Posts tagged business visibility
Taking Over the World: Setting up Your Site for Effective International SEO
Feb 18th
The Internet is the great equaliser, allowing small businesses to compete with large, and everybody to put forth their own opinions. While there are some advantages to being a big fish in the WWW pond, there are also some tricky issues to contend with. The first of these is hosting and targeting for international websites – today we explore some SEO based recommendations for businesses that are trying to take over the world! More >
Should I Use a Facebook Group or Page to Promote My Business?
Feb 19th
Recently we’ve been looking at Facebook for web marketing and SEO – specifically at the two main methods for businesses to connect with people on Facebook, through Groups and Pages. We mentioned that from a consumer point of view, the two are much the same; but from a business perspective each offers their own benefits and drawbacks. So today we’re going to toss the coin with you and help you decide … Group or Page? Group or Page?!
The old style of non-virtual group!
To recap:
Just to recap the difference between Groups and Pages (and save you sifting back through the old posts!), a Group:
- Can be created for free
- Are simple and have plenty of viral potential
- Members can ‘invite’ other members
- Have a limit on the number of your members you can blast message at once
And Pages:
- Can also be created for free
- Are more highly customizable than Groups, including applications, Flash and other rich content
- Have no limit on the number of members you can blast message at once
- Are a little more difficult to share
- Are often the ‘official’ version of a product – Facebook has been taking action against Pages that aren’t administered by the official company or group, in response to a joke Barack Obama Page.
Most popular business choice … Pages
Pages are the most popular method of social media marketing on Facebook for businesses. This is because they have several eency weency features that Groups don’t have. These include:
- A shortcut URL, so you can promote the page more easily outside of Facebook
- Allowance for extra applications, Flash etc, as mentioned above
- Visitor statistics can be monitored
- Pages can cerate Events through the Facebook Events function, and invite their fans
- Can be promoted with ads, whereas someone must be logged into Facebook to access a Group
But don’t close the book on Groups yet!
One striking difference which can impact the culture of your social media marektin greatly is simply the language Facebook uses for members of the public to connect with your business on Facebook. Consider that:
- With Groups, people can ‘become members’ and ‘invite friends’
- With Pages, people can only ‘Become fans’
This small linguistic matter can create an entirely different feel for the Page/Group, and your business culture and brand should determine which is best.
That said, the differences are quite minor … and both are great for social media marketing, general internet marketing and SEO!
What Nobody Tells You About Video Marketing
Feb 2nd
Video marketing … we all know that it has enormous potential for reaching audiences, that it is becoming easier and easier, and that it costs a bit more than text articles but also has greater potential. Bet you didn’t what we’re about to tell you about video web marketing, though …
Not many people are doing it
Video still sets you apart from the crowd. While Youtube is a huge website, and people are quite used to viewing online videos, if you’re in a smaller niche then utilizing video where appropriate on your site will still make you seem like an industry leader, not a follower.
Not every one likes video … not everyone likes text
This seems like an obvious point, but it leads us to a best practice that almost all sites miss. If people don’t have time to be led through a video on your topic, they’ll go elsewhere. On the other hand, if they’re looking for information they don’t have to process too much, they’ll look specifically for videos, and might miss your text-based info.
The point is this: always have a text based version of the info in your video … and if possible, always make a video version of your flagship content pieces.
Google is not good at handling video yet
Video marketing is still more in the realms of building customer engagement and word-of-mouth internet marketing than it is an SEO tactic. Tagging helps, but the best practice is to create a text-based version of your video for both the consumers, and the search engines.
You won’t always be able to ‘do’ video
Video is not good for all info, or all topics. Content that doesn’t suit the video format (ie, there is little opportunity to ADD to the content with visuals) should be left as text!
Youtube might not always be your best friend
Youtube is an independent company, serving their own and their visitors interests, not yours. There are thousands of people worldwide who have had their videos removed for violateing terms and conditions without even knowing they had done anything wrong. Hosting your own video can be expensive, but is sometimes worth it.
Web Marketing Experts is Australia’s leading SEO Company – we can help you with all video and internet marketing services.
4 Ways to Supplement Your Main Business Income With Your Website
Jan 29th
The internet is split along a line … I hesitate to say “roughly equal lines”, because I’ve no idea if that is true! On one side of the line are the businesses who simply use the web as another marketing and promotion avenue for a business that already existed pre-WWW. On the other side are the businesses that would not exist without WWW and internet marketing – businesses like online freelancing, sole-purpose ad revenue sites and affiliate marketing sites, etc.
What many traditional businesses don’t realize is that there are plenty of way to combine the two approaches to making money online – we explore 4 of those today. Of note, we are only looking at methods that detract little from the actual corporate identity of a site.
1. Hosting banner advertising
The suitability of this strategy depends on the setup of your site. If you have substantial information sections, then it makes sense to offer links to other sites that people might find useful. If your site is purely marketing copy, it makes less sense to dilute your message. Still, consider that a site that hosts a banner ad with a $1CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and gets 100,000 page views a month will generate $100 monthly …pretty decent!
2. Affiliate marketing
Find a business that is complementary to your own,, and also has an affiliate program. Mention them and link to them in your own copy (only where appropriate), and you have the potential to be earning commissions from your website, without changing the perceived quality.
3. Sponsored reviews
If you are able to, or already have, built up some kudos in your industry community, people may ask you to do paid reviews – either of their site, a book, a product, etc. If they don’t ask, send out a letter to let them know! Alternatively, use sites like Pay Per Post.
4. Host Premium Content
As a business, you have lots and lots of expert knowledge. Given the quality of most content on the net (!), anything that comes from the expert’s mouth is highly regarded! Have some content on your site as free, and some paid. Offer a range of payment options – subscription, per-per-article, etc.
Applying The Immutable Laws of Marketing in SEO, part 3
Jan 23rd
Phew! 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is actually quite a few 
. Ries and Trout have done quite a good job explaining what happens in a marketing context overall, but only a segment of the laws apply closely to internet marketing, and to SEO in particular. Today we continue our look at how Ries and Trout’s observations relate to the world of marketing on the web.
Marketing styles - different for every business, but all follow the same rules!
Time, time, time – see what’s become of me
One of the most relevant laws in an SEO context is number 11 – “Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time”. This is absolutely true in SEO – there is no business, anywhere in the world, that can launch a website one day, and be first on Google the next. Not only is the phenomenon not overnight, it often takes much longer than you expect. However, it is an ongoing practice with ongoing, very real rewards.
Negative thinking
This highly counter-intuitive rule is practiced almost nowhere on the web, and almost nowhere in traditional marketing – the rule states that ” When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive”. The examples given are Avis, which ran a successful marketing campaign after admitting they were the number 2 car rental brand; Volkswagen, which admitted the Beetle was ugly; and Listerine, who admitted the mouthwash tastes like petrol. The fact is, it takes courage, honesty and confidence in your product to admit something negative about your brand … and those are aspects everybody wants to have in companies they partner with. Make use of it in your website copywriting, your PPC ads, your social media marketing, and any communication your have with your customers.
Success, arrogance, and failure
The 18th law of marketing is that ” Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure”. In an SEO context, we see this most often when companies believe that a number one Google position is absolute. They get to #1 … and then believe they can stop spending on SEO. If you want to remain successful, you have to keep trying to be successful!
Applying The Immutable Laws of Marketing in SEO, part 1
Jan 21st
People have written classic books as recently as 1993 – amazing, eh? I thought the only worthwhile thing created that year was hypercolour t-shirts . The classic I’m referring to is a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It is aimed at marketers in general, but all of the concepts contained within are applicable to internet marketing. Today we are taking a selected look at the laws in a web marketing context.
The ‘First’ Laws
Ironically, the first laws in the book are all about ‘firstness’. Laws 1 through 3 are:
1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
In an SEO and web marketing context, one of the most important of this set is number 3 – it is better to be first in the mind than first in the marketplace. As concrete business advice, you can take this to mean “If your competitors are lagging behind in their SEO efforts, you’d better hop on your horse quick to take advantage of that!”. You can have competitors, not be the first in your niche and still succeed – if you see that little opening.
And if you take it a little more literally, you could say that it is better to be first (in the Google rankings) than it is to be better … and you’d have a highly profitable view of business on the web!
Battle of Perceptions
The law we are talking about here, number 4, is : Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
In the real world, it refers to the importance of brand-building. You should have a brand that is both recognizable and respected. In web marketing this is less important, because consumers are more apt to research and choose, than blindly brand-follow.
Yet, you should always focus on maintaining good perceptions of your business, as well as maintaining good products. If your website looks a little shonky, or you link out to bad neighborhoods, or your website is listed in dodgy directories, you lose in the battle of perceptions. SEO specialists can help determine exactly how those perceptions are best ‘massaged’.
By the way, we’ll be looking at more or less all of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing in an SEO context over the coming weeks … so stay tuned!
SEO and the Changing Google Algorithm
Jan 13th
Much like raising children, SEO is a discipline where the playing field, and the rules, keep changing. It is one of the reasons that there is so much misinformation about it on the web, and one of the major reasons that people turn to SEO professionals to sort it all out. Today we check out how the game plan for SEO has changed over time, by exploring the changing Google algorithm. These rankings are a selected view of our personal opinions about internet marketing, including our observations about which activities get which results.
We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:
- Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
- Anchor text used in external links
- Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
- Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page
2004 – Back in Aught-Four!
- Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
- Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
- Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
- Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP
2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!
- Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
- Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
- Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
- Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google
2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past
- Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
- Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
- Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
- Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.
This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.
Online Advertising: An Effective Strategy for Your Business
Nov 26th
Online Advertising is as tough as planning your business operation. The same level of thinking skills and efforts should be applied to end up beating the competition and be one of the few who survive.
Most of the businesses worldwide have seen the great potential of e-business venture, such as Sydney based Strata management company Strata Live. Instead of merely operating their businesses on the physical world, they have also established it in the infinite world of the Internet. Print media, radio, and television are already proven to be the effective channels for business advertising. However, these advertising channels reach limited audiences that are often times not potential customers. Media groups do not target specific audiences because its exposure is designed to be for everyone. Aside from being an expensive strategy, you are not assured of drawing customers right away. The internet has paved the way for solutions to problems like these. Through Online Advertising, business visibility becomes attainable at cheaper prices for maximum exposure.
Maximum exposure means having your business advertised anywhere in the world without worrying of paying the ‘per minute’ exposure. Nothing beats the practicality that online advertising benefits can offer to any kind of businesses.
The only problem that you would encounter is the selection among the innumerable online advertising firms you should choose for your business. Well, this might be quite difficult. Your wide of selection can be narrowed down by taking into consideration the things like: what kind of business you have, and how would you prefer to have it presented in the internet. Research will help a lot. Give enough effort to get great results at hand, every time.