Twitter Marketing Strategy: A Social Marketing Tactic

admin    Twitter     Marketing, Social, Strategy, Tactic, Twitter

Twitter Marketing Strategy: A Social Marketing Tactic

You get your account set up, also some cool background that is merely the perfect photo or design to help distinguish “who you are” to the Twitter World.  The variety of followers tagged to your account proceeds to develop, and you are now beginning to fully grasp how to hyperlink some other accounts to Twitter.  What you may not fully grasp is how all of this time you are using to develop into the ideal “tweeter” is actually going to assist your own cause or online business?  It may all turn out to be a time-vacuum if you don’t have a advertising and marketing plan or method.

First, is to make certain you possess a simple regular Twitter Marketing Strategy.  If you do not have a approach or specific objective in mind, you might merely find Twitter to be a “time vacuum.”

Twitter was in the beginning simply a supplement to my already present methods.  Soon I observed exactly how on its own, Twitter helped me to build a following of like-minded individuals.  Then, I combined Twitter along with my other social strategies such as Facebook, and now automatic tweets are routed every time I submit something new on my blog making use of a plug-in I installed.  A Tweet is real sweet whenever it’s re-tweeted to follower’s associates. You have immediate growth! Beneficial hint- make for sure and keep tweets under 120 characters as they pick up characters within the re-tweet activity.

Constantly provide fresh and useful information.  This will make sure your fans stay loyal and continue to share your tweets; valuable info is of benefit to them.  Determining your own target sector effectively will make it less difficult to offer a strong message-to-market-match causing in more successful click-through rates.

Many of your followers are following you because of a particular motive.  If you begin to possibly not supply on that want, you will certainly be disappointing them and an “unfollow” may be in your near future.  Keep centered on your followers and their attitude.  Figure out if your updates, subject areas, products, website and weblog continue to give the original attraction that got them to follow in the first place.

Making a following on Twitter will need to be seen very much the same as putting together a lead directory. You surely prefer to supply quality more than quantity with your Twitter marketing strategy.  The more focused your subject and readership, the more productive you can be – and the higher your click-through and conversion rates will be.

Resourcing, linking, and sharing are not spam.  Marketing in general is additionally not spam as long as your followers are respected and you are providing a service or value.  Ask your self, “What do my followers want, and am I supplying that assistance?”  This can constantly make you more profitable in any social marketing strategy you undertake.

Twitter provides a channel where you can be more personable with your own supporters administering that you constantly exhibit a professional persona.  Your principal target should always be to offer real information and facts to your readers.

Building associations is actually the central regarding Attraction Marketing.

Remember to Engage ones supporters.

Twitter is a awesome place for you to build relationships, begin discussions and indulge your specific collection.  You can be very fruitful by including today’s information, information and trends inside of your own specialized niche.  This can also assist boost targeted traffic and viewership.

Social marketing strategies that have did wonders for me personally are outlined down below:

Host a competition on Twitter.  For examples, look for “Twitter contest” at Yahoo and google.

Promote your followers to ‘tweet you’ questions, favorite hyperlinks, sources, and suggestions or individual experiences pertaining to your subject matter.  Employing your articles weblog is a wonderful means to build brand new and interesting blogposts. Utilize Twitter to genuinely engage your targeted market in interactions with regards to your own sector.  What do they want, just what do these people like, what truly frustrates them?

Communicating with your own followers presents a genuine curiosity that can be well received and appreciated.  When you accumulate the particular results, make sure you put together the answers and and then distribute with the team by a brand-new posting.  Give thanks everyone for their contribution and that you value them.  You will understand much more concerning your team and be better able to customize make your own Marketing Strategy possibly even more targeted.

More Twitter Marketing Articles

Real Estate Marketing Online Strategy

admin    Google     Estate, Marketing, Online, Real, Strategy

Real estate in the present global business competence plays major role in different stock markets. Real estate tycoons always develop new strategies as well as plans to make their business visible in the market. Real estate marketing as well planned tactics to use in SEO to insure their online marketing hard work will be more effective and successful. Good SEO strategies on marketing real estates always keep in mind to make your real estate website to appear on the top of the search engine. You can determine through results if your website give pay off big time. High rank on the different search engines especially in Google nowadays is not only the main goal of this strategy. You must also make sure that the person that explores your website is clicking your products. This constitutes catching links for product sales.

Real estate search engine marketing is to ensure that the people are clicking your website to see the products that you sell online. Good real estate marketing considers not only ranking on search engine but what is seen in your inner page of your website. This not a big work or task to be done but it needs extra attention to determine the increase of click through rate by more than double even triple.

Some of this marketing strategies will I discuss is just a hint either point of idea to help your real estate marketing well organize and planned.

Real Estate Marketing includes Page Title that makes your identity or unique and corporate specific keyword or long phrase that your website focuses on. Good and planned Page Title is also one real score on your real estate marketing.

Meta Tag Summary for your real estate website is the summary that appears at the bottom of your webpage tile in the search engine. This will also improve the visual ranking for your website. Although this is optional but you must consider this Meta tag because it will greatly affect to your real estate marketing.

Your website domain name is also a factor. The name that you enter will also affect to your click rates of your website as well as product marketing. You must choose the related name according to your field neither area of expertise. This will help the credibility of those people you view your website.

Real estate marketing websites must also have specific page names. Page names must be strictly related to as well descriptive to the content of that real estate marketing website. This is to ensure that the viewers will not be dismayed on your products. Organize website as well as web page names are really a key factor on your real estate marketing online.

Real Estate marketing online must focus on these areas of ideas to remarkably improve the search engine ranking and as well as the click on your website. This will be a over all experience for both of you and your client to ensure that you have increased traffic real estate website and to reach the success of your business online.

Is Twitter Part Of Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

admin    Twitter     business, Marketing, Part, Small, Strategy, Twitter

The interesting thing (to me) is even though there are so many Twitter users, less than 10% are active on a regular basis. In fact, I read most users have less than 10 posts and same for followers.

Even if Twitter is included in your marketing strategy, without commitment and regular contribution to build a following it isn’t really a strategy. Twitter should be included in your marketing mix, but not how I see many people using it.

So many times, I see people using Twitter to send automatic direct messages (DMs) when someone follows them promoting their product, or they have automatic tweets set up to go out at the same time, everyday, that say the same thing.

This is not how Twitter is used effectively and to most, these methods are seen as spam.

While tweets can be set up to automatically post, there is a way to set them up so that they aren’t seen at the same time day after day. You can stagger your messages throughout the day and at different times on different days.

But you can’t just use automatic tweets and believe that Twitter will be a successful medium for you. Twitter is a part of social networking. The key word is networking. Twitter is a means to connect and build relationships from all walks of life and from around the county. For a business owner, or company, it’s a way to branch out from Chamber Mixers or BNI meetings on a local level. Don’t just tweet or read. Reply. Retweet. Talk.

In my opinion, and based on the experiences that I’ve had with Twitter, the strategy that you come up with and implement includes finding followers and following people who you can connect with ….. and then after striking up a relationship on Twitter, moving the conversation to email, phone, or in person.

Social media is all the buzz. I encounter many small businesses who are allured by the fact it is ‘free’. They think they can ditch all other marketing and focus exclusively on Twitter and Facebook. (Most will be very disappointed.)

I think Twitter can work to support a sound marketing plan. (That means actually having a well-planned, diverse marketing plan.) However, too many just tweet silly things without thinking about relevant keywords that may lure new followers.

It’s important to think about your customer/prospect base. It’s not what YOU think is important, but what your customer/prospects do.

The bottom line is to figure out what will build loyalty and increase sales.

Is Twitter Part Of Your Small Business Marketing Strategy

admin    Twitter     business, Marketing, Part, Small, Strategy, Twitter

The interesting thing (to me) is even though there are so many Twitter users, less than 10% are active on a regular basis. In fact, I read most users have less than 10 posts and same for followers.

Even if Twitter is included in your marketing strategy, without commitment and regular contribution to build a following it isn’t really a strategy. Twitter should be included in your marketing mix, but not how I see many people using it.

So many times, I see people using Twitter to send automatic direct messages (DMs) when someone follows them promoting their product, or they have automatic tweets set up to go out at the same time, everyday, that say the same thing.

This is not how Twitter is used effectively and to most, these methods are seen as spam.

While tweets can be set up to automatically post, there is a way to set them up so that they aren’t seen at the same time day after day. You can stagger your messages throughout the day and at different times on different days.

But you can’t just use automatic tweets and believe that Twitter will be a successful medium for you. Twitter is a part of social networking. The key word is networking. Twitter is a means to connect and build relationships from all walks of life and from around the county. For a business owner, or company, it’s a way to branch out from Chamber Mixers or BNI meetings on a local level. Don’t just tweet or read. Reply. Retweet. Talk.

In my opinion, and based on the experiences that I’ve had with Twitter, the strategy that you come up with and implement includes finding followers and following people who you can connect with ….. and then after striking up a relationship on Twitter, moving the conversation to email, phone, or in person.

Social media is all the buzz. I encounter many small businesses who are allured by the fact it is ‘free’. They think they can ditch all other marketing and focus exclusively on Twitter and Facebook. (Most will be very disappointed.)

I think Twitter can work to support a sound marketing plan. (That means actually having a well-planned, diverse marketing plan.) However, too many just tweet silly things without thinking about relevant keywords that may lure new followers.

It’s important to think about your customer/prospect base. It’s not what YOU think is important, but what your customer/prospects do.

The bottom line is to figure out what will build loyalty and increase sales.

Poker Affiliate Marketing Strategy: PPC Advertising

admin    PPC     Advertising, Affiliate, Marketing, Poker, Strategy

Using PPC advertising to promote your poker websites is a great internet marketing strategy. PPC advertising allows you to instantly send traffic to a site, no matter how old the website is or how well it is optimized for the search engines.

PPC stands for “Pay Per Click” and has become a very popular online advertising technique. PPC advertising involves bidding on advertising space and paying only when a visitor clicks an ad and visits the advertisers website. Pay per click ads are normally placed next to organic search results.

PPC advertising is really a game of bidding on traffic. You can bid on keyword phrases that are relevant to your website topic.

PPC advertising is also called the following:

· Pay per position

· Cost per click (CPC)

· Pay per placement

· Pay per performance

· Pay per ranking

You can being advertising your poker websites with PPC by following these steps:

1. Create an account and deposit money

2. Create your keyword list

3. Bid on ad placement

4. Write and test ad copy

5. Enable your ads to go live

The benefits to using PPC advertising are many. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider this technique as a poker affiliate tool:

· PPC ads allow you to generate as much traffic as you choose immediately.

· PPC advertising generates highly targeted traffic.

· PPC ads give you a new traffic stream.

· PPC advertising allows you to easily track your investment.

Below are some vital things to consider as you’re getting ready to play your pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product

2. Stay within your advertising budget

3. Don’t overbid

4. Keep an eye on results

5. Find less obvious, highly profitable keywords to bid on

6. Write effective ads and constantly test and tweak

7. Make sure that the website you’re sending traffic to is converting well

When executed properly, PPC advertising can be extremely powerful and can provide a great return on investment. If you’re looking to generate more traffic to your poker websites, I would encourage you to look into the world of PPC advertising… it is an easy way to see results quickly.

Google AdWords Strategy – Part 3: Other Google AdWords Strategies

admin    Google     Adwords, Google, Part, Strategies, Strategy

3. Other Google AdWords Strategies

     Google AdWords Ad Positioning

    Although the profit margin on the product or service offered is a large factor, tests have proved that the first ad position on the first page is, generally, not the most profitable. Yes, it gets the most clicks, but it’s often a spontaneous action by the surfer before studying the ad. Sometimes the surfer is merely browsing the subject and is not ready to buy (commonly known as “tyre-kickers”).

    Tests show that the further down the page an ad is, or, occasionally, even on the second page, the greater is its conversion rate. The surfer has taken the time to read the ad carefully because he is ready to buy. Furthermore, the clicks are fewer; so, your overall pay-per-click bill is less than for a higher-positioned ad. The downside is that the click-through rate (CTR) of the lower-positioned ads is lower, which affects your Quality Score adversely and raises your cost per click.

    A happy medium is to aim for positions 4 to 6 on Google’s first page. (You can use the “Show Estimated Ad Position” and “Estimated Avg CPC” columns in the on-line Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine the cost-per-click to bid for each of of your exact match keyword phrases, and then you can set those bids accordingly. These figures can, however, be notoriously inaccurate. Always check your keyword phrases’ positions afterwards in the ‘Avg Pos’ column on the Ad Group’s ‘Keywords’ index tab or by testing with a search on the main keyword phrases.)

    “Google Search” ads, “Content Network” ads, “Search Network”/”Search Partners” ads, “Placement” ads

    You can specify different maximum bid amounts for these various types of advertising. Because the quality of their traffic tends to be lower, bids for the Content Network (“entire network” option) and Search Network (Search Partners) (see Tactics > Search Network) should be kept lower and be more tightly controlled than those for Google Search traffic and the Content Network (“Placement ads” option). In the early stages of a new Google AdWords campaign, it is advisable to go with only Google Search traffic and switch other options off, to help you to control costs. Once you’ve discovered the keywords that produce the highest return on investment (ROI), you can enable other options for those keywords to see what results they produce.

    If you find that a Google Search traffic campaign is too competitive, don’t just abandon Google AdWords altogether; try a Content Network Placement ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads), bidding either CPC or CPM (q.v.).

    Testing and Tracking

    Ad Variations

    Despite what you may think of your copywriting prowess, you will not write the perfect ad at the first attempt. You may need ten attempts before you find the best formula. Although you may hazard a reasonable guess at the advertisement text that would attract visitors, the ONLY way to KNOW what ad text achieves the highest click-through rate (CTR) is split-test two ads simultaneously.

    Although changing just a single word can make a difference, do not split-test two ads that resemble each other that closely; Split-test two radically different ads. (Switch off Google’s option to show the better-performing ad more often than the other, as that would distort the test results.) After between 20 and 50 clicks it should become apparent which of the two ads is out-performing the other. Then replace the inferior ad with another and split-test again. Repeat this process again and again, each time reducing the textual differences between the two ads until you arrive at the one that performs best of all.

    To track the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page, click on the Campaign name; click on the Ad Group name; click the ‘Ad Variations’ index tab; check the ‘CTR’ column.

    Always keep all the Ad Variations that you create, to check that you don’t repeat any inadvertently.

    Landing Pages

    Split-test your landing pages in a similar way, to discover which style, layout, text, call to action, etc. achieves the highest conversion rate. To track the conversion rates of your web pages for various keywords, go to your Google AdWords campaign web page and click on the ‘Conversion Tracking’ item on the ‘Campaign Management’ index tab.

    Always save all the landing pages that you create, to check that you don’t repeat any inadvertently.

    Keywords

    After a new campaign has been running for about a month, check the click-through rate (CTR) of all the keyword phrases in each Ad Group on its ‘Keywords’ index tab. Click the ‘CTR’ column header to sort the keyword phrases, mark the checkbox of all keyword phrases with a CTR of less than 0.5% and either ‘Pause’ or ‘Delete’ them. (If you have many keywords, it’d probably be quicker to do this in your specialist AdWords software tool and upload the keyword list to your Google AdWords campaign again.)

    0.5% is considered the benchmark of a poorly performing keyword. Such keywords cause your ad to be displayed but, for some reason, the people using the keyword in their search terms don’t connect it mentally with your ad, and don’t click on it. If several keywords have a low click-through rate (CTR), the overall click-through rate (CTR) of your whole Ad Group is reduced and its Quality Score will be affected adversely. Eventually, this Ad Group’s lower Quality Score will also affect the Quality Score of your entire Google AdWords campaign.

    This check should be performed weekly thereafter.

    If you really want to use those poorly performing keywords, remove them from the Ad Group and create a new Ad Group for them, or even a new campaign, so that they don’t affect your overall Quality Score.

    The Bottom Line

    Great importance is attached to the click-through rate (CTR), but, to put it in perspective, it is only a means to an end. A high click-through rate (CTR) does not make you a millionaire in itself; It’s revenue that counts. Your revenue is determined by the successful interaction between keywords, Ad Variation and landing page, all three working in harmony together.

    Maximum CPC Bid

    Don’t be afraid to bid higher than necessary for keywords in a new Google AdWords campaign during the first few days. This will establish your campaign with Google and, as your click-through rate (CTR) rises, your maximum CPC bid amount to achieve the same ad position will fall dramatically. Then you lower your bids and check again the next day. Repeat this process until your bids are minimized. You do this for all the keyword phrases in the Ad Group. If there are too many keywords to deal with manually, invest in specialist software to calculate the bids for you.

      CPC or CPM?

     Google ‘Content Network’ advertising (see Tactics > Content Network) gives you the option to specify your keywords’ maximum bids as cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) (“M” is the Roman numeral for 1,000, “mille” in Latin). CPM can be useful if the Quality Score is low or the cost per click (CPC) is high. If you opt to pay for impressions rather than for clicks, Google couldn’t care less about Quality Score or click-through rate (CTR) or even relevance; You simply pay each time your ad appears. Of course, it’s still in your interest to ensure that you follow the advice about relevance already given.

    It’s your responsibility to track the performance of your CPM ads, because Google doesn’t do it for you. Obviously, you won’t want to keep paying for ads that don’t convert. Moreover, you’ll still have to bid high enough to get your ad to be displayed in the desired position within an ad unit on an AdSense publisher’s web page, or even at all, and that cost could be quite high on a good-quality, popular web site that you choose for a ‘Placement’ ad (see Tactics > Placement Ads).

     Keywords

    Unless you have a six-figure annual budget and would be happy with a mere 10% return on investment (ROI), don’t bother bidding for popular 1-word keywords, such as “mortgage”. The competition for most single-word keywords is fierce, unless the niche is very esoteric. Moreover, searches on single words are made most frequently by people who are simply not ready to spend their money; they are merely investigating the market, gathering information; in other words, they are “tyre-kickers”. 1-word keywords would probably bankrupt you very quickly.

    2-word keywords are a better bet, but they can still command a high cost per click in competitive markets, surfers who search on them may still not be ready to buy, although they’re getting there.

    Keyword phrases of three words and up are known as “long-tail” keywords. (Note that the word “keyword” in pay-per-click advertising can mean a phrase of more than one actual word, e.g., “New York”. A “keyword phrase” consists of more than one “keyword”.)

    3-word keyword phrases have the highest conversion rate, according to tests. People who type three words as a search term have usually done their investigations, know exactly what they want, and are now ready to buy.

    4-word keyword phrases fare slightly less well, perhaps because the searcher may indeed be ready to buy, but is comparing prices for a very specific item, or is doing some academic research.

    Don’t understimate the power of negative keywords! If you sell tulips, you don’t want your ad to appear when someone searches on the term “grow tulips”. Although they may not click on your ad, it’d be an unnecessary impression, and its click-through rate (CTR) would suffer. Specify “grow” as a negative keyword. (Of course, if your Ad Group contains only exact match keyword phrases, there’s no point in specifying negative keywords.)

     Landing Page

    Relevance is covered above, and is by far the most important attribute of a landing page. Here is some advice about other ways to encourage Google to enhance your Ad Group’s Quality Score.

    Google values “real” web sites more highly than mere single-page “mini-sites”. The robot checks for links to other web pages, particularly a ’site map’ page and ‘privacy policy’ and ‘contact us’ pages. A ‘terms of use’ and an ‘about us’ page may also help. Hyphenate these page names as the file names, e.g., ‘privacy-policy.html’. Place the links to these pages at the very bottom of your landing page, in the footer, using as small a font as a human would consider reasonable. You want to reduce the risk as much as possible that your visitor will click away from your landing page.

    Minimize the landing page’s load time. It is believed that Google uses this as an element in its Quality Score algorithm. Keep images and JavaScript to a minimum. They weigh the page down. (Google cannot follow JavaScript links anyway.)

     How to Attract Visitors

    What makes a person click on your ad instead of someone else’s? The answer is the same as to the question why a person clicks the ‘Buy’ button on your sales page: good copywriting. That’s a separate subject, but, suffice it to say here that your ad must be not only relevant, but also compelling. Imagine that you are the searcher, looking to buy a product or service like yours. Look at other ads offering something similar. What attracts you to one and not another? Ask your friends and colleagues what they think.

    You have only a 25-character headline and two description lines of 35 characters each. Don’t squander them on waffling about your company. The consumer couldn’t care less about you or your company. The consumer has a problem to be solved, a need to be satisfied, a desire to be fulfilled. So, mention the problem, the need, the desire. And, most important, tell the consumer that the solution, what he needs, what he wants is only a click away. Tell him to “Get Help Now” or to “Find It Here”. That’s the ‘call to action’.

Search Marketing Strategy: How (and Why) to Dominate Google News

admin    Google     Dominate, Google, Marketing, News, Search, Strategy

Search engine marketing efforts usually focus on improving the extent to which a site shows up in Google searches. However, there are distinct methods and advantages to showing up in Google News searches (http://news.google.com).

Show up there, and you’re in the elite company of stories from famous-name news organizations worldwide. Google News aggregates headlines, leads and stories from thousands of legitimate news organizations around the world – and luckily for publicity seekers, it displays news releases (also called press releases or media releases) as well.

One day when I was celebrating my visibility in Google News, someone asked me, “What’s the big deal? What’s so great about getting a news release into Google News?”

Here’s why. First, in Google News you’re more likely to get found by media people looking for what colleagues have recently written about a topic. Ditto for web-savvy, influential bloggers and others researching this week’s take on news and trends.

Second, because of your inclusion in Google News, you appear in news alerts received by experts, reporters, columnists and others who have requested notifications of all news items containing certain words, names or phrases.

And third, from Google News, you usually show up more quickly in regular Google searches, too.

These reasons add up to visibility that tends to bring you more visibility. It’s a terrific and cost-effective way to get your business, product, event or cause in front of people who not only might visit your site and become customers but also spread the word about what you’re up to, to their sphere of influence.

Two methods get you into Google News: 1)Getting quoted in a news story and 2)Issuing a news release – which may of course lead to getting quoted in a news story. In case you aren’t familiar with news releases, they are 300-400 word documents in a very particular format and style that you can learn by Googling “sample press release” and following the models you find.

Key to a proper news release is a journalistic tone – relatively objective and factual, rather than sales-y. Your news release has to come across as if a reporter, not an advertising expert, wrote it. In the headline and body of the release, strategically include the words and phrases by which you want to be found.

After writing the news release, use a distribution service to get it into Google News. These services include established, expensive ones like PRNewswire and Businesswire as well as more affordable newcomers like PRWeb and Emailwire. A few free news release sites, such as pr-usa.net and shepress.com, also get their contents into Google News.

Posting the release on your own site is also a good idea, but it’s not what gets your material into Google News.

From what I’ve observed, Google News keeps stories and releases live for 2-4 weeks. To get found in Google News, twice a month would therefore be the minimum frequency for distributing news releases. Do it more often if you have a variety of keywords by which you’d like to be found.

Did I convince you to crank up your news release efforts?

Planning A Web Design Strategy To Include Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

admin    SEM     Design, Engine, Include, Marketing, Planning, Search, Strategy

The phrase “web design strategy means a range of different things to different people, and involves more than merely “design decisions. The term seems to imply that the issue is about color, page layout and the use of Flash animations. Yes, these factors are part of the big picture, but the “bigger picture is about the overall design of your website, meaning its entire “architecture.

You need to find out how your site’s overall “information architecture affects its visibility to search engines. The truth is, specific web page elements like your navigation scheme and technologies like CSS (Cascading Style Scripts) or JavaScript can either interfere with or aid a search engine’s ability to “spider and rate your site. Sometimes an element can do both, at the same time!

The whole topic of a “site architecture or web design strategy that supports Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has really been quite poorly addressed. Many companies that do SEM consulting have less than state-of-the-art knowledge of how information architecture and design strategy affect a site’s usability and organic rankings. If your consultant, or your own research, is focusing only on search advertising, media buys and bidding processes, you are not getting the whole picture.

A top position in the Google results is useless if site visitors aren’t being converted into buyers. A successful site architecture and site design strategy will address the needs of both the search engines and your visitors/customers.

Directory setups

Generally speaking, the pages nearest the root directory are the most important pages of your site. Essentially, by placing them near the root you are telling the search engines your priorities, strengths, and focus.

One of the oldest and “wrongest SEO myths, however, is that search bots won’t “crawl farther down that a third subdirectory. This is not true now, if it ever was, because as long as related pages are linking with each other in a “spider-friendly way, the search engines will keep on searching. Many experts in the field recommend that the most important pages (up to 200, if you have that many) can be kept in the root directory. This means pages that are important to your target audience, not your consultant or IT expert.

Navigation is key

A key element of your site design is the navigation scheme. Sets of buttons are generally friendlier than pull-down menus (DHTML), but plain old hypertext links are even friendlier than those buttons. While it is true that these text links are easiest for programmers to format (a click with CSS), the site design must consider the preferences of the end users, not the site designers or owners.

The fact is, many usability tests and user focus groups reveal definite preferences among Internet users for intuitive buttons and those dynamic, pull-down menus. Even though some usability experts may not recommend these latter approaches, you really must consider how the users react to them, since it is their actions that lead to sales and rankings, not the theories of the tech squads.

File names, directories, URL’s

When queried on which URL is more memorable – domain.com/car/seats.html or domain.com/carseats.html – more than 90 percent of people in an online survey reported preferring the one without the subdirectory. A surplus of “forward slashes” is a common complaint heard by site designers who take the time to check in with actual users.

Many SEM experts create extra subdirectories as a means of adding another keyword in a URL, assuming that it will help ranking. It is fairly well established that keyword-rich title tags are far more beneficial than keyword-rich URL’s. Never forget for whom you are creating those URL structures. It’s the users. URLs that are easy for users to remember are also easy for them to pass on to others.

Web page categories

Some usability professionals have broken web pages down into seven specific types, while others assert that there are 11, or an even dozen, or more. The actual number is not really that important. The knowledge to take away is that there are different types of pages that SEM-oriented web strategies must consider. Which ones you will employ depends both on your type of business and your approach. And how you will conceive, design and promote each web page will depend to a great extent on the type of page that it is.

Some web page types are home page, category/gallery page, advertising (landing) page, product page, news/media page, form page, services page, shopping cart page, search/results page and “credibility page. Each one naturally requires a different approach. It would be silly to optimize your product page the very same way you optimize some other kind of page, since optimization and design strategies differ according to many factors, not the least of which are the calls to action (CTAs) for each page type.

Layout, look and feel

Naturally, layout strategies will be as varied as the different page types, and a product page will not work according to the same principles as a news page. Of course, you also have to have an integrated and consistent overall design. When you are planning for a site, you need to focus not just on the overall effect, but all the individual ones that are put into play on each page. There must be some overarching sense to the site, while still allowing for differences at the page level.

Successful site design and web strategy entails issues of language, design, color, shape, layout, look and feel. The strategy must make sense while allowing for sufficient flexibility and creativity “along the way.” Certainly you want to improve the ability of search engines to access your keyword-rich content, but the bottom line is that you want to increase those site conversions. Keep your eyes on the prize and stay vigilant.

Social Media Optimization- Primary Strategy for Online Marketing

admin    Social Media     Marketing, Media, Online, Optimization, Primary, Social, Strategy

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Now-a-days Social Media Optimization is becoming a primary strategy for online marketing to promote websites. The increased involvement of Social Network sites, social forums, Social Book-marking sites and blogs in the last few years had increased the need of SMO. The main idea behind SMO is to optimize a site in a way that it will easily be connected and become visible to online websites and social communities.

Through the networking among the social sites will give your website great publicity. Social Media Optimization should be started with the correct analysis of the targeted viewers, plan for the whole SMO process and keyword study. SMO helps in increasing the traffic as people share their opinions and experiences with each other in the form of Blogs, images, audio and video and text links. The customer interacts with the content of your site through blogs, RSS feeds, tagging and Video or images.

Digg, twitter, Stumbleupon are some sites which can be proven as good way to start up with your social media optimization. Online group discussions, blogs and forums, and open chats can also make your site famous among social media. Social Media Optimization includes different techniques like:

- Submitting videos, photos and PPT to different social media sites. This will help in increasing traffic to your site. Flickr.com is the best way to add images from your websites and then linking them to other pages.

- Create RSS feeds and then submit them. It is another easy yet important way. Feedburner.com gives a way to RSS feed to your blog as Google Blog search use RSS feeds to index blogs.

- Create a blog that will simply display the content of your site. This will help the customer to easily understanding the services provided by you. It is a easy way to handle daily record.

- Forums should me made as the visitors can discuss and leave their comments on the product and services provided by you. It will help in getting traffic and by the time understanding the customer’s need.

Things To Consider When Creating Your Social Media Strategy

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Taking advantage of the many different ways to promote an Internet business is not something you just sit down and dream up. It actually involves skills and taking the time to learn the many different advancements being made almost daily.

Social media is one of these new technologies that the average person is not going to know about until they do some research. It also requires that you create a strategy for how to use these new forms of marketing to benefit your business the most. You may actually need to have a business meeting with yourself and create a social media strategy.

There are a couple of things you must address when you determine how to properly use social media.

1. First of all what is the goal that you’re trying to achieve with them? Are you trying to educate your readers and at same time brand yourself as an expert with credibility?

2. Are you trying to make sales for products you represent?

3. Maybe you are just trying to build a list for future follow up!

Social media tools are really only as good as the way you use them. For example blogging is a fantastic way to put your thoughts online very quickly. It is something that doesn’t require a special skill and anybody can do it

Adding video to your website or blog is a little harder. This will require that you not only learn how to record a video, but that you also learn how to get it online where people can view it.

Video is very appealing and is interactive with your reader. However, so is blogging when you allow your visitors to post comments, add content, take surveys, and so on. You may even want to do both of these but again, your strategy will determine whether you’re going to learn new skills or not.

One thing that is fantastic about social media is how it allows you to create a community within your business. You could set up your own discussion forum if you wanted.

You could join existing social networks such as Facebook or eEntrepreneur. These are excellent places to meet potential business partners and build your business using social media this way.

You may not even know exactly the social media strategy that you are looking for right now. Try different things and see what appeals to you. The key is determining exactly what you want to get from the social media that you are involved in and then be consistent in how you do it.