Benefits of Directory Submission

While some SEO experts think that directory submissions are already a thing of the past, the truth is, they are still extremely valuable, but not in the way they are used. What makes it valuable is the fact that it is free, so the only investment required is time. And there are hidden ways where new businesses can benefit from directory submission. You just need to know them.

Google Uses Directories to Return Results

A lot of people may have the notion that Google is a link directory. It may be the giant search engine everyone knows of but definitely not a directory. Directories organize links under categories and sub-categories while search engines (Google and the likes) scour the internet to find whatever is typed into the search box. People don’t use directories when they search for something. They use Google. What people don’t know is that search engines use directories to return results. Hence, if your website is listed on as many directories as possible, the better chance that a searcher will find your site through the search engines.

Use Manual Submission Directories

Search engines sift through a long directory to find exactly what was being searched by a user. To make this work, you must submit your links to the directories manually. Once you sign up for a website, you will have to submit your link. It will be beneficial to use directories that require manual submission. Links will be checked by link reviewers before they are approve for the directory. Google and other search engines will value those directories because they know that the links submitted are properly screened and reviewed for quality.

Search Engines Index Links on Directories

It is therefore, important that your website is submitted to as many quality link directories as possible because search engines will rank your page at the top of the SERPs. When you submit a link to a directory, search engines will index it and this will be found by search engine crawlers that regularly look for index-created and updated links. A good place they start looking into is the links listed in directories.

Increase Your One-Way Inbound Links

This is better than link exchange. Websites and pages with one-way, inbound links are valued by web directories more than the sites that use link exchange tactics to drive traffic to and from their pages. Link directories do not require listing their name and link on your website, thus increasing your one-way links. It also does not require updating the website every time a new link is submitted.

Utilizing directory submission does not mean that you will forego other SEO strategies. SEO is still highly valuable. Any strategy that promotes valuable content will be useful for the website. That’s why keywords are still important. SEO may even be used when submitting links. You get the opportunity to use keywords and title when you name your links which is required by directories. It will be easier for search engines to catalog your links. And most importantly, link directories are often free to use. There’s no additional expense or budget required which is a crucial element especially for new businesses. You will have a reason to question a directory that requires paying a fee, or just look for another one that does not require any fee to be paid.

How to create Facebook promotion to go viral

 

Everyone knows the opportunities presented by social media sites in increasing one’s online visibility and one such social media site is Facebook. This strong and powerful social media platform has served many marketers with successes they have not gained from other online marketing activities. A lot of people have used Facebook successfully to promote their business activities, products or services. They have launched promotions with high-value prizes, raffles and draws. Promotions that have celebrity appeal or limited edition offerings tend to gain support from the community. But promotions need not always have costly prizes. There are other rewards you can offer when doing promotions on Facebook.

While doing promotions in Facebook, there are some rules that need to be followed. Facebook has Promotions Guidelines that spell out the rules surrounding the use of promotions within the Facebook platform. Such rules are designed to eliminate spam and protect the user’s profile data from being used by other brands for their own purpose and benefit. Facebook also imposes limitations on ways for companies to use the brand name and logo of Facebook in any promotion.  And as an additional security measure, any promotion on Facebook needs to be approved by Facebook.

How to Set up the Promotion

There’s no argument on how compelling a Facebook promotion can be for any business or individual. Following the guidelines, you can use your Page as a starting point and create a link to your website for promotion entry details. Alternatively, you can have the entire promotion within the Facebook community.  The following tips may help you achieve success with your promotion:

• Attractive Prize. As in any contest or promotion, an attractive prize will have an impact on the turnout of participants. If you offer attractive prizes, more people are likely to respond. But what prizes can be attractive? Prizes that money can’t buy seem to be favored by participants of the promotion such as an opportunity to meet a celebrity (movie, music, sports, etc. depending on the type of promotion held), or participating in a TV commercial or attending a product’s pre-launching party.
  
  
• Start with Your Existing Customers. This is the best way to start a promotion – get your existing customers involved. You can probably pre-qualify them to the promotion if they have purchased a certain item or product. With an attractive prize at stake, they will have a justification for making an extra purchase. With this strategy, you already overcome the tough part of getting the initial entries. You can reach out to your mailing list of customers by sending a friendly invite. Or get on instant messenger, Twitter, Google+, or email to inform them about the promotion and inviting them to join.
    
• Cross Promotion. You can use your website and other channels (social media accounts other than Facebook) to advertise the promotion in order to gain maximum participation. By adding a promotional banner that has a link to your Facebook Page is a good way to kick-off your promotion.
  
  
• Keep it Simple. The simpler the promotion, the better for participants. Avoid over-complicating the rules. If forms are to be filled out, limit the questions and make filling out easier for the participants. It will also help to give out a single prize of significant value as the top prize and several smaller prizes for second, third, etc. prizes. Less clicks to enter the promotion will be appreciated by those interested to participate.
  
  
• Don’t Make the Promotion Hard to Win. If you set the criteria too high, you might not have any participant. If you’re running a promotion for the most original T-shirt design, don’t ask for too many requirements.
  
  
• Keep a Regular Run of Promotions. You can run promotions for at least a month. If you give more time for the promotion to be known to the community, the more entries you are likely to get. By making enough noise in the community to build up excitement for the promotion, the more successful it is likely to be. Users or followers that are constantly reminded by adverts or write-ups about the promotion, the more they anticipate the big day when winners are announced.
  
  
• Integrate Promotion with Media Campaign. You can combine a Facebook ad campaign with a promotion to maximize the viral effect.
  
  
• Go for Fun Promotion. Avoid off-the-rack kind of promotions by making yours interesting, unique and fun. It should contain an element of entertainment. And the promotion should offer participants an outlet to express themselves, encourage members to share with friends, and convey messages about your product, brand or service.
  
  
• Use Third-Party Promotions Apps. There are several third party apps for promotions – some are free and some apps come with a small price tag. Some of them are:
  
  
• Wildfire Promotion Builder
• Fan Appz
• Virtrue

New Google Adwords Features You Should Try

  

The online world is constantly challenged by the algorithm updates that Google and other search engines roll out. SEOs have to contend with keeping their campaigns aligned with such changes and anxiously pray not to be hit hard by those updates and lose the page rankings that they have worked so hard to achieve over the years.

Google has not stopped at working its way towards providing the users with the best search results, implementing rules intended to weed out the web with those unworthy content that proliferates because of bad SEO practices. AdWords is no exception – some things get changed, taken away or scrapped. But AdWords continue to evolve with new features that PPC managers and advertisers would surely be excited about.

Check out these five new AdWords features:

New Keyword Planner

It works like a standard research tool for keyword with more enticing features including keyword search options; keyword statistics and performance estimates; keyword filters; and group and list view.  It actually combines the keyword tool and traffic estimator. You can change the match type before adding the keywords to your plan, and the tool provides traffic estimates for the keyword. It also has a feature that multiplies keyword lists to get estimates, saving a lot of time of combining keywords manually.

AdWords Upgrade Center

This feature will allow you to upgrade existing campaigns to enhanced campaigns, which is useful for anyone managing multiple campaigns. It will also allow you to merge and upgrade accounts. AdWords will even give you merge recommendations. This is applicable if you have campaigns that have similar keywords and location targeting, like it automatically combines budgets and ad groups.

Upgraded Sitelinks

With this feature, Google allows advertisers to nominate specific text that will display for their sitelink descriptions within their ads, giving advertisers much more control over what is appearing on their enhanced advertisements and the ability to be particular about the text that they would like to appear.

Ad Group Mobile Bid Adjustments

This ad group-level mobile bid will allow advertisers to have more granular control within their campaigns. It used to be that mobile bids could only be set and adjusted at the campaign level in enhanced campaigns. This feature is a clear sample of granular level of customization. Based on past performance, if one ad group has CPCs which are much different from the rest of the campaign, the ad group level bids can even out the playing field and limit losses.

New Google Display Planner

The results this feature produces contains more details than the previous Display Network tools. The tool will generate a list of areas that you can potentially target if you provide your customers’ interests and your landing page. There will be a breakdown of impressions, cookies, demographic data, ad formats, relevance statistics, and many more, per week.

All of these features are available and you can start experimenting with them. And who knows, by the time you mastered the use of these features to your advantage, more new features will be released for Google’s AdWords. After all, it’s Google – and Google always find something to change or update or upgrade.

If you need some help with your PPC campaigns, we would be glad to be of help.

Email Marketing Best Practices

The business world that is running the world now is obsessed with getting the most customer intelligence to further their businesses. Businesses need to know what customers need, how and what they think, what services or products are they looking for, etc. And they turn to all sorts of media blitz and campaign in order to get more customers for their business. Big businesses’ spending on TV and print ads and Internet advertising are staggering and unbelievably huge. And the advertising industry absolutely enjoys every bit of it.

One marketing technique that has not been maximized is email marketing. Compared to all the other popular marketing strategies and techniques, email marketing does not cost much. The investment will probably be on Internet subscription, minimal human resource, desktop computer and electricity bill. Hence, email marketing is deemed the most cost-effective advertising technique there is today.  

In order to get the best results from email marketing, the following lists down some of the known and proven email marketing practices which you can use as a guideline when doing your email marketing campaign.

• Create Incentives-oriented line opener for your email. This will increase the open rates of your email. Recipients are likely to open their email if they read something like, “Get an iPad free by signing up for a demo”, or “Free shipping for first order.” Don’t just do this for the sake of converting; make sure you can deliver what you promised.
• Keep your email clutter-free. Sending an email full of junk will not likely end up in a conversion.
• Highlight call-to-action above the fold. Putting your main message and call-to-action towards the end of the email will most likely result to them being ignored or not read by the recipient. Call-to-action should be repeated throughout the email the least of which is 3 times.
• Put your logo where it can be easily seen – at the upper left hand side of the email. Studies have shown that people look for the logos at this particular and specific area.  
• Create eye-catching and compelling subject lines. Like the email line opener, you can write a subject line of 30 – 50 characters with a sense of urgency. This line should give the readers an idea of what the email is all about.
• Tie your email to landing pages. Craft your email such that it will be able to link to landing pages which should have the same headline, copy and content. Use tracking tools to monitor the email and landing pages for performance.
• Use auto-responder for Opt-ins. It’s normal for recipients to forget they opted in. You need to set up auto-responder to remind them and it should be sent out in 1, 5 and 10 days after the opt-in registration. Auto-responder email should contain additional content or bonus material for opting in.  
• Make your email with a personal touch. This is where the power of email lies – the recipient needs to feel that the email was sent on a personal capacity and as such deserves a response. Use email as your way of reaching out to your customers and making them feel important.
• Timing. Know exactly when you need to send the email, which is when the recipient is around to read it right away or almost immediately. Studies and surveys showed that more people are using their lunch hour to check their email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. This should be about the right time to send your email.  

Email marketing is still a great way to generate leads and eventually more conversion prospects for your business, if done the right way. Compelling email marketing campaigns still get high success rate. People abhor getting junk and suspicious looking email marketing materials. Just follow the simple guidelines presented above to elicit chances of your marketing materials ending up in junk mailbox.

Email marketing is just part and parcel of online marketing. You have to understand online marketing as a whole to have holistic approach and have a more effective campaign. You can take a look at The Do’s and Don’ts of Online Marketing for better guidance.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Online Marketing

In this day and age of internet and advanced technology where online marketing outsourcing is just as anybody’s business, the success of any business is largely dependent on effective online marketing strategies and campaign programs. It opens up business doors to a broader consumer audience.

There are however, important considerations when it comes to acceptable online marketing for many outsource internet marketing experts. These online marketing do’s and don’ts will help differentiate good marketing practices against bad marketing techniques.

Online Marketing Do’s

• Simple and accurate website information. Your main concern is for users to be able to get the information they want from your website easily and quickly. Making your website user-friendly is key to an effective internet marketing campaigns.
• Simple and easy-to-remember domain names. If your website’s domain name is extremely long and hard to remember, gaining repeat stream of traffic to the site is not likely to happen. Imagine a secretary dictating to a business affiliate over the phone a domain name made of hardly read words - a jungle of letters and numbers.
• Learn SEO. For any online marketing outsourcing experts, effective search engine optimization strategies are a helpful lot in supplementing online marketing campaigns for implementation into the website. If your website is found by the various search engines, traffic to your site will definitely improve without spending extra for advertising.
• Have a specific and clearly defined USP. Unique Sales Positioning (USP) is like a single online ad which describes your core business. It should eliminate generic connotations to set your business apart from generic competitors. Example : Domino’s Pizza’s USP is “pizza delivered hot in 30 minutes or it’s free”. The recall factor is strong and people will easily associate the ad to the business.
• Use a short email signature. When using email marketing, use an email signature with a URL attached linking to your website. This is a great way to get traffic to a website. By keeping it short and easy to remember.
• Keep an interactive website. Your website should stimulate interaction from the users. Use online polls, surveys, etc. to get more information about your website’s audience.
• Pick your medium. Whether it’s paid search (PPC) or media buying (banners, pop-ups), choose the logical medium where your targeted prospects are.
• Blog posts. Creating blogs for your website will facilitate user interaction and will cause your website to gain traffic. Make sure to post new blogs in order to keep the users wanting for more new information to read.   

Online Marketing Don'ts

• Use Blackhat SEO techniques. As search engines regularly updates their algorithms, using these techniques will get your website penalized or banned. Online marketing outsourcing companies shun this practice.
• Over-Publicity. There’s nothing worse than a publicity overkill especially when your website is not fully ready for traffic. This is a sure way to drive users away from your website.   
• Conditional access to information. Websites requiring registration prior to gaining access to the information will definitely turn off users.
• Forget the user. Most of the time internet marketing outsourcing companies are so caught up with their campaign that they forgot the users – the people the website is designed for and the people in control of revenue.  
• Send spam and long email messages. This kind of online marketing will end up in the trash folders of email recipients or worse; people will block you. You might as well filter out people who you will send email marketing materials to.
• Slow loading and poorly designed website. Your website is your best asset. Websites that takes time to load will cause user boredom and you’re leaving the users with the option of hitting the back button.

Even conventional marketing firms are slowly moving towards online marketing and nothing beats expertise when it comes to digital marketing. However, if you’re new to the digital marketing world, you might as well want to get informed on how does its mechanism work to avoid unnecessary actions that might be detrimental to a marketing campaign.  Of course, mistakes and experience are the greatest teacher but being a bit cautious could let you go the extra mile.

Being audacious with your internet marketing campaign can be widely accepted and at the same time, may not be accepted at all. But, knowing the foundations and the rules of how marketing or advertising should be done can actually defy any hurdles that may come along the way.