The Concept

Social media marketing is a method of promoting your brand, be it yourself, a product, a service, or a company, by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Reddit, etc. This may seem overly simple but “getting yourself known” is the kicker because each category of social media has a different detailed method for effective promotion.

The key concept to social marketing is that it is not designed to immediately provide business but instead it provides the visibility your brand needs to ultimately convert fans into buyers. I often get clients saying “I don’t think being on Facebook will get my products sold”. The truth is they are often correct. Having a presence on Facebook that provides great content or interesting widgets to raise the awareness of your brand so that users remember your service provides you with a soap box to share the benefits of your brand. In short, it is important not to forget this essential concept – social media marketing drives brand awareness which later translates into sales.

Social Media Categories and Strategies

This is an introduction to the various top social media portals segregated into their appropriate categories and paired with a recommended strategy can be rather effective. Please keep in mind the following is only a partial listing of some social media sites. If you want a more comprehensive list check out this list of social media sites.

Here is an organized list of Social Media Marketing categories I have identified:

1. Social Networking Sites
2. Business Networking Sites
3. Social Bookmarking Sites
4. Content Voting Sites
5. News Sharing Sites
6. Collaborative Directories
7. Video Sharing Sites
8. Photo Sharing Sites
9. Niche Networking Sites
10. Forums/Discussion Boards

Creating Your Plan

Now that you have an idea of the various social media categories and their potential marketing application(s) it is important to identify what you want to get out of them before you market to them. Be sure to ask yourself the following questions:

What is your ultimate goal?
Consider the objectives that come to mind. Here are some examples of common answers and what they might mean to your planning efforts:

“I want people to know my name and acknowledge my expert status.”
In this situation you may want to drive traffic to your main website about page or bio where you feature your services, testimonials or even your resume. Using social media you can build your online reputation by participating in sites that appear to have a strong following of potential customers; provide answers to their questions, find associated content that you know will help them and bookmark it. All-in-all you want to make friends and create a personal profile.

“I want my company name to be found within all of the major social media sites when my industry-related keywords are typed in.”
There are a variety of ways to achieve this but I expect the most effective is to create quality content that no one can help but link to. That is far harder than it sounds but the fact is that company names don’t rise to the cream of the Internet crop without blowing people away with helpful and thoughtful content. Once you create the content use a blog to disseminate it quickly while placing a snippet (say the first 3 paragraphs) into your social media profiles in such sites as Facebook, Bloglines, Blogger or Newsvine along with a link to your main article where readers can continue reading. By only providing a teaser for your article and pointing readers to your website for the full article you will be emphasizing the original content on your main site as the original article and you will heighten its visibility.

“I need to get the word out on my product/service.”
Press releases are not mentioned within this article but I would definitely not want to mention them. Use PRLog.org, OpenPR.com or 1888PressRelease.com to submit a carefully crafted press release to the web. Next go to each of your established profiles and tell your friends about your submission and perhaps even offer them a free product or trial of your service. Whatever you do the ultimate goal is to make it unavoidable for them to help you get it known.

How much time are you willing to commit to social media marketing?
This is a crucial question because it will determine just how big you want to make your social media plan. If you are doing this yourself then force yourself to set a few hours aside every day or every two days to keep your profiles up to date. If that is too much work then consider hiring someone to help you keep the content fresh OR just target the top social media websites in your strategy to market too. Whatever you decide to do start out small and then increase your social marketing workload only when you know you have the time and patience to do the additional work correctly. Remember it’s only as effective as the amount of time you spend on it.

Get Out There and Participate!
I find myself blown away by the shear number of social media websites that appear to be prospering and are regularly adding new creative methods to share and receive great information. Which is why it’s so important to keep in touch regularly, update often, and keep the content related to your niche. Not participating or updating regularly will just result in less traffic and exposure. The more exposure you have the better the opportunity to convert those leads into sales.

Measure Your Performance
Another thing I find that most people do is not track their performance. Social media marketing effectiveness is still a trial and error and you need to measure the performance to get the best results without knowing which content drives you the most clicks, comments or retweets. There are several tools that you can use to measure your performance. But let’s get some of the terminology out of the way first:

Sentiment
Are the comments positive or negative? Most current tools attempt to assign sentiment to a post automatically. While this is helpful for brands with tons of mentions, it’s only about 70% accurate in most cases[1], so manual verification and spot-checking is encouraged across the board before making any decisions based on influence data.

Volume
This is simply the amount of “buzz” that exists. Many monitoring tools give the ability to chart volume for specific keywords over time. This gives you a great way to measure the impact of your marketing efforts and social media campaigns, especially when combined with sentiment. A lot can be learned about your brand and your customers by investigating spikes in social media volumes.

Workflow
Workflow is the process of assigning, tracking and responding to social media, typically in a team environment. An effective workflow can prevent double responses and missed opportunities.

Now that we have an understanding of the purpose and the terminology surrounding social media monitoring, let’s take a look at some tools that can help you monitor your presence.

1. Google Alerts- An oldie but a goodie! Google Alerts allows you to set up keyword searches for the name of your company or competitors, for example, and receive updates in your email inbox or through an RSS feed.When combined with iGoogle, you can create a pretty nice consolidated page that contains the latest findings for your selected keywords. When it comes to monitoring social media, this is the least you should be doing; it’s free and an absolute snap to set up.
2. Icerocket- Used by many, Icerocket helps you keep watch over Twitter, blogs, web, news, images and more. Features include a topic cloud and basic listing of mentions. This social media monitoring tool also offers the ability to bookmark your search results for later reference.Although helpful, some users might find the interface and the style of the search results pages a little archaic compared to the other options.
3. Addict-o-Matic – This tool is a consolidated page with search matches across blogs, Twitter, Digg, Flickr and more. Featuring an appealing interface and one-page dashboard, Addict-o-matic is one of the best free tools available for summarizing all your “buzz” in one place.
4. Boardtracker – Boardtracker focuses on grabbing “buzz” from message boards and forums. Features include a topic cloud and influencer list. There are ads mixed in with your search results which may turn off some users. A premium version is offered. If your target customers are more active on message boards than other channels, this could be the right tool for you.
5. Social Mention – This social media monitoring tool features an interesting combination of easy-to-read metrics including reach, sentiment, passion, and strength (volume/day). Social Mention tracks blogs, blog comments, Twitter, mainstream news, images, video, and audio. Searches can be saved as an RSS feed so you can easily stay up-to-date.
6. ScoutLabs- Scoutlabs has a great clean interface and overall excellent features for volume trending, sentiment-tracking, learning about key quotes (based on sentiment), and managing workflow for response management. Unlimited results helps protect you from increased monthly cost due to unexpected spikes in volume.It’s a great option for agencies and freelancers because you can give clients access to a dashboard with your logo on it, branding the service as your own. Note that it can be a challenge to output some graphs and reports which may be an issue if you want to produce reports for your clients.

There are several more websites and tools out there to measure your success but these are some of the more popular choices.

Conclusion

So following the information above will help you gain more through social media marketing. Keep in mind there is still no guarantee you will get the results your looking for and you should always consult with an expert. So lets recap on some of the things you need to consider before running with your social media strategy:

1. Are you ready to invest adequate time in Social Media Marketing?
2. Will you do it yourself or need to involve a firm/others?
3. Will you and/or your employees need additional training to maximize effectiveness?
4. Do you know how to form a proper brand strategy online?
5. Where should you direct your main efforts, how much and when?
6. What tools will you use to measure social media marketing success?

Benzing Web Design Marketing

We are always using RPC services to notify search engines and blogs that new content has been created. But these services seem to be unreliable and go in and out of service. Below we compiled the list of active RPC servers that we use daily:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.twingly.com

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2

http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2

http://ping.kutsulog.net/

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://www.pingerati.net

http://www.pingmyblog.com

http://geourl.org/ping

http://ipings.com

http://www.weblogalot.com/ping

Benzing Web Design Marketing

It’s been a while since I released a blog post and have been tinkering with ways to drive more traffic to our client websites through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social websites are major tools in today’s online realm so knowing how you can utilize and track them becomes very important. This blog post will go over 5 ways you can drive traffic through social media.

So let’s start with some questions…Do you know how your social media activities are driving offline sales? How many customers came into your store or called for more information after viewing your social media profiles? Will the time they spend interacting on Facebook and Twitter affect your sales? more than likely Yes.

With that said what are ways we can improve our sales through social media? Let’s identify some:

1. Place Your Phone Number on All Social Media Accounts
Now I know what your thinking…I already have my phone on my social sites duh! well yes you do but not your Google Voice number. Not sure what a Google Voice number is? read more here. Currently Google Voice is invite only but you can find invites online or through eBay for $1. I have 1 invite left so first come first serve. Use Google Voice to track incoming calls from your social media profiles if your business has a more consultative sales process or you run a conversational blog or use social networks to generate leads. A natural extension is to place your Google phone number on all of your social media presences and on each blog page for the customers who find you via search. The best part about Google Voice is the ability to have a separate number that forwards to your main number. This also lets you track the number of inbound calls you receive from your Google Voice dashboard.

2. Promote Offline Events on Social Media
This is another no brainier and you are probably already doing this. But how you are doing it matters. Facebook has an especially robust function for creating events and promoting them. Facebook events allow you to post pictures and event location information, while also inviting your fan base to participate. You also can message all attendees to remind them about the event or give special instructions. Creating a Facebook event page then gives you a landing page that will direct visitors to your blog and Twitter followers too. Make sure you take advantage of all the aspects of the tools provided. Twitter also allows for events using hashtags or establishing Tweetups.

3. Offer Coupons Exclusive to Social Media Channels
This is an easy way to generate fans and followers. People love getting things for free or winning things. Not only will this drive more traffic online but also offline at your place of business. Make specific offers through each social media channel you use, like 10% off a purchase if you print a coupon from Facebook, or “buy one get one free” if you use a code sent out in a Tweet. Keep a spreadsheet of the different offers and the response rate, and you’ll begin to generate really useful data about the best way to optimize your marketing campaigns for each channel. Incentives are a great way to build the size of your social media communities. Also, giving fans and followers an incentive to follow you shows the importance you place on social media outreach.

4. Host a Tweet Up or Facebook Party
Creating fun meet ups for your online followers can be a great way to introduce the atmosphere of your business. Charity events and cocktail hours work especially well for drawing attendees to TweetUps. The best way to cement interactions online is to meet your contacts face to face, and there is no better way to do this than to host a party. While you probably won’t bring 1,000+ members to your event like Ford did in the largest TweetUp ever, TweetUps let you form more personal relationships with your local followers. Here’s a great in-depth resource on how to host a successful TweetUp.

5. Connect Social Media and Email Campaigns
This is hugely important and helps retain the interest in your products or service. Many businesses have established email lists they use to stay in touch with customers. Drive visitors on your social media accounts to sign up for your email list to receive more information about your business. Getting social media visitors on your email list can connect you with people you might not otherwise reach through social media. This also keeps things consistent.

So with these 5 tips you can start creating more exposure to your place of business. Now the best way to close the loop between social media and offline action is to promote your social media channels offline as well—adding another way for you to stay in touch with your customers in between purchases or research. I hope these suggestions help you start thinking about ways to convert your social media fans and followers into loyal customers. There are many other suggestions but you will have to wait for our next blog post to find out.

Benzing Web Design Marketing

In this post, we will learn more about the aspect of a search engine optimization technique, called URL Canonicalization or URL Normalization. We will see why it is important and why being knowledgeable about it will reduce duplicate content issues.

Do you have the right content on the web, but have four different ways to access it? if you do, it could affect your search engine rankings. If your still confused let me explain. The web is compromised of billions of URL’s or Uniform Resource Locator’s. A URL is part of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource (website) is available and the mechanism for retrieving it (http://,https://,smtp://,ftp://,etc.).

Now every URL has a structure when it is read by the web server. Let me show you an example below:

• http://www.blogsite.com/index.html
• http://www.blogsite.com/
• http://blogsite.com/

Each of these locations will go to the same page. This is due to improper canonicalization which is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard”, “normal”, or canonical form. Improper canonicalization can cause duplicate content and can affect your search engine rankings. This happens when the search engines index multiple versions of the same page and effectively divide the attributed link equity among the duplicates. Consolidating the worth of your pages by serving only a singular instance of each of them. Having the proper canonicalization is beneficial to you, your visitors, and your search engine rankings.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing all support canonicalization so why not provide it to them. There are several ways to do this but what I find the simplest is using htaccess files. However these only work on apache web servers. If you are unfamiliar with what web server you are using ask your web host provider. To first use htaccess files create one in the root of your website directory and name it exactly .htaccess do not forget the period (.) in the beginning and do not add any extensions to the end of it.

Before presenting a generalized, copy-&-paste version of this htaccess canonicalization solution, let’s examine the functionality involved with various directives.

• Choose WWW or Non-WWW form
• Use the Canonical URL Everywhere in the Domain
• Remove Default File Names From URLs
• Ensure a trailing slash at the end of all URLs

Now using your favorite text editor of choice edit the file and put the following code:

RewriteEngine On
# Remove index.php from root URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://domain.tld/ [R=301,L]
# Permanently redirect from www domain to non-www domain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]

Of course you will need to replace “domain.tld” in the above example to your website domain. This will prevent search engines and visitors from linking to duplicate content since it will be automatically redirected to the proper structure. If you are using WordPress there is an even better way to do the same result while delivering dynamic content from your WordPress Blog. However, WordPress 2.3+ does provide a built-in URL canonicalization technique via PHP. Thus, if you are using WP 2.3+, you technically don’t need to use this method, though, if you prefer to handle URL rewriting at the server level, then you may indeed benefit from its use.

# Comprehensive URL Canonicalization for WordPress in Root
RedirectMatch permanent index.php/(.*) http://domain.tld/$1
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.(html|php)\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.(html|php)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

If your WordPress blog is setup in the root directory then use the above example. If you have your blog in a subdirectory (www.domain.com/blog/) then see the code below.

# Comprehensive URL Canonicalization for WordPress in Subdirectory
RedirectMatch permanent index.php/(.*) http://domain.tld/subdirectory/$1
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
RewriteBase /subdirectory/
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.(html|php)\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.(html|php)$ http://domain.tld/subdirectory/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /subdirectory/index.php [L]

So now you save and upload the htaccess file and it will help prevent duplicate content and provide search engines with better URL normalization. The canonicalization solution presented in this article is both comprehensive and effective. I have been using this technique on client websites since 2008 with great success. Since employing this method, I have virtually eliminated all opportunity for duplicate content to be served from my site and my clients websites. Of course, there are other duplicate content issues not associated with canonical URLs, but we will save that for another article.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

When you start to follow your website analytics you start to notice a percent of people identified as Bounce Rate. Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

I recently had the task of lowering bounce rate on a few of our clients websites. And it made me want to learn more about it. I did some research and I wanted to discuss with the world how bounce rate works and a few ways that worked really well for our bounce rate.

Let’s start with continuing education. There is no such thing as a single identified bounce rate. Yes you may see it on your analytics labeled right before your eyes but it has a deeper meaning. There are 4 different types of bounce rate.

The first is called Low-value referrers which are visitors like those say, visiting from Digg.com, or StumbleUpon.com. These people are probably not in your target audience. You should expect most of them to leave immediately, once they’ve satisfied their idle curiosity. Consider any value derived from sites like those as pure gravy; don’t worry if this traffic source has a sky-high bounce rate.

The second type of bounce rate is Direct links from other websites. These links are the equivalent of a vague recommendation: “You might want to check out this site.” People who click such links haven’t expressed a direct intent to engage with your topic to the same degree as someone who actively enters a search engine query. These visitors do have some degree of interest, however, a high bounce rate at this point is a symptom of a user experience problem.

The third type of bounce rate is Search engine traffic, whether from organic SEO or paid links. By clicking your link, these users have actively indicated an acute interest in the topic and should engage intensely with your content. If they leave immediately, it’s a sign that something is seriously wrong with your landing pages. These issues can be 404 errors, navigation issues, slow load time, etc.

The final type of bounce rate is Loyal users. These are the people that want your product or service and make the effort to browse through your website and who return repeatedly to your site. On the one hand, you’d expect the highest engagement from your biggest fans. On the other hand, this engagement might not show up on every visit if they visit often. As long as people keep coming back, there’s nothing wrong with having them sometimes leave after a page view or two.

There is another type of bounce rate but it can be prevented by making sure your IP Address is not being recorded on your analytics. I can’t say how many times I thought my bounce rate was high but it was just me looking at the front page of my website time and time again. Google Analytics provides the option to remove your IP Address from their settings and if you don’t know your IP Address a great website to get it is http://whatismyipaddress.com.

So now that you understand the different types of bounce rates there are some ways to reduce it using a couple methods I outlined below. These method will work with all websites on any platform.

1. Invite users to click on related posts and topics within your blog or website.

There are several ways to accomplish this even on your static websites. If you have WordPress there are a few different plug-ins. the one I use is Related Posts. It displays 5-10 related links using tags. If you have a static website pick a few site links you have related and post them at the bottom of your content. This makes it easy for visitors to view more content throughout your website.

2. Add More Call To Action

Sometimes your website design just isn’t enough to capture your audience. Build more call to action on your website with a box for newsletter sign-ups or even a poll. Drive people throughout your website and make it easy to navigate. Page Peel Banners (PPB) are a great way to reduce the bounce rate. Here is a Free PPB for WordPress. Here is a demo of a PPB, look into the right top corner of the website.

3. Visual Site Maps

Most visitors love a beautiful design with easy navigation so why not make your sitemaps the same way using visual sitemaps. I recently posted here about SlickMap CSS which is a really neat interactive way to display your sitemaps.

I hope by now you know more about bounce rate and how a few tweaks and adjustments to your website can significantly reduce it. If anyone has any other methods of reducing bounce rate please feel free to share in the comments. Thanks.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

Yes its true, when you thought the good can’t get any better. Google rolled out some useful enhancements to its already useful and powerful Google Analytics tool. The new features gives the tool more flexibility and intelligence. Here are some highlights on some of the new features.

• 1. Addition of two new goal types for measuring user engagement and branding success that allows webmasters to set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per visit. Up to 20 goals can now be defined.
• 2. Improved tracking of mobile websites and mobile apps on mobile devices even if  the device is running Javascript or not. This was made possible through the addition of a server side code snippet on mobile websites using Google Analytics
• 3. Addition of Advanced Table Filtering feature for advance data analysis and for filtering rows in a table based on different metric conditions
• 4. Creation of Custom Report with the option to select Unique Visitors as a measurement against any Google Analytics dimension
• 5. Multiple custom variables, sharing segments and custom report templates for enterprise adaptation of Google Analytics. These tools provide customization options for enterprise Google Analytics usage

These are all great new features but one of the best is the Analytics Intelligence. This new feature provides automatic alerts when there are significant changes in the data patterns of your website metrics and dimensions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Prompting you on significant marks you should pay attention to. This will give you more time on doing corrective actions to highlights by Google Analytics. Very Sweet!

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

Google recently upgraded their Insights for Search tool to include predicted keyword search volumes as well as interactive maps of how keyword search volume changes over time.

There are lots of business implications of the forecast data:

Having predictable trends for a search query or for a group of queries could have interesting ramifications. One could forecast the trends into the future, and use it as a “best guess” for various business decisions such as budget planning, marketing campaigns and resource allocations. One could identify deviation from such forecasting and identify new factors that are influencing the search volume as demonstrated in Flu Trends.

Some business categories are more predictable than other categories:

• Over half of the most popular Google search queries are predictable in a 12 month ahead forecast, with a mean absolute prediction error of about 12%.
• Nearly half of the most popular queries are not predictable (with respect to the model we have used).
  Some categories have particularly high fraction of predictable queries; for instance, Health (74%), Food & Drink (67%) and Travel (65%).
• Some categories have particularly low fraction of predictable queries; for instance, Entertainment (35%) and Social Networks & Online Communities (27%).
• The trends of aggregated queries per categories are much more predictable: 88% of the aggregated category search trends of over 600 categories in Insights for Search are predictable, with a mean absolute prediction error of of less than 6%.

If you were to launch a brand new business from scratch it might make sense to target a less predictable category since it would be more open to new market entrants & they would not appear on the radar of competitors as quickly.

And Google now make their Insights for Search charts embeddable in third party websites via iframes. Given that, I just added those data points to our keyword tool below the keyword data our tool returns, which is like having an instant second opinion on the keywords.

This allows you to instantly estimate the seasonality of a particular keyword. And if our search volume seems somewhat inflated and/or you are uncertain if it is accurate then you can look at the search volume graph for more data. If the keywords graph is quite spiky for a non-seasonal keyword (or if it has no data returned) then there is a good chance that there is a bit of noise in the data.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

Originally posted at DivitoDesign.com

Link building is a very important strategy in your search engine optimizing campaign. In the first part of my search engine optimizing tutorial, I gave you 8 SEO tips that you can implant on your website or blog. Today, we will talk about how to get quality links pointing to your website.
General Knowledge

One thing that is most important to link building is this: a few high-quality links favors numerous links of a low caliber. That means you have to search for the best links that fit the topic of your website or blog.

1. Reciprocal Links

Explaining reciprocal links is simple: you exchange links with other websites. You link to them, they link to you.

Those websites or blogs have already build a reputation in the search engine’s eyes. The SE’s trust them. When you start a new site, your site is not yet trusted. However, if you have that website linking to you, the engine know that you offer something good too. Generally, because you have good content or if you are their friends. They will easier trust you too and list you faster and better in their results. You build on the reputation of the popular website.

However, don’t think you can scream at a few of these sites and ask them for a link. You have to build a site with a good layout and content first, before they might feel about linking to you.

Here are a few pointers that you have to remember when asking for a reciprocal link exchange:

• Place a link to their website before you ask them to put a link on their website to your website.
• Be gentle.
• Make it as easy as possible for the webmaster to add the link. Provide the URL and the anchor text.
• Give them all the information they will ever need: links page, place of link, pagerank etc.

So, where to find these sites?

Be creative, that’s the keyword. Here are a few spots to get you going:

• Look around in your niche, what blogs or websites are you reading that covers the same subjects?
• Become friends with those webmasters and bloggers. Friends will help friends, right?
• Look on the sites of your competitors: who are linking to them? Find them and contact them.
• Look for sites that have already linked to a page on your website and ask them for a reciprocal link.

2. Social Media

This is the time of Social Media and I am sure many of you have an account on Digg, Delicious, Facebook or Twitter. Great. It’s time to make use of this social media to attract loads of visitors, but it also can be used to attract a number of great one-way links.
So, how does it work?

Hundreds, if not thousands of people in your niche are interested in your articles and content. The larger the number of people that read your article, the larger the number of influential bloggers and webmasters are amongst them. Those people might enjoy your article that much, that they start linking to them. Simply because your article is interesting to their visitors. That is social media.

How can I get that number of visitors from Social Media?

• If you run a company site: start a blog.
• Start writing articles about subjects in your niche.
• Try to fill up gabs that your ‘competitors’ didn’t fill.
• Write great headlines.
• Submit your content to the major social media sites and the ones that are in your niche.

Just remember, to get on the front page of the large social media sites is very hard. With submitting your article to the social media sites in your niche, you will reach the people that are interested in your article. The people that are looking for your content. If your article is good, they will vote for it and a few of them will link to you.

3. Directory Submission

In the past, directory submission was a great and important way to get a number of links pointing to your site. However, in this media age, the search engines are much more sophisticated. They won’t fall for that.

Adding your website to a number of high-quality directories however, can help you get better rankings. Make sure you search for the correct category that your website should fit in. Here are a number of directories that I feel are from a high-quality.

• Google Directory
• Yahoo! Directory
• Web World Index
• World Wide Wub
• The Directory Site

Adding your website to any of these directories makes your website more important in the eyes of the SE’s. Those directories are known for only publishing the best websites. If you get listed, you build your website on the reputation of that directories.

4. Guest Post on Popular Blogs

A popular blog in your niche has a large number of followers and visitors. You would like to reach this people because they are interested in your articles.

One way to reach those people is to write an article on that popular blog. When your request is honored, you let the people out there know you exists and that you have value to provide. In return, a link and a description of your website or blog is posted above or under the article. When that articles gets a PageRank (and with popular blogs, that usually happens pretty fast), you will get a quality one-way link to your website.

Also, don’t forget the number of visitors that will click your link when your article was interesting enough. It’ll get your name out.

5. Forum Signatures

If you are very passionate about your niche or subject, you already know that there are a number of great forums out there that discuss everything in your niche.

In many of these forums, you can use signature links. Sometimes these link are no-follow (which means the SE’s don’t value them for the search results), but sometimes they are normal do-follow links. If you are active in that forum and post in many conversations, more and more links from different conversations are pointing to your website. This is a good thing.
Where to find those Do-Follow forums?

Here is a small number of forums related to web design and media that allow do-follow links in forum signatures:

• Digital Point Forums
• Sitepoint Forums
• Webmaster Talk forums
• V7n forums

You can get more do-follow forums in this niche by visiting reading the “forums with link juice“-article.

If you are in a different niche and you wish to find do-follow forums, make sure you become active in a few forums and try it!

Any Suggestions?

As I am not the best Search Engine Optimizer there is, I am sure many of you have a lot more tips that work. I would be happy to hear them, because it will improve my own SEO-campaign, but it’ll also help the other readers.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

Figuring out the process of SEO can be quite a challenge. Knowing what you need to do and what work best and where to put your performance is a daunting task. So this is where I can help you out by providing 32 Google Ranking Optimization Tips. These were gathered from various sources and started with the Google Webmaster Guidelines. So lets get started.

1. Keywords In Your URL’s – First word is best, second is second best, etc. Use hyphens to seperate words.

2. Keywords In Your Domain Name – Ranks very well same as above using hyphens to separate words.

3. Keywords In Title Tags – Keyword in Title tag – close to beginning
Title tag 10 – 60 characters, no special characters.

4. Keywords In Description Meta Tag - No more than 200 chars long. Google no longer “relies” upon this tag, but will often use it.

5. Keywords In Keyword Meta Tag – Use less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.

6. Keyword Density in Body Text – 5 – 20% (all keywords/total words). Some report topic sensitivity – the keyword spamming threshold % varies with the topic.

7. Individual Keyword Density – 1 – 6% (each keyword/total words).

8. Keyword in H1, H2 and H3 Tags – Use Header font style tags appropriately. Limit to 1 or 2 per page.

9. Keyword Font Size – “Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis” – Matt Cutts July 2006

10. Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords) – Directly adjacent is best. Limit keywords so as to not get a negative for keyword stuffing.

11. Keyword Phrase Order – Does word order in the page match word order in the query?
Try to anticipate the search query, and match word order.

12. Keyword Prominence (how early in page/tag) – Can be important at top of page, in bold, in large font.

13. Keywords In Image Alt Tags – Should describe image message – Do NOT fill with spam
(Was part of Google Florida OOP – tripped a threshold – may still be in effect to some degree as a red flag, when summed with all other on-page optimization – total page optimization score – TPOS).

14. Keywords In Outgoing Links (anchor text) – Use title tags in links and keywords in link text.

15. Keywords In Internal Links – Same as above use keywords in title tags and link text.

16. Validate All Internal Links – Validate all links to all pages on site. Use a free link checker. I prefer to use this one by w3c.

17. Efficient Tree Like Navigation – TRY FOR two clicks to any page – no page deeper than 4 clicks.

18. Inter-Site Linking – Make sure you have appropriate linking to lower level sites so the spiders can find them easily.

19. Outgoing Links Should Be Relevant – Google patent - Link only to good sites. Do not link to link farms. CAREFUL – Links can and do go bad, resulting in site demotion. Unfortunately, you must devote the time necessary to police your outgoing links – they are your responsibility.

20. Outgoing Links Anchor Text – Google patent - Should be on topic, descriptive.

21. Link Stability Over Time – Google patent - Avoid “Link Churn” which basically means when one or more links provided by the document changes over time.

22. Less Than 100 Outgoing Links – Google says limit to 100, but normally accepts around 2000.

23. Domain Name Extension Top Level Domain – TLD – .gov sites seem to be the highest status, .edu sites seem to be given a high status, .org sites seem to be given a high status, .com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.

24. Page Load and File Size - Try not to exceed 100K page size (however, sometimes there isnt much you can do, such as with larger textual pages). Smaller files are preferred <40K.

25. Fresh Content – Google patent - How your site changes over time. Newer the better – if news, retail or auction! Google likes fresh pages. So do I.

26. Amount of Content Change – New pages – Ratio of old pages to new pages.

27. Freshness of Links - Google patent - May be good or bad. Excellent for high-trust sites. May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites.

28. Frequency of Updates – Frequent updates = frequent spidering = newer cache.

29. Keyword Stemming – Use plural and non plural keywords, use phrases and narrow terms.

30. Site Size – Google likes big sites. As do most search engines.

31. Age of Page vs. Age of Site - Age of page vs. age of other pages on site
Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition. Old is best. Old is Golden.

32. URL Length – Keep it minimized – use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE – less than 100 is good, less is even better just be sure to use keywords.

I hope this list can help you as much as it did myself. I have been researching SEO and optimization techniques for weeks now and found that this list is the best to follow in optimization for Google and other search engines that follow similar rule.

If you have more to add to this list or need help with optimizing your website feel free to comment or contact us.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

This post was written by DJ Francis at experiencematters.criticalmass.com we loved it so much we posted on our blog. We do not take credit in writing this post what so ever.

Former CMer David Armano wrote a popular post here in early 2008 entitled 10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive In A Recession. I encourage you to read it – its lessons remain salient today.

David’s post examined the opportunities offered to brands by a poor economic condition. And some marketers have caught on. But many still believe some common online marketing myths; an especially dangerous practice during a recession.

In the spirit of David’s post, here are 10 marketing myths de-bunked in order to thrive during the recession.

1. Things are stable now – I shouldn’t rock the boat.

The boat is already rocking – you just haven’t noticed yet.

Joseph Jaffe has this to say about marketers and risk:

“Instead of taking bold chances, we have become seduced by the promise of glory and reward that comes from sticking with the status quo. We have failed to manage risk. And in doing so, we have also failed to manage another unavoidable reality of our industry: change.”

Seth Godin adds that managing risk is not only our job as marketers, but part of the natural order of the industry. In his book Tribes, he writes that “[s]tability is an illusion…Today, the market wants change. The market demands change.”

Marketers must expect change – even plan for it. It is often the most exciting part of the job.

2. I’m Afraid.

How is this a marketing myth? Think of everything you hear around the office that translates into “I’m afraid.”

“Has the boss seen this?”

“Nobody’s done that before.”

“It’s risky.”

A lot of businesspeople hunker down during a recession, hoping they can just ride it out without creating too many problems. That’s actually more risky (and scary).

It’s OK to be afraid of new marketing tactics, but it’s not OK to allow that fear to stop you from taking risks. As General Eric Shinseki said: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

3. Forget [insert social media initiative] – we just need to sell our client’s stuff.

True, selling is important. It was the focus of my post last week: The Modern Agency Still Sells, Right? But social media marketing can help build trust and gain supporters.

Phil Dunn recommends five ways for you to use social media to increase sales, including prospecting, persuasion, closing, delivering value, and customer service. Keep your focus, but don’t discount the medium’s potential to increase sales, if done correctly.

4. We finished the website – now we’re done.

This is digital – you can go back and make changes. In fact, you should!

Compared to print, digital efforts are astoundingly inexpensive in alter. Armano calls it the Beta Economy (#1 on his list). As a marketer, it’s imperative that you check your web statistics, garner knowledge from them, and make changes based on this data.

Why spend so much on a website and ignore its optimization? We’re always in beta…always.

5. I’d be better off letting my competitors try [insert new marketing initiative] first. Then I can learn from their mistakes.

What you consider mistakes are actually learning opportunities. Sure, some missteps are more seriously, but consider the experience your opponent is gaining while you sit on the digital sidelines.

Expert commentary from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War explains the importance of being ahead of your opponent:

“Once war is declared, [the leader] will not waste precious time…with all great strategists, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte, the value of time – that is, being a little ahead of your opponent – has counted for more than either numerical superiority or the nicest calculations with regard to commissariat.”

Being first allows you to build up what Len Kendall describes as a sort of “giving storehouse.” His “Give/Take Ratio” post illustrates that subsequent market competitors will have to work much, much harder to earn trust than the early adopter.

6. Cutting our marketing and advertising budgets will help us squeak through the recession and end up stronger afterward. [If you're not thinking this, your clients might be.]

Henry Ford said, “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”

Think things have changed so much since Ford’s time? John A. Quelch, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School concurs:

“This is not the time to cut advertising. It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic time.”

‘Nuff said.

7. Focus groups are expensive, but it’s the only way to get customer information.

A recession is a great time to expand your online customer research because focus groups are simply too expensive. You can often garner just as useful information by observing customers and potential customers online.

David’s post discusses this as #7: Trade focus groups for digital ethnography.

“Social networks and search engines can be rich ethnography tools…before you slash that discovery phase, think about how digital can be used to find things about the behavior of your target.”

I would add web analytics to the mix. One of the best indicators of how your audience will respond to a message is to determine how they’ve responded in the past. Test headlines, ads, designs, and copy variations to determine the most effective tactics.

8. We don’t have anything to share with our customers. Besides, they don’t want to talk to us, anyway.

This is sometimes true. Not many people want to chat up the guy who makes their ball bearings.

But there are a lot more brands people want to interact with that aren’t making an effort yet. So what do you have to offer?

First, you’ve got access. If customers are interested in your product, it’s likely they would want to take a peek behind the curtain.

Second, you’ve got an experienced workforce with highly specialized knowledge. Employees frequently have the potential to be amazing brand representatives, given the proper encouragement.

9. I’m in a highly regulated industry…so I can’t do anything remotely risky.

Pew comes out with reports all the time verifying that Americans interested in their health are online (the latest is here); and heck, my health insurance company has a Twitter account. Chase Bank and others have even developed iPhone apps.

Even the stodgiest, most regulated industries – from health care to insurance to banking – are realizing that their customers are online…and they’d better join them or risk being left in the dust.

10. ROI is the only thing that matters.

ROI or “return on investment” is the ultimate metric. I’m not saying we should trash it.

But ROI is different in a web 2.0 world – especially one in a recession. Unlike direct marketing in days of old, customers take a more round-about path to purchase.

If you’re stuck on ROI, consider this slight twist. David Alston calls it the “return on ignoring“. From the post: “Exploring investment return for social media is valid and necessary within a business framework. But equally important is carefully assessing the price for not being involved.”

Can you afford to ignore channels where your customers are already discussing your product? Not likely.

Economic slowdowns are opportunities

I started thinking about this while writing my e-book: Marketing During A Recession: Economic Slowdowns Are Opportunities. It seems to me that this is the time when marketers should be pushing the envelope; yet, it seems like most aren’t.

Do you agree with the marketing myths listed here? How has your marketing changed during the recession? Click the title of this post to add any comments, we welcome them all.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

I was searching for more detailed reports when I came across a blog post from Useful Tools. Going over the review on W3Counter. I remember using the counter company back in the day but never thought I could get such up to the second results. Their web analytic data is quite amazing.

Some of their features include:

	See who’s online now, and follow their path through your site
	View a Live Visitor Map of your visitors as they arrive
	Learn what sites started linking to you today
	Discover what new search phrases are bringing you traffic

W3 Counter is an analytics tool that updates in real time. You can who’s looking at your website right this very second, where they are located geographically, and how they found your site. Once they leave, you get immediate access to their activity. You can also see which pages are getting the most views, who is referring your visitors to you and where visitors tend to land on your site. Additionally, you can track your Feedburner RSS stats. Another neat feature is the ability to label individual visitors and observe their behavior over time.

W3 Counter is simple to install-just cut and paste the tracker c0de. Or, if you are in WordPress, use the plug-in.  They have many different styles of badges and hit counters to add to your site. The user interface is kind of plain, but all of the information is laid out so that it’s easy to navigate and to understand.

Best of all, a basic account(missing some features, but still quite functional) for one website with under 5,000 page views a day is free. Paid accounts are $9.95 per month and include up to 1,000,000 page views as well as more advanced features like a live map that shows visitors as they enter and exit your site and the ability to label and track individual visitors.

W3 Counter is not the only company offering real-time stats. Other companies, such as Chartbeat, also update in real time.  Still, the free service is a great value and the information it provides is quite useful.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

I was recently reading some articles on cultural patterns and patterns in society and thought about consumer trends and patterns. I found an article on Yahoo called “Hot in recession: Cheaper wine, chocolate, Spam“. The article goes over the current wants of the consumer industry during this recession or “down turn” of the economy.

If you read the article, you’ll learn that the following products are “hot” which, although ambiguous, suggests they might be a good idea to target with your current related websites or a new website altogether.

- Chocolate
- Running shoes
- Cheap wine
- Gold coins
- Gardening seeds
- Tanning products
- Spam
- Dinty Moore stew and chili
- Condoms
- Dating
- Laxatives
- Pepto-Bismol and other stomach medicines
- Bike helmets
- Guns (because of Obama administration)

So with this list it’s almost impossible NOT to create a gun and laxatives website. I would recommend you read the entire article to get a feel for the psychological aspect behind these product increases. Learning these behavioral trends will help you predict future behaviors.

A head start can often be the difference between success and failure. Here are a couple sections in the Yahoo article that point this out:

“Consumers have trimmed household budgets and postponed buying cars, major appliances and other big-ticket items. Yet they still are willing to shell out for small indulgences and goods that make life more comfortable at home, where they are spending more time.”

“People are much more focused on their homes and their immediate happiness and they’re buying things that they can use themselves — seeds, fishing equipment. Lipstick and chocolate are small rewards that make you feel better.”

Keep in mind that these are recent trends and could not be next month. For example “gardening seeds” would make a great stand-alone website but by the time you’ve got your site built just to your specifications, planting season could be over. Remember the trends and notice consumer spending.

Get creative. Come up with an angle.  Personally I think that chocolate and cheap wine have the biggest upsides when all things are considered. But then again, I’m sure a lot of people might decide something else which means larger opportunities could be elsewhere.

As I end this I hope the information was helpful/interesting and don’t forget… always be on the lookout for great opportunities disguised as regular, every day information!

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

So you’ve freshly installed wordpress and you’re ready to put in the time and effort to make it a huge success.  A few steps go a very long way for the long term success of your blogging site.  Gathered from a variety of sources, here are the steps I now follow to optimize a fresh WordPress install:

1. Permalinks (Friendly URLs) – Not a plugin but adding the search engine friendly urls will help index your links with keywords people are searching for. Fortunately WordPress has built in permalinks under settings. I usually  choose the custom method and change it to /%category%/%postname%/

2. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. You can get the plugin here.

3. All in One SEO Pack – Hand’s down this optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines. You can change each page or post title, metatags, and more. You can download it here.

4. SEO Friendly Images – This is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

5. Ultimate Google Analytics -This plugin adds Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog without making any changes to your template. The plugin can also add tracking to outbound links, downloads from your own site and mailto: links. You can download it here.

6. Social Bookmarks -This plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites. You can download it here.

7. WP to Twitter – The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter. You can download it here.

8. WordPress 2 Ping.fm – Links and integrate your WordPress account to Ping.fm. Once linked, the plugin will update all your social networks every time you publish a post. You can customize the look of your pings, send custom pings, and set rules for which posts you want to notify your social networks about. You can download it here.

9. PodPress – This plugin adds tons of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast. You can download it here.

10. FeedBurner FeedSmith – The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well. You can download it here.

11. Robots Meta – This plugin provides many different optimization techniques to help in indexing specific pages or not indexing pages. Also can edit .htaccess file and robots.txt file. You can download it here.

12. Easy AdSense – This isnt much of an optimization plugin but it does work in sync with the rest of the plugins above. It provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. You can download it here.

With these 12 plugins you should be on your way to a more optimized blog. I hope these plugins help you as much as thay have me. If you need help with your WordPress blog don’t hesitate to call us.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

I came across another great article written by Spencer Spellmen of Tutorial Blog:

It’s no surprise that Twitter has quickly risen in popularity among social networks. Few national and local newscasts can go an episode without mentioning the powerful tool. It’s almost become a competition to see who can gain the most followers or who can follow the most celebrities.

As a blogger, there are many different ways you can promote your website through Twitter.Here are 5 ways to market your blog with Twitter.

1. Promote your blog posts.

Use your Twitter account to share posts with your followers. There’s several different Twitter applications available that will automatically update your Twitter status when you publish a blog post. The power of it comes when your followers then share/retweet your blog post to their followers.

2. Involve your followers.

Twitter ultimately comes down to interaction. You’re not going to get more page views by just telling your followers to check out your new post. Pose a question or target your followers in a way that will spark discussion. Engage your followers!

3. Put a Twitter app on your blog.

Many bloggers are very active on Twitter, yet much of their audience doesn’t know it because there’s no place to show it on their blog. Put a Twitter widget with recent Tweets or a link on your blog that points people to your profile.

4. Interact with other bloggers in your niche.

Although it may not seem relevant to promoting your blog, it’s important to network with other bloggers and even promote their work. The better relationship you have with fellow bloggers and the more you share their work, the more likely they’ll be to share yours.

5. Offer incentives to your Twitter followers.

Doing regular contests and giveaways are the easiest ways to get easy traffic to your blog. Giveaways and deals are one of the most shared types of tweets on Twitter and as long as you’re giving away something interesting, then you’re sure to get traffic to your blog.

Article Source – TutorialBlog.org – http://tutorialblog.org/5-ways-to-market-your-blog-with-twitter/

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

When you design an email these days it’s still quite far off from the browsers. There are still no standards for email presentation and designers are stuck using ancient coding techniques to create the best effective method. Using the following 9 tips should help you create a successful email blast until the standards are created.

Fortunately, there are people working to create standards. Email Standards Project is a website that is at the top of the list working towards establishing these standards. Launched in November, the Email Standards Project is an advocate of the establishment of common standards for emails, and is probably the closest thing there is to a regulating body in this field. The site even offers a helpful rating system of various email platforms based on its own acid test.

Let’s jump into these Tip’s.

1. Go back to HTML – Scrap everything you’ve learned in recent years about tableless CSS structures and revert back to the HTML that your grand parents grew up with (its an exaggeration, but I swear it’s been that long since I’ve used tables). Now forget about positioning divs with CSS and rely on table cells to lay out your content as many email readers will not render positioning properly or at all.
2. Use Inline Styles – Most major email readers, whether they’re online, like Gmail and Hotmail, or desktop applications, like Outlook and Thunderbird, will ignore everything between the <head></head> tags, including your styles (whether you do it via <link> or <style></style> tags). This means you should style your HTML using inline styles. Be careful though there are many CSS properties that will not render properly, for example the ‘position’ property. A detailed report on how various major email readers performed against an Acid Test (which tests a handful of common CSS properties) can be found here.
3. Don’t Use Background Images – Using background images has become an essential tool on the designer’s belt. However, there is such an inconsistency between browsers that will actually display background images that it’s best not to use them. As an Outlook 2007 user, I know as a fact that no background images are displayed (this is true for Gmail as well). On the other hand, readers like AOL Webmail and Windows Live Mail (not Hotmail) will render background images correctly. Since it’s too difficult to predict what reader your audience is using, your use of background images should only be for enhancement and not as something your design depends on.
4. Expect Your Images To Get Blocked – For security purposes, many email readers will block images embedded in an email by default. This is because email applications are trying to help you eliminate spam and block bad images as well as Trojans that embed themselves into images. Today’s reader must opt-in on each email to display the images (though some may allow readers to set their preference). What this means is that you should NOT rely on your images to communicate your message. Avoid replacing too much text with images and make sure your email design still gets the point across even when images are not displayed. Use ‘alt’ attribute to display the same information in your images.
5. Use ‘Alt’ Attribute In Images – To avoid completely losing the message on an image when images are blocked, fill out the ALT attribute for each of your images. This ensures that the important content from the image (i.e. the text) is still passed along. This also helps in cases where the reader is using a text-only email client, as the image will be replaced by the ALT attribute.
6. Always Use Absolute Paths – Make sure to use absolute paths when referencing images. Relative paths (i.e. /images/my-image.jpg) will break as the email reader won’t know what the path to the image file is. Your image paths should look like this instead: http://www.mywebsite.com/emails/images/my-image.jpg. This is so simple that it can often be accidentally overlooked so make sure to double check your image paths before you send out your email.
7. File Size Matters – Using large images in your email design will slow down the download process on the reader’s end and may deter them from reading it all together. In some cases, exceptionally large emails may also be flagged for spam and viruses. To minimize these risks, optimize your images so that they have the smallest possible file size. This may require you to play around with JPG, GIF, and PNG formats to see which gives the highest image quality with the smallest file size. Where possible, use plain text to communicate your message.
8. Avoid Using Rich Media and Forms – In a browser, using Flash, animated images, and forms extends interactivity to the user experience. In an email, it bulks up the file size, raises security flags, or just doesn’t work at all. If there are interactive components attached to your email campaign, you are far better off linking the reader to your website than to attempt to embed them into the email itself. It’s an extra step but at least you can be sure that your rich media and forms will work. Also you can track links to your website this way.
9. Design For Minimalistic Reading – Just like designing for a web browser, you need to be considerate of screen resolutions and window sizes. In addition to this, email readers often have added sidebars and navigation on both sides of where your email content is displayed, further decreasing the amount of space you have to work with. I say keep the width of your email design at least within 800px (we commonly use 750 px or 640 px).

If you are considering doing an email campaign let us help you keep it simple and effective. Contact Benzing Technologies Today! (866) 980-2369

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

When it comes down to evaluating your website you need to think on both sides of your brain. One (the right brain) is visual and processes information in an intuitive and simultaneous way, looking first at the whole picture then the details. The other (the left brain) is verbal and processes information in an analytical and sequential way, looking first at the pieces then putting them together to get the whole.

With both sides of your brain working you will see how they both can be used to evaluate your website. Let’s start with design and then point out some functionality and content tips.

DESIGN
1. Is it inviting and welcoming?
2. Is the purpose of the site clear? Is it obvious who owns this site?
3. Is the page attractive? Does the visitor want to explore the site further?
4. Can you find your way around the site?
5. Is it easy to find your way back to the home page?
6. Are the pages attractive on monitors set to various resolutions, on various browsers and on both Macs and PCs?

FUNCTIONALITY
1. Can various users (with various computer skills) interact with the site in the desired manner without assistance?
2. Is technology (menus, scripting, animations, bells and whistles) used to aid communication (as opposed to confusing the visitor)?
3. Do all the links work? Do pages download quickly?
4. Is there an over abundance of flash or scripting?

CONTENT
1. Is the content interesting and appropriate to the site’s mission?
2. Is information helpful and relevant to the topic?
3. Is the content fresh (not outdated)?
4. Is there too much content and not enough visual elements?
5. Does it contain essential information? (Mailing address, telephone numbers, home/search/contents/contact buttons, keyword-heavy text, organizational news, quick launch links)

All of these listed above are answered with a well designed website. You must create the best overall experience while being compatible with people who’s skills range from none to uber geek. Now we can’t accommodate everyone who visits your website either due to language barriers or technology hindrances. So you must first decide who your target market is and how to accommodate that market on your website. Keeping in mind different methods for different cultures.

Choosing the right design agency is also key as they understand the ways to attract your visitors and keep them coming back for more. But how do I know who the right design agency is? Well, ask them questions. The more education you have on what your looking for and your needs the easier it will be for both you and the design agency your working with. If they have trouble answering your questions or you get confused with their process then look elsewhere.

If you are on a tight budget or are unsure about getting a website then you must first decide if your ready to go online. Do you have a residual client base? do you need to be online? how do your clients notice you? these are all great inital questions you need to answer first. I don’t always agree with “You get what you pay for” but it does show its value when you choose the right design firm. Finding that fine line between affordable and functional.

If you have any questions or comments about this post please feel free to contact us.

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Benzing Web Design Marketing

When it comes down to it marketing yourself is a necessity. These days it’s an overstatement to keep yourself a float. But what methods work best for your company? Is internet marketing just as valuable as paper? I spent a little time investigating these questions and I found some interesting results. Online marketing sales are rising higher than print showing 92% over 88% print advertising. It definitely seems like the internet is a definable method of marketing. Check out the differences from our previous post “Online Advertising Tops The Charts“.

I recently succeeded in a facebook advertising campaign for our company and I must say it was a pleasant experience but didn’t pull the results I was looking for. Nor did a similar MySpace campaign. I have no doubt marketing takes time, as so many have said to me. Yet, there is probably nothing more critical for you to consider in this year than your organization’s branding.

What is the better, marketing online or print?

“The Web has become more of a prospecting tool, and print is what you send to those candidates who have leapt through the first qualification hoop.” says Anne Holland, with her article Print vs Online — Should Your Marketing Have the Same Content Online and Off?. I agree to what she says, The web has certainly opened many peoples eyes to explore information at an accelerated pace. Print advertising still has value in the physical aspect. There is no doubt I read my mail from my mailbox and my e-mails every thirty seconds. Which is where I see the value in online advertising compared to print.

Dennis Malaspina of Return Path says “Some say opposites attract, but email and postal are a match made in heaven. Both are direct media and both want to elicit a response from the intended audience.” he also agrees that the main difference is in the delivery. So why not use them together to bring a harmony of physical and virtual marketing. The objective would be to deliver your brand to the different types of people, some reading only paper and others eyes glued to the monitor. Today I see no difference in elders or youngsters who are involved in the technology outbreak. It’s here and only moving forward.

So to answer my question, should I market online or print? I choose both. The double whammy to my clients and potential clients. The real understanding of this post is in the effort you put towards it matters. Having a solid marketing plan and business plan will be the successful element in your company’s success. Being able to place a hat for passion and perseverance.

Benzing Web Design Marketing

Choosing a domain name for a new client is a difficult task. Domain names are the crux of a website’s existence. A bad name can create a negative impact on branding and the ability to strengthen the domain value. A good domain name is essentially priceless (tacky but true) in name, branding, ease of understanding, and catchiness.

This article piggybacks on another Smashing article but it stops short of domain extensions. Here, we are going to discuss generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), country top level domains (ccTLDs), new and exciting domain extensions for 2009, domain hacks, and internationalized domains.

Learning this will make you even more of an awesome designer or developer for clients. You need to think of a variety of domains and possibilities for new sites, as well as uniquely branding corporate websites with domain extensions. Domain names are not a lackluster industry, it is a hidden industry that is vital to the success and maintenance of the Internet.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• The Effective Strategy For Choosing Right Domain Names
• How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
• Domain Names: Tools, Articles and Resources

1. Boring Stuff First: Short Background Information

The birth of Domains

In 1983 the Domain Name System (DNS) was invented so people did not have to remember a long string of funny numbers. DNS inherits its structure from an even older systems but it was with the birth of the DNS that we are able to type in letters instead of numbers.

When domain names become fashionable, domains owners needed to control the rights of their domain names, and an administrative authority was necessary. Fifteen years later ICANN saw the day of light and its governing purpose is to coordinate all the unique domain names on the web today.

Current use of domain extensions

Today there are a few groups of domain extensions: gTLDs, ccTLDs, and the personal domains. The most well-known generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) is the .com, an international extension for everyone from large corporations to small personal websites. Being the most popular extension in the world, it is increasingly difficult to find a .com domain name. It has led to new and creative ways of setting up domain names. The .com will always be in demand but it is not as sought after than in the earlier years.

Other domain extensions that are frequently used on the web today are: .net, .org, .co.uk, .de, .fr and .it. As you can see, there is a healthy mix of both generic top-level domains (gTDL) and country code top-level domains (ccTLD) among many of the websites of today.

Registering a Domain Name

There are two alternatives to register a domain name: 1) via a web hosting provider, or 2) through a legitimate domain registrar. A registrar has the ability to manage gTLDs but not all ccTLDs. Each country decides which registrars that are allowed to sell its ccTLD; check the country’s domain website where country domains may be bought.

Fun facts about domain names:

1. All 3 letter possibilities are gone on .com
2. All 4 letter words are depleted on .com
3. The most popular registered domain name length is 11 characters
4. There are 255,000+ domain names that are 32 characters or longer
5. All of the top 10,000 family names are registered as a domain name
6. The most common letter to start a domain with is S
7. More than 270,000 domains contain the sequence SEX

2. gTLDs: Generic Top Level Domains

Generic TLDs are divided into three sets: unrestricted, sponsored and geographic. Unrestricted gTLDs can be registered by anyone who wants one. The core group consists of .com, .info, .net and .org. Sponsored gTLDs have been underwritten by an organization or private agency; .aero is an example for the air-transport industry. Geographic gTLDS are not common, only .cat and .asia exist today, but they are to be used in connection with a geographical, ethnic or cultural group.

List of gTLDs

The domains are marked as restricted or unrestricted. Registricted domain registers must meet certain conditions to receive such a domain; unrestricted is okay for anyone. For example, If you have clients that fall into hospitality or museum industries, you can help them obtain a restricted domain.

• .aero - air transportion; restricted
• .arpa - reserved by the Internet Architecture Board; restricted
• .asia - Asia-Pacific region; restricted
• .biz - business and commerical use
• .cat - Catalan language and culture
• .com - commerical, personal, or any use; unrestricted
• .coop - cooperatives; restricted to Co-Op organizations
• .edu - post-secondary educational institutions; United States only; restricted
• .gov - United States government orgs at the federal, state, and local levels; restricted
• .info - informational use; unrestricted
• .int - international organizations established by treaty; restricted
• .jobs - employment-related; restricted
• .mil - US military; restricted
• .mobi - mobile device based; restricted
• .museum – museums; restricted
• .name - individuals; unrestricted
• .net - originally for network infrastructures; today unrestricted
• .org - originally for organizations; today unrestricted
• .pro - professions; restricted
• .tel - services between telecom and the Internet; restricted
• .travel - travel agencies, airlines, hotels, tourism bureaus; restricted

Most major companies register a .com domain. But is it really necessary for your website? Well, a ccTLD does just fine if your target audience is in a specific country, otherwise it is advisable trying to find a .com domain. .com’s are also the most easy to understand for users and therefore good for branding purposes.

Pros of gTLDs:

• Suitable for an international market.
• There is a familiarity with .com which you will not find with any other extension.

Cons of gTLDs:

• Can be difficult to find a good and available gTLD.
• Will not rank as high as ccTLD’s when it come to regional searches. In Sweden, .se domains are more valued and trusted than a generic TLD.

3. ccTLDs: Country Top Level Domains

Depending on your site and its potential clientèle you might have thought about whether you should get a ccTLD or whether you should look elsewhere when seeking for a domain name. There is no set rule for how one should when it comes to ccTLD’s. One of the most influential countries in the world, the United States, hardly even uses its ccTLD .us.

Europe Union member countries also use the .com for sites mainly in English and country’s ccTLD for sites written in native languages. For example, if you have an Italian website with an Italian target audience, then the .it extension better choice. If the audience is international, a .com extension is preferred. Not all ccTLD’s are open for international registration, so investigate before you make a decision.

Pros of ccTLDs:

• There is more trust in ccTLDs
• The website will most likely rank better in that specific country (regional targeting)
• There will be more available domain names to choose between

Cons of ccTLDs:

• You may get lower search engine results in the United States and Anglophone markets. But this also depends on the location of the hosting server, geographic nature of inbound links, and if the content is in English.
• Some ccTLDs have restrictions regarding DNS providers.
• In extremely small markets, e.g. TT, the benefits are limiting. Unless its for domainhacking, a .com is better.
• Annual registration prices are usually higher with ccTLDs. A few countries offer free domains like .tk and .cx but it is not common.
• Commercial sites face more scrutiny that they comply with local laws.
• It is hard to manage a portfolio if you have domains with many providers.
• Payments for registration and renewals may be difficult; some DNS providers only accept wire transfers or Paypal. Incorporate those costs into domain renewals for your clients.

A Quick Look: The Top ccTLD Registries During the First Quarter of 2009

By the end of the first quarter of 2009 we had roughly 74 million ccTLD registrations which is an 18% increase compared to the same quarter in 2008. At the moment there are over 240 ccTLD extensions on the global market.

However, out of these 240 ccTLDs, the ten biggest (presented above) represent 64% of the total number of registrations. The .us domain grew fastest with a 12% increase quarter over quarter. Special promotions drove sales, especially in China. The Chinese ccTLD experienced its slowest growth in twelve quarters, with a four percent growth (can be attributed to both sales and recession). Overall, the 25 largest ccTLD’s experienced a substantial amount of growth from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009.

4. 2009 Domain Extensions Registrations

We are running out of good .coms (if you do not want to spend a fortune at auction, that is), which is the reason to look at alternative domain extensions. Many ccTLDs are now open for business internationally and more and more countries are looking to open their extension for international registration as well. It generates more revenues for the countries. Mexico will open theirextension to the public in fall 2009. Is “domain hacking” is the way of the future?

Mexico opens up to the public (.mx)

For the last 20 years it has been reserved for Mexican citizens only but people that like to invest in ccTLD might want to keep their eyes open after this summer. The current schedule known as sunrise and sunset periods:

Pre-Sunrise: Before March 1st, 2009: To participate in pre-registration phase of top-level .mxdomain names, you must already be registered under one of the other classifications (org.mx, com.mx, net.mx, edu.mx and gob.mx)

Sunrise: May 1st to July 31st, 2009: People already owning a domain name in any of the five sub-extensions will be allowed to register the same name under .mx. If two people have the same domain name, the one with proof of having the longest will get to keep it.

Waiting Period: August 1st to 31st 2009: Domain registers will go through everyone’s applications.

Landrush: September 1 – October 31, 2009: Anyone can register an available .mx domain during this period.

Cameroon Opens Registrations (.cm)

Not too many exciting things are happening with the Cameroon extension since few words end in ‘cm.’ Apart from being an abbreviation of centimeter, ‘cm’ may not the be best option for new hacks.

Sunrise period: June 15th to July 14th, 2009

Landrush Period: July 15th to 31st, 2009

Go Live period: August 1st , 2009

The Netherlands meets us half-way (.co.nl)

The Netherlands does not open up their .nl extension but the .co.nl extension just recently was opened up for international registries. It is not intended to replace the .nl extension but the “.co” could be attractive for people already using a ”.co.xx” address which means that it could be successfully used to attract business and visitors from for example the United Kingdom and India. The opening of the .co.nl was divided into three phases:

Grandfather: November 18th 2008 – 15th of January 2009: People holding an .nl domain were allowed to register the same domain with the new extension.

Sunrise: February 10th, 2009 – 10th of March 2009: Trademark holders had the opportunity apply for a domain on afirst come first served.

Landrush: March 17t to 31st, 2009 – open to all, priority will be based on lottery.Go Live: April 15th , 2009 onwards: .co.nl domains are open for everyone to register.

5. Domain Hacking: Get Really Creative

There’s a whole world of domain extensions you probably didn’t know about. Now, how do you use these extensions to your advantage?

Go domain hacking. No it’s not actually hacking someone’s domain name and stealing it. It’s the process of using real words but part of the word sits in the domain extension. One famous example is DesignM.ag. See the .ag? Their website is registered in Antigua and Barbuda.

Domain hacks find their extensions from the rainbow variety of ccTLDs. Again, you will need to check on the country registrar for information on how to register the domain and where it can be hosted.

Steps to take:

1. Create a name
   This is your chance to shine with a client if they are insistent on something extremely unique and interesting. Most ccTLDs allow for two letter domains (.com, .net, .org do not). The best example is ma.tt, the man behind Automattic/WordPress. You can try Xona, a popular domain hacking tool. I tried it out with WebHostingSearch and got some fun results; the best being the .ch extension.
2. Register with approved DNS providers
3. Brand like hell
   Because people most commonly understand .com and .net, getting people to remember a new domain extension and your domain name will be tricky. Part of using a domain hack is for branding, make sure that is stressed in all aspects of the new site.

Common list of domain extensions:

.ag – Antigua and Barbuda. Good for words ending in ‘ag.’

Examples: Designm.ag, Namet.ag

.me – Montenegro. Used for vanity sites or great with ‘me’ phrases.

Examples: Move.me, Search.me, Fa.me, David.me

.us – United States. Great ending for ‘ous’ ending words or using the word ‘us’ itself

Examples: Del.icio.us, Call.us, Email.us

.fm – Federated States of Micronesia. Used for FM radio stations. No words end in ‘fm’ so it’s domain extension really strong for online radios than anything else.

Examples: Last.fm

.gs – South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. Works with words ending in ‘gs.’

Examples: blo.gs, rankin.gs

.at – Austria. Popular as a ccTLD; used in phrases ending in ‘at’ or words with ‘at’ in it.

Examples: Losef.at, Bureaucr.at, IM.at

.it – Italy. Heavily used for Italian sites; used in phrases ending in ‘it’ or words with ‘it.’ Not very popular as an extension representing ‘information technology.’

Examples: Beat.it, Forget.it

.be – Belgium. Another popular country extension for local sites; works with phrases with ‘be’ ending; words that end with ‘be’

Examples: Tu.be, Ado.be, Bee.be

.to – Tonga. For phrases ending in ‘to’ or using the two letter word.

Examples: Go.to., Pin.to

Pros of Domain Hacks:

• Fun, creative way to express a domain name
• Opens up for a plethora of options compared to .com or .net names
• Becoming more popular; acceptance within the community is growing

Cons of Domain Hacks:

• Must be well branded.
• Needs to be promoted for people to understand a new name.
• International, English based sites may have harder time ranking in search results.
• Has SEO disadvantages. Search engines do not care about domain extensions. With Ma.tt, the SEO value is in “Ma” not “Matt.” You may lose traction when it comes to extremely competitive keywords if the phrase is domain hacked. For example if we turned WebHostingSearch.com into WebHostingSear.ch, we lose the value of “search.” Our domain will also be registered in Switzerland and can pose issues as mentioned above.

6. Internationalized Domain Name (IDN): Special Characters in Domains

Since we are covering everything related to domain names, the last type of example to show are the internationalized domain names, known as IDN. IDNs utilitze non ASCII characters in the domain name. Considering non English words use ä, ö, å, é, è and non-Latin scripted languages are entirely non ASCII, IDN is a way to create usable domain names. Here is an example of a Swedish website.

Swedish spelling: Västerås.se – This is how a native will spell the word.

IDN spelling: xn--vsters-buam.se – This is the ASCII translation the characters Ä and Å for those that use special characters.

Standard spelling: Vasteras.se – This would be the standard spelling if we were to remove the special characters Ä and Å and call them both A.

Notice how all three domains lead you to the same website. As Västerås is a large city in Sweden, it was a good idea to get both domain names in case people were not sure how to replace the Ä and Å into English.

Pros of IDNs:

• Having the IDN allows you to keep control of your brand/corporate identity.
• Easy to type in for native speakers.

Cons of IDNs:

• Not all email boxes or web browsers support non ASCII characters.
• Security issues: homograph spoofing. It is easy to take a real domain and create a spoof with different Unicode letters that are seemingly the same. For example the letter ‘a’ can be U+0061 (Latin ‘a’) or U+0430 (Cyrillic ‘a’). A visitor would never see the different in these letters while typing, thus creating a major security problem for websites.
• Most keyboards do not have special characters, so it can confuse visitors.

We hope this article enlightens your knowledge of the plethora of domains available today. Remember a great web designer deserves a great website name.

Further Resources

• List of TLD domains

Related posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• The Effective Strategy For Choosing Right Domain Names
• How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
• Domain Names: Tools, Articles and Resources

About the authors

Written by Preeti Pradhan and David Walsh of Web Hosting Search. WHS is a web hosting review site chock full of reviews and articles to help you make informed decisions about hosting and creating websites. You can also follow them on Twitter.

Benzing Web Design Marketing

When it comes down to your identity online many people often choose the wrong naming structure for their brand or identity online. The combination of strategy, imagination and good linguistic design practice. Not everyone has this ability and should definitely take this into consideration any time they wish to promote their business or brand online.

There are a few questions before you decide your domain name:

The first question is easy: Are you willing and able to spend lots of money on your domain name? If not, you can forget about a .com domain that’s a single real word, like Twitter.com or Amazon.com. They’re all registered, many by domain speculators, and buying one will cost a lot. You’ll need to look for a different kind of name. Real words on .net and .org domains are pretty hard to come by, too.

The other question is a strategic one and takes more thought: How do you plan to get traffic to your website? Answering this question can help you avoid a lot of confusion about what makes for a good name. Some views on this issue directly contradict others. For example, Rob Monster, CEO of Monster Venture Partners, believes that Google.com and Yahoo.com are “lousy domain names” and that podcast.com and slideshow.com are great ones. Marketing guru Seth Godin advises against real words like these and in favor of unique made-up names like Squidoo.com (his company).

Now should you have your domain name in mind…

How about some Fun Facts!

1. All 3 letter possibilities are gone on .com
2. All 4 letter words are depleted on .com
3. The most popular registered domain name length is 11 characters
4. There are 255,000+ domain names that are 32 characters or longer
5. All of the top 10,000 family names are registered as a domain name
6. The most common letter to start a domain with is S
7. More than 270,000 domains contain the sequence SEX

So now you know the facts, let’s think about choosing your name. This isn’t rocket science and you probably know you want your business or brand name in it somewhere. Don’t forget services or products you sell, they also make great domain names as people search for you online. If you domain name is already taken and not for sale then we have to think about alternatives to help you benefit in either branding yourself online or easy to remember phrases.

Let’s jump into some linguistics. FUN!

• Compound
  Example: YouTube
  Two whole words, often two nouns, stuck together. Don’t let anyone tell you that this kind of name is a “fad” and will go away. This has been the most common way to coin new English words as well as to create new names, and that’s unlikely to change in the next few hundred years.
• Phrase
  Example: Six Apart
  Words put together according to normal grammatical rules. Phrase names can be similar to compounds, but have a different pattern of syllabic emphasis. In compounds, the emphasis goes on the first word, the way we emphasize “white” in “the Whitehouse.” In phrases, the emphasis often goes on the second word, the way we emphasize “house” in “a white house.”
• Blend
  Examples: Microsoft, Farecast
  A blend combines a part of a word with another word or word part. The name Microsoft combines the “micro” part of “microcomputer” with the “soft” part of “software.” When blends involve a surprising overlap in sound between the two words, they’re a form of wordplay. Farecast is like that. It combines the words “fare” and “forecast,” and “fare” resembles the first syllable of “forecast.” When you create this kind of blend, be sure to avoid awkwordplay: don’t pile up consonants in ugly ways (like in the name Syncplicity), and don’t use important words to replace syllables that aren’t emphasized (the way the names Mapufacture and Carticipate do).
• Tweaked word
  Examples: Flickr, Zune
  Sometimes you can find a good domain name that’s basically a real word, but changed in some small way. It might have a modified spelling, like Flickr, or it might have a changed or added sound, like Zune (from “tune”) and iPhone.
• Affixed word
  Example: Friendster
  Some names are new words created by sticking a prefix or suffix onto an existing word. Friendster, for example, is “friend” with the suffix -ster attached. Biznik is “biz” with the Yiddish-derived suffix -nik (as in “beatnik”).
• Made-up name
  Examples: Etsy, Odeo
  Sometimes you can find a name that is, or seems to be, completely made up. For example, Etsy is an online hand-made goods marketplace, and Odeo is an online music website.

So we’ve figured out when building a name out of pieces, be sure that both pieces contribute something interesting. The name WidgetThing fails in this respect. LiftPort, the name of a company that wants to build an elevator to outer space, is not much better. The words “lift” and “port” have very similar meanings; both relate to moving things around. Neither relates to what makes this company really exciting, outer space.

Some great resources to find words is Visual Dictionary or Visual Thesaurus both of these resources should show you visually what would be a good match of words.

With all this understood, you found the words your looking to go with, now one last thing to think about is online advertising and how designing your domain name for SEO Ranking is important. For most search engines, having the same search term in the domain name, title, and meta tags will rank better than those with limited relevant words.

I hope this article was informative for when you choose to purchase a domain name. If you would like to purcahse a new domain for $10.99 let us help you. Click Here

Benzing Web Design Marketing

The present world surely belongs to the world of marketing and advertising. The business that can make better sales in this world is the one that has more visibility in the market. There are various ways and means of getting more visibility and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are the most reliable methods to do so. PPC is one of the best and effective tools of SEM for getting more business in the dot com world. However, PPC is an acronym of Pay Per Click advertising must be undertaken only when there certain prerequisites are fulfilled by your business.

Why PPC Advertising?

Well, the answer for this is pretty simple the aim of any business is to make profit and PPC advertising helps in it. This is how it helps:

• Firstly, it helps in getting you a top position on the search engine without even having top ranks on the search engine. The sponsored links are the ones that are using PPC Advertising and they are generally placed on top of the results that are shown for your search.
• Secondly, it helps in establishing brand name for your company. For instance, suppose if you search for jobs in specific area or just in general yet the sponsored links will show you the names of the companies involving in job placements. This establishes your company name and reputation as a reliable portal for finding jobs. Hence, it enables you to build a brand image in the online market.
• Thirdly, you can have instant business on the preferred keyword. Since the website registered for PPC is displayed on the top disregarding your site’s page rank, while searching a specific keyword, it helps in making more business.

When To Go For PPC Advertising?

As mentioned earlier, that a business should go for PPC only if it fulfills several pre-requisites. So, let’s take a look at when is you business fit for going for this advertising tool.

• If your venture is fresh and you wish to have immediate business or wish to gain quick leads, then PPC advertising is ideal for you.
• If you have a venture that is seasonal, for example, a gift articles shop, then you can consider going for PPC advertising during the Christmas time. This is beneficial as your site might not be high ranking but because of PPC you gain instant visibility and therefore, business.

You should carry on with PPC advertising only if you have enough advertising budget. Therefore, one primary thing to keep in mind while going for PPC should be ROI (Return on Investment). This is a must otherwise there is no point in spending more on advertising than the actual income you are making through your business.

ARTICLE SOURCE  – PLAVEB – http://www.plaveb.com/blog/why-and-when-to-go-for-ppc-advertising/

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