Online Marketing: Before or After Website Development?
It’s not altogether uncommon; a prospective client calls in and says, We just finished our website and now we are looking for a marketing firm to drive in new business via search engine traffic and media buys. The first thing we do is take a look at their newly designed website after asking for their domain name. Sometimes, no matter how hard it might be for the client to swallow, we have to say, "You have a beautiful website that showcases your product/service as a high-end prestigious...
What exactly is a PING and how do I do it?
A Ping is a basic internet program that allows one to verify that a certain IP address exists and can accept requests. Pinging acts as a notifier to search engines that you have updated your RSS feed on your site. Once a search engine receives the ping they will typically schedule an immediate refresh of your feed so they have the latest content. This is the easiest way to get your blog or RSS feed indexed by the search engines. There are two easy methods to ping a search engine. You can use...
What’s a Title Tag? Why Does It Matter?
A title tag is coded into each page of a site and is meant to define what a page’s content is about. It appears in the title area of a browser window and will be the default name when you go to bookmark a page. It’s defined in the underlying HTML coding of each page. Title tags are a critical part of search engine optimization, or SEO. While not as important as the content of a page in gaining rankings in the search engines, it does get heavily factored by the search engines...
Benefits of RSS
What is RSS?
RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, is an XML-based format for distributing links to content on your web site that you would like others to use. Each area of your site that features a changing list of information should have a corresponding RSS feed.
Current State of RSS
RSS users can be lumped into two types of buckets, "Aware" and "Unaware". Aware RSS users are knowingly using RSS. Unaware RSS users enjoy the benefits of...
Tracking Offline Media Buys
Updated: Feb. 2015 Your website analytics can be used for far more than just tracking the performance of your search engine optimization efforts. Media buys these days almost always have a website address as one, if not the only, path for conversion. Think about how many television spots, radio reads, magazine ads, direct mail pieces, or billboards feature prominently a website address as the next step for an interested party to take. When the people making these media buys are not working...
9 Years of Digital Marketing and Everything Continues to Change
When I started Search Engine Marketing in 1998, there were 10 to 20 key players, instant search engine updates, Google was in beta, GoTo a new pay per click search engine had penny bids, banner ads were overpriced, and black hat techniques of hidden text and tag manipulation were all the rage. Today there are 3 main players in the search engine world, content is king and offsite factors are a greater influence in your online success. How It Has Changed Web site promotion has grown from...
Getting Local on Yahoo! Local
According to a recent comScore study : 63% of U.S. Internet users perform a local search online last July This is a 43% increase over July 2005 As Local Search starts to take off in the next couple of years, businesses need to monitor and update their business listings in the local search engines. Today we are going to take a look at Yahoo! Local. First, determine if you are indeed listed in Yahoo! Local by doing a search on your business name and the city / state that your local business...
The Pros and Cons of Google Analytics
Google Analytics has been on the website traffic statistics scene for just a little over a year now and looks to be in no danger of fading into obscurity. For many website owners and professional Digital marketing firms, it has become the standard for helping to manage online marketing campaigns. Much of this is due to the depth of data and the ability to cross reference categories of information. It really drills down to specifics on the who, what and when of your site’s visitors. When...
The Difference Between a Sitemap and a Site Map
Most people are familiar with the term "site map", but how does it differ from "sitemap"? Besides the obvious spelling, these two terms have completely different meanings. Knowing the difference when talking with your customer versus your Digital marketing team can make the word of a difference. Site Map A site map is a collection of plain text links to all of the pages on your website. Site maps are standard on most websites and are most commonly linked to in the footer section of the site...
Google Supplemental Results
Article Updated: Feb. 2015 Google Sandbox You may have heard about the Google Sandbox, or sandbox effect, while surfing the web for Digital marketing, SEO, SEM, or other related terms. This term is a name given to the supposed Google penalty which effects newly created websites. Although it has never been confirmed, the Sandbox has been up for discussion since 2004. The sandbox effect basically implies that Google filters webpages by the active age of a domain and by the competitiveness of the...