NEW FACEBOOK & YOUTUBE SPECIAL OFFER — GET YOUR WEBSITE PROMOTED!
I wanted to pass along an offer I am presenting to my customers. Some of you might also be interested in this offer for your customers. If so, please let me know and we can discuss details for your client.
From: BusinessMBA.org
It’s difficult to compete online without utilizing social media marketing for your web design business. Your potential customers are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube more than ever. If you don’t have a presence on these websites, then you’ll lose a competitive advantage. The good news is that you don’t have to spend all day trying to market on these websites, and you can do a lot with little or no monetary investment.
The leader in social media appears to be Facebook, and you can use it to your advantage. There are many ways that you can use it for marketing your web design business, such as:
Utilizing Facebook to promote your business can be an effective way to generate more leads and gain more sales. You should not mix your personal Facebook pages with your business presence, and many business owners decide not to have a personal Facebook at all.
You may be among many business owners who dread posting tweets about everything you’re doing and when you’re doing it. There’s a misconception that the only way to use Twitter is to engage in meaningless conversation or to give a status report of your daily happenings. That’s not the case it all when it comes to social media marketing for your web design business. You can so much more using Twitter, including:
It’s important to note that you don’t have to monitor Twitter all day long or be on standby to post your tweets. Software developers have created various applications and tools to help you manage your Twitter activities. For example, you can write and pre-schedule tweets for the week using SocialOomph.com.
YouTube
Video marketing resonates with many customers, more so than articles or other types of marketing. The use of video engages more senses and holds the interest of web visitors. YouTube makes it possible to take advantage of video marketing as a form of social media marketing with minimal investment. You can do a lot with a flip video camera. You can even create video using only static pictures and text, which customers may be willing to view instead of reading a lengthy manual or document. If you’re wondering how you can use YouTube effectively, consider these strategies:
Make sure that the video and audio quality is good, so that you don’t frustrate viewers.
There are many options for social media marketing for your web design business, but these are the big three that you should start with. Take the time to learn the strategies to be as effective as you can on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
You’ll have to invest money in promoting your business, but there are free marketing tactics for a web design business that are effective and can get you started. One of the benefits of doing a lot of your work online is that you can reach your target market using little money or nothing at all. Even a long term marketing strategy can include free marketing tactics. You’ll have to do more work to see results, but it often leads to a more profitable business in the end.
Social Media Marketing
Larger companies pay people, buy tools and sponsor advertisements in relation to their social media marketing strategies. You don’t have to do that as a small web design business, at least not until your business is established. You can leverage social media to promote yourself as a web designer, for free. If you don’t already have business accounts for the main social media websites and utilize them to build fans, members and followers, then take the time to do that this weekend. Here are some of the “biggies” that you should be active on:
You can post videos, link to articles you’ve written or ones that are written by others, share videos you’ve created, and generate discussions. For more ideas on how to be effective in social media marketing, read www.mashable.com.
Webinars
Some of your prospective clients will not pay attention to the articles you write, but they would love to view your tutorial videos. Webinars are an effective way to showcase your skills and expertise. Webinar attendees benefit because they get to learn how to use a software application or some other technology that is difficult for them to understand. Don’t worry about them never coming back because you’re shared how-to information with them. The opposite is often true. They will have confidence in your skills and abilities, and pay you back by hiring you to do work for them.
These free marketing tactics for a web design business do require you to put in much of your time. However, if you approach it in spurts and with little effort, then you can expect very little in terms of results.
You may not have to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant if you know some basic SEO tips for your online business. The subject can seem intimidating at first, but keep the main purpose in mind: To rank higher in search engines. The more you know about SEO the better you’ll be able to serve your clients who may look to you as a resource. You’ll also boost your search rankings, which translates into more revenue for your business. Here are 4 tips that you can use today to improve your online business.
SEO Tip #1 – Choose 5 Years or More for Your Domain Name
It’s cheap to register domain names on an annual basis. If you’re a new business, it can be tempting to go for the $9 a year deal. The problem is that you’ll be making a big mistake. One of the basic SEO tips for online business that you should use is to register your domain name for at least five years. It sends a signal to the search engine that yours is not a fly-by-night operation, and that you intend to be around for the long haul. The search engines like that stability because yours is less likely to be a spam site.
SEO Tip #2 – Select Keywords to Target
Visitors to your website will arrive as a result of keywords and phrases they search for. Your goal is to choose a few keywords to target so that they can find you. Those keywords should be in your web copy, articles and blog posts and even in the URLs for your web pages. For example, if you want to target the keywords “Atlanta web designer,” then you need to include those keywords on various web pages and in articles.
SEO Tip #3 – Create Relationships
Implementing SEO tips for your online business involves the use and manipulation of technology, and it involves algorithms and other technical know-how. There is a human side to SEO that you should be aware of and capitalize on. You should make an effort to create relationships with other website owners, so that they will consider linking to your website. You’ll want to target websites that rank higher than yours, that are relevant and ones that are considered the authority in your industry. Don’t pay someone to get them to link to your website, because you will get blacklisted by the search engines. Get to know the website owners and make the content that you want them to link to valuable to their visitors. These links are referred to as inbound links, and the more you have, the more that search engines will reward you.
SEO Tip #4 – Don’t Act Like a Spammer
Spammers make it difficult for legitimate business owners to rank well in the search engines. If search engines have an inkling that you are one, they will ban your site or lower your rankings. One common technique used by spammers that you should stay away from is setting up numerous domain names and redirecting them to another website. The search engines may think that you’re really a spammer if you engage in this practice. Think of a solid domain name, stick to it, and work on targeting keywords on your other web pages and the associated URLs.
These SEO tips for your online business are a good start. Learn as much as you can about the tips and tricks so that you can drive more traffic to your website.
Writing content for your website is an essential business strategy. Traffic flows to your website based on the content that’s on it. The first contact that many of your prospective clients and employers will have with you is your website. A polished website with solid content can foster great leads and keep prospects interested in learning more about your services. A poorly written website or one that contains sparse or little content can lead to a lack of confidence in clients who otherwise wanted to do business with you. Follow these tips when writing content to present your services in the best light possible:
Quality Beats Low Prices
There’s a trend that’s heavily promoted by Internet marketers that has led to poor quality writing on websites. The advice given by the so-called experts is to hire writers for very low pay to generate a large amount of content on an ongoing basis. You get what you pay for, and in many cases, the content contains spelling and grammatical errors, does not translate well with an English speaking audience, offers little information and is difficult to read. Quality content will establish your credibility, expertise and brand in the online marketplace. When you’re thinking about writing content for your website, concentrate on quality. If you need to outsource it to freelance writers, make sure that you find ones that can deliver quality work. You’ll pay more, but you may earn more in sales as a result.
Learn SEO Techniques
Quality writing is one half of the equation. You need to compete with other websites that have similar content, and you can do that with effective search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. There’s a lot of information on the web about SEO, from understanding what it is to how to use it for article writing. You can learn more about it from a blog post by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam Team. What you need to remember is that one of the ways your clients and employers will find you online is by typing keywords in a search engine. If you can prepare relevant articles that contain those keywords in the body as well as in the titles, then your website has a better chance of appearing in the first couple of pages of the search results. Learn as much as you can about SEO techniques and article writing, because there are many other factors that you have to take into consideration to elevate your online presence.
Use Subheadings
Web surfers have little tolerance for lengthy articles that aren’t broken up. Readers want to glance through subheadings quickly to see whether your content is what they are looking for. When you’re writing content for your website, break up your text by using subheadings. It’s effective to use numbers, tips or brief titles for your subheadings. You should also refer to the AP Stylebook for how to title subheadings, because it’s the most common format used in article writing.
If you need help writing content for your website, or if you could use an extra set of eyes to review and improve it, then hire a freelance writer or editor. There are several online writing communities for freelance writers where you can post job ads. You can also search the web for writers or post an ad on Craigslist.com.
Resources:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-writing-useful-articles-that-readers-will-love/
Yahoo recently launched a new service called Yahoo Clues. Yahoo Clues is a free service that gives you keyword trends and demographics data on specific search queries. The service is still in beta but shows a ton of promise and features that others..Cough..Google..Cough..doesn’t have. Let’s dive into some examples of the service.
Blogs are all the rage — and with good reason. When you convert your web site to a blog site, you will be in complete control when it comes to updates, changes, and additions. A blog (web + log) is a type of web site that is typically maintained by a person or group. Many personal blogs are akin to a diary, whereas a company’s blog may look and behave exactly as a standard web site. The owner(s) of the blog create the pages by posting a constant flow of entries written as commentary, descriptions of events, or reviews of noteworthy subjects or products. Blogs can even include multimedia, such as images, illustrations, video, or sound. These pages (articles, posts, or stories), are generally displayed in reverse-chronological order.
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Article by:
Cyndie Shaffstall
Author of Small-business Guide to Winning at Web Marketing
http://www.winningatwebmarketing.com
When was the last time you opened your yellow-pages directory? Fifteen years ago, that was a shopper’s primary resource for locating your business, but today your customers are turning to search engines millions of times a minute.
Search engines, like the directory of decades past, favor those listed first. The closer your company appears at the top of the list, the more likely you are to attract customers. Unlike printed directories, you no longer have to name your company AAA Repair Service — you can be found based on your ability to solve the customer’s problem.
Moving up your placement in search-engine results (SER) is not something you can achieve overnight, but it can be done. Here are ten projects that you can do on your own that will positively affect your rankings.
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Almost everyone is interested in higher rankings on Google and with the amount of information out on the internet about SEO strategies it can be daunting even where to begin. In this article I will give you a couple simple but surprising strategies that will help your rankings.
Seems everyone has their own SEO (search engine optimization) techniques and theories. I mean companies hire SEO experts and agencies have entire SEO divisions.
That’s how competitive search rankings has become.
But how can we truly separate the wheat from the chaff?
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