Author - sicksens

30Sep

Marketing Your Local Business Online

If you run a local business, you may be missing out on a wealth of effective and economical online marketing opportunities. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is known for connecting people around the globe with their target products and successfully promoting businesses. It's  even more well known for marketing local businesses in their communities. There is an entire  world of marketing opportunities available for location-based businesses, including search, social, and content marketing options. In this guide, we look into two marketing strategies that successful local businesses use to boost their local SEO. Follow these SEO steps to getting noticed in your local community searches. Naperville Local SEO Optimizing your website for local search is one of the top priorities.  There are a number of ways you can optimize your website for local search that will help attract local clients and customers. The first thing you need to do is identify your keywords. These are the words (usually a short phrase) that describe your business.  If, for example, you run a wedding photography business, your keywords might be “wedding photographer.” To localize your business, add the city you target to that phrase, e.g. “Naperville wedding photographer" or "Glen Ellyn Wedding Photography.” Read the Small Business SEO Guide, do some keyword research to make sure the city + keyword phrase has strong search volume, then optimize your website for the best locally focused keywords using the on-site optimization tips in the guide. Next, include a local street address and phone number (with a local area code, not 800 number) on each page of your website. Most businesses do this in the footer. This information must be on the website in text, not image format, so that search engines can crawl the information. If your business has multiple locations, the alternative is to put the primary location on each page and create individual contact pages for each location. Tip: Make sure your website has a contact page for each location that includes the address, phone number, and a map helping customers find it. Adding photos of each location on the contact page is also a good idea.   Find the right local directories to join Local directories and review sites are often referred to as “citations,” and they can help your business website rank well in local search results on Google. Here are the keys to ensuring each local directory and review site you join counts towards helping your business rank well in local search:
  • Make sure your business name, address, phone number, and website are consistent, on both your website and in local listings. Things that will cause ranking problems include having your business name listed as ABC Services in one place and A.B.C. Services in another, or having your address listed as 1500 West First St. in one place and 1500 W. First Street in another, or having your website address listed as abcservices.com in one place and www.abcservices.com/index.html in another.
  • Encourage (but do not incentivize, bribe, or purchase) customers to write reviews about your business on the top local directories and review sites. The more positive reviews you have, the better your business is going to rank.
  • Complete each of your local listing profiles as thoroughly as possible. If you are given the option of adding additional information, social network links, photos, and videos, be sure to do so.
With hundreds of local directories, review sites, and profile pages, choosing which ones to sign up for can be difficult. Start here:
  • Create listings on Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, and Yelp.
  • Search for your business name using Google and then claim and complete profiles for any of the listings that appear on the first couple of search engine results pages (SERPs).
  • Use the GetListedresource pages to find the best citations for your business based on industry and city.
To get in a wide array of listings without spending a lot of time, you can use services like Universal Business Listing. You complete a profile in their system, and they take that information and populate it across all of the local directories and review sites. You can also use tools like Whitespark to find citations for your competitors. They also offer a free review handout generator that helps you create a guide for your customers to use on how to do reviews for your business. Don’t forget about local media and organizations such as newspapers, news stations, and chambers of commerce. Many have their own business directory that you can get listed in simply by asking or becoming a member. You can also reach out to local business owners to see if they are willing to become referral partners. For example, caterers, wedding planners and florists would be ideal referral partners for a wedding photographer. Look for local businesses with partner’s pages or local resource pages.
By Chicago SEO, Glen Ellyn Web Design, Naper Design News, Naperville Web Design, SEO, Web Design, Wordpress, , 0 Comments
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03Sep

Why Relevant External Links Matter: Back to SEO Basics

As a knowledgeable and methodical webmaster and we may be, we know that  know that optimizing our website is a constant effort and that the Web is always evolving.  Our Naperville Web Design and SEO Team is constantly being retaught and our methods reformulated to appeal to the demands of the search engines. You may have spent several hours adding and updating meta and titles tags, keyword-rich content, H1 header tags on top of pages, multiple header tags within content, title text,  quality web content, alt tags for photos, and even building inbound links. One thing you’ve certainly learned through all of this is that in order to rise and remain at the top of SERPs — everything is never enough. linking still matters

Outbound Linking

Certainly one commonly overlooked, and sometimes feared, tactic is hosting external links to relevant websites within your own site’s content.  Some SEO's view this as the ultimate sin.  You likely know that having authoritative sites that include a link back to your website can help generate traffic, leads, as well as increasing your rankings on SERPs. But you might find your self puzzled considering, "if we’re going back to basics, how exactly would linking out to other websites help?" And with the onslaught of websites that have fallen off the grid post-Google updates (Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird) for suspicion of trying to “game the system” – why on Earth would you want to risk having your website get penalized? Some SEO's here in Chicago have openly claimed that outbound links are a near and dear friend of the internet devil. The answer is very simple: user experience surpasses all other aspects of the algorithms. Search engines want you to provide relevant resources on your website that enhance your visitor’s experiences while surfing the web. Your dynamic content and lists of helpful resources will all add a great deal of value to your website in the eyes of your visitors…and the Googlebots.

Spammy vs. Natural Links

So, how can you distinguish between “natural” and “spam” external links and why should you care? Well, what's useful and relevant to your website’s categories and topics. For example, if your website is geared towards sports, it would make sense to link out to other authoritative and relevant sport sites and pages that can enhance your visitor’s experience; whereas including a link to a dentist’s office would seem out of place (unless somehow the connection is legitimate). Of course, you also want to protect your visitors from sites that involve online gambling, payday loans, pharmaceuticals, or adult-oriented content.  Avoid any links from sites associated with known spam content. Additionally, if you ensure that the keywords associated with the site linking into yours are similar to your own, there will be a greater chance of additional weight being placed on them. External links can also come in several shapes and sizes. Surely one of the more well-known tactics is to develop useful content that contains natural links out to other related sources and websites. Accepting authoritative guest posts is also a way to keep your site updated with unique content.  The addition of an authoritative author is that you receive fan traffic from those who are avid readers of the guest author.

They're Still Votes From The Internet

Obviously, you want quality links coming in, and in doing so, you want votes of approval from the internet as a whole. While yes, Google has clamped down on the weight and power of any specific link, the simple reality is that they aren't currently able to get a good feel for a website's overall impact without using link data.  Keep them clean, and Google will reward your SEO effort.
By Chicago, Marketing Methods, Naper Design News, SEO, Web Design, Web Design Feeds0 Comments
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01Sep

Google Authorship Is Dead & What That Means For Your SEO Strategy

The Authorship markup was first unveiled by Google in June 2011 and SEO Techs everywhere rejoiced. Its roots can be traced back to the company's Agent Rank patent of 2007. Bill Slawski, an expert on Google's patents, says that the Agent Rank patent is a type of system wherein multiple pieces of content are connected with a digital signature that represents one or more "agents" (authors).

Three years after Google Authorship was launched, the company decided to discontinue the project and SEO's everywhere cried a little. The announcement came from John Mueller of Google Webmaster Tools which he posted in Google+. According to Mueller, Google will stop displaying authorship in Google Search. Likewise, it will no longer track data from content with the rel=author markup in SERP rankings.

Google noticed that displaying the authorship information wasn't as useful as the company had thought it would be. At some point, it can even distract from the results. For these reasons, Google decided to axe the Authorship project.

Don't discount Author Rank as a result of this change and the reduced spinets.

According to Search Engine Land:

Author Rank Is Real — And Continues!

Schmidt was just speculating in his book, not describing anything that was actually happening at Google. From Google itself, there was talk several times last year of making use of Author Rank as a way to identify subject experts and somehow boost them in the search results:

  • Google Authority Boost: Google’s Algorithm To Determine Which Site Is A Subject Authority, May 2013
  • Google’s Matt Cutts: Someday, Perhaps Ranking Benefits From Using Rel=”Author”, June 2013
  • Google Still Working On Promoting Subject-Specific Authorities In Search Results, December 2013

That was still all talk. The first real action came in March of this year. After Amit Singhal, the head of Google Search, said that Author Rank still wasn't being used, the head of Google’s web spam team gave a caveat of where Author Rank was used: for the “In-depth articles” section, when it sometimes appears, of Google’s search results.

Google divulged that dropping Google Authorship shouldn't have an impact on how the In-depth articles section works so strong writers' SEO platforms should be intact. Google also explained that the dropping of Google Authorship won’t impact its other efforts to reward authors who perpetually make quality and engaging content. Well, if you read the above portion, you're likely scratching your heads. How is there to be author rank without authorship, when Google has also said that it’s ignoring authorship markup? The answer is that Google has other ways to the author of a quality story, if it wants. In particular, Google is likely to look for visible "bylines" and citations that often appear on news stories and blog posts. These existed before Google Authorship, and they aren't going away. One thing to keep in mind, you will want to ensure that all of your titled work is consolidated under the account name you will want tracked.
By Article Feeds, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design, Wordpress0 Comments
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30Aug

Low-Cost, HIgh-Impact Ways Businesses Can Boost Local Sales

If you're a small business owner, you've likely felt some pains because of the tighter lending regulations from banks.  Your advertising budgets are already small or non-existent, making advertising even harder now.  Fortunately, digital advertising has some low-cost options, allowing small businesses to be able to expand their limited budgets.

Many small businesses have Facebook and Twitter pages, and maybe a few listings in local directories, but that is the extent of their advertising. This is not for lack of interest, however.  In a recent study released by market research firm BIA/Kelsey, 40 percent of small and midsized businesses plans to increase digital spending in the next year.

So how can businesses get the best return on investment from digital, internet and social media advertising methods?

Low Cost Internet Marketing Ideas

It is understandable that companies do not want to put up the cash for traditional outbound marketing techniques, but there are actually a lot of inexpensive (and free) ways to market a business online that are underutilized. If you want to maximize your online presence, look beyond the typical social networks and directories and make use of these options as well:

Register your company with Google’s Places for Business. It's estimated that 97 percent of consumers decide what local businesses to frequent based on an online search? This free service from Google, Places for Business, literally puts you “on the map” so people can find the products or services you offer on a local level. If you do not have an office that is open to the public, you can choose a service area option during signup and hide your physical address. If you have multiple locations, you will want to sign up separately for each spot. Additionally, you will want to be added to several citation sites, to reinforce the Google Places listing. Ensure that the location, phone, and name of your business are the same on each of these sites. Bet results come from consistency.

Join your local Chamber of Commerce. For a small annual fee, you can take advantage of the many networking opportunities your local Chamber of Commerce provides. This is an excellent way to learn about the ways area laws will affect your business operations and also to rub elbows with potential clients. Usually new members get the chance to promote their business on the Chamber’s website or in its newsletter which could lead to a boost in business.

Seek out barter swaps with other local companies. This can take many different forms depending on the resources that you have available to trade. Consider comparable online banner ads or just simply leaving business cards at each other’s physical locations. You may also want to look into exchanging guest blog posts with other area businesses. By linking to each other, you will build up search engine credibility for people searching businesses in your area. There are really no limits here and business swap ideas are free. Try to find companies that make sense with which to trade – for example, a home inspector may find value in a swap relationship with a local Realtor or property management office.

Make a business video. People love to watch videos online, so why not ride that wave? Make a brief video explaining your services or products and post it several places, including your official website and YouTube.  Show your expertise in your field with a video that explains what you do and why you are the best at it.  People like to put a face with a business name, especially when it comes to local companies, so give them a reason to pick you over the other options.

By Marketing Methods, Naper Design News, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design, , , 0 Comments
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29Aug

Make Sure your Chicago Area Small Business is found on Google| Small Business SEO

You may have recently decided to dedicate a lot of effort and resources to get your website discovered. However, if the website has poor quality and lacks vital information, then it can have an adverse effect on your small business. In order to ensure your small business is found in Google(or Bing and Yahoo for that matter), you will need to be search engine friendly.  It’s also important that you provide content that’s persuasive and valuable for your potential client. Here are a few SEO tips to help enhance your visibility on Google: Being Found In Google Use Catchy Titles & Descriptions: Make sure each page has a ‘catchy’ title. It should include at least one relevant keyword. Your Meta tag descriptions should also include a keyword. It should also summarize what your web page is about. You’ll want to include a call-to-action. The key is to persuade people to click onto your website for further information. Use Relevant Keywords & Keyword Phrases: Always use the right keywords. You’ll want to use the keywords that your target audience is actually using to find your product or service. A web design company in Naperville or Chicago that offers SEO services can conduct an extensive keyword search and find the most popular keywords in your niche. Stuffing keywords in that don't have any relevant position to the page topic, or flood the page with useless info is a great way to be punished by the Google gods. Be Social Make sure you can be found on the social media sites that your audience is hanging out. It’s not necessary to sign up for every site. Simply sign up where the majority of your audience is hanging out at. For example, if you find out your target audience is hanging out at Foursquare, Facebook and Google+, you’ll want to make yourself available on those networks. Don’t forget to add the link of your website to your social media accounts, not only for the search engines, but so people can find you. Social Media traffic is one of the most dedicated driving forces of the internet today; ignoring it would be ignoring your businesses future. It’s important to understand that Google is constantly evolving. The key is to provide your visitors with a website that is not only well designed but a website that is relevant to the product or service you’re offering. Remember, Google is meant to function in a way that simulates the average person searching.  If you make your site more data-friendly to average users, it will also be friendly to Google. Contact us to find out more information about our Small Business SEO, web design, and development services. Naper  Design is a full-service web design and SEO company in Naperville offering mobile app development, website design & web development, mobile development and SEO services. 
By Marketing Methods, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design, , , 0 Comments
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29Aug

5 SEO Tips for Launching a New Website and New Brand

You may feel that you have the perfect search strategy, but there are still more tactics to consider. Here are some basic SEO tips for launching a new website and new brand: Rebuilding a Website
  •      As you transition from your old website to a new SEO targeted Website, you can maintain the link equity in which you have invested in already. This is vital for getting your new website to rank quickly. The most effective way to achieve this would be to leave your URLs untouched. However, this is not always possible y if you make an attempt to improve your URL structure or moving to a new domain. Often, updating to a strong Database Built Web Design will result in some changes to link mapping.
  •     Images are ideal to make your new website engaging and attractive. Unfortunately, search engines have not reached a point yet where they can decode content that is image-based. The use of alt tags can enable search engines to comprehend the meaning of images; this can also be valuable for those who are visually impaired. Alt tags should be vivid and entail the same keywords for which your page aims to rank.
  •      External links can enable link authority to your website, while internal links can distribute that particular authority across your website pages. In page cross-linking, there are opportunities for appropriate referrals to additional pages with relevant data; they are typically unheeded during a redesign. Page copy can be an ideal place to link to deeper website pages with anchor text to point to long-tail keywords.
  •    Local results have taken a greater standing in the SERPs. Naturally, it depends on your brand; so, local can be your strategy instead of a small portion of your overall plan.  Keep in mind, locally focused works only if your business model is only focused locally. There are several locally relevant recommendations to consider in combination with your fresh new website launch, but most importantly, your maps should always be the focus of local SEO. Our Naperville Web Design and SEO Team targets citation listings (map directories) and locally relevant review sites to ensure for a cohesive and universal set of data descriptions.
  •      A new Google search feature in authorship is expected to increase in relevance over time. Author-Ranking is the future of authorship where pages are ranked based on the authority of the writer, as opposed to the authority of the page/website. An investment in authorship can help you not only in the short term, but the long term as well. We suggest that your content creators work on and off of your sites to develop a stronger authorship ranking.
To find out more information about how SEO can help improve your web visibility, contact our Chicago and Naperville SEO Team.
By Marketing Methods, SEO, Tutorials, Web Design, , , , , 0 Comments
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28Aug

Tips to Streamline Online Marketing Budgets

Marketing your business online to prospective customers doesn't have to cost a fortune. Often times, many people waste a lot of money with online marketing that doesn't produce the results they expect - mainly because they do not have a solid marketing strategy in place. In reality, you can experience good results with online marketing on a budget. Here are six effective tips: Tip #1:Your marketing strategy will never be lucrative if you don’t have an audience that is clearly defined. Before you spend a dime on marketing, first identify your prospective market. There is no need to pay top dollar to employ a prestigious market research firm. If you have knowledge of your product, then you should be able to identify the market yourself. Tip #2:You can determine what you’re looking to gain from marketing online, whether it is increased awareness or increased revenue. It is likely you’ll have various goals, but keep track of these multiple goals to measure your achievements. When you reach your initial goals, then you can set new goals for your company to reach success.   Our Naperville Web Design team can help you monitor and keep track of your marketing efforts with our various analytic tools. This will help you with growing your business. Tip #3:Once you are aware of who your target market is and have created goals, you can plan your budget appropriately. The best thing about marketing online is that you can be a success even on a tight budget. You can determine what outlets are the most valuable for your product and have the will to spend some dollars to achieve results. Tip #4:Set yourself apart from your competitors. There is a myriad of companies making an attempt to sell products online. Thus, you need to make your brand id notable. Naturally, this begins with a first-rate website. Our web design company in Naperville, will not only build an aesthetically pleasing website, we will create a website that’s mobile friendly and easy to navigate. Tip #5:Every business owner’s dream is to have his/her website displayed on the first results page of the search engine. This can be achieved with the proper use of relevant keywords, back-linking (white hat) and SEO friendly (and human friendly) Meta Tag titles and descriptions. Tip #6:Social media marketing can also help enhance your brand identity. It’s important that you provide your audience with valuable information that will persuade them to take action. This may include visiting your website or even sharing your content with their friends on various social media outlets. Also, your website, social media sites and marketing materials should complement each other. If you need help building a website or you need to enhance an existing website, our experienced Naperville Web Designers are here to help.  Contact us today or call: 630-803-8998.
By SEO, Social Media Marketing, Web Design, , , 0 Comments
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29Aug

New Clients

In Dallas: Complete Overhead Door is committed to providing the most professional and quality installation, sales and repair of garage doors and electric openers in Dallas. We will not be undersold. Blue Nail Enterprises is the best roofing company in Garland, commercial roof repair, roof construction, and roofing contractor. Our expert roofing team serves Arlington and Dallas TX. Florida: Charter fishing with Captain Brian Helms for tarpon, bonefish, redfish, permit, and snook. Some of the best fishing in the world is in Islamorada.  Captain Helms leads the best fly fishing charters in the Florida Keys. Port Charlotte Florida Used Cars & Trucks prides themselves on having the cleanest, highest quality and best maintained pre-owned vehicles in Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, Florida. Buy Tires for less at Don Gasgarth's Tire shop located in Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, Florida. Convenient location for all customers in or around Port Charlotte Florida. Don Gasgarth's Quick Lane Auto Service located in Port Charlotte, services all towns surrounding near Fort Myers, FL. Auto parts, Auto Repair and collision for your cars, suvs or trucks The UPS Store in Victor NY, services all of Rochester NY for your printing, copy, scanning needs. The store provides printing and business services for all products. Test drive a new or used car in Port Charlotte at Charlotte County Ford. Their greater Fort Myers, North Port and Englewood Ford dealership always has a wide selection of new Ford cars. Their location makes them the best Ford Dealer to Fort Myers.     Rochester New York: Five Star Improvements, Inc, in Rochester, NY, takes pride in making homes look and feel like new again. Five Star Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor Improvements  is one of Rochester’s top home remodeling companies. An experienced business founder, CEO and General Counsel for both public and private companies, he started his ?rm to address demand within the small and midsized business community.  Call today for for an outside counsel in Rochester who respond to business problems in an “in-house manner.”
By Business Directories, Portfolio0 Comments
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15Dec

How to Resize Your Images on a PC

This is how to resize the high-resolution images your camera takes. First copy the images you would like to resize. You might need the originals later for pieces of the image to harvest for design reasons. This way you will only destroy your copies if you do something wrong and not your originals.

Now you will want to open your copied pictures with Paint.

The reason I picked Paint is because it is a program that comes with Windows so everyone has this free program if they are running Windows of any flavor.

Once your image is opened in Paint you can easily edit your image.

Click on Resize in the Upper Right hand corner of the screen and you will be taken to the Resize menu.

I chose the pixels over the percentage for scaling the image. Keep in mind your page content is usually under 700 pixels wide.  So the horizontal number should be  under 700. Otherwise you are just creating an image that will slow your site down for no reason. Save the image  and you will have a much smaller faster to upload picture for your website.

You will still have your Originals in the folder to use if you need a partial of a picture as well if you copied the images before hand.

By Tutorials and Help0 Comments
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