The festive period is upon us once again, and what better way to celebrate than to treat our clients to a range of SEO and Internet marketing stocking fillers that can boost their campaign? The team here in the SEO department are beginning to get into the festive spirit, and whilst there is plenty of gossip about what must-haves are making it onto our own Christmas wish lists, let’s take a look at what gifts we can offer our clients at this jolly time of the year.

Like Santa and his elves, the team here at Creare are also preparing for a busy month ahead – and whilst we are continuing to look after our client’s SEO campaigns – wouldn’t it be nice to be able to offer them a little something to help their campaign succeed this Christmas.

There are many ‘stocking fillers’ we can provide for our valued clients; let’s take a look at what we have to offer.

eMarketing

In a bid to increase sales and trade, many businesses focus on trying to attract new customers without considering the potential for attracting further sales from their existing customer base. eMarketing – whereby a periodic email is sent to previous customers – can prove an effective way of reaching a business’s captive market and making them aware of any new services that their business can offer whilst also raising awareness of any promotions such as special offers and deals that may interest them.
As part of this useful service, we can offer our clients bespoke email designs, professional content writing, SPAM testing and even the implementation of video email.

eMarketing is a tried and tested method of increasing online sales and will no doubt be greatly received by clients this Christmas.

Pay Per Click

If your client is in a particularly competitive industry, reaching the top of Google and other search engines is going to be a tough feat to achieve. That’s not to say it isn’t possible, after all our consultants have achieved minor miracles in the past. However, if a client is looking for instant results, you could advise them to invest in Pay Per Click. With the guidance of the team, your client could see their business advertised on the first page of Google on the side bar when industry related searches are made.

Social Media

Social Media is big business and according to the forever reliable Wikipedia, social networking now attributes to 22% of the time spent online in the US. With the likes of Twitter and Facebook enjoying similar levels of popularity on our side of the pond, it is clear to see why your clients should consider investing in one of the social media packages that we can offer.

By using Social Media giants Facebook and Twitter, clients can benefit from effective networking that will encourage consumer interaction and interest. We can offer on-going support and maintenance of their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts – regularly updating and personalising both.

Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is an excellent way of strengthening your client’s SEO campaign with regularly produced industry-related guest posts that are distributed across the Internet. Whilst they are not directly promotional to your client’s brand, these posts will contain links back to your client’s site – strengthening its authority on search engines whilst driving traffic to their site.  Why not give your client something to write home about this Christmas by introducing them to the forever expanding world of Guest Blogging?

Remember SEO is for life, not just for Christmas – so why not encourage your clients to boost their campaigns with an excellent range of must-have SEO and Internet marketing stocking fillers that they can enjoy not just at this festive time but for the new year ahead?

Click! Oh well…better luck next time eh? Taking a photo which doesn’t strike a nerve, get your blood pumping, or grab your heart and throw it at the nearest wall is a bit disappointing to say the least.  Every budding photographer wants that extra oomph, or how do you say – je ne sais quoi? Creating a photo which turns heads is difficult – fact. Photos are fantastic, inspirational and emotive snatches of art. They have the extraordinary power to spring emotion up in the viewer from a single, still image. If you are not impressed, then you are not a true photographer.

I would never dream of calling myself a professional photographer (just an enthusiastic nipper stumbling blindly after the perfect photo with my FinePix S2750), so I can definitely sympathise with budding photographers aiming to achieve the perfect photo.

Pondering this (as you do…ahem) it soon occurred to me that there are strong parallels between photography and SEO.

Lights! Oh wait you need an Idea:

Unfortunately, ideas don’t always hit you on top of the head (although I wish they would sometimes).  This means that to get a great idea, you usually have to look for one. You probably already knew that great snippet of advice? Well here’s another glaringly obvious hint – you need to focus your photography on something that you are passionate about. This is pretty much essential. If you have a cause or passion that is close to your heart, photography gives you the perfect opportunity to interpret your passion and capture it.

Believe it or not – when it comes to SEO, our clients also have to generate clear ideas on what they want to promote. Obviously this is connected with their business (duh!). Creating a key phrase is usually achieved by ascertaining what our clients are passionate about in their business – whether this relates to a service or a product that they supply. If you don’t select the right products and services to promote at the keyword selection phase, you could find that your client isn’t happy, even if his key phrases are on page one position one!

Action! “You’re a tiger! You’re Tony the Tiger! You’re grrreat!” Even Austin Powers found his creative “Mojo”

As any inspiring photographer, artist or film maker will know – with every idea there are numerous angles which you can take. Everyone can stand looking at a photograph and take a completely different meaning, idea or emotion from the person stood next to them. This is what makes them fantastic – postmodernists eat your heart out.

All of us content writers get numerous titles through the day – and finding an angle that we know suits our client, and the product in order to build their growing authority on Google can be extremely difficult. The same applies to blogging and writing site content – sometimes you just need to start writing and see where it takes you. Photography is exactly the same – so get outside or in a studio and getting snapping at everything and anyone. Your perfect image could end up being a photo of your Grandad snoozing on the sofa with the cat sneaking some of his forgotten fruit cake – you never know!

By and large the search engines value natural links, and for your article marketing strategy or long tail campaign that means writing fresh and authentic copy. Write about what you know; take a photograph of real life and describe in it words (not forgetting your keywords of course!)

To change or not to change – How fake will you go?

So you’ve taken the photo – now do you leave it as it is or have a little fun with Photoshop? Personally, tinkering and improving a photo with the help of Photoshop has never been more fun (yes – I do have a life thank you very much). Looking at past iconic photos – whether you prefer Diana seated in front of the Taj Mahal while her marriage was in public disarray, or the iconic fashion photo of Marylyn Monroe with the flirtatious and cheeky image of wind blowing up her dress. They are all iconic – and yet looking at them they haven’t noticeably been altered.

Like all things, sometimes keeping the image in its raw formation with a few tweaks made just to reaffirm or improve the original and authentic character of the photograph has the best effect. This is exactly like SEO – keeping the whole process of SEO natural is essential. Therefore SEO tries to mimic an organic growth, rather than something inorganic and synthetic. Keyword stuffing or article spinning is the SEO equivalent of photo – shopping a photo to death – it looks fake and uninspiring.

Err…You’re not finished yet mate!

Now, unless you are planning on leaving your perfect shot in a photo album underneath your bed somewhere, you need to consider how you’re going to present it. First thing’s first – how can you improve it – what would strengthen the character, emotion or meaning in your photograph? There are lots of different ways to present a photo. Whether you prefer the minimal (and dare I say lazy?) approach of whacking it in a photo frame, or a more creative and quirky way of thinking which is completely outside out the box (go you!), presentation of the overall picture is essential.

Like photography, SEO needs to be presented in a certain way. In article marketing, external articles need to be stripped completely bare of any mention of the company name if they are to be accepted by the web community. In contrast, for the internal articles – well let’s just say we can let our hair down and get a little bit loco shall we? Always conduct your SEO campaign as if someone is watching, because they are, and these observant search engines have the power to make or break you or your clients’ company.

So if you think you can top my photography tips or you would like to know more about what a SEO Company can offer you, then drop us a friendly line below.

Right…Off you go then.

We know it`s Superbowl time in America when talk begins of outrageous marketing costs for major companies wishing to advertise during the now famous half time show. It is quite astonishing when we discover that companies such as Motorola had spent anywhere between 600,000 to 1.5 million dollars in the past at previous Superbowls but it`s even more shocking now that we know this year, advertising costs rocketed to it`s highest ever level. For just 30 seconds of advertising companies had to pay $3 million. Yes you read that right. So Google`s “Parisian Love”advert (which has had a generally poor response online) cost them, based on the advertising fees almost 6$ million dollars as their advert came in at 52 seconds. That is a mighty fee just to advertise their business but it`s advertising isn`t tailor-made for the audience watching it, unlike SEO. However, it is the prime focus for a lot of major businesses to advertise during the half time show as it has the biggest audience for television over any other US television programme throughout the rest of the year.

This same principal is applicable to your SEO campaign and link building is essentially advertising for the clients website, albeit a different method of advertising. The difference is that where the major sporting events like the Superbowl and other tv based spectacles offer general advertising for whoever pays the most money, it is vital that any advertising or link building that takes place is mainly concentrated on industry relevant sites or in a position where you will receive the most exposure. Generally we are not talking the same level of expenditure of course as what I`ve mentioned above but when spending money on links you should ensure that it`s worth it and whether your client`s customer base will see the link or advert and get a return from it.

This raises a common issue of whether paid links should always be used in favour of free links and I think it comes down to a balance, making sure the link is relevant to the industry your client is involved in, creating paid links if necessary but free ones where available. It is important, now more than ever that link building consists of industry relevant links alongside categorised directory listings, especially as we now know that Google builds it`s algorithm based on quality and type of links and whether they are suitable for the site.

With Google changing it`s Algorithm recently, we must adhere to what is required to get the results we want and industry relevant links will always most likely be the single most important thing you can do in a campaign to please Google and make it look favourably on your site. It takes longer than just submitting to general directories of course but you`ll reap the rewards in the long run and industry relevance filters the advertising of the campaign so that you are hitting the right market for your client.

For those of you who like a good analogy, American football is more similar to SEO than you might think…..

• The Quarter Back: He throws the long ball or short passes down field after “the snap”. Or in SEO terms, he`s the link builder and places the links.

• The Referee: Quite simply, Google.

• Receiver: The player catching the ball from the Quarter Back. Or in SEO, he`s the directory or industry link site.

• The Football: Surprisingly, the football that is thrown or received. Or in SEO, the Keyword.

There are so many outlets that as consumers we can gain information about new products and services. I will suggest 5 ways to target the right people for a new product launch. You will need to take an integrated approach to be successful. In the modern age, a combination of traditional marketing methods, SEO and social media are all tools easily at hand.

• Traditional Marketing

Don’t over look the tried and true local advertising, local radio, trade shows and industry specific promotional events will all help you reach out to your target market. My parents favorite saying is “fail to prepare and prepare to fail” you need to invest time and effort into understanding the buying behaviors and demographics of the people you wish to reach out to.

• SEO

I would like to hope if you are reading this you already have some ideas about the benefits a strong SEO campaign can bring to your business. A well optimised site is an easy platform to reach out to an existing market already interested in your products and services. Add a new page optimised for your product launch, with a feature linking from your home page. Press releases are a pricey but worth it with the rewards they can bring.

• Social Networks

You have at your finger tips a group of your target market who are already “sold” on your services. All of these people have the potential to share your new information, make sure you put the time and effort into communicating with your friends and followers, answer any questions, keep information updated and start to create a buzz. Skittles is a prime example of a hugely successful internet marketing campaign, 14,909,637 followers on Face Book. Good effort!!!

• Email Marketing

Reaching out to people you have existing relationships with and giving them an early preview will help nurture their feelings toward your company. Everyone likes the feeling of being the “first” to be in the know, offering them the chance to pre-order could be a way to make some early sales.

• Guest Blogging

You would be hard pushed not to find a successful blog in your niche that will have an active following interested in latest developments in your industry. Take some time and get to know the webmaster, his audience and the way they structure their content. You can then offer your product to them to review.

There is such an extensive range of social media and internet marketing tools available today, you really are missing a huge opportunity by not integrating these into your traditional marketing strategy.

Business has always been a David v’s Goliath competition. The big boys have the money and the man power to hold on to their market. The small local businesses have a constant uphill battle to keep their piece of the pie.

I am sitting on the fence slightly here, as I am a big fan of small market towns and supporting local businesses. Sadly the reality of modern day life, and the time constraints we have inflicted on ourselves, means the internet has opened up a whole new world to consumers, often leaving the small local businesses out in the cold. Unable to compete with the prices big businesses can achieve through marketing products online.

Google seems set on bringing local back. One one hand I can see the advantages, it is brilliant for small local businesses and restaurants. The crack down on Google Places, Google HotPot (if it doesn’t disappear into obscurity) and the chatter about Google Offers (similar to Groupon, which allows consumers to be emailed daily of special offers in their area) are going to be useful marketing tools and potentially will finally give the David’s of the business world chance to compete with the big boys.

Sadly they seem to have neglected to remember that not all businesses are based in one location, for example consultants, and tradesmen such as plumbers, builders and electricians will often work throughout surrounding counties or even on a national basis. To some extent there are ways around this, you can set your Google Places listing to specify a specific area you cover. But it is by no means a solution.

Google’s answer to this is “you can always try AdWords” to me, this sets alarm bells ringing. With the recent (fairly) integration of the Places listings into the organic search, followed by the announcement of Google Boost (equivalent of AdWords sponsored listings) for Google Places, it possibly highlights Google’s intentions of making money out of the precious real estate page one offers.

SEO has always been about evolution. The future of a strong SEO campaign is going to be focusing on all aspects of internet marketing, from organic listings across all the major search engines, to social media campaigns, to email marketing, whatever I have forgotten and whatever next week throws into the mix. Google may have been the king pin of search for a number of years now, but Face Book has knocked them of the top spot for the most visited site on the net, Bing is putting in a strong fight. If Google prices everyone of the market their of plenty of other baskets we can put our eggs in!