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Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

Marketing Without a Cost

Thursday, June 6th, 2013

There are many aspects to owning a business that are very important for your business to be successful. Keeping all aspects in balance and unity will make a successful business. But, of course, income is the most important. So, how do you get your name and brand out there in order to sell and produce income? Marketing. Marketing is a big part to having a business. The most effective methods are going to come at a cost, because in reality, you pay to win. But, have you thought of the methods that may come to you without a cost? Below is a list of marketing suggestions that may help your startup or company gain name recognition without emptying your wallet.

Blogging: It is always a great idea to have a blog on your site and try to post at least once a week, if not more. But, this is not going to technically bring any new business to your site if no one knows your name. So, find other great blogs or bloggers in your industry and comment on them. Try and contribute to these blogs by leaving very informative information in the comments section. Keep in mind that the more information the better, because simply putting ‘this is very informative’ will not get your comment approved. Once approved, other users can view it and become familiar with you and your company.
Article Creation: Building backlinks is ideal if you know how to. It is not suggested if you have never built links in the past because you could get penalized with the search engines, hurting your brand. Let those knowledgeable in the field do it for you. If you do know how, this is the most effective way to market in the Internet marketing World. You will need to write your own articles and submit them to article directories. It is suggested to submit around eight articles per month. If you are able to, then in due time the rankings of your site should improve.
Social Media: At this point, we all know the big outlet that has been changing the marketing industry considerably. All social media outlets including, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn are free services that can gain your brand recognition, and in the end, client retention. Keep in mind that once you create these accounts you have to be sure to be posting on a regular basis in order to keep your audience interested. Also, remember to engage with those that are engaging with you. Excellent customer service is a huge plus!
Forums: Find a few forums that are related to your industry. Once you join the forums, make sure your signature and profile includes a link to your website. Also, be sure to involve yourself in the conversations with informative information, daily. It would be ideal for you to try and contribute three to four times a day in order to be recognized and reputable.

These are just a few ideas to try and market yourself without breaking the bank in the beginning stages of your new business. Of course, there are great marketing efforts at low costs that can improve your strategy greatly. For any Internet marketing needs or questions, please feel free to contact us!

Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »

AdWords in Bulk

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

For those running their PPC campaigns through Google AdWords, you may have noticed that last month Google released a ‘keyword bulk upload’. This was released in order to add, edit, and remove keywords in bulk. Now Google is following up on the bulk upload to include ads and adgroups, which is great! The option comes when downloading a report. When you go to download a report, there is a check box that reads editable. You will want to check this in order to make edits to the report once downloaded. To further explain, it will allow you to make edits to the ad creatives, pause or enable ad groups, and change budgets. Below are bulleted steps with explanations that you need to take in order to make ad and adgroup changes in bulk.

Prior to editing the report, be sure to save your original file because once the changes are made they cannot be un-done. This of course is standard practice to save, but always a great reminder.
Once the report is created, you should notice that the first column says ‘Action’. This is the column to make the actions that are necessary. If you leave this column blank, then no changes will be made.
The ‘actions’ that are able to be implemented are Add, Remove, or Set. When making the action ‘Set’, you will then need to add an action in the ‘Action Status’ column. The options to choose for changing an ad or adgroup from there are ‘enabled’ and ‘paused’. Again, if ‘Set’ is in the ‘Action’ column, be sure to add enabled or paused to the ‘Action Status’ column, or else no changes will be made.
Once the report is completely edited for an ad or adgroup, you will want to go back to AdWords and upload.
First, you will want to click ‘Reports and Uploads’ which is near the Shared Library area.
Then, click the ‘Uploads’ tab, browse for your file, and upload!

Hopefully, those that run PPC in AdWords have found the bulk uploading helpful. If you have not tried it yet, follow these steps and let us know what you think of the bulk uploading feature!

Posted in Internet Marketing, PPC Advertising | No Comments »

The Best Way To Keep Up With Google? – Ethical SEO

Friday, December 14th, 2012

It is a known fact that regular optimization of a website is a vital part of ranking well in search engines, especially Google. But, what some may not know is that SEO can actually hurt a site. “Over SEOing,” as we like to call it here at NetSearch, occurs when there are too many links going to a site. It is true in fact that link building can go too far. It is hard for the common consumer to understand that the same practices that can give your site great rankings and visibility can also end up getting you wiped off of the search engines completely.

The key way to make sure that your site remains in good standing with Google is to be sure that you or your SEO company always conducts SEO in an ethical way. Ethical you say? By this we mean that the only way to avoid penalties from Google is to organically link build – no paying for links, no using link farms, and no posting links in irrelevant directories. Some red flags that a “SEO-er” may take part in unethical practices is if their prices are extremely low, they guarantee first page placement in a very short amount of time, or they have no reporting to show the consumer exactly how they are running any given campaign. In the end the world of SEO is changing very fast and it is important to stay ahead of the curve before your webpage, and ultimately business, feels the consequences. To learn more about ethical SEO practices, see this recent article from Forbes.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Internet News, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Shopping to Increase Conversion Rates

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

‘Tis the season for people to go holiday shopping for their family, friends, and themselves! This holiday time is a great time to get your conversion rates up and bring sales to your company. People are enjoying the convenience of avoiding the stores, traffic, parking, crowds, and all around difficulty of shopping. What is that convenience? Well, buying online. Buying online has been the easiest way for people to do their holiday shopping with their feet up relaxing on their couch. About 73% of consumers do at least half of their shopping online. For retailers out there this is great news for your conversion rates. You want traffic coming to your online store with people either buying directly on your site or by having people shop around online and coming in to the store to make a purchase. So, how can you get those conversion rates up this holiday season? We have some great tips on how!

The first would be the power of social media. It is always a great idea to share your store sales, products, and information through social sites. Never feel you are over sharing because consumers want to know the deals they can get from your store. It is also a great way for consumers to get customer service help. Just listen to the consumers themselves; 67% of consumers say that customer service on social media responds faster, 51% said they have resolved their issues, and 43% say that they care more about consumers opinions.

The next few tips pertain to your website. The first thing you want to make sure is that you keep content above the fold. This means when a consumer clicks on your site, they should be able to read and get important information before having to scroll down your site. Some content that could be great to show are your offers. Consumers become irritated when they have to take a lot of time to navigate throughout your site and can’t find any information they need. Another great tip is to give consumers a true idea of shipping dates. No one wants to receive their presents a day after the holiday. Let your consumers know when the latest date they can purchase something is in order to receive it on time.

The next tip is very important tip for your site. It is to have a phone number large and prominent for consumers to see. It is always great to have customer service that is easy to get in contact with in case your consumers have specific questions about your products. With great customer service it can only help in selling your products. Another great tip could be to make sure consumers know your return policy before purchasing a product. This can help with any upset consumers who are trying to make a return the day after and can’t because there are no returns. The last tip that could be beneficial to your company would be to send out e-mails for your offers. This way your company can be proactive by sending out offers to those consumers in your e-mailing lists. Everyone checks their e-mail at least once a day if not, consistently in real time, due to phone notifications. By e-mailing your offers, a consumer can easily click on the e-mail and be directed to your site. Then you want the consumer to easily navigate throughout your site in order to make purchases with products that are applicable to the offers.

Hopefully these tips find you well this holiday season in order to get conversion rates up and if so, then we can consider it a merry one! Happy Holidays!

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Service Highlight: Web Design

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

NetSearch Direct offers website design services including creating, designing and setting up your website and setting up a blog if your business would like one. We have a skilled website designer and web development team. We offer a couple of different website design packages to fit varying budgets and needs. NetSearch Direct would be glad to partner with you to create or update your online presence.

The web and online media including mobile is here to stay and the more presence you have online now the better chance you’ll have at gaining more leads and more return on your investment. To learn more about the website design packages we offer please contact one of our sales representatives by calling us at (804)228-4400 and speaking with someone today!

Posted in Internet Marketing, NetSearch Direct News, Search Engine Marketing, Website Design | No Comments »

Office & Website Redesign Project

Monday, June 13th, 2011

NetSearch Direct is currently redesigning our interior office space, as well as our website and blog. When we are finished the website and blog will look drastically different with a different color scheme, layout and content. Our office will also look somewhat different. We have cleared out clutter, opened up some cubes and made more usable space, created a sitting area in the front of the office and we plan on painting our new colors on the walls, adding artwork, adding stand up desks for associates who would like them and potentially creating another office space for a salesperson.

We are very excited to be redesigning both our physical space and our space online as many of you know us. We wish to project the image of a modern and knowledgeable internet marketing agency that stays up to date on all the current trends and tactics in online and digital marketing. Check back often and soon you will find a whole new website that will be much better organized with a much better design and feel. Once our website redesign is completed please feel free to share your thoughts with us.

Posted in Company News, Internet Marketing, NetSearch Direct News, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »

Google Supports “Author” Tag

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Google recently announced they will support the authorship markup, enabling content sites to help identify their authors on the site and across the web. Content would be linked up to the writers name and can be used to find all the stories the author has written on any site. It uses the rel attribute, so all you need to do is add the rel=”author” to your author’s hyperlink on the article page. For example:

Written by <a rel=”author” href=”../authors/amandabradbury”>Amanda Bradbury</a>.

As Google explained, this tells search engines: “The linked person is an author of this linking page.” The rel=”author” link must point to an author page on the same site as the content page. For example, the page http://example.com/content/webmaster_tips could have a link to the author page at http://example.com/authors/mattcutts. Google uses a variety of algorithms to determine whether two URLs are part of the same site. For example, http://example.com/content, http://www.example.com/content, and http://news.example.com can all be considered as part of the same site, even though the hostnames are not identical.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Internet News, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines | No Comments »

Google Makes Search More Image Friendly

Monday, June 6th, 2011

According to an article on Mashable, Google has added a couple of features to its main search engine that make it easier to search for images, as well as browse through image related results. One of the ways Google has made it easier is that now images that show up in main search results will increase in size when you move your mouse over the picture which could possibly make it easier to choose the picture you want.

Also, if you indicate that you’re searching for images in the main search on Google then Google will recognize it and offer you a grid of images on top of the search results. The new image friendly features are currently available on Google.com.