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Online Advertising

July 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

While print and TV ads aren’t going to disappear anytime soon, they are starting to take a backseat to online advertising. Although a great marketing campaign will rarely be completely free, Internet promotions, if done right, offer much more value for the same, or a lower, cost.

Every marketer’s goal is to go viral. You can rarely accomplish this goal by throwing money at it; in fact, the cheapest productions tend to have the best success rate. If you can create something that’s truly innovative, engaging, and maybe even a little shocking, you won’t have to spend another dime as the Internet community itself creates enough buzz to get your piece featured on every news station across the country.

Another great trend in online advertising is localizing the focus of the ad campaign. Many users are relying on localized search engines like Canada 411 to find companies in their area with which to do to do business. By making sure your website can be easily found on this type of site, you simply use your promotional material on your own pages and eliminate the need to pay huge fees to Google and other online advertising providers.

Direct email campaigns are another effective form of online advertising. Because you know this customer is already interested in your product, a targeted strategy often delivers the best results at the lowest price.

By combining online advertising with traditional marketing strategies, you can get the most for your money and drive your sales to record levels. How will you start your online ad campaign?

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For Optimum SEO Results, Start With Your URL.

May 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

So you have come up with a clever name for your business and have secured the domain name so you can set up a great website to represent your venture. You have spent hours or days building your website with tons of information and samples and lots of ways to place an order or contact you for services. But how will your website be found?

Don’t Set Yourself Up To Spend Money

In today’s virtual world, we are inundated with domain names, usernames, twitter handles, Facebook aliases and more. It’s not easy to just be found. If you don’t do something proactive, your website may never be found. The best way to be found is still through the search engines. Since Google is the biggest, you want to make sure your website gets a high page ranking after being indexed.

Or you can participate in pay-per-click, banner ads or other costly campaigns. But if you want to hold on to your money, you can take a
different approach.

What’s In a Name?
Know Your Keywords.

The first step is to determine the most popular keywords that can be searched to lead to your website. Once you know those keywords, the best thing to do is to establish a domain name that incorporates those very same keywords. This is a great way to increase your page rankings in the shortest time possible.

Then follow up with SEO throughout all of your content pages. This will reinforce the indexing and help your site to rise even further.

Research up front and get the right domain name. This could be the key to your success.

Filed Under: Internet, Website Tagged With: , ,

Popular Online Scams to Watch Out For

January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Dating Sites

Some of these scammers create phony profiles on dating sites, profess a quick love or will drag it out for a couple months, sometimes even discuss wedding plans, and then all the sudden, they are out of the country and need money for an emergency, generally followed by another emergency, and then at some point, they are done taking from you and you never hear from them again.

Foreign Lottery

You may get an email saying you won the lottery in Africa, and all they need is a bunch of personal information from you, and possibly some money, to close the deal.

Make Money on Ebay, Google, or Other At-Home Opportunities

We have the secret to making lots of money on the internet. Janet has made over x amount of dollars in just the last year alone working part time behind her computer. If you want to learn how, please follow a series of clicks that do not answer any questions you may have on the subject and eventually send money or sign a contract promising to make monthly fees.

Credit Cards

You may get an email about a credit card. All the bank needs is for you to fill out this application. Once approved, you immediately have an account with a $300 limit of which $265 was already billed for first-time fees, annual fee, and a monthly fee. Even if you close your account without ever using the card, you still owe that money.

In addition, they may not even be a bank whether using a phony name or using a famous one with a similar logo, and they then use your personal information from your application for identity theft.

Protect Yourself

Protect yourself from these scams by being aware, safe-guarding your personal information, and researching people before doing business with them. Never send money to someone you don’t know.

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Googler: Heal Thyself

December 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The old adage used to be “physician: heal thyself”. Now it has become “googler: heal thyself”. With the proliferation of more and more websites dedicated to medicine and general health more and more people are looking to the internet when suffering from an ailment not to their doctors. Is this really a turn for the better?

A few weeks ago I was suffering from a urinary tract infection. I was prescribed antibiotics for the infection which worked well in the beginning but after a while the antibiotics seemed to make me itchy and they made my face flush. It turns out I was having an allergic reaction to sulfur, one of the components in the medication. I figured this out by perusing WebMd and some other health related sites on the internet. I cofirmed my diagnosis by instant messaging some pharmacist friends of mine on Facebook. Luckily, as soon as I stopped taking the medication the itchiness and facial redness went away.

The internet worked for me, but I wonder is this really the best way to diagnose and treat oneself? Should I have just called my doctor? I’m sure that if things had not gone as well for me I would have regretted not making that phone call. Yet with insurance premiums skyrocketing and doctors spending less and less time with their patients the internet is really becoming a viable option.

Medical information is available on the internet 24 hours a day and it is totally free making it very appealing to those with a sick child in the middle of the night or a wierd rash on a Sunday. The problem is that although this information is 100% free it is not 100% reliable. Although there are many reputable sites out there, such as Webmd, there are just as many site filled with quackery. So when looking to the web for medical information Buyer Beware!

Filed Under: Computers, Internet Tagged With:

Creating Relevant Content: Internet Business

November 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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There is – in your most certain of opinions – no service that can match the one you provide. Your online business offers far more than the common attempts at products, the typical ideals. Your web design is unique and none can even try to challenge it. But such a challenge has become unnecessary: while you may be among the happy few that can claim a genuine brilliance, you are also one of the many who are unable to share that brilliance due to a lack of customer awareness. Search engines do not recognize you. Keywords (though accurate) are limiting. And your content provides a too narrow focus, a too precise scope.

You are not reaching potential consumers. You are instead feeling the strain of computers.

And it is because of this that creating relevant secondary content is so important. You cannot define yourself to one specific service. This is will keep you hidden from the world, unable to be found by those who could need you most. You must instead fill your site with information that is related to what you do and what you offer – this will become invaluable to generating traffic.

Simply explained: the more content a certain site has, the more search engines are able to track it. Keywords beyond your carefully chosen few can be discovered, rocketing your position to the top. You will no longer be forced to a tiny corner of the Internet, restricted by your own perfectionism. You will instead have a broader appeal – which enables you to be found by far more clients.

This is not to be an excuse of random information and an unnecessary prose, however. You are not to simply stuff your site with irrelevant content, hoping to snatch the interests of idle consumers. All words must be logical. They are to reflect the purpose of your product and help to suggest similar services. This establishes trust and encourages a reputation.

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Filed Under: Computers, Domain Names, Internet, Web hosting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Picking the Perfect Domain Name

October 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Whether you plan to have an ecommerce website or plan to work with all the top affiliate programs that you can find, having a good domain name is a very important step to making your website successful. There are many mistakes that people make when they decide on a domain name, but if you follow these do’s and don’ts, you should be able to find a great domain name for your business.

Do:

Think of something short, sweet, and to the point.

Use a keyword phase or product type in your domain.

Purchase at least the .com version of your domain name. More is fine, less is not.

Spell everything correctly. If you use words like you and are, spell them out.

Don’t:

Use letters in your domain name; for example, stuff4you.com.

Use hyphens. Putting a dash in your domain name is asking for it to be forgotten.

Purchase the .net, .us, .info, etc. version of your domain name if possible.

Each of these points is there for a specific reason. One of the most important things to understand is that you want to do everything possible to make sure that a visitor remembers your domain name. You want them returning to your site and not accidentally going to another. The best way to ensure this is to make your domain name memorable and easy to key in, as well as spelled in a common fashion. You also want to make sure that you have a domain name that has something to do with your site. Using a name that means nothing, like thingsforyou.com, will make it difficult to remember.

At times, choosing a domain name can be a frustrating process simply because the names that you want may have already been taken. Do not get discouraged. With a little bit of creativity and some effort, you will find the perfect domain name.

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Filed Under: Computers, Domain Names, Internet Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Creating an Attractive Website

October 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Network Solutions is smoking something with th...
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Sometimes Less is More

Making a website is both easy and hard – easy because there is almost no limit to the tools, resources, and help to do it – hard because there are so many bells and whistles you can throw on a website that you don’t know what to do with them all. You can have pop-up windows, flashing text, jumping animations, and strobe lights all on your webpage, and some peopel do. However, unless you’re trying to make a visitor to your website have a seizure and / or hit the ‘back’ button on their browswer within a nanosecond, you should do what the experts say works about a website: Keep it simple and easy to use.

Simplicity and Functionality

A simple website without lots of graphics and distraction has been the way that sites like Google and Craigslist became incredibly popular; people go to a website for specific purpose, and want to get straight on with business. If your website hosts pretty pictures, then make it simple to go through the pictures. Make them easy to view, meaning fast. You can give thumbnail images so that someone can choose to load a larger picture. But if you are not running a site that focuses on visuals and images, then you barely need more than text to run it. Craigslist for example only has images that users load themselves; everything else is insanely-fast loading text.

Domain Name and Web Hosting

Your domain name is something that you should think about before you even consider the look of your website. The domain name is important because it will stand as the primary descriptor of your site once your domain is catalogued by the major search engines. You can purchase a domain name for under ten dollars these days, and the annual fee is about the same. Web hosting is a bit more expensive, but that is largely based on the amount of traffic to your site. If you have a site that loads quickly – it doesn’t send a lot of data to load – your web hosting fees will be cheaper.

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Filed Under: Domain Names, Internet Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Typos Costing Half a Billion Dollars a Year

September 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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How Much Can a Typo Cost You?

Everyone who’s ever used a keyboard has made a typo – hitting the ‘y’ key instead of the ‘u,’ for example. Users of devices such as mobiles make twenty times as many typos as keyboard users, since the keys and screen are smaller. When people are typing URLs – website addresses – their typos actually cost the website owners, since a typo can send an unwitting consumer to a competitor’s website, and the website the user intended to visit never got the sale. This side effect of typos created while searching for web addresses even spawned a mini-industry called ‘typosquatting.’

Typosquatting

Typosquatting is a practice wherein a person registers a domain name that correlates with a likely typo for a popular product or website. For example, if a website is called ‘hotboots,’ a typosquatter could buy the domain name of ‘hotbots,’ and instead of making a website, he would just have paid links to other websites competing with the ‘hotboots’ website. He could take a few variations on typos of hotboots. Or, if hotboots was a .com website, he could take the .net domain, and possibly get a good stream of users seeking the .com, and never getting it.

Typosquatting for Profit

Typosquatting can be profitable in the sense that someone is reaping the rewards of millions of slight mistakes committed by people seeking a commodity or product that has spent millions of dollars getting their attention. Google has recently estimated that typos cost online vendors half a billion dollars a year. Typosquatters sometimes hold their typo domain names for ransom, only selling them when a large sum is offered by the owners of the original website. They also make money linking to competitors websites. However, typosquatting has moved out of the gray zone of quasi-legality, and there are now legal precedents and laws that deal with typosquatting cases. Typosquatting is considered a form of cybersquatting, and it is addressed in the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999. This law has helped settle numerous lawsuits, however, many other still go unresolved.

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Filed Under: Domain Names, Web hosting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Web Presence Mandatory for Business Startups

September 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON - JUNE 9: Google Chairman and CEO ...
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The Necessity of Being on the Internet

Experts are now saying that it’s more important for a small business startup to have a web presence – a website and email – than it is to have a phone or being in the telephone book. The Internet is now the primary means of consumers in the US to look for and find products and services. There are still a few mom and pop stores in the country that don’t have a web presence, but their business base was developed and fully established before the turn of the century, and they still rely on the best form of marketing: word of mouth. But for any startup in the 21st Century, having a website is a minimum standard.

How Customers Search for Your Product

The basic way that the majority of consumers now seek out their needs is through a web search via a search engine site such as Google. This is true even for consumers who are looking to find a local store where they can go and shop; web presence is not just mandatory for web-based retailers, but for any retailer, no matter how localized their goods and services. Studies show that over 97% percent of potential customers under the age of 30, who, when initially researching a potential point of sale, will turn to the Internet instead of a phone directory or asking friends. You have to have a website these days if you want potential customers to find you.

Getting Yourself Online

The best way to get your business online is by registering your business name as a top-level domain. For example, if you sell boots in Little Rock, then littlerockboots.com would be a good domain name for you to purchase. You then make your website at that address. This way, anyone who types the words in your domain name into a search engine will have a high probability of being directed to your site, where they’ll instantly see your address, phone number, and hours of operation. Even if you don’t sell a single product online, having a web presence is mandatory.

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