As part of your ongoing effort to increase your website’s visitors stats, it is important to include your business to Google Local. If anything, it helps your current customers find you quickly after typing your company name, but it is FREE! Be sure you include all of your locations.
Here is how:
Read the rest of this entry »
It amazes me but it shouldn’t. The internet continues to grow by leaps and bounds and I don’t mean just by shear numbers. 73% of all American adults are on the internet now. (http://www.pewinternet.org). Many of these online adults are expressing how important it is for them to be connected. How the “internet has greatly improved their ability to shop.”
This is an important distinction to remember when building your website. Is your website allowing these savvy shoppers find what they need quickly? Your navigation should be clear and concise with no more than 2 clicks to get to the product or service of their choice.
35% of these adults are also saying that the internet is helping them do their jobs better. If you sell your product or service business to business, are you making it easier for them to contact you? Does your website give them the right resources like some frequently asked questions, product reviews, knowledge-base, job announcements?
But let’s not forget the group of people that don’t use the internet as much. According to the Pew Internet data, there a those , 17% who only use the internet several times a week, say that the internet has helped them do their jobs. Again, make sure that your website reflects a clear navigation and common sense content to ensure your target market knows what to do next when they come to your website.
Internet penetration has reached high levels. Many businesses refuse to acknowledge the need for a website at all. This may be the case for the rare few business segments, but not for the business owner wanting to reach the widest target audience.
We use the 3 major search engine webmaster tools. We won’t hide this from you and don’t try assume that we’ve got special, secret gear. We use these tools because they are there for a reason but it means a bit of manual effort to review your website based on what the Search Engine see. Each SE has their own algorithm but they are useful.
From these pages, we register your website by uploading robots.txt and, if needed, a sitemap file. Below are the online tools that you can review yourself.
Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster
Some rules to get your website listed. Note: these are not steps to get listed the top 10 search results.
Other notable ideas:
If you are at all interested in making sure your customers can find you on the internet or on the road, make sure you remember your listing within Google Local. It is often overlooked but is still very important to your online marketing efforts. Beyond search engine strategies like pay-per-click, optimization, and off-line efforts, your listing in Google local can be quite helpful.
To the left is a screenshot of my Google Local listing when searching “web designers richmond tx.” Because I have two phone numbers listed I show twice.
Which brings me to my next reminder, take some time and check your Google Local listing. Then claim your listing by clicking the “Edit this Listing” at the footer of the detailed page. Follow the instructions to validate your listing using a mail post or phone call.
For search engine optimization, one of the primary edits I will make is to make sure that each web page has its own headline using the <h1> and <h2>
Google and Yahoo! likes to see that you have labeled your page using these tags. They are part of the indexing algorithm and any text within these tags get a little extra weight. Be sure to use your chosen key words within the title naturally. It makes no sense to have more than one <h1> on a page for instance.
There are conflicting predictions on how SEM spending will grow. According to JP Morgan, they predict that growth in US paid search ad revenue (currently the largest segment of US online ad spending) would fall to 31.9% in 2008, down from 36.8% in 2007. Unlike JP Morgan, eMarketer expects growth in US online ad spending growth to rise slightly in 2008.
“David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, predicts that online ad spending will grow by 28.5% in 2008, compared with 26.8% in 2007. eMarketer also projects that US spending on paid search advertising will increase by 27.5% in 2008, compared with 26.8% in 2007.”
eMarketer predicts a growth in online ad spending, specifically pay-per-click. They see it reach its peak growth in 2008 with 27.5% increase. It then dips in 2009 to 17.6% until in 2011 to 11.3%. Other online spending areas included video, referrals, classifieds, display ads, sponsorships, and email. All peak this year and suddenly drop next year and continue.
I believe this shows the SEM industry is leveling and normalizing.
But, hold on there, ZenithOptimedia predicts a much sunnier horizon. They are predicting record growth. They are saying…
I don’t agree with the first and last predictions, as Google has added their new advertising segment within adWords, advertising on the radio and print. I do agree with item #2 but still believe that the spending will normalize over the next couple of years as interest in quick-results advertising and conversely frustration over managing it grows.
1. Google has the largest market share of U.S. based web searches at 64.49%
2. Yahoo is second with a market share of 21.65%
3. MSN is third with a market share of 7.42%
4. Ask is fourth with a market share of 4.76%
“Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending Oct. 27, 2007, Sept. 29, 2007, Oct. 28, 2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.”
Source: Hitwise – Dominance continues with a six percent increase over last year.
Top 5 Search Engines in the United States (The Majors) by Rank
Our Twits© 2010 GlobalSpex, Inc.Privacy Policy|Terms of Service
