Archive for SEO – Page 5

Posted by DBC Digital on
 November 11, 2011

Five Easy Pieces to Optimizing Your Website for Inbound Marketing

Are you hesitating to begin your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) improvement project for your website?  Lots of Denver clients hesitate when it comes to optimizing their site for Inbound Marketing because they aren’t sure what it means, what they should do and what outcomes to expect.

The most important thing to know about SEO is that the majority of your website traffic is coming from search engines (mostly Google, Yahoo and Bing) so you need to ask yourself if you can you really afford NOT to optimize your website to attract more search traffic?

SEO can usually be done very easily on most websites in a matter of a few weeks.  It always involves five essential steps — none of which require a degree in engineering, and all of which are easy to understand.

 

Here’s how to optimize your website in Five basic steps:

1.  Do “keyword” research to uncover what search words your prospects are using

Every SEO project should start here.  You are looking for three things:

■Which keywords are your visitors searching for? Your website analytics can tell you (or your web programmer).

■Which of those keywords have a reasonable level of search volume, combined with a lower level of competition?  Simply look at each page on your website and identify the best potential keywords for each.

(Google has several free tools to help you determine what the best keywords can be, and will help you focus in on those keywords that searchers are actually typing into Google.)

■Which keyword searches don’t yield a lot of “page one” (first page of search results) choices for what you’re offering?  Type in to Google some of the keywords you have identified for your site, and see what results come back.  In some instances, there will be very little local competition for those keywords — opportunity for you!

 

2.  Optimize your Website Page URLs.

Choose one or two of your best keyword phrases to focus on for each page of your website.  For each page, create a new page URL (your programmer will know what this is, or give us a call and we’ll help) that incorporates the most important keyword phrase for that page.  Separate all words in the page URL with hyphens, and try to keep the page URL to 3 to 5 words.

 

3.  Create “301 Permanent Redirects” from Any Old or Duplicate Web Pages.

This is really important!  Google does not like duplicate content and will ding you for it.  An easy way to see if you have any duplicate content is to create a list of any of your old page URLs that you are no longer using, and include any other page URLs that contain duplicate content.  For each old or duplicate page URL, identify the new page URL to permanently redirect that traffic from.

Have your programmer create these 301 Permanent Redirects.  Using a redirect will preserve the value of any incoming links to those old pages –but only when your programmer creates a 301 permanent redirect page-by-page (not just redirecting the entire domain name).

 

 4.  Optimize “Page Title,” “Meta Description,” “H1 Headline,” “H2 Subheadings”, and “Body Text”

Once you have selected one or two keyword phrases to focus on for each page of your website, here’s how to optimize each website page:

A. Place your primary keyword phrase in the early part of your Page Title and in the Meta Description.  Your programmer can easily do this for you, or you may be able to do this if your website has a Content Management System (CMS) as a part of your site.

B. Put your most important keyword phrases in the early part of your main (H1) headline on each page.  Have you programmer code one main headline on each page as an “h1″ headline.  Use your keyword phrases early in subheadings on the page as well.  Ask your programmer to code your subheads as “h2.”

C. Incorporate your most important keyword early in your first sentence, and then a few additional times throughout the page, including in the last sentence on the page.

 

5.  Create Links between your Individual Web Pages

Create links within your text to other related web pages on your site.  Be sure that the link appears on “anchor text” that contains keywords for the page you’re linking to.

That’s it!  Five simple steps that you and your programmer can accompish in a short period of time.

Are there other SEO elements that you consider to be basic steps to optimize a website?  Please leave a comment on what you would add to this post!

 

Not sure where to start?  If you need some help optimizing your site, give us a call at (303) 357-5757.

Categories : SEO
Posted by DBC Digital on
 November 2, 2011

What Other Arrows are in Your Quiver besides Inbound Marketing?

What About the Other Arrows in the Quiver, Mr. Hood?

As you know, dbc is a marketing company that supports all aspects of Denver-area businesses marketing efforts.  We focus a lot of our time supporting Inbound Marketing strategies for our clients.

But, in these days of website banner ads, Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and Internet-based marketing options, we’ve noticed that some long-established, but “un-sexy” marketing methods may have been over-looked recently to the possible detriment of the savvy marketer.

Direct mail isn’t always thought of as a valuable contribution to a company’s digital marketing campaigns, but if used correctly, this method can not only be a viable advertising avenue, but also contribute to the business’s online advertising success.

Direct mail can add value that is often overlooked by business owners. There are some general rules about direct mail marketing that marketers need to keep in mind to keep their pieces from being thrown away, but if the guidelines are followed, these pieces can provide benefits that aren’t available to Internet-only marketers.

Best Practices

Direct mail marketing works best when it’s highly targeted and ties into a complete marketing campaign. Fortunately, those are two things direct-mail does very well. There are some great suggestions in the market for direct mail marketing, but the primary advantage is that direct mail allows its clients to tailor the pieces to specific demographics in local communities.

For instance, new advances in technology allow businesses to adjust their design and copy to match different target audiences in the same print run. Providing a clear “call to action” as well as pointing the recipients to the marketers’ website and social media accounts gives the recipient a clear direction in which to proceed.   Businesses that utilize direct mail marketing are always collecting information on the parts of their campaigns that do best and are always adjusting their strategy to improve response rates.

Benefits

  • If used properly, direct mail marketing campaigns can last anywhere from several months to a year or more, keeping your former and potential customers informed and encouraging them to engage with the you.
  • Reconnecting with past customers allows a business to provide coupons or updates on additional services and profitable upsells. Contests and promotions can lead to recipients trying out your company’s services for the first time, giving your company the opportunity to generate new, loyal customers.
  • Additionally, a physical piece of mail can make an advertising message more tangible for the customer and can include a gift cards that can generate more brand loyalty.
  • Direct mail doesn’t get stuck in the “Spam” box.  And, if you have targeted your list correctly, your recipients won’t consider your piece to be spam anyway!
  • Direct mail marketing campaigns can provide some great benefits to businesses if used properly. Providing a clear message, call to action and tying together all the company’s active marketing campaigns can engage your customers and keep you at top-of-mind.

The possibilities for direct mail marketing are nearly limitless and, when combined with its laser-precise targeting capabilities, can be used to entice new customers or retain current ones.

If you haven’t considered a direct mail campaign lately, now may be the time.  Give us a call at (303) 357-5757.

Have we missed any other benefits to direct-mail marketing in this blog?  Please add your thoughts!

 

Categories : INTERNET MARKETING, SEO, WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
Posted by DBC Digital on
 October 25, 2011

Inbound Marketing Lead Gen: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!

Here are Six Tips to Use to Increase Your Leads

While there seems to be some good news hidden among the economic hurdles in the economy, generating quality leads in today’s market is still a challenge.

Here are six quick tips for Denver-based businesses to help you reach a broader market of your targeted prospects and increase your leads.

 

  1. It’s a game of inches.  The fact is there are no silver bullets in today’s lead generation.  You need to do a lot of little things right.  Once you find a lead, you need to keep nurturing them through follow-up emails and Calls-To-Actions until they become a client.
  2. Fact: You will get tired of your message before your target market even hears it.  Believe it or not, marketers get bored easily.  The tendency is to want to change your message every week, and somehow make it more interesting.  Resist the urge to keep yourself interested in your message and give your message time to work its way into the market.  Stay on your core messages over and over again in everything you do.
  3. Your prospects can’t buy if they don’t know who you are.  Amazingly, this point is often overlooked.  It doesn’t matter how good, fast or inexpensive your products/services are if your target has never heard of you.  Focus on this simple truth and make sure you are working on getting “found.”
  4. Pretend you are a Search Engine algorithm.  No matter what your line of business, your market is looking for you on the Web.  Everything you do to generate leads needs to be asked with: “Will this activity improve my search engine page rankings?” If not, reconsider spending money or time on it.
  5. You must be fully engaged in Social Media.  This is no longer an optional item for successful lead generation.  A vibrant, robust social program centered on a focused strategy will pay for itself many times over.
  6. Don’t require your prospects to make a big leap.  Some products/services are harder to describe quickly.  It may be easy to sell beer because everyone knows what it is.  Saying “less filling” is not a hard concept for the client to grasp.  On the other hand, trying to sell server virtualization is not so easy.  While marketers may want to say “less filling” for everything, unless your market already knows what you are talking about, and how it can solve their problems, your pitch will fall on deaf ears.

 

Do you have other suggestions or ideas to share with the group?

Let us know and we’ll publish a follow-up with credits to you.

 

Feeling a little overwhelmed with too much to do and haven’t made a dent in your marketing strategy?  We can help.  Give us a call at (303) 357-5757.

 

Categories : BRANDING, INTERNET MARKETING, SEO
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