Posts Tagged ‘business website marketing’

Do Your Competitors Have a Better Web Site Marketing Strategy Than You?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

So you’ve begun search engine optimization techniques to help with your page rank and even though it appears to be working and you are moving up in the search engine results, you’re still falling behind your biggest competitor. Why? The answer is simple, they are working a better Web site marketing strategy than you. This is a huge problem that shouldn’t be taken lightly. If a potential customer who knows nothing about your business searches for keywords and your competitor pops up in the results before you, it’s more likely they will choose your competitor. What can you do to get your site above theirs in the rankings? First, you need to spend more time monitoring what they are doing, so you can do whatever it is better.

The quality of your Web site marketing campaign is crucial. If you are doing the bare minimum of SEO techniques and are wondering why you aren’t surpassing your competitors, stop wondering. They are simply doing more, or better quality work. Monitoring the behavior of your competitors is a crucial part of SEO because it will allow you to take what they are doing and build upon it. Research the SEO techniques being used by your rivals and see how they are benefiting from them. Compare the different techniques that all your rivals, large and small are using. Maybe you will find a new Web site marking strategy that you didn’t know about before.

If you are too inexperienced in SEO to research and monitor your competitors you may want to enlist the help of a professional SEO firm. Firms have the knowledge and tools to monitor and research why your rivals are performing better than you. After they identify the areas where your Web site marketing strategy is lacking, they will begin to patch up the holes.

Making sure your SEO strategy is the best it can possibly be is the surefire way to ensure that your competitors are not running a better Web site marketing campaign than you. Be sure to frequently update your site, constantly be on the lookout for new SEO techniques and news, conduct monthly keyword research and link to your site from social networking sites and link directories. Hiring a professional SEO firm is the best way to make sure your site will increase page rank and surpass your competitors.

Website Optimization and Promotion: The Secret to Effective URLs Names

Monday, February 8th, 2010

websitepromotionThere’s a lot that goes into effective website optimization and promotion. But for a lot of people just learning about optimizing their website forget one important rule: when developing URL names, it pays to plan ahead.

Why? It’s because planning ahead will almost always save you time-consuming problems related to your website’s structure. No matter what kind of site you have, the best way to achieve effective website optimization and promotion is to create URLs that can be easily read. URL names that are too long and too complex won’t achieve maximum optimization. Here are the two basic rules of creating URLs that search engines will love.

Make your URL as short as possible. Keeping URLs short will make it easy for your customers to remember, and easy for them to type.

Use keywords. One great thing about using keywords in your URL names isn’t just that they help with website optimization and promotion on search engines, but they’re also usually easy to remember, which makes them user friendly as well.

There are more advanced website optimization and promotion strategies for crafting effective URLs, but there’s really nothing more powerful that these two tips when it comes to the best optimization practices. These are the two rules all other URL optimization efforts should stem from.

Will Your Business Website Marketing Plan need a Favicon?

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Do you have a favicon?

If you’re like most people, you may be scratching your head, just trying to figure out how to pronounce favicon, never mind actually having one.

So first of all, “favicon” is a jamming-together of the words “favorite” and “icon,” and it’s pronounced “fav-eye-con.” It’s the tiny icon that appears right before the “http” address in most modern Web browsers. Favicons also appear in browser tabs and in a Web browser’s bookmarks, hence the significance “favorite” in the word. Their use in business Website marketing so far has been slight. But that could change soon.

Google has experimented with a few favicons. Go to most Google pages now and you’ll see a lowercase “g” surrounded by blue, red, green and yellow blobs. Go to CNN’s Website, and you’ll see a simple favicon containing CNN’s famous red letter logo.

Even though they’re pretty small, most business Website marketing experts notice the branding opportunities in favicons. A small, compact icon that’s always next to your Web address is a great way to give people something visual. The favicon also makes it easier for visitors to distinguish and remember your Website.

But why are we talking about favicons for business Website marketing now?

Because it looks like Google is experimenting with including favicons in their search results. As with most new Google features, right now only a random few have reported seeing these, so it looks the feature is still in the testing stages.

Right now, business Website marketing experts may tell you that a favicon provides a nice, professional flourish to a Website. But if you don’t have one, it’s not exactly something to lose sleep over. That could change if favicons start appearing in Google’s search results. In order for your Website to stand out, favicons will be necessary.

This also raises some interesting questions for business Website marketing professionals. Will the search results pages look cluttered with too many little icons? And what about favicons for Google AdWords that appear on search results pages?