Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

For just about all of us, it has become obvious in the recent years that a website is an absolute must in the current day and age.  Any business selling any product or service needs to have an effective way of communicating to prospective and current clients who they are, what they can provide and how to contact them.  While the designs and technologies behind websites can range from a simple one page “brochure” to a multi-page, optimized “web 2.0″ megasite, everyone needs some sort of website to promote their business and the sooner the better.

At this point, having a website is almost like a source of status.  If you find a business that doesn’t have a website, what does it make you think?  Either they are a brand new business, in which case they have not yet established any credibility, they have been around but don’t understand the new technologies, which would mean they are behind the times in marketing and may be as well in their products and services, or they don’t believe a website is necessary.  If they don’t believe a website is necessary in an age where the majority of research and information on a business comes from the internet, then they clearly do not understand modern-day clientele.

Once the website has been created and been taken live, the question becomes “how do we let people know about it?”  In some ways, it may seem pointless to promote a website, which is itself a marketing tool.  To use a form of marketing to promote another form of marketing is redundant, right?

Actually, it is the opposite.  Many historically successful advertising and marketing campaigns have utilized this very concept.  By directing clients from one form of marketing to another, you are creating a cycle, by which you are creating an intrinsic link between yourself and the client.  They see an advertisement about a product that leads them to your website, which gives them more information, which directs them to give your company a call, from which your sales representative provides further clarification and makes a sale.  The next time around, they may not need the advertisement, choosing to go right to the website and find out about your newest product.  They may choose to contact you directly.  You have become a source of information for them.

For that reason, as soon as you have a website, it should start appearing everywhere.  It should be on your trucks, billboards, tv ads, newspaper ads (for those that still use those), and ads on other websites.  Make a blog entry about your new website.  Make a facebook post to all of your friends.  Send an email blast to all of your clients, or even a direct mail campaign.  Do what ever you can, but make sure everybody you know is made aware of your new website.

This isn’t just for marketing purposes or the quick sale.  From a search engine optimization point of view, the more people visit your site, the more people respond to your facebook posts with ones of their own or right reviews of your website with a link to it, the better your website will rank in search engines.  This provides more visitors and more clients.  By continuing these efforts, they become multiplied in terms of their effectiveness, and your website, your brand, becomes the buzz of the industry.  This won’t happen over night, but it will happen if you are committed to it.

If you have read this article and think “I really do need a new website” or “I need help getting my new site promoted” I encourage you to check out our website at www.activenation.com.

In our ever changing world of search engine optimization, there are very few things that remain constant.  Keywords will always be important, inbound links will always be helpful, and fresh content will always be necessary for keeping rankings as high as possible.  In the case of the first two, the strategy is obvious, even if the implementation is not always so straight forward.  In the case of the last however, things are quite a bit different.

When I say that content needs to be fresh, that does not mean that the style of your homepage needs to change every day, every week, or even every year in order for you to maintain or improve your rankings.  Content deals somewhat with style, but more about the pages you have and the words and images on them.  It does not always have to be your homepage that is updated either.  As long as your whole site is being consistently refreshed with new content, your site will have a much better chance at staying at the top of the rankings.  Now, this may seem like a very difficult task.  I mean, coming up with new content every week sounds quite challenging, doesn’t it?

Not at all, in fact.  You are probably already doing it but you may not realize the power you have at your disposal.  There are three very easy ways for making sure you always have fresh content on your website.  The first is one that you are reading right now.  Yes, blogging is one distinct way of maintaining content on your site.

Now when I speak about blogs, I need to be clear as there are two basic types of blogs, at least from an seo point of view.  There is an external blog, which is what this is, and an internal blog.  An external blog is one that is created at a different domain from your main company website.  It might have its own domain, like this blog, or it might have a subdomain from the blog site you are using, such as blogger or wordpress.  In either event, it can be very useful for creating buzz, telling people about the latest news, or simply creating a whole bunch of inbound links to your site from a different domain.  A useful tool, no doubt, but not for the purposes of this article.

An internal blog, on the other hand, is one that is installed and accessed directly from your site under the same domain.  Usually it will be located under a different directory from the rest of your site, such as /blog.  What you may fail to realize is that the content being generated from this blog counts as content on your webpage.  Each new posts counts as a new page when search engines look at your website.  That means, with each new post you make, your website will be judged as having been recently updated.  This does not replace updating the content on your homepage, but it does mean you could get away with doing it less often, or conversely, increase your rankings by having your site be updated more often than before.

The other two easy ways to create new content are news and newsletters.  In the case of news, many sites will have a place on their homepage, if not on every page, for recent news items.  These can be short tidbits, like tweets, describing a new deal, a new product, or other such announcements.  They are short, and so they are easy to make often.  Anything you can tweet you can make a news post about.  If your site does not currently have a place for recent news, speak to your web developer or design team.  It is very easy to put in and shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes, no matter how they do it.

Also, if you are in the habit of creating newsletters that are sent out every week, two weeks, or month, consider having an archive for them to be placed in on your website.  Each one of these newsletters can be uploaded as an html page, providing fresh content each time one is added.  Search engines will just read them as new pages, like blog posts.

Using one, two, or all three of these strategies can provide quick and easy way to keep it fresh and high in the rankings.

A recent Pew Research study was done in an attempt to differentiate various generations and their unique roles as web users. Some of the information they retrieved was pretty interesting. I don’t know about you and your family; but I know my siblings, parents, and grandparents utilize the internet for many different reasons. Not to mention the older generations in my family aren’t naturally as tech savvy nor do they really spend as much time online as say myself or my younger siblings who are just now hitting the “tween” ages. This may be the same within your family tree, or it may not be. Let’s take a peak and see what the Pew Research Center found to be an average depiction of what our generations are doing online.

First and foremost, how about we break down exactly what the different generations mean, shall we?

So now that we know who’s who, let’s dissect what we and they are doing with their time online. Do any of the generations have anything in common as web users?

Recently All Facebook posted this istrategylabs data. The data was apparently collected “directly from Facebook’s Social Ads system”. It’s basically information regarding different demographics of U.S. residents that are Facebook users. It’s a pretty interesting overview. What do you think about the info? Do you think this helps internet marketers with consumer targeting and online social media behavioral trends?