Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands

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Tools To Help You Manage All That Overwhelming Social Media!

February 2, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / No comments

Thanks for being a loyal visitor. Check back often for information on SEO!

Managing all your social media platforms is sometimes overwhelming. With a little help from web-based tools, this can be manageable and time-saving. See below for some of the tools available for managing your social media platforms. This is in no way a comprehensive list….it just give you an idea of what’s out there.

Ping.fm: Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap! It allows you to simultaneously update accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr through their web interface, text message, email or instant message.

HootSuite: According to them, they are the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks. This is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution.

TweetDeck: TweetDeck is an app that brings more flexibility and insight to power users. Like HootSuite, TweetDeck provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity- enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted.

Cotweet: Cotweethelps companies of all sizes engage customers, manage conversations, and report results across leading social networks like Twitter and Facebook. CoTweet is perfect for companies who have multiple people contributing to their social media campaigns. In addition to organizing and monitoring your Twitter and Facebook pages, it allows you to assign updates and social streams to members of your team based either on their expertise or who working at the time.

Seesmic: Seesmic connects you wherever you are. Keep up with all of your personal and professional networks, anywhere, anytime. Manage your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Ping.fm, and Foursquare accounts all from one simple interface. Whether you want to access your social networks from the web, a desktop application, or your mobile phone, Seesmic has a solution.

NutshellMail: Manage your Facebook Pages. Keep track of Likes, Posts, Comments, and Insights. Manage your personal Facebook profile too, with all your Facebook Birthdays, Photos, Friend Requests, Wall Posts, News Feed, Event & Group Invites, and Messages in one interactive email. This is by Constant Contact.

Sprout Social: Sprout Social will deliver relevant messages from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs & Articles, competitor insights, check-ins and more directly to your dashboard. Another organizing tool, Sprout Social manages multiple social networks from one dashboard, allowing you to optimize your outreach in each channel, identify people interested in your brand and convert them to loyal consumers.

PostRank: Tap into the intelligence of millions of online users active on the Social Web. PostRank delivers objective, real-time data and analysis on any topic, trend, or interest relevant to you or your business. Learn how you can use PostRank. PostRank, recently acquired by Google, has a dashboard that aggregates what is happening with all of your content across the web in a constantly updated feed. This way you can see what type of engagement your content is getting across different channels right as it happens.

If you don’t have time to manage your social media, even with these cool tools, JaxWorks SEO & Web can do it for you! See below and contact us for more info. These plans enhance and are part of the custom Facebook fan page we build for you, which start at $70.

Maintenance refers to changes you would like to make to the fan page
Posting services refers to us doing more than one generic post a week. It is a custom proposal that may include multiple post a week on FB and daily Tweets. This also could include other social media platforms like LinkedIn or Foursquare
Social Media Advisor is available to assist and answer questions about the social media platform we built for you
Monthly Tips are general monthly social media tips.

Should you use Search Engine Optimization or Pay Per Click?

January 10, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 29 comments

Selecting between Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t a case of measuring Return on Investment (ROI). There are big differences between the two approaches and the decision between either is reliant on different factors. There is a need to understand the differences before a last call is made on your choice between the two or your use of both.

Which to choose – SEO or PPC?

Many internet marketing experts who’ve used PPC advertising, worried by the ever growing value of PPC or stung by examples of click-fraud (click fraud is where your competitors continue to click your ads so you are charged and your budget is used up), are looking towards SEO as a substitute or alternative for their Pay-per-click efforts. Unfortunately, comparing Pay per click to SEO is like comparing an IBM AS 400 mainframe to an Apple Macbook Pro…there’s simply no comparison. They have distinct differences: they might be close in that both are PCs, but the differences outweigh the likenesses. Selecting between Pay per click and SEO isn’t a case of tossing a coin. It’s better to have to have a real understanding of each approach and the way to measure the ROI of each before reaching a decision.

Pay-per-click Ads

The key to Pay per click selling is to think about it in a rather similar way as ‘conventional’ advertising: the money you pay out ends up in the ‘display’ of your ad for a particular period. The instant you stop paying, your advertisements will be removed. Results for Pay-per-click advertising are instant and quantifiable because you begin to get results inside a few days of your ad being posted on the search website page and much of the time , folks stop visiting your website the instant your ad is removed.

Organic SEO

A search engine optimization campaign, alternatively, can have an outlined start and end point (outlined by the details of the contract made between you and an SEO company), but the results can last outside the contract’s termination date just because the measures implemented are, to a great extent, “permanent.” Think about an SEO effort as your classic brick-and-mortar conglomerate…you have the place and the goods and the SEO company paints the building, sets up window displays, puts your products on view, and then waits for the buyers to come in.

If your SEO team did the job correctly, folks will ‘wander’ in. You can choose to let your SEO group go after a year and leave everything as is, but folks will still drop by for awhile because their attention will continue to be called by your site’s window displays, exterior painting, merchandising display, or word-of-mouth. Eventually, your site will drop down in the rankings and will no longer be on the first page, but that can take a few months.

From this viewpoint, it isn’t necessarily a case of ‘choosing’ between Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization. There are express conditions where one is better than the other, either temporarily or permanently. For instance, if you want fast results, then Pay per click is the right way to go. If you want long-lasting results that take longer to achieve, then SEO should be your choice. Another option is to use PPC until your SEO company’s organic SEO efforts are making you rank on the first page and then drop the PPC.

There are hundreds of thousands of websites out there and if you want to be found for your product or service, SEO or PPC is the way to help others find you. Hopefully, you can now make a better choice of which way to go.

If you liked this article, please share below, and good luck on your internet marketing campaign!

Category: Pay Per Click The Woodlands, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / Tags: Pay Per Click, PPC, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands

5 Sixty-Second Video Ideas to Help Market Your Business

January 2, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 26 comments

1. Tell your company story.
Though it may seem like simple advice, the story of why your company exists is a great place to start with a video. In contrast to the typically useless text on your company website’s about page, using a video gives you a chance to share the story of your business with authenticity and can also be a great way to introduce new customers as well as new employees to your business.

2. Show your products or services in action.
Depending on your business, video can be great as a way to demo your products and show a potential customer what the experience would be like. Another great way to use this type of video is to focus on answering some of the most common questions you get from customers and potential customers. Pointing them to a video can be a great way to save yourself some time and also offer value to a customer.

3. Get a customer testimonial.
Anytime you see a suggestion like this, it almost always sounds easier than it is in real life. Asking your customers to record a testimonial doesn’t have to be awkward, though. The key is to make it feel more like an interview than a scripted message. That means building three or four good questions to ask your customer, such as what the project was and how they evaluated who to work with and chose you. Then ask the ultimate question of whether they would recommend you to a friend or colleague and why — you’ll probably get pretty close to 60 seconds already.

4. Show your location.
If you are a business with a retail destination, showing your location can have a great impact to help customers to learn more about your business and even find it more easily if they happen to be headed your way.

5. Animate your Powerpoint.
Aside from the video that you create by shooting footage, there are now a host of sites like Animoto that can help you create a video out of your powerpoint presentations. This can be a great way to take content that you already have and make it more interactive and compelling for customers to engage with — without a huge amount of additional work.

There you are…five fast and easy ways to marketing your business. Share this with your friends and get busy!

Category: Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, SEO The Woodlands / Tags: Video Marketing The Woodlands

Market Your Business with Video, Part 1

December 15, 2011 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / No comments

This is just a introduction but I am going to be doing a series of posts on how to market your business with video. Not only will this help with marketing your business, but it will help with search engine optimization of your website as well. Hope you enjoy it and be sure you share us below!

Category: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, Small Business Websites The Woodlands, video marketing, youtube marketing / Tags: Video Marketing, YouTube Marketing

6 Common SEO Mistakes On Small Business Websites

December 14, 2011 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 2 comments

In the last several years that I have been working in the search engine optimization industry (SEO), I have been fortunate enough to come into contact with many small business owners looking to build a brand on the Web. Small businesses are not web marketing experts and therefore tend to make mistakes on their website SEO, soooo….

Here are six common SEO mistakes many small businesses make—and that you should avoid.

1. Building a site on a free subdomain or social media site

As a website accumulates inbound links, it begins to rank better within the search engines. When you build your site on a free subdomain, you risk that if you ever choose to move your website (and there are numerous reasons that you may decide to do so), you will lose credit for all of the links aimed at your “free subdomain” website.

Why? Because most free subdomain providers don’t allow you to to “tell” a search engine your site has moved without having to start over again from square one with your search engine rankings. Also, all the SEO is going to, say, WordPress, rather than your site. Same goes for using a social website, such as a Facebook page…this shouldn’t be your ONLY online presence!

2. Duplicate or non-descriptive title tags

The Title Tag attribute is largely agreed in the SEO community to be one of the most important “on page” aspects of SEO for each page of your website. Simply stated, the Title Tag attribute tells the search engine what your page is about. Many small business owners make the mistake of making their homepage Title Tag attribute merely contain something generic like “Home,” which does little to tell the search engines what your website is about—and therefore what words and phrases they should be ranking it for.

Bad homepage Title Tag: “Welcome”
Good homepage Title Tag: “The Woodlands Texas Widget Store | ABC Widgets”

Additionally, many small business owners often use the same exact Title Tag attribute on every page of the site. Each page should have its own individual title describing the content on that specific page.

3. Building primarily flash-based websites

It used to be that search engines couldn’t index the content on Flash sites—period. Flash optimization has come a long way since then, but if you think regular SEO is tough, then Flash based SEO techniques will seem like rocket science. While having Flash based components isn’t a problem (such as a flash banner rotating images of your products), most small business owners would be better off avoiding heavy use of Flash, unless they also have the budget to bring in Flash SEO professionals to ensure the search engines can read it.

4. Using “splash” pages as homepages

We’ve all been to that website that has the very sexy graphic or Flash animation on its homepage that users need to click to enter the “real” website. Not only is this bad from a usability perspective (these pages confuse some people and they simply leave the website) but it’s also bad from an SEO perspective, for a couple of reasons.

The splash homepage traditionally contains little or no written content. Given that the homepage is typically the strongest page of your website in terms of “ability to rank” in the search engines, you want to be sure there is content on the page that tells the search engines what your site is about.

A splash entry page is a sure fire way to produce “split link popularity” issues. For example, when a visitor goes to yoursite.com, they see your splash page and then have to click in order to “enter,” which takes them to yoursite.com/secondhome.html. When people link to your website, some will link to yoursite.com while others will link directly to yoursite.com/secondhome.html to avoid the splash page and connect users with the “real” homepage immediately. So, if you have 100 links to your homepage, they could be split between the two pages. You’d be much better off having one homepage with all 100 links aimed at it, making it a “stronger” page that will ultimately rank better in the search engines.

Everything we’ve discussed above has been related to “on page” search engine optimization efforts. But not everything you can do for your site SEO-wise actually happens ON your website. SEO also involves “off page” factors. Below, we’ll discuss two that small business websites typically ignore.

5. Not optimizing local listing pages on popular local sites

Twenty percent of all Google searches are local in nature. And lately, Google Places is showing up at the top of the search results for more and more of those search queries. If you want to be found for locally based searches on Google, claiming and optimizing your Google Places listing is vital.

Additionally, Google pulls data from many other websites and it’s believed that they take that data (mainly reviews) into account when ranking your Places page within the Google Places results. This means that claiming and monitoring your listings (and getting good reviews) on sites like Yelp, CitySearchs and others is important to your SEO efforts.

6. Doing nothing on the “link building” front

Links are still widely believed to be the single most important “off page” SEO factor. Simply put, without links from other websites, your site won’t rank. The more competitive your niche? The more links you will need to get.

Unfortunately, many small business owners put their sites up and completely ignore the inbound link building process afterward. While link building can often be confusing to some small business owners, and it can definitely be time consuming, there is no doubt that if your goal is to improve your search engine rankings, you absolutely need inbound links.

Luckily, many folks in the SEO industry share their link building knowledge on a regular basis.

If you have any questions about this post or SEO in general, comment below! Also, share us with your friends.

The above is partially quoted from American Express Open Forum.

Category: Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands, Small Business Websites The Woodlands, Websites, Websites The Woodlands / Tags: Small Business Websites

Blogging is One of the Most Powerful Marketing Tools. Ever.

December 5, 2010 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / One comment

If you have a business, especially a small business, you need to start a blog. Start it today. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it to start. Blogging is an amazing marketing tool and every business needs one.

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.Godin believes that the end of the “TV-Industrial complex” means that marketers no longer have the power to command the attention of anyone they choose, whenever they choose. Second, in a marketplace in which consumers have more power, he thinks marketers must show more respect; this means no spam, no deceit and a bias for keeping promises. Finally, Godin asserts that the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable

Seth Godin on blogging:

“Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anybody reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matter is the meta-cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself to the few employees – or your cat – or whoever is going to look at it? How do you force yourself to describe – in three paragraphs – why you did something? How do you respond out loud? If you’re good at it [blogging], some people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it, and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. This has become much bigger than, “are you Boing Boing or The Huffington Post?” This has become such a micro-publishing platform that you’re basically doing it for yourself… to force yourself to become a part of the conversation, even if it’s not that big. That posture change, changes an enormous amount.”

Watch the video of Seth Godin and Tom Peters (author and consultant):

What do blogs do for your business?

Like all other means of social media promotion, blogs can:

Increase traffic to websites, since bloggers can optimize for keywords using search engine optimizationtechniques that will help customers find the business or product that they need.
Help build links to corporate web sites, which will help people find your business in online searches.
Build brand awareness, which gets your business known globally or wherever you are looking to be found.

With the right content and approach toward your readership, businesses can develop strong links that will help them build a solid reputation and foundation online. As content is consistently produced and comments are consistently reviewed and/or responded to, businesses are bound to find new readers who will check the site frequently for updates, get new search traffic, and establish visibility in their industry.

What are you waiting for…start your business blogging today!

Category: Blogging, Keywords, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands /

Twitter Day 8 by JaxWorks SEO & Web

October 6, 2010 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 11 comments

It’s true business transactions are transpiring in the Twitterverse. Individuals and businesses are connecting every day on Twitter. The sale of a product or the scheduling of a service is not uncommon across the daily Twitterers. There are even companies finding that perfect job candidate on Twitter. Talk about amazing!

People are more and more using Twitter for business transactions, the sale of products, scheduling services, and finding candidates for jobs. Are you participating in Twitter for these opportunities? Nielsen reported that in a 12 month period from February 2008 to 2009 Twitter grew their unique visitors by 1,382%. This brought their user base to 7 million, so let’s put this in perspective. There are 7 million people out there that you could be prospecting to. Interested? I knew you would be, so how do you start finding those prospects that have an interest in your products or services?

First of all, don’t offend and lose prospects.

1. Be willing to give other people information and knowledge in your area of expertise. Provide information that they can use while maintaining your personality and unique persona. Just don’t give them fluff: put meaningful information out there that they can really use. Solve problems, answer questions…you get the idea!

2. Don’t spend all your time promoting your products or services. That is annoying and unattractive to followers. At best they will ignore you, at worst they will “unfollow” you.

3. Once you say something, it’s out there for everyone to see, so be sure you use common sense when tweeting. You don’t want to say anything derogatory or inappropriate about anyone. This also turns people off and they will not consider buying your products or services.

4. Don’t repeat the same message over and over again. Give your followers new and informative information…don’t spam them!

5. All social media is about interaction, not about plugging your business or self promotion. Interact and form a relationship with our friends, customer, colleagues, and prospects. Treat them like you would treat a friend!

So, now that we know how to act, how do we find prospects?

The most valuable tool that you can use to find prospects on Twitter is the Twitter search tool. Search for terms and keywords that represent your customers. By doing this, you will have a starting point that will represent a list of individuals that may have an interest in your products or services. Start following them! You’ll be surprised at what you will learn that will help you in targeting your selected market for your products and services. You will also find that many times the follow will be reciprocated and they will start following you.
Share information with your fellow industry workers, not just your potential clients. They like to hear different takes on the industry and what you are doing in it.
Find people in your industry that are moving and shaking and follow them. You may learn something!
Create a Twitter profile that draws the interest of your prospective market. Make it informative and interesting, so that it draws in your potential customers and makes them want to follow you.
Finally, pick a Twitter name that represents you or your business. Make sure the profile and the Twitter name accurately represents your business.

That’s it…now get out there and Tweet!