Category: Marketing

The term multi channel marketing has always existed in business, and it is a term to indicate the successful employment of different channels in order to help the success of a particular business. As such, it is really a self explanatory term; an example of multiple channels within which to successfully conduct your business (and allow it to expand and grow exponentially) could be a retail outlet, a mail order method of sales and an online store. All these elements can work in unison to form a powerful single entity where to market goods or services, allowing a business to gradually strengthen and become more popular over time.

Multi channel marketing is now a term which can be attributed solely to online marketing practices, though it really is no different than its land-based counterpart. Multi channel marketing online entails essentially the same methods of being able to sell goods/services online through more than one channel; this may mean taking advantage of video sites, social networking sites in order to sell goods and aquire popularity more quickly, and, most importantly, SEO and indexing techniques. This latter aspect is absolutely crucial to ensuring your business will reach each potential channel adequately, and fulfil its multi-channeling scope in full flow.

Let us look what multi-channel marketing means in practical terms, and how entrepreneurs can make the most of the technology available to successfully market a product through various online channels.

Marketing through a variety of Channels Online

The majority of users are now no longer confined to searching for a product in the comforts of their own home, but are likely to begin a search at home and continue that search as they go through their normal daily routine. For instance, they may search for a particular pair of shoes on a desktop PC while leaving for work, then continue that search on a tablet or a mobile phone when it is safe to do so.

All this means that creating an interweaving network which connects through a variety of channels is essential to the longevity of any business. Users will spread the word of a product through social media for instance, and hence it is important for a business to establish a social network presence as part of a multi channel marketing strategy.

While social networks like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (to some extent) are an important part of user engagement and interaction, call to action methods are more important for converting leads. Therefore, it is important to use viral marekting methods (e-mail, Pay-per click) as another form of multi channel marketing for your online business. Buying adverts which will be displayed on social media is important, just as Pay-per click marketing, Affiliate marketing and link building.

A strong multi-channel network isn’t just created by nurturing only one single aspect of your business, but knowing how users search and interact online. You are then able to correlate all these elements into something stronger and more durable over time.

The Importance of SEO

Organic results are still essential to a business, and getting indexed highly can still make or break the success of a website. This means that SEO is as important as ever, and particularly more so as Google places emphasis on quality content through various algorithm updates (i.e. Panda, Penguin, etc…).

Proper keyword research, including KEI, is absolutely essential to successful multi channel marketing. SEO is essential for any aspect of an online business anyway, and therefore it is important to bear this in mind at the very early stages of your multi-marketing strategy.

Many of us have come across a novel idea that may very well be the “next big thing” to hit the market. However, a lack of finances may deter us from ever realising what may be a lucrative and rewarding dream. In these economic times that seem to be defined by a lack of finance and tighter lending regulations, this is often times the unfortunate case. While it may seem a bit unorthodox, money is not necessarily the main determinant for success. In fact, some of the most successful brands have arisen from little or even no capital. While sites such as this one provide valuable resources for those that may be on a shoestring budget, but are there any ways to find success with no money at all? The answer to this daunting question may very well surprise you!

Personal Magnetism

Many salesmen attribute their success as having to do as much with their personality as it does to the product at-hand. It is a proven fact that a customer is buying the person along with the product. Personal magnetism, charm and positive energy are all critical factors when transferring an idea from the drawing board into the marketplace. Some of the most powerful businessmen in history were able to utilise their sheer willpower alone to find investors, secure finances and bring their dreams to life. There are many websites including the one found here that offer a more in-depth understanding of this critical area.

Trade Events

Industry-related gatherings are another excellent way to meet like-minded individuals and present your product to those who may be interested. In the world of business, success revolves just as much around who you know as it what you know. There have been very few ventures that have realised profit without the help of outside stakeholders. Trade events and other fairs are pivotal in helping to increase your contact base; perhaps allowing you to find that one investor who truly believes in what you are offering.

Social Media

The power of the internet has become altogether apparent in recent years and social media platforms are now the arena of choice in helping a company reach their target demographic. The advantage that these sites have is the simple fact that they are both user-friendly and cost absolutely nothing. If we couple this with the ability to literally reach millions of potential customers from across the globe in real-time, we can begin to understand why such websites have taken the lead in countless internet marketing campaigns.

Offer Extraordinary Service and Support

One of the tenets of developing a loyal customer base is allowing the public associate a particular brand with quality and unrivaled levels of service. It costs very little to keep customers happy. Although another well-established company may offer a similar product, consumers need to feel as if their individual needs are being addressed. This may be thought of as bringing a bit of the old “mom and pop store” mentality into modern times. When a large number of companies may offer a virtually identical product, this type of proactive client engagement may be the ultimate determining factor.

These are some of the most efficacious ways to help build a brand from the ground-up with no capital. Combining these tips with others found on sites including this one will provide you with valuable tools to help transform a dream into a reality. Naturally, such success stories rarely happen overnight. Triumph in the business world takes time, acumen, insight and a solid willpower to move forward even when presented with a certain amount of adversity. This dream of success may be closer than you think!

Web masters often quote a study that says that “93 percent of Web users don’t look beyond the first page of search results” when justifying their use of SEO. And they’re absolutely correct. That said, many web masters don’t know how to properly go about optimizing their website for search engines. I’ve detailed below secrets that only the best of the best at SEO know.

1. Make sure the keywords you’re using are appropriate.

One mistake often by made by people trying to utilize SEO is that they make use of the wrong keywords. More often than not, the keywords companies use to describe their products are different from the ones consumers use. For example, you might be promoting “portable computers” but your customer may describe it as a “laptop”. With the wrong keywords, you could be wasting your time with your SEO efforts.

Thankfully, there are tools you can use to gauge whether your keywords will be effective. With the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can evaluate which are the most frequently searched keywords and see how competitive a keyword is. With this tool, you might even find keywords you haven’t even heard of.

Lastly, you should take into account the value of your keywords. This can be checked by using something called a Keyword Effectiveness Index. This can be a costly endeavour but if you have the money to spend, you can check the index on Wordtracker and SEO Sniper.

2. Take care when choosing where to place your keywords.

A common mistake from inexperienced webmasters trying to implement SEO techniques is that they place keywords in the wrong places. If keywords are placed too often in certain areas, it can cause search engines to ignore your website entirely.

You should take in consideration the following rules when using and placing keywords on your website.

– Make sure that you’ve utilized keywords in your page’s HTML title tag. Search engines pay extra attention to this part of the page to see whether a given page is relevant to the topic being searched.

– Incorporate keywords inside the body text. This is a good idea as long as you ensure that the keywords fit well with the rest of the text. This means ensuring that the keywords are used as if they were part of the paragraph originally.

– Do not make a page full of keywords that redirects to another page. This is commonly done by SEO novices and can get your page banned from a search engine’s index. In fact, most notably, BMW of Germany got itself kicked out of Google’s Index back in 2006 for doing the exact same thing.

3. Try to gain more external links to your site from other websites.

One of the best ways to boost your search engine rankings and strike SEO gold is by having your site linked to on another site. If the site that’s mentioning you uses keywords as well, that’s even better! To gain more external links, there are a number of steps you can take.

– Ensure that your pages have newsworthy or notable content. Once you have made sure of that, spread it around social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter. This will help boost your page ranking as it lends your site more credibility.

– Tell influential journalists and bloggers in the media about your work. If you’re lucky and they agree, you’ll have an easy way to boost your chances of being noticed.

– Link to other sites as well. Webmasters may pay the favour back by linking to your site.

Conclusion:

As long as you follow the aforementioned tips, you should become an SEO master in no time at all. SEO may require patience and perseverance but once you have accomplished your goal, it can feel incredibly rewarding!

Organic search results are important to entrepreneurs who wish to gradually build their business and take it to new heights. Integrating quality content with SEO techniques like backlinking, link building, long-tail keyword searches and more have always helped webmasters and business owners ensure high indexing in SERPs while creating a steady building block for a healthy future of their site. By using these techniques many have managed to rank their website naturally, without using shady practices like black-hat SEO or using paid solutions (i.e. synthetic traffic, likes or similar practices which are still widely used).

There had once been concerns about Google scrapping organic search results altogether in favour of paid results, as some tests in the first page of search results have shown in the past years. In 2012, one test ran an extra advert for a website which paid for high indexing, such as a credit card or similar site, which essentially pushed organic results down further. Back then, some SEO experts rightly chimed in asking whether these concerns were legitimate, and what the extra sponsored link in the front page meant. However, no official reply was given by Google as they simply indicated that they were running some tests to check the efficiency of new algorithms within their engines.

Many blog owners, providers of services, businessmen and entrepreneurs rely on organic ranking within Google and other search engines, and this change which has occurred against their favour will likely spell more disaster than any new qualitative search-algorithm. It is now a certainty that Google has scrapped organic SEO altogether in favour of sponsored results and other types of results.

Shooting Themselves in the Foot

Sites which are non-profit, like Wikipedia, have been providing quality content for a number of years and, despite huge popularity, still rely on analytics and organic word searches. A major part of building a succesfull website is optimised keywords and quality content, above anything else.

Back in 2010, a user reported seeing only as much as three organic results in one single search, though this was also admittedly a test by Google. The other results included a number of photographs and mostly sponsored links, which is the speculation of a number of SEO experts as to where Google wants to head in the future. Wikipedia was indeed one of the first three organic results, but this means that not many other sites will have a hope of competing against such a large project.

Now, it is obvious that organic search results are on the way out. For instance, the particular query terms for a website will not be shown anymore in Google analytics, something which is essential to any website owner in accurately determining which keyword to use, what long-tail search users type in to find that particular site and, as a result, how to provide better optimisation in order to rank higher and provide the search users want. All this will gradually be completely scrapped in a very short time, as SEO expers are seeing now already.

This change was implemented because of privacy reasons, at least according to official Google statements. However, Google are clearly shooting themselves in the foot by implementing these changes. Eventually, there will be no scope for varied content and very little choice in terms of what to read, purchase or look at. Gradually, only a bunch of sites could rule the online realm and it will ultimately not matter what users search for as essentially the same results will be churned out by the search engine.

That joke about everything tasting like chicken come to mind. Visit http://www.seobrighton.com for more info on how to optimise your site.

It’s no big secret that the internet is big business. Indeed, any company that expects to experience any level of success in this day and age must have a fantastic online presence to drive business. A key part of a successful online strategy involves making sure that it’s your site that appears towards the top, or preferably, at the top of relevant internet searches.

Companies now got to great lengths to ensure that their sites are amongst the top search results in their field. Indeed, there is now an entire industry of companies dedicated to helping other companies in this pursuit.

To understand how this all works and how paid links fit in to the bigger picture, it’s necessary to have a quick look at the history of the web and online search

THE HISTORY

Although it seems difficult to believe now, there was a time in the history of the Internet when Google didn’t exist. If we turn back the clocks to the mid 90s when the internet was just starting to take hold in business and homes, there was a whole gamut of search sites offering a service that, to the average end user at least, seemed to be offering a service very similar to what we see when we Google today. However, underneath the hood, these search engines were rather primitive, mainly ranking results on how often your search term was featured on any particular site. This was an easy system for the eager or unscrupulous to exploit. As such, the results that were at the top of your search results, weren’t necessarily the best sites for your needs.

All this changed when Google came along. Their founders had the revolutionary idea that a website should be ranked not just on the frequency of the search results in its content but also on how many other sites linked to it (and also the quality of those sites). This totally moved the goalposts in terms of internet search, and Google quickly established itself as far and away the market leader in web search in the late 90s to early 2000s, a position it still holds today.

THE ERA OF PAID LINKS BEGINS

Companies and webmasters weren’t oblivious to this new trend and quickly started looking at ways to boost their chances of getting themselves to the top of Google’s search results. The savvy amongst them realised that if they could artificially boost the number of sites that linked to theirs, it would inflate their Google ranking. The quick way to persuade people to do this was to pay them to link to their site. Thus the age of paid links began.

In turn, Google was aware of this new trend and, accordingly, incorporated new algorithms into their page ranking system to take into account paid links. Today, Google does not disallow paid links, but they do require that they are flagged as such. It is strongly opposed to websites that try to present paid links as ‘legitimate’, ‘natural’ links. Any website found doing this suffers an extremely severe hit to its Google ranking (http://www.tizish.com/what-are-paid-links-and-how-they-affect-your-seo/).

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Alongside the paid links phenomenon exists the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry in which a company such as http://www.seobrighton.com/, for example, is employed to boost a company’s Google ranking by ‘natural’ means. This is usually achieved by creating genuine web content that contains links to the company’s site within a valid context. SEO is a huge industry now, with one source suggesting that by the end of 2012 it was mentioned on over 900 million different websites (http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/how-big-is-the-search-engine-optimization-industry-infographic/).

THE FUTURE

We’ve seen how paid links work and that they are an acceptable way of boosting Google ranking, as long as they are declared as such. Google itself gives extensive instructions to web users on the do’s and don’ts of paid links (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en). One thing seems certain: paid links (alongside SEO) are likely to continue to play an absolutely crucial role as the web gains yet further prominence and importance in the world of business and commerce.

What is SEO

Anyone familiar with web marketing and the techiques which it entails will be aware of the term SEO, which means search engine optimisation. This is an important aspect of building web sites as it allows a site to be properly indexed by way of various other techniques such as keywords, link building, B2B marketing and much much more.

SEO is perhaps the single most important factor, as well as advertising, to building a successfull website and knowing which keywords or which long-tail search to insert into your site can literally make or break your business. For example, if a keyword has a high level of competition it will be unlikely that your website will index quickly in a search engine, and therefore it will take more time and effort for your site to rank properly.

A Darker Side to Optimisation

However, it is not all rosy in the world of SEO and for many years marketers have used less than ethical techniques to ensure ranking above their competitors. With current algorithms which have been adopted as a safety measure by search engines, particularly Google with its Panda updates and beyond, there is less of a chance of cheating search engines with SEO techniques; this is still possible though, and many black-hat SEO techniques exist to circumvent the qualitative aspect which these algorithms prefer.

In short, there is a much darker side to SEO than what ethical content providers are used to, and that is black-hat SEO solely used to rank highly in search engines; there are no scruples nor things which aren’t allowed when cheating a particular search engine, but for the benefit of this article we will be solely looking at what link-hacking means in relation to these black-hat SEO techniques.

We do not in any way encourage anyone to try these techniques, as the best way to rank your site and ensure its success in the long-term is by providing quality content, reputable sources and quality links. This information is, therefore, for informative purposes only.

Hacking Websites for Traffic and Ranking

Black hat techniques were previously considere legitimate, at least in moderation. We all know that in love and war everything is permitted, and this adage is certainly valid for business too. However, some black hat SEO specialists just take it a step too far.

One extreme example of black hat techniques is hacking a competitor’s website in order to ensure it will gradually rank higher and higher in a search engine. This technique is also known as cloaking and it takes an extremely sophisticated hacker to pull it off in a successful manner; those who are new to SEO techniques will certainly not be able to find a cookie-cutter method to these techniques and will not be able to easily implement cloaking or hacking techniques.

Usually, a hacker will insert relevant keywords within the anchor text of a competitor’s site in order to get the “attention” of what is known as a crawler bot. Crawlers work for all the major search engines to look for relevant keywords within a site. By inserting keywords relevant to his own site within a competitor’s anchor text, the hacker will be able to create what is known as an interlaced network, redirecting most traffic to his own site and ranking highly as qualitative content at the same time.

If it all seems complicated, that’s because it is. One wonders whether if the energy spent doing this could be directed elsewhere, such as creating quality content. But then these are the mysteries of the human mind.

Remember to visit http://www.seobrighton.com for all your SEO content, not at all including black-hat SEO techniques.

One of the most important aspects in obtaining online exposure is the ability to appear high in Google’s search rankings. While the new Penguin updates have taken much of the “fluff” out of SEO, webmasters have been increasingly concerned that malicious reviews of their website links will result in lower rankings and may incur penalties. Thus, Google launched their link disavow tool on the 16th of October last year amongst mixed reviews. Although this tool does indeed work, it must be recognised that some considerations need to be taken when employing link disavow.

What is the Disavow Tool?

This relatively new feature allows webmasters to remove low quality links that may harm the status and ranking of a website. Most often, these are links that the webmaster cannot control. As opposed to incurring an SEO penalty and causing rankings to subsequently suffer, Google has introduced a disavow tool to allow one to request that Google not take such links into account when evaluating a page. A more detailed description from Google can be found here.

Working to Remove Algorithmic Penalties

As opposed to manual penalties, algorithmic penalties are automatic. An example can be those which had occurred with the recent Penguin update. In effect, no human eyes have ever reviewed the links, but rather Google’s computers determined that they were inappropriate. Disavow is extremely effective in cleaning up these bad links, but it must be realised that this is not the end of the process. You must then wait for the disavow request to enter into their system and be processed. After this, it is also necessary to wait until Google uses the same algorithm that originally picked up the bad links to make certain that they were removed effectively. This three step process can actually take a number of weeks to complete. Succinctly, the disavow tool works, but the logistical side of gaining recognition from Google can be time consuming.

Addressing Manual Penalties

This process can actually be much quicker due to the fact that a human has physically reviewed your links and found one or more to not abide by Penguin regulations. the disavow tool can be used in conjunction with what Google terms a “reconsideration request”. It should be noted here that the disavow tool alone will not be enough to erase the penalty. Both the tool and the request must be filed in tandem. The reason behind filing the request is that this will prompt a human at Google to ascertain as to whether the link or links were removed. This will expedite the process, as there is no need to wait until and algorithmic sweep is performed as is the case with computer-based penalties.

Also, it should also be clear that human-centred penalties normally come with an expiration date. Therefore, the webmaster always has a choice to forgo the disavow tool and wait for the penalty to be lifted. However, this can prove risky, as it will leave the site open to possibly incur an algorithmic penalty in the future and the more lengthy removal process will have to be undertaken. A more detailed description of the time frames involved for both algorithmic and manual processes can be found on this page.

So, the disavow method as a standalone process works quite well. Nevertheless, it is essential to understand that the tool’s efficacy is directly related to the length of time take within the administration processes of Google. Needless to say, any potentially bad links should be dealt with as soon as one has become aware of their existence. Other tips to help more effectively manage a site while addressing Google’s parameters can be viewed here. Still, the disavow tool has become an increasingly valuable trick in a webmaster’s arsenal to help promote effective SEO and search rankings.

Before becoming a successful webmaster, one needs to become a master in SEO. SEO utilises a good number of techniques for naturally drawing traffic to a website. High-quality content writing based on relevant keywords, link submission and social bookmarking are some ethical techniques used by website owners and SEO companies for white hat SEO purposes. On the other hand, uncanny techniques like sneaky redirects, invisible text and cloaking used by SEO professionals for obtaining higher search engine rankings are considered unethical and fall under Black Hat SEO. These techniques normally break the regular white hat SEO rules and techniques, and generate better results, while compromising with the user experience most of the times.

Any person who is aware of SEO knows the importance of quality backlinks in boosting the search engine ranking of a website. In the present day competitive virtual world, not everyone uses legitimate ways to get these backlinks. One of the most commonly used ways of obtaining backlinks by walking on the wrong, yet shorter path is SQL Injecting. The black hat SEO experts upped their stakes in making link injection one of the most popular black hat SEO techniques.

What Is SQL Injection?

The site-building process is given its due importance by present-day dynamic CMS providers by using two basic factors – server side programming language like ASP, ASP.NET and PHP, and a database that makes use of SQL language. The combination of these factors results in dynamic CMS’s that store the web content, design elements and other aspects of the database. The role of languages is to translate the page requests and provide the required content from the database to the users. The role of SQL injections is to find the weaknesses on the websites that make use of server side programming and database languages, and include content with HTML coding in the website’s database for enabling the search engine to index the predefined content and rank the same higher.

How to Identify Vulnerabilities?

For identifying websites having a weakness to transplant codes, one needs to search for websites that allow the users to interact or upload content with or without registration/ approval of the admin. Such websites can be categorised as follows:

1. Indexes: The websites that allow the users to upload content to the index in different configurations like a business card, personal car, business profile and the likes.

2. Forums: There are various forum networks that enable the users to act without the permission of the admin. Various kinds of codes can be transplanted into the title, content and various other areas.

3. Content and Portal Sites: There are various websites and portals that enable the users to the posts through comments.

How To Make SQL Injections?

To make SQL injections and get quality backlinks to a website, the black hat SEO experts inject HTML codes on the websites that do not require registration or approval for guest posts and comments. Inputting HTML code in the content can be a tricky part, but the professionals can perform it easily. What really helps in getting backlinks are the user comments. SEO people can post positive comments in such posts, basically a praiseworthy line related to the post, and inject the link embedded keywords within the comment. After injecting codes, CSS commands can be used for making the links invisible, by making it of the same colour of the comment font.

Going the unethical road is not an easy thing. One needs to be careful at every step for the careful promotion of a website. This is a way in which thousands of HTML-injected do-follow links can be received from relevant websites for free. One just needs to follow the ‘more risk, more return’ formula mentioned above and enjoy the benefits of black hat SEO.