Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
2010 is the year that online marketing trends really take off. Businesses, moms, companies, vendors, consumers are all out there cruising the web. Twitter, Facebook, Google, iPhone apps, Bogs, YouTube: are the new vernacular and everybody using it and doing it. If you are out to market your goods, turn on your computer and get to work.
With real time benefits, more interaction and connectivity, and audience engagement, online marketing has become more hands on than ever before. For the first time, business can begin to understand their audience in an up close and personal manner. Who they are, where they spend their time online and how they spend their money–and use that knowledge to create strategy accordingly. Business have already started to employ SEO, RSS syndication, bookmarking, pull marketing, and audience sourcing through Social Media  platforms to get their products/services directly to their market.
It is important to remember, although marketing is taking a turn to digital, creating synergy between online and traditional campaigns is still crucial to effectively reaching your marketing aspirations. By employing traditional techniques like using a consistent brand and message identity across all channels and understanding objectives and metrics, utilizing these tools to the online sphere will boost any marketing campaign.
Tags: audience engagement, online marketing trends, SEO, small business, social media, Strategy, synergy
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Small Business News, Strategy | No Comments »
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
 As we constantly move towards a society where daily tasks such as paying the bills, ordering food and shopping for clothes are being performed online, new opportunities to approach, reach and target your clients are beginning to emerge. Online marketing has a number of benefits, especially for small business owners. It’s fast, efficient, environmental friendly, but most of all, it’s cost-effective!
Besides the obvious benefits of eliminating mailing and printing costs, here are some important factors to take into consideration.
The two-way communication process. The feedback from your consumer makes it easy to adjust and update your online campaign. If you notice that certain copy or images needs to be changed, this is an easy fix. Imagine doing a print campaign and realizing along the way that you’re not getting the results that you’re looking for. The cost and time it would take to make the necessary edits would probably mean a financial setback for your business.
To receive feedback from the consumers while doing an offline marketing campaign requires the consumer to mail or call. People don’t have the time to do this and valuable information gets lost. Online marketing allows clients to have an ongoing communication with the actual company, and most importantly the company can very fast adapt according to their audience.
Another way to track the results of your campaign is to set up SEO keywords. The campaign can get customized and constantly updated based on your consumer’s reaction and feedback.
There are numerous communication channels to be utilized in online marketing. The primary channel is the web, but also e-newsletter, social media platforms audio and video. Speaking of email marketing, there’s nothing easier for a potential client to forward and/or share the email that is being sent out. Today, an increasing number of companies are integrating social media with e-marketing. TopRank’s online marketing blog featured an interesting post about the so-called “Share to Social” (S2S) link t hat can be imbedded in an email marketing campaign. When sending out an email simply include this link, which tells the receiver to instead of just sending or forwarding the email, he or she should also make sure to share it with more people by utilizing social media platforms. Links to the platforms are imbedded in the email, which makes it easy for the receiver to spread the word about your products and/or services!
Tags: blog, cost-effective, email marketing, Marketing, online marketing, print marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, social media, TopRank
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
 People read blogs to learn, for entertainment, for news, or simply to see what’s going on. With that in mind, it’s important to keep things current in your blog. Make your content engaging, interesting, topical and thematic. Using credible links can add validity to your blog and attaching images creates visual stimulation for your viewers. When attacking your blogs be sure to include buzz/key words that will generate ultimate SEO.
Ultimately, your blog is a channel used to expand your professional network and it allows you to develop a status of expertise in your chosen field. To do that, you must familiarize yourself with your audience and write what you know. Creating a successful blog can lead to new clients, more business, and it allows you to establish a name and credibility in your respective business. So get out there, captivate your readers, make it a must-read, and have fun doing it.
Tags: blog, Optimization, Search Engine, SEO, social media
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Posted By: Sumontro Roy, strategy@perksconsulting.com
Usage/Technical Details
An account at Delicious is completely free and through the sign-up process you will be instructed on some pretty handy tools that are available.
Browser Add-On: The most convenient one is where you can add a little button through your web browser (e.g. Firefox, Safari) on your PC toolbar. Once done, hit that “Bookmark on Delicious” button every time you want to save a link and a new box shows up with the URL and some initial details already sorted out. And it’ll be there every time you re-visit.
Tagging Rules: no spaces between words. Thus, “asianfusion” and not “asian fusion”.
Multiple Tag searches: separated by “+”. Therefore, “asianfusion+excellentcocktails”
Navigation: the site is organized into three sections: Bookmarking, People and Tags and once you’re logged in, you get access to all your information through these sections. Also check out the What’s New section for updates and new features.
Put your favorites on the web, share them with friends and peers, and have access to your favorite pages anytime and anywhere, and don’t forget to go and check whether others have ‘delicioused’ you!
And since competition is never far behind, here’s a 2nd player in this field that you might want to check out: www.diigo.com. They offer ‘highlighting’ and ‘sticky notes’ as an improvement over the incumbent ☺
On a parting note…
The litmus test for social media and networking sites is obviously how to generate revenue…any suggestions on how Delicious can monetize their model?
Posted by Sumontro.
Tags: Delicious, SEO, social media, tags
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Posted By: Sumontro Roy, strategy@perksconsulting.com
Let’s face it: there’s so much out there on the web but we hardly ever always have the time to read in as much detail as we’d like, right ? Often, we’d also like to go back and read those special articles just that one more time…like the one where the favorite team beats its arch-rival in Game 7 of the series in a real epic!
 Delicious.com is a social bookmarking website that allows you to bookmark web pages and access them from any computer at any time- think about it as the “favorites” tab on your PC toolbar except that it’s through a website and accessible through the internet on any computer.
Delicious.com was created in 2003 by Joshua Schachter as a casual way of sharing web pages with his friends. It has grown in leaps and bounds since, and, in December 2005, Yahoo! acquired it for an apparently huge, but undisclosed, sum of money ☺
It is defined as a “social bookmarking” website as against just a “bookmarking” one because it allows you to share your links with other people i.e. your friends, colleagues, peers and co-interest groups. You can use it for personal and/or professional purposes, to organize your research, ideas, articles and websites that are of interest to you.
Have stuff that is for your private use only? Duly mark as “not to share”!
But why should you actually use Delicious?
Firstly, it allows you to conveniently save and refer to a link for future reference through any computer.
Secondly, its extensive functionality allows for convenient cross-referencing, indexing, sharing and usage. If you were to “bookmark” or “favorite” a link in your browser in the “favorites” tab on your PC toolbar, you would likely do so only once using just one “category”.
However, as an example, let’s say you were a food enthusiast, lived in New York City and loved to explore, make personal notes, revisit and maintain a database of restaurants in the area. With all that NYC has to offer, that database could get pretty complex, especially over time!
With Delicious though, you could save a link for an Asian-Fusion restaurant called “Jade” that you visited under various descriptors (called “tags”) such as “asian fusion”, “value-for-money”, “manhattan”, “excellent desserts” and so on. You could also record a comment about the “Chicken Chilli” entrée that you liked!
Thus, in future, when in the mood for an “Asian-Fusion restaurant with excellent desserts” (but having conveniently forgotten its name!) you could easily pull this one up (as well as others with similar tags) by searching for “asian fusion + excellent desserts”. This cross-referencing and indexing tool is particularly handy.
You can sort all your bookmarks with (multiple) tags and also pull up all articles that have similar tags by others with delicious accounts: more than 3 million users and 100 million bookmarked URLs per recent data.
It will show the pages that have most recently been tagged, but you can sort the information by popularity i.e. the number of people that have bookmarked that particular page.
Although other social sites like Twitter, Digg and Blogs allow for dialogue among members, Delicious does not. You don’t vote, review or comment on others bookmarks either. All you do is save a site as a favorite.
However, Delicious does have a “most popular list.” This is on the Delicious home page itself and consists of the most recently and the most often bookmarked web pages. Stay tuned for Delicious 101 in tomorrow’s blog.
Posted by Sumontro
Tags: Delicious, SEO, social media, tags
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
“I googled it” – I bet you $10 that you’ve heard that phrase before. 
Google’s search engine has become such a large part of our lives it has become a noun. When you need to search for something on the Internet you head straight for Google right? Wrong! According to many, Google may well be shaking in their swanky offices for fear of Twitter taking part of their market.
Gyuate Park from Winning the Web, declares Twitter “definitely has the potential to be the ‘next big thing’ and gain enough market share for certain social queries to put a dent in Google’s search business.”
Is he right? Perhaps. And the fact that one is even contemplating that perhaps mega market monsters Google could have a potential dent is more than significant.
So, how can Twitter be used to optimize your brand? Here are a couple of easy tips:
- Stand for something. If you are using Twitter as a business tool, there really isn’t any merit in letting your consumers know that you ate a mushroom omelet for breakfast. (Unless your business is that you are a mushroom omelet connoisseur of course) To be honest, no one cares. Focus on what your message is and stick to it. Now this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be personal – far from it! You want to have your own voice and presence, but keep it relevant.
- Personalize your profile. Okay so I guess the blue background… or even the brown one… looks kind of cute, but this says nothing about you or your business. If you have a logo – use it. Create your background to include the colors of your brand. Show a little effort and people will be much more receptive.
- Get Chatting. This one is easy! - Follow people who are relevant. Let them follow you back. Talk about interesting things. Engage in conversations to develop these relationships and make them solid. Through this community, you’ll create that essential buzz about your brand, raise your SEO and increase traffic to your website.
So what do you think? Are you a Tweep on Twitter? Has your brand benefited? Is Google a Gonner? Let us know your thoughts…
Tags: Branding, Google, SEO, social media, Twitter
Posted in Marketing | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 30th, 2009
 SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the hottest new way to increase traffic to your website. You know when you search from Google for a topic, and you get a list of sites relevant to your search? SEO is the practice engaged to receive the highest possible natural ranking of your website. Simply put, SEO is what makes sites appear at the top.
Why is SEO important
So, who cares? A lot of people, actually. Obviously, websites are competing for that number one spot for many reasons. While the key purpose of SEO is to increase traffic to your website, (since websites are, after all, built to be seen) there are several underlying benefits of SEO including:
Types of SEO
There are two types of Search Engine Optimization: onsite and offsite.
1. Onsite Optimization
Onsite optimization is an internal tool that must be kept in mind while creating or refining your company website. This type of SEO is used to optimize the searchability of your website by creating content that is embedded with specific keywords. These keywords are the terms that search engines use to find your site and they indicate what your site is all about.
2. Offsite Optimization
Conversely, offsite optimization is an external tool that encompasses the different strategies used outside of your website, specifically what sites you link to outside of your own. Using offsite optimization to link to relevant sites outside your own increases the chances of a high natural ranking.
So, how can SEO be integrated into strategy to increase the bottom line of your business? Stay tuned for Sumontro, who will bridge the gap between Search Engine Optimization and your business.
Tags: Google, SEO, Yahoo!
Posted in Strategy | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 27th, 2009
Whether you’re researching to pitch a client or write your latest blog, the internet is a powerful and credible tool—if you know how to use it. If you’re on a tight deadline or have a project with a huge scope, it can be difficult to even know where and how to begin the research process. But by following these four simple tips, you can find the most useful information in the least amount of time.
Be specific.
Sounds simple, right? Using specific and targeted search terms can save you a lot of time, aggravation, and unnecessary reading. Make sure your words are concise and get right to the point.
For example, if you’re looking for an article on the positive affects of green marketing, instead of searching for “green marketing,” try searching for “green marketing benefits.” This will narrow your search and streamline your results.
A keyword can be described as the terms of your search, or what you type in search bar when you visit a search engine. Make sure that the terms you use are concise, specific and spelled properly.
Evaluate your sources.
Make sure the information you use is of the highest caliber. Double check any site you retrieve information from, giving highest priority to trusted websites. Search news outlets, like CNN or the New York Times, before looking to less credible sources. Do a background check on the author(s) of the piece and where they’re getting their information from–use only the best.
Make the most of Search Engines
Search Engines, like Google and Yahoo!, offer a plethora of information. Use some of the above tips, as well as these tips offered by Google to track down the most accurate and relevant information quickly.
Organize Your Research
Using a clear organization system that you understand will make the research process more efficient and effective. Chances are, you’re not going to use every single source you read. Compile the most relevant information into a research brief or outline. This will help you organize your research and clear out the clutter.
Here are a few more resources that will get you on the right track with your online research.
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Tags: Google, online research, research, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Posted in Management | No Comments »
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