Why SEO Should Be A Part Of Your Web Development Strategy
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Website Development on June 20th, 2010
Website development is more than just planning and building a website that is attractive and designed well. Equally important is search engine optimization and I’ll go so far as to say that website development should not even begin until an SEO strategy is considered.
Let’s face it, it’s getting more and more difficult to market yourself online. There are a number of reasons for this:
- There is more competition
- Many competitors in every niche have an age advantage built into their Web business
- Google Caffeine, recently launched, is indexing more pages than previous incarnations of Google’s database, adding to the competitiveness of search overall
- SEO is ever changing, making it more and more difficult to keep track of what is important
- There is an overload of information available
- It can be difficult to discern what is truly important
- Good SEO is often perceived as out of reach financially (not true, however)
Internet marketing offers a diverse array of strategies for marketing any business online and SEO is only one track, but it’s an important one. When you consider that 80% of Web traffic for most websites still comes from organic search and that organic search strategies are free to implement, unlike PPC, then it puts it into a different perspective.
Your website development strategy should include as many online marketing channels as possible and that are feasible for your business. SEO should be among them. By considering search engine optimization before you begin developing your website you could save yourself thousands of dollars in bad design work. Not only that, but you’ll increase your chances of being found in the search engines and receiving more quality traffic to your website.
WordPress 3.0 Means More Robust Blogging
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Internet Marketing on June 19th, 2010
Bloggers know that a new version of WordPress has hit the streets. Code named Thelonius, in honor of the famous jazz Monk, WordPress 3.0 merges the single-user version of WordPress with the multi-user version. We here are LeapGo are looking forward to playing with it.
Why is this important?
We think WordPress 3.0 is significant for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s the first major revision of WordPress for several versions now. That means there is a lot to look forward to. From the WordPress codex, here are a few of the features offered through WordPress 3.0:
- Ability to manage multiple websites from one central installation
- A new theme, Twenty Ten, that illustrates WordPress’s new features
- Custom menus
- Custom header and background APIs
- Admin username and password set during installation
- Bulk theme updating
- Shortlinks support
- Custom post types and custom taxonomies
These are just a few of the new features offered by WordPress 3.0. We haven’t played with this enough to give you a review of the features, but we are looking forward to using the new WordPress. What I will say is if you are a blogger or planning to start a blog for your business then WordPress 3.0 promises to provide you with greater benefit than ever before. Now is the perfect time to start a business blog.
What Is Ecommerce?
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Internet Marketing on June 18th, 2010
What exactly is e-commerce? It’s a question that is often asked by new small business owners or small business owners who are thinking about going online and doing business there. In a word, e-commerce is any type of business conducted online. It is generally referred to as selling products and services, but it need not be limited to that alone.
For instance, music sites that allow free downloads can be considered engaging in e-commerce, particularly if it is expected that those free downloads will lead to other transactions such as cell phone ringtone downloads, the purchase of CDs and DVDs or a link to an affiliate program is clicked. Any of those activities constitutes e-commerce.
E-commerce is also transmitting information about products and services – your e-mail newsletter, for instance. You can have an e-mail newsletter that drives people to your brick and mortar store for purchases. That’s e-commerce too.
So the selling doesn’t have to take place online. It generally does, but as long as you are using the Internet to promote your products and services then you are engaging in e-commerce. If you are ready to start your e-commerce strategy, contact a rep today to discuss how e-commerce can benefit your business.
Tweaking Your Existing Website
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Uncategorized on June 17th, 2010
Sometimes an existing website can be tweaked in certain ways to help it rank better in the search engines and receive more traffic. We can even often improve your conversions with a few simple changes. And you might be wondering by now just what kind of chances I’m talking about.
For starters, an SEO evaluation will reveal whether or not you need to optimize your website content for better rankings. Having someone look at your meta tags, keyword densities and inbound links can often reveal weaknesses or holes in your search engine optimization strategy.
Next, your website design should be given a looking over as well. Chances are a complete overhaul is not necessary, but you may need to move elements around. Your newsletter opt-in box may not be in the best position on the page or perhaps you could add social networking icons to make your pages easier for visitors to share with their friends. Sometimes small changes can increase how visitors interact with your site.
For a free website evaluation give us a call or contact us and we’ll see if there are any missed opportunities on your existing website.
Who Should Write Your Website Content?
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Uncategorized on June 16th, 2010
If you think you can hire a web designer to design your website but write your content yourself then I’d encourage you to reconsider. You might be making a huge mistake.
Perhaps you are a great writer. You spell well, your grammar is impeccable and you can tell an awesome tale. But can you sell? You’ll have to know how to lead visitors to the Buy button. After all, that is what website content is all about. If your content doesn’t sell then it’s a waste of space.
There are different techniques to approaching the close of a sale online. Many of those techniques parallel traditional selling techniques. It is not necessarily a 1-to-1 correlation, but many sales techniques do convert well to online marketing and any website content writer worth his weight in salt will know what they are. If you are not familiar with the sales techniques that successful sales people use to close sales then you should probably not write your own content.
So who should?
When looking for someone to write your website content you should find out a few things about them first. Here are five things you should be absolutely certain that your content writer can do for you:
- Write well optimized content; SEO is still the name of the game.
- Write attention-grabbing headlines.
- Write conversationally. Website visitors don’t want to read stuffy marketing copy – they want to relate to a human being like them.
- Write strong calls to action, which are your money makers. Without calls to action that inspire website visitors to pull out their credit cards, everything you do is for naught.
- Write with your website visitors’ needs in mind. Your content must reach your site visitors at their point of need. If it doesn’t then don’t expect to close the sale.
These five skills are essential for any content writer. When you get ready to hire a company to develop your website, ask if they have a content writer on staff that can do these five things. Get samples of their writing and the results it has produced.
Why You Should Hire A Ghostwriter For Your Blog
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Internet Marketing on June 15th, 2010
Many small business owners start a blog only to abandon it after a month or two. That’s not a good idea. A better option is to hire a ghostwriter to write your blog every day. Here are 10 reasons why hiring a ghostwriter for your blog is a good idea:
- A professional blog ghostwriter won’t run out of ideas
- The time you spend writing your blog can be freed up to do more important things, like seeing to your customer needs
- A professional blog ghostwriter will spend time ensuring your web content is polished
- Your blog stands a much better chance of assisting your website achieve high search engine rankings than most other forms of Internet marketing
- Your company blog can be promoted in ways that your standalone website cannot
- A well-written blog can be highly optimized for search engine traffic
- A professional blog ghostwriter will keep your blog focused on the topics that your customers care about
- A blog is an excellent branding tool
- Your company blog is the best tool for reaching an audience with search engine marketing AND social media marketing
- A blog means more content and more web pages on your website, which benefits you in several ways including increasing your chances of receiving search engine traffic and inviting the search robots to your site more often to crawl it
If you’re still not convinced that having a company blog is right for you or that a blog ghostwriter can benefit your search engine marketing then give us a call at 1 (800) 211-7619 or contact us for more information about our blog ghostwriting services.
Localized SEO For Local Small Businesses
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Internet Marketing on June 14th, 2010
There is perhaps nothing more important in today’s Internet marketing landscape than localized SEO.
More and more people are going online to find local businesses and that means that your business should start right now to engage a local audience online and reach your target market before another business snags it. This is particularly important for urban businesses or small businesses in a large metropolitan area, but rural businesses can tap into localized SEO and Internet marketing as well.
First, perform some competitive research to find out which of your competition is currently marketing online and which ones are getting ranked for the important keywords for your niche. Then try to find missed opportunities or holes in their marketing. That’s where you want to start.
Once you gain a foothold in your local market online then you can branch out into your competition’s more secure operations. This is a sneaky way to enter a market, but if your local market is already rich with online marketers then it’s the best approach – whether your business is in a large metro area or a rural area.
Localized SEO is becoming one of the most needed areas of online marketing operations and if you haven’t started your Internet marketing initiatives yet then you are already behind.
Why You Should Run PPC Ads Concurrent With Social Media
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Social Marketing on June 13th, 2010
Social media is all the rage today. Many small business owners and other marketers jump on the bandwagon of a new idea when it’s hot then abandon it when they don’t see the results they want. Even if they were doing it all wrong to begin with.
Chances are, if you’re not seeing results from your marketing campaigns then there is something about those campaigns that you can fix to make them perform the way you expect them to. Whether it be social media campaigns, link baiting, PPC, SEO or whatever, if you can change it and it’s not working for you then you should probably change it.
But what about if things are going good? Let’s say you are running a successful social media marketing campaign. And let’s say you stopped running PPC ads because they weren’t doing as well as you thought they should. Would they do better the second time around?
It’s likely they would – if you made the right changes.
You don’t have to stop your social media marketing campaigns to pick up on your PPC ads again. Just make sure that you are targeting the right keywords and that your landing pages are optimized correctly – for SEO and for conversions. But PPC can enhance your social media marketing in several ways:
- Its adds to your branding
- PPC is a pay after results model, social media is a pay results or not model (assuming a service provider is handling your campaigns)
- You can track and measure PPC
- Successful PPC advertisers report a high ROI on their advertising
- PPC success is duplicatable
PPC advertising is a good compliment to both social media and search engine optimization. Don’t cut it out just because you didn’t see results the first time.
Why Analytics Is Important
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Internet Marketing on June 12th, 2010
Analytics is one of the most important aspects to marketing online. What you can’t or don’t measure cannot be changed or improved. That’s why Twitter recently announced the purchase of an analytics company for its offerings to business users.
While it’s still unclear just how Twitter will use its analytics capability to benefit users, one thing you can be sure of – they do understand the importance of analytics.
Analytics allows you to track and measure your website’s performance. You can also track and measure the performance of your other Internet marketing campaigns – pay per click, Twitter, social media marketing, etc. With the proper analytics package you can measure your results for any marketing strategy and change what needs to be changed to better optimize your marketing efforts. That’s what analytics is for. And that’s why you should employ analytics whenever possible.
Website Development Begins With A Plan
Posted by Jason Corgiat in Website Development on June 11th, 2010
Website development is a lot more complicated than it used to be. Before you ever start building your website you need to decide what kind of resources you are planning to dedicate to it and what kind of features your website will have. Website developers do more than just design websites these days. We build sites that are a part of a company’s overall marketing and branding plans.
Some websites would benefit from a forum or a blog while others do not necessarily need them. If you are building a Web store then you’ll need the appropriate e-commerce package that may include a shopping cart, autoresponders and a customer management area. You may need a way to manage an electronic newsletter, or specific hosting needs. You may even have to integrate different components that are coded in separate languages such as PHP, ASP and CSS.
It all begins with planning. To plan your website development properly you should consult with a professional website development company that knows how to handle the needs of a company like yours. Be sure to ask a lot of questions.
