Navigation


RSS : Articles / Comments


Google Analytics Telephone Leads

9:46 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

Integrating Telephone Leads and Live Chat for Increased Results

Get more from your marketing budget and increase ROI by combining the power of Google Analytics with telephone tracking and live chat interactions. Each of these powerful marketing tools, when combined with Google Analytics, can provide you with better results and more information about your customers.

Telephone Leads and Google Analytics

Combining telephone calls and Google Analytics allows you to track each phone call made by your customers to your company resulting in new valuable information about you customers. All of this is easily accomplished when you work with a company like Mongoose Metrics. Purchasing bulk toll free numbers from Mongoose Metrics, allows you to use unique phone numbers for individual marketing campaigns or product lines at a very reasonable price. By assigning each number to a hidden web page on your site including the Google Analytics tracking code, each phone call will trigger a visit to the hidden web page. This will then trigger Google Analytics to register the phone call as an event in its tracking system. By combining the numbers being tracked with your account in Google Analytics, you can see results including the phone number called, duration and date of the call. All of this information can help you to refine your marketing and increase ROI.

Live Chat and Google Analytics

Having the capability to chat with your customers while they are on your website is invaluable. Aside from the personal touch this provide, it allows you to get a better handle on what is working or not working on your site, with your marketing and how your customers are responding to your company. Using the services of a company like LivePerson, allows you this real time interaction. Combining LivePerson’s services with Google Analytics gets you a wealth of knowledge not before available. Some of the information available to you includes:

* volume and quality of live chats by geographic area
* the source and keywords that lead to the chat
* navigation paths that drive chats

The more you know about your clients the more successful you will be. By garnering this type of detailed information from telephone and live chat interactions, you will be able to modify your future messages and increase ROI.

How to Turn a Negative Blog Post into a Positive

9:44 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

No one wants to see or hear a negative comment about their business. When you first read a negative blog post, you are likely to get a sinking feeling in your stomach. However, a negative blog post doesn’t have to mean impending doom. Instead of dreading seeing your company’s name, take this as an opportunity to spin a negative into a positive.

When a blogger mentions your business consider it an open invitation to respond. If a blogger criticizes a promotion you are running or pans your business based on their experience, it is your opportunity to craft a well thought out response.

You have every right to explain yourself. Address the specific issue raised in the blog; explain what your business is all about or the structure of your promotion in question. Be sure to take the high road and always be professional. Personal attacks are never appropriate; even if you were attacked first.

Opening a dialog with a blogger gives you the opportunity to provide an explanation, to correct misinformation and address misunderstandings. With a well thought out and timely response, showing your thought process and professionalism is likely to enhance your image.

Don’t forget that the blogger’s posting and your response is going to be viewed by all of the blog’s readers. Accuracy is a must. On a side note, a quick “Thank you for the kind words” post to a positive blog comment is always appreciated.

Can You Protect Your Online Reputation?

9:42 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

We’ve all done things in our lives we regret. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, those things are often found on the internet, available to potential employers, schools and any other person who enters our life. So can you protect your online reputation by having those pages removed from Google’s index?

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as you would hope for. Google clearly states on their website that they do not own the internet. This means that in order to get the pages off of Google’s search results, the website that houses the undesirable information must be changed. Your only hope of getting a change is to approach the webmaster of the offending site to request removal of the page or at least request they block the page from Google’s indexing. Google’s response if you approach them first is a polite, but firm, “We are sorry, but we can’t do anything without action by the webmaster.”

Your only hope is if the information falls into one of the categories that Google is prepared to deal with. They include:

· Social security or credit information in results

· Adult content in results, when SafeSearch has been turned on

· Inappropriate images in video results

Beyond these points, you are pretty much on your own. Once you understand that Google has no control over what is posted to the internet, it does seem to make a bit more sense. Google’s job is to tell you what is out there, not to police what is already posted to the Web.

So what is the best way to protect yourself? Be on your best behavior to keep your reputation intact, and well, if that doen’t work for you… than you’re in good company. If you do have to approach someone to get a page removed, make nice and hope for the best. If that does not work, just make sure you have lots of good stuff to make up for being less than perfect. After all, nobodys perfect J

SEO Investments on the Rise

9:42 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

Search engine optimization (SEO) budgets are increasing as marketing executives gain knowledge of how SEO can benefit advertising and marketing campaigns. eMarketer is reporting that SEO budget allocations are expected to rise in the coming years as compared to other search marketing strategies.

With the decline in the economy, customer acquisition is becoming more and more vital. As the focus on customer acquisition increases, SEO becomes a more vital part of the overall marketing strategy. Because SEO provides a long term strategy for increased consumer presence, it has added value as compared to paid search marketing.

“Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” reports that SEO growth will grow from 17.7% to 20.3% while paid search will decline from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013. When searching for information, consumers find more value in organic search results than pay per click (PPC) advertising. The value placed by consumers on organic search results garners more clicks on these results thus making SEO a valued part of the marketing plan.

SEO Market Growth

SEO Market Growth

Combining SEO and PPC marketing efforts may result in higher search engine result rankings. Paid search engine advertising offers more immediate results, but in order to see results in the search engine arena advertising must be consistent. SEO marketing results occur over a longer time frame, but result in organic search results more valued by consumers.

In order to gain the most information and knowledge of your results, Web analytics is necessary. Having solid feedback regarding your SEO and PPC marketing efforts will allow you to gage how successful your campaign is. More traffic is only positive if the cost of the search ad relative to the conversion doesn’t reduce your bottom line.

SEO is a bit like a good public relations strategy; it helps to bring top of mind awareness to your site. SEO gets them in the door, so you can complete the deal.

Maximize Your Twitter

9:40 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

Twitter is expected to be one of the only social networking sites to have long term viability. Twitter usage and name recognition has been growing in leaps and bounds. Many are using Twitter not just to stay connected, but to market as well. So how do you maximize your Twitter?

Get an active Twitter account.

Yes it sounds basic, and you may already have one, but don’t just breeze past this section. We have some interesting tips to help you maximize your usage.

For those of you just getting started, open your account at http://twiter.com/signup. Once you have the registration form complete, connect with as many people as you can. They make it easy by allowing you to search your email lists (see below for more information). Customize your profile to show your main website and your, or your company’s, bio information. Don’t forget to set your location, update preferences and how you want to be notified of friends who have joined the Twitter revolution.

Draw attention with a customized background.

Get creative here. Simply click on “Settings” and then “Design” to choose a premade background or upload your own image. If you have a flair for design and a little Photoshop experience you can create a background that speaks volumes about you and your company. Check out some great custom layouts like:

http://twitter.com/JetBlue

http://twitter.com/BBCClick

http://twitter.com/MarthaStewart

Gather friends and follow interesting people and organizations

Finding friends on Twitter is easy. Three options are available.

1. Search Twitter. Use the “Find People” function to search for anyone from your next door neighbor to celebrities to companies.

2. Search other networks. Connect to anyone in your email contact list. Twitter can search through your hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail contact lists and if your friends use Twitter they can be added to your list.

3. Manual invites. Have friends, co-workers or clients who are not on Twitter? Manually input their email addresses and invite them to be your friend.

Connect your blog to Twitter

One of the best tools to connect Twitter and your blog was created by Alex King. This plug-in will automatically create micro blogs from your WordPress blog posts. Just follow this link for all the information

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

to download this plug-in click here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip

If you blog regularly, be sure to review the instructions and support information.

Monitor your Twitter Rank

Twitter offers the Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to show you where you rank against other Twitter members. Once you enter your user name, you will see where you rank among a possible 100 points.

Twitter Grading is based on overall rank, number of followers, your following and updates. The more active you are the higher you will rank.

Link your Twitter account to social bookmarking sites.

If you are in the Twitter game, be in it to win it. Build up your social networking account by bookmarking your Twitter account to sites such as Digg.com, Propeller.com, Dropjack.com and others.

Take advantage of advanced search features on Twitter

To really maximize your connection with people in your target market, go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced to use the Advanced Search features Twitter offers. In Advanced Search you can search by keywords or phrases, location, names and more.

Resist the urge to connect with everyone you see. Be choosy and select only the best people who actually have good information to share and are likely to accept your friend request.

As you take these steps to maximize your Twitter impact, you will see your social status rise. As with any adventure, the more you keep at it the better the result

Optimize Your Long Tail Keywords

9:39 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

We all prefer our customers to be serious shoppers with money ready to spend. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable time with a customer who isn’t serious about a purchase. Whether at your bricks and mortar location or your website, you want to draw motivated shoppers versus window shoppers. So how do you drive top quality traffic to your website? The kind of traffic that is ready to buy?

SEO (search engine optimization) is an excellent tool to build website traffic and top rankings on Google. But searching on any old keyword isn’t enough. To get the best prospects for your business, you need to focus on “long tail keywords”. Long tail keywords are keywords of three or more words. For example, searching on “cars” isn’t as effective as searching for “used cars for sale under $5,000”.

Long tail keywords work to your advantage because there is less competition for them. With long tail keywords, you get higher search engine rankings more easily. Most importantly, consumers who search for more specific things are more likely to be serious shoppers ready to spend their money.


The reasons to focus on long tail keywords are simple:

Focusing your SEO efforts on long tail keywords will over time, lead to more search engine traffic because you will have more pages indexed.

Long tail keywords will produce higher page rankings because there is less competition for them.
You will find your best prospects through long tail keywords. They’ve already taken the energy to think about what they specifically want or need; now they are on your site. These people are more likely to subscribe to your blog, email blasts and read your advertisements.

Long tail keywords generate higher sales. Shoppers who use long tail keywords are motivated and looking to spend money. Skip past the window shoppers and focus your energy on the serious shopper.

Focusing your SEO energy on long tail keywords will deliver the customer who is most likely to spend money at your site. Isn’t that what we all want?

Internet Marketing System

11:24 PM, Posted by Franken, No Comment

Do You Need an Internet Marketing System?
With the rise in online businesses and e-commerce, business owners have started to hear the phrase Internet Marketing and need to consider using an Internet Marketing system as opposed to a project-based system to effectively market their business. Without using a strategy to direct visitor traffic to their website, the site owner will not see any sales. By using strategies, the site's visibility increases, thus driving traffic and conversions.

What is Internet Marketing?

IM is the art of positioning a website to show up near the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs), and preferably in the top 10 positions on the first page. Many companies use professional SEO (professional search engine optimization) and SEM techniques to do this. Using various methods to supply backlinks to the target website, using proper keyword structure, and using fresh content are examples of techniques a professional search engine optimization company uses to increase visibility of a website.

SEM, otherwise known as professional search engine marketing services, includes SEO in addition to other methods such as pay-per-click advertising, sponsored advertising and more. Both methods increase overall visibility of a website and promote high visitor traffic so that the site can convert more sales.

Why Use Internet Marketing Companies?

Using Internet marketing companies as opposed to project based website development and marketing has many advantages. For example, an Internet marketing service provider will continue to update the professional search engine marketing services used, but project based services leave a business owner to tend to the SEO himself, if he has the time. An Internet marketing service provider will also turn the business website into an asset for generating sales leads and continuously use web-tracking services to assess a particular campaign's viability.

An SEO will also use website traffic tracking to monitor and analyze visitor behavior and change content to improve conversions related to the site's performance. This method is easy, but time-consuming and what site owner has the time to continuously monitor their site's statistics?

Opting to use a professional SEM or SEO company will not only have an effect on traffic and sales, but it will also effect the way visitors look at the site. They will see it properly maintained and know it is a site they can trust for fresh and reliable content and products. This is one of the many assets of using a professional Internet marketing service instead of a project based in-house approach for any SEO campaigns and web tracking services.

When it comes to Internet marketing services in San Jose, WSI Omega Solutions is your best choice for a professional Search Engine Optimization Company and web tracking services. They are a company that provides complete professional search engine marketing services and they take the hassle out of website traffic tracking and increase the return on investment overall.