Tag Archives: Search Engine Optimization

Mobile Marketing is Here to Stay!

 

                Mobile marketing delivers results, period. 85% of consumers are searching for local businesses online; however, 63% of small businesses still do not have a mobile website.  Keep in mind that smartphones are always on, always with us and always connected (the typical mobile user spends an average of 2 hours each and every day using their mobile device).

Smartphones are transforming are consumer shopping habits. They are creating smarter consumers, 79% of consumers use a smartphone to help them with their shopping needs. 54% of consumers use smartphones to actually find their retailers; on top of that, nearly 50% of consumers use their smartphones to compare prices. We use are smartphones to find everything from the nearest restaurant, movie show times or to find the nearest store that carries the item we are looking for. Astoundingly, 88% of us use this information to make a purchase within the same day!

Google claims that 95% of mobile users look up local information daily on their mobile devices. Considering 87% of the world has a mobile device, by not having a mobile website, your small business is missing out on large numbers of potential clients. If your website is not able to be found on a mobile device within the next year, don’t plan on beating out your competition for any new business.

Another mobile trend that is on the rise is spending through mobile devices. In 2011, 86.1 billion dollars was moved around the world from mobile devices and this number is expected to rise. What does this mean? Companies that begin to offer a way to pay from a mobile device will experience an increase in their revenue stream.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization – Your Path To Profits

Why SEO and Who Needs It
In this age of information when searching for something on the Internet people normally look it up in popular search engines like: Google, Alexa, Gigablast, or Yahoo. They do not go beyond the first or second page of the searched results i.e. the first 20-40 of the hundreds of thousands results popped up by the search engines. If the information is available on the Internet, it is found, more often than not, in these first few search results. Browsing through the top websites thrown up by the search engines related to the information suffices. Studies on internet search behavior and eye tracking have confirmed this.

As obtaining information and doing business online has become a popular practice, individuals and organizations that are conducting business on the Internet fully or partially should be more visible on the Internet. Websites of such organizations need to come up among the top ten/twenty of the search results to be noticed by people. Small businesses as well as large organizations that depend on online business need to rank high up on the search engines. The higher the rank of a website more is its number of visitors, and possibly more business for the website.

The websites that come at the top of the search engine results are not there by accident. Careful planning, designing, and programming are the factors behind pushing the ranking of a website higher up. The process of elevating a website to a better ranking and higher visibility is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

How SEO Works
Imagine the World Wide Web to be a huge library stacked up with innumerable websites. When somebody tries to search for specific information using a search form, a robot (much like a library assistant) scans the relevant section of the library of websites. Similar to libraries that have categorized sections for books, the search engines have indexes for the crawlers to search through. The robot (also known as spider or crawler) searches through HTML data bases and selects the most relevant websites first. Search engines use different algorithms to judge relevance of websites to the information searched for.

SEO consultants help in designing websites by using keywords and other methodologies. They attempt to make the meta tags, contents, and links of the websites become more tractable for search engine algorithm. Search engines outline their own policies of search engine optimization and it’s the responsibility of the SEO consultant to adhere to those. Failing which search engines can ban websites. Therefore SEO consultants have to strike a balance between ‘keyword stuffing or spamdexing’ and ‘paucity of keywords’.

Search engine optimization has gained importance with the growth of online business. A website foraying in to the World Wide Web without using SEO techniques is akin to a soldier rushing in to battle without a gun. Obviously, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.”No wonder, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.

 

Search Engine Marketing & Mobile Websites: IMPACTFUL!

In 2011, Search Engine Marketing’s ROI increased over 18% quarter on quarter. This statistic simply means that marketing through search engines continues to bring in more and more dollars, per dollar spent on the advertisement you displayed (and at an increasing rate).

Today, Google has increased its share of advertising on the internet to over 45%. Search Engines are where modern businesses, potential customers, clients or whoever; goes to find what to do, what to buy, where and what to eat and how to get there to make the final purchase. Google it! You can literally get prices, pictures, virtual tours, dimensions, ingredients and much more, all from going to a website! The key for small business owners is being that website that stands out and gets found.

Realizing the impact of such a powerful, speedy and reliable form of marketing is just the beginning for many small business owners. Taking advantage of this concept is when small business owners truly see an impact on their own profits. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth and having a Facebook page is very impactful marketing, however, if you want to see a true trending growth in your business, keeping your businesses website presence substantial and up to date is an absolute must. That is as long as you’re also willing and able to keep up with the sure to be incoming business yourself.

This means that part of staying on the top of people’s minds when they want to make a purchase is keeping up with how the internet is accessed. Mobile websites are fast becoming the new, and they reach 86% of the global population! Why go to a computer downstairs and leave the comfort of your couch or bed to check your Facebook page or look up a good restaurant to eat at tonight when you can do it right from your phone, and just as fast if not faster. Or when you’re out and about, a desktop computer is not even an option for finding services or products. It is fast becoming the norm for people to pull out their phones and quickly check the closest needed product or service with a few quick finger strokes.

Keeping your website available on desktop and mobile devices, fast loading and full of correct and up to date information is crucial to growing your small business. You’re an entrepreneur and your expertise might be selling clothing or selling household items such as vases and lamps so staying on the first page of Google might seem like a difficult task. However, the right SEO company can provide you with weekly reports of your Google rankings and keep your site active so that Google views it as a site that is healthy and viable for the first few pages of Google.

If you’re not on the internet and your next potential customer is, well then they are just that, a potential client. To make sure that they become a customer you need to make sure they find you on the internet can access your website and view your products in a fast, clean and efficient manner. But you don’t specialize in uploading content to the internet, so what do you do, you hire somebody to do it for you.