1. Fill Up the Title and Meta element in your web page – this is a simple task that even the search engine giant Google may have missed, to prove it try searching for “Google Keyword Tool” using google.com and you may be surprised that the main title of the link to such page is “Untitled”. You need to incorporate a title and fill up the meta elements, although such strategy is simple and not too much of SEO relevance it helps in displaying your site correctly in the search engine results page.

2. Remember that Images are not Crawled – if you plan on incorporating images in your website, which is suggest you do, then take note of its limitation of not being crawled by bots, thus it is important to incorporate the “alt” attribute to your image element in order to insert keywords that may be relevant with your image.

3. Remember not to SPAM – with the ongoing improvement in the search engine algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Bing, quality is paramount over quantity thus do not utilise any Spamming techniques in order to manipulate the search engines.

The cardinal rule in order for one not to waste time in implementing their SEO campaign is to treat both simple and complex SEO strategies as equally important.

So what exactly are the different benefits that SEO can bring to your business?

1. Brand Recall Will Be Higher – since your site is up there in the search engine results ranking page those who visit your site and those who just see your site may easily associate your site with their keyword entry, thus associating it with a particular brand increasing brand recall.

2. Increase Traffic and ROI – since your business website is going to be ranked high if not first in the search engine it will definitely have a lot of visitors and thus increasing the number of potential customers thus an increased possibility of ROI.

3. SEO Creates a Positive impression In Your Business – Since your site is ranked first or high in the search engine results page your visitors will be able to associate your site with reliability thus creating a positive impression about your website.

Those who finally resort to acquiring SEO services have been reaping multiple benefits and they find out that the return of investment is greater than the actual investment. It only requires a little patience and of course a great SEO Company to handle the SEO campaign.

How Much is Facebook’s IPO?

According to previous announcements made, Facebook’s initial target is around five billion dollars ($5 Billion) however it is predicted to increase due to the demand of various investors interested in Facebook stocks. This target is considered to be the highest IPO that would emerge from Silicon Valley even topping Google’s $2 Billion initial target when it opened its IPO.

Who will be the Lead left?

A “lead left” is the underwriter’s name that will appear on the top of the Initial Public Offering prospectus. According to recent reports Facebook is looking at five book runners and is inclined to pick Morgan Stanley as its “lead left”, the other book runners are JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital. Morgan Stanley is the company behind the successful IPO launch of different internet companies like Groupon and Zynga which may have helped them in being selected by Facebook as the “lead left”.

Stock Market Effects

With the announcement of Facebook’s IPO caused a media frenzy as well as stirring up investors, which increased the shares of different social media companies like Linkedin and Ren Ren, furthermore this event has increased the competition in Wall Street. For Facebook the IPO once it formally opens to the public it would have an idea on what the company is really worth.

What are the Policy Changes?

According to Google they will be removing around sixty existing policies and they will be replaced by policies which, according to the search engine giant, will be a lot shorter and easier to browse over or read. This means goodbye reading a page long terms of condition or policies wherein after reading three paragraphs you might already be in slumber land. The shorter version of the Google policies may help everyone in understanding the different changes and the scope and limitations of each of Google’s services.

Specific Policy Changes

The updated privacy policy basically focuses on how your user details are being safeguarded and being utilized by Google. For instance Google explains in their privacy policy how they gather information for you, it is basically stated that information is gathered in two ways these are gathering your user information based on what you as the user register with Google. The other way of gathering information is by using your data information from using the different Google services. For the second type of gathering information there are several types of data that are being gathered like your Log information, information about user location, Cookies and other anonymous identifiers, the user device information and other relevant information.

With Whom Information is shared?

One of the fears of most of Google users or internet users in general is on the manner on how their personal information or data gathered by Google be safeguarded and utilised. Google has made it clear with their policy that there are several ways on how your personal information is shared. First, your personal information as gathered by Google may only be shared with the users’ consent. Second, your personal information may be shared with domain administrators or those providing you service and support through Google services like that of the Google apps.  Third, your information may be utilised for external processing via Google’s affiliates who will process your information for the intended purpose of Google. Finally, your information may be utilised or shared by Google to third party companies for any legal reasons thereof.

Conclusion

Making the Google policies concise and easy to understand makes it very accessible to the millions of people who are using Google or any of its services in one way or another. This move by Google helped a lot of people especially those who are not fond of reading long Privacy Policies and Terms of Service. As to the extent of its benefits or its detrimental effects, it would still remain to be seen pending its full implementation on the first day of March.

While many consumers may be keen to jump straight in and give you their details without a moment’s hesitation, there are those who will look a little deeper at the tone and design of the form itself. It’s these kinds of consumers who are unlikely to convert, and therefore it’s these kinds of consumers who need a little more encouragement at this stage of the buying cycle.

We’ve put together eight tips for webmasters eager to draft up great-looking landing page forms that will blend seamlessly into the design of the site yet still encourage the user get in contact with your company.

1. Make the form as simple as easy to use as possible. This is often easier said than done but crucial if you’re to encourage the user to choose you company over your competitors.

1. Ensure that your form is bright, bold and eye-catching. The aesthetic appeal of the form really does matter and it should be designed to fit in with your site’s existing branding.

1. Similarly, make sure that the look and feel of the form is consistent with the rest of your website. If users land on a page that doesn’t meet their expectations, they’re not likely to stick around, and a landing page optimisation form that sticks out like a sore thumb smacks of unprofessionalism.

1. Consider your audience at all times. If you’re a high-level service provider targeting multi-national corporations then keep the style of the landing page chic and professional; if you’re a local nursery wanting to appeal to young families, design a landing page that’s bold, quirky and fun.

1. Make sure the form looks clean and uncluttered. The user won’t want to feel overwhelmed when they land on the page, so widen your side margins and use whitespace to your advantage!

1. Keep all important information and calls to action above the fold of the page at all times. Contact numbers should be displayed as prominently where possible, too.

1. Lay out the information logically and consider the visual cues that your landing page has to offer. Typically, the user’s eyes will fall in a ‘Z’ pattern down the page, searching for the information that’s most relevant to them and acting upon what they see in a matter of seconds. If in doubt about the effectiveness of your landing page, always ask colleagues or impartial individuals their opinions and get an outside perspective on what you have designed.

1. Avoid integrating pop-ups or pop-unders into your landing page. The user has already followed a promotional message to reach this point in the cycle – they don’t want to be inundated with more sales spiel.

We’ll also be publishing advice for those of you looking to optimise your PPC landing page forms fully to increase conversions, so be sure to check back to our blog next week for part two of our landing page optimisation tip sheet.

Even though the methods used for social media are completely different to that of PPC, they still aim for the same results. This is why social media should be seen as part of the team, as opposed to the only way.

Social media should be used tactfully to achieve these objectives:

-          To achieve targets that cannot be accomplished by other marketing methods.

-          Increase access to your target audience.

-          Make your business more available to a brand new audience.

-          Turning potential clients into converting sales.

-          Improving experience for existing customers.

Conclusion

It’s vital that you remember social media is another form of marketing. It is not its own individual field of marketing. Although it can be used to achieve many different goals, it generally is used to achieve a higher amount of sales. However, social media campaigns can be aimed at strengthening the relationship between customer and company.

Whatever you are using Twitter management techniques to achieve, you must remember that you can use your other marketing campaigns, such as SEO to help benefit your marketing campaign. If you use web design strategies to help visually optimise your social media profiles, ontop of your other marketing techniques, then you are sure to see a better return on your social media efforts.

What Not To Do

First off, it’s important to know what not to do. Social media, is a social environment which is built around friend ships and conversations. Your audience do not want to log on and be sold to constantly, if you do this, then it is likely that you will lose their interest because you have annoyed them etc.

Techniques

The first and probably the most beneficial is promotional codes or discounts. Everyone loves a bargain and are more likely to purchase when money is being saved. Exclusive social media vouchers are great, it makes your followers feel “exclusive” but it’s also a great way to measure how many people are using the social media voucher code. Using voucher codes is most likely the best method  to sell on social media, it is not direct and if anything can be seen as a nicety online.

Sending links to new or old products is also a good way to get sales, although not as good as voucher codes. If links to products are constantly posted out and make the majority of your content, then it is likely that your followers are getting annoyed with the constant stream of sales and will begin to ignore them. Getting the balance is crucial.

Contests are similar to voucher codes. They can be posted about all day long, however it does not necessarily convert to a sale; it will help establish a following but not an instant sale because these followers would be interested in receiving your product for free. This can however convert into a sale organically or with the help of a voucher code.

Conclusion

Selling on social media is difficult and is a completely different tactic to SEO or even web design. Social networking sales are very laidback and are more of an “the offer is on the table” situation, where the follower does not feel pressured into purchasing anything but is aware of the products and offers available.

Detecting And Resolving Customer Complaints

Finding and resolving complaints is very easy to deal with when using social media. The most easy would be twitter management to accomplish this. This is because you can run searches for your business name and receive all tweets containing your company name, this way you can deal with any negative opinions. You can also acknowledge and thank any good comments. Both of these actions will help improve your following and relationship with your followers.

Receiving Feedback

Through proper Facebook management techniques, you can run polls and ask questions to your fans about anything you want, so this can be very helpful as you can receive feedback on new product and find out what your customers really want. You can also do the same thing on Twitter, however this is a little harder to manage than Facebook because all you can do is tweet out and hope for your followers to reply.

Providing Technical Support

Tech support is usually handled over the phone, but we have so much technology available nowadays and social media really helps with this. For example, you can use Google Plus hangouts to visually answer and explain answers to your customers, and text support can be given easily to followers via Twitter and Facebook.

Conclusion

Social media has many benefits, and using social media to benefit the customer experience is a great idea and is something that very company should be trying to do. A social media agency can run these kind of techniques effectively and beneficially to you and your company, whether you’re a retail company or an SEO agency.

Many users on twitter are simply listeners and only want to receive updates from those who they are following without posting many updates themselves. The power users of Twitter, e.g. celebrities, companies and influential people in niche industries create the majority of tweets, which is very interesting to know because you as a business are most likely targeting an audience, and this audience has a tendancy to listen, as opposed to feel the need to be heard.

Branding

Chances are that you have heard this a million and one times, but social media is great for branding as it establishes brand awareness as more and more people will like/follow your social media profiles.

Building Relationships

As well as branding, building relationships is something that social media can be used for, it is also very easy to do. There are a few points you should remember to build an effective relationship:

-          Know what you talking about

-          Contribute to the community regularly

-          Avoid “in your face” sales techniques

-          Provide valuable, third party info via links.

Conclusion

It is important to keep in mind that social media is a long term commitment and should be treated as such, if your Facebook management campaign or even Twitter management campaign is planned for short term success, the benefits will be a fraction of what a long term plan would bring.

Each week I will be providing you with my digital marketing Top Tips on how your online business can stay ahead of your competitors! We look after some of the biggest clients on the internet, here are a few of them: promocodes.co.uk, luggagesuperstore.co.uk, voijeans.co.uk, partybritain.co.uk and spabreak.co.uk for more examples please see our case studies.

1.    Blogging

Creating a Blog on your website is an essential part of your online marketing strategy and vital to keep your visitors engaged with news about your business. Your blog is like a newsfeed, so it’s essential to create unique interesting articles which contain links to relevant pages back within your website. If you copy and paste another article and re blog it, remember Google could penalise your site for copied text. As a general rule of thumb only use 1 link per 100 words, this will help Google crawl for keywords associated about your business. A perfect example to see how it’s done is by clicking on the words that are underlined within this article. Remember to update this as much as possible and I would suggest you spend 30 minutes daily doing this task which will benefit your websites online presence massively.

2. XML Sitemap

Your website is like a book, your menu bar is like a contents page so this needs to be clear and simple so that your visitors can navigate around your site and look at pages. You may already have a site map on your website which is like an index page in a book. By creating an XML sitemap which is tailor made especially for Google, allowing it to crawl/read your keywords on all your pages. Please see our website for an excellent example of an XML Sitemap.

3. Google Analytics

Any one that has an online presence for a personal website, small or giant online business should have Google analytics. It’s a vital part of your marketing strategy and its one of the most powerful web analytics tracking solutions that will help you understand customer trends visiting your site. This will help you improve and implement new strategies for customers to purchase or contact you resulting in a conversion. In addition Google Adwords (PPC) customers can even see their Analytics data from inside their Adwords account, plus Google Analytics is free for anyone to use.