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Archive for the ‘Wprogram’ Category
Reflecting on The Past, and Preparing for a Successful 2011
Marcy Zuendel | December 9th, 2010
As 2010 comes to a close, there is no better time than now to plan for the future ahead. The best way to ensure profitable marketing in 2011, is to reflect on the successes and failures of the past. To begin, take a look at the Marketing strategies you have implemented over the past year, and make note of what has worked for you and what hasn’t. For your successful initiatives consider increasing their budgets or testing new opportunities within their realm. For your not so successful strategies, consider ways of optimizing their performance or shifting those budgets elsewhere. Next, be sure to take a look at what your competitors are doing and if there are areas in which you need to expand your marketing to stay competitive. This past month, SEMPO released its annual State of Search Engine Marketing Report which documents projected search marketing trends. While some of the facts are not surprising, others might give you some insight of what your competitors may be doing and if you are late in the game to join these tactics. One not so surprising statistic was the projected growth of the search engine marketing industry in North America, from $14.6 billion in 2009 to an estimated $16.6 billion in 2010. The growth of this industry is astounding, and if you are not already involved in one or several search engine marketing campaigns, it is a must for your 2011 marketing plan. SEMPO also reported that on average companies expected to Continue reading…
SEO Tools & Tactics, From A Beginner’s Perspective Onward
Kevin Burns | November 9th, 2010
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should be present in every website’s effort to be more relevant online, but too often it falls by the waist side. A few typical reasons why this happens is because people do not have the time, money or the know how to achieve a substantial SEO campaign. This article will walk you through a handful of free SEO tactics that only require an hour to set up and a small amount of time to maintain. As the year-end nears, make it a goal to complete some of these basics, so that you can check it off your 2010 to-do list and have a great start to 2011. Also you don’t need to be an expert to start on SEO, but if your business ‘depends’ on it, we recommend hiring a professional. 1. Back to the basics This initial information is basic but essential for various search engines to find your website. Once a site’s design is complete go into the HTML code and give each page a unique and accurate title so search engines can recognize the content. If all of your pages have the same title your audience could be directed to the wrong page. The key is to do basic optimization whenever you post anything at all, rather than leaving it until later. Just think ‘search’ when creating content and you won’t have to worry about it later on. News outlets teach their teams SEO on the fly, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to Continue reading…
Three Lessons To Help You Master The Corporate Blogging Challenge
Amanda Moshier | August 18th, 2010
The company blog. In the beginning, it sounds like a great idea. “We’ll put a face to our name, connect with our customers, share our expertise, and we’ll have fun doing it!” Not to mention the online branding and SEO benefits that come with active blogging. Then reality sets in. “We don’t have any writers on staff. All our writers are busy. We need more structure. Is anyone reading this thing? How is our traffic? Why are we doing this again?” If you are having a tougher time than expected keeping your corporate blog updated regularly, you are not alone. We struggled to figure out the best way to manage our own blog, but with a little unconventional thinking and some good, old-fashioned hard work, running the blog became easier and now, the blog pretty much runs itself. To help you master the corporate blogging challenge, we’ve decided to share three lessons we learned while revamping our own blog, The Wpromoter. Lesson #1: Two (or Five) Hands Are Better Than One When we started The Wpromoter, we planned to use one writer to blog three to five times per week and extend an open invitation to anyone else who wanted to contribute. It didn’t work. Turned out the writer who was expected to update the blog had other work to do, and the assumption that each blog would take only one or two hours max was inaccurate. No one will deny it’s possible to bang out a post in an Continue reading…
4 Worthwhile Ways to Successfully Leverage Social Media
Mike Mothner | July 16th, 2010
According to a recent study on social media and dating behavior, more than one in six marriages over the past three years were the result of relationships begun online. In 2010, the rising popularity of social networks like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter simply cannot be ignored. When people are turning to the Internet to find their soul mates, you can rest assured they are looking online for everything else – from their next pair of Oakley’s to their new optometrist – and if you are a business seeking customers, you are well-advised to look online, too. All in all, social media is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. But don’t just take my word for it. Nielsen recently published a study stating that 79% of Fortune 100 companies are leveraging social media to engage their audience, and they are doing it in innovative ways to build buzz, establish relationships, foster communication, improve products, and cultivate long-term brand awareness and consumer trust. The beauty of social media Whether you’re a seasoned producer of award-winning viral campaigns or just figuring out how to create a Facebook profile, it doesn’t matter. The beauty of social media is that you don’t need experience; you only need to learn the rules. Social media is not so much a new idea as it is a new way to communicate ideas, and the nature of a good idea hasn’t changed. The same marketing principles from 50 years ago apply today; they are simply communicated in a Continue reading…
5 Secrets to Selecting Highly Effective SEO and PPC Keywords
Mike Mothner | June 2nd, 2010
If there is a single concept that is the driver of much of the internet’s growth over the past decade – not to mention nearly all of Google’s $25 Billion of annual revenue – it is the concept of keywords. Keywords are what we type in when we are searching for products, services and answers on the search engines, an act that Americans performed 15.5 Billion times in April 2010 (according to ComScore). For businesses, the implications are huge; keyword selection is fundamental to success in paid search (PPC), organic website rankings (SEO), as well as the holy grail of marketing: how to most effectively market your products and services to your target audience. Do our customers love our product because it is fast acting or because it is long lasting? Do they care more about the great price or the abundant features? The answers very well may lie in the keyword research and strategies below, the same strategies that we use to help our clients, from the local dry cleaner to Fortune 100 companies, with all of their online marketing efforts. 1. Pick good “keyphrases” rather than “keywords” When it comes to search engine marketing, there may be no larger misnomer, no more archaic term than the ubiquitous “keyword”. I propose an official migration to the more accurate term “keyphrase”, but for now I will be forced to accept reality. My frustration with this term is that it quite simply implies a single word, which is rarely the strategy Continue reading…
Tags: Google, PPC, SEO, Wprogram, wprogram feature article
Posted in PPC, SEO, Wprogram | 2 Comments
Is your brand’s Google ranking top of mind? If it isn’t, it should be; there is quite a bit at stake. In fact, in a thought-provoking article titled “Meet the Brands Hiding on Google”, Advertising Age identifies just how much is up for grabs by evaluating the organic search presence of five branded websites, four with which we’ll bet money you are likely already familiar. The brands evaluated are Home Depot, Tiffany, Harry & David, 1-800-Flowers and CDW, and if you have yet to hear of the last name in that list of five, you are not alone; the b2b IT retailer boasts marginal brand awareness. Still, nothing about the list of brands itself surprises. All five are easily digestible. The article’s findings, however, which point out supposed failures of brands like Harry & David to rank for incredibly generic search terms like “gift,” are what may raise an eyebrow or two, at least to those who define a brand via its website ranking. It is hard to believe, after all, a lifestyle brand of such import, one synonymous with quality and refinement, could fall short at search engine optimization. We shudder at the thought. Ok, let’s get serious. We think the AdAge article missed the mark. We know there is more to a brand than its Google ranking and likely more to Harry & David’s “oversight” than meets the eye. We also know the value of establishing a credible online presence and believe in the proven power of search Continue reading…
