Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing Training’ Category

SEO 101- 3 Tips for Marketing Your Business on Facebook

Friday, August 27th, 2010
More and more businesses are creating Facebook pages, but not all businesses actually know what to do with them. Simply having a page doesn’t mean you’ll get lots of new customers and visits to your official website. You need to know how to create and manage your page to get the most out of it. Here are some excellent SEO 101 tips from Mashable.

1. Update Your Page Regularly
A page with outdated or few discussions, posts, and comments gives the impression that your company is unprofessional, or doesn’t care to interact with their customers. These are obviously not impressions that you want to make. Update your page regularly with posts that contain relevant information, news stories, links to your blog posts, videos, etc.

2. Set a Goal
Decide what you want to achieve with your Facebook page. Do you want 10,000 “likes” by the end of the year? Do you want at least 5 comments on your page per week? Once you’ve set a goal, you have to decide what you need to do in order to achieve it. If you want more people to “like” your page, you may need to extend your network and promote your page. Post a link to your Facebook page on your website, blog, Twitter feed, and e-mails. If you want more people to comment on your page, post thought-provoking questions or post relevant interesting news stories that are bound to get people talking.

3. Post Photos and Video
People love pictures, and with the popularity of YouTube, they obviously love videos as well. This is especially helpful if you want to show off certain products or the results of your services (if you run a hair salon, for instance, post before and after pictures – with customers’ permission, of course!). You can post videos to your page that show tutorials on how to use your products, or a bio on the company.

There is a lot more to Facebook, but using these three tips will help set you on the right track. Contacting our local SEO firm can help you learn more about what you can do to build your Internet marketing strategy and get the most out of an effective social media marketing campaign.

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Posted in Internet Marketing Training, Online Social Networking | No Comments »

The Real Truth About Hitslink vs. Google Analytics

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Using website analytics is an important part of a successful Internet marketing campaign. When looking for an analytics solution, there is a lot to consider. One of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not to use a free service, like Google Analytics or a paid service such as HitsLink. While free may seem to be always the best price, it’s also true that you often get what you pay for.

If you just want to know the basics, and can’t fit HitsLink into your budget, Google Analytics may be right for you. However, as you will see here, there are many advantages of using HitsLink over Google Analytics.

  • Unbiased Results. Because Google makes most of their revenue from advertising, they have incentive to overstate their results. Google also profits from click fraud, meaning they often won’t report it. Google is also biased when it comes to charging for AdWords. When using Google Analytics, Google knows how much you make with every click, and can charge you more if they know you are likely willing to pay it.
  • Privacy. Google Trends will share (with your competition!) your website traffic, visitor locations, and the search terms used to find your website.
  • Google Can Use Your Data Against You. When a customer visits your website, Google stores the website visit, and the keywords they searched for. The next time that customer gets online, there will be ads based on the data from their visit to your website, meaning there will be ads from your competitors.
  • Can Prevent Click Fraud. Click fraud is where someone (or a computer program) clicks on a PPC ad for the sole purpose of generating a charge per click, without having any interest in visiting the site. HitsLink can track and monitor this for you.
  • Results in Real-Time. Google Analytics refreshes their results every 24 hours, while HitsLink refreshes results in real-time.
  • Daily Backups. HitsLink does daily backups of your data. Google offers no such guarantee on how often, or if at all, they backup your data.
  • Customer Support. The HitsLink support staff is available via email and phone, while Google does not offer any free customer support.
  • More Detailed Information. HitsLink provides more detailed information than Google Analytics. HitsLink can provide you information on who visits your site, how they found you, how they navigate your site, whether or not they made a transaction, and how effective your advertising is.
  • Different Versions to Fit Your Needs. Depending on how much you want to spend, and what type of information your company needs regarding your website, there are three different versions of HitsLink to choose from.
  • Report Customization. You can customize your report to suit your needs and make accessing your data easy.

While Google Analytics might be a good option for a small company with a small budget, for most businesses HitsLink is clearly the preferred option. Google Analytics does provide you with some good information, the privacy issues and inaccurate results due to bias make this analytics tool not worth the risk. A tool like HitsLink can help you with the success of your Internet marketing campaign much more effective than Google Analytics.

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Posted in Business Marketing Online, Internet Marketing Training | 1 Comment »

Why does a Small Business need a Website?

Monday, August 10th, 2009

draft_lens6382231_1249935518businesswebsiteGood question. After all, if business is good, then what’s the point of undergoing a new project–one that’s bound to take time and money? Well, if you’ve been reading this blog, then you’ve learned some key reasons why getting an edge over your competition online is crucial in today’s marketplace. But if you need more convincing, then we’ve put together a handy Squidoo guide that shows why every small business owner needs to seriously consider getting a Website that they can use to promote their business online.

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Posted in Internet Marketing Training, Local Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »