We get a LOT of questions about mobile websites, text message marketing and QR codes. We’ve put together this brief presentation about Mobile Marketing for Local Business to help answer some of these questions.

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Big Splash Web Design, eCommerce & Internet Marketing - Providing Custom Websites and Marketing Solutions to Friendswood, Houston and Beyond

Since we’re in the business of web design and internet marketing — and small business owners ourselves — we frequently have conversations with our clients about promoting business online and staying “visible” across the internet.

We’d like to share this article, 7 Pillars of Marketing a Business Online. The advice in this article echoes what we frequently tell our clients, so you’ll likely find some good tips relevant to your business and/or your marketing strategy.

If you have questions, or need more information about marketing your business online, contact us at info@bigsplashwebdesign.com, or give us a call at (281) 816-6932.

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When most people want to find something on the Internet, whether it’s on Google, Facebook, Bing or YouTube, they use specific keywords to search for it. Search Engines are the number one way that people retrieve their needed information on the Internet, and so building a website that is easily accessible to Search Engines like Google and Bing is, perhaps, the most important component of a strong Internet Marketing Campaign. Unfortunately, most people do not understand how Search Engines work and therefore have difficulty making their web pages “rank” or appear on the Search Engine results page for their most valuable search keywords. A basic understanding of how Search Engines work can greatly enhance your chances of getting quality leads through your website.

In order to find relevant web pages for every possible keyword that is entered by a user, Search Engines employ software, known as bots, to catalog as many pages on the Internet as possible. Once a bot comes to your website, it will look for information that identifies what your website is about. The bot uses the words you put in your meta-title, in your text, and in your URL to catalog the website as being associated with a particular search keyword. The web bot may also try to determine whether other websites on the Internet think your website is related to a particular search keyword. It does this by examining the context in which other websites link to your website. For example, if 100 websites linked to another website with the phrase “yellow widgets,” then a Search Engine would determine it is likely that the specific website has something to do with these yellow widgets.

The search engine then prioritizes how much your site has to do with a given word or phrase. Ideally, sites that are the most relevant and the most authoritative show up on the first page of the search engine, while less reliable sites that have less to do with the keyword you typed in will be on the 2nd page and so on.

Now that you know how search engines find out information about websites, you can begin a search engine optimization campaign that utilizes the keywords customers will use to find you. If you don’t know which keywords you’re targeting on your web site, your web page may not rank for any keywords or the keywords it does rank for may not be ones that are valuable for attracting customers. That’s why it is very important that you consider which keywords you’d like your page to rank for before embarking on an internet marketing campaign.
For example, lets say a plumber in Miami has a URL “www.miamiplumber.com” and the title of the page is “Miami Plumber | Dave’s Plumbing”. That site is probably likely to be ranked on the first page of the search engine results page for the keyword phrase, “Miami plumber”. Now what if the same plumber were to use the URL www.davesplumbing.com and called the title tag, “Home Page”? A site like that may not rank at all for the keyword phrase “Miami Plumber” and if it did, it probably wouldn’t be on the first page of Google.

The lesson to take away here? Even if you know the audience for your site or your video, the search engines may not. Always use search engine optimization so that the bots can read and appropriately index your web site.

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Big Splash Web Design, eCommerce & Internet Marketing - Providing Custom Websites and Marketing Solutions to Friendswood, Houston and Beyond

There’s a resource that we refer to from time to time here at Big Splash Web Design & Marketing . It’s Copyblogger Media, which you can find at www.copyblogger.com. Founder Brian Clark and his team at  Copyblogger Media are experts in online marketing; specifically, creating quality content that will grow your business online.

Copyblogger offers a tutorial on online marketing called Authority Rules which includes a great report titled The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effective Online Marketing. This document has some great information on how to leverage your expertise to create more trust and gain more customers.

Here is where you can read the full report.

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Big Splash Web Design, eCommerce & Internet Marketing - Providing Custom Websites and Marketing Solutions to Friendswood, Houston and Beyond

Listen to this article as a podcast:
4 Ways Your Small Business can Dominate the Search Engines

One of the best ways to take control of your small business’s online reputation is to make sure that your small business owns all the first and possibly second pages in the search engine results. Using the following strategies, any small business owner with a limited budget can use this cost-effective strategy to dominate the search results for their company keywords and reduce the “space” for any external negative search results.

1. Build a website with your complete company name as the domain name and use a .com extension. So like in our case, our company name is Big Splash Web Design, so we registered the domain name http://www.bigsplashwebdesign.com. Doing this improves your search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure you use your company keywords in your content to help with your SEO. A side benefit of choosing a domain name this way is that it’s very intuitive and easy to remember for your customers.

2. Make sure your website has a blog where you can post up to date articles, news and have discussions with your clients

3. Build complete profiles on all major review sites and business directories, making sure all your business name, contact details and category information is 100% identical on all sites. Make sure your profile includes videos and photos, and your name and those of your prominent employees. Important sites include:

• Yelp!
• Insider Pages
• Google Maps
• Bing Local
• City Search
• Yahoo Local
• Local.com
• Merchant Circle
• Angies List
• Better Business Bureau
• Yellow Pages
• InfoUsa
• BrownBook
• SuperMedia
• InsiderPages

4. Sign up to all major Social Media Sites – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube being the main four. You should use your small business name as the profile user name for better search engine optimization. Make sure to add content to these sites. You can automate this by setting up your Twitter and Facebook to get updated with your latest blog posts and YouTube video uploads. Your videos, profiles, tweets, status updates and notes can all find their way to the search results.

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Big Splash Web Design, eCommerce & Internet Marketing - Providing Custom Websites and Marketing Solutions to Friendswood, Houston and Beyond

Even though SEO is always changing and evolving, there are some time tested strategies that work now and probably always will. However, it is still critical that you keep up with the latest methods that are working, or at least hire someone knowledgeable enough to do it for you. Here are some SEO tips to try in your business marketing.

First, you have to learn how to target keywords that are actually within your reach. If you are an accountant, it would be almost impossible to rank in Google for “accounting”. But, on the other hand, you may be able to rank for “Atlanta accountant” with the right SEO tricks up your sleeve. Ranking for lots of “little” keywords may be a lot better in the long run than obsessing over a huge one.

You have to focus on your on-page SEO efforts. What does this mean? Basically, you need to have the right keywords in the right places on your website. You need to use tags, a certain keyword density, captions, meta descriptions and other things to get your site to rank and keep it there.

Another point to remember is that you must be consistent with your social media efforts. Spend some time each day interacting with your followers and fans. Build rapport and relationships as they will serve you well for years to come.

You also need to start focusing on mobile marketing as well. More and more people are using mobile text messaging as a marketing medium. Done correctly, mobile text messaging can far outshine email marketing, in terms of ROI.

Start using videos on a regular basis too. Take advantage of this video revolution we’re experiencing on the Internet. People are watching videos all day long, so put some of yours in front of them too!

There are technical things you can do to decrease your page load times on your website. Make sure those things are in place because people simply won’t sit there and wait for your site to load. It makes you look “behind the times”.

Finally, it is critical that you are posting fresh content on a regular basis. Make it good content! Don’t just post for no reason. Find the questions your prospects and clients have, and answer them. Be their problem solver.

SEO does not need to be an arduous or expensive task for your business. You need to know some simple tips that you should do on a consistent basis. Keep plugging away and you will start to see a snowball effect.

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I offer Christian summer drama camps to kids during the summers at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and would like to attract children to our website by creating a more interactive site that is a learning tool as well as a good advertisement.

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We’ve all been to sites that look very snazzy and cool, but are hard to navigate or find any real information. As a business professional, it is crucial to understand that your website doesn’t need to be the glitziest site on the Internet. Instead, it needs to be easy to navigate and user-friendly for your target audience. Here are some tips to help you accomplish that.

Always start by looking at your website from your potential user’s point of view. Really take a step back and see it from their perspective. Do they know where to go and what to look at when they get to your site? Is your email opt-in form in full view? Take a look at your site from a couple of different computers and browsers to be sure everything looks good.

You should also strive to find ways to feature your content. In other words, make sure the important parts are above the fold. Try installing a slider at the top of your site to showcase several of your blog posts at once if that’s where the most important information is coming from.

It is important to have lots of white space in the design of your site. It has been proven that dark letters over a light (preferably white) background are easier to read. People will stay at your website longer if they can read it without eye strain. Internet readers are “scanners”, so add more white space to make it easier to scan over your information.

Also, we have found that it’s easier for visitors to scan your text when you use narrower columns, rather than making your text into a single column that stretches the entire width of the page. It sounds silly but full-width text forces the user to move their eyes side to side to read the text, rather than simply scanning straight down the center of a narrower column.

Don’t go nuts with funky new designs and “testing”. Use what has been proven to work and go the conventional route when it comes to page layout. Trust us, people have tested layouts ad nauseum, so there is no need to go into your marketing lab and test a dozen new layouts.

Always have an easy to find search bar on your site so that readers can search for old blog posts and topics they care about. Not having a search bar can prove to be frustrating for some readers and may cause them to leave your site too quickly, since they can’t find what they’re looking for.

Above all else, keep things simple. Don’t spend your time trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead, focus on quality content and over-delivery with what your visitors are looking for, not just what you want them to see. That will work every time.

Having the perfect website design may not be possible for every business or every budget, but optimizing it as much as possible doesn’t take that much work. Tweaking your site here and there will continue to improve it over time. You will see a rise in traffic and conversions when you do this.

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When our website was designed, social media, blogging and the like was not at the forefront of marketing as it is today. I would love to have a website that is more interactive with where today’s consumer is going. My husband has a vision of where he would like to go with our company (aging-in-place housing unlike what is being done currently, a strong remodeling arm, etc.) and I do not feel that it is represented in what you see currently.

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We are a small (but rapidly growing) non-profit and our website is our primary advocacy and marketing agent. Often times our webpage is the first impression many donors and volunteers have of our organization. It is embarrassing! Our website is disorganized, confusing and lacks the capacity to fully tell our story. While we make “Extreme Home Makeover:Habitat Edition” dreams come true every day, we are begging for you to make our “Extreme Makeover: Website Edition” dream come true!

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