Internet Marketing Tips That Have Stood the Test of Time

Posted: Friday, January 6th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
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Some SEO techniques work for a few months or years before they become antiquated by revised search engine algorithms (link farms, anyone?). However, there are a handful of tips that worked in the past and will most likely continue working in the future. Read on for internet marketing tips that have stood the test of time.

Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing

Fresh Content

With today’s technologically savvy generation, many companies feel the need to use social media to keep up and maintain the interest of their current and prospective clients. And given that platforms like Twitter, Facebook fan pages, and blogging sites are generally free, most businesses (old and new) tend to view social media as a low-risk investment. However, once you decide you want to have a blog or Twitter, you absolutely MUST update them frequently. Even though Twitter and WordPress may be free, you still have to spend time writing new content on a regular basis, or at least you’ll have to pay an employee to do the updates for you. Just having a Twitter, Facebook fan page, and blog isn’t enough to increase your ranking in the search engine results page. Here is a good example that better explains the often over-simplified benefits of social media on web marketing: A company blog ranks relatively high in a SERP. However, one day, the owner finds that his traffic has suddenly dropped significantly. The culprit? His popular blog had not been updated for more than five months. However, once he makes a new blog post, that is enough to bring his traffic back to its standard volume.

Fresh content is good because search engine crawlers will recognize it. But more importantly, fresh content is good because it will naturally attract the attention of users and help you build organic links. Read more …

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What is Google Panda 2.5?

Posted: Thursday, November 17th, 2011 by | Filed under: , , ,
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The Google algorithm, also known as Google Panda recently released their latest update, Google Panda 2.5. Panda’s last update was about 7weeks prior, which is one of the largest gaps they have had in their update schedule so far.  So what is Google Panda? Think of it as a complicated math equation. Google uses hundreds of different factors to determine who and which websites to rank in their search engine. So, when you see results appear on page one, it’s the result of Google’s algorithms. The Google Panda update involves changes to this complicated math equation, which often changes the ranking amongst many different search combinations.

Google Panda

Google Panda

Now, more than ever is Google focusing on quality web content and websites overall. Unique, keyword-rich content will help your website appear in search results, but if you’re recycling content, re-writing someone else’s website content or even plagiarizing, you won’t be appearing in search results any time soon. Read more …

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Email Marketing Tracking

Posted: Thursday, September 1st, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Now that you’ve built your email marketing campaign, it’s time to blast it out to your email database. Whether you’ve built the HTML yourself, or you’re using an newsletter marketing program, you should always evaluate tracking data. There are a few important results you want to evaluate. This data will help you understand who is reading your emails, what they’re interested in, which email addresses are invalid and more. To understand your results, there are a few different areas you should be aware of:

 

Open rate

This term refers to the number of email recipients from your list that opened the email message you sent. This number is usually displayed in a percentage and total number of message opened.

 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to the number of emails that were undeliverable. — some email addresses may be invalid, some email accounts block unknown users. A hard bounce means that the email you sent was returned because delivering it was impossible. Either the email account doesn’t exist or it’s wrong in your database. A soft bounce is the delaying of email messages. Sometimes the system has difficulty delivering because the mailbox is full or the server is temporarily down.

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Retention Email Marketing

Posted: Saturday, August 20th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Research shows that it costs four to seven times more to gain a new customer than it costs to keep an existing one. That being said, it’s important to actively communicate with your existing customers and a great way to do that is through retention email marketing.

Businesses, especially those operating in highly competitive markets and rely on their existing customers to continue using their products and services, can surely tell you how important retention email marketing is. Retention marketing is often used by mobile phone companies, cable television services and credit card companies because it’s an effective way to retain their customers.

What is email marketing? Retention email marketing is a form of internet marketing through email. Retention is the idea of keeping your current customers, which is crucial for any business.  Customer loyalty can make or break your business, which is why any business should make use of their database and email marketing. Even combining email marketing with other forms of online marketing can boost your marketing campaign and create a very powerful strategy.

Before you build your email marketing campaign, you should learn about the value and ROI it will bring your business. Your business can increase revenue in a number of different ways. Since email is one of the most inexpensive and effective channels to reach customers, email marketing is a great way to communicate. You can also increase your profits by targeting specific customers (highly profited) and design a strategic campaign specifically for them. Read more …

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Budgeting a PPC Campaign

Posted: Saturday, July 2nd, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

As you can probably assume by now, advertisers only pay for online advertising in pay per click (PPC) form when users click on the ad. PPC advertising can help your business earn visibility with users looking for their services. The cost of this type of internet advertising can vary based on your campaign, but be alert of the costly clicks.

Advertisers bid on keywords in specific search engines and win a prominent ad spot. Bids are placed based on what advertisers are willing to pay for each keyword. The cost per click of your ad is the amount you are willing to pay for each click. The tricky part of this process is identifying which keywords you will incorporate into your advertising campaign. There are highly competitive keywords in search engines, which tend to be general terms, and tend to be quite expensive. There are two sides to bidding on a popular keyword: one, the traffic to your site will increase almost instantly and two, each click costs you part of your budget and that online advertising cost will increase quickly as well.

A good way to use online advertising is to bid on keywords that are most relevant to your website content. Think about specific brands, geographical regions and other, more defined keyword phrases. Internet advertising is very competitive, especially general PPC keywords.

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Optimizing Your Page Rank

Posted: Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Page Rank is very important to your website, as are many other web marketing services. Of course SEO is important, but there any many other ways to improve your Page Rank. When developing and constructing a website, be sure to build your site with smart architecture. Faceted navigation is important for your website and any online marketing you plan on exploring. Users should be able to explore by filtering available information so make sure navigation around your website is simple, easy to read and doesn’t need explanation.

While developing your website it is important to be sure all broken links are fixed. Links are constructed many times based on SEO and small errors can be overlooked. When 404 errors occur throughout your website, Google may take that as a lack of credibility. If you can’t fix 404 errors, be sure to redirect the page to a relevant content-rich page.  Follow simple online services outlines to figure out redirection.

When deciding on a host for your website, make sure you choose a fast server. A hosting server that utilizes multiple resources will be sure to load your website at a faster rate. Google also views this as one of there many classifications for ranking. Choosing a host is just as important as choosing your web marketing company. Read more …

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What is PageRank? Google PageRank Explained

Posted: Sunday, April 10th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

PageRank is a numerical value that Google uses to determine how important a page is on the web. In other words, it is a link analysis algorithm that evaluates and measures the importance of your website and along with Search Engine Optimization, is one of many factors used by web marketing in determining where a webpage appears in search results.

Named after Google co-founder Larry Page, PageRank is largely based upon the number and quality of backlinks a webpage has. According to the Google founders, the most important pages on the internet are the ones with the highest number of links leading to them. Think of this as a voting scenario. Each link is a vote and by linking to a site, you are casting a vote. Although each link counts as a vote, pages with a higher PageRank value have more weight when “voting” compared to pages with lower PageRank. Another factor determined in PageRank is the number of links on the page casting the “vote.” Pages with more links have less weight.

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