7 Search engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

As the cost of pay-per-click advertising growing (almost double in the last year for competitive keywords) search engine optimization, or SEO, is becoming an important component of website marketing strategy. Following are seven proven techniques that you can use to improve your search engine ranking:

1. Identify keywords and key phrases that your prospects use to find your products and services
   Search habits of most of the products are already set. Do some research to find out what keywords or key phrases your customers use when looking for your products or services. Once you have the list, optimize your WebPages for the keywords or phrases. You may need to create several landing pages to optimize for major keywords and key phrases. Call 949-679-3418 for win-win website marketing solutions. We do not make any profit unless your website generates revenue.
   
2. Optimize every page of your website It appears that most website focus on the homepage for optimization, but ignore other pages of the site. Search engines rank every webpage for keywords, not just the homepage. The best strategy is to optimize each webpage for specific keyword. Optimize it like you optimize your homepage – source code, keyword density, contents, and links -- and see your website get higher visibility.


3. Use relevant key phrases for each page You may want to find relevant key phrases and optimize each page for one key phrase. You can find relevant key phrases at wordtracker.com. Go after key phrases that are not top searches, but not bottom searches either. You will find it easier to get higher search engine rankings if fewer websites are fighting for the keyword.


4. Title your webpage appropriately Title of your page is one of the key components that search engine uses to index your page. Make sure that the keyword or key phrase for the page is included in the title. It helps search engines identify the focus of the page, which will result in a higher ranking. Using the keyword in your title would also let your customers quickly know the page is relevant for what they are searching.


5. Add relevant contents regularly. When it comes to ranking websites bys search engines, content is king. It will help immensely if you add relevant content to your site regularly; at least once a week. You want your website to be useful for your visitors, so always add contents that adds value to the knowledge or answers questions of your customers. The more your website is relevant to your customers, you will get better ranking. Thus this expense/effort should build your website ranking as well as your credibility in the eyes of consumers.


6. Keep Your website search engine spider friendly The only way your website is going to get indexed and ranked is after the search engine spiders have crawled your site, and keep on coming back for further crawling. Not all designs are spider friendly – websites designed in flash cannot be crawled by most of the spiders, and spiders cannot understand the pictures in the site. Make sure that the site is “not” designed in flash and add picture description if possible.Add site map and Google map to help spiders crawl through the website. Site map also helps your visitors find information on the site.


7. Add incoming links and use keywords or key phrases as anchor text for incoming links Create a link description for incoming links that includes keywords or key phrases. This helps search engine rank you for the keywords or key phrases. For example, a transcription site gmetranscription.com can have incoming links as gmrtranscription.com or as anchor text “affordable transcription services”. Gmrtranscription.com link may get the site identified for transcription, but “affordable transcription services” would help the site index for this key phrase

Many webmasters and novice search engine optimization “specialists” try to trick search engines for giving higher ranking for the website. some of these techniques are keyword spamming, hiding keywords on the page by using the color of the page background, using link farms to get incoming links and other questionable processes. Never try these tricks; even if you get good result initially, there is a very good chance that your website will be flagged by the search engines because they are trying to catch violators. Once they catch you, expect to be completely blacklisted by the search engine.

Call 949-679-3418 to contact us for a free evaluation of your website strategy.

Random Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

Peter Drucker, the god of business management said that marketing & innovation are the only activities that produce value for an enterprise; everything else is overhead.

Is your organization shortchanging marketing because you are too busy managing your day-to-day operation? Based on my survey of small businesses, the answer for over 90% of small businesses is “yes”.

Here are some random marketing ideas that you can use to generate sales for your enterprise very quickly. Pick the ones that make sense for your business, your philosophy, your style, and immediately start execution:

Make sure that you have engaged in at least one marketing activity every day. List the activities and track results.

Write down any marketing idea that comes to you and add it to a list for later use. You will need a list if you really want to try at least one marketing activity every day.

Stay up on business trends by reading newspaper, research results, industry newsletter, etc. and watch out for trends that could impact your business. Use the knowledge to try new marketing programs. As napoleon Hill said – knowledge in itself has no value; it is the application of knowledge that creates value.

Ask your clients and former clients for tips on how you can improve your service. Execute some of the ideas.

Keep looking for the available market niches for your products/services and act on ones where you see opportunity.

Form a mastermind group of successful professionals and get their opinion about your marketing and innovation plans regularly (monthly). Use the ideas generated from the group in your business.

Ask your clients for referral and contact them. Too many of us have a list of prospects who were never contacted.

Hire a marketing consultant/business coach and use their ideas for your business.

Monthly evaluate your pricing and make adjustments in order to increase sales/profit.

Join a barter program for small businesses.

Send a newsletter with useful information to clients and prospects regularly.

Develop a website for your business and do web marketing to make sure you are found when a prospect is looking for your product or service on the World Wide Web.

Offer something of value in lieu of the contact information of visitors on your website.

Create a slogan for your business that is memorable and use it in your marketing materials.

Include a signature with your business slogan and website address in all your email correspondence.

Include customer testimonials on your website.

Test email campaigns to different mailing lists and analyze its effectiveness. Repeat successful campaigns regularly.

Send oversized mailers for all your direct mail campaigns.

Do regular press releases; sent it to the relevant media outlet, post it on the website and post it to all online PR posting sites.

Regularly write articles about your industry in your chamber magazine, local newspapers, and trade magazines. Post these articles on your web and submit it to all article submission sites.

Publicize all notable things that happened to your company – Ex. Anniversaries, 1,000th client, major client acquisition, etc. in your PR.

Participate in tradeshows for your prospects’ industry.

Participate in local charity.

Mentor students/new businesses in your industry.

Develop educational CD ROM for your business and make sure they are in the hands of your prospects, not stacked in your back office.

Work as a salesperson regularly to see what kind of obstacles they are facing and how they can be helped.

Make sure all business professionals you deal with (attorney, CPA, bank, etc.) have your marketing material. Advertise their services on your website and ask them to advertise your service on their website.

Set automated email responses with marketing materials on your website that your prospect will also receive when they sigh up to get things of value that you have posted.

Follow up on all proposals, inquiries immediately.

Create automatic reminder system for re-orders.

Sell your product/service through your website proactively. Write a well defined web marketing program and execute it.

Take clients out for dinner, lunch, golf, or a ball game; especially ones who have referred other businesses to you.

Send a copy of interesting articles to your clients; either by snail mail or email.

Spend time/resources on value that you can offer to your clients; values that are above & beyond what you are getting paid to do.

Join Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations and become an active participant.

Use coop direct mail program with other businesses (your clients?).

Advertise during peak seasons for your business.

Get a memorable phone number for your business.

Include your website address on all marketing materials.

Advertise your business jointly with other professionals via cooperative direct mail.

Advertise your business in the relevant online directories for your business.

Create a direct mail & email list of "hot prospects" and follow up.

Code and track your ads for effectiveness, and keep records of results.

Visit http://www.gmrwebteam.com/ or contact us at 949-679-3418 for web design and marketing solutions

Case Study -- How website increased a Surgeon’s business by over 379%?

This is a marketing success story of a surgeon who performed lap-band surgery in Mexico for mostly US patients. The surgery costs about half of what a patient would pay in the US.

The surgeon was facing the following challenges:

• Prospects could choose between two surgical options, gastric bypass & lap-band. Gastric bypass was the more common procedure.
• US based patients were concerned about the quality of doctors & hospitals in Mexico.
• There was a relatively small marketing budget.

This is how we solved his problems:

Conducted a consumer research of his patients and found that:

• Patients were happy with the results.
• They found out about the surgeon through word-of-mouth.
• They rated the surgeon very highly.
• The surgeon believed that life-style was not the reason for their obesity; which is what patients wanted to hear.
• Their biggest issue before the procedure was Mexican hospital, not the surgeon.
• They loved the US based patient facilitator of the surgeon.
• They liked the support group meetings offer by the surgeon. Many prospects also attended those meeting.

with the above information in hand, the following marketing program was launched:

• Developed a website with the following objectives:

1. Educate the readers about the surgeon’s qualifications and experience.
2. Education of the lap-band procedure and its advantages.
3. Highlighted the patent facilitator’s so that patients call a US based person.
4. Education of the hospital facility in Mexico; which is at par with any US hospital.
5. Several before & after pictures with testimonials on the website.

• Launched pay-per-click advertisement on Google, MSN & Yahoo.
• Tracked the pages with most visits; which turned out to be the price page.
• Created a gateway and made visitors fill a form to see pricing which helped capture the visitors’ contact info..
• Everyone who filled the form to see prices automatically received a marketing email.
• Started sending informational bi-weekly newsletter about the disease, latest news, and success stories to the prospects through email.
• Sales team called prospects that also left their phone number on the contact form.

The results were spectacular:

• The program generated over 100 incoming call from prospects every week.
• In addition, 1,000 lead a week were generated from people who filled the form, 40% with phone numbers. These leads were followed by email campaign or phone call by the sales people.
• Prospects contacting were already educated about the procedure, surgeon, prices, etc, from the website (average 25 page-views); resulting in a much easier sales process.
• AND most important – average monthly bookings jumped from 19 to 91 surgeries per month – a 379% increase

The marketing program generates inquiries based on the advertising budget; hence the surgeon controls his workload.

Any business can get similar result from website design and marketing if done right. The basic strategy is same

• Identify target customer
• Understand their hot-button issue that the product addresses
• Design marketing material (website, or brochure, or radio ad, etc.) addressing hot-button issues
• Design a website that addresses the consumer hot-button issues and how the business addresses these issues.
• Use internet marketing tools like pay-per-click advertising, affiliate program, email campaign, Blog, and Podcasting.

Visit www.gmrwebteam.com or contact us at 949-679-3418 for web design and marketing solutions if you want to replicate the results of this surgeon.

Seven Steps to Building Website for Better Conversion

Small business owners! A website for your business is a necessity, not a luxury. Just consider these facts:
a) Over 50% of your prospects may search the internet for products or services you provide instead of the Yellow Pages. If you are not there, you do not exist for them.
b) Over 80% of your prospects may want to visit its website before contacting a business.
Even if you have a website, you will not see good results unless your website is properly planned and designed to sell your product or service. A poorly designed website may not project well and could even hurt your business.
Follow the seven steps outlined below to maximize your website return on investment:
Decide what you want to accomplish with your website before you start. Knowing the end result at the beginning will help you get the most of your website. Below are some examples of why you may need a website:a. Generate online sales b. Generate online referrals c. Generate online leads d. Build credibility of your business e. Build a database of your prospects f. Customer service g. Delivery method for brochures, advertisement, etc.
Decide who your target customer is. A website is no different from other pieces of marketing. You will get better results by narrowing your target market.
Taylor your message to your target audience - same as traditional marketing.
Design your website structure based on your goals. For example, if you want your audience to visit your website to find specials of the month, make sure that it is featured in all pages.
Another example - reduce clickable links to drive a visitor to a particular path. Make sure that your message is concise, easy to understand, and appeals to both emotion and intellect. Explain why your prospects need your product/service before your tell then what you offer.
Decide what you want out of visitor on the website. A well-defined goal will guide you create a call-to-action as you want - purchase your product, contact you for more information, signup for free trial etc. make sure that your offer has a high perceived value; thus "Contact us for information" is not an effective call-to-action.
Be very careful with graphic design of the website. A good graphic design would provide assurance to a visitor that he is at the right website, create credibility and helps a visitor take steps you want (purchase, leads, referral, etc.).
How is your website? Follow the steps outlined above and you have already taken a leap over competitors .
Call us by phone at 949-654-7897 or email info@gmrwebteam.com