OSEKmedia, LLC Tucson Arizona Web Marketing, Tucson Website Design and e-Commerce Blog - Tucson Web Design - Web Marketing

Marketing on Facebook - 6 Ways to Market your Company or Website

Wed, 12 May 2010 15:54:00 -0400

Marketing on social networks is not always that successful as Todd has pointed out, but there are sly ways to garner some success. Facebook has an interesting feature -- the news feed. Depending upon members' privacy settings, it will chronicle their activities and broadcast them to their friends. While some Facebook denizens loathe this feature, it enables people to find out what their friends are up to. From a promotion point of view, the news feed is a great channel for others to advertise a person's or organization's cause. As Facebook denizens interact with such entities, the news feed can broadcast such action to their friends. Further, they are also indirectly vouching for a cause making it more appealing, important, or hip for their buddies. Here are some tips on how to harness the news feed for peddling a product, person, or cause that will coax people to do things that are visible to others: (1) Create a profile -People cannot befriend anyone who doesn't have a profile. Further, create one for your "mascot." Many of my friends have added such icons to their buddy lists. I've searched Facebook, and Smokey the Bear doesn't have a profile. Why? (2) Host an event and post it -How about a costume party with a competition to see who can cross dress better than Rudy Giuliani? (3) Share a funny video or picture -Blendtec's viral "Will It Blend?" video series lends itself well to this tip. It even makes high-end blenders hip to younger folk. In fact, I like the one when glow sticks are liquified, and my Bivings colleague Erin brought it to my attention by sharing it via Facebook. -How about a reel of bloopers from TV commercials? (4) Post pictures -These could include candid shots of products, people, or other silly related items. If Facebook users are in these photos, either they or their friends can tag them, and these tags can show up on the news feed. (5) Post news articles -Offbeat news involving a person or organization is a great item to share. For instance, a lost dog was returned to its owners four years after it was MIA by a shelter about 1,100 miles away from its owners since they had a microchip idenfitification chip implanted in the pooch. The Associated Press article profiling this news even mentions the chip maker, Avid. If Avid had a Facebook profile, it should share this article via the site. [More]

YES! Website Analytics For Small Business Websites

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:52:00 -0400

Do you have Web analytics installed on your small business Web site? If not, you should. How will you know how your Web site is performing if you aren't measuring the plethora of data available? Cost is no longer an excuse for not having Web site analytics. The free options are quite robust; Google Analytics, for one, is quite comprehensive. In addition, Yahoo last year acquired IndexTools, and has made a version of that available for free to its advertisers. Obviously, there's a learning curve involved in analyzing your data. But it's worth it because the analytics information will help you increase your conversion rate, maximize your ROI, and make more money in less time. Once you know what you should be looking at, your online business will thrive with just a little effort. You'll be less "in the dark" about what is and isn't working for you. Let's outline four of the more important metrics you should be looking at. Keep in mind -- depending on what you're selling and what action you consider a "conversion," these may vary a bit, but they're a good place to start. Conversions Conversions are the be-all and end-all for me. Are you making money, signing people up, sending people out (if you're an affiliate and you make money on advertising clicks)? Your traffic can be the best in your industry -- but it won't matter, if you're making zero dollars from that traffic? By measuring your conversion rate, analyzing sticking points, and clearing the paths to and through your sales pages, you're making sure your conversions are on their way to being the best in the industry. [More]

Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, October 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:19:00 -0400

Below, the top 10 search terms by search volume.

Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending November 1, 2008 (%)
IT and Internet		Automotive Manufacturers
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
paypal	5.50	toyota	1.89
paypal.com	1.25	honda	1.76
paypal login	0.92	harley davidson	1.27
www.paypal.com	0.65	ford	1.17
people search	0.61	nissan	0.88
pay pal	0.51	hyundai	0.86
experian	0.43	honda motorcycles	0.79
auctiva	0.29	chevrolet	0.74
intelius	0.28	oreilly auto parts	0.71
bill me later	0.20	dodge	0.70
Movies		Net Communities and Chat
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
netflix	2.22	myspace	7.03
imdb	1.47	youtube	2.52
blockbuster	0.62	myspace.co	2.42
twilight	0.49	facebook	1.91
fandango	0.48	www.myspace.com	0.88
movies	0.43	my space	0.74
netflix.com	0.39	you tube	0.67
redbox	0.23	youtube.com	0.39
regal cinemas	0.23	facebook.com	0.33
cinemark	0.23	facebook login	0.29
Food and Beverage Brands and Manufacturers		Pharmaceutical and Medical Products
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
pizza hut	2.72	viagra	0.43
mcdonalds	1.45	cialis	0.37
pepsistuff.com	1.30	cymbalta	0.34
starbucks	0.81	lexapro	0.28
subway	0.75	bipolar disorder	0.24
dominos	0.73	lyrica	0.21
candystand	0.55	abilify	0.21
pepsi stuff	0.53	zenni optical	0.20
kfc	0.43	pfizer	0.20
betty crocker	0.41	merck	0.20
Blogs and Personal Web Sites		Broadcast Media
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
perez hilton	0.33	cnn	4.67
daily kos	0.33	fox news	3.26
we blog+kansas	0.21	msnbc	1.85
360	0.19	cnn.com	1.46
dailykos	0.18	news	1.05
perezhilton.com	0.17	cnn news	0.64
wise bread	0.16	abc news	0.63
just jared	0.15	bbc news	0.61
yahoo 360	0.14	bloomberg	0.51
michael savage	0.14	foxnews	0.50
Shopping Rewards and Directories		Travel Destinations and Accommodations
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
coupons	0.42	hotels.com	0.41
grocery coupons	0.25	disneyland	0.28
free samples	0.24	holiday inn	0.24
black friday 2008	0.21	carnival cruise	0.22
black friday	0.20	disney world	0.22
free stuff	0.19	holiday inn express	0.17
consumer reports	0.17	trip advisor	0.17
free coupons	0.13	marriott	0.15
mycokerewards.com	0.13	best western	0.15
mycokerewards	0.12	las vegas	0.15

View: Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending September 27, 2008

Top 10 Fast Moving Search Terms - October, 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:15:00 -0400

This list features the search terms for the industry All Categories, ranked by largest relative increase for the week ending October 25, 2008, compared with the week ending October 18, 2008.

Rank	Search Term	Volume
1.	jennifer hudson	0.04%
2.	baby name meanings	0.01%
3.	free pumpkin carving patterns	0.01%
4.	cheapest places to live	0.01%
5.	oprah.com	0.01%
6.	glenn beck	0.01%
7.	pumpkin stencils	0.01%
8.	amber smith	0.01%
9.	samick om3	0.01%
10.	faith hill	0.01%

Source - Hitwise - October, 2008 - based on volume of searches.

How can I get visitors to my website?

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:24:00 -0400

Where does traffic come from? Now I'm not talking about that stuff we all get stuck in during rush hour. Website traffic is essential, if you have no traffic to your website you are not going to get anyone buying your products or reading your articles. Traffic is one of the key components of your website and is available in these three forms. 1. Pay For It. You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay Per Click advertising. The major names in this market are Google and their AdWords program and Yahoo Network Sponsored Search. There are many smaller companies around also but they all follow the same premise. You create your account, grab a bunch of keywords and create your adverts. You can define the amount you want to spend per click or per day, what geographical areas you want your adverts to appear in and even what time they should appear. When someone types one of your keywords into for example Google your advert will be displayed down the right hand side of the natural search results. If the searcher then chooses to click on your advert and gets forwarded to your website you will get charged for that click. The price you pay for each individual click depends on a variety of conditions such as how many other people are competing on that keyword. The more competition the more it costs to be higher up the ranks. The position you want to occupy. The percentage of people who click on your advert, the list goes on. Pay Per Click advertising can be very successful but has a steep learning curve, it is essential that you do lots of research into your chosen Pay Per Click vender and in the niche you are in. 2. Borrow It. This option is not for everyone, but in certain niches it can be effective. The first method of borrowing traffic is what is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. This can be beneficial as you can get traffic from a more successful website reasonably quickly. However this traffic is not always targeted. The second option in the affiliate marketing world is called a joint venture or a JP. This is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. If they are interested they may send a mailing out to their list or put an entry in their blog alerting their visitors about you and your relevant products. The key things to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return. This can make it tricky when targeting very successful websites. 3. Create It. Creating your own traffic is one of the best ways to start bringing people into your website. There are literally hundreds of ways to start creating your traffic but I'm just going to tell you about two of the most popular. [More]

Why Google Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:31:00 -0400

Why Google Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic For your website?

Google PageRank is important in building traffic to your website for a number of reasons. Before we discuss why, here is quick heads up on how it works. Page Rank is based on links between your site and other sites, in fact specifically between web pages, since it is links between individual pages rather than complete websites that interests Google. That is because Google lists individual pages and not domains. There is a formula that Google uses to determine the value of each link to your site, which is based on the PageRank of the web page providing the link and also the number of other links leaving that page. You can see the page Rank in the Google PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar - it is the green bar that shows a numerical value of 0 to 10 when you hover your cursor over it. This value is logarithmic, which means that if it takes 10 links to reach PR 1, then it takes a lot more to reach 2. If Google uses a logarithmic factor of 8, as it might do (nobody knows), then it will take 8 links to your site to get to PR 1, 64 to reach PR 2, 512 to PR 3 and so on. This is very basic, since, as I have stated, it also depends on the PR of the page providing the link and the number of other links leaving that page. Here are the top 4 reasons that in my opinion help to generate traffic and make you money: 1. The higher your Google PageRank, then the higher Google is likely to list you in the search engine results pages. Google take the view than the more other websites link to yours, then the more relevant your web page must be to the topic in hand, otherwise they wouldn't link to you. In fact, the links are to specific pages in your site, not to the site as a whole, which is why it is called 'Page Rank' and not Site Rank. 2. The higher the Page Rank, then the more relevant other people will consider any particular page on your website to be. They will feel more confident that if they visit your site they will have their questions answered and find the information they are looking for. 3. A high Page Rank shows that you have a high number of links on the pages of other websites. There is then the possibility of others clicking on these links to get to your website. 4. The higher your Page Rank, then the more people will want you to link to their website. That means that they too will be likely to visit your site. They will also offer you a reciprocal link if you want one, and that too will provide you with more exposure online. There are some factors you should keep in mind that could affect your Page Rank. The way your domain name is presented is very important. Take at look at these domains: www.mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com/index.html, domain.com, domain.com/index.html They are all different URLs that will lead somebody using them to your domain. However, search engine spiders see them all as different URLs, and if you use different ways to write your home page URL, then they will all be listed separately, and all be given a different Page Rank. Thus, the page rank for any one of them will be weaker than your page would have been if you had used only the one way to express it. Get into the habit of expressing your domain in only one way. [More]

Using the Advanced Features of Google Analytics!

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:29:00 -0400

Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now that the waiting list has been removed anybody can sign up to use this great service. The user interface had a major redesign in May 2007 and a lot of the features we love have become hard to find. This guide should help you find your way around the new system. I see a lot of comments on the forums asking whether Analytics can do X, Y and Z. In most cases it can do it but people just don't realize it. As webmaster of several large sites I have been using GA for around a year now to track a huge number of variables. In this post I will go through a few of the more obscure interactions that GA can tack on your site. Tracking exit clicks, banner clicks and RSS feed subscribers Have you ever wanted to know how many people clicked on a particular link or banner on your site? You may wish to find out how many people click on an affiliate link, how many people from a certain country click on your banner advert or even the number of visitors from Digg that clicked to sign up to your RSS feed. [More]

How Do The Search Engines Work? Search Engines Explained..

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:04:00 -0400

I was surfing search engine optimization forums and I ran across this great article by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch. I thought I should share with our readers. The article covers a basic question on many of your minds, how do search engines work? This great article will answer that question for you as well as provide you an overview of how the search engine process works. The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways. Crawler-Based Search Engines Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found. If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role. Human-Powered Directories A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. [More]

Is your web site getting outranked in the search engines?

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:17:00 -0400

Clients and readers often ask why a site that's younger, smaller, or just plain "uglier" outranks them. There really isn't a simple answer. More than a few times I've had to say, "I don't know." But there are some things to take into consideration when a competitor is outranking you. Addressing these issues could be the catalyst for your Web site moving up into those coveted top spots. Content Is King No -- I didn't coin that phrase, but the number one reason for getting outranked by a competitor: better, and much more, content on their site. Don't forget your content needs to be original, unique and relevant. More pages will not necessarily make you rank. We're talking about more text. Do you have an all Flash Web site with little text to feed the search engine bots? It may be a flashy classy slideshow. It may be much more aesthetically pleasing than your competitor's site. If the search engines, though, can't spider (define) your site to determine how relevant your page is to a particular query, you're not going to rank well for that query. That's not to say you can't use Flash, just wrap some text around it -- or work around the problem. Support System In travel, my particular niche, many of our clients' competitors are part of a huge chain of Web sites with vast numbers of pages. The pages for hotels in New Orleans aren't relevant to the pages for hotels in New York City, but if all those pages live on the same domain, they lend power to all the pages on the site. A 10,000 page site is going to have a much easier time ranking for a particular keyword phrase than a 10-page site, particularly if they're using that keyword phrase in their on-site optimization in the correct manner. Architecture is the Path to Good Rankings How is your site constructed? Do you have well thought out navigation and easy to understand "paths" through your Web site. Users and search engine spiders use your architecture to learn what your site is about. The more pages the spiders can reach, the more "credit" you have for having a lot of content related to phrases. Think about the user navigating your site and make sure relevant content is linked together, and irrelevant content is not. [More]

Improve Your Website Search Engine Rank - Part 1

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:06:00 -0400

What can I do to improve my website search engine ranking? This is a question all website owners ask from time to time, what is the answer to the riddle of the search engine? I have read over many articles with different information, I have seen software claiming to get your website that #1 ranking in google and yahoo, I have seen the companies claiming to submit your website to thousands of search engines and get your website to the top of the search kings. I have never found these SEO solutions to work, the only way to truly raise your website ranking and placement is lots of hard work and sometimes a bit of a marketing budget. Where do I start? That is a common question, and I understand how overwhelming it can be at times but do not get discouraged, if you follow a few guidelines and put in a decent amount of work you will get the website raking you want. [More]

Improve your company's local search placement in 8 easy steps!

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:30:00 -0400

Local search is a valuable resource for any business looking to build a bigger client pool. Is your business located in the major local search listings? I recently ran across this great 8 part list that may help improve your local search traffic and improving your overall business. 1. Make sure that you have a crawler friendly web site The first step in improving your business performance in local search engines is to make sure that the search engines can easily crawl your site, and identify your business keywords. Minimize the use of tables, and avoid deeply nested tables. Make sure that your business name and address are featured prominently on the page as text, and not hidden from the crawlers in an image file. Your page title should include your business name, address and key words. Place an "H1" header near the top of the page that also has your business name, address, and key words. 2. Include your business address twice on the page In addition to placing your business address prominently on the page, also include it in the footer. Abbreviate the business state in one of the addresses, and spell it out in the second. Abbreviated states are sometimes misinterpreted by the crawlers. For example, MD represents both a state and a doctor. 3. Check out your business listing on the major search engines Check out your business listings on Google, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Search. If your business is not found, you should submit a listing at Google, Yahoo, and Superpages (for Microsoft Live Search). For each business listing, make sure that your information is correct, your business description is complete, and that it uses the same keywords that you are using on your web site. Make sure that your description has all the information that your potential customers will need to contact you, since people often will not click through to your web site from the local business listing. Include the county in addition to the city on your business listing. Finally, check out any photos of your business on the business directories, and provide better photos where appropriate. [More]

Track Your Website or eCommerce Traffic Goals with Google Analytics

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:38:00 -0400

Webmaster tools from Google are indispensable for people who optimize their web site for indexing with the Google system. Google Analytics is a new statistics and metrics tracking feature offered by the team at the google compound. This free web based analytics software is the perfect tool for you to track your users and web marketing campaigns for all of your web sites and projects. We wanted to highlight some of the wonderful webmaster-specific metrics available within the Google Analytics system for you, since it offers a lot of easily-accessible information that will enrich the daily online work you're doing and the web sites you are building. Do you know how many of your web site visitors are using IE versus Firefox? And even further, how many of those IE or Firefox users are converting on the goals you have created? Google Analytics will tell you important information like this so you can develop and customize your website for your targeted audience.This also is a helpful feature when building and designing your web project, when you are designing your website, you can prioritize your testing to make sure that the website works on the most popular browsers and operating systems first. [More]

SEO and Negative Press

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:48:00 -0400

Even after many years of clean business practices, a single negative event can stain your brand image in the public eye for a long time. Simple things like a negative product review in a blog can be detrimental to your brand, especially when competitors are standing close by to snatch up customers. One way to combat that threat is through a reputation management strategy, which can begin with search engine optimization (SEO). First, to understand how negative press can get to the top of the search engines results pages (SERPs), let's take a trip down memory lane and revisit the old urban legend of Pop Rocks and Coke. Amidst all the excitement around the popular fizzy candy, in the late 1970s stories began to spread around school playgrounds that, when mixed with soda, Pop Rocks could cause a mini-explosion in your stomach. Teachers overheard and passed on to mothers. The worried mothers then escalated the news to the press, and soon General Foods, the creators of Pop Rocks, had a reputation problem on their hands. This telephone game of word-of-mouth is replicated online via link-building. First, someone publishes negative comments about your company. As others read the comments, more people start linking to it in blogs and discussion groups. Friends forward to friends, who forward to friends and so on. Next thing you know, the bad press is at the top of the search rankings. Back in the Pop Rocks days, General Foods responded to the Pop Rocks fiasco with full-page print ads, letters to school principals around the country, and even sent the Pop Rocks inventor door to door to attest to its safety. But what could they have done had they lived in the today's digital world? [More]

SEO Effects of Craigslist

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:54:00 -0400

Over the past months I have started a campaign of search engine optimized craigslist.com advertisements that I create for our individual websites and services we offer. I had expected a better Google page rank as well as increased search engine traffic. Why would I expect this from simply posting on craigslist? The key is indexing and it seems that Google indexes craigslist multiple times a week. What does this all mean you may ask, well let me explain. Within the advertisements I have posted on craigslist, I have embedded content sensitive keywords and I have linked them to different pages of the website I am marketing with the ad. This intern has helped to direct the search engine spiders from craigslist across the keyword embedded links and onto my keyword related page content. The result seemed to be more than I had expected, My site went from a Google pr0 to a pr3 within a few weeks and I seem to be getting more and more keyword hits on my stats. I was excited when I noticed that as well as the search engine traffic, I was getting numerous hits on the advertisement links from the craigslist community. After a few weeks I started to analyze the advertisements I had built and I came to the conclusion that if I added a few graphics and created a nice frame for the ad my craigslist community hits improved without hurting the SEO effect of the advertisement. Overall I recommend posting at least 3-5 ads per day 3+ days per week with heavy seo on some nice but simple designed ads. This has worked for me and a number of my clients. I wish you the best of luck with your website marketing! Check back for more seo info.