Archive for the ‘web development’ Category
Why you Should Hire a Denver Internet Marketing Firm
Not everyone is going to be an expert at every aspect of Internet Marketing and Web Development. There are so many facets and niches within the industry, it takes a substantial amount of time and effort to stay abreast of the newest trends and techniques. So, when considering your Denver Internet Marketing plan, you want to take full advantage of the Web, and specific benefits that only experts can provide. Many different skills are required in order to integrate your business within the Internet so that you are fully visible and accessible to your target market. In order to achieve and maintain a significant Internet presence, it is crucial to hire a team of people capable of an array of Internet Marketing techniques.
denver internet marketing,denver SEO,denver web development
Denver Web Development is absolutely key in helping to produce awareness, traffic, and sales for your company or product. Just like traditional marketing campaigns, there are many specific skills required to be effective in your Denver Internet Marketing plan. These skills include but are not limited to link building, web design, Denver search-engine-optimization, HTML writing, blogging, and social networking. Techniques and trends are constantly changing as well, and it is important to utilize the experience and knowledge of a Denver SEO Firm or Internet Marketing Company.
It is important to set goals, and plan a complete strategy for building a valuable website and increasing the traffic to that website. In addition to a clear website with substantial, valid content, you need to drive the site to towards the top of search engine results for targeted keywords. This intricate, time-consuming process is called search-engine-optimization, or SEO. A good internet marketing company will also handle Denver SEO for your business. It is best to let experts execute SEO for you, because the ranking algorithms and industry trends are constantly evolving and changing. A Denver SEO Company will keep up with the pulse of the industry, staying on top of all the new tips and tricks.
Denver Internet Marketing is paramount to staying on the cutting edge of any industry. Create a strong, reliable Internet presence while at the same time being highly visible on local and global search engines. Customize your plan to cater to your target audience, increasing your chances for sales, leads, and referrals. The days of Yellow Pages are over, and you need to keep your business ahead of the curve by working with a Denver Internet Marketing Firm. No matter what your industry, help yourself and take the right step towards a successful future.
Using Google Analytics to Track your Site’s Traffic
What good is a marketing tool if you cannot track its effects? A website is not one of those marketing pieces that you use to just create awareness of your companies existence. A website correctly marketed online will bring in leads and direct prospective clients to your business’s location. If not marketed online, it’s more of an electronic business card that people can check out once they know about you. Regardless how you use your website, you need to be able to see how many visitors it is getting and more importantly how they found you, how long they were on your site and what pages they visited. By using the free analytics tool provided by Google, you are able to see these things and much more!
The first thing you should do to make it easy on yourself is sign up for a Google or Gmail account if you do not already have one. By doing this you allow yourself access to all of the great free tools Google has available such as Google Analytics. After signing up and logging into your Gmail account, search for “Google analytics“and locate the tool. Once there, you will find the directions for adding a site to the Analytics tool. An important aspect of using Google Analytics is putting the tracking code on every page of your website. This way it will allow you to get a real indication of which pages your searchers like visiting and what pages they do not visit often. You can then try to either create more exposure to those pages or add more to the page that would attract more traffic.
Once you have added analytics to your website it will immediately start recording your website traffic’s tendencies such as pages visited, time on the site and whether or not the visitor is new to your website or not. Obviously when you first start out, every visitor will be a new one but after a few days your percentage of new visitors will start to drop. A good percentage of new visitors is anywhere above 85%. The idea is to keep driving new traffic to your website but making sure your website is useful enough to bring back those who have already been there.
There are many features of Google Analytics that can benefit your search engine optimization campaign. The Google algorithm used for ranking sites for example includes many of the aspects that analytics will show you including bounce rate, length of time on the site & the referring sites you are getting traffic you get. These are all important things to keep track of to help you with increasing your ranking on Google. You want a low bounce rate or to limit the number of people who leave your site in 30 seconds or less, you want to keep visitors on you site as long as possible and also increase the number of referred traffic coming to your site.
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It’s important to use a third party tracking system for your website reports so someone does not have the ability to create “false numbers”. Google analytics is a great third party reporting system that we use for all of our search engine optimization clients. Whether you are working on your own website or you have someone else doing your internet marketing, Google analytics is a great tool! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nicolas_Hantge |
Do You Really Need A Website Designer?
By: Cade Lee
Most of the sites we have worked on that have been built by “website designers” are not effectively producing leads for that business. We have seen some of the most beautiful websites but without traffic and without new customers what good are they? Your online business should be another source of income and customers. If you trust the right people to work with your website designer than you might have a shot of obtaining both.
Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. Website designers are very useful if their services are used in the correct capacity. Most web designers do not have a clue how to build a website that is developed to convert traffic or drive floods of traffic to the site; most developers that I have talked with would agree. Usually web designers are focused on aesthetics, navigation, look and feel and not placement in the search engines.
So why do you have a website?
Most business owners that I speak with have a website so that they can develop more online business. When I say this, what I mean is they are looking for more prospects or customers online. They definitely want to see some type of return from their website as most of them have spent a small fortune on developing the site to begin with. So if that is the case for you, it is probably best to make certain that the web designer you are working with owns a successful online business and knows also how to run it. They should be able to show you some successful online campaigns that they have led and give you references for their work. Simply showing you websites that they have built is not enough. I know that you want a “pretty” site
but I am certain it is more important that you are able to develop new customers from your site, right? It only stands to reason that your website designer should have the same experience that would deliver the results you are looking to achieve yourself!
Your website is your business online!
Sure it is nice to have a charming storefront, one that customers constantly compliment. Does it bring in cash flow? Is your office, store, garage or retail space built for sales?
These are the same types of questions that you should be asking yourself about your website. Your website is not there to win awards or compliments, you are building this website to make money and build customer relationships. Even if you have the lowest prices online and are providing more services than your nearest competitor, it is the website that attracts more traffic that wins more prospects and customers. Being the best at marketing your product and services is really all that matters at the end of the day. Stop reading this right now, hop on Google and check it out. Use a search term that a customer would use to find your business. If you don’t know what they would type in, go to Google’s free adwords keyword tool and locate a search term related to your business or service. (To locate Google’s free keyword tool simply search for “adwords keyword tool” in Google)
Now, after you have located a popular search term for your business, search it! Open the first “organic” result that you see (by organic, I do not mean any of the “sponsored links” or local listings next to the map), what do you think of your competition’s website? Is it the prettiest site you have seen? Is it the “coolest” site you have ever been too? If I was to place a wager on it, my guess is that it is none of the above. Probably a very average looking site at best, yet all of your prospective customers are coming here first.
Marketing online is not like you’re off-line marketing
On every website project I have ever been a part of it seems that somebody always has a problem with a font that we have chosen or an image that we had used. While branding is extremely important and the look and feel of your website is important as well, it is important to remember that all of the communication tools and techniques that you use in the real world are very different than what works online. Whatever type of marketing you are doing in the real world may be a complete and utter failure online. This is why it is so critical to work with an online marketing agency or consultant who has experience with successful websites. When I state successful, I mean websites that have a proven track record of traffic and generating leads. Usually these types of individuals know what works best for traffic conversion and online marketing. For example, online marketing absolutely requires you to know how to get your site ranked extremely high in search engines like Google and Yahoo so that you organically show up on the first page for customers that are searching for your product or services.
Most website designers and businesses do not know SEO or search engine optimization. If a business owner does know and understand how to optimize their own website; they usually do not have the time to implement all of the tactics and techniques used by a search engine optimization professional to make the campaign successful. It is imperative for any online business to have both an optimized presence as well as a strong marketing campaign online! This means that not only should the site be optimized for search engine optimization but there must be a campaign put in place for search engine marketing.
If you are looking to market online, only work with Internet marketing firms that know website and online marketing
I know it’s a simple statement but probably 97% of web design companies do not know how to create websites that actually market your products and services. Often times when we are talking with prospective customers about search engine optimization they refer to their experience with the larger corporations that have handled their pay per click campaigns and even their “search engine optimization campaigns”. You absolutely must work with people that know how to create “high traffic” websites that can “convert”. A sales representative from one of the larger advertising directories doesn’t usually have knowledge of SEO. Usually he/she can regurgitate whatever pitch their sales manager gave them that morning and sure it sounds good, but will the team behind him/her be able to deliver the product that you were promised? Usually they cannot deliver the results that were originally promised or they are able to show minimal results compared to a firm or company that is dedicated to internet marketing. Internet marketing takes a great deal of time and cannot happen overnight. You’ll need to work with a team that can make it possible for you to have an online revenue stream. These people must have real world experience as well as online experience that can combine your website into a practical functioning marketing machine for your business! The best combination would be a search engine optimization professional that has sales and marketing experience or a marketing company that has proven search engine optimization experience.
If you are attempting to perform search engine optimization or search engine marketing without a professional, that would be very similar to representing yourself in court if you are not a lawyer or building your own house if you are not a general contractor. Granted, I’m certain that you could learn any one of these trades but it is probably best if you focused on the strengths you have in your business rather than trying to focus all of your time and energy on staying up to date with Internet marketing. The most successful businesses and business leaders have developed a team of experts and surrounded themselves with experience.
Lastly, MEASURE THE RESULTS!
It doesn’t matter whether or not you are advertising in the Yellow Pages, newspapers, local trade magazines, or a bulletin board near your office! You will always, always want to measure the success of any marketing campaign to validate its effect on business. It is never a surprise for us to see a prospective client that has absolutely no idea about the amount of traffic they get on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. Usually they do not know where they get the traffic from, how long visitors are on their website, or what keywords brought them to their site to begin with. You should always pay attention to your key performance indicators for your online strategy and if your web developer has not shown you how to monitor the results of your website, you might want to consider working with a different developer.
At the end of the day, a website developer is absolutely needed to help you with your website; however, they are usually best at working with code, graphics and overall look and feel. An internet marketing professional is what will help you take your online business to the next level. Either a professional search engine marketing firm or agency will help you establish a marketing plan for your site so that you can start to see results from your presence online.
Keyword Analysis
Written Oct. 28, 2008
By Cade Lee
Keywords are absolutely “key” to getting a good page rank on Google or any other “crawler” type search engine. When I say “crawler” search engine, what I mean is a search engine that literally crawls the internet and indexes or records those websites in a central database. A “crawler” website like Google will actually analyze the keywords in the “meta” tags.
Often times when I review websites, I will see the same pattern from site to site and to me that would suggest that a keyword analysis was never completed nor considered when the site was created. Most web designers will not complete a keyword analysis nor will they consider the marketability of a website as they are designing it. Web designers most often consider the aesthetics, the look and feel and navigation of the site. All of the considerations above are critical for the end user, but for Google it is not as important.
As a matter of fact, there are two things that need to be considered when developing a website. First is the compatibility of that website with Google, and second is the site’s “user friendliness” with the end user which of course is the prospect or “searcher” that you are trying to reach. More often than not the order of these is switched and the end user is considered way before Google or any other search engine. I can understand the logic of most graphic designers and web designers, but my argument is that a website does not mean much if it is not in front of the user it was designed for. Unless you plan on spending a huge amount of your budget marketing your website through old mediums (magazine advertising, trade shows, etc.) than the very first thing that needs to be considered is your target audience and the search terms they will use to find services like yours.
Keyword analysis as suggested previously is hardly ever considered when the website is being built. Most of the sites that I review do have “meta tags” for keywords within the site, and there are still several sites that have no keywords or Meta tags for keywords at all. Let’s use a pawn shop example. In searching for “Denver pawn shop” I come up with www.fastcashpawn.com as the first result. The following is their Meta tag:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”pawn, Colorado pawn shops, Denver Pawn, fast, cash, loan, pawnbrokers, pawnshop, jewelry Colfax Pawn shop,, fast cash, lender, Denver pawnshops, pawns, loans, jewelry, money loans, moneylender, hock, Federal Heights pawn, money lenders, Lakewood pawnshop, Aurora Pawn, Parker Pawn, pawn brokers, eBay, loans, Edgewater pawn, Quebec St Pawn, Larimer St Pawn, Thorton Pawnbrokers, Parker Pawnbroker, North Fderal Pawn, Jewelry, money lenders”>
They have used keywords that are a little more user friendly, or more used than other keyword metatags that I see. For example the combination of “Denver pawn” instead of “Denver, pawn”. When Google last indexed this site, the googlebot recorded “Denver pawn” as a keyword not “Denver” and then “pawn”. Ultimately if this site had used “Denver, Pawn” as keywords in the meta tag than they would be back further in the search results and not the very first listing, at least that has been my experience in the sites I have worked on.
Let’s look at another example, “Denver real estate”. This is a highly used search term, notice that I am not using “Denver” or “real” or “real estate” or just plain “estate” as none of these search terms would more than likely yield the results I am after. I am mainly interested in finding homes for sale as the prospective searcher, and I am looking for homes for sale in Denver. The very first result is www.denverrealestateonline.com. Here is the Meta tag for the keywords on the landing page for that site:
<meta NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Denver real estate, Highlands Ranch Real Estate, Metro Denver Real Estate and Homes, Cherry Creek, Greenwood Village real estate, Lone Tree real estate, Centennial real estate, Littleton real estate, Englewood Colorado real estate, Cherry Hills Real Estate, Parker CO real estate, Bill Kosena, luxury homes and real estate, homes, residential real estate, relocation Denver homes, property search, mls, Realtor Bill Kosena, Denver homes for sale”>
Notice how the webmaster has used their keywords. They have not used “Denver, real, estate” those are literally three different search terms. Please understand that I am not saying that using keywords as referenced in the above example will not work, but it is probably an excellent way to insure that you will be on page 2, 3 or even 100 of the Google search performed by your prospective customer. Using the same search term, “Denver real estate”, I found www.jaylarsonrealty.com on page four. This site is buried in the back where no customer will typically go. Here is the meta tag for Jay’s site:
<META NAME=”keywords” CONTENT=”Home, Homes, Houses, Real Estate, Realtor, Agent, Broker, Relocation, Moving, Greenwood Village, Lone Tree Real Estate, Cherry Hills Real Estate, Cherry Hills homes for sale, Centennial Homes for sale, Bear Creek Village Lakewood Colorado, Bow Mar, Littleton, Englewood, Old Englewood, Brookhaven Lane, One Cherry Lane, Taylln’s Reach, South East Aurora, Pradera, Falling Water Condominums, Jay Larson, Jay Larson Remax, Jay Larson Remax Classic, Jay D. Larson, Relocating to Denver, Relocating to Colorado, Moving to Denver, Moving to Littleton, Moving to Lone Tree, Moving to Highlands Ranch, Highlands Ranch homes for sale, Heritage Hills, Heritage Estates, The Pinery, Parker Homes”>
He has actually used a meta tag and he is within the first 100 results, so they are doing something right. However, if you look at the search terms, you will see the usual. All the neighborhoods are broken up and so, instead of completing any research on the most often used search terms it would seem they have just compiled a list of “make sense” keywords and used those.
Keyword research should be the very first consideration when designing a website for search engine optimization, and the second consideration should be the usability of that website by the end user. A couple of tools that can be utilized in finding the correct keywords for your website are:
1. Google keywords: you can find this tool by simply entering the term “Keywords” into the Google search engine. Here you will be able to enter a myriad of different keywords and actually see the search volume for the previous month as well as the search volume monthly average.
2. Ask your clients how they found you through the Internet. Odds are pretty good that they will not remember the exact search term; however, they will have some ideas that you may have not thought of. For example, in the case of our realtor above that is listed on page 4 of the Google search “Denver real estate”, he or his webmaster has used his name as a keyword for the website. Most new clients that don’t know this realtor by name would never use his name as a major search term when looking for real estate in the Denver metro area.
3. Friends and family are a fantastic resource to use when developing a keyword list. Often times I find myself asking my girlfriend which search terms she would use when searching for various services such as “carpet cleaning”. Whenever I am asking for her advice, I make certain not to give her too much information so that I do not corrupt her subliminal mindset.
For more information on keyword research or assistance in developing a core keyword list, contact Iniquitous at info@thisisiniquitous.com. Iniquitous is a search engine optimization and Internet marketing company located in Denver, Colorado. They have completed many successful campaigns for many local Denver businesses with a national demographic. If you are looking for search engine optimization Denver or outside of Denver, you can call on Iniquitous for a free evaluation. Iniquitous offers professional search engine optimization coaching as well as a monthly search engine optimization subscription for their services.