Archive for September, 2009

SEO Services: Your Business Marketing Plan Necessity

SEO services are a necessity for your business marketing plan.  Call the SEO experts at Directory One at (800) 477-1324 to learn all about the business marketing SEO services to give your company that competitive edge you are looking for now.

Currently, the business awareness of the importance of Internet marketing is increasing dramatically and you are probably reading this blog because you too are aware of the necessity of cyber exposure.

The fact is that the only way a business can compete in the online marketplace is if either an SEO expert is running the company or if, like the old entrepreneur of Ford Motors, you are aware that your business is only as strong as the individual experts you utilize to support that business.  In this case, you would wisely hire an Internet marketing expert to handle the SEO services for your company and thereby strengthen your business marketing plan by leaps and bounds.

It is only possible to focus on so many things at one time.  The old adage that you can be an expert at one thing or do a bunch of things…well….rather inefficiently, is definitely true.  This is why Directory One exists.  We have a full staff of experts to support the businesses who are serious about their success. All of our employees are continuously trained in keeping up with search engine optimization, the many details and methods involved. 

Website Designers

Our website designers focus on the direct IT work.  With the consistent training, they are also able to spot any weak points that need adjustment. 

SEO Analysts

Our SEO analysts work closely with our clientele to ensure that their SEO service package is meeting the specific needs of their business and that it continues to do so over the course of time.

SEO Writers

Our SEO writers are trained and skilled in the methods of ensuring that your website remains active with a steady flow of excellent and informative web content that calls the readers to action.  What action?  Why, picking up the telephone and calling you, of course!  That’s when our SEO services meet up with your role of providing excellent service to the customers who call you. When we all work together, each focused on our specific expertise, your business succeeds.

Call Directory One today.  We have been in business for many years and have been staying on top of the SEO industry as technology advances.  We want your business to succeed as much as we want our own business to succeed because we realize that we all work best when we support one another’s continued growth.

SEO services are a business marketing necessity.  Your business marketing plan can be effective and complete when you target your large customer base by utilizing the SEO services delivered by Directory One.

Call (800) 477-1324 to experience the difference a personalized marketing plan for your business will make to increase your profits.  Enjoy the relief you will experience in knowing that you are working with an integrity-based company of SEO experts equipped to handle all of your business marketing needs.

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Social Media Marketing :Facebook Business Pages

Whether you’ve been on Facebook two weeks or two years – chances are you are most familiar with the personal “profile” element of the social networking site. Your profile is your personal portal to the Facebook world. Status updates, wall comments, photos, applications, messages – all are connected to your personal profile. A personal profile tells a lot, or a little about you – depending on how much you are willing to share with your online community of friends. For many people, their Facebook account and their personal profile is their online “home.”

Great as all this is — should a business have a personal profile? The straightforward answer is no. Almost every business can benefit from a Facebook presence – but most won’t benefit much from having a personal profile. A business should utilize the business version of the personal profile: the fan page. A fan page (despite the misleading name,) is a business profile for your company. Obviously, Facebook wants businesses to utilize this tool rather than the personal profile tool – but why is it beneficial to do so? Below I outline the top three differences between the types of profiles.

Facebook Business Pages Can be Customized

While customizing a Facebook business page is not a simple affair – it can be done. Facebook allows business pages to create customized HTML pages and customized applications. This is not available on personal profiles. Personal profiles will always look cookie-cutter. The only way to stand-out from the crowd on Facebook is via a customized business page. In addition, the page’s administrator can redirect non-fans and fans to separate “tabs” on the page. This means that first-time visitors can be wowed with a sort of “landing page” while regular visitors can be directed to the areas they most wish to utilize.

Facebook Business Pages Allow Advertising

You can’t advertise a personal profile – but you can (and of course, Facebook finds a myriad of ways to encourage you to,) advertise a business page. Facebook advertising is similar to Google AdWords; but it’s more targetable than the latter (a full description of Facebook Advertisting can be found here.)

Why is the ability to advertise your page so important? Research shows that the most effective advertising on the social networking site are ads that direct the user to another page within Facebook. Advertising that attempts to pull the user from the social network out to another site online are less effective. Why? Users become comfortable with the walled-garden of Facebook and are more likely to check out a page within that walled-garden than something external to it. In addition, an advertisement for a Facebook page includes “social” information about friends that may also be a fan of this page. This can add an element of credibility to your product/advertisement that isn’t available elsewhere online (at the moment anyway.)

Facebook Business Pages Allow You to Track Visitors

Page administrators are granted access to analytics about the types of users visiting their pages. In addition to simply being informative, this can help in the targeting of advertising campaigns. Personal profiles have no such access to analytics.

These are not the only differences between Facebook “profiles” and “fan pages” for businesses – but they demonstrate the need for companies wishing to make the most of their social media presence to choose a business page. If you need help setting up a business page; contact a Houston social media marketing company.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below, email me at jenn@directory.com , or go all SMM on me and contact me @SMMjenn on Twitter ; and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult Directory One today at 713.465.0051

Learn More About Social Media Marketing

Social Media Starts at Home — Analyzing Your Social Media Strategy

Putting the Social Back in Social Media

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Duplicate Content - What Google Thinks

Call Directory One today at (800) 477-1324 to obtain original website content and avoid having to learn the hard way about duplicate content and what Google thinks.  Keep reading this blog to learn more fascinating details about the search engine world and how it will enable or disable your business success….

The major search engine, Google, which has consistently won the battle of being the top most utilized search engine across the globe, has their own agenda.  What is this agenda?

Google is concerned with providing the most accurate results for any search performed at any time in their directory search engine.  Well…yeah….obviously, you are probably thinking.  But how many people truly think about this in detail?  In order to figure out what is best for ranking in the search engines, you must put yourself in the search engine company’s shoes for a moment.

If you have done any searches recently, you may recall seeing a message at the bottom of the search engine results page that states that some of the results were omitted from the search you are currently perusing.  Why would Google omit some of the results from the search?

One big reason is called duplicate content.  Google wants to provide a unique variety of results for the searcher based upon their key term search.  They know that if they fail at this, searchers will look elsewhere.

When the Google crawlers identify web pages as having duplicate content, they omit those results because they do not want their searchers to simply discover one listing after another that is all the same.

Their procedure for identifying duplicate content involves more than just the actual text in the page.  It also includes looking at the url to help spot pages that are actually the same but which have different extensions.  To help work on that portion of this topic, you will want to get your IT crew working on the various methods of ensuring that only one url contains the majority of the link juice for each page of content, but right now you too must be aware of a few details that are not so techy in nature.

What choices have you made for populating your website with quality content?  It is extremely important to note that the search engines find it rather annoying when companies choose to copy content from another website in order to populate their own website with data and text.  This kind of behavior makes it even more difficult for the search engines to provide unique content in the search results.  They have therefore, established crawling methods to identify when a company is doing this and will often omit this company’s website from search results or dramatically push it down the list.

The fact is that if you want your company to show up in top search engine results listings, you must regularly add content to your site to show that your site is not entirely static and out of date with regard to any useful information.  You must also make sure that all of that content is of some value and is unique.  Unless you are a web content writer yourself, or unless your business is very slow, you will not have the time to consistently maintain your website content and you do need a professional to maintain your site and ensure that you are not being pushed out of Google search results due to a lack of fresh and original content.

Remember when you receive these articles from the web content writers at Directory One that their two main purposes are to keep your website active and to drive traffic to your website from specific key term searches and with original content in order to prevent your company from being put into the cyber corner by the major search engine, Google, or any others.

Get quality content that is effective for helping your business rise to the top of search engine results listings.  Avoid duplicate content and avoid getting on Google’s bad side by calling Directory One today at (800) 477-1324.

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By “Home” I am referring to your business’s “homepage.” While external social media sites are a crucial part of any social media marketing campaign, savvy business owners know that you can’t neglect the homefront / homepage. Here are three tips for identifying opportunities for interaction that may already exist on your website.

Tip #1 Create a site that invites conversation

You have likely heard that “content is king” and “conversation is queen.”  How about ensuring your content invites conversation. What do I mean?Review your site to ensure it isn’t speaking “at” your customers, but rather “to” them. Yes, there is information you need to impart; but you’ll encourage more interaction by crafting your message as if was part of a dialogue instead of a monologue. In addition to making your site more readable and engaging to users – using a conversational tone in your content also makes your subsequent invitations to interact more natural.

Once you’ve tweaked your content pages – consider adding an internal blog. An internet marketing company in Houston can help you add an internal blog (like this one!) if you don’t have one already. A blog serves many purposes – not the least of which is introducing you to your customers on a personal level. The comment section under your blog can also be a great place to encourage dialogue and interaction.

Tip #2 Encourage Feedback

There are many ways to encourage feedback, and the options you choose will likely have everything to do with what sort of business you’re in. Companies that sell products or services might encourage feedback with reviews and testimonials. A website for a railroad company on the other hand might not have any use for a customer review – but they might want to gain credibility in their endeavors to “go green” by asking visitors to supply “sustainable suggestions” in a virtual suggestion box.

Warning: many companies have the desire to censor customer comments and feedback. Don’t be tempted. You may occasionally find that a customer wasn’t 100% pleased with your product and service. Allowing them to communicate with you via your website allows you to respond and take action, developing credibility in the process. Also, keep in mind that one bad comment amongst dozens of great ones won’t damage your reputation – if anything, this too adds credibility by demonstrating the reviews are honest and real.

Tip #3 Create incentives for participation

Give your visitors a reason to participate in your website. Contests are a great way to do this. Think: a product-naming contest; or a contest for the best photo of your product being used. You might also create a rewards program for customers who become members on your site. The discounts don’t have to be huge – but it will keep the conversation going as they’ve now invited you to send them information about promotional events and discounts.

Prizes and promotional programs are options – but the main point here remains the fostering of a dialogue. In that sense, the incentive can be as minimal as recognizing they’ve made the effort to communicate with you. Did they leave a comment on your internal blog? Respond to it. Did they make a suggestion in your virtual suggestion box? Send an email thanking them for their thoughts. Think of it as part of the act of listening – you are nodding your head slightly, saying “I hear you – I appreciate your input.” You’ll be surprised (and inspired) by how far this small act can take you and your business in this new world of word-of-mouth marketing.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below or eEmail me at jenn@directory.com and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult a Houston social media marketing company today at 713.465.0051

Learn More:

Social Media Marketing: Getting Your Message Across “Socially”

Social Media Marketing: Why Just “Being There” Isn’t Enough

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Corporate Blogging

The following “Blog” discusses corporate blogging.  Not in the mood to read?  Simply call Directory One today at (800) 477-1324 to learn about corporate blogging and how your company can benefit.

Okay….so you heard a little bit about blogging, how it helps businesses and is an effective marketing tool.  Perhaps you then sat down at the “round table” and mentioned the idea to your fellow executives and business partners and everyone agreed that blogging is “hot” and that it was time to start a corporate blog for your company.

This is how it has worked in many other businesses, if not yours….

Now a bit of time has passed and you might be wondering….what is going on with this blogging idea?  Is anyone maintaining the blog?  Have there been any positive results in accordance with your previously established corporate blogging plan?

What often happens is that the topic is either never discussed again as it falls to the wayside for more critical business matters, or if you are efficiently keeping on top of each and every one of your notes from previous meetings and you bring this up again, there may be a cough in the room, a change of topic to be discussed, a few shrugging shoulders, or typically the best scenario is that ‘Manager A’ speaks up and says, “Joe is working on that and has been experiencing great results!”

But what results?  Is there any way to track your corporate blogging performance?  How often is Joe “working on that?”  Has your company experienced a rise in sales since the beginning of the blog or perhaps a trackable increase in telephone calls from potential customers? Is there any evidence to suggest that whatever manhours are being charged to your company for this corporate blog maintenance are actually valid?

More often than not the answer to these questions is either a resounding “No” or an “I don’t know.”  Because of the nature of business and the variety of details required to be tended to, companies who have been ingenuitive enough to start corporate blogging, often end up discarding the process because of a lack of experiencing any proven results.  Generally one to ten blogs are created and then it will fall by the wayside.  The star who suggested the blog as a great idea has another great idea to replace that one that just never worked out.  And it’s back to business as usual as the world goes ’round….

But wait!  Blogging is huge!  Extensive marketing benefits are actually being delivered to companies that do actively maintain a blog.  Only a few companies are reaping these benefits, however.  Shouldn’t your business be one of the elite that successfully manages a blog and increases their ROI by way of blog marketing effects?

Your company can and will be among the leaders in the industry who have effectively utilized a corporate blog if you use another tool first.  That tool is the telephone.  Call Directory One today at (800) 477-1324.  Assign a professional writer who is not only skilled in writing for your industry, but who understands the wide variety of SEO tools and techniques that must be utilized in order to deliver an effective and regularly maintained blog.

If you do not already have a blog created, Directory One will create a blog for you that is suitable for your business needs.  Discuss your Internet marketing concerns with one of the expert SEO analysts at Directory One and establish a blogging schedule that you can count on being maintained. 

Learn as much as you want about how to manage and maintain an effective blog by working with our integrity-based marketing firm.  We pride ourself on education and open communication with our clientele. For more Internet marketing / Corporate Blogging information, give Directory One a call today!

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Putting the “Social” back in Social Media

Social media has altered the relationship that has existed between companies and consumers since the advent of modern advertising.  Gone are the days of speaking “at” potential customers. Dialogue has replaced monologue and narrowcasting is replacing broadcasting online.

This shift creates great opportunities for businesses – but like any change, it has been difficult for some to adapt to.  Perhaps this is ironic when we consider that for most of human history, interaction between producer and consumer has been a social affair.  Initially it was technology that made it possible to target the many instead of the few – via newspapers, radio, and then television.  These platforms greatly increased reach – but eliminated the individual interactions. Now technology lets us to both at once: reach the many and interact with them.

Unfortunately for many companies embracing social networking – the monologue & broadcast mentality has become ingrained in the culture of marketing . Instead of doing what should come naturally (interacting with other people) there is a lingering focus on “remaining on message” in many social media marketing campaigns.

The trick is to envision your Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube presence as a virtual countertop between yourself and your customers .  On one side stands your company and its message, brand, products, and services; on the other side stands a potential customer.  Would you expect to be successful by assailing the potential customer with a barrage of bullet-points and brand messages?   Would you expect the customer – who has the option to interact with thousands of other companies at the click of a button  — to remain in front of you while you continue your pre-programmed, on-point, litany ?   Sounds like a losing proposition, doesn’t it?

While other formats continue to provide a viable place for your “broadcast” messages  – social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, etc… are not a viable home for this technique.  Your potential customers will tune you out and your carefully crafted message will end up as noise.  Of course,  interaction alone won’t lead to real results for your business either. A Houston social media marketing company can help you craft an effective strategy for remaining focused on your company’s strategy and goals while being effectively social at the same time.

Questions or comments? Leave a comment here — find me on Twitter @SMMJenn, learn more about me, or email me at jenn@newnectar.com

Social Media Marketing in Houston: Learn More

Social Media Marketing: Why Just “Being There” Isn’t Enough

Social Media Marketing: Avoiding Culture Shock

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