Archive for November, 2010

Does your website offer higher service or product than your competitors? This question is usually answered by the credibility or the accuracy of your site. Why is your competition having a higher price with just similar service or product? Here are some factors that affect the credibility of your website (according to some research) that you will often see in most articles.

1. Make it easy to verify the information accuracy of your site.

This factor is what Google usually looks for in your site. Is your site credible? Are you not hiding something? These questions can be solved by using links to the proofs that will satisfy or verify what you claim. This has a lot of weight especially when evaluating the quality of your landing pages. Sometimes, with the use of the right keywords in your ads can make this information credible and accurate. Using a keyword research tool such as KeywordSpy can help you choose the keywords for your ads to make it be more accurate and bring your potential customers to the page where they want to be.

2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.

We have encountered a lot of online companies that are not what we think they are. Some are reselling products and claiming that they are legit.  The problem sometimes arises when it comes to the Customer Support aspect, especially when we’re having issues with the product or service that we purchased. It would be great if you actually have a Support team, a Development team, etc.  You may also post contact numbers for these different teams/divisions on your website so they can easily be reached by customers who have questions and concerns.

3. Highlight the expertise and the service that your organization provides.

Prove to the world that you are the best, you sell the best product, and you offer the best service. You should highlight these facts. Showcase testimonials from people who are impressed with your product.  It’s also a plus if you get good testimonials from the big men in the industry.

4. Point out that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.

Display your staff profiles, show their experiences and expertise. Highlight their exceptional performance under your company and maybe their previous employers. You may display individual testimonials as well.

5. Make it easy to reach or contact you.

This is simple.  Show your Company’s name, registration number, physical address, phone number and all important information that would allow them to locate and contact you easily. These should all be placed on an accessible part of your site or on the footer of each of your web page as well.

6. Make your site look professional.

The first impression of your potential customer is very important. This is quite similar to having an office.  If a client pays you a visit, your office should look presentable and should look competent. You may want to hire some professional web designers to make this look pleasing to your potential customers.

7. Make your site easy to use and of course useful.

We are not our visitors.  First time visitors/users will still not know how to navigate the site.  They want be able to easily navigate the site – to know where to go and what to do.  In other words, it should be “user-friendly”. Try to use simple navigational keys and simple wordings to prevent confusion.

8. Update your site frequently.

Update your site often to show that you are still in business. Show the update’s dates or even the time. It would be best if you start a blog that’s connected to your site as well but don’t forget to maintain it.

9. Be Cautious with any promotional content.

Post something that is appropriate and not competitive. Some companies would just earn a few cents by allowing ads on their site but you have to be very careful as some of your competitors’ ads could accidentally show on your site’s ad section.  If you can, refrain from allowing ads on your site to make your site appear cleaner and more focused on your product. Ads can sometimes divert visitors’ attention and can get them to start thinking your site is up more for advertisement purposes than presenting the real product it’s trying to sell.

10. Avoid errors at all times, no matter how negligible they may seem.

This is what we need to avoid in all our sites. Just a single misinformation could lead our rank to decrease or in worst case scenario, the downfall of our company. We don’t want to give our visitors wrong information. We need to check our site all the time, check for errors, update and correct them if needed.
These factors may seem to be very simple but we often forget about these. How about checking your website and implementing these factors to see how your site’s credibility will improve?
Peter Zmijewski who is called as a internet marketing guru is the founder and CEO of KeywordSpy.com . You can find more information about him at PeterZmijewski.com

There are over 126 million blogs on the Internet, according to Technorati.com, the popular Internet search engine for blogs. That’s 126 million opportunities for you to market your product or service, which sounds exciting. Blog marketing should be part of an overall brand awareness and outreach strategy for every small business. The opportunity blogs afford small business owners to engage their current customers or clients and find new ones is tremendous.”

Here are seven strategies for harnessing the power of blogs to promote your product or service.

•  Be free. Businesses around the world are still experiencing tough times due to the economy. So creating a free blog through Word press or Blogger is a great option. Search engines love Word press and Blogger is owned by Google, so the chances of your posts ranking high in search engine results are very good.”

•  Good words are key. Pick a keyword related to your business and center it around that. For example, if you own ABC Shoes, don’t make that name the focus of your blog. Instead, pick a keyword that relates to your industry such as fashion footwear, high heels, etc. This increases your chances of ranking high in search engine results and getting found by prospective customers.

• Think like an editor. Once you’ve picked your keyword, don’t overuse it. Your keyword shouldn’t be in every blog post you create. The general rule is that you can use your keyword in every other post your write for your blog. That way, you’re not overdoing it and you’re not running the risk of being penalized by search engines.

• Inform. Remember that a blog is not a direct marketing tool like an advertisement in a newspaper. It’s used to indirectly reach your target audience by keeping them informed about not just your company, but your industry as well.”

•  Educate. In your blog posts, teach your readers something they didn’t already know. If you’re a flower shop, teach your current and prospective customers how to pick the perfect orchid or how to properly take care of roses. Post instructional videos on your blog. Information like that is much more interesting than just telling them how great your company is.

• Persuade. In each post on your blog, end with something that persuades the reader to try something or view something else. For example, when you’re talking about selecting the perfect orchid, end with a link to purchase it on your company’s website.

•  Compliment your competitors. Most business owners think it’s inappropriate to comment on the blogs of your competitors. But it’s actually quite the opposite. This engenders goodwill and helps you build a relationship with a business similar to yours.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as a internet marketing guru is the founder and CEO of KeywordSpy.com . You can find more information about him at PeterZmijewski.com

Email is the most common method of business communication and email marketing as an integral part of the marketing strategy for many businesses. Choosing the right service takes some consideration of your needs and you must ensure that you get the service that is right for you. If you want your email marketing campaign to succeed you need the right tools. When you are developing an email marketing campaign the first thing to decide is if you want to manage your email marketing alone or if it would be easier to use and a title=Email Marketing Service. Email marketing services do create an expense, but they can allow you to reach more customers and make more sales, making the cost well worth it. You can start small and manage your marketing campaign yourself until it grows to a size that makes manually managing it impossible. An email service can automatically remove subscribers that request to be removed from your mailing list.

When you have a large number of subscribers manually removing the subscribers that opt out of your mailings is too time consuming although keeping up with these requests is important. Keeping up with new subscribers is important as well and when you deal with a large number of new subscriptions every day adding them to your list manually is also too time consuming. For large mailing lists software is a necessity for these tasks. One of the first things you should consider when choosing a title. Email Marketing Services is the level of customization you need. Having a service with a large number of functions is great if you need them all, but it can be difficult to use and confusing to operate if you only need a few of the features it offers but are forced to navigate endless lists and menus. The best software for you is one that has all the features you need without too may extra or missing features. Some services allow you to have a free trial of their program to see if they are right for you. This is a good way to ensure that you will be able to easily use the service and make sure it will fulfill your unique needs.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as a internet marketing guru is the founder and CEO of KeywordSpy.com . You can find more information about him at PeterZmijewski.com

Google announced a new feature of Google Docs, called Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The feature comes from Google’s acquisition of DocVese, a company that specialized in the real-time sharing and editing of documents, earlier this year. They paid $25 million for it, and it could turn out to be a huge piece of the puzzle in winning over Microsoft Office users.

Google Cloud Connect lets Office users automatically sync and backup their documents with Google Docs, so they’re always accessible on the web and able to be shared with others.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere including mobile devices at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

This is one of many steps Google is taking that could have a significant, if overlooked impact on the company’s overall strategy. The obvious impact is that it should get more people using Google Docs and more businesses using Google Apps. The idea is that for those who are just continuing to use Microsoft Office, Google is providing a way for them to get their feet wet with not only the cloud, but their version of it.

But there’s more, and while Microsoft is obviously an important competitor to Google, Google needs more people using Google Apps for other reasons as well. Last week, Google announced the expansion of Google Apps to include almost the company’s entire catalog of products – products that you need a Google account to operate. Many of these same products are also key in Google’s overall strategy for keeping the attention of users online, something that Facebook is taking away from them more and more.

Google has indicated that it will add social layers to many of its products. This is the main way in which the company will compete with Facebook. These social layers (along with that singular Google account) are what connect Googles’ various offerings into one big, feature-rich social network. Google has to use every weapon in its arsenal (and it’s a very big arsenal) to stay relevant to people’s social habits, social graphs, and social data. That means it needs people to have and use their Google accounts, and the more they use these accounts for, the better.

A lot of people use Microsoft Office. This can help to some extent. That’s all I’m saying. Google Apps for Business users can sign up to be an early tester for Google Cloud Connect, though the company assure us the feature will be available for everyone eventually.

Peter Zmijewski who is called as a internet marketing guru is the founder and CEO of KeywordSpy.com . You can find more information about him at PeterZmijewski.com