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Tips for selecting your SEO keywords

Tips for selecting your SEO keywords

Successful Search Engine Optimization is closely tied to the quality of the keywords that you choose to optimize. The search for these keywords is critical. The keywords are terms or sentences that your prospects will type in their browsers to search for your products or services.  These searches are the first steps that companies providing SEO services in Long Island should include in their SEO  packages. SEO keywords search

 

Understand your target audience – Your first step should be to identify who your potential clients are and what they are looking for. The language they are using to search for your product may be different than what you would expect. Do research and find what terms and keywords you audience may use to find your products or services.

 

Checkout your competition– When looking for specific keywords, you should also consider looking at your competition.  You are not the only one optimizing your site and there are a lot of tools out there that will allow you to better understand what keywords the competitors are going after and their online ranking.

 

Go Local–   When looking for keywords you may want to start thinking locally . You may get better results and lead conversions promoting your business in your own backyard. Use  the keywords you want to optimize and add your targeted location (town, county, state). For example instead of web design Services optimize for web design services Long Island.

 

Keywords tools – There are a lot of sites that can help you find out the right keyword phrases and terms. Find out how many times a specific term is searched. Google Webmaster is a good tool to use to identify what your prospects may be looking for.

 

 Website content – After your keyword research is completed and chosen keywords are selected, they will need to be carefully included in the content of your site.  Remember, content will need to be relevant. Bad quality and irrelevant content will be tagged by Google and negatively effect your ranking.

Which social media platform is good for you?

social media

social media

With over 100 various social media platforms, it is becoming very difficult for businesses to decide on which one to commit.  Social media activities can drain the resources of your day to day marketing activities. Whether you are gathering information about your competitors, actively posting, or branding with thought leadership, you will need to choose wisely where to most effectively spend your efforts.

Which platform is best suited to your business, targeting the right demographic……
To help you to decide the best platform for your business, let’s focus on the most
prominent social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Google Plus) and consider their characteristics.

 

 Facebook 

With about 55% to 45% female to male user ratio and an average age of 30, Facebook has over 650 million active users, making it one of the most powerful social media options.
One of the characteristics of this platform is the amount of personal data they are gathering about their users, allowing paid advertisers to better target their campaigns. The demographic of the site is getting older, generally a very good site for the 20 and over market for every industry. Unless you are doing Paid per Click, Facebook is not about true selling but more about increasing brand awareness to your. Mixing business oriented message with social friendly posts that display confidence and loyalty.

 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is by far the most professional, business oriented site and offers a strong market of 240 million active users. It is also one of the most popular sites among the adult 30-49 year old age range. LinkedIn was created for social business networking, where users grow their business connections and use them either to gain more business or find employment. It is also a place where virtual industry groups are created and where members can discuss issues or promote their solutions. LinkedIn is a must have social platform for every business.

 

YouTube

YouTube is a  powerful platform to distribute your video content. With 1 billion visitors a month, it is a top site for a young, millennial audience to watch content. Whether you are posting a video displaying your capabilities or a video about your products and services, YouTube is
the place to share. Be aware that with over millions of video hours downloaded, only the most entertaining or educational content will have a chance to go viral. Posting original videos about how your products and services can help businesses solve their issues is one way to bring
viewers.

 

Twitter

Targeting the millennial and younger generation with 645 million users, Twitter is the platform where people share their ideas and feelings in snap shot discussions of 140 characters or less. This is place where ongoing conversations are taking place. Unlike other social media sites, people can pick and choose what conversations they want to find and participate in. Twitter favors direct communication for businesses and consumers, which is a great format for industry questions or product/service announcements. Consumers very often use twitter to complain about or praise products and services.  If you have a twitter account, make sure to spend some time to listen to your customers and interact with them.

 

 Google Plus

One of the fastest growing new social networks is Google Plus. Originally seen as the black sheep of social media at its inception, it is now getting recognition in developing connections and businesses. Google Plus should not be seen as a direct competitor of Facebook, as it has
specific features that others do not.  For example, Google Plus has a community feature that allows groups to form around the same interest.  You can join these communities either as a brand as well as an individual. Companies can also use Google Plus to setup live group meetings or presentations to their circle or others, which is not possible on other sites. Additionally, having a Google Plus account will also help your website ranking.

Need help picking the right social media platform for your business?  Contact us….

Where are your customers hiding? Choose the right marketing strategy.

When you decide to start a new business venture, filling out the corporation paper work, create the actual product or service offering, developing the marketing materials may be the easiest part of process.  Now that you are ready to go, you will need find customers so your business can thrive. The question is how to find customers and how can the customer find you . Picking the right marketing strategy will be key.

Depending on the nature of your business and your marketing budget, you will need to strategically decide how you will promote your business.  From traditional to digital marketing, you will need to fine tune your strategy and choose wisely where spend your marketing money.   Some examples of marketing campaign elements that will help put your offerings in front of prospective clients are:

 

Tradeshows

Every industry has their own tradeshow event where buyers meet sellers.  However, some are more popular than others. Do your research, checkout if your competitors are attending, attendance numbers. In terms of cost, a small booth space (10×10) can range from a few hundred to a several thousand dollars. A base cost to which you will have the added expenses of graphics and travel for your team.

 

Industry Membership

Just like tradeshows, each industry has their own organization to develop partnerships with other industry leaders or connect with potential customers. Memberships are usually affordable and offer benefits like networking events, business listings, and industry contact lists. Before registering, make sure the organization meets your business target needs, review  benefits and existing members.

 

Website

A 24/7 sales representativewebsites are where prospective client can learn about your business while browsing online.  An e-commerce business that has navigation hurdles or latency could mean the loss of a sale. A website is also a reference for the potential buyer that may judge your services by the quality of your site. Having a website is a must for every entrepreneur. Consider the expense of a couple of thousand dollars to build the site. Then remember to allocate a few hundred dollars a month to gain market visibility with search engine optimization.

 

Customer Referrals

There is nothing better than have an existing customer recommending your business to prospective client. It is very important to bring incentives to your customers, so they remember to spread the word.  Offering existing customers discounted price or a freebie for offer a referral and bringing new customers is an easy way to increase your sales. 

 

Advertising

One of the oldest marketing method to bring customer to your business.  From traditional to digital, from billboard to message board, you will need to choose the right placement and publication for your industry. But remember it  may  be difficult to track the return on investment on traditional advertising  On the contrary, digital advertising will allow you to fully track the return of each campaign.  Keep in mind that advertising will repetition that depending on the publication could be expensive.

 

Social Media

By listening to the social media platforms, salespeople can learn about the needs of their prospective clients. They can also determine how their brand is perceived. Through social media, particularly LinkedIn, salespeople can also research the right person to contact within a targeted company. Before you start your marketing effort, make sure your targets are using social media. This research will be time consuming but effective if your prospects are accessible through social media.

 

 What is your favorite method to acquire new customers?

 

Search Engine Optimization Monitoring Tips

How Can You Monitor SEO Performance?

Search Engine Optimization is the procedure that helps a website improve its visibility on the web.  Hiring a SEO service provider can boost your web presence, but how should you monitor its effectiveness? What positive return should you be looking for?SEO  growth Large

SEO professionals use several types of tools, software and platforms to make sure your site gets optimized. They should also provide you with a monitoring report displaying their own performance.

There are several ways to determine the output of any website, and one of the most common measuring tools available is Google Analytics.  It is free, and it is powerful. Just include the google analytics coding in each page of your site, and you are good to go.  Once your google analytics account is setup, you will be able to monitor your traffic. This can help you learn more about your visitor’s behavior and measure your SEO performance. Some of the most prominent items you should be monitoring to ensure your SEO is effective are:

 

Traffic – There are several types of traffic such as organic, paid, referral or search. Analyzing these different traffic types will give you a fair idea about which of your efforts are most productive. For example if your SEO is done right, you should see an increase of organic traffic.

 

Keyword – Keywords are an important part of SEO, and monitoring them will teach you more about the performance of your website. It is important to know how much traffic you are generating through particular keywords. Look for the particular keywords you are optimizing, and see how much traffic they are bringing to your site.

 

Conversion rate – Conversion rate is another way of monitoring any website’s performance. For a successful business, it is necessary that your website visitors convert into customers. With the percentage of conversion, you can find out where your website stands.

 

Result page ranking – To monitor a website’s SEO performance, one can keep the track of its ranking on search engine result pages. Good position indicates the success of your efforts.

 

Appropriate keywords, good conversion rate, excellent rankings are just a few of the many aspects to measure the SEO performance of a website. Monitoring your website’s performance is an important aspect of marketing, identifying which efforts are working and which ones are not. Ultimately you want to grow the traffic quality of your website and generate qualified leads that will turn into customers. Finding a more focused direction to your marking plans and strategies through SEO will help you achieve your desired results.

Email-marketing a “Slam Dunk” not “Spam Junk”

SEO slam dunk

SEO slam dunk

Email-marketing a “Slam Dunk” not “Spam Junk”

With over 3.2 billion email addresses, email has become the preferred method of communication for consumers. It is the most cost effective solution for reaching out to new prospective clients and staying in touch with existing customers.

Some may be concerned that we are already being digitally bombarded, and that promotional emails will end up either in the junk box or deleted. An Econsultancy Study shows that 66% of marketers give email an “Excellent” rating in delivering return on investment versus social media.

For marketers, the key is to be creative and create the right targeted content so the reader will open the email. From branding to lead generation, e-marketing should be key element of every business marketing strategy.

Here are some tips to make your email marketing strategy more effective:

1-     Contacts: Make sure to capture everyone’s email  (customers, prospects)

2-     Content: Don’t just be a self-promoter, educate and offer problem solving solutions

3-     Graphic: Emails with pictures have a higher opening rate

4-     Coding: HTML emails have higher opening rate

5-     Personalize:  Include the recipient’s name

6-     Multi-Screen: Optimize your email for mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms

7-     Frequency: Don’t overdo it, once a week is plenty

8-     Pick the right day and time. Morning and mid-week work best

9-     Test: Always send a sample email to yourself first

10-   Don’t be junked: clean up your email list

11-   Don’t spam: Make sure to have an unsubscribe link in each email you send

Need more information about creating an email marketing campaign, please contact us.

Stay on the top with SEO

Why do my competitors come up at the top of the search engine and I don’t? What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? With over 865 million websites in 2014, it is becoming more and more difficult for businesses to stand out from the crowd. Visibility is essential when a prospective client is looking for your products and services on line. How do you get on the first page of a search engines and grab the attention of these new visitors? The answer is Search Engine Optimization, a process that improves your website presence and visibility. From improving site navigation to creating content, SEO service providers will work on your site and with other sites, creating an ecosystems of links, and targeted content for the search engines.  This SEO process will continuously register your site was various social media sites/ blogs/ search engines on a daily basis.

The following are  some key elements to consider when putting your SEO strategy in place:

 

Initial Search Engine visibility assessment Hire a professional to assess your current web visibility, pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses. You don’t want to start from scratch if you don’t have to.

 

Easy navigation and web design Set up your site navigation in accordance with search engine criteria. Easy navigation is a must to facilitate search engine identification of your site. Stay away from flash or frame design and use basic HTML links.

 

Research and analyze keywords It is very important to define the key terms that identify your business. As an example, a web designer would optimize his site locally for key terms like “web design Long Island” or “Long Island web design”. All the key terms that you would like to optimize will need to be analyzed by your SEO provider to make sure they are really terms searched on the web. There is no need to optimize for a term that no one is looking for.

 

Optimize and target your content Content is king for search engines.  Search engines do not see images or graphics. They are content driven. Make sure to optimize your content and build it around key terms you pick to focus on. Fresh content is a plus, so having a blog on the site is a great way to add fresh targeted content to a site regularly.

 

Be social Make sure to be active on social media. This is a great way to repurpose content and link viewers back to your site. Search engines favor sites that have connections with social media.

 

Registration please…. Now that your site is optimized you cannot forget to let the search engines know that you are here.  Your service provider will then index and register your site with the various search engines and directories. As search engines and algorithms are in constant change, it is necessary that your (SEO) provider optimize your site regularly.

How much time should you spend your social media /marketing inbound effort?

How much time should you spend your social media / inbound marketing effort?

 From traditional to digital, managing the various marketing and social media channels can quickly become overwhelming for small businesses and take away valuable time from important day to day activities. According to Constant Contact, most of small business owners spend over 20 hours a week promoting their businesses with half of this time used on the web, email and various social media channels.

social media

social media

 

About 82% of business owners market their companies over various platforms that include: website, email, and social media.  When asked if the time spent was worth the level of effort, most of them agreed that it either created new customers (57%), increased the company web traffic (54%), and increased revenues (40%).

 

How much time do you need to spend per day on your inbound marketing efforts?  The collegial answer is at least 2 hours per day. Half of this time should be focused on listening and the second half should be split equally between communicating/interacting and creating.

 

Listening:  Find out what the world has to say about you or/and your industry, reviewing social media sites, relevant blogs and news media outlets

 

Communicating: Respond to your followers using various channels (social media, email, website, blog).

 

Creating: Writing new blog content, creating video, posting photos…remember search engines are striving for new content

 

You will still need to allocate a little bit more time to measure the result of the social media effort… ROI.

 

However there are still some small business owners that do not see benefits in spending time marketing themselves via social media and other social channels. Some of their obstacle are: they think that their knowledge in this field is too limited, that they don’t have the time, they are not sure if their customers are on social media, or they don’t know  how the measure their social media campaign success.

 

If you have a doubt or are not sure how the digital media can help your business, we are here to help. iMarket4U can manage your social media efforts from creation to implementation, so you can focus on your core business while getting brand recognition and increase success.

E-Marketing: Make sure to pick the expert

E-mail marketing is an inseparable part of every internet-marketing plan. The main objective behind using e-marketing is to get your message out to your subscribers. Communication is the most important part any business, it is critically important to deliver the right message to the right person and of course, at the right time. Hence, it becomes mandatory for you to look for an expert, instead of experimenting everything on your own.
Professional companies use special software, which will provides bulk-mailing services and these e-mails help businesses to develop and maintain a strong relationship with their subscribers.
These companies will give you the access to check and track your messages. They also have techniques and software to track conversions in real time. They will keep you updated about crucial information such as opens, click-through, bounces, spam, unsubscribe and many more. Using Google analytics as an additional option, an experienced marketing service provider will track performance of the entire campaign. They will analyze your campaign completely and if needed, they will quickly change the plan of action accordingly, to ensure that you get a quick ROI from your project.
Hence, if you want to improve your sales and business, you must use the best e-mail marketing services. We are living in a world of internet and you just cannot afford to miss on the communication part with your subscribers.
Make sure that you check their reputation, success rate and plans for action before you make the final call. Cost of the project is equally important; you must ask them for a written quotation along with services included in the package, as it will give you an opportunity to compare it with the other available service providers.

No matter how good products or services you are offering to your customers, there is a need to have a proper communication with your targeted audience. Moreover, if you want to contribute towards paperless society, and want to help the environment, time has come for you to get in touch with an expert to get started.

The do’s and don’ts of web design

Website Design

Website Design

Today, every customer is looking for a quick, easy, and convenient way of shopping. Online shopping comes as a plus here, as it consumes less time and offers quality results.
A website gives you the perfect opportunity to enhance your business and sales, especially if you want to grow your business all around the globe. Your website defines presence of your business on the internet; hence, its design should have flair of perfection.Thus, there is a need to look for professional web design services in Stony Brook (or any other area), not matter whether you are looking for a new website, or planning to redesign the existing one.

 

These companies are staffed with skilled people that will analyze your existing website carefully to ensure perfection. :

 
• Home page of your website says everything about your business and if it is not appealing, you might be wasting your efforts of offering quality service and products. Professionals will work on the homepage and make it effective and eye-catching.

 
• Overdoing graphical mastery can create problems in website loading, which will leave bad impression on visitors. Thus, they will make sure it has balanced mixture of text and image.

 
• Website layout while designing is a critical factor to keep in mind because in an attempt to deliver alluring designs, some workers add complexities in the layout and it can make navigation difficult. Hence, they will keep the navigation flow simple and easy for the visitors on the web.

 
• They will keep the typography of your website in order to make sure that it’s in appropriate size for the users. Font of your website must be readable and the selection of such fonts must be made upon considering your targeted users. If you have a high bounce rate for your website, bad typography could be a crucial factor.

 
• Design must be compatible with all the browsers and should not look outdated. Skilled designers always stay updated with technology and create designs that scale to adapt new versions of the browsers.

Trade shows or no trade shows, that is the question…

Trade shows or no trade shows, that is the question.

As companies are spending thousands of dollars to promote themselves and gain market visibility, it is interesting to see the ways that businesses are moving their trade show budget to digital marketing looking for a better return on investment. Where is the best place to advertise or promote yourself? Are trade show expenses declining due to the explosion of digital marketing?  Is that true that in this digital world the buyer is now coming to the seller? One sure thing is that every company is trying to find ways to cut trade show costs. Listed below are some basic tips to help you to stay in budget.

Trade show saving tips:  It’s all about size….

While the trade show season is at a slow point during the summer, let’s go over key show expenses and find ways to minimized them.

 

Exhibit space 25%

Book early to get a discount, it will also give you more visibility as your company will be listed on the exhibitor list from the beginning. Make sure to size your booth correctly, bigger is not always better.  A larger booth will require more furniture, displays, and staff and therefore increase cost.

 

Travel 22%

This is the second biggest expense that can easily be cut down.

  1. Carefully select your sales and marketing team, you don’t want to be understaffed. To be able to attend, sales personnel should have multiple pre-scheduled meetings.
  2. Book a block of rooms for your team in advance, and check with the show organizer as they may have special deals.
  3. Attendees need to book their travel arrangements as early as possible.  Airfare price can double/triple if booked at the last minute

Show services 20%

  1. Order your show  services before the deadline as it will save you quite a bit of money
  2. By keeping your exhibit light and ship your display in advance to warehouses you will save on drayage in and out

 Booth design 15%

You can own or rent your booth.  Booth rental in my view could be more effective if you are using the same display for multiple events and looking to change your look and feel every year or so. In any case I would keep the booth design as simple and open as possible.

  1. Think about using lighter materials when designing your booth, it will save you on shipping and drayage cost.
  2. Use a generic messaging on your graphic panels so you will be able to reuse them for other shows.

Shipping 10%

  1. Keep the weight down by using fabric and lighter structures
  2. Rent or buy furniture on site so you won’t have to ship them
  3. Don’t over ship datasheets and collateral, they are heavy and usually no one takes them

Other promotional costs 8%

  1. Keep the giveaway items costs down by being more selective
  2. only give gifts to higher end/real prospects.
  3. Chose a small items versus the bulky one.

Contact us if you need support for you tradeshow on long island?