Focus Marketing Efforts on Your Target Audience

One of the first things to look into when marketing your business online is who your targeted audience is.  If you know the kind of people you are targeting, then you need to advertise your business to the people who are going to be reading the most in your area of business.Don’t waste your valuable time or money on consumers that won’t make you money!

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Another way to successfully market your business online is through SEO, or search engine optimization.  SEO will help your business appear closer to the front in the results of some of the larger search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.  A bigger push on SEO will lead to more people finding your business online. If you don’t have the money nessacary to run a SEO campaign, there is nothing wrong with doing it yourself. Keep in mind that this is no easy task. It will take A LOT of time, bloods, sweat and tears, but if done correctly will save you a ton of money.

Writing Blogs that has useful information

Along with SEO, another important thing you can do to market your business online is writing a blog.  Blogging is absolutely essential to successfully bringing traffic into your web page for your business.  You can write about any topic that is trending within your business or any news that may be going on to keep customers informed and can bring in new customers as well.

Business Directory Submission

Another great way to market your business online is through directory submission.  Directory submission is key to marketing your business online because when you submit your business’s information to multiple directories, your business has a greater chance of being found easily online. Not to mention the backlinks that comes from directories will give your website a great boost.

Social Networking

A very popular way advertise your business for free; that is beginning to become almost a necessity in marketing your business online is through social networking.  In today’s society, social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest and Instagram is huge all over the world and is the perfect way to get your business noticed. If you don’t have at least one of the social media networks working for your business…YOU ARE WAY BEHIND!!!

You Need a Stellar Web Page

With all of this traffic that is going to be brought to your business by your new tactics on increasing traffic, you are going to want to have a flawless web page.  Your website needs to be simple and elegant, yet creative enough to keep your audience interested in your business. You have a split second to impress someone visiting your website and if the website looks like poo, the consumers will bounce along with the money they have in their pockets.

Get Positive Reviews

Along with your killer web page, you are also going to want to make sure that your business is given good reviews by all of the people publishing reviews on the World Wide Web.  If people see that you received good reviews from reliable sources, then you have a greater chance of bringing in more potential customers for your business.

Put videos on YouTube

Having YouTube videos is also a great way to market your business online.  YouTube is an incredibly simple way to market your business online.  You can simply make a video, add narration to it, and add some keywords to the video tag and send your video off to the web.

Podcasts

Along with YouTube videos you can also start making podcasts for your business and help keep followers informed of your business and anything that is going on.

PPC and SEM

Finally, to really get your business out there on the World Wide Web, PPC and SEM are some huge key factors to doing so.  PPC, or pay per click, is a method of marketing where there is a bidding rate that charges every time a user clicks on an ad.  SEM, or search engine marketing, includes all of the ways that people use to market their business online.  This includes the use of SEO and PPC.

Marketing your business online is one of the most essential ways to get your business noticed in world.  All of these are easy and cheap ways that you can market your business online, help get your business noticed and increase the traffic to your web page.

We wanted to give a basic understanding to thought with little or no experience about online marketing and advertising. In the next few days, we will break down each way and give you resources that will even help advanced marketers.

Having a website for your business can be one of the most beneficial tools to success when starting your business.  It is important to make sure your website is done well or it is likely you will have no greater success on the World Wide Web.  Prior to hiring a web design company, there are a few things you should know.

A big factor to consider before hiring a web designer is the budget for your new website.  Figure out the most you are willing to spend on a web designer and compare it to the allotted goal of the site.  If you are spending hundreds or dollars on a website that doesn’t meet your expectations, then you need to spend some more time researching a designer to hire.  Without a smart budget plan for a website, you set yourself up for disaster later on down the road. Take some time and plan out what you expect from the final product of your website and talk it over with multiple web design companies and then decide on a company that would best suit your expectations.

A second huge factor to research before hiring a web designer is the company’s consideration towards SEO when designing a website.  SEO, or search engine optimization, is an enormous factor to consider when making the decision to launch a website.  Your web designer could create the most flawless website on the web, but without SEO, your website is practically invisible to the rest of the world.  SEO for your website is the key to business marketing on the Internet, without it your business is not going to be found on the Internet.  When hiring a web designer, you need to discuss their views on SEO and what amount of push on SEO they are going to set your site up with initially and how much they plan to push it a few years down the road.  Before jumping into hiring a web designer, you should become familiar with SEO and find a web designer to best fit your goals of your SEO push.

Finally, before you pull the trigger on hiring a web designer, you need to think about your desired audience for your website and what type of site you need to have in order to draw that audience in.  Once you decide what the target audience of your website will be, discuss it with multiple web designing companies and find out their ideas on what they can do to create a site that will draw in that audience the most.  Make sure you thoroughly discuss this topic to avoid any miscommunications with the final website for your business.

Making a decision launch a website for your business can be one of the greatest plans of success you can make in the lifetime of your business.  Online marketing has grown to such an incredible phenomenon that it is almost impossible to market your business without a website.  Before hiring a web design company, you need to do extensive research and figure out what your expectations are for the final product of your website and make sure you find a designer that can best suit your needs.  Your budget, SEO push, and desired audience for the site are three of the most important things to have determined before looking into hiring a web design company for your business and are keys to the overall success of your business on the World Wide Web.

 Call us for all your web page design needs! - 678-481-9416

Atlanta Web Design Company

There will come a time in a webmasters life when he or she will consider hiring a web design company for their website. Whether you are wanting to hire on a company for a website redesign or you want a company to design your website from scratch, hiring a web design company can help you get your website moving in the right direction.

For more established websites, website redesign is a popular way to optimize your site and implement search engine optimization strategies. Professional website redesign companies are now understanding that seo and web design go hand in hand. And without it, your website may lack proper search rankings as well as strong targeted traffic.

Most webmasters fear the time that it takes for a web design company to do a website redesign. When in actuality, you can shop for a company that has the right expertise when it comes to giving your brand a jump in sales and productivity.

Top 3 reasons you should hire a web design company

• Focus more on your business

If you don’t specialize in web design then there is no reason for you to spend your time focusing on web redesign. Hiring another web design firm will allow you to focus more on your business while they handle the rest.

• Higher return on Investment

Web Design firms are professionals who help you focus on the business side of things. Investing in a firm can help you get a high return on your investment. An effective website can give you long time sales, as well as produce large returns.

• Avoid Wasting time

Time is money and as a business owner, you don’t have time to waste trying to market and get results that a professional can give you. A web redesign contract can serve as a way for you to learn from the pros, watch positive results and still run your business.

• Internet Marketing At It’s Best

People search the web on an everyday basis. So when it comes to your website, it’s important that it has the right presentation. Your website is considered your online business card,serving visitors with the vital information they need. But if your website isn’t optimized properly, your company could miss out on a lot of potential business.

SEO | Search Engine Marketing | Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization in 2012 is leaving a lot of SEO companies stumped…like what just happen. If SEO companies are stumped; just imagine how service companies like plumbers, carpet cleaners, roofers, water damage companies, auto repair service companies, etc…, feel. And if that’s not confusing enough, it seems like every major city is being targeted by SEO companies to get their clients more visibility to keep them in business. Just think if you are a water damage company in Atlanta, Orlando, Dallas Tx, New York, Los Vegas or any other major city with over a million plus homes or businesses, I bet your bottom dollar that competition is ten times greater than in a little city like Griffin, GA (Population of about 24,000 people). In many cases a company marketing in a major city like Atlanta doesn’t even have a business there, but don’t mind commuting 50 miles to keep their business alive. That is why it is important to know what SEO is and how it works.

A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is vital for all businesses with websites who depend on traffic to increase sales and visibility.  Businesses all want more traffic, more visitors to their sites that result in an increase of sales and revenue.  A good SEO strategy is one way in which sales can increase and profits rise.  When people seek a solution to optimize my website, there are a few important things to remember, it is not just about keyword saturation in content, it is also about well constructed websites.

When a potential customer is searching for a specific product or service with one of the countless search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, the search engines go out and search websites for content and keywords that match the searcher’s criteria.  Keywords such as “mattress” will pull a variety of results ranging from mattresses for sale to furniture and bedroom sets and linens.  When the searcher is more specific with, for example, “foam mattress” the results are narrower in scope providing for better potential customers to the sites in the results. Optimizing websites for the best quality of visitors and staying on the first page of results is vital for all businesses and their bottom lines.  When thinking about how to best optimize your website, think about how you search.

A website can be well structured, have valuable content and good offerings and still not get the desired and expected traffic.  Often times, an SEO professional can make changes to increase traffic with a combination of SEO techniques and website optimization.  Google, for example, uses three processes when a searcher types in a request to come up with relevant search results.  Crawling is when the search engine crawls through the web to find new and updated pages to websites.  New content is then automatically formulated and recorded for similar searches.

Search engines also Index content of websites and include key content tags, Title tags and ALT tags.  This too helps for better and faster search results for the searchers.  Relevancy of content on websites is vital to good search results and better more qualified visitors to websites as well.  Many popular search engines have several hundred criteria for determining relevancy of sites for searchers to ensure the best results possible.  An effective website optimization strategy must include a well designed site with relevant content that allows search engines to index and crawl.

Search engine optimization is not just about keywords and lots of content; it is much more complex than that.  There are many technical aspects of website optimization and search engine optimization that are most effectively handled by professionals.  For example, a web site that supports “If-Modified-Since” http header allows for search engines to easily find new and fresh content on websites.  Most small businesses and entrepreneurs don’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge to handle the technical side of SEO and website optimization.  Professional SEO and website optimization companies are best at weeding through the vast amounts of technical data and algorithms to help businesses succeed online with more qualified traffic to their sites.

If you are a Plumber, Carpet Cleaner, Roofer, Water damage company, Auto repair service or any other service industry that needs SEO Marketing, give us a call at 1- 800-383-7017 – We give FREE SEO ADVICE (OVER THE PHONE OR SKYPE).

How can SEO help my business?

Internet marketing has become a must today for any business. Depending on one’s target and budget there can be hundreds of internet marketing strategies. Having said that, it has to be noted that most internet marketing strategies incur a cost for a business and unless you have a preset budget for internet marketing, you cannot employ most of these strategies. Trying to maximize internet marketing for free is what most people would be looking for. Here are three internet marketing strategies that do not require any financial investment but can manage to significantly increase traffic to your website.

Internet Marketing Strategy 1: Build An Overwhelming Online Presence

The online world is growing at a phenomenal pace. Every other day, there are new blogs, websites, forums and small to medium social networking sites that are coming up and surprising the virtual world. Having an online profile is not just about hosting a website anymore. Internet marketing demands that a business must have an overwhelming presence in the virtual world.

Now, what do we mean by an overwhelming presence? Depending on the nature of your business, the products or services that you offer and the principal location of your company, there would be many online blogs, forums and review sites. A business needs to have a consistent presence on these portals. Whether you simply participate in a discussion, share your expert opinion or simply try and promote your services, all such activities collectively form one of the best internet marketing strategies to get some traffic to your site.

Internet Marketing Strategy 2: Free Online Classifieds

Posting ads is essential for any business, whether you are a car dealer or into real estate. There are several free online classifieds – local, national and international, where you can easily post ads of your company. You need not go all out trying to sell the product or your services, but may simply post a very small sales pitch or something that you think is your company’s USP and mention the website or give a link to your desired webpage. This internet marketing strategy is employed by most businesses and is a great way to get some traffic for free.

Internet Marketing Strategy 3: A Blog On Your Website

Irrespective of how good your website SEO is or how you intend to promote it, having an online blog is one of the most successful internet marketing strategies. Search engines look for relevant and high quality content. Having several posts in your website blog talking about the industry you are in would enhance the rankings of your site. Hence you get more traffic from search engines. If you are looking to add a blog to your website, there are 2 FREE sources, WordPress.org and Blogger.com. All you do is create a blog account and once you have completed that step just add a link to your website and call it “Blog”. You now have a blog  attached to your website.

These are a few great internet marketing strategies that worked for me and I’m sure they will work for you. If you need help with creating a stronger online presence using the strategies mentioned above, please feel free to contact us. US Image Design will be happy to help you meet your online goals.

Internet Marketing Strategies to Help Increase Traffic To My Website

By: Tirrell Spruill

The goal of Google Panda was, and continues to be, to lower the rankings of websites with poor quality information, and raise the rankings of websites with high quality, non-repetitive information.  Google Panda started with actual human evaluation of websites and then trained the algorithm to look for the items that humans found important, trustworthy, and poor.

Google Panda continues to roll out new algorithms regularly, and some websites see continued decrease in traffic and others see an increase when they have updated their sites to include new fresh materials, with few advertisements.

The most recent Google Panda 3.3 update had no changes in the actual Panda algorithm, it just refreshed the data in the internal Google Panda system to make it more sensitive to changes on the web, consumer behavior, and increased overall accuracy of the algorithm.

Evaluate where you get backlinks from

Google recently announced they were reconsidering the link evaluation part of the Google Panda algorithm.  Panda has in the past evaluated links from websites to help determine the quality of the information on a site by checking and testing back links for legitimacy.  A website comprised most of links to other sites was found in Google’s research to provide no benefit to consumers.

Writing fresh content is a must

Content Farms have seen the most dramatic drop in visitors to their sites since the first roll out of Google Panda in February of 2011.  Duplicate articles, overlapping articles and information that is redundant triggers Google Panda to lower the rating and ranking of sites.  Fresh, new and well written articles help boost the ratings and rankings in Google Panda algorithms.  Quality content is now the standard webmasters and businesses need to aim for when constructing sites.

Don’t go overboard with Advertising

Large amounts of advertising, even Google’s on AdSense, can harm the rankings in Panda’s algorithms.  Mass-produced content, spelling errors, and sites with no original content will continue to suffer a deterioration of traffic as long as the sites don’t publish original content or information, original and thoughtful analysis, or substantial content.

All is not lost with Google Panda.  Webmasters and businesses can make sites more user friendly and increase page views as long as the visitor’s experience on the site improves.  A good place to start is with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines available on their website.  It covers design & content guidelines, technical guidelines and quality guidelines they recommend for all sites.

SEO my site for Google Panda – 3 Very Important Updates You Should Know about Google Panda 3.3

You’re the owner of a small- to medium-sized business and you’ve noticed that your traditional way of marketing – newspaper ads, Yellow Pages ads and listings, direct mail marketing, etc. – just isn’t giving you the same return on your considerable investment as it used to. 6V4BYBCFBDUR

If this is the case, you’re not alone: more and more business owners are finding that these types of marketing tools aren’t as effective as they were even just two or three years ago.

Why Internet Marketing?

Some facts:

• The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) found that the number of people online worldwide is more than 2 billion, with 226 million people coming online for the first time in 2010 alone. The market research firm IDC predicts that 2015 will see an incredible 2.7 billion people worldwide online.
• Even if you just market locally, Internet World Stats estimates that more than 245 million people were online in the U.S as of June 2011.
• eMarketer.com reported in July 2011 that more than 72 percent of online users in the U.S. alone would have shopped online that year.
• But perhaps the most salient fact is this: according to TMP Direction Marketing, in 2009, almost two out of three Internet users surveyed said they used local Internet search as their primary source of local business information.

If this hasn’t convinced you that your marketing dollars might be better used to help your business become visible online, here are three additional reasons why you need Internet marketing today.

1) You can measure how your Internet marketing is working for you in great detail.

Minute detail. Do you want to know how many people visit your website? When they visit? Which pages they’re visiting the most? How long they stay on your site? Which pages they click to (your website’s “funnel”)? How many clicked on an ad or a link? How many visitors become those “users”? How many “users” became buyers? And so on.  The amount of detailed information you can learn about your site’s visitors is little short of incredible. More importantly, you can use this information to tweak your offerings at any time to better attract your perfect buyer. And you can do so at a highly affordable price.

2) Internet marketing can help you shorten the sales cycle.

Internet marketing allows you to attract your “perfect customer.” Done properly, Internet marketing can help you market to just those people who are interested in your services right now! You can niche down to the narrowest of demographic, geographic and even psychographic (your perfect customer’s personality, values, attitudes and interests) markets. This then allows you to shorten your sales cycle because most people who visit your site will be doing so because they have an interest in your product/services. To some degree, they’ll already be qualified buyers.

3) You’ll find that the cost of getting leads will decline precipitously.

A  2010-2011 survey by HubSpot (a maker of Internet Marketing software), found that companies using Internet marketing to attract prospects discovered that they had a 62 percent less cost per lead than traditional “outbound” (newspaper ads, Yellow Pages, etc.) marketing techniques

We could go on and on about why Internet advertising is critical to your business’ success today. We’d love to talk to you about it and how the Internet marketing services of U.S. Image Design can help your business not only survive but thrive!

Contact us today. We look forward to being of service!

Three Reasons Why I Need Internet Marketing Today More Than Ever

I need to market my franchise but don’t know where to start.

There are three things to consider when marketing or advertising your new or existing franchise.

1. Location

One of the big no no’s with owning a franchise is marketing in another franchisors territory. If you market in another franchise territory, it’s like going into someone’s house and stealing their TV and selling it to a pawnshop. In this case you won’t go to jail but the organization you purchase the franchise from may fine you and if this continues, they take away your franchise. That is why it’s highly important to work with a company that provides pinpoint marketing and knows the rules of your franchise organization.

2. Co-op

Co-op is when a franchise organization develops a national marketing budget that is divided amongst the franchise owners. In many cases an experienced marketing company is able to work out the details of a franchises co-op program. This allows the franchise owner to spend little on no many out of pocket to generate to new business.

3. Community Involvement

Getting involved with your community is very important. Many franchises fell because the community never embraces them. When hiring a marketing company you need to know that they have the ability to get you exposure in your community. One of the best ways of doing this is through social media (twitter, facebook, Linkedin, etc ). Your social media program need to be customized to fit your industry and demographic.

U.S. Image design has provided marketing solutions to several franchise owners. We have helped franchises such ServiceMaster Clean, Sign-A-Rama, and AAmco Transmission and we can do the same for you. Give U.S. Image Design a call today for a free phone consultations. 678-481-9416

Here are some great internet advertising methods:

Get a strong website developed

If you want to convey trust and authority in your business, your site should have a very clean design and should also have meaningful content as well. Make sure that is not built-in Flash search engine crawlers cannot interpret or understand Flash. Having a simple HTML website will do the job, also make sure that you use a standardized address format and also make sure that you include it on your website in plain text. Use unique content instead of the marketing materials supplied to you by your product suppliers – search engines do not like duplicate content.

Content that focuses on location and is optimized

The internet has billions of websites and you need to make sure that your website stands out from the others. This is particularly important for small business owners who have a focus on a specific geographic location. There are virtually thousands of sites about home insurance, but quite a few focuses on home insurance in your city name. Make sure that you also include your location in your web page titles along with your other business related keywords. Great internet marketing entails being able to make your website standout so that you can reach your target market and boost sales.

You Can Try Search Engine Marketing

Organic SEO (search engine optimization) really requires real dedication. So in order to achieve successful results, one will have to invest a lot of effort and time into your website. Are you looking for quick and quantifiable results, Search Engine Marketing (also known as SEM) internet marketing may be really right for you. Bing Adcenter, Yahoo sponsored search and Google AdWords are awesome places to advertise your products and or services on the internet. So, in order to avoid spending loads of cash more than you ought to, you have to be sure to target your marketing campaigns to your specific geographic location. Begin with a small list of keywords, set aside a small daily budget until you totally get used to PPC. Google is known to also offer a Click-to-Call marketing solution that will help you connect users with your business through the phone.

In conclusion, having a great web site that is optimized for the search engines and investing in a Pay-Per-Click program, your business in most cases will generate a tremendous amount of leads, which will turn into sales. This can be some what time consuming for a business owner to implement and is highly recommended that you hire a qualified internet marketing company to take on this task.

I hope this article is helpful in your quest to finding the best methods to marketing your business online. You will find so many more internet marketing solutions on the web, but SEO and PPC in most cases (if done correctly) will grow your business. If you have any questions please fill free to contact:

U.S. Image Design.

Atlanta SEO – Internet Marketing Firm

678-481-9416