How to using Bulk SMS Marketing effectively

Companies shouldn't be afraid of using bulk SMS to aid their marketing campaign. After all, research shows that SMS messages are read more than any other messaging medium. According to Aphelion Software 98 percent of all SMS messages are looked at and are read within an average of five seconds. So it's highly likely your messages will be successfully reaching your audience.

However, a customer's phone is a private place and the last thing they want it to receive annoying or irrelevant text messages, so it's important to get your SMS marketing campaign right. Here are some tips that will help you use bulk SMS marketing effectively...

Content

What is in the SMS messages you send out is very important. Content very much depends on what type of company you are and what you're trying to achieve, but there are still some things that every company needs to consider. You only have a short space in which to put your message; 160 characters to be precise, so your content needs to be clear and to the point. A message that is too short doesn't provide enough information and a message that is too long will lose the customer's interest. Essentially, what you want to gain from a text message is a response, so give them something to respond to.
Offers are a particularly good way at attracting a reader's attention. Research from Upstream shows that 68 per cent of consumers would like to receive promotions via SMS every week. A great way to make the most of this is to send out a message clearly explaining what the offer is, perhaps with a discount code included to make the offer seem exclusive to that customer. There should also be a deadline too, stating when the offer will end. This gives the message some urgency, so receivers will be more likely to react immediately. If they don't feel like they need to react straight away, they'll forget about the message.

Timing

What time you send out your Bulk SMS may vary depending on your business. For example a café may wish to drive customers to their business during lunchtime, so they'll choose to send their messages just before midday, when people are beginning to discuss their lunch plans. A bar may choose to text people at the end of the working day, to encourage people to go out for drinks after work.
There are, however, sometimes you should avoid altogether. Mondays are a bad day to send out bulk SMS messages because people are often most busy after taking time off over the weekend. You don't want to bulk SMS to be sent out during ridiculous times of the day either, because if you text someone at 3am, they're probably going to unsubscribe from your service. Instead, try to pick times of the day when people won't be busy, such as at lunchtime or in the early evening.

Regularity

Most customers probably won't want a daily text message from your company, nor will you want to send out that many messages every month. If you send messages too regularly, customers might get annoyed and choose to unsubscribe from the service. However if you leave it too long between messages, the customer may lose interest and will have forgotten why they subscribed in the first place. There's no set amount of messages you should be sending per week or month, as your audience and the purpose of your messages will mean the frequency will differ.

Targeting

Think about who you're targeting with your messages, as it's likely that each offer or message will need to be tailored to individual customer groups. Age, gender, location and past purchases should all be taken into account when you send out your messages. For example you wouldn't offer free lipstick to men, because it's likely the response rate would be next to zero and some of your customers may choose to unsubscribe as a result. Paying attention to a customer's purchase history is a great way to target individuals effectively. For example if they purchase one particular product a lot, they'll be pleased to receive a SMS telling them it's half price this week and therefore they are more likely to respond. You might also want to think about how a customer's age can have a big influence in what you send. Young people may be more inclined to follow a URL or text your company back, whereas older customers might feel more comfortable calling you instead. A small change can make a big difference.

Five Reasons to Use Accounting Software

This year, make a crucial change to your business operations and switch to computerized accounting software. If you are using a manual accounting system, on paper or in Excel, you are wasting time and even putting your company in jeopardy.

According to a recent survey of 700 small business owners by Sage, business owners who do not use accounting software are more likely to struggle with accounts receivables, accounts payable, and invoicing than entrepreneurs who use computerized accounting. Shaquela Tracy, CPA, of Chicago accounting firm The Meekins Group, says that using pen and paper or spreadsheets is often a “complete and utter disaster.”

1> Efficiency: Using a software accounting package will save you tons of time that would have been spent on tedious calculations. Once you’ve learned the basics, it’s infinitely faster to look up past transactions and data and to run reports for loan applications or taxes.

2> Accuracy: Having a computerized system means fewer mistakes. Most systems can sync with your bank accounts, so you can make sure all entries are correct and capture every expense item.

3> Automation: It’s simple to generate reports with real-time data on the state of your business’s finances. Depending on the program, you can create checks, invoices, and budgets with the click of a button. Payroll services can generally be added for an additional cost.

4> Backup: It’s much easier to back up your data using computerized software, especially if you can save it to the cloud. Then there’s no risk associated with losing your paper-based system.

5> Cost: You can purchase accounting software at a remarkably low price, or even utilize a free online service. In the end, the time saved can be reinvested in growing your business. And having clean, accurate financial records will make it easier to make sound business decisions and acquire financing.

How to build a successful SEO campaign

To build a successful SEO campaign you need to consider many factors which go beyond the traditional SEO work. Achieving good rankings in search engines is not the only concern; on the contrary a good SEO campaign should be able to drive traffic to a website from a number of sources including but not limited to social media and mobile.

The way that the digital industry is evolving has changed SEO and a SEO campaign today includes actions you would normally expect to find in an Internet marketing campaign or even a digital marketing campaign ( which is a more trendy term these days

Step 1 – Analyze the current setup

The basic idea behind this first step is that you need to know basic information about the website in order to be able to make decisions. What I do is check things like:

Web Site Platform – Is the website based on a modern or an outdated platform?  A modern platform (like WordPress) is fast, more secure, easier to optimize and more flexible when it comes to design. If the platform used is old and outdated then my first suggestion is to migrate to WordPress before doing anything else. SEO wise it is sometimes cheaper for the client to pay for the migration to WordPress rather than paying for optimizing a platform that was not build for the web.

Web site Design – Besides the platform one of the things you need to decide in advance is whether you will keep or change the current design of a website. This is always a tough decision since the look and feel of a website is subjective and what you like as SEO may not be what the client expects. If you are to change platform then things are a bit easier since you can select a new theme together and then customize it but if you decide to keep the existing design then any changes for SEO purposes have to be justified and agreed.

Traffic sources – One of the metrics you need to analyze before starting a new campaign is traffic sources. In other words from where does the current website gets traffic. The best way to do that is by viewing the traffic sources report from Google analytics (Example 1 in best Google analytic reports for beginners). If Google analytics is not installed on the site you can get the data from the tools available or by installing Google analytics and waiting a couple of weeks to gather some data.

What is important to distinguish is traffic coming from Google and other search engines (i.e. organic traffic) and traffic coming from other sources.

Step 2 – Perform a SEO audit

This is the starting point of your SEO campaign. The deliverables of a SEO audit will become the action plan of your campaign. The audit will help you identify areas that need improvement in terms of on page SEO (i.e. on the site) but also in terms of off-page SEO (areas beyond website design).

Step 3 – Work on social media

If this article was written 2 or 3 years ago then step 3 would be “Build links”. Fortunately things have changed and the focus has now moved from building links to creating social media connections.

Once you make the changes identified by the SEO Audit the next step is to start work on social media. If you are a beginner to social media you should start by reading my 10 social media marketing tips for beginners and SEO boost your social media profiles.

Besides the traffic benefits, social media will help you understand if you are moving to the right direction. In other words if your content is promoted on Facebook, twitter or other channels then this is a sign that what you are doing is accepted.

If on the other hand you are using proper social media marketing methods but you don’t have any return (i.e. traffic, likes, fans, followers etc.) then this is a good indication that you need to improve the quality of your content.

Step 4 – Work on local SEO

Most businesses have a website in order to promote their products or services in the local market and sometimes all they want is local SEO.  Things like Google maps; Google+ for Business will generate more exposure to your web site from the local market. See also 10 SEO tips for startups and small business owners

Step 5 – Do your Keyword research

Keywords are a very important part of a SEO campaign. There are a number of tools to use to make a complete keyword research analysis.

Google Keyword tool is your starting point – Your goal is to find as many related keywords as you can and try to incorporate those into your content strategy.

The search queries report of the Google webmaster tools gives you valuable information about the performance of your website in Google Search. You can see which keywords generate traffic and the position of each keyword in the search results. (See also: How to use Google webmaster tools for beginners – section 5)

Google auto-complete and related searches – When you search something on Google, as you type you get a number of suggestions. This can give you a good idea of what people are searching. Once you hit enter, you can also scroll down the page see the ‘Related Searches’. The same applies for Yahoo and Bing as well.

Step 6- Perform a Competitor Analysis

It is almost certain that there are more than a dozen websites offering the same products and services as you do. Knowing who your on-line competitors are and how they operate online can be helpful when establishing your long term plan. For example if your main competitor is offering on-line services then this is something you should provide as well.

I wouldn’t spend too much time on this step since what matters at the end of the day is how your website is performing and not what your competitors are doing.

Step 7 – Establish your content strategy

Content is the core of every website and having a content strategy will make it easier to promote your web site in search engines and social media. Depending on the kind of website you are running, you can create a suitable content strategy.

For example, if you are running a blog or a how-to website you may need to publish content on a frequent basis to give incentives for your users to come back. If you are running a small business website promoting your products then updating may not be your main task but you can concentrate your efforts on social media and other promotion methods.

Step 8 – Measure progress

A true campaign needs to have milestones with clearly defined targets. The only way to ensure that targets are met is by measuring progress. Monthly progress reports are ideal for long term campaigns and they can also be used for pricing purposes as well.

Step 9 – Identify other potential sources of traffic besides search engines

As mentioned in my introduction above, a successful SEO campaign these days goes beyond traditional SEO and touches the boundaries of digital marketing. This means that besides optimizing a website for search engines you will have to look into other areas like mobile marketing, email marketing, Pay per click campaigns and in general ways to increase web site traffic (besides search engines).

Step 10 – Build relationships

In the past one of the major activities you had to do as an SEO was to build links. As I explained above this has changed in favor of social media and what you essentially need to do these days, is start building relationships. This is how the offline World works and this is how the online World is starting to work.

So you should branch out and make friends in your niche, get closer to people who are considered to be the influencers and when the time is right introduce yourself and start building a business relationship.

The outcome of this could be a guest post to an important blog, an interview with an important person to a follow back by a social media persona. All these things if done correctly, slowly and without exaggerations will increase the credibility of your website and this will results in better rankings and more traffic.

6 Tips to Help You Build a User-Friendly Web Application

Web applications are sometimes more challenging to design than websites. Designers need to anticipate user behavior and design an experience that makes the user’s job easier. Many designers tend to do what is easier for them than think about what’s easier for the user. The following is a list of tips that designers often overlook in the process of designing a web app.

1. The Power of a Good Tooltip
When you present your web application to a potential customer, the last thing you want to do is ruin your lovely graphic design work by plastering words everywhere to hand hold your new user. Tooltips on your icons can help in a big way. Tooltips offer users the ability to learn a system by exploring icons without harming their experience. People who are learning what all the buttons do can feel immersed in the experience. When it comes to mobile displays, you could use a button that toggles the tooltips off and on. The first tap would display the tooltip and the second tap would submit the action.
The tooltip clearly tells users where the icon takes them.

2. Don’t Rely on the User’s Memory
There is nothing more frustrating than flicking between pages or tabs where the information you need on page 2 was entered on page 1. A web app should not force users to remember their details. They should simply allow them to do whatever action they need to do, and present them with the most relevant information possible to help them complete their task.
For example, if a user is required to enter their customer reference number at the beginning of a process, they should not have to re-enter that information a second time. If you must ask a user for more than one piece of information that they have to reference elsewhere (bank statement, order reference etc.), you should make them do it all on one page to prevent cognitive overload.

3. Offer Multiple Methods of Execution
Any web app you create needs to adapt to your user’s behavior and offer multiple routes to the end goal. Let’s imagine a task management application. A typical task may contain a number of information properties that define what needs to be done (date, priority, description etc.). The default method is to add a task with its associated information properties. However, you should also give users a quick method to add a task without filling in the extra information properties. Offering different routes to reach the same end goal makes your application more dynamic for users, so that they can get things done at their own pace.
Add a new task with all the info you need.
Simply add a task and sort out the details later

4. Don’t Go Modal Happy
“Hey look at me, nothing else matters!”. That is what modal popups scream to users. They are the modern-day answer to popup windows that are sometimes overused. You should use modals to draw the user’s attention. But if you force your users to focus their attention at every turn, they will soon get tired and turn off.
To help users feel more in control, make your modal popups easily dismissible with either a cancel button or an ‘X’ icon in the top right. Another tip that’s often overlooked is to allow users to close the modal popup when they click outside of the window on the faded background. Users don’t like to do more work than they need to or being shouted at. Use modal windows sparingly only when you need the user’s full attention.

5. Give Valuable Status Messages
‘Please Wait…’ and ‘Loading…’ are usually messages you’ll find at the top of a page. They rarely add to the user experience of the application, but they do inform users that the application is busy doing something. The problem is when they are small and unnoticeable. People who miss the status messages become frustrated at the application for not reacting to their input as they don’t realize it is occupied with another task.
For example, when you first load Google Maps a small yellow status message appears at the top of the page somewhere center-left, which you may not have even seen it before. While this status message is present, the map cannot be dragged around until it finishes loading. If the message is important enough to stop all use of your application, then a small status message is not enough feedback. If a status message has a vital message such as ‘Please Wait…’ it should appear in a modal window with a transparent overlay. This tells the user to wait, and users will always be more forgiving if they’re aware of what is happening.
Look out for this next time you’re using Google Maps.

6. Don’t Worry About Scrolling. Use It to Your Advantage.
Worrying too much about ‘the fold’ can seriously turn your user interface design from a scrollable, flowing design to a cramped and messy affair. The root of the problem is an unrealistic fear that people who use computers do not know how to scroll or that anything under the fold will never be seen. What you need to combat ‘the fold’ is a quick way of explaining what your web app is all about above the fold. What is it? Why should users care? Is there more info further down the page?
If you can make your app interesting enough above the fold, users will scroll down to experience more of the page. Leave enough content below the fold to continue to satisfy the user. Once they’re at the bottom, you can be fairly confident that you have an interested user looking at your content. The bottom of the page is possibly the most valuable area of your site because the end is mostly for users who are likely to engage with your app than casual browsers who stay mostly at the top.

Why a Mobile-Friendly Website Is Essential to a Successful SEO Strategy in 2015

Some organizations are still resistant to having a mobile-friendly website, either because they lack the resources or don’t see the value. If your organization falls into this category, and you would like to continue being relevant in 2015 on the most widely used search engine in the world, Google, then now is the time to begin building a mobile-friendly website.

Here are three reasons your organization must have a mobile-friendly website in 2015.

Reason 1: Increased Mobile Visits

Now that Google labels websites that are optimized for mobile as "mobile-friendly" within its mobile search results, failing to have a mobile-friendly website can have a negative impact on your website’s click-through rate (CTR). Think about it this way. If a user performs a search with their mobile device, and four of the top five results have a "mobile-friendly" label, all else being equal, the mobile user will give preference to the four results that Google identifies as being mobile-friendly. The effect of this over time is less click-throughs for the website that is not mobile-friendly, and more click-throughs for the websites that are.

Fortunately, Google provides a tool that allows website owners to test if their website is mobile-friendly. If a website passes this test, it will receive the "mobile-friendly" designation.

Reason 2: Higher Mobile Rankings

Google already penalizes websites in mobile search that are not mobile-friendly to ensure that websites which are mobile-friendly rank higher and provide mobile searchers with a better user-experience. However, Google now appears to be taking this a step further by using the "mobile-friendly" designation as a ranking factor to promote sites that are optimized for mobile, in addition to demoting those that are not.

Consider this quote from the Google blog post that announced the new "mobile-friendly" labels:

"We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal."

Reason 3: Increased Revenue From Mobile

If increasing rankings and click-throughs to your website isn’t enough incentive to be mobile-friendly, hopefully lost revenue is. Lacking a mobile-friendly website at a time when so many searchers use mobile devices to find products and services they need is essentially handing customers over to your competition.

The bottom line is that failing to have a mobile-friendly website is most likely already resulting in lost revenue for your organization. Consumers are becoming less and less willing to put up with poor user-experiences on their mobile devices because organizations fail to adapt to changing expectations. Your prospective customers will find the path of least resistance, and that path will lead straight to your competitors in 2015 if they have a mobile-friendly website, and your organization does not.

13 Simple Tips for Improving Your Web Design

How your website is laid out, what colors, fonts and images you use (or don't use) can mean the difference between success (low bounce and exit rates, high conversion) and failure (high abandonment, low sales).

Want to ensure that visitors will exit your website almost immediately after landing there? Be sure to make it difficult for them to find what it is they are looking for. Want to get people to stay on your website longer and click on or buy stuff? Follow these 13 Web design tips.

1. Have a polished, professional logo--and link it to your home page. "Your logo is an important part of your brand, so make sure it's located prominently on your site," says Tiffany Monhollon, senior content marketing manager at online marketer ReachLocal. "Use a high-resolution image and feature it in the upper left corner of each of your pages," she advises. "Also, it's a good rule of thumb to link your logo back to your home page so that visitors can easily navigate to it."

2.Use intuitive navigation. "Primary navigation options are typically deployed in a horizontal [menu] bar along the top of the site," says Brian Gatti, a partner with Inspire Business Concepts, a digital marketing company. Provide "secondary navigation options underneath the primary navigation bar, or in the [left-hand] margin of the site, known as the sidebar."

Why is intuitive navigation so important? "Confusing navigation layouts will result in people quitting a page rather than trying to figure it out," Gatti says. So instead of putting links to less important pages--that detract from your call to action or primary information--at the top of your home or landing pages, put "less important links or pieces of information at the bottom of a page in the footer."

[Related: 6 Ways to Add Social Media to Your Web Design]

3. Get rid of clutter. "It's very easy these days to be visually overloaded with images, to the point where our brains stop processing information when confronted with too many options," explains Paolo Vidali, senior digital marketing strategist, DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency.

To keep visitors on your site, "make sure pages do not have competing calls to action or visual clutter [e.g., lots of graphics, photographs or animated gifs] that would draw the visitor's eyes away from the most important part of the page." To further keep clutter down on landing pages, "consider limiting the links and options in the header and footer to narrow the focus even further," he says.

Another tip to streamlining pages: "Keep paragraphs short," says Ian Lurie, CEO of internet marketing company Portent, Inc. "On most Web sites, a single paragraph should be no more than five to six lines."

4. Give visitors breathing room. "Create enough space between your paragraphs and images so the viewer has space to breathe and is more able to absorb all of the features your site and business have to offer," says Hannah Spencer, graphic designer, Coalition Technologies, a Web design and online marketing agency.

"Controlling white space through layout will keep users focused on the content and control user flow," adds Paul Novoa, founder and CEO at Novoa Media. "With a lot of visual competition taking place on the Web and on mobile, less is more. Controlling white space will improve user experience, increasing returns from the website."

5. Use color strategically. Using "a mostly neutral color palette can help your site project an elegant, clean and modern appearance," says Mark Hoben, the head of Web design at Egencia, the business travel division of the Expedia group, who is also a believer in using color wisely. "Employing small dashes of color--for headlines or key graphics--helps guide visitors to your most important content," he explains.

It is also important to use a color palette that complements your logo and is consistent with your other marketing materials.

6. Invest in good, professional photography. "Website visitors can sniff out generic photos in a second--and they'll be left with a generic impression of your company," warns Zane Schwarzlose, community relations director, Fahrenheit Marketing. "Your company isn't generic. So show your visitors that by investing in professional photography."

"We strongly recommend that our clients invest in professional photography or purchase professional stock photos," says Gatti. Good photographs "draw the eye, providing an emotional connection to the written content." Poor quality photographs or photographs that have nothing to do with your message, on the other hand, are worse than having no photographs.

Bonus photography tip: "If you want to draw attention to a particular piece of content or a signup button, include a photo of a person looking at the content," suggests Elie Khoury, cofounder and CEO of Woopra, which provides real-time customer and visitor analytics. "We are immediately drawn to faces of other humans--and when we see that face looking' at something, our eyes are instinctively drawn there as well."

7. Choose fonts that are easy to read across devices and browsers. When choosing fonts, keep in mind that people will be looking at your website not just on a laptop but on mobile devices. "Some large-scaled fonts may read well on [a computer monitor], but not scale or render well on mobile, losing the desired look and feel," explains Novoa. So he advises using a universal font.

"Pick a typeface that can be easily read and size it no less than 11pt," says Ethan Giffin, CEO, Groove Commerce. "If you're using Web fonts, try to use no more than two font families in order to ensure fast load times," he says.

"If you're using a fixed-width design, use a font size that allows a maximum of 15 to 20 words per line," adds Lurie. "If you're using a fluid design, use a font size that allows 15 to 20 words per line at 900 to 1000 pixels wide."

8. Design every page as a landing page. "Most websites have a design that assumes a user enters through the home page and navigates into the site," says Michael Freeman, senior manager, Search & Analytics, ShoreTel, Inc., which provides hosted VoIP, cloud PBX service and business phone systems. "The reality, though, is that the majority of visits for most sites begin on a page that is not the home page," he says. Therefore, you need to design the site in such a way that whatever page a visitor lands on, key information is there.

9. Respect the fold. When asked for their top design tips, almost all the Web designers CIO.com queried immediately said: Put your call to action in the upper portion of your website, along with your phone number and/or email address (if you want customers to call or email you). Regarding home page images, "I recommend going against full-width sliders and encourage sliders or set images that cover two-thirds of the width allowing for a contact form to be above the fold," says Aaron Watters, director, Leadhub, a website design and SEO company.

10. Use responsive design--that automatically adapts to how the site is being viewed. "Rather than developing a site for each device, a responsive site is designed to adapt to the browser size," making for a better user experience, says Jayme Pretzloff, online marketing director, Wixon Jewelers. And a better user experience typically translates into more time spent on your site and higher conversion rates.

11. Forget Flash. "Thanks in part to the ongoing dispute between Adobe and Apple, the days of Flash as an Internet standard are slowly coming to a close, so why stay on the bandwagon when there are other options that are much more Web and user friendly?" asks Darrell Benatar, CEO of UserTesting.com. Instead, use HTML5, he says. "HTML5 is gaining more support on the Web, with search-engine friendly text and the ability to function on many of the popular mobile operating systems without requiring a plug-in. The same can't be said for Flash."

12. Don't forget about buttons "The 'Submit' or 'Send' button at the bottom of a Web form can be the ugliest part of a website," says Watters. So he encourages designers to make form submission buttons "so appealing visitors can't help themselves. They just have to click it." In addition, "when a visitor hovers over your submit button, it should change color, gradient, opacity or font treatment," he says.

13. Test your design. "Whether you are trying different placements for a call to action or even testing different shades of a color, website optimization can make a big impact to your bottom line," states Lindsey Marshall, production director, Red Clay Interactive, an Atlanta-based interactive marketing agency. "A user experience manager at Bing once remarked that Microsoft generated an additional $80 million in annual revenue just by testing and implementing a specific shade of blue!"

11 Important SEO Tips for Your Website

1. Make the website about one thing.

It can be about other stuff, too, but choose one primary topic that is most essential to your

message.

This step is important, so you may want to do a little keyword research before choosing a

topic.

2. Mention keywords where they matter most.

Include your “one thing” in the site title, domain name, description, tagline, keywords, blog

categories, page titles, and page content.

If you’re on WordPress, you can change a lot of this in the General Settings or through a

plugin like All in One SEO Pack (which I use).

3. Link to internal pages on your site.

A lot of content management systems automatically do this, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll want to

be intentional about linking to your most important pages directly from your homepage and

cross-linking them with each other.

4. Use a permalink structure that includes keywords.

Some sites have “ugly” permalink structures that use numbers to identify pages.

Don’t do this. It’s bad for SEO and just doesn’t look good.

Use a URL structure that includes text, and make sure you include keywords in your URLs.

So instead of having a page’s URL be this:

http://yoursite.com/?p=12
It should look more like this:

http://yoursite.com/coolpage/

5. Remove anything that slows down your website.

Page load times are important, so get rid of any non-essentials that bog down your website.

These may including music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.

6. Use keywords in your images.

Include words that reflect your site topic in the image title, description, and alt attributes.

Also, re-title the file name if it doesn’t reflect your main keywords (e.g. writing-tips.jpg

instead of d1234.jpg).

7. Link to other websites with relevant content.

You can do this by including a blogroll, link list, or resources page on your website.

Of course, do it sparingly, as each outbound link is a “vote” for another site. However, if you

do it well and people click your links, this tells search engines you are a trusted authority

on your particular topic.

8. Update your website frequently.

Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content. That’s why blogs

and directories (like Wikipedia) do so well on search engines. They are constantly being

updated with new content.

9. Make sure your website is indexed in search engines.

A lot of search engines will automatically find and index your content, but don’t count on it.

You want to be sure engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are crawling your site, so that people

are finding you online. (You can add them directly, if they’re not.)

10. Have other websites link to you.

This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO. The bummer is that it’s not something

you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do

is ask (which occasionally works).

My counsel is to spend the time you would trying to convince somebody to link to you on just

writing great content. And, start guest posting on other blogs.

Regardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.

11. Stop changing your domain name.

The age of your URL is a factor in your site’s search ranking, so be patient.

If you’re launching a new blog every six months, you’ll never see your site get the value it

deserves.

E-Commerce Design & Development

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E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC)  is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the Internet. These business transactions occur either business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business.

E-commerce websites, along with other operation software including customer relationship management offers various business an opportunity to sell their Products & Services to the global audience, build and maintain never ending relationship with customers, create a brand for its products and develop all new unique company image.

We offer complete control to you over product inventory, images, discounts, specials, and prices through a web browser. Our back-end solution lets the merchant update store contents and prices without having to learn complex database manipulation.

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Using shopping cart technology, we provide a personalized web shopping experience without sacrificing accessibility to products. A professional quality and industry standard web site will help your company sell your products or services online

How to turn your Bulk SMS marketing campaign into a conversion tool

It is taken as a key for branding from so many years. The main thing which a company must know is the correct way to reach people and try to make conversions from most of the individuals they reach, in this way only; the Bulk SMS will be a best investment for advertising.  Apart from just sending messages to random numbers for promoting products and services organizations must be utilize this service at it most by using it wisely just by following simple steps given below:
Know your crowd
It is not about just sending text on so many numbers randomly. Bulk SMS marketing should always be done by focusing best on which kind of people will be interested in what you are offering, sending without knowing the interest of people will lead your marketing nowhere. You should differentiate the public according to age, sex, interest, profession and location, this will help you to gain sales because of reaching to one who is already interested in what you are offering will lead you to conversions easily.
Engage people
Engagement is a powerful tool for creating interest in your prospects mind. While using two way communications via Bulk SMS marketing. It will be like, if you send some update about your new launches or anything else you avail reply back option for your end user, so they can ask you further quires and inquiry for the same.
Bulk SMS marketing; Use code to generate sales
In recent times, Bulk SMS is used mainly to publicize brands via coupons code. This usually works like; company sends their existing customer or may be to new one as well, a text containing coupon code along with short description of their offers and at the end it has been mentioned to show the code along with text to enjoy the benefits of offers.
Include Links
It should be considered as most important part of Bulk SMS marketing, the content should have links of your products and website that will take the reader directly on your web page. It will help you to increase website traffic and also helps in gaining the sales.
Develop need
Your Bulk SMS is all about getting attention of audience and drive them to buy your products and services, you can do so by developing an urge in their mind to go with what you are offering. Like adding such quotes; offer ending today or there is nothing best than this; what are you waiting for; these kind of text attract reader attention and they develop a thought of buying your products and services.

What Makes WordPress the Best Platform for SEO?

WordPress sure has a come a long way since it’s initial release in 2003, hasn’t it? What started out as a simple blogging tool has become arguably the leading content management system in the world.

Optimized Websites in 5 Minutes or One Click

Creating a website can be a daunting task if you’re new to the development world. A decade ago finding a complex content management system that could handle all of the many tasks that WordPress can offer would have cost you an arm and a leg to get started with, and that’s before even trying to figure out how to use it.

Open Source Customization

Another important factor is that WordPress is open-source. This is the real reason that WordPress is such a powerful CMS – any developer in the world can create a theme or plugin (more on this soon!) and contribute it to the WordPress community.

Permalinks

After installation, the first thing you’ll want to do is head over to the settings tab and click the drop-down menu, where you’ll find a section called “Permalinks”. There you’ll find the default permalink setting which displays URLs based on a few odd characters and numbers (grabbing the id number of the database entry where your page or post is being stored).

Title Tags & Headings

This takes us to the next set of basic SEO needs, found in the content editor. Once you’re ready to add content, simply head over to “add page/post”, and begin adding your content. First you’ll want to add the title, which typically is coded as an H1 or H2 tag depending on the theme you’re using, which will also act as your web page’s title tag. Under that, you’ll see your URL structure, which again, is easily editable without having to touch a line of code.

Optimized Content

Next, you have the actual content area, where the Visual Rich Text editor allows you to bold and underline words, hyperlink to other internal or external web pages, add additional heading tags, upload images (where you can add image alt tags), but more importantly as a whole, ADD CONTENT, which will easily be crawlable by search engine spiders. All those basic SEO elements are built right in to any default WordPress installation.

Site Speed

Earlier we mentioned using alternative paid or proprietary platforms could be a detriment to your SEO needs, and addressing site speed is a great example of how you could run into such a problem. Over the last few years Google has been making it very well-known that it’s taking your website’s load times as an important factor in your on-page optimization.

Conclusion

Over the last decade WordPress has taken over the web development world as the platform of choice for many designers, developers, and SEO professionals. With its core installation, its community of open-source plugin and theme developers, and the ease of use for non-programmers, there is no doubt that WordPress will continue to be the dominant CMS in the SEO community for many decades to come.

Why Web professionals choose to W3C Validation

Validation as a debugging tool

While contemporary Web browsers do an increasingly good job of parsing even the worst HTML “tag soup”, some errors are not always caught gracefully. Very often, different software on different platforms will not handle errors in a similar fashion, making it extremely difficult to apply style or layout consistently.

Using standard, interoperable markup and stylesheets, on the other hand, offers a much greater chance of having one's page handled consistently across platforms and user-agents. Indeed, most developers creating rich Web applications know that reliable scripting needs the document to be parsed by User-Agents without any unexpected error, and will make sure that their markup and CSS is validated before creating a rich interactive layer.

When surveyed, a large majority of Web professionals will state that validation errors is the first thing they will check whenever they run into a Web styling or scripting bug.

Validation as a future-proof quality check

Checking that a page “displays fine” in several contemporary browsers may be a reasonable insurance that the page will “work” today, but it does not guarantee that it will work tomorrow.

In the past, many authors who relied on the quirks of Netscape 1.1 suddenly found their pages appeared totally blank in Netscape 2.0. Whilst Internet Explorer initially set out to be bug-compatible with Netscape, it too has moved towards standards compliance in later releases.

Validation is one of the simplest ways to check whether a page is built in accordance with Web standards, and provides one of the most reliable guarantee that future Web platforms will handle it as designed.

Validation eases maintenance

It is reasonable to consider that standards such as HTML and CSS are a form of “coding style” which is globally agreed upon. Creating Web pages or applications according to a widely accepted coding style makes them easier to maintain, even if the maintenance and evolution is performed by someone else.

Validation helps teach good practices

Many professionals have been authoring the Web with HTML and CSS for years and know these technologies by heart. Beginners and students, on the other hands, will find automated checking tools invaluable in spotting mistakes. Some teachers also stress that automated validation tests are a good introduction to broader, more complex quality concepts such as accessibility.

Validation is a sign of professionalism

As of today, there is little or no certification for Web professionals, and only few universities teach Web technologies, leaving most Web-smiths to learn by themselves, with varied success. Seasoned, able professionals will take pride in creating Web content using semantic and well-formed markup, separation of style and content, etc. Validation can then be used as a quick check to determine whether the code is the clean work of a seasoned HTML author, or quickly hacked-together tag soup.

The Basics of #SEO Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Creating revenue with a small amount of resources and the unlimited number of tasks associated with running a business are challenges every entrepreneur faces – and they aren’t likely to change. You are likely short on time as you try to get your brand off the ground, create findability, and build an organization – which means you lack the bandwidth to learn and execute the daily tasks associated with every role.

When it comes to SEO, a few important basics can greatly improve your presence in the increasingly crowded online space.

Since SEO has evolve to include a content-centric view of rankings and incorporate social media and local engagements, there are fewer shortcuts and a larger focus on quality. While it sounds time-consuming, quality content has benefits that reach beyond SEO, as good content is useful across all marketing mediums, and forces you to think through messaging from a topic and keyword perspective – ensuring you’re honing in on what actually matters.

Below are a few things I think are important:

Know Your Audience(s) and What They’re Looking For

This is a helpful exercise regardless of whether or not you care about SEO. You’ve got to know who would buy your products or services, and what they’re looking for, in order to find them. Your initial assumptions may be accurate, but you may also be missing things that could drive additional traffic, potential messaging opportunities, or new market segments.

You’ll want to do some research up front (if you haven’t already) and map an audience to the keywords, topics, and phrases they’re using in and around your industry. It’s also helpful to map the keywords and topics back to your content and the ways people are sharing it so you’ll know what types of content perform best on each channel.

If you don’t have the time to go through that exercise in its entirety, a look at how people are currently finding your content using your analytics provider (like Google Analytics) is a good start.

Map Competitor Content

If you’re looking for increased traffic, and not just any traffic but relevant traffic, you need to know what you’re up against. Mapping out your competitors’ content will help you understand what’s already out there, what’s missing, and how similar products and services are being messaged.

To get started, create a spreadsheet with the following information:

• The competitor name (e.g. Acme)
• The keywords / topics that you’re targeting that they are also ranking for (e.g. “anvils”)
• The content they’ve created that is currently ranking above yours or in the top 10 on search engines (e.g. “how to trap a roadrunner” – be sure to include the title of the content as well as the URL.)
• Note any key elements of the content such as videos, images, long-form content, lots of discussion on the post, etc.

Armed with this information, you can better allocate the limited time and resources you have to create content that truly stands out against the competition.

Certain tools will do this for you automatically, and will also highlight things like search and CPC data, which can be a great option if you have a highly competitive or volatile market.

Create a Content Repository

Creating increased traffic and revenue comes from having the most useful content for your audience to consume. Whether that’s in the form of landing pages, blogs, email, social media, ads, or other assets – you’ll need to focus on the findability of your specific content. Having a content idea repository will ensure you’ve always got a list of topics and fresh information for your audience.

Once you’ve done this, map keywords and topics back to each content topic to ensure you’re writing with those in mind when it comes time to create the content.

Set Keyword Expectations and Manage Them Accordingly

You’re going to want to run your keywords and topics through a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to make sure  the topics and keywords you have chosen have enough search volume and potential traffic to warrant time spent. Be sure to take into account the relevance of the search to your audience. The narrower the topic focus, the lower the traffic typically, but this is often offset by the accuracy and interest of the audience.

For example, a broad search might be “running shoes” which has a very high volume and competition for space. You may not want to create content just for “running shoes”. Instead, consider a focus that maps back to your content ideas and create keywords and topics such as “women’s trail running shoes.”

Set Up Your Site & Content Structure for Success

As you create content, you’ll want to make sure each page is optimized for crawlability, page speed, mobile friendliness, and overall findability. Initial investment in a site audit or recommendations for establishing a few initial best practices will pay out results ten-fold.

Depending on your budget and how much site content you’ve already created, you may want to conduct a site audit of your current content or use a recommendations tool that will highlight current issues and help you update them.

Track Progress

You’re going to want to keep an eye on the keywords and content you’re creating and to track competitor movement in the space. A lot of sudden movement by a competitor on a group of keywords could signify intent to increase marketing efforts in that area, add additional products that competes with yours, or other issues to be aware of in your space.

Make Time for Adjustments & Optimizations

As you track progress and release new content, you should start to see what works well for your audience, whether it’s specific channels, content types, or messaging (or a combination of the three.) From there, dive back into the keywords and topics and get specific about each keyword list for your updated audience groups, marketing channels, etc.

The more you can narrow down your marketing efforts, the better your conversions will be. For example, if you have a younger audience segment that uses Twitter and Instagram – look at what topics and keywords relate to that audience and then match your Instagram content to those. If you have another audience segment that focuses on Pinterest or Slideshare, see what their specific needs and topics are and focus the content you create for those mediums on those keywords.

This is especially important when considering mobile content consumption, as people are often accessing apps and sites, and asking different questions when searching on a mobile device versus a tablet or desktop.

Being updated with the SEO updates, could keep you away from making mistakes

The internet spectrum is fully dominated by the various Professional business websites. These website off course need different kinds of advertising and marketing services.

Adopting a Search engine optimization strategy in fact is the latest trend in online business. Along with being a trend it is also a major requirement to get recognized among your competitors.

How important is SEO?

Seo is nothing but Search engine Optimization which is very important for your website, online venue, or a blog page. It is extremely helpful in attracting traffic to your website which eventually gives way to brand validity establishment and a greater visibility, which is very fruitful for your business. You need to keep your webpage highly optimized. You cannot relax, on the though, that your page is a seo friendly one. It has to be kept updated according to the changing algorithms of search engines.

Knowing each and every move and proposal of seo is highly important, which could be achieved by attending the seo conferences or by keeping an eye on the important updates online. You can therefore acquire knowledge about a wide range of tools and techniques which are used by professionals, to achieve a high page raking. You can therefore make your webpage yet more responsive than before by being regular to these SEO updates. They provide a good knowledge about proper content marketing along with the required Seo for your online company. You can maintain your web content well, and enhance its quality by using strategic and the most competitive keyword to attract various customers and client to the webpage.

How SEO friendly is your website?

Being updated with the seo news is a smart move for your business. You cannot miss these seo conferences, if you want to stay ahead of your competitors in the web market. You never know, when the seo strategies keep changing. Being regular with seo strategies, will help you keep your webpage alive, by optimizing it on a regular basis. Securing the Seo services of a company is a highly important. A well optimized business website can basically fulfil all your desired requirements. You can receive a good guidance relating to important seo moves, which starts from conducting an online search to the assessment of business pages and so on.

Sometimes we do not realize what the business is actually lacking. When you get together with a lot of people of the same business, you get to learn a lot through these conferences. Hence these help you create a better or the best website, which can earn you high revenue and you, could probably build a brand name, due to high page ranking of your website. The website basically should be completely SEO friendly and should be well maintained according to the Google webmaster rules and regulations.

Why Responsive Design is More Important than Ever

Why Responsive Design is More Important than Ever

In case you haven’t already heard, mobile responsive design is kind of a big deal. All the big names in digital marketing have talked about it, but it turns out that it might be even more important than even they thought.

With more and more benefits piling up behind the prospect of keeping your web properties mobile-friendly (and even more disadvantages to non-responsive design presenting themselves), responsive design is proving to be an item deserving a spot near the top of your list of priorities. Here’s why.

The Growing Proof

Let’s talk for a moment about the growing body of proof that undoubtedly shows how responsive design is one of the important factors that could make or break your business online.

First off, depending on your audience and industry vertical, mobile users could account for up to 70% of your email opens.

And looking at regular content consumption, over 2 billion users are expected to be surfing the web via mobile by the year 2017.3

Furthermore, the typical smartphone user today checks their device an average of 150 times per day—that’s 150 opportunities for you to break through and convert a prospect to a customer!1

Google announced earlier this year that mobile searches now exceed searches done via computer. Specifically, Google said that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.”

The list of compelling statistics goes on and on. But if they don’t convince you, just have a look at the cost of ignoring mobile.

The Price of Unresponsive Design

You’ve heard the case for adapting to mobile. Now listen to what you’re facing if you ignore the call for responsive design.

SERP Ranking Penalty

Early this year, Google announced that responsive design would become a notable ranking factor in the SERPs. And in April, the respective algorithm change to implement those sentiments was released. That means you’ll likely begin to see your rankings drop if you fail to design for your mobile users.1 (highlight to tweet)

Frustrated Users

Web users are a finicky bunch, especially when they’re looking to buy. Research reveals that webmasters have a window of 7 seconds to capture users’ attention before they click away. To make matters worse, 73% of mobile web users say they’ve run into a site that took too long to load on their phone or tablet.

Lowered Credibility

First impressions matter, no bones about it. And if your site isn’t set up to impart the best impression on all platforms, you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Each and every user should receive an impeccable UX and UI experience the first time they visit your site, no matter what their device may be.1

Getting Up To Speed

Are you sold on the benefit (read: necessity) of implementing a responsive design? If you’re still working with a non-responsive design, you might be starting to feel a little nervous at this point. But don’t be discouraged. You have a few different options when it comes to bringing your site up to speed with modern mobile standards.

Switch to a Responsive Theme

If you’re running on WordPress, making the switch to a responsive theme—and hiring a design firm to make the transition as smooth as possible—is a great option. Professionally designed themes tend to be stable, updated frequently, and rather pleasing to the eye, even with minimal customization.

Build Custom From Scratch

Regardless of your situation, this option is definitely the most expensive. However, it’s also the option that provides the highest level of customization and quality. A larger, more established business with a heavy reliance on revenue generated from their web presence can’t go wrong by building a new responsive site from the ground up, no matter the cost.

Adapt An Existing Site

For many websites, it’s possible to convert an existing website to be mobile responsive. If you have a strong brand attachment to your current site, a lot of prebuilt systems, or other assets that might make a redesign difficult, this approach may be your best bet.

The Potential ROI

Having seen the ever-growing demand for responsive design, it’s hard not to acknowledge the tremendous ROI you’ll be receiving on your investment in a new mobile-friendly site. From snagging customers that otherwise would’ve bounced from your site to keeping your existing customer base happy, there’s no denying the value of a clean, effective responsive design.

Below is a convenient visualization from Rebuild Nation documenting the continuing move toward mobile in the market.