Marketing on the Web Need help finding the right keywords to market your business on the Internet? - Marketing on the web's John Allen spoke with Ad4! Group's Chris Gattis on his show at wtkiradio.com - WTKI 1450 AM / 92.9 FM Huntsville and WEKI 1490 AM / 94.7 FM Decatur. Free Keyword Tools: Google's keyword Tool* SEOBook's Keyword Tool Wordtracker's Keyword Tool Excellent article from Casey Meraz on using Google's KW tool here *Note on July 1, 2013 Google discontinued the public version of its t...
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Where do you Stack up in local Results?
A lot has changed in the way Google displays businesses in the past few years. The changes have come in slowly, so you may not have noticed, but Google Ads that only appeared on the right side of the page have now crept above the left column, pushing organic results down. Businesses that were near bottom on the first page may now be on the second page (or worse). Google is also displaying a "local stack", kind of a phonebook listing at the top of the page for searches it considers local (like...
MoreLocal Businesses Need a Google+ Local Page
As a part of your marketing strategy you need to have a Google local page. Google Local (formerly Google Places) is the web equivalent of the phone book. When Google translates a search as local in nature, these listings appear near the top of the search results. Local Listings are now part of Google Plus, enabling people to comment and vote on your business through their Google+ profiles. If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to sign up for a personal Google+ account to create your...
MoreLocal Ranking factors
The Basics: Immediately Actionable Items There are two different ways to look at the top local ranking factors: what matters and what you should work on. Several of the key factors to ranking are well are out of the typical company's grasp, but here is a list of 10 recommended factors that you can work on today. The actionable factors are: Your physical address matching/listing the city where you're located. Manually verifying your ownership of the company's Google Places page. Hav...
MoreGoogle Places becomes Google Plus Local
---- Update Start ---- Google has clearly changed their strategy for the better with Google Plus Local. In this case, Google is looking to keep things authentic, so you'll need to start by setting up a 'real' Google Plus account. Then create a Google Page for your business and then click the "verify" link in the bottom right to have a post card mailed to you with a verification code. In my case, Google actually called to check on me. I could tell the agent was using Google street view to c...
MoreMarketing on the Web Celebrates 5 years in Business
I am pleased to announce that Marketing on the Web is five years old today! While I served as an in-house marketer for many years, I started Marketing on the Web in 2007 to assist Huntsville-based companies with their internet marketing efforts. We feel this is a significant milestone because the Small Business Administration reports that more than half of small businesses fail within their first five years. We have been fortunate to have our business continue to grow each year. Many local...
MoreThings That Affect Search Engine Rank
The Domain Name / URL (Uniform Resource Locator) Recent studies indicate that search engines continue place a high value on the words in the domain name. Having a domain name like www.HuntsvilleBikeParts.com is far more likely to be found by someone looking for “Bike Parts in Huntsville” than www.bobsbikes.com. Note: If you are in the process of purchasing a domain name, it is recommended that you register several variations, .co, .net, dashed, and non-dashed versions because you don’t want som...
MoreCreating a Pay Per Click Campaign
The following are some of things that you should consider when creating a Pay Per Click campaign: Getting Started / Open an Account To get started, you will need to set up an account with each of the search engines. It’s painless and there is no initial cash outlay. Many of the hosting companies will give you ad credits for Google or Microsoft as an enticement to sign-up and the major search engines give these away at tradeshows and marketing events. These credits come in the form of a code an...
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