WSI Marketing, Surf, Search and Social

In order to have a successful website, you need your visitors to take action.  You might have exactly what they need. If you have your visitors interested, how can you get them to commit? You also might have a clear and compelling offer, but that is not always enough to let them take the final decision.

It’s a fact that people are wary about buying online. You always have to build trust by eliminating their risk. Your visitors are looking for reassurance.  Adding strong trust-building elements to your website or blog is frequently the difference between a poor performing website and a money maker.

Find below 20 tips you can implement into your digital marketing strategy to build trust, credibility and lower your prospects’ anxiety.

1. Offer a 100% unconditional money back guarantee.
2. Include an option for a free trial or introductory offer.
3. Include a video clip of the product in action to help the customer see what they are buying.
4. Have a simple and hassle free returns policy.
5. Prevent surprises by disclosing shipping costs early in the shopping process.
6. On your home page and ordering pages have ‘trust logos’ prominently posted (Bank logos, VISA, HackerSafe).
7. Give reassurance that you will guard their privacy (no spamming, emails won’t be sold to spammers).
8. Include helpful product education and ‘how-to’ advice. The more time they spend on your site, the more they will trust you.
9. Include user product reviews and ratings.
10. Include real testimonials and reviews by people who have used your products.
11. Get endorsements from industry experts and professional organizations.
12. Include links to press coverage from the mainstream media; include an ‘in the news’ or ‘press’ section on your website.
13. List any industry awards you have won.
14. List any industry associations you are a member of (or use their logos in #5).
15. Include actual case studies you have done.
16. Disclose any ongoing costs to maintain and operate the product.
17. Include your phone number and physical address prominently on your site.
18. Offer offline ordering alternatives such as finalizing the purchase by phone.
19. Offer multiple payment options.
20. Offer multiple shipping options.

The goal with call to actions is to be transparent and to show your prospects why they should trust you. Always provide real value and offer your customer choices.

Visit our site for more digital marketing tips and industry techniques that will help your company’s website convert visitors into customers!

We’ve always known that web content is an important aspect to digital marketing; now there’s a book to prove it. The Yahoo! Style Guide, released July 6th, is the first publication of its kind to cover writing topics specific to the world of online media.

The book is based on Yahoo!’s own in-house style guide developed by working web editors, writers and professionals. Yahoo!’s editors cover everything from basic grammar to how to write for an international audience. Keys to creating an accessible website and how to improve SEO with strong content also are explored in the guide. While no one yet knows whether Yahoo! will score big with the book, we do know the need for strong content is bigger than ever.

So why does content warrant the publication of such a book?

Content is the middle of the sandwich on a website. It’s the tasty filling that users come back for time and time again. With more and more established writers and publishing veterans taking their craft online, great content is becoming the norm. This is a call to action for small businesses and organizations to truly step up their game. Yet, this isn’t as scary as it sounds. With a little thought, a lot of creativity and some help from a seasoned pro or two, anybody can achieve this sort of content.

Great content is content with a vision — your vision. It should express all the unique and exciting things about you and your business. Your voice is the key. Only you can express how fantastic your idea or business is. Go wild when describing your vision of your website — the sky is the limit! After all, it is a reflection of you and how brilliant you are.

But what if you’re not a “word person?” That’s when an extra set of hands comes in handy. Some lively sessions with an experienced writer who understands your vision can produce the content you’ve always dreamed of. With your style guide in hand and writer in place, amazing content is within your reach! Learn even more about the power of content and content marketing right here.

Social bookmarking is great way to get more visitor traffic to your website or blog. Interested social bookmarking site visitors will discover your links and browse to your articles, website pages or blog posts.

Search engines will also discover your links found on popular social bookmarking websites as most of these Web 2.0 channels are ranked very high on the search engines. It is a great way to get your pages indexed on the search engines.

Social bookmarking can help you develop a regular flow of unique visitors to your website or blog over a period of time.

How does social bookmarking work?

Social bookmarking is a way of saving your favorite bookmarks to a public website and tagging them with relative keywords found in the content of the page you want to save.

Others can see your bookmarks and tags as you can see theirs. This allows people to organize, search and select bookmarks based on these tags. These can then be accessed from any web enabled computer.

People search social bookmarking sites to find the most popular websites dealing with almost any subject. Some of the popular social bookmarking websites features a ranking system where users can vote for your bookmarks.

To put it in simpler terms, if your site is rank highly by others, your links will become popular and viewed often.

Social bookmarking tips

• Register: This will be the first thing you will do when you find a social bookmarking site that you would like to use.
• Widgets: You can make it easy for other users to bookmark the content of your website and blog by adding social bookmarking buttons such as Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us or similar sites to your content. Visitors will then be able to bookmark your content with just one click.
• Participate: Search and find informative, great content that you can bookmark around the web. You will gain a reputation by only presenting the best content. Be social and social bookmarking will pay off.
• Great content: Always focus on creating content that is informative, unique and that inspire others. If your content doesn’t stand out, bookmarking won’t work. Valuable content is always the key.
• Occasionally bookmark: When you have created an outstanding content article, it is really ok to social bookmark it yourself. It should meet the standard you set for other or it will hurt your own credibility.

Have you ever Googled your name, business, brand, product, or website? Try it; you may be surprised by the results. Some companies have lost significant business and authority with their potential customers because of what is written online about them. Even if your business doesn’t have its own website, the Internet could still be damaging your reputation.

Why?

Disgruntled employees or customers could leave negative reviews on review websites. These may even be false negative reviews that have been written by competitors to try and ruin a reputation. Whatever the reasons, it’s likely to be having some kind of damaging effect on your business and you should take action.

Legal Action

Getting negative reviews and posts removed is a lengthy battle that could incur costs and you may not even manage it in the end. Online publishers can be difficult to trace and ISPs (Internet Service Providers)  are often unwilling to remove search engine listings. It can take several months or even years if you are successful and this may only deal with one such post on one website. If the writer is trying really hard to ruin your name then they are likely to re-word their negative piece and then post it elsewhere. And what if the legal action is unsuccessful?  This can give the story even greater publicity!

So, whilst there are legal avenues designed to help remove false negative publicity, it is better to take action and implements a savvy digital marketing strategy, which will perhaps work to bury the negative online content and replace it with positive or informative pieces.



Of course, there are countless other methods to maintaining a positive online reputation! contact us uf you would like more information

Analytics Data & PPC Optimization

Analytics Data & PPC Optimization to Achieve Meaningful Results:
Using a Network of Tools and a Data-Driven Approach to Optimize PPC Marketing

Download this pay per click advertising and  Guaranteed you will walk away with incredible information to help your internet advertising and internet marketing campaigns.

Think about it, a great website that few people see will not get the marketing results you desire, and with the explosion of online marketing activity, capturing your place online has never been more important.  As the internet becomes the dominant vehicle for marketing, an internet marketing plan including; pay per click advertising, search engine marketing, and social media marketing is essential to compete in the years to come. Too many businesses are failing to fully capture the potential from online marketing, and this is due primarily to a lack of knowledge about the tools available to be successful.

Google has made enhancements to their Adwords platform. Paid search marketing or pay per click advertising, sponsored link marketing, and PPC are all terms that describe the process of paid online advertising with Adwords as the platform to manage paid search marketing. Also, Google has made free to the marketplace its Google Analytics tool, which captures all kinds of data about how people are using your website, where visitors are coming from, and what keywords people are typing to find you. The combination of free Google Analytics and pay per click advertising, Adwords, bring forth opportunities for businesses large and small to succeed online advertising. After all, the more business are successful advertising and marketing online, the more they will spend doing it. In this case, everyone wins – the business and the search engines.

Download Pay Per Click and Website Analytics Whitepaper.

5 Tips for Getting Started In Link Building

We explained in a previous post why it is important to build links to your website.  But after reading that post you are probably wondering “how, exactly, can I get started building links to my site?”

To be honest, there is no surefire, quick way to build up tons of links in a very short amount of time.  And you should be very wary of any person, company or service who tells you they can build massive amounts of links with very little effort because those methods are not usually above board.

With that said, there are some ways that you can start building links now so that you will continually increase the number of sites that link back to yours.

Here are five ways you can get started:

1. Be smart with anchor text. Anchor text refers to the words that you click on in order to be directed to another site. Rather than using yourwebsite.com as the anchor text, you can use words that refer to your product and make sense in the context where the link is found.
2. Try content syndication. Syndication refers to when someone uses an article, blog post or news item you wrote and publishes it on their site. When they give credit to the source, they will link back to your site.
3. Directories can also be a great way to build links. The Yahoo Directory is a great one, or you can try to find one that features topics related to your product or service.
4. Bookmarks. Sites such as Digg allow people to share their bookmarks with one another, allowing people to bookmark and share your site. This works best if you have a particularly interesting picture, blog post, or event on your site that people would like to talk about.
5. Ask clients, associates and organizations to put a link to your website on theirs. When you work with people, it is a good idea to see if it would be possible to use the relationship for link building. Also, for any organizations in which you are a member, ask the people in charge what it would take to get your link on their site, and then see if that is feasible for you.

Aim for Quality over Quantity

I’ll share a quick story with you to demonstrate why quality trumps quantity in link building.  A client of mine in the IT business has a very large company that they serve.  I suggested they request a link in the footer of their very popular and well established site saying “Technology consulting by ABC…”  And within a few weeks, our client moved up quickly in the rankings.

Now, this digital marketing strategy does not yield the same results every time.  However it does demonstrate that when Google, Yahoo and Bing find a link to your site on another site they trust, this helps your credibility in the online world.

Can you afford to ignore internet marketing?

Gone are the days when business marketing was about creating a message. Today, success is pretty dependent on online marketing or better to say ‘Internet Marketing.’

In this era, almost every company has its online interface, which helps the company in attaining a local and global outlook as well as leaving an impact on all the web-surfers and web researchers who can turn into clients. Keeping the target users in mind, internet marketing is done in a comprehensive manner.

It incorporates several online marketing strategies, starting with On-line Competitor Analysis, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Management), Link Building, Content Marketing,  PPC (Pay per Click) Management and Social Media Marketing.

The goal is to improve your search engine rankings or ‘Your Popularity”

Content is a King

To make this statement more definite, I would change the phrase for – rich content is king. But what sense in creating the greatest content in the world if nobody can find and view it. If you want to run your online business successfully you have to be seen.

Nonetheless, this is absolutely web-based marketing but it leaves a great impact on mass, which is considered the major USP of Internet Marketing. This cost-effective marketing tactic is absolutely measurable focuses on driving web/customer traffic and converting that into revenue influx and visitor count.

A linking strategy is an absolute must

Back links are the life blood of a successful site and although you might not actually see them, the search engines do and reward you as links back to your site are seen as subtle endorsements and can be built up with a strategy of regular blogging, using social media and on-line press releases article directories, etc.  The more links to your site, the more Google see you as popular and relevant to their searcher.

Before You Do Anything, Do Keyword Research

Yes,  it is very important. Besides, keyword research does not mean that you should guess which keyword sounds good and will be ranked high in the search engines. Judging by my experience they are the worst ones.

Again work with the professionals who have access to tools providing you with information on specific keywords and the number of clicks that they attract. Also find out what keywords your competitors are using AND which words get clicked on.

How do you stay ahead of your competitors?

Though, nowadays, millions of pages are online and many of them share category listings and key words with your site, It becomes very difficult to stay ahead in the race… Internet Marketing is the only solution that can help you in emerging as the winner.

For impact internet marketing, you must have the idea of your target client or target ‘persona’ enabling you to communicate with ‘relevance’ using persuasion architecture within your website to achieve those sought after conversions. This helps professionals in preparation of a well-versed strategy.

Internet Marketing should always be done with a progressive approach

Implemented by almost every entrepreneurial organization, internet-marketing tactics are considered great not only for the budding enterprises but also for those who are in queued in the list of big guns… and those smaller companies who have the drive and will to take on those ‘big guns’!

If you too want to give a boom to traffic count of your site and increase revenue generation, understand what your competitors are doing on-line in order to develop and commission an online marketing strategy that will allow you to pass your competitors and win the much needed market share.

Contact us today for a Analysis Report. This report will help you understand what you top ten competitors are doing online and what your target audience is searching on Google.

If you’ve already searched for some Fan Page inspiration and taken up the task of building a custom landing page for your business’s Facebook presence, you may now be in the market for some features that will further engage fans of your brand.

A nice feature of the modern social web is that it’s modular. You can plug in and customize pre-made pieces of software (often created by other users or companies), and mix and match what works best for you without a lot of technical know-how. Facebook works the same way with apps.

Many Facebook apps are built for casual use, like the social games and quizzes you may see your friends using in their personal feeds. But there are quite a few apps that are ideal for a business Fan Page. These are useful for customizing your page with greater detail, showcasing your content from other social sites, and getting more information from your customers. Here are five essential Facebook apps that your business may want to take for a spin.

1. Static FBML for Your Page Sidebar

We’ve already discussed how the Static FBML app can be used to make your Fan Page a unique destination. But this versatile plugin can also bring some interactivity to the column that appears on the left-hand side of your page.

Vertical, left-hand navigation is something users expect to find on most websites. They will be comfortable looking there for additional links, promotions, and contact details. Moving a Static FBML box over to the left-hand column is a great way to exploit this valuable real estate. Here’s how to do it.

If you haven’t already done so, add the app to your Fan Page and make sure it’s functioning as a “Box” rather than a “Tab.” Add content to your box using standard HTML. Graphics cannot be uploaded to Facebook here, so you must reference them from a URL — likely, one on your own hosted website or blog.

For a sidebar, think about adding some clean graphic buttons or icons that link out to other destinations your fans would be interested in, such as your company website, blog, or Twitter account. This sidebar will be visible no matter what Fan Page tab your visitors are on, so consider using graphic elements that coincide with your existing logo and color scheme.

Once your content is added and saved, it will appear as a box on the “Boxes” tab. Head over there to ensure that your HTML has rendered properly. If so, click the “Pencil” in the top-right corner of the box and select “Move To Wall Tab.” This will display your content in the left-hand navigation of your page.

2. Promotions

Contests and giveaways are a great way to engage people with your brand, especially on the social web. A chance at some free stuff is one of the top reasons people follow and friend brands in the first place. The Promotions app makes it easy to build and publish a contest on Facebook in a way that is inherently social and shareable.

Promotions is different from many Facebook apps in that the content you create for it lives on the developer’s website. This makes it a versatile tool, but you’ll have to sign up for a free account at wildfireapp.com.

Once you create an account and connect the registered app to Facebook, the promotions you generate on WildFire will populate the tab on your Fan Page. Promotions are easily built through a step-by-step process. Provide the dates of the contest, the types of prizes, the fields for the entry form, specific parameters about contest entry and rules, and upload any additional artwork you want to include.

A nice advantage of having contest data centralized on WildFire is that it can be sourced out to other social networks, and even to your own company website. Any changes or additions you make to your promotions will dynamically update on all of the locations where your customers and fans find you on the web.

Note, the cost to publish a basic promotional campaign through Wildfire is $5, plus $.99 for each day the campaign is active. Additional packages with more customization and publishing options are available.

3. Social RSS

If you already have great content from your company’s blog or another social network that you’d like to bring to the fore of your Facebook presence, Social RSS is a smart tool.

You can configure this app to automatically pull in updates from any RSS or ATOM feed and display them as posts on your Fan Page, either on a dedicated tab, a wall tab (on the left side) or as part of your core news feed. It’s a useful way to automate your content and eliminate the need to republish things manually to your Facebook Page.

Take note, however, that fans on social networks are much more responsive to curated content. Especially on Facebook, where people connect to a smaller community of personal friends and family, an unfiltered pipeline of RSS content may not be welcome in all news feeds. If your core customers are already subscribed to your blog and other social accounts, a double-dose of the same exact content may trigger some to hide your updates or “un-fan” you. Consider relegating your Social RSS feed to a tab if this is the case.

Test where and how an app like Social RSS is best implemented on Facebook, and adjust as needed depending on the size and response of your audience.

4. Poll

Sometimes you just need a little feedback. That’s what social engagement is all about, right?

On Facebook, it doesn’t get any simpler than the Poll app. There’s no account to sign up for. Once you connect it to your Page, all the setup and data lives right in your settings panel.

A poll can be a casual way to get a read from your fans about a new product, a new page design, or your business in general.

In the poll settings, simply name your burning question (What do you think of our new spicy burritos?), list your choices (Delicious, Pretty Tasty, Needs Work, Offensive) and select your publishing options.

Polls can be published to your Page wall/feed, live on a custom tab, or be popped into your left-hand navigation where visitors can click anytime they come to your Page. You can invite your friends to take a poll, and they can easily share it out as they would any other post or app. Both you and your visitors can see the poll results without leaving Facebook.

Publishing a weekly poll about new products or changes in your industry is a great way to keep fans coming back to your Page and talking about your brand.

5. YouTube for Pages

If creating video content is part of your business’s social media strategy (and we recommend it should be) you can squeeze more views out of your productions by dedicating a Fan Page tab to your YouTube channel.

That’s exactly what the YouTube for Pages app does. To activate the app, you’ll have to set up a free account at the developer website involver. Once it’s connected to your Fan Page, simply input the YouTube channel you’d like to pull videos from (it could be your own, or anyone else’s), pick a few more settings, and you’re all set.

The app “features” your most recent upload or favorite, and displays thumbnails for previous videos on a simple, clean interface. The videos play directly on Facebook of course, so fans can watch without ever leaving your Fan Page. Just be sure to add the tab in the app’s “Application Settings.”

A Facebook fan page is an essential part of online marketing. You can see some outstanding examples of how large brands use their pages in this list of the top 50 branded pages of 2010.

1. Use your personal profile for professional networking. Having a personal profile allows you to reach out and add select individuals as friends, comment on their walls, and begin to build key relationships. Plus, be mindful of your status updates and posts—you never know who’s reading your content in their stream!

2. Make use of Friend Lists. To better manage your friends, create lists with specific influentials, for example; you can then more easily view your News Feed each day and quickly Like and Comment as appropriate to continue nurturing those important relationships!

3. Use @ tags strategically. You can have up to six “@ tags” in any update/wall post (on your profile or fan page) consisting of a mix of friends, fan pages, events or groups. Use @ tags to give credit, thank, acknowledge and be enchanting!

4. Add an attractive landing tab to your fan page. A popular tab is a simple “welcome” message with custom graphics and possibly a video message. The purpose of this tab is to inspire visitors to join (like) your fan page. Check out these examples: NHL, EzineArticles, Steve Spangler, SocialMediaExaminer, and my own fan page.

5. Provide an area for your fans to promote themselves. To honor your fans and to help minimize any possible spam posts on your wall, give your fans their own forum using the Discussion tab. Specify exactly how and where you want them to post. For example, I have a long-running, popular thread encouraging fans to promote their Twitter accounts.

6. Respond to fans posts promptly and personally. Implement an effective engagement strategy (you may need team members to help) and reply to your fans’ comments and questions. Personalize your replies and use fans’ first names for an informal feel. BestBuy is an excellent example of enchanting engagement!

7. Surprise your fans and think outside the box. From time to time, give your Facebook fan page a burst of excitement by introducing initiatives like “Fan Page Friday” or “Share Your Blog Day” and invite all your fans to share their links on your wall. Every wall post creates viral visibility for your page throughout Facebook!

8. Give away a special free gift. Using the FBML app on your fan page, you can add any custom content as a tab or in the left column, including an opt-in box. Offer your fans a valuable, free download and you’ll grow your email list as a result. You can then continue building your relationship with your fans via email.

9. Chat live with your fans. Your fans will love to interact with you LIVE from time to time. Use the Vpype or Ustream apps to stream live video and get your fans to interact and chat. Also, try out the Clobby app (Chat Lobby) to chat real-time with your fans. Your fans will love you for the enchanting live element and you’ll stand out from others on Facebook!

10. Get your fans involved in product and content creation. Involve and include your Facebook fans when creating new products or when seeking ideas for new blog posts, etc. This is called “crowdsourcing.” You might also run a contest. Wildfireapp.com is a good choice for contests on Facebook.

The easiest websites to optimize are the horrible ones. In fact, the hardest part about optimizing a site that has a million and one problems is deciding which ones to go after first. However, where do you begin if you have a beautiful, clean, profitable website? If there are no clear issues – if the calls to action are visible and the page uncluttered and the buttons big and shiny – then what can be done short of remaking the entire site (an idea as scary as it is unnecessary)?

Sometimes, all you need is a change in perspective. We, the web savvy, see the Internet through big, clear monitors and 11 point font. We look at our site and we can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t be able to perform whatever task the site is designed to do. Well, to that end, Google Labs has created Browser Size. This nifty little tool allows you to see how much of your web page is immediately visible to your visitor depending on the size of their monitor and resolution settings.

The concept of “the fold” of a web page (as in “above the fold”, i.e., what can be seen upon landing on a webpage without any scrolling) is not a solid line that snips the bottom off every page, but rather a subjective experience. The notion of having important links, buttons and messages above the fold is taken for granted as a good policy, so what if you found out that 20% of your visitors couldn’t immediately see what you thought they could?

Plug your site into Browser Size and you’ll get that perspective. Each band of color represents approximately how many visitors will see that section immediately upon landing (the seemingly shaky lines are actually a true representation of the visible area excluding the title bar, toolbars, etc). If you have important information or buttons in the 70% range, that means 30% of your visitors are forced to scroll to see that information and convert.

Take a look at this example from the Website Optimizer homepage:

As you can see, most people can see our primary call to action, the “Start testing now” button. However, some of our educational content like Benefits and Testing 101 sections is below the fold for 50% of viewers.

Think the numbers are different for your site? Browser Size bases its data on a sample of visitors to Google.com, but you can check out your screen resolutions report in your web analytics tool to see the most common visitor screen resolutions for your own site. For most sites the list of dimensions is quite long, and the ones we in the industry tend to use – 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024 – typically only represent about 50% of the visitors at best.

So get back to the optimization grindstone, squeeze another percentage point or two into your conversion rate, and give all of your visitors the experience they deserve. You can start using Browser Size at http://browsersize.googlelabs.com