Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

Smart article over on Small Business Bliss. You’ve probably heard it all before in a dozen different places, but maybe never as succinctly. Here are the basic reasons a blog solves all of your major online marketing needs in one simple, compact package. If you want to know why a blog must literally be the beginning and end of your basic online marketing approach, look no further.

Those clients of ours blogging successfully will know how important this strategy is, and those readers who arent clients of ours but blog successfully will also know. It really is the basis of your social media platform and essential.

Read the article in detail and talk to us about setting up a successful blog strategy.
5 reasons your business needs a blog.

Selling online is getting harder these days. As more and more big-box retailers shift their focus to ecommerce, remaining competitive takes more than low prices and a website. This is especially true if your products are not unique.One easy way to break out from the pack is with a blog.

Why a blog?

An ecommerce blog can really make a difference if it’s done right. That means keeping it updated keeping it fresh, and posting interesting and relevant material that your customers want.

How can a blog help your online store? Here’s 5 ways it can have an impact…

1. SEO SEO SEO

It’s no surprise that a blog can help with your search engine rankings. Google loves updated content. They also love content that is written in a way to be appealing to living, breathing humans.

All commercial website owners want people to visit their site. Since you’ve gone to the trouble to produce a website, you have probably also made a little effort to learn something about how to get it noticed. In the course of your reading, you will have read about back links, but you may not know exactly what they are. This guide for building back links is intended for people like you.

Once you’ve published your site, you’ll then want to start the process of promoting it using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You’ll maybe subscribe to newsletters by SEO gurus in hopes of gaining some valuable insights. Like many beginners, some of the best advisers will be useless to you because they use terminology you don’t yet fully understand.

Converting visitors into customers is about more than just supplying great product information. It’s about more than a great design, simple navigation and customer service links. The basics–such as page design and content presentation are certainly necessary. But if you want to grow a loyal customer base for the long term, you have to reach even further.
Here are six ways to engage visitors and turn more of them into actual customers, bringing friends with them.

1. Serve up the ideal newsletter. Contrary to what some social media “experts” say, people still like to receive email from companies they love and from stores that carry items or product lines to which they’re devoted. By integrating useful tips and links to articles or invites to forums, you’re opening up a channel for conversation, of which customers will take advantage.

Build Links to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings Introducing Wordtracker’s Link Builder Tool

The surest way to improve your website rankings in the search engines is to get quality links pointing to your site.

With Wordtracker’s powerful new Link Builder tool, you’ll be able to:

• Find hundreds of top quality link prospects
• Uncover your competitors’ linking strategies (and beat them at their own game)
• Analyze sites that rank well for a particular keyword
• Plan and create your own high impact linking campaigns
• Drive more traffic, sales and revenue for your business

This Link Builder tool offers 7 day free trial (credit card required), a 30 day money back guarantee and the cost is $59 per month, not much if you consider other forms of attracting traffic. And unlike pay-per-click improving your search rankings means you dont have to pay for every visitor delivered to your site. Yes it takes some time and effort but in the long term its a must to not have to rely solely on paying for visitors.
Follow this link to find out more info and/or sign up for the free trial

To improve your search engine ranking, increase the number of quality links to your site. Links are the lifeblood of search, especially for competitive terms. You don’t necessarily have to pay for links. You can obtain links through suppliers, customers, product reviews, and links from local organizations that you are part of, such as chambers of commerce and civic associations. Friends, family and more… We cannot stress the importance of building links. Talk to us today if youd like to automate this laborious process.

There has always been some discussion as to whether Google pays any attention to the “keywords” meta tag when ranking web pages. For now, that discussion can be put to rest. Today, Matt Cutts, Google’s page ranking head honcho (he refers to himself as the head of Google’s Webspam team) put out a video and several blog posts that state conclusively that Google disregards the keywords tag.”At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking.”

He notes that the “description” meta tag is used to determine what a page is about, and it is also used as the short summary that is part of a web page listing when it appears in a Google search results page.

Targeted marketing is the most effective way to drive potential customers to your site. Use the search engines to find related forums and blogs, and sign up for as many you find. Participate by adding useful information, comments and advice, and be sure to include a link to your website!

Talk to us today if you aren’t sure where to start.

Several of our clients lately have asked us whether or not it is a good idea to have a blog on their site. Our answer is an emphatic yes! A blog on your website can greatly increase the performance of your site, and it is surprisingly easier to upkeep than you might think.Here are a few advantages of adding a blog to your site:

• Build the Content of Your Site - If there is one thing that search engines love, it’s great text content! Blogging allows your site to fit better into the original purpose of the internet - a hub for information. While building informative articles, the search engines will give you a little extra love.
• Become the Industry Expert - The more knowledge you share online, the more people will come to respect you as the industry expert. If you are an expert, people (and search engines) will trust you, which in turn leads to more customers.

Benefits of a blog
Relative to static ecommerce sites, search engines consider blogs more real and trusted because blogs tend to have fresh content and there is a less financial, more informational link between a blog and its readers. An ecommerce site should take advantage of this tendency by adding a blog to augment the overall site.

A focused, well-written blog can get readers hooked on the blog and promote repeat visits to the website or garner subscriptions via RSS feeds and email newsletters. These recurring communications will help to tie potential customers to your site, encourage natural link building and increase repeat visits. Journalists are also more likely to follow a blog or subscribe via RSS than to visit the corporate site repeatedly. So, several avenues of search optimization and online marketing can be addressed with a single blog entity.

If you are trying to improve your search engine ranking and results, and optimize your site, one of the first things you should look at is the wording of links within your site. This not only applies to your website’s navigation menu, but also any links you have on your site that link to other pages or information. More importantly if you can control how other websites link to you this is essential part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), make sure you get these incoming links (or backlinks) to use keywords and not just your business name.

Don’t Click Here!

The use of “click here” as the actual link to another page or info on your site will not produce good search engine results and you are wasting an opportuinty to add to your site’s SEO performance if you use this for internal (or external links) on your site.

We’ve had a lot of queries about search engines and how they work lately. There are many ways to get traffic to your website, but for the average small business they probably boil down to only four. These are outlined below simply, and you can always dig deeper later. The four main ways are:

1. Traffic from search engines, known as search engine optimisation or SEO.
2. Traffic from paid search ads, the pay-per-click (or PPC) text ads that appear in e.g. Google.
3. Traffic from other advertising, such as newsletter advertising, e-mails, blogs, direct mail, print advertising, TV ads, radio spots, etc.
4. Traffic from former visitors, e-mail newsletters that keep you in touch with visitors and customers.

If your company’s organic search results aren’t what you wish they were, check out these key tricks to know and implement. If you arent utilising these tricks currently get in touch and we can implement then for you.When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), there is no magic bullet. Effective SEO boils down to doing a lot of little things well. Imagine building a house — each brick that goes into the foundation plays a vital role in creating a solid structure. A website is similarly comprised of a large number of building blocks, each of which needs to be given a proper level of attention to maximize your site’s visibility. Following are 11 steps marketers can take to get more out of organic search.