Thursday, July 30, 2015

How Do You Manage Your Reputation Online?

Getting good feedback about their own businesses is what entrepreneurs always look forward to. With the emergence of online marketing, many businesses invest on creating a good image online through launching their websites. As a business making a name in the industry, it is important to have and maintain a good reputation. A single negative comment on your business can ruin your reputation.

Having a good online reputation builds trust among customers and improves customer loyalty. A simple tag on a comment about your business can easily be shared and spread online. As someone who wants to have a good name in the industry, how can one manage their online reputation? 


 Monitoring the situation is the first step one should do. However, it can be pretty difficult following every customer you have if they have good or bad word about your business. One can set up alerts through Google Alerts. What it does it that it emails the business once its name appears on any comments online. A link is sent for one to check these. In this way, one can read on the comments to check whether you are making people happy with your services.

In any case that you have read negative comments about your website, do not react negatively. Instead, read on the comment and use it to your advantage. For example, there is a negative comment on the slow service in your business. This could be a good time to fix that problem. Recording negative comments will help your business improve. Also, address problems of customers professionally. Leave comments or answer to queries in a friendly tone. If you sound angry and intimidating, you might just get more unhappy customers.

For most businesses, hiring an SEO or search engine optimization team is a helpful tool in maintaining their online reputation. With different social media accounts in existence today, angry clients and customers can easily write something that can destroy a business. What SEO companies do is to look out for these kinds of write-ups. These damaging blogs or personal homepages cannot be easily shut down online. What SEO does is to let companies know of an existing hate page for the business to do something about it. For example, if a blog exists with content on how bad the menu on a restaurant is, SEO can counteract this blog by creating a positive testimonial blog that can turn bad comments around. Providing strong links to other blogs commenting on how good the restaurant is plus their social media pages with positive testimonials surely helps the business gain their customer’s trust and loyalty. SEO companies do reputation management and monitor to protect their clients.

Most businesses engage in online marketing. Promoting their business and reaching their target market have been easier with the Internet. However, it has always been part of the game to have negative testimonials and bad blogs to ruin your business. The best thing to do is to get SEO company services to make sure that you have a good reputation and maintain it to continue gaining customers and increasing your profit.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Is WordPress Good for Your Website?

Are you a businessman thinking of creating your own website for your business or an individual who wants to write blogs about your travels and gastronomical adventures? Whoever you are, having your own website can bring an increase to your revenues. Among the different content management systems available, choosing the right one can greatly affect the success of your website. For most people, using WordPress is the best for their websites.


Why choose WordPress? Why should you trust WordPress?

People simple choose WordPress because of its flexibility and fully functional commands that making a website has been easy and fast. According to a survey, almost a quarter of all the websites on the Internet is under WordPress. Hence, it has become very popular among web developers and web designers. Here are a few more good reasons why you should have WordPress for your website.



· Cost-efficient

A good way to start investing on a website is to know that WordPress is for free. There are no hidden charges that make WordPress even more popular than any other content management systems.

· Flexible

Use it as a personal blog or a site for e-commerce, WordPress can surely give you the best features that your website needs.

· Open Source

WordPress is open source so you can host your website anywhere you want. Simply say, you are free to do whatever you want.

· Search engine friendly

Crawlers of search engines easily find WordPress online. WordPress can be optimized as well for more powerful traffic increasing your website’s ranking.

· Easily customizable

With a variety of functional plugins and themes, anyone can create a page that they want according to their taste. Create a website that suits your brand or a blog that will feature your interests.

· User-friendly

You do not need deep technical knowledge to understand WordPress. It is easy to learn and suits best to those beginners. Within a few minutes, you can have your website working.

· Mobile-friendly

Since a lot of users are online through their smartphones and tablets, WordPress make it possible that their themes are easy to navigate and responsive on mobiles. This is good news for all websites since Google’s search ranking depends on how useful your website is once used on mobiles.

· Secured

There have been a lot of issues where WordPress has been target of hackers. However, WordPress constantly updates their security software to protect their clients. WordPress assures every client that their websites are safe and secured.

· Easy to monitor

You do not need web developers to constantly maintain your website. Monitoring is done by WordPress itself. This saves you a lot of money from hiring people to look after your website.

· Popular

Trusting a content management system could be a challenge. However, WordPress has been established and a lot of clients are already satisfied with the services they are providing.

Web developers highly recommend using WordPress. Unlike other content management systems, there is no complicated coding and plugins that you have to understand in order to launch a website.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Top 10 SEO Expert Tips for Businessmen

Running a company or a business poses different challenges to many entrepreneurs. A lot of things are to be considered that may cause stress and this includes marketing the business. Recently, many businessmen invest on online marketing. It is usually recommended to those businesses that are still starting. Creating a website is an initial step in making your business gain online presence. In addition, business owners have begun search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns to boost their web traffic.

Some businessmen do SEO by themselves without any knowledge on how to do it right. This can be detrimental as such strategies can make or break a business marketing strategy. When employing SEO, businessmen are recommended to find people who can do the work well for a positive return of investment. SEO specialists have the following tips for businessmen regarding SEO.




· Identify your target market

In any SEO campaign, the intended audience should be the main priority. Once the target market is identified, looking for strategies or new approach in marketing becomes easier. Knowing the demographics allows a creative way in making the right SEO technique.

· Build Strong Keywords

Identify the keywords that users normally or usually use when searching for a particular product or services. In addition, do research on what other keywords might be commonly used by other web users. It is taking one step forward to making your webpage reach the top page results.

· Have Dynamic Keywords

Do not just settle for the same rich keywords again and again for your website. Trends change so you have to adapt to these different changes. Update yourself with the appropriate and useful keywords for your website traffic.

· Know other competitors

As businessmen, you have to understand the competition in your line of business is tough. It is best to know what your competition is doing and find a strategy that can outrank them.

· Understand algorithm updates
Search engine algorithms are always changing. To maintain rankings, businessmen should adapt with these changes.

· Provide visitors with a very interactive content.

It has been proven that web users stay a long time exploring websites that are very engaging. When developing your website, make sure that it is easy to use and navigate. With these qualities, your website will get good rankings.

· Avoid stuffing your content with lots of keywords


Websites that are extremely bombarded with keywords get penalized by search engines. Once you get penalized, you have the greatest possibility of sinking down the results pages.

· Have connection with bloggers in your field

Bloggers are good connections that can increase your traffic. They write good reviews on products and services from their blogs which are linked to their social media pages. With bloggers, sharing links to your site is possible and sharing it becomes easier.

· Provide your contact information in every link you build for your website.

Building trust is essential in getting customer loyalty. It will further improve your rankings if the keywords contain your local area’s name.

· Utilize social media networks
With most of the population being online, it is just right to take advantage of this. Creating accounts for your business on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter can boost the traffic to your website.

Doing SEO is not an easy task and cannot be easily learned overnight. Trusting an SEO specialist is way better to get your desired results for the success of your website.

Monday, June 8, 2015

What Services Should I Avail When it Comes to SEO?

Generating a lot of views to your website is an important factor in gaining online presence. Every website has its own purpose of having the public known of their existence. The more people know about them, the better return of investment they get. In our world today, the Internet has been used for online marketing which dramatically increases the popularity of a business with a website. However, some websites are unsuccessful in reaching their target customers because of the lack of knowledge about SEO or search engine optimization. Until recently, there are still a lot of website owners who do not understand the importance of having SEO. It is now the time to shine some light on them.

Search engine optimization simply brings your website the traffic it needs to increase its rank on different search engines. Different search engines have these different criteria on how they can rank your page according to its relevance to the user’s inquiry. Search engine optimization specialists or SEOs incorporate different strategies and techniques such as tagging and link building to build a great network of links that can boost a website’s online presence.


Getting SEO services is the best step in making your website increase its traffic. If you are looking for a quality SEO service, you have to make sure that the amount you are paying will basically cover all the necessary SEO services to boost your website’s popularity. Here are some SEO services that should be available in your own SEO package:


· Keyword Analysis

· Website SEO Audit and Analysis

· Google Analytics Setup


· Google Webmasters Setup

· Social Media Setup/Promotion

· Preliminary Ranking report


· Title and Meta Data Creation

· Local Business Directory Submission

· Blog Setup


· Blog Post Writing

· SEO video marketing

· Weekly ranking and website traffic report

The services mentioned above assures you that your SEO company will do great to promote your website online. There are hundreds of SEO companies that offer different service packages to their clients. As a client, you have to know what kinds of services are included to be sure that you have the right strategies incorporated to your website. What should people look out for when choosing an SEO company?

First, always make sure that they have a portfolio of their previous works. This will serve as basis of your decision whether these previous projects look promising or not. The portfolio will also be a factor that the company is legitimate and has proven their expertise in their field. Next, ask about the duration of the project. SEO takes time. You should know that your website won’t rank on the first page in Google, Bing, and Yahoo in just a month. However, you should ask your SEO provider with the progress of the project – check if there is an improvement in rankings and website traffic. Also, check whether their services are priced reasonably. Compare their service packages with others and decide on which fits you best.

Deciding on which SEO company can give success or hurt your business. It is just reasonable to be very keen and careful in choosing an SEO company to handle your website. Websites are just like businesses; entrepreneurs will invest money on it and patiently wait for a good return of investment.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Where Do I Start When Investing in Online Marketing?

Businesses have their highs and lows. There are times when a shop can get a lot of customers and time when customers just pass by the shops not even taking a glimpse of what’s new in the store. Customers always look for something new and fresh. This is evident as to why a lot of people can be seen flocking in a newly opened restaurant. They want to find out what kind of food they are serving and how it tastes compared to other restaurants which have practically the same menu. Because of this customer behavior, every businessman should employ strategies to their marketing that will increase customer loyalty.

source: http://seriouslysimplemarketing.com/traditional-vs-online-marketing/


Marketing plays a vital role in making a person love your business. Reaching your target audience can be difficult; however, if you know how to utilize the existing technologies around you, having them right in your business is easy peasy. Making use of online marketing is a start to make your business bloom.

Recently, different entrepreneurs have seen the positive impact of the Internet. People always check online on what’s the latest craze for them to experience. As a businessman, it will be a great help to one’s business to invest on online marketing. When we say online marketing, this is where we sell your brand name online through the use of websites and the social media.

Creating a website is a powerful tool to gain online presence. With a website, people from your area (and possibly in the world) can easily access information about your business. It is important for a business to choose a web development company that can handle this project very well. It is crucial for a business to project its vision to its website as it creates a good image for the company. The website should be able to host information about the company – what kind of company it is and how it started on the market. The website also showcases the company’s product and services through different photo stories uploaded. Web developers should carefully use themes and fonts that are pleasing to the eye as customers are very visual; once they are interested in what they are seeing, they are most likely to stay and explore more on the website. Also, since most people are online, it is best to have a mobile-friendly website for it to be accessible to your audience anytime and anywhere. It is important to consider hiring SEO or social media optimization specialists to gain website traffic to increase online ranking.

Another good investment for your marketing is the social media. People are connected through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIN and even on Instagram. Businessmen can easily make an account and upload photos of their products and services online. With a share button on these social media accounts, people can easily pass on the information to others in a snap. The more people liking and sharing your account, the higher possibility of making these people into your loyal customers. Social media networks make it easier for business to advertise their products and services and find their target market.

Investing in online marketing is cheaper and effective. A lot of businesses have done it and success is overwhelming. To have the same success, create a website and utilize the social media networks today.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

What to consider when choosing a Website Maintenance Company?

A lot of people nowadays have their own web space – whether it is a blog or a website. Having your own website is a perfect tool in creating online presence and to increase your product or service sales. Personally, I have had my own website for my car parts and accessories for quite some time now. It actually took three months for the website to be launched and another two weeks to have it running smoothly without any glitches – a service offered by the web development company I had invested with. However, after a month, there were some problems with my website like slow downloading on mobile devices and I needed to update some of the products online. The problem is that the website company wanted to charge me for this as they consider this an extra service from them. I ended up asking someone, my nephew, to do the maintenance of my website. Good thing, he also works in a web development company and made a promise to do the maintenance from that moment. 
 

Web maintenance is really important. It keeps the website’s contents updated and organized as clients check it from time to time. It also helps in preventing any suspicious or attacks on the website. With this experience in web maintenance, here are some things that you need to know in finding professionals to do the work for you.

· Pricing

You have to make a clear agreement whether the maintenance is valid for a year or more. Price range can go cheaper when you let the company do the work for many years. Further, make sure to make price comparisons from different website maintenance companies before making a final decision.

· Services

What services are covered with the price? Does it include updating the website? Service improvements? SEO? You have to know what you are getting from the fee you are paying. Their services should address your maintenance needs.


· Know their plans

Aside from the services that covers the fees, ask them for other plans that can help improve your website. It is an advantage that there are more techniques or add-ons to be included to optimize the website.

· Check for experience

A quality service is determined with the number of years and happy customers. Find a company that has been in the business for more than three years. Check their records whether their clients are happy and satisfied with the services offered.

· Backup service

Servers can have their downtime and can affect the service of the website. With impatient customers, losing a valued customer is a huge problem. Always ask the website maintenance company about backup services when the system is down. It is important to always put a smile on the faces of customers to maintain their loyalty and trust.

Maintaining the website is important as your ranking on search engines can be affected. My catering service in my area had its worst times when my website was not updated and queries from customers were not addressed. To continue the success of your website and your business as well, find a company you can trust and be comfortable with in maintaining your own website.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Mobilegeddon: How Alarming is it to SEO and Web Developers?

SEO specialists around the globe were in frenzy when Google announced “Mobilegeddon” last April. This Mobilegeddon would greatly affect how things were usually running on search engine optimization and web development. Certain changes on Google’s algorithm have changed that certain existing features on websites can make them lose their rankings or even bury deep. Hence, web developers have to update their created websites and make them fit to these changes. What exactly is the Mobilegeddon? Why it raised alarm to SEO and web developers?


 
The Mobilegeddon, as referred to many to what Google has done, is a change in Google’s ranking algorithm. There is now a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that SEO specialists and web developers have to take into consideration. This means that Google will include in its ranking the criteria of how mobile-friendly your website is. If it is not, then your website cannot be searched on the web, and as a result, you will lose your ranking. Why is Google doing this? Will these bring a lot of changes in a website? What should be done with the Mobilegeddon?

One reason is that Google wants to focus on giving mobile users an improvement to their mobile browsing experience a better experience. With the changes, Google has to have websites download fast on mobile devices. Since everybody is using a smartphone to access the Internet, it is best to have pages downloaded quickly for better browsing. Further, Google wants mobile browsing to be as good as browsing on a desktop. Users will be able to get the same interface to increase better mobile experience. This will be very essential for people to have all access to a websites feature right on their smartphones.


 
With these new changes in ranking a website, SEO specialist have to change their techniques in link building, tagging, and creating content for their websites. SEO specialists have to optimize their content for mobile to make sure traffic is still attained. Creating short and entertaining headlines is one way in optimizing content. In addition, the content’s structure and layout are easily read. Links built should be relevant to the site and not misleading. It must have keywords that are optimized to ensure that users are lead to the information they are looking for.

For web developers, they have to make sure that they design a website that can be loaded on mobile phones. Since the trend of people using the Internet on their mobiles has been increasing yearly, websites should be mobile-friendly. To check if a website is mobile friendly, visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ and key in the website’s address. Adjustments to the website’s responsiveness to such platforms have to be made. If not, the website will not be ranked and might lose its current rankings.

Mobilegeddon brings a new change in Google’s algorithms but this change is for the better. Keeping up with the trend, SEO specialists and web developers have to make changes to their websites to be ranked by Google. It is not a huge problem unless this is taken for granted and not considered for the betterment of the website.