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Redesigning a website can wreak havoc on hard earned search engine rankings.  Effectively redesigning a website without losing visibility in search engines is a team effort, SEOs, developers & designers should all be involved in the process to ensure that basic SEO mistakes do not occur.

One of the most common SEO mistakes is utilizing pictures instead of text.  Pictures enhance the visual appearance of a site, but do relatively nothing to increase search engine rankings.  Alt tags can be utilized to increase the relevance of a picture to search engines, but pictures should never completely replace live text.

Another common mistake is engaging in URL rewriting without a 301 redirect.  Reconstructing a URL to make use of effective keywords is an excellent strategy.  However, engaging in this activity without properly redirecting your traffic to the reconstructed page can be SEO suicide.

The redesign process is complete, live text has effectively been used throughout the website, URLs have been recreated and redirected.  You are now ready to send your site live, right?  Wrong, the most critical SEO mistake made by the redesign team is launching a site without placing the analytical tracking code back into the page source.  No analytics means an inability to make strategic SEO decisions.

Steer clear of the previously mentioned SEO missteps and your website will maintain its SEO relevancy after re launch.

In an economy where very few businesses aren’t just surviving, but thriving, app developers have found their way.  Even though it seems as if app stores are dominated by free apps, experts are projecting a $3.8 billion rise in profits in 2011. It could be the simple fact that free content is readily available all over the four major app stores which encourages people to spend money on apps they feel are really useful (or really fun).

When designing an Internet Marketing plan, it is very important not to miss any opportunity to grab your audience’s attention. With apps now for almost everything from virtual water slides, homeopathic remedies, pedometers, photo and video editing and even a cry translator, is it time for your business to be present on the app store circuit? Even JWoWW of Jersey Shore fame has her own app. Incorporating an app into your Internet Marketing portfolio is a great way to condense content and relate back to your audience in order to build a relationship with them.

Think about your target market and what would make access to your product or brand easier for them. For example, Chipotle’s app allows their customers to order in advance directly from their app so they can skip the line and avoid the lunch time rush. Their model could be useful for any restaurant or service based industry which would allow users to specify exactly what they are hoping to accomplish before they even walk through the doors of your business, either literally or figuratively.

What are your overall goals when deciding on your Internet Marketing objectives? If you are looking to create more positive brand awareness instead of a specific call to action, Geico’s apps are perfect examples. Not only do they have a more obvious app that caters to current customers and potential customers alike, but they also have Geico Arcade and the Geico GloveBox apps which both offer games, funny videos and more. Apps that offer free games and activities are a great way to increase brand awareness and give your brand a personality. Apps that accomplish those objectives are also great for a wide range of businesses.

Let’s say you own a bakery and are looking to create a dialog about your business. You can set up an entire Internet Marketing campaign that focuses on your creative cupcakes by reaching out to your audience with a contest that is lead by your Online Marketing efforts. An app can be incorporated into your campaign that will allow your customers to create cupcakes that go along with a monthly theme. You can also mirror this same process on your company website so you aren’t excluding any possible leads. The best creations can be featured in your store for sale. Think of the possibilities- lines around the corner, viral YouTube videos, and (best of all) loyal and engaged customers.

Could you be overlooking a key element of your business’ internet marketing and online presence? If your answer to that question isn’t a resounding “no,” you need to attend The Intersection of Social Media & SEO, a collaborative event being brought to you by South Florida Internet Marketing leaders Exults and iAnalyst in conjunction with the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association (SFIMA) on Thursday April 14 at 6:30 pm.

Exults, iAnalyst and SFIMA have joined forces to bring you a unique opportunity to learn from an internet marketing leader and pioneer in the ever-evolving industry of Internet Marketing. And who better to direct this open forum than Brett Tabke- a social media and search engine optimization (SEO) specialist and founder of WebmasterWorld, an online forum about website development, with over 30 years of experience. Mr. Tabke will be leading this eye-opening production on making sure all of your marketing efforts intersect to form one cohesive campaign in which all of your efforts complement one another.

Feeling a little overwhelmed about the thought of implementing a new way to reach your target audience online? Fear not. This hybrid networking and informative presentation will bring to light essential aspects of internet marketing you could be overlooking including: how to effectively and seamlessly incorporate social media into your SEO campaign, the significance of creating an online community that will both involve and engage your target audience, the importance of getting the most bang for your buck in choosing suitable social media outlets and the rewards that can come from an effectively integrated social media and SEO campaign.

Exults is a South Florida based company that offers Search Engine Optimization services to a wide variety of businesses- both local and global. Creating an online presence that accurately reflects your business’ goals and core values is a great way to expand your customer base. Exults believes that the best way to understand your customer base and create a prominent place in your industry is through ensuring all of your marketing bases are covered.  Both Exults and iAnalyst are national thought leaders in the area of integrating search and social media efforts to enhance your Internet Marketing.  With this in mind, an intuitive partnership between Exults and iAnalyst was forged.

iAnalyst is a social media management firm and mobile marketing authority with offices in New York, Las Vegas and Miami that relies heavily on in-depth knowledge of your business’ objectives to ensure a successful Internet Marketing campaign.  By using appropriate forms of Social Media, iAnalyst aims to increase desired visibility in an already flooded marketplace where it is important to stand out. Both of these companies work closely with SFIMA to provide monthly educational events that provide South Florida business owners a great opportunity to network and make local connections that can prove to be invaluable.

The Intersection of SEO & Social Media event will take place at Galuppi’s located at 1103 North Federal Highway in Pompano Beach. The networking portion will run from 6:30 pm until 7:15 pm followed immediately by the hour long presentation at 7:30 pm.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a good way for a small business owner to compete with big business for visitors to their website. As the visitor runs a search query on the search engine, the most relevant terms will come to the top. The relevance of these pages is determined by how optimized the website is, so anyone can work to improve their position in the search results. Organic SEO is the process of improving the page rank of your website with the use of keywords for the natural (organic) keyword searches.

As the Internet continues to develop, there are new ways to market your online presence and make it available to large numbers of potential customers. A good SEO strategy would aim to exploit as many of these new opportunities as possible in order to capture as many new visitors to your website as possible. A great strategy would convert a lot of them into paying customers.

Mobile Internet

Mobile access to the Internet is growing rapidly and searches from mobile devices are slowly catching up with the normal Internet searches. An SEO consultant should be looking at amending their SEO strategy to take advantage of this rise in mobile searches. This is particularly true for campaigns that are targeting a local area. You can kill two birds with one stone by hitting the mobile Internet users who are searching using your keyword phrases as well as those physically in your target area.

Social Media

The social media sites are rapidly becoming the most popular sites on the internet. If you can focus your SEO strategy to take advantage of these sites then you could be reaching a massive global audience of potential customers. The rise of these sites is leading to new search engine methodologies that are quickly becoming more effective than the traditional organic SEO techniques.

Less Means More

Until recently there were three large search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo. With the recent merger of Bing and Yahoo, the number of major search engine players has dropped to two. For an SEO consultant this effectively means that there is less competition in the marketplace and the cost per click is likely to rise as a result.

Google is still the behemoth in this market, and any SEO strategy needs to primarily target this search engine. There are still alternative search engines available for when you’re targeting foreign markets, such as Baidu in China, and you should think about using those when you run campaign in other countries.

It’s a Small World

A lot of companies are now targeting people who are physically located in close proximity to their premises. This is done to try and get more customers to visit their shop because a lot of people prefer to do their shopping in person. They like knowing that they can quickly exchange the goods if there is a problem.  By targeting them via the Internet and mobile devices, you’ll be able to expand your marketing tactics—taking advantage of both worlds.

These new developments give plenty of scope of a SEO consultant to refine and improve the tactics they use in SEO campaigns. And luckily for the website owner, this will only result in more exposure for their site, and that should lead to better profits in the future.

If you are running a PPC campaign then you’ve probably tried the same things as you did for your last campaign, and probably every one before that. But things change quickly online, and your old tactics may be outdated. Seeing as it’s a new year, why not get your next promotion off to a flying start by looking into these new ways of targeting your ads?

New Sites

For years, most PPC management professionals would have advised you to concentrate on the search engines. Now though, there are a number of options that have opened up that will give you a lot more potential to reach customers. One of the great examples of this is Facebook, currently the most popular website in the world. Advertisers have only just started to realize the potential of this site, whole population totals more than the country of Brazil. When you consider the amount of information that’s stored in a user’s profile, you can see how it would be ideal for PPC optimization for targeted advertising campaigns.

Another site that is ideal for a PPC campaign is YouTube. Since Google took it over, it has now grown to be one of the most popular websites with over 2 billion hits a day.  And with its powerful search features, it’s ideal to use for PPC. One thing that you should consider when advertising on YouTube is that the search terms used there are different than those used on search engines, and so you’ll have to plan your campaign accordingly. If you are planning to target YouTube, then take the time to discuss these differences with your PPC management company.

New Technologies

After several years of hype, the use of mobile smartphones to access the internet is increasing more and more every day.  A lot of new PPC management professionals are now targeting these mobile users for their campaigns. A lot of the searches on the internet that are being performed from mobile phones are more locally targeted than those from a standard browser. This leads to the possibility of targeted local ads for mobile users.

According to Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, 10 percent of all searches on Google are currently from mobile devices, and this will only increase as the smartphones become even more popular. If you want to target your ads to mobile users, talk to your PPC advisor about which keywords and search terms are used by them and adjust your campaign accordingly.

New Ways of Doing Old Things

Now that the big search engines have expanded from the basic search into many different areas, there is a lot of opportunity to link your ads with these new search patterns. Instead of running the PPC campaign on the basic search, maybe image or news search is much more relevant to your advertising needs.

Make sure that you keep up to date with the latest tools and utilities to help with the PPC optimization of your campaign. The range of freely available packages gets better every with every iteration and will really help if you are targeting one of the new areas for your PPC campaign.

The existing advertising spaces are becoming ever more saturated with advertising campaigns, you can move into new areas and beat the rush. Do your research first and find the best way to link your campaign to the new opportunities and different ways of searching where you can really benefit.

As with most things on the Internet, the SEO field is constantly evolving. New opportunities continue to appear and the SEO professional has to find new tactics to make the most of them. Some of these opportunities are due to changes in the way that people use the internet and others are due to changes in technology as well as the technology providers.

Different Searches

There has been a big growth in the use of personalized searches over the last few years. Personalization means that the search engine filters your results so that it only returns sites with a solid history and any new sites are going to find it harder to break through. It will require a new kind of SEO strategy to bring a new website through the established and branded websites that dominate the search results.

The number of main search engines that you can target now has dropped to two since the joining of Bing and Yahoo. Most searches are still on Google, so as an SEO professional you’ll need to target your campaign towards that search engine. Anything that works on Google will also work on the Bing and Yahoo combination.

The number of searches is steadily increasing, but the search engines are trying to answer these searches without having to pass the visitor on to another website. If you’re not careful then the search engines will index your content and quote it directly and so the searcher will never see your hard work. To get around this you might have to deliver more complicated content that delivers real value to your visitors.

Social Networking

The most popular sites on the Internet now are the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. In comparison, nearly every other site on the Internet is losing popularity. If an online marketing company is not targeting its campaigns towards these sites then it will start to fall behind those companies that are actively targeting them. Your new SEO strategy will really need to leverage the social networking sites in order to succeed.

Bigger Budgets

Both personalized searches and the increased use of social media are acting to take searches away from the traditional web indexing. These are now an integral part of online marketing and promotion and it’s becoming increasingly necessary to use the skills of a SEO professional to make the most of your campaigns.

Everything Faster

The speed of change on the Internet seems to be increasing and people are increasingly interested in real time information and messaging. The challenge for the online marketing company is figuring out how to take advantage of this trend and incorporate that real time Internet into your SEO strategy.

Even though Twitter is considered a social media site, the microblogging site has the instant messaging and retweeting functions that make it into a great research tool. It’s becoming increasingly important for the SEO professional to spend time seeing what the current trends are and how their rival companies are making use of them.

The holy grail of an SEO professional is the conversion of searches into visitors. No matter what new trends come along, your aim is to increase the conversion rate and improve the return on investment. Basing your SEO strategy on these trends will help you to do that.

As new developments sweep over the Internet, it’s becoming increasingly important to keep abreast of the latest trends and tricks to keep your PPC campaign ahead of the pack. Some of these are just extensions of existing developments and others are entirely new ways to try and get browsers to click through to your ads.

Display Advertising

There has been a big growth in the use of display advertising on the main PPC hosting sites. With their use of graphics, fonts and even animation these ads are a lot more interesting to look at than one that just uses plain text. The next time you are thinking of a new PPC campaign, you need to seriously consider improving the look of the ad to attract more visitors to your site.

Social Media

The rise of social networking sites over the last few years has been nothing short of a phenomenon. These sites attract millions of unique users every day, so everyone involved in PPC management should be looking at ways to use these sites to increase revenue. The social media sites are getting wise to the fact that PPC services can use the information they have, and are constantly developing new ways to promote it.  You should expect a big rise in the way that you can promote your business on the social media sites.

“No” Keywords

Ever since the earliest PPC campaign, the selection of keywords has been one of the most important activities that an advertiser can do, and keywords are still an important part of how owners drive traffic to their sites. But more and more searches are based on people, songs, lyrics and images. One of the big new challenges facing PPC management companies today is figuring out how to take advantage of these new search patterns for the promotion.

Less Competition and More Cost

The recent joining of Bing and Yahoo has reduced the number of large search engines you can use for PPC services to two. The downside of this is that there will be more competition for the search terms and in turn this might lead to increased cost per click. One way around this is to spend more time finding the best keyword combinations with the least competition.

If you’re planning a promotion in a different country, there may be a local search engine that is more suitable for your PPC campaign. For example, in China you might prefer to use Baidu rather than the search engines you would normally use in the U.S. To take full advantage of an international campaign, you most definitely need the strategic planning and expertise of a PPC services company.

Mobile Internet

There has been a big rise in mobile internet recently, and this is only expected to increase. In general, mobile users search in a different way than traditional computer users and you’d be wise to try and figure out how to draw those users.  And when you target your campaign to these users you should take advantages of the features of mobile devices that will make your promotion more interesting.

There are always new trends and technologies coming along on the Internet, and it’s the job of a PPC professional to know about and then pass on that knowledge to their customers.  By working with one who’s up to date on the latest trends, you’ll undoubtedly have a successful campaign.

Over the last few years there has been a significant rise in the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook. These online communities have a vast audience of potential customers that might be interested in what you’ve got to sell. One of the biggest challenges facing an online marketing company today is how to tailor an SEO strategy to reach as many of these people as possible.

An SEO strategy based around social media sites is concerned with the social rank of the target webpage. This is related to the popularity of the site within the social networking sites, so the more fans, friends and” likes” a page gets, the higher up the search engine rankings it is. Even Twitter works on the same principle—as you get more tweets mentioning your site it then moves up in the search engine rankings.

If you’ve been involved in SEO strategy before, it might help to think of tweets and fans in the same way as you would previously have thought of back links. The more you get, the more popular your website will be.

New Business Models

Traditional advertising models work on a one-to-many basis, where one ad reaches many potential customers. With social media, there is the potential for a many-to-many campaign, where anyone can act as an agent and promote your brand to their friends without you needing to ask them to do it. Every time you or a friend “like” or become a fan of a company or product, you’re advertising it to all of your friends.

Communities

A lot of the social media sites have communities where people with similar interests can congregate online. Any SEO campaign based around advertising a product to a related community would be a lot more successful than a general campaign. The key is for your online marketing company to find and then target relevant communities.

Location Based Advertising

Social networking sites all store information on their user base including their home location. They can use this to target ads at a specific subset of the users who are physically close to the target area. This might not be as specific to your products as using communities, but it allows smaller businesses the opportunity to advertise in their local area. This could be very valuable to a small local business that is trying to increase their revenue through an advertising campaign.

Behavior Based Advertising

A lot of users on social media sites are producing their own content which is then viewed by their friends. As the number of friends increases so will the number of people viewing this content. Users of these sites will spend more time searching for content based on these sites, which creates opportunities for SEO targeting of your social media content. By tailoring your pages to fit the desired searches, you can get more visitors to your pages.

Your online marketing company should be able to assist you when you are thinking of starting a SEO strategy targeting social media sites. These new methods are great ways of gaining access to a whole new market of potential visitors to view your web content.

Nothing ever stays the same, and to keep ahead of the game you’ll have to think about adapting your PPC campaign to take advantage of the latest trends in Internet usage. If you keep doing the same old things you’ll likely miss out on new marketing opportunities that your rivals will exploit. Consider changing your PPC services to make the most of these chances before it’s too late.

Higher Costs

When the first PPC ads appeared, there was very little competition for the keywords and so the cost per click was pretty low. But over time more and more competition entered the market and the cost per click has steadily climbed. The recent merger of Bing and Yahoo also means that there is less choice of search engines to run your campaign. After the merger, the cost per click increased by about 15% nearly overnight. This means that you will get less PPC services for your money. As always, you will need to look at allocating more money or find a way to get more for your budget.

Local Ads for Local People

The Internet might be expanding into every walk of life all over the world, but at the same time it’s growing more local. There are more ways of accessing the Internet from everywhere, including laptops with Wi-Fi, tablets and more importantly smartphones. From these devices people can browse the Internet from everywhere, which gives a PPC agency plenty of opportunity for new business ideas for targeting local ads. Surfers can now find directions from where they are to your business in a matter of seconds as well as promotional material, directions and much more. And while a lot of people still like to hand their money over the counter in exchange for their products, once they realize that if there’s a problem you’re right around the corner, you’ll have a golden opportunity to increase the conversion rate from your next PPC campaign.

Anyone, Anywhere

Mobile devices, especially smartphones and more recently hand-held tablets, are becoming increasingly popular for accessing the Internet. Mobile users perform different searches than normal Internet users. That’s why it will be important for your PPC professional to use the analytics in order to target your PPC campaign at mobile users.

Social Media

The Facebook juggernaught seems unstoppable at the moment. There are currently 600 million users and that rate is climbing steadily. You simply can’t consider a PPC campaign at the moment that doesn’t take advantage of the vast amount of personal data stored for each of these users.  Your PPC agency should be able to advise you about how to run a campaign that targets the subset of Facebook users whose interests coincide with yours. By advertising solely to your target market, you’ll increase the chances of a click-through and that should reflect in an increased return on your advertising investment.

The Internet hasn’t stood still since it first appeared and new developments and trends are continually creating new opportunities for PPC services to reach potential customers. By aiming your ads at each of these niche areas you could find yourself in the prime position to grab hold of people and make them your customers.

Whenever you’re running a PPC campaign, it’s important that you get as many visitors to your site as possible. And no matter how many visitors come, if the first page they see doesn’t attract them, then they won’t be likely to stick around and make a purchase.  And because in PPC advertising, you’re paying for each visitor, it only makes sense that you would invest some time and effort to ensure that your visitors like what they see when they get there.

There are many ways that you can try to impress your visitors, but these are the current hottest trends for the design of PPC landing pages. If you’re interested in adopting some of these for your site, simply speak to your web designer and PPC services company and ask them to do it for you.

Limit Movement

A number of recent campaigns have lead to a landing page with few options for the visitor. This trend reduces the options that are open to a visitor and directs them on to more of your targeted content. For example, if you’re running a promotion offer with your PPC campaign, you might want your users to land of a page that allows them to see the products that are on promotion before they browse the rest of your website. Or, you might have a route in for your registered users and one for those who haven’t been to your site before.

Prominent Graphics

A lot of landing pages now feature impressive graphics or even a video to draw in the visitor. An attractive image can give a good impression to your visitors and make them want to browse through the rest of your site. That great first impression can really help make your visitors feel comfortable—maybe even enough to make a purchase.

Catchy Mottos

If you come up with the perfect motto for your campaign it will resonant with the visitors and capture their imagination. A great motto will grab their attention and remind them of your site even after they’ve gone. Spend a little time to get the motto and any logo for your campaign just right and it will pay dividends over time.

Give us your Data

A lot of websites are now demanding that users register as soon as they land on the page. For a long time this was seen as counter-productive as users were likely to leave rather than spend time registering for a website that they might not use again, but a lot of sites are asking for basic details like name and email address and offer an incentive for that information like a money off coupon or other offer for joining.

Running a successful PPC campaign is more than just getting the keywords and placement right. Once the user clicks through to your site, you’ve got their attention. Keeping it is just as important as that will help in converting them from a click through to a sale.  And that’s the goal of any campaign. Work with your PPC management company to make sure that your PPC campaign does everything that it can to bring in the visitors and then convert them into the buyers that your business needs.