Google’s advertising platform, Google Adwords, is the magic behind Google’s targeted advertising. Adwords is Google’s advertising service. It allows you to advertise on Google and its affiliates using the Pay Per Click system, meaning that you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. PPC allows you to control who you target your ads to as well as how much you spend on ads.

Google Adwords – Where do they appear?

Google Adwords ads can appear in a few different places on the search results page. You can see ads in the “Sponsored Links” section to the right of the general search results. Ads can also appear above the search results. These ads, not surprisingly, have a higher click rate than those in the Sponsored Links section.

Adwords Keyword Tool – How do I choose the keywords I want to target?

Adwords is so effective because of the Adwords Keyword Tool, which analyzes keywords to discover what Google users search for most. The Keyword Tool allows you to figure out what search terms are most relevant to your business. It tells you how many times per month people search for terms and the term’s competitiveness. Competitiveness is based on monthly searches and on the number of people trying to optimize for that term. The higher the competitiveness, the less likely you will be able to rank using that term.

The Keyword Tool is accessible to anyone, but can also be used once you have an ad campaign set up with Google. This set-up allows you to monitor the keywords you use and edit them if necessary.

Google Placement Tool – How can you further target your ads?

Adwords also allows you to target your ads using the Placement Tool. The Placement Tool allows advertisers to target their ads to searchers based on a searcher’s characteristics. Advertisers can choose up to three categories to target their ads to including: age, gender, income, and location. By allowing control over what demographic groups you can target, the Placement Tool helps you to make sure the right people see your ad. If the ad is relevant to the user, they are much more likely to click on it. By utilizing the Placement Tool, you reduce your per click expense while increasing the chances that your ideal customer finds you.

Want to make the most of your online marketing efforts? Contact Incitrio at 858.202.1822 to get an honest review of your current efforts and to get brand-specific strategies proven effective in today’s online marketing jungle. We are an award winning, full-service marketing firm focused on client success in Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Email Marketing and Web Design.

Most people have heard of Pay Per Click, or PPC, but not everyone knows how to make it work for their ad campaign. If done incorrectly, PPC campaigns can cost you a lot of money and still produce minimal results.

Pay Per Click Strategy – What is PPC?

PPC is how Google charges you for the ads you purchase. As an advertiser, you “bid” on what you want to pay for a click on your ad. If a search term is a popular and profitable one, then Google will most likely ask for higher bids (some terms can cost as much as $22/click). If you bid the highest, you have a better chance of ranking number 1 in the sponsored results column where the ads appear. When your ad appears and someone clicks on it, you are charged what you bid. It’s kind of like the online version of a silent auction.

PPC Campaigns – How can you make the most of your PPC campaign?

It’s important to be strategic in your PPC campaigns. To keep costs low and results high, make sure to avoid broad search terms. Google’s Adword Keyword Tool tells you how competitive a search term is. Competitiveness is based on how many people search globally (around the world) and locally (in the U.S.) as well as how many other people are trying to optimize for that term. A highly competitive search term is harder to rank within, while a medium or low competitive search term makes it easier for your ad to rank.

It might seem counterintuitive to target a more obscure search term with less searches per month, but targeting lower competitive search terms increases the chances that the right people will see your ad and click on it. While the ad may not reach as many people, the people it does reach are more likely to find your ad relevant. So, before investing in a PPC campaign, it’s important to do keyword research to see what relevant terms are low to medium competitiveness so that you can structure your strategy.

Pay Per Click Campaigns – How you can beat out the competition

Beating out the competition is all about creativity. For example, the search term “t-shirt printing” is highly competitive, with 450,000 global searches and 201,000 local searches per month. But, the search term “t-shirt printing store” only has 1,600 global searches and 590 local searches a month. So, investing in a pay per click campaign for “t-shirt printing store” would improve the chances that your ad is seen by the right people while decreasing your costs. Because the term is less competitive, you will pay less per click while increasing your chances of converting customers.

Stay tuned for more articles in our Demystifying Google series.

Want to make the most of your online marketing efforts? Contact Incitrio at 858.202.1822 to get an honest review of your current efforts and to get brand-specific strategies proven effective in today’s online marketing jungle. We are an award winning, full-service marketing firm focused on client success in Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Email Marketing and Web Design.

Look out billboards and flyers. Online advertising is edging you out and it looks like it’s here to stay. We all know that print media is going the way of the dinosaurs and Jay Leno’s ratings. In today’s world, online advertising beats out print advertising in almost every sense. Online ads are now reaching more people in more locations than ever before, and for a lot less money than a traditional print ad campaign. Online ad sales continue to increase every year, with $63.4 billion spent on online ads in 2010. As of December 2011, 5 companies accounted for $40.4 billion (64%) of all online ad spending.

Guess which single company controls 45% of all worldwide online ad spending? That’s right, Google, the Goliath of the Internet world. Yahoo, Microsoft/Bing, AOL, and Facebook combined account for just 17% of online ad spending. So what makes Google’s advertising so appealing to companies that spend money on online ads?

Google Advertising – Why is Google on Top?

Google crushes the Search Engine competition. Bing, Microsoft’s answer to Google, might have cool background pictures and a catchy marketing campaign, but it still can’t compete with Google’s algorithm. Google’s algorithm is a proprietary blend of various technologies that rank search results.

The algorithm includes crawlers that visit websites and then index the site’s pages. The crawlers, or bots, follow links on the website to other websites and then index those websites. And the trail continues forever. Google then assigns these sites a PageRank, a number between 1-10 that shows a site’s SEO strength. The higher the PageRank, the more likely that the site appears closer to the top of search results pages.

Even the 80+ million dollar ad campaign that brought Bing brand awareness couldn’t help Bing to overtake Google. In the same year (2009), Google spent just $25 million on all of its ads and easily maintained its dominance. These statistics prove that, in the end, consumers care more about accurate results than about flashy marketing campaigns.

Google Ads – What do they mean for you?

Advertising on Google just makes sense because it is still the Search Engine of choice for over half of the world’s population. You can reach more people with less effort and money by advertising on Google. Stay tuned for further articles that will demystify the Google advertising platform and help you to make informed advertising decisions.

Want to make the most of your online marketing efforts? Contact Incitrio at 858.202.1822 to get an honest review of your current efforts and to get brand-specific strategies proven effective in today’s online marketing jungle. We are an award winning, full-service marketing firm focused on client success in Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Email Marketing and Web Design.

Want a Transmedia video for your company? Call Incitrio to talk through your vision and pricing options.

At Incitrio, we have the opportunity to look through our clients’ sites and discover the wealth of information provided. We absorb as much as we can from each site in order to become experts in the field. Then, we can make educated recommendations on how to improve a website. In order to make a relevant and appropriate recommendation, we must spend a great deal of time on a website to discover the content on each page or blog post. Navigating through the site is generally easy, but takes time. Just like a normal visitor to the site, we must rely on links to find what we are looking for and to discover new content.

Links come in many forms, such as buttons, images, and anchor text. In order to find the content we are looking for, we rely on visual cues such as underlined text. Images relevant to content are often linked as well. So we visually rely on our cursor turning into a small hand to decide if an image is linked and will take us to another page. Needless to say, discovering all of the pages on a website can be time consuming. But there is a simpler, more user friendly way to navigate a website: a sitemap.

Creating HTML Sitemaps

There are two types of sitemaps: an HTML sitemap and an XML sitemap. A sitemap is a page on your website that hosts all of the links to each page on your site. A sitemap is a perfect place for a visitor to quickly access all of the content available on your website. Sitemaps help visitors who have difficulty finding specific information through conventional navigation methods. Although not every visitor to your website needs to view your sitemap, it helps those visitors that need additional tools to navigate your site. Often times, that small percentage can mean the difference between attracting the lead and making a sale. Any website owner looking to improve user experience and come up higher in search engine results should consider creating an HTML sitemap. It’s easy to create and makes your site more complete. In the big picture, a website that manages to cater to as many people as possible will be the website that attracts more visitors and keeps them from bouncing off of a site to a competitor’s site.

A Love Affair (Search Engines + Sitemaps)

Search engines love HTML sitemaps because it is a page that provides all of the content on your website, served on a silver platter. Normally, search engine “crawlers” or “bots” (those little pieces of code that scan your website and report their findings back to search engines) scan your website from the top to the bottom. The bots arrive at your site, look through your content, and attempt to discover what the site is about. If a bot comes across a link, it follows the link and then scans that page. By adding an HTML sitemap, you provide all of the links to existing pages on your website, making the work easier for the search bots. The bots still deploy throughout the rest of your website through conventional methods, but you reduce the risk of them failing to index important information before they bounce to another site.

Often times, pages aren’t indexed completely. Bots sometimes abandon a website before scanning the entire site. Bots usually leave a site because inefficient code gets in the way (such as lengthy tables,  too much javascript, or there are too many links pointing to outside sites). In addition to adding an HTML sitemap, you can also keep bots from abandoning your site by adding “no-follow” attributes to links, optimizing your website for table-less designs, and reducing the code in your head tag. You can also create an XML sitemap.

What is an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitmap is a sitemap created specifically for search engines. It is a file that notifies search engines when new content is added to your site. An XML sitemap, unlike an HTML sitemap, ignores all design. An XML sitemap is only a list of code. You won’t find any traces of branding. There are no logos embedded in an XML page. It is simply a page search engines look at before they see the rest of your site. It saves search engines time, greatly increasing the chance that bots will scan and index your entire site. You can directly submit your XML sitemap to various search engines. If the sitemap is dynamic, bots see if there are any new links posted and if a page was recently edited. The bots then continue on to scan the new new and edited content first before moving on to the rest of the site. This method is the most efficient way search engines can index your website’s content.

To get the best results, create both an HTML and XML version of your sitemap. Include your HTML sitemap in your navigation. Many companies include the HTML sitemap in the footer of their site, while some websites with more complicated navigation may include it in the main navigation (towards the top of their site). Either way, make sure visitors can locate the sitemap. You don’t need to link your XML sitemap to your navigation. Adding it to your website and submitting it to search engines is enough for it to make a difference. Of course, it is a good idea to keep an eye on your monthly analytics to see if adding the sitemap(s) increases traffic to your site. If your website has been difficult to index, you may be facing the consequences with reduced online visibility. By adding an XML and/or HTML sitemap, you could potentially help increase traffic to your site. Remember that a sitemap is only one piece of the puzzle. For best results be sure to follow all of the best practices possible when creating your website.

About Us

Incitrio is a San Diego based marketing firm specializing in web design, branding, search engine optimization, email marketing, and social media. We work hard for each client to provide visible results. If you own a website and think you may need help in attracting visitors or need help in improving a visitor’s experience on your site, contact us today at 858.202.1822. We appreciate interesting comments and invite you to participate in the conversation.

The Relationship of Social Media and Search Engines

For years, the common trend among search engines has been in providing better real-time search results. As a result of the demand for finding the most up to date information, search engines have begun to index websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It is not a stretch to see the forecast in the horizon; social media websites will have a greater impact in allowing your clients to find you first when searching for your product or service on any search engine. Today is the perfect time to begin engaging in the conversations already taking place. Waiting any longer to put together a comprehensive strategy will only empower your competitors.

The Social Media Forecast

According to Forrester Research’s U.S. Online Retail Forecast for 2008 – 2013, online retail sales were expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10% to reach $229 billion by 2013. This huge market highlights the importance of participating in the online marketplace, as it consists of a large number of consumers. As more and more of these consumers continue to adapt to this virtual marketplace, the potential for online sales continue to grow. Additionally, Forrester’s research finds that the typical online consumer is less likely to be negatively affected by the economic climate we are currently experiencing, allowing for more stability for companies who have shifted a significant portion of their marketing and sales efforts to an online platform.

As the recession lingers and consumer confidence remains low, Forrester finds that by 2013, 33% of online users will do more research in order to find the most competitive prices, and points to a large increase in comparison-shopping. The research presented in this report shows that consumers are not just looking for the best deals, but are also doing more targeted shopping, while reducing impulse purchases. Additionally, 54% of offline sales will be influenced by online research. This information makes it very clear that an investment in online marketing is an investment that will allow a company to continue to grow, despite a bad economy.

Facebook alone claims 500 million active members, according to statistics on their website. 100 million members actively use LinkedIn according to their website. By having a presence on these and similar sites and by leveraging them to find and communicate with your target audience, you will begin to position yourself as a modern business, whose market is important enough for you to communicate with.

Communicating on social media sites will require proper strategy to ensure your efforts will be worthwhile and will make sure that each tweet, post, update, and comment fall within your brand guidelines. You will want to make sure that the strategy you employ will place you in the best possible position to grow online, and will help you avoid the pitfalls that can negatively affect your company.

When conducting yourself in a social media setting, make sure to:

Integrate your existing marketing efforts.
By integrating your marketing efforts, you will make sure that your message stays consistent throughout the different sites you participate in. You will also be able to save time by reducing the number of times you must visit each site. An ideal solution will allow you to automatically post to various sites with minimal work.

Remain professional at all times.
The nature of social media encourages an informal setting for communicating. It is important that each employee understands that their online conduct reflects on the company. Employees should enjoy the fact that they are a professional and should conduct themselves in a fun, but professional manner.

Use the social media platform to enhance research and to get insight on the market and on market trends.
With the use of such tools available, including common interest groups, fan pages, and Google Alerts, you can get insight on what people are saying about your industry. Use the information you gather to develop new avenues and solutions in order to be on the forefront of development.

Engage with your audience.
It would make no sense to create these platforms without using them to communicate and engage with your audience. Be sure to assess your resources in order to avoid stretching your resources too thin, and only dedicate your efforts to those sites in which you will be able to routinely participate.

Become an industry leader
Realize that each communication you add to the conversation should be well thought out, and each should put you one step closer to becoming a leader in your field. This will be accomplished by adding quality content, and by being consistent in your positive message.

Don’t give too much away.
Save the most valuable information for your paying clients. If you give away too much information, your connections will no longer need to purchase your service. Additionally, it will be unfair to those who already pay for the information that you may be giving away.

Provide Oversight
Be sure that a Marketing Director, CEO or other high ranking individual provides oversight. Nobody will understand the company better than a CEO or one who answers directly to the head of the company. Only they can ensure the proper conversation is taking place and that each communication enforces the company’s beliefs, mission statement and policy.

Not all social media strategies are the same. Each one requires custom tailoring depending on the industry and the history of the company. When deciding on beginning or enhancing your social media communications, contact Incitrio at 858.202.1822 to get an honest review of your current efforts and to get brand-specific strategies proven effective in today’s online jungle. We are an award winning, full-service marketing firm focused on client success in Search Engine Optimization, Graphic Design, Online Marketing, Email Marketing and Web Design.

When adding their name to an article, an author has the option to either link their name to their own personal page or the about the author page. By adding the rel=”author” attribute to the link, the author will be telling Google the following: Follow this link, the name of the link is the author, and the page it leads you to is the author’s page. This attribute will help give credit where credit is due, by allowing authors to create a network of links all pointing to them as the creator. Additionally, Google has begun to index based on the rel=”me” attribute which is similar to rel=”author.” The attribute rel=”me” allows authors to add value to each link on their personal site. By adding rel=”me” to all links pointing to their articles, Google can tell that the author is putting a claim on the article that the link points to. Using both attributes can help authors expand their online exposure and will improve the search results when search engines index by both content and authorship.

How To Use These Tools

Both of these useful tools should be used together, but based on the possibility of abusing the rel=”me” attribute, it is suggested that more emphasis is given to the rel=”author” attribute, because it is harder to abuse. From a search engine perspective, the website hosting the content will have more authority when it points a link to the author’s page, because this means that the website hosting the content is validating the author. In order to abuse this attribute, someone will need access to the website content. Since not anyone can access the content, it will be more secure and will have a higher value of importance. Since anybody can use the rel=”me” attribute, it is likely that it will not stand high in importance within the Google search algorithm, but will have significant weight depending on the number of articles the author is claiming and how many reciprocal links they receive back from these articles. Although you don’t need to use both of these attributes, you will get a better result by doing so. If you only have the resources to focus on one of these attributes, focus on rel=”author.”

The following is what a rel=”author” link should look like:
<a href=”http://authorswebsite.com” rel=”author”>Author Name</a>

The following is what a rel=”me” link should look like:
<a href=”http://articlelink.com” rel=”me”>Article Name</a>

Improving the Internet as a Resource

These changes may give the internet more weight as a valuable resource for various forms of research. For many years, the internet has been looked down upon as a source for citation because of its lack of transparency. With the new changes, it allows those authors who wish to be given credit the ability to no longer remain in the shadows. This will allow researchers and editors the ability to reach the author if necessary. This will depend entirely on the participation of the author in this new system, and in the amount of time it will take for third party technologies to adopt the new attributes into the way they find and publish content.

Incitrio is an integrated marketing agency focused on client success. Our specialties are in branding, graphic design, online marketing, social media integration, and email marketing. If you have a business that needs to find new and exciting avenues for growth, we encourage you to call us today at 858.202.1822.

The analytics report will examine your data from month to month. As time goes by, you will be able to examine your report on a monthly timeline, allowing you to see how your traffic fluctuates with time. In order to add Google Analytics to your site, you will need access to your website files in order to add your custom analytics code to all the pages you want to track. You will need to create your analytics account to get your custom code. Once you have it, simply add it to your website to ensure that all activity will be tracked. Although some dabate exists on where exactly the code should be added, adding it just before the closing body tag (</body>) of your document should allow the entire web page to load first, before your analytics code. According to various developers, this will ensure that your entire site will be tracked, and will help prevent the code from interfering with other parts of your website.

In order to implement working strategies based on the data you collect, it is best to work with a professional online marketing agency that can confirm that you will be getting the most for your marketing efforts. The following information will give you a good idea of what is possible with Google Analytics, and will provide an argument for choosing to use it for your website.

Getting Started With Google Analytics

1. Once you have added your code to your site, allow a few days to begin collecting data. Log into your Google Analytics account and select from the “view reports” drop down menu, select the site you want to analyze. If you only have one website registered with your account, you will only see this one website. If you have registered several websites, they will all appear in this drop down menu. If your website is relatively new, its not uncommon to see very little activity within these first few days.

2. You can review any past reports by changing the date on the top right hand side of the dashboard page. You will be able to view specific days, weeks, months, or years. This makes it possible for long term trend analysis. Over the years, you may find that more traffic visits your site during specific periods such as holidays, or after special events and promotions. Use this knowledge to predict future traffic peaks, allowing you to make smart decisions in your marketing efforts.

3. You can export your analytics reports directly to pdf, xml, cvs, or tsv. This will help you in presenting your reports, or to help you sort your information for finding specific trends and for deeper analysis.

Understanding your Analytics Dashboard

Your dashboard gives you a quick look at the most popular information every web master wants to see, the traffic rate. According to your dashboard report, you will be able to see how many visitors your site receives per month and the average number of pages these visitors looks at. You will be able to also see the average bounce rate (people who visit your site, but quickly leave), the time they spend on your site and it will tell you how many of these visitors are new and unique. Google analytics does not take into account whether it is you visiting your site, or someone else. If you have visited your site several times for any reason, you will see this reflected in your visitor count. For this reason, you may want to give more significance to the number of visitors who are “unique” or in other words, those who have never visited your site before.

Visitor Overview

Visitor Overview gives you greater detail on those visiting your site including “unique” visitors. Pay close attention to this “unique visitor” concept because it gives you a good idea of those who are reaching you for the first time. The idea is to retain these people, or to give them enough good, useful information to make them want to return in the future. This page gives you the same report from your page 1 dashboard, but adds the browser people are using to reach your site including firefox, safari, and chrome. This page also tells you what type of connection your visitors are using to connect to the internet. This info can be useful if website size is an issue. If you find that the majority of your visitors are using a cable connection for example, you can be safe in placing high definition video, high quality images, etc.

Traffic Sources Overview

Traffic Sources Overview allows you to see where your traffic is coming from. You can use this information to find out how many people are finding you via search engine, how many are finding you from referring sites, and those typing your URL directly in the address bar. This page also gives you information on which keywords are attracting your visitors. You can use this area to find out what search terms are the most successful and which may need to be revised.

Content Overview

Content Overview tells you which pages are being visited the most. You can use this information to find out which pages are succeeding at attracting traffic, helping you to further develop your website based on your strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding Your Google Analytics Tools

On the left of your dashboard, you will see the left hand navigation menu with the following items. Intelligence, Visitors, Traffic Source, Content, and Goals. This is your main navigation within Google Analytics. Look through it to find the valuable tools available for all Analytics users.

Intelligence allows you to create custom alerts that will automatically email you when your website has performed a certain task, such as reaching a set number of visitors, reaching the desired bounce rate, etc. You can arrange your alerts by day, week, and month. You have the ability to create any custom alert that will notify you when you have reached a goal. Setting small, reachable goals will ultimately help you to reach the main objective of a higher ranked website.

Visitors will tell you about the people accessing your site. It gives you insight on who is visiting and how long they are staying. You will also be able to access any information regarding their country of origin, the type of browsers they are using, what percentage of visitors are new vs which ones are return visits, their connection speeds, along with detailed information regarding the time they spend on your site and how many pages they read.

Traffic Source simply tells you from where your traffic is coming from. It will tell you where they are being referred from, or from which search engines they are finding your site. It will also give you a good idea of what keywords are working to help you attract traffic, and to which pages. Use this tool to help you find out which of your advertising efforts are paying off in attracting customers. You will be able to see which are your top referring sites, making it easy for you to see which advertisements are working and on which websites. You may find that a low funded web banner is attracting more leads than a high funded one on another website. You will be able to make smart decisions about which ads to better fund and which to cut out of your campaign based on this information.

Content tells you what pages your visitors are accessing when visiting your site. You can find out which pages are the most popular, and which ones are not getting any attention. Use this information to modify your site according to what your visitors are looking for. You may find that a lot more people are looking into a case study, when you have been focusing most of your attention in promoting your service page. With this information, website owners can make smart decisions in placing targeted information, lead generation forms, or advertisements. They will likely get a better result if their acquisition efforts are spent on the pages that have the most visitors. You will also be able to see which pages will need revisions in order to increase your visitor count. Edit these pages accordingly in order to bring those numbers up. A website with more high ranking pages will rank higher in search results overall.

Goals allows you to set up a metric for measuring your conversion rate. Setting it up will allow you to measure how many people are actually reaching your set goal (goal may be signing up for an email newsletter, signing up for a consultation, reaching your contact page, etc.). It will give you another way to gauge how many people are converting into customers aside from how many people pick up the phone. Setting up goals will give you an opportunity to further tailor your online marketing efforts by allowing you to plan your sales funnel around reaching these goals.

Working with a Professional Analytics Consultant

When creating a website, consider partnering with a company well versed in Google Analytics. A professional analyst can help you in finding common trends based on your data. This information can then be used to help you plan for future online growth, and it can be tracked to find out what marketing efforts are paying off, and which ones are not. Contact Incitrio today to set up a free website consultation with one of our professionals. We are a San Diego Integrated Marketing agency focused on helping your company grow. We specialize in Branding, Web Design, Online Marketing, SEO, and Email Marketing. Be sure that your company is on the right track and is poised to grow. Contact Incitrio today at 858.202.1822 for a free online evaluation. We will help you at any step of the way in understanding your analytics reports, and can help to guide you in the right direction in your online marketing efforts.

Many business owners are hesitant about joining Yelp because they fear that bad reviews can hurt their business. However, one does not need to add their business in order to be featured on Yelp. Virtually anyone can add any business and can begin reviewing it. Chances are that your business might already be featured and several people have already expressed their views about your service. It is absolutely necessary to take the first step and claim your business as the business owner. This will allow you to join the conversation, helping you to quickly address both the bad and good reviews. Being proactive in your approach will allow you some control in what is being said.

Responding to a Bad Yelp Review

It is often difficult for a business owner to separate their personal feelings from business as their business is often regarded to as their “baby;” reading a bad review can hurt. One’s natural inclination is to defend the company. Taking a defensive approach will only hurt your reputation by making you look out of touch, and will likely earn your company additional bad reviews. The only real solution is to be honest and transparent in your online marketing efforts. If you have screwed up, and a passionate reviewer brings it to your attention with a bad review, rather than taking offense, try admitting your mistake. Then, assure the reviewer that you are doing everything possible to prevent the mistake from ever happening again. You will often be surprised by the response. The bad reviewer may see your honesty and may change the bad review, and you may impress future visitors who will be amazed that the owner cares so much by taking the time to participate. Remember to also include those who have sent you good reviews in your response. If a visitor is very happy with your service and writes an extraordinary review, be sure they come back to visit you. For example, consider offering them a group discount on their next visit. This way, you can be sure that they will bring their friends and more potential positive reviews. Also, remember to add them to your friend list in order to populate your account with happy and satisfied customers.

Become an Active Member of the Yelp Community

In order to get more exposure for your company on Yelp, become a valuable community member. Be sure to participate by routinely reviewing other businesses. Be clear and honest in your review without being mean or overly friendly. Be sure each review you post is useful and informative. This will benefit you in the long run when the community begins to see you as an authoritative figure, helping attract visibility to your page and more positive reviews.

Integrate Your Marketing Efforts

In order to get the most momentum with your Yelp account, be sure to integrate your online efforts. Link your social media profiles, like Facebook and Twitter, to Yelp; doing so will make sure each of your posts will get the most visibility. Include a link on your website and email signature and tell your clients about your Yelp page. Focus on those who have had a positive experience with you, but do not solicit a review as Yelp discourages this practice. Yelp will routinely filter reviews that have the telltale signs of having been solicited. This includes glowing reviews by members with incomplete profiles, good reviews from members with little to no history of reviews, and good reviews posted all in a short period of time. For this reason, it is best to first target your clients with existing Yelp accounts. Search for existing clients who are already Yelp members and request to join their friend network. Then, you can send them a friendly message asking them to visit your company profile, while avoiding soliciting directly for a review.

Post Offers and Announcements

Special rates and discounts are a great way to gain attention. Posting special rates and announcements of company anniversaries, press releases, media spots, etc. will also improve your chances of getting found locally, while also improving your chances of being featured locally in Yelp’s monthly newsletter. If you have integrated your social media accounts, each announcement has the potential of being seen by a large number of people.

Developing an entire Yelp or other social media campaign can be beneficial to any company in today’s market. It can help you grow and expand your business in a way that traditional marketing never could. Be sure you are working with a knowledgeable integrated marketing company to ensure that your online efforts pertain to your long-term business goals. A marketing strategy that provides you with greater access to your clients, while focusing on your long-term goals, will ensure that your business continues to grow online, without sacrificing your brand. Call Incitrio today to set up a free consultation about your online marketing efforts. We can help you develop the perfect strategy for online growth.

Companies looking to make a first page presence in Google search results have generally followed the same set of guidelines since the advent of search engines. The formula was simple: increase content and create as many links as possible to your site. This formula has worked for many years until the most recent Google algorithm update (Panda), which is the most significant change to Google’s online search engine in recent years.

Companies who were not prepared for the update may have found their rankings drop significantly since the release date of February 24th, 2011. Many who have enjoyed the prestige of being found on the top of the first page are now left scrambling. The norm has changed, and in order to continue to compete against the competition, an in-depth analysis is necessary to find out exactly what is causing that drop in rank. This has left several business owners asking themselves: “What now?”

Companies who have traditionally relied on low-rank link building strategies and automated content generation have been hit hard with significant drops in Google page ranks. Now, they will need to make a major change to how they conduct business online if they ever plan on recovering from Google’s newest update. Additionally, many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) agencies cloaked as white hat experts have now been exposed; their clients are starting to feel the burden of their black hat practices.

In the past, before the Google Panda Update, it was possible for companies to get away with the bare minimum of original content creation and low-level link building. All the time ignoring Google and various other reputable search engineers who have warned against this practice for several years. Now, the tactics that “content farms” have capitalized which often outranked the sites of original content publishers, will no longer work.

Priority will now be given to higher ranking links and to the most original and in-depth content. Google is enforcing this concept more thoroughly. Now, companies who were not aware of these best practices in internet marketing are hurting as a result, while those who stayed ahead of the curve are benefiting. Several top ranking spots have literally opened up overnight.

5 Fantastic Tips for Optimizing Your Website for Google Panda

If you are among the thousands who are now suffering due to the Google Panda update, there are several things you can do to improve your rankings:

1. Look at your analytics and find out whether your site was impacted. Look at the time period before February 24th and after. Do you have a downward spike in traffic? If yes, then you may have been impacted directly by the update. The next step is to find out whether your entire site traffic is down, or if only traffic on specific pages has dropped. Look through each of your affected pages and see what you can do to remedy the situation. Perhaps the given page is heavy in ads and low in content? You may benefit from reducing your ads and adding valuable information to the page.
2. Scan your site for repeat information. Check to make sure you are not repeating pages or content on multiple pages or websites. Make each page uniquely targeted for a specific audience with original content. Don’t resort to copying others’ work and loosely editing it to fit your site. This can be especially detrimental to your results if you do not know where the content originated. If the content is already in existence in a “content farm” type website, you will be doing yourself more harm than good if you repurpose it.
3. Find out where your links are coming from. With modern search tools, it is possible to find out the origin of your website’s links. Additionally, it is possible to organize your inbound link list by rank. Once you find out which links rank low, you can begin working to disassociate yourself from them. Go to each in-bound linking website and find out what you can do to remove your website’s link from their database.
4. Work on better link building. Focus on gaining links from only relevant directories and websites that rank high on your list. Don’t waste your time creating links from a list that you have not researched and organized by rank. Don’t waste your time posting to websites you have not researched for relevancy and rank; these can lead to poor links.
5. If you work with a company who handles your online marketing, be sure they provide you with honest and transparent results. Ask to see the numbers and don’t be passive in your pursuit of answers. Several disreputable companies exist and thrive on clients who are not informed or proactive regarding their website and search results. An honest internet marketing company will provide you with a clear strategy for where your site is and will set realistic expectations, not give you bloated numbers and misleading jargon. Only with clear reports can you develop a strong working strategy for online growth.

The complexity of internet marketing requires a professional touch in order to ensure you are well represented in the online world. Be sure that the company you hire is reputable and up-to-date on the latest strategies. Hire a company that is poised to help you succeed and take your company to the next level.

Incitrio is an award-winning branding, design and online marketing agency based in San Diego, CA. Call us directly at 858.202.1822 and ask for Blake or Marco, or Email us at startfresh@incitrio.com. We help companies like yours develop integrated solutions through: website development, email marketing, internet marketing, social media, video marketing, lead generation, and much more. Click here to view a case study and testimonial video about one of the many integrated online marketing campaigns we offer our clients.