I Do Web Marketing

Online shopping is growing, and by the year 2010 it is expected that over $300 billion will be spent in online purchases. Therefore, having a solid online reputation is of great importance, and managing that reputation is just as important. People typically do research on the products and the businesses that sell those products. Do you know what is being said about your business?

By just doing a search for your company’s name, you will be able to see what your potential customers are seeing. This helps you monitor what customer’s are saying about your business and/or products.

There are a few things that you can do to maintain a positive online reputation:

• Articles and Press Releases – You can help to increase your brand exposure by issuing articles and press releases. By regularly publishing this content to various article and press release directories, you give yourself a better chance of flushing away the negative search results. Search engines crave freshly written content, so articles, and particularly press releases, tend to rank well. One article or press release a year won’t get the job done. You need to devote time to consistently publishing quality content and you’ll eventually start to take control of your online reputation.
• Guest Blog Contributing – One of the best ways to establish your authority and attract new customers is to be a guest contributor on top blogs in your industry. By guest blogging on popular blogs, your posts will rank very well and be associated with you or your business name. Additionally, you will receive free, high quality links to your site. If you’re a regular reader and commentator on a certain blog, ask the author if you can write a guest post. Many times, they’ll be more than happy to have a guest contribute unique content.
• Social Networking – Not only are social networking sites a great way to connect with your target audience, they also can be used to push down negative search results. If you create profiles on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, and Myspace, you’ll be able to influence what search users see when they search for your name. However, it’s important that you create useful profiles as your potential customers will be viewing these pages.

You must remember online reputation management requires time and devotion. If you are providing a shady product and do not offer customer support, than all of the online reputation management techniques in the word can’t help you. It starts with you and your business. Treat reputation management as an important part of your business management strategy.

Thanks to Eric Brantner for his thoughts on online reputation management.

Writing articles is sort of similar to a press release. However, your goal is to not necessarily make news headlines. The goal of your article is to have it read by as many people as possible.

Any article should showcase your business and be a topic of discussion within your niche market. Like anything else, it is imperative that your article be filled with targeted keywords and contain links to your site. It is also important to ensure proper grammar is utilized.

Once your article is written, you will want to submit it to a quality article source. There are sites now like Digg, and Reddit, that allow users to rate your article. These services have thousands of hits per day, so if you are able to provide an original piece of content to these sites you could see a steady flow of traffic. There are also hundreds of article directories that you want to submit your articles to. These provide additional links back to your site as well. It is important to have your article proofread, before submitting this to any public site.

Again, this is also something offered through our internet marketing package at Novel Concept Studio!

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

In a follow up to a previous post about Black Hat SEO tactics, I thought it best to discuss your options on an SEO provider. Unfortunately, there are some companies out there who have given the industry a black eye. These companies have gotten websites blacklisted in search engines and do not provide an ethical service. It is an unfortunate situation, and one company is actually being sued by several of their customers for their tactics and Google is even helping in the process. I will not name the company, as they do not deserve to be mentioned. Just be forewarned though, that not all SEO providers are equal.

For large professional seo firms who have been established for 5+ years, you will see that their costs reflect this. They offer the same marketing package that we currently are listing at $1,750/month. However, their prices can range anywhere from $2,500 a month all the way past the $5,000 a month range. The reason for this is because of the overhead costs of these companies. They are bigger firms, therefore have bigger overhead. Novel Concept Studio is a small SEO firm, and therefore do not have the overhead costs. We like to take a personable approach to all of our clients, and this helps ensure repeat business with our clients.

Now, enough of the sales pitch. Here are some things you want to watch for when choosing your SEO Provider:

Do they do enough?
Site optimization and search engine submission is just part of the internet marketing process. This is by no means an on-going effort. You want to make sure your provider is doing something for that monthly payment.

What are you getting for your money?
Most good internet marketing companies will continuously offer one way link building. This is an on-going effort and one that pays off in the end. This requires several hours of work, so this is something you want to ensure your SEO provider is doing for you. Another on going effort that you should be receiving is in the form of press releases, articles, and blog posts. These also require extensive amounts of time. For press releases and articles, it takes just as long, if not longer, to handle the distribution aspect as it does to write the piece. If you are being charged a monthly fee for your internet marketing service, these features should come standard as part of that package.

Am I guaranteed of results?
Most internet marketing companies do not offer a money back guarantee for top results. The reason for this is, because there are things that are just out of the provider’s hands. Search Engine algorithms are constantly changing, and about 2 people in the world actually know what that algorithm is. Therefore, internet marketing companies are always striving to figure out the formulas for success. But with an ever changing algorithm, this formula is not always guaranteed and therefore SEO providers can’t guarantee that to their clients.

Now having said that, you may be guaranteed that the work is being done as stated. They may guarantee that they are able to acquire a set number of links, or guarantee that they will issue a set number of articles or press releases.

You want to ensure that your SEO provider is providing regular updates to you as well. This way you can track the progress of your internet business. For the most part, this is a pretty standard practice for SEO firms, but it is something to request. Always read through the full service agreement before signing. If they promised you something, you want to make sure it is in writing.

If you are reading this and not a customer of Novel Concept Studio, than I thank you for your time and would kindly suggest you visit our web site at www.novelconceptstudio.com. Should you choose another SEO provider, than I wish you the best of luck and would ask that you let us know why you chose to go another route.

Press Releases can be an important part of your internet marketing campaign. The goal of a press release is to alert the media and possible consumers of news related to your company. Whether you are releasing a new product or service, have a huge sale, or anything else you feel is newsworthy. You may just get lucky and have someone from the media call on you to provide a story for their publication. That is the ideal turn of events.

There are several press release publications that will handle the distribution aspect of your press release. The key is having your press release written properly. You want the press release to contain a link back to your web site, and ensure that you always have your contact information filled out correctly in case a journalist does want to contact you. It can be devastating though if proper grammar is not utilized, and if things are not understandable. This is why it is important for someone to proof read your article before publication, or even hire a professional writer.

Luckily for you, this can all be taken care of through our internet marketing package at Novel Concept Studio!:)

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This post is going to cover a very important aspect of internet marketing. This will be helpful you to ensure your SEO provider is not doing any of these tactics. These tactics are often referred to as “black hat seo,” and should be avoided at all costs.

Overuse of Targeted Keywords
It is important to utilize your title, meta, and alt tags. It is important to utilize your keyword phrases throughout your content as well. However, overusing them or stuffing them into small locations in a repeated manner can be very damaging to your site. Search Engines will read this as exactly that, abuse.

Hidden Text
Tying into the targeted keywords, some developers will hide targeted keywords into their backgrounds. So, for example, if the background of a web page is white some developers will use white text in that background and fill up that space with their targeted keyword phrases. Search engines have extremely complex algorithms and can read this type of behavior for what it is.

Redirecting Domains
Having other domains that have no other purpose, but to redirect to your site is also a good way to have your site blacklisted by search engines. Don’t get me wrong, multiple domains relating to your niche market can be helpful if those web pages are established and not just automatically linking to your home page.

Cloaking
This involves changing what search engines are seeing versus what visitors see. There are still cloaking methods that are not yet traceable by search engines, but search engine algorithms are constantly changing and this tactic will eventually get you in trouble. Especially should a competitor find out what you are doing, they surely report this to search engines.

Duplicate Websites
This was an old method that was quite frequent in the early days of search engine optimization. Fresh and unique content is king. If you have multiple websites with the same content, this will get your site in trouble. Search engines or competitors will undoubtedly discover the tactics you are using.

Auto-Submission
Many link builders, article submitters, and press release distributors utilize automated software to handle the distribution aspect of these marketing methods. This can possibly lead to trouble down line if these directories feel they are being automated. These directories themselves can report your site to search engines in this case.

In conclusion, if you find that your SEO provider is utilizing any of these techniques than I highly suggest you cancel your agreement immediately with them. This will do more harm than good and you may never be able to recover from this.

The heart and soul of most marketing campaigns is in the link building aspect. Whenever another site links to yours, it is commonly referred to as a backlink. Why are backlinks so important? Well, search engines (Google in particular), take great value in the amount of links a web site has pointing to their domain. They view this as a way to measure how important your site is. So, if you have hundreds or thousands of web sites linking to your web site, then search engines feel like your site is relevant and has importance.

Now, having said that, not just any web site will do. You can’t go and create 1,000 domain names and just have them all link to your web site. Google has a complexing algorithm in place, to monitor where the links come from and your site could very well be penalized using that tactic. It is commonly referred to as “blackhat seo.” We will cover the difference between blackhat and whitehat seo in another post. Another thing you do not want your web site associated with is Free-For-All (FFA) link pages and link farms. These are looked upon very negatively by search engines, and again you will be punished. When I say punished, I mean you will no longer show up in any searches. It will almost be as if your web site does not exist.

Being blacklisted by search engines can be catastrophic for an internet business. This is why it is important that you understand the link building techniques, and if you are using an internet marketing firm, ensure that your links are being built correctly.

There are several quality web site directories out there. One of the best is www.dmoz.org. I say they are one of the best, because that web site in particular has a Google Page Rank of 8. Pages are given page rank based on their web site. A page rank is based on a scale of 0 to 10. A page rank of 0 is common for new web sites, or sites with very little web presence. So for a site to have a page rank of 8, it shows they have several backlinks (4 million plus for dmoz.org), and have been around for a long time. Search engines put more validity into web sites that have been around for more than a year, and do not feel that it is a spam type of web site in that case. So, the point of all of this is, you want to try and find web site directories that you can submit your web site too. However, you want to try and find web site directories that have a higher page rank than your own web site. As you probably guessed, that is also part of the google algorithm. They factor in the quality of the web sites you are linking from.

Another method to link building is to find web sites in your same market niche. Try to contact the webmaster and see if there is a way your site can be listed from their web site. In many cases, they may request a link back to their own web site. Might not be a bad thing to consider, and these are referred to as reciprocal links.

Another good way to build links is by submitting content to blogs or forums. Always include links in your signature, and only post relevant content or replies. Do not just post one line responses with links back to your site. This will be considered SPAM on most forums, and would lead to your account being deleted and your posts being removed.

I hope this has helped to shed some light on the link building process. These are the steps which we take to ensure our link building campaigns are successful at Novel Concept Studio.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

The word “blog,” is derived from the term web log. So far in this blog, I have discussed every one of our internet marketing services except the Blog. Well, this will be the topic of discussion today.

Blogs have really taken the internet by storm. Everyone, even some companies, have blogs nowadays. Blogs are great ways to express your viewpoints, and you don’t have to be a professional journalist to publish one.

Blogs are also great marketing tools. The reason is, search engines love the fresh content. This is why you will often find blogs rated atop search engines for some of your searches. From a marketing aspect, it is important that your blog be related to your niche market. If you are trying to sell real estate, than you want all of your blog posts to be related to that of the real estate industry.

It is also important that you have selected keywords that link back to your site. For example, Novel Concept Studio, is the chosen keyword for this example. Clicking on that will take you back to our main page. This is important because search engines not only look to see how many links and what kinds of links you have, but the words used to describe your link. So if your web site is a real estate web site, you may want your keyword to be, “purchasing real estate.” So every time that you use that phrase, you want to link that back to your web site.That tells the search engines what your site is about, and helps to identify the keywords you are trying to use.

It is also important to make regular posts in your blog. You can’t expect to get solid results if you haven’t posted in your blog for 6 months. Content is king, but FRESHLY written and UNIQUE content is even better. I hope this helps to explain how to market your blog a little more effectively. Again, this is something that is a part of our internet marketing service at www.novelconceptstudio.com.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Site optimization is an important aspect of internet marketing. From proper use of title tags, meta tags, and even alt tags to the actual page content itself incorporating select keywords. It is all considered a part of the site optimization process.

Select your keywords, and review your competition.
The first step of the search engine optimization process is to identify the keywords you want to utilize. There are several tools available to aid you in this process. A quick google search for “keyword selector,” will help you. There are several things to take into account. You need to pay attention to the competition for these keywords. If you choose “Cars” as your keyword, you are going to be up against an enormous amount of competition and will probably never be seen on the first page of google for that keyword. So, you will want to maybe focus on more descriptive keywords like “classic cars” or “environmentally friendly cars.”

Content, Content, Content!
The most important, and often overlooked aspect of internet marketing is the actual on page content. This content needs to be related to your chosen keywords. The keywords need to populated throughout this content with the proper density. The keywords need to be placed regularly throughout the page, but at the same time you need to make sure that the content flows and still makes sense.

Tag, You’re It!
The proper use of your title tags, meta tags, and alt tags are important. These tags are ideal locations for your targeted keywords. Your title tag is looked upon heavily by google. It is important to have your targeted keywords towards the beginning, and you do not want your title more than 8 words generally. Meta tags are important as well. You do not necessarily want the same meta information across all of your pages. You want the meta tags to reflect what is on the page, but you want to ensure that you have your targeted keywords in this location. Meta tags are not as highly regarded as they once were, but it is still important to have this information filled in correctly. Finally, the alt tags. Alt tags are used whenever images are placed on your page. These tags are used for visually impaired readers of your site to have an idea of what the images are on your site. In place of an image description, it is a good idea to implement your targeted keywords in this section.

This covers the extent of site optimization that Novel Concept Studio offers its clients. This is typically the first step in the marketing process. Future posts will cover the additional services that our internet marketing package contains.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

It is one thing to have a smooth and proficient web site, but if no one visits the site, what good is it? The importance of internet marketing and search engine optimization is at an all time high. Given the current state of the economy, businesses are finding it vital to enhance their presence on the web. It is estimated that $310 billion will be spent via internet purchases by 2010. Make sure you are prepared to get your piece of the pie!

There are various proven tactics to getting your site ranked highly on search engines.
Getting highly ranked on search engines has proven to be the most effective method of advertising, and gives you the best ROI. This is referred to as organic search results. There are several steps encompassed in this system.

So what are the methods, you ask?
What we, at Novel Concept Studio, do is optimize your site for targeted keywords. Applicable and consistent content is still the most powerful component of internet marketing. Once the site is optimized, we recommend your site to numerous search engines. This tells them to search for your site when they are crawling the web. Another extremely important form is getting quality links back to your site. We will also issue press releases. Another form of marketing that we offer in our full service marketing package is to establish a blog and contribute constant content-related postings. We’ll even create your own myspace page and publicize it heavily. Newly written articles and distribution as well as Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign management also comes in the full service package.

Don’t be left in the dark!
These are all important angels to driving targeted traffic to your site. However, it can be confusing trying to figure out the most effective components in which to do this. If you need SEO or marketing work, feel free to contact us for a quote or visit our Internet Marketing and SEO Firm web site for more information.

Another process in the internet marketing procedure, that we take at Novel Concept Studio, is Social Marketing. This can be a very effective tool, and is a way to create brand exposure. Some of these sites see several hundred thousand visitors per day.

The first thing you want to do is decide which social networking site is best for you. There are two major ones, and that is MySpace and Facebook. Depending on your business though, these may not be right for you. One that we have recently joined and found very useful is Xing. The reason I recommend Xing, is because they are geared towards businesses who are looking to network with other business professionals. There are sites like LinkedIn and Ryze, but quite frankly found it difficult to expand your network to new people. Xing makes this process simple with its search criteria.

Now, once you have decided on your social networking site, you need to dig in and start to branch out and establish contacts. I always advise clients to choose one site and devote all of your attention to that one site. Once you are fully established on one networking site, then you may move on to another. It can be overbearing if you have 5 different social networking accounts, and don’t know how to utilize each site properly.

With any of the social networking sites, you need to complete your profile. This is where your contact information will be placed. It is also HIGHLY recommended to ensure your web site’s URL is placed somewhere prominently in your profile. There is generally a section to place your URL. Take the time to complete your profile as it will help you later when you are trying to establish contacts and expand your network. People like to know how they are accepting into their own network, and having a fully completed profile lets other users get to know you and your company.

With Xing, I would recommend finding groups within your niche market. Participate in forum activities to show that you are knowledgeable in your field. Make sure that your signature or posts leave a link back to your site. Also, do searches for businesses in your area. Find members who you think could benefit from your product or service. Try to reach out to them and establish them as contacts.

I hope this helps to get you started in your social networking venture. As usual, we can take the hassle out of your social networking headaches as part of our internet marketing package at Novel Concept Studio.