has Internet Marketing Grown to Be a Necessity?

internet marketingSimply put, it is yet another way for a business and/or a website to advertise themselves and whatever services/products they offer.  Of course, there are other routes a business can go to advertise, namely TV and ads in newspapers.  But the thing about marketing online is that you will be reaching a wider and more diverse audience than you would if you were to go the more traditional route.  Pretty much everyone has a computer and spends a lot of time on the Internet; also, with the almost exponentially increase of smartphone users you will be able to reach them while they are out and about.

Internet marketing is more flexible than advertising either on TV or in newspapers.  With Internet ads, you can change them on the fly to optimize the audience you are hoping to reach or to update customers on new developments with your products and services.  That is not even remotely possible with traditional methods of marketing.  Once the TV spot is run or the ad is run that is it; it is out in the open now and you cannot take it back.  You get a lot more out of internet marketing with about the same budget plus the added flexibility.

For more information, contact an online marketing company today.

Social Media Has Changed Marketing Strategies…

social media marketing…and it is in your best interest to keep up!  Social media – e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and the like – has made it that much easier for you to communicate with current and prospective customers.  And even more importantly, it has made it much easier for said customers to communicate with your business.  They can shower your praises and tell you what they like about your services or products but on the other side of the coin, they can also tell you what they do not like or do not appreciate about what you are offering.  Regardless of what they say, you should listen to their complaints, criticisms, as well as any positive feedback they are sharing across the various social networks they are on.

For both you and your customers to have a dialogue with one another you need to set up accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites out there.  You can use said sites to advertise your products and services, showcase features, introduce new items, and so on.  But for dialogue to happen not only must you talk, but you must also listen.  Otherwise, your social media campaign will be a waste of time and your audience might disappear which will hurt your overall business efforts.

For more on social media marketing, contact Ajax Union today!

Understanding Social Bookmarking

social bookmarking

social bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Delicious are used by people to bookmark sites they like to peruse through and refer back to from time to time.  But more importantly, in terms of SEO efforts, you can share said sites with other people using the same social bookmarking services.

As a business, you want to show both current and prospective customers on the Internet what you have to offer and social bookmarking is another way to do it very effectively.  By bookmarking certain links – e.g. links to pages from your own site or your company’s blog posts – you can share them with many more people thereby increasing both your company’s exposure and page ranking on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Users on StumbleUpon and Delicious will be able to vote up links to your website that your business has put up which puts you at a greater advantage than those who have not tapped into this very effective online marketing strategy.  By using the right keywords in the title, body, and tags of your submissions, it increases your chances immensely.

Social bookmarking can lead to more traffic, increased site ranking, and then some.  Ask an internet marketing agency today for more details!

Social Networking and Ecommerce

online marketingMost people think that social networking sites are for people to waste time, keep up with friends, and stalk potential romantic partners. All these things are true. Social networking sites also serve as a tool for companies to spy on people. If your company isn’t gathering data from social networking sites you are wasting a powerful resource.

After corporate America co-opted love, freedom, virtue and truth in the 1990s and 2000s they moved on to friendship. Friendship proved a more formidable foe than the aforementioned notions however. It is hard to be friends with a corporation. I mean I love Burger King, but I am not in love with Burger King.

Now that I am friends with Burger King online I can see it every time I turn on my computer and every time I walk down the street. Soon visiting the Burger King Facebook page will make your computer emit that oh-so-familiar Burger King odor. Burger King in turn gets to see everything I do, say and buy. If that isn’t friendship I don’t know what is. Online marketing is great because it speaks to the notion that corporations are people too. Your company can become human too, by using online business marketing.

How Very ‘Pinterest’-ing: Another Social Media Site To Benefit Small Business Internet Marketing

There are so many social media sites now it’s ridiculous. Sometimes you wonder how you’re going to keep track of it all. But there’s a new kid on the block who’s making sharing things very easy. This kid is called Pinterest. This site provides an innovative and visual way to share your interests, likes, and opinions. Using a virtual pinboard, this social media site tacks pictures from hyperlinks you add, with a space for your commentary. This way you get a visually appealing and quick snippet of what you think. It’s not long and outdrawn. It’s kind of like a picture version of twitter, but a lot more fun to browse.

Businesses and individuals to combine efforts and spread word of the latest trends and favorite products. It’s a way for online marketing companies to share the wonderful services provided that consumers may find intriguing and may otherwise not have known about. And it is all done through a visual medium. People respond very quickly to visual stimuli. Having an online presence through imagery is just as powerful a tool as the written word. If you can’t say it, show it.

Businesses and individuals can plan boards to organize their goals, such as planning a wardrobe, or a wedding, or a dream home, or more. The options are limitless for small business internet marketing and promotion of new products.

 

Local Internet Marketing and Choosing Keywords

When it comes to setting up your keywords, you need to think local. What is that your business does? Do you fix cars, sell insurance, offer some kind of help in law? Who are the people you want to attract? Locals. You want people in your immediate area that you can help with your services. So when you are looking to market online, you need to focus on the community.

So you want keywords about fixing cars. If your keywords are broad, you are competing with thousands upon thousands of other auto shops in the nation. But if your keywords include the specific city or state that your business is in, this changes your search results immensely. Because when someone wants their car fixed, they need a place next door, not 5 states over. So they’ll search for their town or city. And when they do, your company will come up, because you knew how to take on local internet marketing and choose the right keywords.

It’s all about targeting specifically when it comes to internet marketing. Choose your keywords, be specific and don’t stray from them. You’ll be up in the search engine ranks sooner than you think!

Local Internet Marketing – (Oren)

Local Internet MarketingThe internet is a large, meta-physical space. They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing. Many businesses think that they should not be spending money building a presence on the World Wide Web when they only operate in one small physical realm. This is where local internet marketing comes in.

Since privacy, as a concept and practice, no longer exists the internet knows where you are at all times. It tracks your every move. Every time you pick up your phone, check your email, or buy something the internet stores this information. Why do you think those ads on your computer have an eerie relevance? This is scary yes, but it is also marketing gold. You can use this information to target only customers in your area. That way you don’t need to waste money boosting your presence on the World Wide Web you can stake out your own little corner.

World domination is a hard thing to pull off, but local rule is a lot more manageable. You should stick your flag in your corner of the web before someone else beats you to it. Use an online marketing company that offers local solutions. The internet is like the American west of old, virgin, lawless and just waiting to be claimed.