Tag Archives: SEO

It’s Time to Take an Integrated Marketing Approach

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IntegratedMarketingIn 2013, if you aren’t already, you should take an integrated marketing and communications approach, using a mix of offline and online activities. If your marketing and communications plan has not shifted toward more online communications and integrated programs, you are not fully connecting with your customers.

To sell more products and services, your company should consistently connect with and speak to your customers and stakeholders on a regular basis. You should always maintain and further strengthen the relationships you’ve built with your customers. Keeping visible in your marketplace is also vital to catching the eye of new prospects.

Taking an integrated marketing and communications approach means integrating your offline channels (print advertising, direct mail, public relations, outdoor and broadcast) with online channels (e-marketing campaigns, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, banner ads, social media, blogs, RSS). Integrate the various elements of the mix to maximize competitive advantage for your brand.

Proper integration of online media adds depth and measurability to your programs. It makes you more accessible to your customers. And, accessibility is an important key to marketing in today’s business environment.

You should devote a good portion of your communications budget to public relations, which includes search engine optimization and social-media-optimized press releases, which increase exposure and potential ROI. It’s important to repeatedly let people know why your brand is worth its price by maintaining regular communications and focusing on the advantages of your products and services. A great way to accomplish this is to distribute press releases at regular intervals.

You must also invest in a strong web presence. You have to make sure that you understand how your products are researched and found, and serve as a resource to people who are in search of information. Your website should be responsive to mobile devices. Think of ways to drive people to your website, such as dedicated landing pages, and using an easy-to-remember URL with your promotions. This strategy makes it very simple to track your promotions. Offer a free newsletter, coupons or some other information of value to your target market.

Why not consider integrating a blog with your website? Blogs are conversations. You can speak in your everyday voice, which your stakeholders will often find more friendly and approachable.

Consider doing a video. There are lots of ways to get prospects excited about your business, but very few are as attention grabbing and emotionally evocative as a well-done video. If you’ve never taken this angle for your business, this is an excellent time to do one,  get it up on your website and a clip up on YouTube.

Start doing a monthly e-mail marketing campaign. Use segmented lists and personalized messages with very specific information for each contact. Permission-based tools can make your marketing and public relations dollars work for you. Sending regular messages to your target audience is one of the best ways to market your products and services, and to drive traffic to your website.

Social media is everywhere. You should have a company Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn page, at the very least. With everyone more and more connected via mobile, these are great tools to stay connected with your customers. Your communications need to be relationship-based, taking advantage of search marketing, social media, lead nurturing and online communities.

You should also develop direct-mail pieces using variable digital printing and customized mailing with information directly targeted to each individual. Digital printing can save you money as you print on demand.

And, don’t forget to include print advertising, especially in your industry’s trade publications. Consider using a quarter-page ad in trade publications rather than a half page, or a half page instead of a full page. Many times they work just as well, as long as your copy hooks in your target audience.

Energizing your customers – getting them charged up and talking about your products – should be done consistently. Determine what your customers are looking for and focus your attention there. Learn which channels and mediums provide maximum exposure for your messages and deliver the most for the dollars you are spending.

Successful marketing and communication efforts result from careful strategic and comprehensive planning. Look for ways to promote your company, its products and services in an integrated approach.

Make Use of Open Source Fonts!

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Open source fonts are certainly not new, but as support for open source fonts continues to grow, the days of being limited to using only Arial and Verdana on the Internet are finally disappearing! The same goes for Times New Roman, Courier New, Trebuchet, and Tahoma. There are now hundreds of free fonts available, from various sources, for use on your website with new ones being continuously added to the mix.

Why Use Open Source Fonts?

One, for SEO; you can now use search-engine-friendly fonts instead of creating images of those typefaces. Two, for speed; using searchable fonts is not only better for SEO, but downloading fonts is quicker than downloading images. And finally, for the obvious reason, for visual interest; who isn’t ready for better looking websites?

How is it Done?

With the use of open source fonts such as Google Web Fonts, you can now add beautiful web fonts to any website by simply using a specific stylesheet link in your HTML document, then referring to that font in a CSS style. Below is an example of how to use the Tangerine web font.

An Example of an Open Source Font!


Coding Example:

To use the web font, first add a stylesheet link:
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=” http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine“>

Then either use a css class:
.yourclassname {“font-family: ‘Tangerine‘, serif;”}

Or an inline style to call your font:
<div style=”font-family: ‘Tangerine‘;”>An Example of an Open Source Font!</div>

Does it Work in All Browsers?

Not all browsers support open source fonts yet, but their support is growing. Only older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 5, as an example, will not work.

Therefore, until there is full support in all browsers, it may still be a good idea to use “graceful degradation.” This means, that if a browser cannot display your desired font, then it will present the font you declare to use as a backup. And if consistency is important, then by picking fonts that are similar in looks, visual size, or spacing, your website will “degrade gracefully.” In other words, viewers in unsupported browsers will never know what they are missing, but your website will still display correctly in its formatting of the layout even though it may not be your preferred look.

Where Do I Get Open Source Fonts?

Here are some of the leading developers in open source fonts and links on where to get them:
Google Web Fonts:    http://www.google.com/webfonts
The League:    http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Open Font Library:    http://openfontlibrary.org/
Free Font Manifesto:    http://www.designwritingresearch.org/free_fonts.html
Vitaly Friedman’s Font List:   http://www.alvit.de/blog/article/20-best-license-free-official-fonts

Endless Possibilities, but Please, Be Mindful!

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, is the answer to “can I use as many fonts as I want?” Please, still use good design techniques and do not overload the viewer’s visual experience with too many fonts! Too busy is still too busy!

The good news is that with each typeface having a personality of its own, this resource adds yet another avenue to complement and enhance your website. And with so many fonts now available, endless possibilities continue to grow in creating a unique and enriching visual experience for the Internet.

The Search for Good SEO

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SEO - Seach Engine OptimizationIncreasing your search engine ranking with keywords

You have a great Website, but can it be found? A Website is a big investment. And, if you manage the content yourself, it’s a lot of work too. Unfortunately, having a great Website doesn’t ensure that potential customers will be able to find you.

Competition for the top search engine ranking position is fierce. In some industries you will almost certainly have to pay for a top spot. However, in most industries it is possible to get a first- or second-page position with organic search engine optimization.

Website SEO begins with keyword identification

The most important step in optimizing your Website is to identify your keywords, or key search phrases. You need to determine what your customers and prospects are actually searching for so that you can optimize your site for those search terms.

Each page of your Website should be optimized independently. We cannot stress this enough. To be effective, Website optimization needs to happen on a page-by-page basis. You should develop a list of keywords for each and every page of your Website. Yes, this is a lot more work than making one generic list for the entire site. But, Google™ will be ranking your site based on relevancy. A broad list of keywords just cannot be relevant on every page of your Website.

When choosing keywords, the three most important factors to consider are search volume, relevancy, and relative competition. In other words, you need to ensure that people are searching for your term in sufficient quantity, that the term is relative to your page, and that you’ve chosen a keyword that has the least amount of competition possible. How do you find this out? There are many tools for assessing keywords to be found online. We use and recommend the free Google AdWords™ Keyword Tool.

For each page, you should identify your top keyword, then select 5 to 10 diverse, but related, keywords for optimization. There are many tricks to finding related keywords – the Google AdWords Keyword Tool can certainly help you. However, a more effective method is to use the Google search engine itself to give you some clues.

Go to Google.com and begin typing in your top keyword. As you begin to type the keyword into the search box, Google will attempt to autocomplete your query. These suggestions are often your most valuable keywords as they are based on what other users have searched for and are also the keywords Google is recommending to its users.

You have your list of keywords, now what?

So, what do you do with all those keywords? You want to make sure your keywords appear in the right spots, and that your content is relevant and easy to read.

Keywords should appear naturally in the flow of content. Do not ‘load’ the page with keywords. Google and other search engines reward Websites with good and relevant content created for human beings. Bold, italic and linked text has more importance than standard body text, but don’t be tempted to overdo it. A page loaded up with nothing but bold, italic and linked text is hard to read and may be penalized in the rankings.

Important keyword locations:

  • Page title (meta title)
  • Description meta tag
  • H-tags (h1, h2, h3)
  • Internal site links
  • Bold or italic text

Begin by writing your page’s meta title – this is the title that shows up in the bar at the top of your Internet browser. The meta title should include your page’s top keyword and perhaps another related keyword and geographic location (if applicable), and should not be more than 70 characters (with spaces) in length. Look at Concentre’s Website as an example; we’ve determined our top keyword phrase to be ‘brand marketing agency,’ but we’ve also included ‘advertising agency’ as an important related keyword.

When writing your page content, keep in mind that people skim, more than they read Websites. Your text should be written in short, easy-to-read paragraphs. Include bulleted lists to highlight important information, such as product features and benefits. Use relevant headers and sub-headers (h1, h2, h3) to break up the copy and make scanning easier.

Be sure to use your most important keyword in the h1 tag. This is the most important headline tag, and should appear at the top of the content and be relevant to the content of the page.

End each page with a call to action, learn more feature, or links to related content. The idea is to keep your customers engaged until they’re motivated to take further action, i.e., make a purchase or contact you.

And finally, test, test, test. Search engine optimization is not a once-and-done project. Search engines, like Google, Yahoo™, and Bing™, are constantly changing their ranking algorithms. And the competition will be trying to wrestle that top spot away from you.