The Best Long Term Internet Marketing Strategy for Local Businesses
At the dawn of the Internet age, […]
The EyeQuest Digital comprehensive list of best practices companies can employ to market their business in the digital arena. Very few businesses can use all elements. All industries differ in marketing dynamics and return varying results from each action on this list. A professional consultant is vital to determine which facets you need to prioritize for your business so you invest in the areas that will give you the highest return for your efforts.
The “About Us” page is usually treated as an afterthought on most websites. After looking at the analytic of so many sites, you would be surprised how many site visitors view the “About Us” page.
Ideally you need a unique page for each product service that you provide. Each of these
pages serves as a landing page for paid search and also has a better chance of showing up in
the organic (free) search. Additionally, it allows you to make your sales pitch for that specific topic and the content will be a more relevant to whoever reads it.
Most visitors instinctively go the top right of a web page to find a phone number to call a business. Why make them search if they have committed their mind to contacting you?
Don’t leave this off. Some internet users simply like to use electronic communication. Maybe they aren’t able to talk on the phone at the time or can’t speak very well.
Instant chatting has emerged as a great way to initiate contact with your potential customers. Many people like it because it is less personal than a phone call, quicker than a phone call or they are not available to speak on the phone. You can either send an automatic invitation after a predetermined amount of time or selectively initiate a proactive chat depending on how the person arrived at your site (was it direct or from search term keywords?). Results for chat vary widely so test the timing, position, message, size and design of the chat box.
Email marketing has been around for a long time and continues to thrive. The best results occur when recipients have “opted-in” to get your message. A request to subscribe needs to entice, promise:
If you offer free consultations, it is a good idea to include that message on your website. Assuring visitors that contacting you will be essentially risk free increases conversions, especially if free estimates are not a standard practice in your industry.
There are several ways to have your website visitors interact with your company’s facebook page. A request to “Like Us” automatically puts them in that category when they click on it (as long as they are logged in to facebook). Then you have access to communicating with them through facebook.
The request to “Share on Facebook” is asking visitors to post your content as an update on their page. They can make comment about it as they pass it along. This could be a great way to have your content go “viral” and gain more visitors but it doesn’t necessarily mean they will “like” your page.
Similar to the facebook “like”, it would be great for visitors to add your Company’s Google+ page to their circles and follow you.
A “+” on Google for your content means that the visitor is endorsing your content, recommending it to others in their circles. Enough of these “+”s could mean that Google takes notice and realizes your content is serving the needs of visitors. This could have positive ramifications for search results rankings.
A request for the visitor to share the content as a post on their Google+ page.
The need for social proof drives referral business and gives celebrities the power to demand millions just to say they use a product. It can substantially increase conversions on your website if done properly.
The list of possibilities is endless but if you have a large number of positive reviews on review sites people recognize such as Yelp or Superpages, show them on your website. Reviews from an unbiased source are certainly better than any you could put on your site.
Every industry has designations that make a company “official”. Even though most would assume a plumber maintains its license, don’t make visitors guess, reinforce it with a logo and link to the official documents. Some examples
Especially great for contractors like plumbers or electricians, showing pictures of and bios about the servicemen who the visitor will invite into their home could go a long way toward earning a phone call. When you can build any connection or relationship with the visitor, you are much farther ahead than your competitor. Include a first name, picture, and a short bio about their experience, education, certifications and interests.
If you have 5000 facebook likes on your page, make sure visitors to your website see that social proof.
Every website has essentially two addresses, www.mysite.com and mysite.com. Choose one and redirect all pages from the other to chosen one. If you fail to do this, you may
Once you choose which address you are going to use, tell the search engines with settings provided in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
Even though it doesn’t show up on the page itself, the title tag might be the most important 70 characters on it. It needs to tell Google what the page is about, indicate the keywords for which the page should rank, and sell the click since it shows up as the first line in the search results that searchers see.
Similar to the Title tag, the description is another way to tell search engines and Google what your page is about. The description is not displayed anywhere on the page, but often show up as the second and third line of the search result. This should contain keywords in a fluid manner and entice searchers to click onto your site.
Particularly important for local businesses, your official name, address phone number and other basic contact information should be displayed somewhere on every page. This further defines the information for search engines and gives potential customers easy access to become customers. The address also has to be marked up using the schema.org tags, defining the information for search engines.
Nothing could be more important for search engine optimization. If search engines get an indication that your content gives searchers the information they want in any number of ways including click through rates, time on site, non-return to search results or links to that page from other websites, they will rank it high for searches related to that page.
The H1 is the headline of a webpage, each page can only have one. The headline has tags in the code indicate its “headline” status to search engines.
The function of the alternate text is to assist those who can’t see by describing the picture in words. It can also serve to further indicate to search engines what the page is about. Appropriate use of keywords helps, but don’t overdo it.
This markup indicates to search engines the official business information such as address, type of business, city, state and phone number.
Businesses can claim their content on their website by adding a tag in the code of each page. The Business uses their Google+ page identification number. That way, search engines know who the original owner of content is if others copy it.
When switching websites, it is usually hard to match urls for each page down to the character due to the programming differences. Therefore, make sure that each page on the old site redirects specifically to the corresponding page on the new site.
For a larger site especially, create one page for users with all your page links displayed in an organized manor.
The xml sitemap is created in a format specifically to submit to search engines. It is the site’s way of telling them which pages you want them to put in their memory to show in search results. It increases the chances search engines find all your pages (once again, especially for larger sites) and the result could be higher rankings and more free traffic.
If yours or another website links to a page on your site that does not exist, it will become a broken link. You could be losing potential traffic and link power. Redirect the broken page to the closest existing page.
This should have its own section it is so important. Page load speed is the one thing that Google has no trouble sharing as a factor in their ranking algorithm. Faster websites generally rank higher than slow websites because people like fast website and Google is in the business of giving people what they want.
These buttons make it easy for readers of your blog to share the post with friends or circles.
Google now allows writers to claim “authorship” of a piece of content using the author’s Google+ profile.
Webmaster tools is Google’s avenue to communicate directly with site owners. The information is always there, the owner simply needs to verify the site to gain access. Webmaster tools gives information such as:
Call tracking provides valuable data used to measure the success of your online campaigns. Dynamic numbers can now indicate not only where the website visitor who called came from in the first place, but also what keywords triggered the visit. We can then import this information into the campaign for an extremely accurate ROI analysis.
The extreme variety of search terms people type these days and the personalization of search results specifically for the user diminishes the importance of obsessing on specific keyword rankings. But knowing your ranking for top keywords and trending over time can provide a fairly accurate indicator of a campaign’s health.
Maybe the most important thing some businesses can do. If you show visitors to your site what you have done for customers in the past, they will be more convinced you can do it for them. A great example is the “Landscaping Design Offer” area of Keep it Green’s website. Almost all visitors looking for landscape design and installation can identify with one of the “before and afters”. Whether they have a lot of shade or want a colorful tropical look, they see that Keep it Green has done.
Set up a system to immediately notify someone if the website goes down and take action at once. Without someone monitoring, it could take hours to find out your site down, along with profits for the week.
A search on Google for “site:yourwebsite.com” tells you what Google currently has in its system as possible results for searches. It also means that all those pages are considered in determining the quality of your site. So many pages with thin or duplicate content could hurt quality rating of the overall website.
WordPress is constantly upgrading the platform to add new features and increase security. A site has to be saved, upgraded and then checked to make sure nothing is broken on the new version. Many times plugins (code inserted to perform specialized functions) will not work until it is also upgraded. If you don’t consistently upgrade to the next version, you site could be very vulnerable to hackers injecting viruses and spam into your site.
By documenting tactics we can use to accomplish internet marketing goals, we always have a complete picture of the possibility actions. It is impractical for a company to commit resources to everything on the list, each type of business benefits most from different actions.
We start every customer with a complete analysis on the status of every action item on all three parts of the plan. We then prioritize, specific to each company, everything that needs to be done, usually starting with the most important foundational items as well as a few items in “Ongoing Activity” to “start the clock” for things that benefit from long-term consistent activity. We revisit the plan every month and develop a plan for the next month.
Call today for a free consultation on where your company stands in relation to our Master Internet Marketing plan. 813-215-6386.
At the dawn of the Internet age, […]
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