Let me list a few of the areas you can get your potential clients for business:

• Internet Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (paid or free)
• Word of mouth (WOM)
• Email marketing
• TV advertising
• Radio advertising
• Soliciting (door-to-door or phone)

Now I’m going to dig a little deeper into the huge possibilities of internet marketing:

• Social media (Facebook, Linkedin, My Space, etc…)
• Videos (Youtube is the biggest website and it’s owned by Google)
• Articles
• Press Releases
• Directories

When working to find potential clients through internet marketing you need to implement search engine optimization to maximize the possibilities! Otherwise, in a world where millions of people search for websites, your business will get lost in the shuffle of all the other businesses trying to market themselves.

When you choose to use internet marketing for your business, you can also benefit from word of mouth and gain potential clients for business by successful internet marketing and search engine optimization; potential clients from WOM can come along without any added work!

I hope this helps you with some new ideas as you look for potential clients for your business! Send us an email  or comment on our SEO blog if you have questions about internet marketing or search engine optimization.

There are many different meta tags in HTML. When creating a web page, meta tags are typically used to tell search engines what your web page is about. Just as a term paper has titles, a synopsis and headlines, meta tags in HTML do the same.

Some primary meta tags include the following:

• Title tags
• Descriptions tags
• Keyword tags

Search engines use robots to “read” websites to determine what information is on your website. When meta tags are filled out correctly, it can help your website appear higher on the list of  search results because it helps categorize your website among the millions of websites that exist.

Although there are many other factors involved with search engine results, some meta tags are essential to search engines like Google. Search Engine Optimization (the art to getting your website on the first page of Google) uses good keywords in the meta tags to enable better search results for your website.

Many factors structuring your website are fundamental to search engines. If you are considering having a website created,  create a good foundation before you buy your domain name.

Many people build a website without realizing what is needed and spend thousands of $ dollars $ when it isn’t necessary to get the results you want!

“What are meta tags used for?” I hope you know the answer to this question and will implement this factor into your website development.  If you would like to know more about search engine optimization (also know as SEO) and want to learn how to accomplish this, contact us today!

Many people do not have a budget for internet marketing in this economy. But there are some marketing resolutions any business can set up to do better with your customers in addition to potential customers.

Here are five marketing resolutions your business should put into practice:

1. Marketing Plan – Does your marketing plan consist of primarily print ads, television ads or radio ads? If so, you need to rethink the potential available in internet marketing. There are many different arenas of the web that can be marketed to meet the demands and information being sought right this very moment!

2. Your Website – Update your website and make sure it is optimized for search engines.  Does your website help customers know what to do with a great call-to-action? With technology constantly changing, so do websites. Don’t think just because you own a website that you will get leads or that people will want to buy a product from you. There are specific ways to enhance and give value to your site!

3. Web Reports – Do you look at any type of monitoring of your website? Have you compared different versions or styles to see what works best with your customers? Do you get any type of analytics or reports to see what web pages are doing well and which need to be changed? If not, track and measure your website and make modifications to get better results.

4. Social Media – Like it or not, social media is here and still growing every day! Do you have a presence in sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Youtube? If not, there is a way to do this successfully with social media optimization and engaging with your customers.

5. Listen – The key to Social Media is listening to your customers. Today’s businesses have become lax in this area. Not only do you need a web presence, but to do the job well, you need to listen to what people are saying and change the situation to build integrity, trust, and RELATIONSHIPS. Organizations fail in this important area of social media. Don’t be another company to contribute to this problem!

If you do any of these marketing resolutions, you are going to benefit and see results in 2010. Don’t be afraid to try and test this out. Don’t be a wimp and sit there and say, “Yeah, I need to do that some day!”

Be one step ahead of the rest! Connect and market to the people who want to purchase your products! Enjoy your customers, build new customers and see results in 2010.

Have a Great and Happy New Year!

1. Make sure you provide one (and only one!) call to action on your landing page. If you provide several options, people will get confused. Buyers are looking for easy and simple directions.
2. Writing your call to action needs to be easy to understand.  Eliminate unnecessary or confusing, words or phrases. Here are some examples: “buy it now”, “fill out this form”, “sign up”, “go to this site”.
3. Is your call to action prominent? Does it stand out from the page by color and size? Don’t use too large of graphics if it takes away from the call to action or the user will get distracted.
4. Writing your call to action needs to be persuasive.  Writing needs to ask a question, use facts and figures or a powerful strong statement. Compare these examples  and tell me which one grabs your attention!

• Find out how to increase traffic with SEO!
• Click here and read this article.

Writing and looking for a higher conversion will usually need A/B testing. Although there is expensive software to accomplish this,  Google offers their Google Website Optimizer free! You will be able to test your call to action and other factors such as graphics, colors, writing content and find out what works best on your website. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!

The answer is, “Yes, it is!”

Here are five reasons why WordPress is good for SEO.  From a search engine optimization perspective, you can get the same results instead of building a website that can cost as much as $5,000 – $10,000!

1. WordPress  is free – You still need to get a domain but you don’t need to pay a web developer thousands of dollars to create a site for you. This week I heard about a site that was made that cost $100K and it was not optimized well for search engines!
2. Meta Tags and XML Sitemap – WordPress has plugins and widgets that will simplify the SEO process of creating meta tags and XML sitemaps for search engines.
3. Pings Google -  When you create new content, Google likes this. I remember once literally seconds after I published a new post that it was already indexed in Google. (That is pretty amazing!)
4. Permalinks can be keyword enabled – Each post that you write can be constructed with your keyword phrases for SEO tactics.
5. Social Media, Backlinking, Pingback, Trackbacks – Links and badges can be added to further build backlinks and added traffic. Pingbacks and Trackbacks help with creating links between sites.

Two of our current clients took our advice and begin using WordPress. Feel free to contact them and ask them what they think.

http://www.executive-protection-services.net

http://www.southfloridasecurityconsultant.com

Bill Ferrell and Grant Linhart will express how easy it is to maintain, and the fun they have had writing content.  Ask them about their return on investment.

If you are able to work in Microsoft Word, you’ll be able to handle the backend of WordPress. Anyone can learn how to add content to their blog. It’s easy and with a little direction, you will be on your own, writing and maintaining your blog with the template you prefer. (And there are literally thousands to choose from!)

I hope this helps you make a great decision for search engine optimization  and a great decision for your pocket book!

Time and time again, I go to Christian websites and look to see what type of internet marketing is utilized. Social Media is growing in businesses and a person can witness to the lost this way. But, I still come back to search engines.  Sometimes people type words such as “who created this world” or “who is God” or “life is rotten.” Doesn’t it make sense to apply SEO skills to give people answers they are searching for? Think about it. How often do you search for something in a search engine? Google is the most popular search engine and there are many others!

If you are a church, ministry or just an individual who wants to stand up and share the gospel with the world, think about the limitless ways that can be done on the web. If you are a quiet person or introvert, as I can be, it is easier to type on a blog or social media then get in front of a group. So what are you waiting for? The Bible tells Christians to share the good news of Jesus Christ in The Great Commission.  There is no better time! What have you done to evangelize to the millions of people on the world-wide web?

Google has finally come out with a statement from Matt Cutts.  I decided to post the video for future reference and conversations! You can also read the post on Matt Cutts blog. 

1) On page optimization – Tags (title description, keyword, headings, body copy) along with a clear subject matter focus

2) Hyperlinks - Inbound links, outbound links, internal links. (gives page rank)

3) Content- Clear subject matter focus built with sentence structure and good keywords

4) Video/Audio – Added to site and to social sites; adding meta tags

5) Marketing – Adding blogs, news press, articles, etc. to other sites to market your own site with hyperlinks

6) Spidering – Crawlable html and xml sitemaps

Google has over 200 variables in the algorithm.  Take advantage of the opportunities and optimize as much as possible!

When two domains have the same exact content, Google sees this as duplicate content. This means plagiarism to search engines. As a result, Google will lessen the ranking of one or both sites and possibly kick them out of their search engine!

So, what is the solution?

1. Don’t copy text from any site, including your own website!

2. You might want to consider occasionally using  “do not come” robot.txt file to tell spiderbots not to index the page.

3. Write copy that is original. (Isn’t that a clever new approach? )

Make sure when creating a page you use these essentials on the web page to help with search engine optimization:

**Good Keywords
**Meta Tags
**Good, Relevant Content

Content is King! But everything does have guidelines and rules. And this is no exception! Don’t you want your website to be a site of authority and value?