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Archive for March, 2009

10 Best Tactics to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

March 26th, 2009
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In this Google  world  businesses are competing to make it on the first search results page. Whether you are the biggest corporation or a small startup company, either you are in B2C or B2B business. We all are trying to stay ahead of our competitors, to make it simple we have put together a list of top 10 factors that positively affect your search engine rankings:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag

Use the search keywords you’re targeting in every webpage’s title tag. Have a customized title for each page; don’t be lazy and use the same title for every page on your site.


2. Anchor Text of Inbound Links

When other sites link to your webpages, how do they describe the link? When you email other websites to promote your content, mention your preferred anchor text if they choose to link to your site. Choose anchor text that helps your website/page rank better for your targeted keywords.


3. Global Link Popularity of Site

How many other websites are linking to your site? Make link building — the practice of getting more inbound links to your site — a central part of your online marketing strategy.


4. Age of Site

The older your website, the better. Start today. Be patient. The hard work you put in now to optimize your website may not payoff until next year. The good news is that after next year, you’ll have a leg up on new competition

 

5. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure

How prominent is the webpage within your own site? Showcase your best content or the webpage you most want to highlight. Put it in your main navigation menu or link to it from your homepage.

 

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site

Are the sites linking to you related to your topic (and targeted keywords)? The more relevant, the more weight those links are given. Relevance matters. Focus your link building efforts on sites within your topical niche.

 

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community

How popular is the site that is linking to you? Especially within your niche. Relevance and authority matters. For #6, we said you should focus your link building efforts on sites within your topical niche. This factor says you should prioritize your link building on getting links from the biggest of the relevant sites.

 

8. Keyword Use in Body Text

Within the webpage/article, how often and what keywords being used? How relevant is your article to target keywords? Use the search keywords and phrases you’re targeting throughout your page or article…. when it makes sense. Don’t cram so many keywords in the article that Google penalizes you for keyword stuffing.

 

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site

Links from big websites (ie., sites that have lots of inbound links) are worth more than links from smaller sites. Focus your marketing efforts on the biggest, most authoritative sites. Think of it this way — it’s better to get one link from a big site (like marketingsherpa.com) than to get 10 links from 10 small sites (like personal blogs)


10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page

Relevance matters. Links from a webpage that is related to your page’s content are worth more than links from random, unrelated sites. Relevance matters (again). Focus your link building efforts on sites within your niche. And if you can help it somehow, try to get links on specific webpages within a site that’s even more relevant.

 

Hope you put these tactics in your SEO and improve your ranking.

Kriti Jaising

 

mobile and email marketing , , , ,

B2B Email Marketing Best Practices

March 8th, 2009
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I am a great fan of Simms Jenkins, a nationally known email marketing expert. I have finished reading his book The Truth About Email Marketing. The book reveals 49 proven Email Marketing Best Practices. It is a must reader for all marketers. Simms also discussed about the best practices for B2B email marketing. Please read and enrich your understanding of email marketing.

According to Simms

  • Know your audience: If you are mailing to IT network administrators, an image-heavy newsletter probably will not be well received. Instead, send a text-only message. Follow the cues of what your audience is like and don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach
  • Mobile email triage is real: Escape the mobile email gauntlet. An increasing number of business executives use their mobile devices/PDAs to perform email triage. This means that if you have a weak message or lack something compelling or of immediate value to your email, you may have the busy exec delete your email while in a meeting. On the flip side, a unique email with a relevant purpose may get saved for the executive to read in the office.
  • Make it easy for the mobile audience: Click here to read on your mobile phone is becoming more commonplace on B2B emails and may help you escape mobile email rendering snafus.
  • From & Subject lines: Emails from a CEO to a fellow executive tend to resonate. Ensure your From line is from someone who matters. Combine this with a short Subject line that can break through the clutter while demonstrating a reason for the user to read this email.
  • Short and sweet: Whether read on an iPhone or laptop, make your message count. That means make sure it gets read. Long emails without clear calls to action will get skimmed and deleted. Make your value proposition above the fold and obvious to the people that will browse over your email looking for a reason to read (or delete).
  • Don’t oversell: Too many promises, customer raves or pricing information may overwhelm your audience and diminish your opportunity to have people click on a link where they can find the details of the service or product being offered.
  • Respect the audience’s time: Frequency is a significant issue for all mailings, but if a business subscriber doesn’t respond to the first two messages, it doesn’t mean you should send to him even more frequently.
  • Test: I received seven different emails from a lead generation company in the span of five minutes this morning. The emails actually contained decent messaging and links to at least one relevant case study. They had me until hello occurred seven times. Someone was asleep at the wheel when the campaigns were segmented and set. Do your due diligence before an email is sent as these campaigns did more damage than good.
  • Offer something unique: A white paper can often work, but they are everywhere, aren’t they? Provide access and perks that are gold to the C-suite audience. For example, one client attempting to register business executives for an annual event tested pricing breaks versus admission to a VIP event. Remember, the B2B audience usually isn’t spending its own money so you can guess which offer performed better.

  • Remarket: We had major success with one client recently by creating follow-up campaigns based on how each user responded (or didn’t) to the initial campaign. Using your metrics can guide you to a better and more relevant strategy. (You can find the case study of how this client generated $120,000 from remarketing here.)

    • Buzz on EkoBuzz, Digital marketing, mobile and email marketing, permission based marketing, self service marketing, targeted marketing

    Pricing of Mobile Marketing Campaigns

    March 5th, 2009
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    Mobile marketing campaigns hmm… sounds familiar, isn’t everyone talking it especially in this economy when every company is looking at cutting their advertising and marketing budget. Every marketing initiative is geared towards sales, how each and every campaign is going to affect the bottom line.  

    Bad economy has helped mobile marketing industry to boom. This low cost marketing channel is gaining momentum due to its newness, uniqueness and cost effectiveness. As a small business must be wondering should I try this new channel that every marketer is raving about or should I wait to see the actual results, numbers, the concrete ROI. Presently email is the most cost effective channel with the highest ROI of $57 for every dollar spent.

    In terms of quantitative measurements mobile sure has a long way but qualitative analysis does present a beautiful picture. The channel is helping in customer engagement, better brand recognition and recall and surely better brand experience. 

    A simple SMS alert campaign can cost you anywhere from $0.1 to $0.2 per message. The cost is also dependent on the keyword selection shared or exclusive and whether you are using bulk or premium SMS. Please check out different website before selecting a vendor. There are way too may options available that it makes so confusing for the decision maker.

    Keep reading

    mobile and email marketing