Proactive Internet Marketing for Your Business

SEO Marketing ServicesInternet Search

Almost all of us do it; with many doing it everyday. Many more do it several times a day. We are all searching the Internet for something. We use Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Bing Search, Ask, or any number of the other search engines available online.

Are you taking your business for granted online?

Many businesses are simply placing a website online and thinking that is all they need to do for their online presence. But, think about how everyone is using search today to find the things, information, products, services, locations, directions, videos, instructions, helps, tips, and other business related information all at the tips of our fingers. If you are forgetting these search points, then you are probably loosing market share in your business.

That is why, you need to be proactive in your B2B and B2C business approach to Internet marketing. There are a number of major on-site optimization items that can really help your business out online. Don’t just simply sit back and do nothing about improving the performance of your business website. Most businesses have some advertising budget, but devote very little in the way of funding their online marketing efforts. Advertising is viewed as something that can be turned on and off, with quick results. However, advertising is not the best answer for a good Internet marketing plan. Nor is advertising, without a top Internet marketing plan, going to provide you with the best return on investment, and provide the best sales and marketing conversions of turning web browsers in to web buyers.

Developing your Internet Marketing Plan

A good Internet marketing plan begins at the very foundation of the website design structure, information architecture, and Web branding architecture. Graphic designers are good at putting pictures and designing Flash websites that definitely show flashy to the eyes, but do very little in the way of promoting the business online, due to most designers having very little training in good marketing concepts. My personal opinion is most graphic designers probably use only the right side brain approach to designing their websites. Right Minded MarketingIn today’s online marketing landscape, you must use both left brain and right brain when promoting the website, and not always waiting to the end of the website design to do it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a pretty website is going to be the ticket to your online sales and marketing success. Many B2B and B2C companies over the years have made that mistake with very little sales to show for it.

So take this right minded marketing tip to your business heart. Don’t sit on your online business laurels. Get more bang for your marketing dollars with Professional Web Services’ Internet marketing services.

Contact us today for an internet marketing evaluation of your business website. Find out what needs to be done to improve your online exposure. Learn how your business can become a bright Internet star.

Email Marketing Campaign Strategies Pros and Cons

Email AtWith 30% or more of the bulk unsolicited email marketing campaigns blocked by ISPs as spam, and people that simply throw emails away in the electronic trash can because they did not realize they opted in with one of the free software and information opt-in offers; email marketing using a paid mailing list to send out bulk email campaigns can hurt your company brand more than you know.

New Business Launching

You’re trying to get your new business off to a fast start, and you’ve come across an opt-in paid email offer online to target businesses across a wide spectrum of markets with promises of 2 million emails sent on your behalf, and you think, wow that sounds pretty great! Well, think about this for a second. Do you personally like receiving unsolicited emails? While you may have opted in when you signed up for that free software offer online, I venture to say that the majority of those emails sent to you, don’t even get read.

Other email marketing issues to date.

Viruses and the threat of viruses, spyware, and malware embedded in emails and email attachments are severely placing a damper on what was once a good way of life for a number of organizations to get their sales and marketing messages out. Embedded HTML CSS coding, attached images, tracking cookies, and javascripts, some of which can help make your emails look pretty and others can give be used for quantitative feedback mechanisms are in fact part of the problem. People sometimes get hundreds of emails a day and most of these go into the trash can. So by habit we are all trained to throw things away.

So how does this affect you if you and your business, if you are using this type of email marketing campaign strategy? It has an intrusive nature about it. If it does make it through the ISP email servers and the company’s email filter software programs, and that’s a big if, habits are hard to break. Since it is hard for a person to give more than a quick scan of the title before they decide to read it, or press delete, the bulk of e-mail is going into the trash can. Most people that have signed up for something online can not remember if they opted-in or out. Other websites trick you into a reverse thinking of, having to opt-out by unchecking the box. Still others share your information with all their hundreds of advertising partner sites and affiliate ad partners without you even being aware and the send you a ton of stuff. It was in the fine print…

So do you really want your company to be thrown in the trash can? Do you want your company branded with that marketing approach? Sure there may be some short term gains, but careful consideration needs be given to analyze the long term consequences to your company brand. The consequences can severely affect your brand both online and the real world. Do you really want your company to become known that way?

Email MarketingEmail marketing strategies for your business; the better way.

Invite your visitors on your website, to signup for a free newsletter. These are truly the opt-in sales leads for your business. These folks have been to your website, and would like to know more about you or the information your company provides. If you do choose a strategy to go the rout of an unsolicited email marketing campaign with a paid sales leads email mailing list, make sure it is from a reputable mailing list firm. Do your due diligence by asking them the tough questions. Find out where and how they collected their list of emails. Perform some searches online for the company that you are intending to buy the email sales leads mailing list from. Find out if there are any negative comments about the company online. Search for their url and read information in the online forums. Compare offers from other companies. Ask for references of other organizations that have used their email lists. Know what you are getting, before committing to spending a ton of money on this email marketing strategy. If you are having the company do the email marketing mailing campaign for your business, find out what it will look like in the email receivers’ inboxes. Will the email look good in the old and the new Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Mozilla Thunderbird, as well as Google Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Microsoft Hotmail? Find out what percentage of emails are likely to get through. Ask what percentage of these emails are likely to convert to a click through hyperlink, to a landing page on your business website.

Would you like to have an automatic opt-in email newsletter subscription service set up to gather emails or other important information from online visitors? Contact Professional Web Services today to get an opt-in email marketing strategy that will set your brand apart and gather sales leads for your business. Find out more about professional Internet marketing today.

Marketing Attorneys, Lawyers, Legal, and Business Professionals

Legal Scales of JusticeWhen marketing an attorney online or other business professionals on the Internet, there are many important considerations to weigh out when developing your online Web presence.

Domain name strategies and online branding should be prime considerations for marketing your business profession.

Your first consideration that needs to be addressed online is your brand image. In the age of the Internet, domain names and branding are intrinsically linked together. If you are an attorney, consider the following article information for your website presence. While, you may want to start building up your law firm’s name for your business profession by including your law firm name in the actual domain name; this may not be the best or only solution for a professional to begin with.

Many times professionals such as lawyers, are placing their website placard on the Internet, without a good understanding of the marketing concepts involved online and expecting that is all they need to do to promote themselves. For example, many of the attorneys’ websites I have seen online give general descriptions and typically no locations of their business listed on the home page. If I am a consumer looking for an attorney in my city, how likely would I do a global search of the entire USA and world for “attorney” on Google Search? Let’s be realistic here, most people want a local attorney that can give them the personal touch, and one that can handle whatever the local issues are. They don’t want to use someone to represent them hundreds or thousands of miles away from their local needs. Likewise, if I need a lawyer’s service in another town or a distant state, I would want to find a local lawyer who can help me in those local towns and distant state locations.

Again, let’s take the attorney professional as an example, and look at what they would need to do when picking a domain name for their legal profession. Actually, you might want to have two domain names with very distinct and different information on both websites, though having unique content on each site is critical from a search perspective. It would not be a good idea from an SEO perspective to have both websites saying the same exact things. One website might have the actual law firm name of the law practice in the URL, while the other site could have the name of the legal specialty practice in the URL. Consider for a moment, how the Internet is shaping the way businesses and consumers find information today. Refer to: Online Marketing Tips for Attorneys and other Legal Professionals, below, for more pointers.

Most people look to the Internet first and foremost with searches for all types of professionals, before they even open up their Yellow Pages phone book to look for a professional or an attorney. Heck, most people never use the Yellow Pages anymore except on rare instances, and certainly the younger generation hardly even picks up the Yellow Pages even once a year. A person searching online is very likely to type in the name of a local city, with the word “attorney” or “lawyer” after the city name, when doing a Google Search. These search engine results pages would reflect the use of those keywords specific to the city being searched for. This is true for other searches too. A person would much more likely find the particular profession they are looking for by typing the city in addition to the keyword, attorney or lawyer.

OK, what about all the different areas of law practice? How do the areas of law affect your search results online?

For example, take a look at the long list of attorneys that specialize in a particular branch of law. If you are an attorney, how do you differentiate your law practice from the thousands (actual number of attorneys is well over one million) of attorneys online?

List of Attorneys and Areas of Law Practice

Administrative Law
Admiralty and Maritime
Adoption
Appellate Practice
Arbitration and Mediation
Aviation
Banking
Bankruptcy-Creditors
Bankruptcy-Debtors
Business Litigation
Child Custody
Child Support Collection
Civil Litigation
Civil Rights
Class Action Lawsuits
Collection/Creditors
Computer
Condemnation
Construction
Consumer Law
Contract
Copyright
Corporation/Partnership
Creditors Rights
Criminal
Divorce
Drunk Driving
Education
Elder Law
Employment
Entertainment
Environmental
Estate planning
Family
Finance
Firearms Law
Food and Drug
Foreclosure
Franchise Law
General Practice
Government
Health Care Law
Immigration
Insurance
Intellectual Property International
Labor-Employers
Labor-Workers
Land Use (Planning/Zoning)
Landlord Tenant
Lemon Law
Libel / Slander
Malpractice-Plaintiff
Military Law
Native American Law
Not For Profit
Nursing Home Abuse
Patent and Trademark
Pension and Profit Sharing
Personal Injury-Defense
Personal Injury-Plaintiffs
Phen-Fen and Redux
Privacy Law
Probate
Products Liability-Plaintiffs
Real Estate
Securities
Securities Arbitration
Sexual Harassment
Social Security
Sports Law
Tax
Traffic Tickets
Wills and Trusts
Workers Compensation

Think Like a Marketer, Not a Lawyer

To really distinguish yourself online today, requires using the keywords related to your legal profession. Most attorneys are specializing in one or more of the areas of law practice but not all. Simply telling your specialty one time in a website, is probably not going to help your branding efforts online, nor, will the small effort of publishing it once help get your website found in the general search results pages. You need to think like a marketing person, instead of as a attorney, when it comes to promoting yourself on the Web. In fact, you have to think of yourself as the client, and think how new clients would go about searching for your legal profession specialty on the Web. You need to know your clients semantically. Then the next requirement is the website needs to have good copy writing — actual body text (not just the website graphics) that reflects the way your clients think and talk. Get down to earth. Speak your clients’ language. Tell it like it is, and do it with style!

11 Online Marketing Tips for Attorneys and other Legal Professionals

  1. Consider having two websites, both your law firm name as the domain name for one, and another domain name for additional information and writing within your area of expertise. Must have unique information on each website.
  2. Use your local state and city names in your website copy writing.
  3. Include the keywords related to your legal profession throughout the website.
  4. Make sure your website is both a marketing and advertising tool that is search engine friendly, one that can be found in the search engine results pages for your local practice areas.
  5. Don’t just get lost in the myriad of online legal directories in which people have to go searching for, in order to find your name or someone else’s name.  Start building up your online brand in your location today.
  6. Promote yourself with a website blog. Blogs are simply a means of easily sharing with readers what is happening in your area of expertise. Note: One of the two domain names from above could be your blog website URL. That way, you could simply update it anytime you wanted and provide additional marketing and advertising channels online, with quality links back to your main legal website.
  7. Incorporate your brand architecture across all online market channels. In essence, make it known online that the two websites are yours (your brand) and promote that fact (the websites don’t need to look the same).
  8. Advertise in your local markets online. Set aside an advertising budget. Google AdWords and other online advertising channels should be serious considerations for marketing and advertising online.
  9. Build quality web pages that can be used for advertising and sales landing pages.
  10. Stay in touch with your clients through email campaigns and reach out to new clients with automatic sign up pages for more information.
  11. Consider again, writing a blog on the general subject matter and legal practice. A blog can gain you extra traction online.

The above pointers are things to consider going forward. Don’t get lost in the details. Start first with a quality website, one that is search engine friendly, and go from there. Need help with your legal marketing? Professional Web Services knows what it takes to get you found online today. Set your brand apart. Contact Professional Web Services for a website analysis and establish a great brand online today.

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Remember, your profession is your business, so now is the time to get found online.

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Online Marketing Means Knowing Your Customers Semantically

Do you know your B2C customers or B2B buyers intimately on the Internet? If you don’t know your customers, you are probably not talking their semantic language online and your website is probably not being found in the search engine results either.

Professional Web Marketing

When it comes to online marketing, a close working relationship is a must between those that take care of your website and the products or services you provide. Simply having a website online, with just a sprinkling of your keywords throughout the site, is not good enough to getting a business found in the search engine results pages. Most of all, quality content is required, and that content better stand on its own merits. Sure, you can publish on your business website a list of things that you sell, but how is that going to hold up to the hundreds, or thousands, or even millions of websites that use those same keywords as yourself.

Think about the difficultly of reaching the right customer on the Internet. There are not an infinite amount of words in the English language. The most common words are used by everyone. With that being said though, the search algorithms have gotten much better at evaluating what a web page, and for that matter, what a website subject matter (the website theme) is all about. In the future, search algorithms will be using a form of artificial intelligence, where not only will they learn from you, but they will improve themselves with constant AI tweaking, and self learning to improve the search results.

So, how does this affect your business on the Web? What does artificial intelligence have to do with your business website, and how will artificial intelligence play out in the real world of Internet marketing in the future? The answers can be found in the actual copy writing that is on your website.

Semantic Text Analysis

Get Your Business Discovered OnlineNot only are the words you use important, but the writing style, the proper grammar usage, the syntax, word capitalization, alternative word meanings, and even the titles, headings, and the included pictures can all be relevant factors in determining what the main subject is all about. Prior to the use of computers, people would read an article and be able to point out what type of writing style was being used. For example: English professors would be able to tell if a style of writing was; Argumentative – the speaker involves himself, argues, explains or analyzes in order to try to convince the interlocutor; Narrative – a narrator states a series of events, happening at a given time, and in a given place; Enunciative – the speaker and the interlocutor establish a mutual relation of influence, make their standpoints known; or Descriptive – a narrator describes, identifies or classifies something or somebody. Source: Semantic Knowledge

Writing analysis has much to do with the way the words are interconnected to one another. There are classes (direct relations) between using certain keywords with those of others in sentence structures. Text analysis programs take into account these keyword relationships and produce sets of references between various keyword categories, which can identify what the main subject is about. It can also be used to give an indication of the frequencies of words used and the meanings of the ambiguous words used throughout a written document in order to give a better analysis of the theme topic being discussed.

Words have different meanings depending on where and how they are being used in the body text. Also, there are times within the body text, where the same words are used as nouns in some instances, and at other times as verbs; with many times the verb noun word usage is switched even in the same document. It is said that one in four words used in a document could be deemed as ambiguous. As computer algorithms are improved, the word usage ambiguity is broken down with mathematical formulas, by evaluating all the given factors to determine with a high degree of certainty what the written document is all about.

Semantic Text Analysis Example

Business Keyword Reference Field
Business Keyword Star Graph

The Star graph above displays the relations between references, or in this case, between the “business” word category and other references. The figures shown on the graph give the number of relations (co-occurrence frequency) existing between the various references in this document. This graph shows the relations between those references. They are oriented: the references on the left of the central reference are its predecessors, those on the right are its successors. Reference Semantic Knowledge Tropes

This is a prime example of showing the relationships between the word business, and the words prior to and after business. While most of the word associations make sense from a logical perspective, however you will notice that a few of the word associations seem out of context. For example: the water_travel successor represents a usage of the words “sprinkling of your keywords” used near the top of this article. However, when this article is taken in its entirety, it is obvious that this article is not about H2O travel, but how business and the Internet have a direct success relationship together along with a host of other keyword associations.

The Semantic Web

With the aid of powerful computer programs, search engine companies can now build search algorithms that are quite smart. We generally think in terms of Search as being something we do, or a place we go online to shop, look for products and services, read the local news, or the quest for information for our business or personal use. However, Search from the standpoint of the search engines is simply a program or group of programs all designed to take and catalog the library of information online, and provide the best results possible. But, it is wise to understand the end result, in that Search is not just one particular result or even one style of results for a select search phrase. What I mean by this is, the top search engines such as Google, I believe, builds a collection of results that try to cover as broad a range of information area as possible, while keeping the results as narrow to the search terms that are practical. I’m not referring to Universal Search with the inclusion of various types of vertical search content from picture images, videos, directories, book searches, or local news data sources into one universal search output, but more as it relates to the basic search database of website results.

I’ll give you an example: Let’s say we are looking for information on how to replace the cabin filter on a 2000 Honda Accord. If you were to do a simple search query using Google Search for 2000 Honda Accord Cabin Filter, you would likely find information on the parts, prices, replacement procedures, and associated automotive areas that are directly related to the search query. While the given search query example was not placed in the form of a question like, “How to, how can, what is, or where is;” never the less, the results are given in the form of an answer by answering as broad a range of probable questions as practical, while being constrained to the topic at hand. Take a look at the results from the above search. It is interesting to note, as people become more adept at searching, they will begin to constrain their own search queries with using more sentence like structures to search and find the information they are looking for.

So, how can you apply this semantic knowledge for online marketing?

Market Segmentation

Internet Marketing StandoutFind a hole and fill it! You need to ask yourself some business related questions. What is missing in your particular Web market segment? What horizontal or vertical marketing information is lacking? What products or services that your business supplies, produces, or could produce need filling online? What other market segments can be penetrated?

Research and analysis is 90% of the marketing effort required. Doing due diligence, studying the competition, and keyword analysis are some of the major factors right off the bat that need to be researched, analyzed, and evaluated for the Web opportunities that are present. Then by structuring an online marketing strategy plan that can take your business’s strengths, and apply this to the business opportunities present on the Web, will help produce a sales and marketing impact success for your business. Read about strategic marketing from an Internet perspective to understand the relationships between your business, your competition, and how by including a website SWOT analysis, which includes analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your business online, can bring to light various marketing and advertising strategies that can be substantially applied for a sustainable competitive market edge.

The Top Ten Percent

To take advantage of your 90% effort requires the last 10% commitment. Think of it this way, you’ve done the research, you’ve identified the hole to be filled, you know what information is missing; now go do it. That might be easier said than done. Someone, either yourself or others, needs to take the next step and write the information down. Then, the information needs to get published online either in the form of a web page or pages of a website, or even in the form of a blog. The more proficient and succinct your copy writing is; using the best grammar that you can muster, taking into account the style of writing that is missing in the search engine results pages, the more likely you will be successful in your Web marketing strategy. Be aware, online marketing success is an ongoing process; it doesn’t happen overnight. Simply writing one or two articles in your particular field is probably not going to get you in the top ten percent of the search results, unless very few others have written and published about the same topical information.

Reaching Your Customers and Buyers Online Marketing Tip

Here’s an important marketing tip to remember when getting intimate with Web prospects. Reaching your customers and buyers online requires you to talk their language. When writing articles for your BtoB or BtoC business, in which you are planning for it to be used as promotional pieces to target potential customers; what good is it if you habitually only use keywords in your articles that are never searched for on the Web? Sure, you can use your own keywords or trademark phrases, but those trademark phrases also better include references to keywords used online by perspective Web customers. If there is a customer information barrier present between the way you talk and the way your customers talk, you are more than likely missing the sales and marketing boat. If there are synonyms for the various keyword terms, it is wise to also include these synonyms where appropriate, in the article too.

Natural Language Writing

KISS your prospective customers and buyers now! For those that don’t know the KISS principle (acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid”) states that design simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided. It serves as a useful principle in a wide array of disciplines, such as software development, animation, engineering, strategic planning, Internet marketing, and online advertising. Read more about the KISS principle at Wikipedia.

Set Your Business Apart

Be different. Do it to the best of your abilities; learn, improve, and perform to a level of excellence that sets your brand apart online. Remember, everything is linked together on the Web. Your sales, marketing, advertising, and branding architectures are all inner related to each other through the information architecture(s) of the website(s). Read about marketing strategies for your B2B or B2C business. Don’t settle for mediocrity for your company. Start making a difference for your business and your future customers. Professional Web Services, can help set your business apart on the Internet. Contact us now for the business solution, to help you reach new prospects today while turning those new prospects and sales leads into customers tomorrow. I invite you to take the next step now into gaining more sales for your business. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Ask for your free Internet marketing SEO website evaluation today.

Now is the time to get your business discovered online. Contact Professional Web Services today.

Get Your Business Discovered Online

Online Marketing Time

Internet marketing time Tic – Tic – Tic : The clock is ticking. Can you hear it for your business?
By: James A. Warholic

California Time

Time is an important consideration when marketing online.

The clock is ticking and you are looking for important marketing information related to your business. After visiting various websites and scan reading the information available, you discover that you have just spent two hours on a project that could have been completed in ten minutes.

Why did it happen?

Typically, the people that manage the corporate websites have a difficult time getting to the point, or taking for-granted that the reader knows everything that is required for disseminating the presented info. In marketing a B2B or B2C company online do not assume anything. Presenting a business in only one light, or at one level, does not provide the interaction necessary for promoting a business on the Web.

But, how do you do this when time is of the essence?

Get to the marketing point. Provide the most important information first. Give the reader what they are looking for in a succinct way.

Get started with the facts.

Start with information that is most important to your visitor and tell it like it is. Concentrate on what the product or service is going to do for them. How does it save them money or make them more money? Or, how will the product or service make life better for them or their business. Forget the store front fluff at this point. There is only a short Internet marketing attention span so make sure to get to the B2B and B2C online facts.

Spotlight your company.

Time to tell a little more information about your company. Tell about the benefits and advantages and how it relates to the subject at hand.

Provide additional information links.

If a person is truly interested in what is provided on a website they will investigate and read on. So, provide the most reliable info in a logical and efficient way, by including additional helpful links, articles, or technology news related to your company.

Marketing Call To ActionCall To Action

Understand that the Internet marketing process is typically more than a one time website visit before a visitor becomes a customer. It takes time to develop a customer. A potential client or customer has to get familiar with an individual or an organization, and build up a trust relationship with a company before they are willing to commit to a long term buyer/seller relationship. At each step of the way, it is important to provide call to action items, which include end-to-end and back-to-back solutions for your potential customers; and do it in a creative way with some marketing style.

See: Internet Marketing and Online Advertising

Find the solution for your business online. Start gaining more sales leads and new customers from a greater online brand presence for your company. For an Internet marketing assessment and help in gaining new sales leads with your website, contact Professional Web Services today.

Internet Marketing Website Advice For All

Marketing StandoutInternet marketing website advice is running rampant on the Net.

People come up with all sorts of linking schemes, website keyword packing suggestions, and advice that is at best just a guess and at other times dangerous for anyone and any business that follows.

Website Contents: Thesis

I have always felt the most important item a website has to share is the content. I still firmly believe that this still has the highest value in any search algorithm. People talk about getting inbound and outbound links. Others offer advice that has not been tested and in fact gets themselves or their clients in trouble when they try it themselves.

This site is designed with lots of wild looking stuff, with a number of quality outbound links, but at its core is content. Content that is original and carefully thought out.

Marketers Keys To Online Success

  1. One of the aspects of online marketing is keeping browsing fun for a company and your audience, and at the same time getting your point across. To accomplish this goal requires some creativity.
  2. Impacting an audience on the Internet can be accomplished in the form of special graphics mixed in with creative copywriting.
  3. Another is to have the site interact with your audience by providing additional information that would be helpful to those that wish to gain more in-depth information.

So consider carefully the advice you find online because following the wrong path could drop you at the end of the search line.

Reach Professional Web Services Internet marketing and online advertising help desk today.

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Creative Marketing With Style!