Education is the key to Success
The past several months, the Stellar Blue team has been providing presentations at local university classrooms and chamber events. As much as our presence is there to educate our audience, we also take a lot back with us.
More than ever we see the strong need for companies to have an optimized and functional web site. Marketing plans are honing in the notion that a strong web site truly becomes the hub for all marketing materials. Therefore to further everyone’s education on the matter, Stellar Blue is analyzing the feedback received at the presentations.
We’ve noticed that many people have heard of the following hot topics as essential parts to web presence but not everyone knows what to do with them:
• Keywords
• Web site analytics
• In-bound links
• Functional e-commerce
Stellar Blue recognizes the frustration and has made these issues the main topics in the presentations. But to further expand our audience, we have decided to use our newsletter to focus on the specific topics. In doing so, we hope to learn more through feedback while providing vital information for you and your company.
Click here to view the Stellar Services; an all inclusive list to make your web site stand out. Contact Stellar Blue Web Design at info@stellarbluewebdesign.com or call (920) 905-0250 for any inquiries about our presentations!
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Know your Keywords
Keywords are the basis of a strong search engine optimization strategy. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and all search engines seek out the keywords. Therefore, your goal is to have them find you through your carefully chosen words.
Stellar Blue wants to provide several crucial steps to take in regards to choosing the right keywords that will provide the best optimization. Below is a compilation of keyword choosing steps that can help you gain better results and profitability in the long run.
1) Optimizing with the right keywords
The basic step for initiating SEO is choosing the keywords that are relevant to your site and optimizing them. Too often sites end up selecting the wrong keywords which results in lost time and effort. While choosing keywords, keep in mind:
a) Select Keywords that bring target traffic
While it’s good to want to increase site traffic, be aware that too much concentration on that could leave you with the wrong traffic to your site. With the right keywords we can rely on having quality traffic. To have the target traffic, optimize a website with relevant keywords to the mission, product or purpose of the site. For example, since the keyword “cameras” is quite popular, several people may try to optimize their website for this particular keyword with the thought that if they can attain a good ranking “cameras,” their site will get huge amount of traffic. However, if your site does not deal with cameras but attracts people to your site due to the keyword popularity, it will only create a bad user experience and inadequate site statistics.
b) Choose Low competitive keywords
Words such as ‘finance,’ ‘business,’ and ‘construction’ are keywords but are highly used and therefore very competitive. While building a keyword list, you may want to settle with the previous, common words because they are popular. However, such keywords will make it very difficult to beat other major contenders using the same words and to get to the top of search engine rankings. A better option would be to choose less competitive keywords even though they may not be as popular as the competitive keywords. Another tip: If you must used words like ‘finance,’ ‘business,’ and ‘construction,’ make sure you pair them with other relevant, specific terms to your company. For example, use your location or type like ‘Fox Valley Finance,’ ‘Integrated Business,’ and ‘Custom Restoration Construction.’
2) Use Meta keyword tags effectively
It is often seen that people stuff too may keywords in the Meta keywords tag in the expectation of achieving a high ranking. However, as far as search engine ranking is concerned, Meta keywords tag does not hold the same value like before. By putting hundreds of keywords in it, it is not going to help you achieve a top ranking. To attain a high ranking, it is important that you place your keywords in the content of your webpages, specifically the first 100 words on your homepage.
3) Keyword Use
It is imperative that you use your keywords on your homepage without continuously repeating them in the content. Natural repetition is safe but overloading the page with keywords, resulting in non-grammatical sense, will result in penalization by the search engines. So use your keywords as if it’s a mission statement - using compelling content with the use of keywords is best for search engines and your viewers.
How to find the right keywords
Keywords should be specific to what you are providing the viewer, whether you’re a consumer or non-consumer brand. The best way to develop your keyword list is to think like your clients. When people are searching for your industry’s product or service, what are they looking for? Location? Services? Specialties? – All major items to take into consideration. Secondly, consider back to your company’s mission statement or your elevator pitch. Both of these typically present your company in a concise, 100-word manner.
Keep in mind that while you are creating your keyword list and working on your SEO strategy, these things take time: Time to create, time to implement and time for the search engines to begin recognizing your site. Keywords are the backbone, so make sure they are strong!
Not sure where to start? Stellar Blue can help you find your keywords. Call 920.905.0250 or email info@stellarbluewebdesign.com for more information.
Amanda Betts - Assistant Marketing Director
Stellar Blue Web Design, LLC
Visit Amanda's LinkedIn profile.
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Organic SEO vs. Pay Per Click
Today online advertising has become one of the most basic mediums to promote a business and make your presence felt in the market. The need of the hour is to draw customers to your website by creating successful campaigns coupled with unique ideas and quality products and services.
Since the concept of online business has taken a front foot in the competitive market, it is important for businesses to realize that they need to dedicate their time and efforts more towards website advertising and marketing.
You may be in a quandary as to which technique to employ for advertising your website. First, before you employ any technique to promote your site, the golden rule is to clearly define goals that you wish to achieve. This will guide you in selecting techniques more appropriately and help you maximize your results within your budget.
Regarding the techniques, there are two options that have gained a lot of popularity in the recent times. These are:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the activity of improving the volume and quality of real time traffic to your site by optimizing your web pages. The SEO technique involves getting the topmost ranking without paying since your site is relevant to the search query entered by the user.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
This is an advertising model which requires an advertiser to pay when a user clicks on the ad. Advertisers select keywords that they want to run on and which are relevant to their business and then bid on these keywords. Bids may vary from keyword to keyword depending on how important and relevant the keyword is for the business. The advertiser’s ad shows under the sponsored links when a user types in a search query which matches the advertiser’s keyword.
Many times some commercial websites make use of both these options simultaneously to advertise their website. This is also a smart option as it not only leads to better website exposure and visibility but also ensures a better ranking and real time traffic to your site. However, gaining a better understanding of both these methods by analyzing their pros and cons can help you gauge which technique would be more suitable for you and is in align with your business objectives.
Search Engine Optimization Pros
More Credibility – By showing on top of search results you can enjoy more credibility because real time traffic and popularity is achieved by putting in lot of time and effort. The ranking is achieved purely on the basis of quality content and relevance.
Free Placement – Unlike PPC, you do not have to pay for the clicks you receive from organic search results. Getting on the top position is a matter of how well you optimize your site in relation to your competitors. It also saves you money in the long run once the process takes off well.
Improved Website Ranking –SEO also helps you attain a better site ranking with little effort. You can also hire SEO professionals like SEO Traffic Spider who can carry out the optimization task on your behalf which will reap you the benefits in the long run.
Qualified Traffic – You can expect a good amount of qualified real time traffic to your site as a result of increased recognition of search engines.
Long Lasting Results – The results you achieve from this method are more lasting and stable. Also, it gives you a much higher return on your investment. This is because usually users tend to click on organic search results when compared to PPC ads and this brings more traffic for less.
Search Engine Optimization Cons
Time Consuming – SEO is a complicated task and requires enormous amount of time and effort to implement it the right way. Sometimes it may also require you to completely modify the structure, layout, presentation, or content of your website to make it search engine friendly and also enhance user experience.
Results May Take Time – The true impact of SEO efforts cannot be known immediately. It will not give you instant results in terms of traffic and may take some time for your site to get the desired traffic. This time gap may affect your profitability till the time you start seeing true results.
Pay Per Click Pros
Instant results – This method brings you immediate results in terms of traffic, leads, or sales. In a matter of few hours or days you can begin to show on top of the sponsored links and enjoy the benefits of increased traffic flow.
Appropriate for Temporary Offers – This would be an ideal option for those who want to gain an entry into the online market for a short term or for those with temporary product/service offerings. This is because they can hope to gain better visibility and exposure by bidding higher on keywords rather than waiting for SEO to be implemented and return results.
Easy to Implement – PPC can be easily implemented without devoting much time and effort to it when compared to SEO. It also enables the advertiser to experiment with different keywords and landing pages to see what works best. You can also bid on a variety of keywords that you want to run on and which cannot be practically placed in your web pages when implementing SEO.
Pay Per Click Cons
Expensive – It is an expensive option as it eats up on your profit margins. Also, you end up paying even for clicks that may not convert into sales. Additionally, in case of click fraud, you may end up wasting a considerable amount of your budget on fraudulent clicks.
A thorough analysis of the pros and cons of both these approaches will help you decide which option would be more suitable for your advertising needs. However, the main highlight here is that PPC serves well as a short term strategy over SEO. It is a good option for those looking for quick results and a good ROI while waiting for their SEO initiative to ramp up. However, using the PPC model will leave you with thinner profit margins. From the long term perspective, search engine optimization will bring in higher profitability and make the most of your advertising dollars as it will extensively increase your margins in the long run.
Call Stellar Blue Web Design at 920.905.0250 or email info@stellarbluewebdesign.com with any questions or inquiries.
Jim Dobinski - Marketing Director
Stellar Blue Web Design, LLC
Visit Jim's LinkedIn profile.
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About Stellar Blue
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LinkedIn has over 55 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. In other words, a huge global audience who could potentially learn more about your company through keyword searches. Users seek companies and jobs on LinkedIn by way of keywords. To maintain brand uniformity with your web site, use the same keywords when you create a LinkedIn Company Profile.
According to an Intraspin Study, "42% of search users click the top-ranking link. 8% click the second-ranking link, and the click-through rate (CTR) continues to drop thereof. In addition, 80% of unsuccessful search are followed with keyword refinement." |
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The internal linking component is another way of telling the search engines what your web pages are about when they spider your web site. For example, add a site map to your site with a line-item list of links to pages. Each of your web pages can link to the most important web pages in your web site with keyword optimized anchor text. The same keyword text can also be used when posting events on your site calendar.
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Impact Publications, Inc. is a leading provider of practical, hands-on trainings for the social service professionals. In order to meet the changing needs of customers, Impact has evolved from strictly a publishing company to providing numerous training services. It is Impact's mission to develop new products and services to meet changing training requirements and different needs of customers. Click here to find out more on Impact's services.
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Darboy Stone and Brick, Inc. has been a trusted provider to Northeast Wisconsin for more than 50 years. The company's roots as a masonry contractor and brick supplier have laid a solid foundation for their diverse product and service offerings. Today, Darboy Stone and Brick is your complete source for all your home upgrades. Click here to see all the possibilities.
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