Web Site Promotion Blog

The Importance of Linking

1/3/2011 11:51:00 AM

What is linking? How does it help my website or my users? Is it important? You might be asking yourself those questions right now. In this blog post, I am going to go over the topic of linking. Linking is an expression you may hear in regards to your website. When used, it refers to the act of hyper-linking to a specific document – or for an easier understanding, a website. Links on the internet make the World Wide Web so interesting. It allows us as users to navigate across billions of documents online. As you may now see, linking is vital for users to navigate not only for the entire World Wide Web, but also your site. It’s important to build a navigation system that 1) makes sense to the user and 2) links to every single page within your site. Now you don’t have to link to every single page from every single page (that’s what a Site Map is for). But keep in mind that if you have a page on your web site and there are no links to it, it’s going to be quite hard for a user to find it. Internal Linking Internal linking is an expression that simply means you are linking to other documents within your own site. This contributes to your search engine rankings so it’s important to use descriptive, targeted keywords as the anchor text. For example, if you have a page that is targeting “Blue Candles”, it’s helpful to use different variations of that keyword as the anchor text -- Blue Candles. External Linking External linking are links that are pointing to your web site from another site. Search engines weight these links too so it’s important for your sites success to have external links. Sales & Marketing Technologies specializes in Daytona Beach Web Design & SEO. If you need help with your link building campaigns, contact us now by calling us at (407) 682-2222.

Optimizing Your Site for All the Major Search Engines

12/1/2010 2:06:00 PM

As you may or may not know, search engines have different calculations in their algorithm to rank sites. None are exactly the same (unless owned by the same company), but they are similar in many aspects. Google is the big dog when it comes to search engine market share. According to comScore’s October 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings (Source), Google owns an amazing 66.3% of the market share while Yahoo is at 16.5% and Microsoft Sites such as Bing is at 11.5%. After reviewing those numbers, it’s pretty clear that you should optimize your site for Google over Yahoo and Bing, but why not market your site to all the search engines? Some say that you risk losing 66.3% of the market share to go over 27% -- which is true if you don’t understand what lines you can and cannot cross. Bing and Yahoo provide optimization and content quality guidelines to help optimize your site for their specific guideline. At SMT, we understand these guidelines and cross reference them with the almighty Google’s. Any differences and we make note of to ensure quality in optimizing your site across the board. In closing, marketing and optimizing your site for all major search engines isn’t impossible. However, it does take a strategic approach to accomplish. Let SMT market your site to all the search engines! Contact us now for Daytona Beach SEO and Daytona Web Design services!

Good Web Design for Your Business

11/1/2010 10:50:00 AM

At the surface, good web design seems like it’s merely how aesthetically attractive the site is. But if you dig deeper you will find that good web design is actually a lot more than that. Good web design is a combination of beauty, research, psychology, common sense, and user experience. There are so many websites that ‘look’ great, but aren’t intuitive for the user and don’t convert (which is most likely why you have a website). You want visitors to turn into customers; whether they are purchasing a product or seeking your services. The bottom line is: good web design grabs your visitors attention, peaks their interest, stirs up desire in your product or service, and then drives them to action. That is actually called the AIDA marketing model for web design. It’s a good model to follow when designing a website because having that in the front of your mind will only help you on your journey to creating a good website. I wanted to quickly touch on one of those model elements… Action. It’s imperative to have an engaging Call to Action (CTA) above the fold. I'll leave you with this interesting fact I read recently from SEO by the Sea: “Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.” Web-Site Promotion specializes in good Daytona Beach web design. If you are interested in our services, contact us online or call us at (407) 682-2222 today!

Stand Out In The Market With Fresh And Alive Website Content

10/1/2010 9:18:00 AM

Presence on the Internet becomes an essential to many businesses nowadays, as more and more companies populate the web with content. Sure, there are various means of conveying your Internet personality, and I’m not going to give them all here. Instead I want to talk about why businesses fail to produce that emotional response from their audience and what they must do to revive. As you should already know, people buy into something that gains their emotional trust, that meets their needs. No more, no less. So most importantly, you must appeal to the powerful attraction that you and your potential clients/customers have in common. Before creating this magical content, it’s imperative that you understand who your audience is. Knowing your users interests and then channeling those interest through your content can spell out the difference between being an ordinary business or a prominent one. I can already hear you asking: ”What does it take to build such intriguing content?”. And you might be skeptical about actively pursuing such steps towards success. You can do it, but you must be dedicated. A good start would be to just spell out an outline as a step by step ladder. It should have a bite to it, an engaging attitude by the use of headlines. Use impressive expressions that make sense to your audience. Stay within your niche or market, because you can’t satisfy the whole world, and make the content a worthwhile reading for them. Then there is the problem of what to write. And that seems to most businesses/people a challenging step forward. As I have pointed out in the title, fresh related content is essential. Try signing up to the newsletters in your industry. See what others are doing. Be a trend setter for your market just by giving the latest news and your impressions on it. Market your business’ personality. It’s not about WHAT you say, it’s HOW you say it. This means you have to start writing yourself and accomodate your readers with a constant style. Need help with your content? Looking to grow your Daytona Beach business online? Contact us online or call us at (407) 682-2222.

Adding Mobile Marketing to Your Online Strategy

8/30/2010 2:18:00 PM

Just now beginning to get used to internet marketing and what that can mean to your business? Well don't get too comfortable or think you are finally catching up with the times - because there is a new player on the scene - Mobile Marketing! What is Mobile Marketing? Mobile Marketing is essentially taking your online marketing and making sure that it can communicate with consumers on the move via their mobile or hand held devices - such as PDA's, smart phones or wireless internet enabled gadgets like the iTouch. Mobile Marketing's Demographics According to statistics there was a 50% increase in the sales of smartphones Q2 of 2010 compared to the same time last year. 98 % of all cell phones in the US have the ability to connect to the World Wide Web. And 68.7 million US citizens are using SMS (Short Message Service) capabilities. They are either texting or accessing online content via the internet from their hand held devices. Gone are the days when Blackberry's and PDA's were used just for business. People from 15 to 70 are jumping on the bandwagon of being able to be in touch with the world 24/7 - no matter where they are. Who's Using Mobile Marketing? Recent news reports state that companies like USA Today (USAToday.com) and Vegas.com are moving full steam ahead on integrating Mobile Marketing into their online marketing strategies. Recently Vegas.com did research to establish just how much consumers accessing their website via mobile devices could be affecting the analytics of their website. Just by looking at a couple of high level pages in the sales funnel they realized by building web pages that could be viewed and used easily by mobile devices they could lower their bounce rates and increase the time spent on their website. By analyzing this information further they determined spending some of their marketing budget on making sure that the entire sales funnel, including booking options, are accessible to their mobile consumers they will be able to raise their conversion rate as well! Are you ready to start determining how integrating mobile marketing into your Daytona Beach online marketing strategy can work for you? Contact Sales & Marketing Technologies TODAY to discuss how we can help you with your mobile marketing!

SEO vs Pay Per Click

3/26/2010 11:19:00 AM

Doing this for many years, I often run into clients that ask me "Should I be investing my money in a PPC campaign or an SEO campaign (organic)?" The short answer is both, but the indepth answer is depends. I'll explain why. Which is Right For You It's so important to clearly scope what you are going after in this market. This will help determine the bet course of action when choosing to invest marketing dollars in an online marketing campaign. If you have the marketing dollars to spend, I strongly would suggest you invest in both. But, sometimes that's not always the case. Sometimes we only have X amount of dollars to spend an splitting it between 2 campaigns wouldn't be worth it. If that is the case for you, consider this parable: I like to think of a Pay Per Click campaign as renting a house. You get immediate results for paying X dollars. Now SEO, or organic search is like buying a house. You are in it for the long haul, and while it takes time to build and invest in this house, it pays off in the long run. The money that was invested in the SEO campaign will give you lasting results compared to the PPC campaign. Once the marketing dollars are spent for PPC, no more traffic. If You Have to Choose If you have to choose between one of the other, I would always choose organic search (SEO). I have seen time after time clients benefit greatly from taking their online marketing serious. SEO can greatly help by improving your search engine rankings, manage your online reputation, and increase traffic. Consult Professionals This all can seem very confusing, that's why I strongly recommend you consult with an SEO or PPC company. Web-Site Promotion is a Daytona SEO, Web Design and PPC management company that would the opportunity to discuss your online marketing campaign.

Web Design and SEO Work Hand in Hand

1/27/2010 2:32:00 PM

I am here to set the record straight about web design and SEO and how both should work together to maximize your results. There is a misconception floating around out there that if you have a nice looking website, then it will automatically be a success. If you think it will, then you truly aren’t maximizing your website potential at creating leads, attracting new customers, and/or earning your company more money. I can’t stress the importance of including SEO in your web design plans. When you are in the development mockup stage, it’s important to draft your call to actions and the funnel conversion process. You need to make sure that a visitor on your site is 1) intrigued to click on call to actions and 2) has easy accessibility to contact or convert on your product or services. Now that you have seen why it’s important to implement SEO in web design for conversion, now I will show you why it’s important to consider it for search engines. One example of how SEO and web design go hand in hand is your internal link structure. Your internal link structure is a key factor in your link building campaign. This is why it’s so important to optimize your website for both users and search engines. Instead of using images for your menu, use text. Need Daytona Beach web design and Daytona SEO services? Contact us now to begin maximizing your online potential.

Daytona Web Design Service

12/31/2009 10:47:00 AM

Web-Site Promotion isn't your typical Daytona Web Design company. We not only build creative, award winning designs, we build web sites that focus on returning results! How can this be done? Web-Site Promotion focuses on three core elements: 1) The user's experience, 2) Being Search Engine friendly, and 3) Converting those user's. The term, "Build it and they will come" simply doesn't work anymore when it comes to websites. It's important to put together a strategy that will produce results. All of our web sites are built with the user and search engine in mind. What does search engine friendly mean? Code that is easily crawl-able for search engine spiders Ability to create unique title and meta tags Cross browser compatibility Effective internal link structure and more! Looking for a Daytona web design company? Need a website that gives you results? Contact us today to learn how we can develop and design a website for you!

Help Your Daytona Business Grow Using SEO

12/3/2009 3:03:00 PM

In this day and age, marketing your business offline just isn’t enough. The gold ole’ days when word of mouth or newspaper ads fueled your business are over… way over. Today, every business needs to have a website and also implement an online marketing strategy. There are many elements, but one I believe that shouldn’t be overlooked is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. SEO is a method that optimizes your website to increase volume of traffic being referred by search engines. Typically you increase your traffic by being ranked higher in the search engines; especially Google. There are many factors and techniques that go into SEO, and if you don’t know what you are doing, we recommend consulting the SEO experts at SMTUSA.com because you could get your site banned by Google. Don’t wait any longer. It’s time to get your website ranking at the top of search engines! If you have a business in or around the Daytona, Florida area, consider learning more about our Daytona Web Design or Daytona SEO services.

Copywriters can take the pain out of content creation

5/13/2009 6:56:00 PM

If writing is not your thing then we recommend hiring a copywriter to help you with the creation of your web site content. There are many great copywriters out there that can (with minimal input from you) turn those blank white pages into interesting and engaging content for your web site. You will still need to read it over and make some corrections, however, it is much easier to tweak than to come up with all the ideas yourself.

Parsing data in C#

4/22/2009 11:02:00 AM

Parsing data in C# is a simple process, and can be done using some basic language syntax. Sub Strings provide this functionality, and when used properly can make data collection, or simple parsing operations a much easier task. First when parsing data from sources such as a web page, it is important to first remove all data at the beginning of the document which is unnecessary, in order to prevent the parsing utility from finding the wrong information. website design search results http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/ en Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT website design - sample feed http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testimage1.gif http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/ Small Businesses Receive Web Design Financing from Wildfire http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink1.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:15:30 GMT This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes Effective website design for successful ecommerce http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink2.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:23:38 GMT This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes website design - XML Sample Finding unique tags to mark the beginning of the data to be parsed is the key to building an efficient parsing utility. In the above sample, all of the text prior to "" is irrelevant if you are only attempting to gather the item data, and will not be needed to complete the parsing process. To remove this from your text use the following code: (code assumes data is loaded in a string variable named strData) int intStartPos = strData.IndexOf(""); strWorkingRSS = strData.Substring(intStartPos); Once the irrelevant data has been removed, you can then focus on parsing the remainder of the string, with the following code this can be done by using any unique string at the beginning and the end of the data you would like to capture. The following code will always stop at the first instance of search string so if you continue to trim the text as you work using the above sample, you can easily write a loop to pull out each of the items until the data has all been parsed successfully. The below sample will result in assigning the variable strTitle with the text in between the "" and "" tags. string strOpenString = ""; intStartPos = strData.IndexOf(strOpenString ) + strOpenString .Length; int intEndPos = strData.IndexOf(""); int intLength = intEndPos - intStartPos; string strTitle = strData.Substring(intStartPos, intLength); This should be enough information to get any parsing project started. The data that I used for my sample may have been XML, but the real value in this type of parsing utility, is in cases where data from an HTML site, or group of HTML pages needs to be moved to a dynamic location such as a database. Many times the only viable option for data transfer is to use a "screen scraping" application, and this code provides a general outline for how to build one for most any circumstances.