Tag Archives: search engine optimization

Four Key Ways You Can Use Your Business Blog As Part Of A Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Plan

When it comes to establishing an online presence, businesses in every industry recognize that search engine optimization is a proven resource. Here are four ways you can use your business blog as a part of your overall search engine optimization plan. The result is increased online visibility, higher ranks in the search engines, and a following that recognizes you as a thought leader in your industry.

Upton Technology Group: Experts In The Search Engine Optimization Benefits Of Blogs

At Upton Technology Group, our team of website marketing experts understands that creating a business blog can play a significant role in a well-executed search engine optimization plan. Easy to create and establish and relatively inexpensive, a blog can quickly help a business put themselves on the online map. While it’s no secret that a blog can make a major impact in a short time span, it’s important to wield its power wisely. Understanding four critical factors when going live with your company blog can make all the difference between being a mere face in the crowd or actually standing head and shoulders above the competition.

Compelling Content: Just like other online copy used for website marketing and search engine optimization purposes, it’s vital to only post blog pieces that contain informative and engaging content. Never arbitrarily stuff a piece with relevant keywords at the expense of the message. While your company may receive an initial traffic uptick with stuffed pieces, the overall results of the website marketing campaign can get diluted quickly. Need another reason to write compelling content? Your blog should be more than just an SEO tool. Its purpose should be to inform and educate your current and potential customers. Write content they actually want to read, and you will soon have avid followers that consider you a thought leader in your industry.

Post Often: Want to dominate the search engines for your industry niche? Post new blog articles frequently. Browser algorithms actually seek out fresh Internet copy and weigh it heavily when determining which site shows up first. Unlike standard websites that only allow for a specific page count as it relates to your business, a blog delivers infinite publishing opportunities.

Always Fill Out Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Both the title tag and meta description are searched by the browsers as additional means to determine the content of the piece. Utilizing these blog sections will further entice the browser algorithms to notice your company as more than a passing blip on the Internet radar. Failing to include these two sections translates directly into missing a major website marketing opportunity.

Include Backlinks: Backlinks provide clickable text within the online copy that channels Internet viewers to a specifically targeted page on your website. Always include at least two backlinks in every online blog post. For maximum search engine optimization, always include two different backlinks and attach them to two different keyword phrases. To further leverage this powerful website marketing technique, strategically align your business with other organizations and develop a backlink exchange campaign. Having your company’s backlinks showcased on other blogs broadens the overall search engine optimization impact.

Ready to create a business blog? Contact Upton Technology Group today to find out how we can help you get started!

How Google +1 Can Help Your Business’ Search Engine Marketing And Website Marketing Efforts

Perhaps you’ve heard the news: A couple months ago Internet browser giant, Google rolled out its latest innovation in search engine marketing, Google +1. This website marketing tool has been developed to enable users to more confidently and efficiently navigate the often unwieldy and overwhelming search engine terrain. Likened to the Google equivalent of the omnipotent Facebook “thumbs up,” the +1 button allows everyone with a Google account to simply click the +1 and alert their entire network that this site is worth checking out.

Can Your Business Search Engine Optimization Campaign Benefit From +1

For individuals exhausted from incessant wheel spinning and time squandered clicking through an endless list of search results, this search engine marketing tactic brings with it ample opportunity to expeditiously prioritize browser returns and acknowledge the +1 as a “start here” indicator. While an impressive feat on its own, it appears that businesses implementing this new website marketing technique actually stand to gain the most.

Previously, search engine marketing campaigns focused on Google’s specifically engineered algorithms to determine how to best design a website marketing strategy guaranteed to help business links catapult to the top of keyword searches. The onset of +1 can possible change that process. No longer will returns from Google be based solely on these computer generated calculations, but instead, will also include input from individuals within our own social networks. While it’s still too early to determine if Google will ever be able to match Facebook’s achievement in sheer volume, one thing is certain; the Google +1 is a search engine marketing method that businesses can’t afford to leave unexplored.   

Upton Technology Group: Incorporating Google +1 Into Customized Website Marketing Campaigns

Like most website marketing techniques, the specifications and unique applications of the Google +1 tool may overwhelm business owners who attempt to incorporate this resource into their own search engine marketing strategies. Aligning your business with a reputable firm that specializes in the various nuances of search engine marketing is critical to ensure a successful implementation.

At Upton Technology Group, our team of seasoned search engine marketing specialists recognizes the potential of this important new Internet function and the pivotal role it will play with our partners endeavoring to rise in the ranks of browser search returns and, ultimately, secure market share. Our staff of experts will partner with your organization to understand specific business goals, visions and action items and then create a custom website marketing solution that includes Google +1 tactics to target every objective and ensure a thorough and positive return on investment. In short, Upton Technology Group will help incorporate Google +1 and its many online benefits into a specifically created search engine marketing campaign to help enhance your business’ online presence.

We can help bring you that much closer to your clients and, most importantly, help your homepage stand out as quality content among the endless ocean of search engine results.

Getting Started With Search Engine Optimization

When To Change Your Search Engine Marketing Campaign

Whether you’re just starting to consider search engine optimization or already use search engine marketing to help your company, there will come a time when you decide to start or re-start your campaign. This initial moment is one of the most important moments in your marketing program because it will determine a lot of what happens from that point onward. Although search engine optimization takes time to see results, knowing when to get things started is important because you’ll be launching a total campaign. You don’t want to change things too frequently, yet new marketing initiatives can generate fresh interest.

New Products Always Warrant Re-Evaluating Your Search Engine Marketing

Whenever your company releases a new product, it’s a good idea to look at whether or not you’ll want to initiate a new search engine marketing campaign as well. You will certainly need to change things a little bit, otherwise your potential new clients and existing customers may never know that you have a new offering to provide. However, the way in which you announce and promote a new product can vary dramatically depending on what it is and what result you want from it.

At a minimum, a new product generally warrants some new search engine optimization. The reason for this is simple: you’ll want to ensure that people searching for that product can find you. This is usually easy to accomplish and can be done via adding pages to your existing site rather than creating a totally new strategy. However, it may sometimes be worthwhile or beneficial to launch a totally new search engine marketing campaign to promote a new product. If you don’t want to lose the associations and benefits of your old search engine marketing by changing up web layouts and other identifiable features, you might consider treating the new product as a sort of separate element of your company. You can brand it individually and promote it individually, maybe even creating a separate website for search engine optimization purposes.

Don’t Be Too Quick To Change Your Search Engine Optimization

Over time, your customers will grow to recognize certain key elements of your search engine marketing. For example, your logo and your website design will become very recognizable very quickly. Changing them is not necessarily a bad thing; it will definitely be noticed by your regular customers, but it will also lead them to lose recognition of things that were once key identifiers for your company. For example, if you use a particularly notable color scheme, that was almost certainly associated with your company. Changing it will lead people to wonder what’s different, but will also lead them to no longer recognize the new colors. The same thing is true with a logo. This has more impact on search engine marketing than search engine optimization (people rarely memorize entire paragraphs, and large portions of text are what matter most for search engine optimization strategy.)

If you’re thinking about changing your search engine marketing to accommodate a new product, or simply to keep things from getting stale, Upton Technology Group can help you create a dynamic new strategy that will get results. Contact us today to learn more!

A Beginner’s Guide To Search Engine Optimization

At Upton Technology Group, our clients come to us with many different levels of search engine optimization knowledge. Some have heard of search engine marketing and know that it’s a great way to promote a business online, but don’t really know what it is. Others have scarcely even heard the words. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, this guide will help you understand search engine optimization so you can know how it might benefit your business in the longer term.

Search Engine Marketing Is What Makes The Sale

Search engine marketing is unique because it isn’t really about selling your company to people who aren’t yet convinced they want to buy. It is not push marketing at all. Instead, it’s all about selling your particular product to someone who is already looking for the general type of thing you offer. For example, if someone is looking to buy a refrigerator, search engine optimization can help guide them to your particular refrigerator supply business by ensuring that your company shows up on the top or near the top of search engine results.

Search engine optimization can help you connect with a new customer base, but the results will be mixed at best unless you really have something to offer that demographic. For instance, the hypothetical refrigerator company mentioned above could target people looking for freezers, and it could rank highly for those terms – the benefit would just be debatable if it didn’t actually sell freezers.

Search Engine Optimization: The Art Of Connecting Your Business With People Who Want To Become Customers

Search engine optimization is simply the art and science of getting your website to rank highly in search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing for certain targeted terms that you select. Search engine marketing is what goes beyond that, and includes a number of more difficult marketing techniques. Search engine marketing uses your high rank from search engine optimization to communicate with potential customers about the benefits of using your product over your competitor’s.

Search engine marketing has many different aspects, all of which need to work together for the best results. Content marketing is one of the most important aspects of search engine marketing, and ties in with search engine optimization as well. Content marketing includes all of the text on your website, but also all the text in articles that you publish on the internet. Search engine optimization ties in with your text because the keywords in that text are a major part of the overall search engine ranking that your webpage will get. For that reason, good content is a cornerstone of successful search engine optimization; because reading that content will ultimately be what makes customers choose to buy your product.

SEO & SEM Work Together

Although search engine optimization and search engine marketing are distinct, they are absolutely inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. Without strong placement in the search engines, the best web copy won’t be seen by people who intend to buy. Without strong sales-oriented copy, a good ranking in the search engines won’t lead to sales. Understanding the difference between them is important, but it’s even more important to understand how they work together.

Integrated Website Marketing: Are You On Board With This Strategy Yet?

As website marketing professionals, we at Upton Technology Group are always looking to help our clients get the most out of their marketing efforts. We see many companies who are successful in one aspect of website marketing, such as search engine optimization or web design, but who fall short in another important way. Today’s market doesn’t permit anything other than strong marketing on all fronts; that’s what makes integrated marketing so important. With integrated website marketing, you create a unified message across diversified marketing tools. Your web design fits in neatly with your search engine optimization, which in turn is backed by strong offline marketing. When you combine all of these, you obtain much more marketing power than would be available through one avenue.

Good Search Engine Optimization Is Inherently Integrated

No company can afford to skip over search engine optimization in today’s highly competitive environment. As more potential customers turn to search to guide their product choices, it’s pretty much imperative that your company come out on top. Search engine optimization starts with your company’s own homepage and your own web content. Web design is a natural part of it.

But that’s not all there is to search engine optimization. To be done right, search engine optimization will also incorporate things like link building, which is best done through content marketing. Content marketing involves putting your company’s name out there by publishing articles. Those articles will create valuable backlinks and help your website rank more highly, but they’ll also establish you as a thought leader and industry leader within your field. You become an authority on the topic, and at the same time you make your search engine optimization more effective. It’s a win-win situation.

Good Web Design Ties In With Your Other Marketing Endeavors

Web design is itself a combination of many other factors. For instance, web design implies some form of logo design. It also requires some degree of web development to meet technical challenges, such as the creation of an online ordering system, or simply the organization of your website to ensure that it can be easily navigated. While not all of these are marketing related, all of them are interconnected and impact the final product.

Web design is the background that highlights all other elements of your website. When done well, web design ties your website together with your other marketing in subtle ways that might not even be obvious to your visitors. It is things like color and logo design that will make that connection, and that will solidify your company’s identity in the process.

Offline Marketing Is A Crucial Part Of An Integrated Strategy

There’s a strong tendency for today’s marketing experts to unintentionally ignore the offline in favor of an online focus. While the world’s eyes are increasingly shifting toward the internet, there are still many instances where offline marketing can reach them just as effectively. The key is targeting your offline efforts to ensure that they have maximum impact. They should coordinate with your search engine optimization and content marketing. When you put all of these disparate elements together, you get a powerful and effective campaign where every element supports and enhances the others.

Upton Technology Group continues to lead the way with integrated website marketing locally and nationwide. If you’d like to learn more about integrated website marketing or any of its component strategies, we’d be happy to work with you and create a custom plan for your business.

How To Prepare For Your Web Design / SEO Strategy Meeting

Starting out with search engine optimization can be a daunting task, even if you have good guidance. One of the best ways to help your search engine marketing company create the best plan for you is to spend a bit of time preparing before you have your first web design discussion. Upton Technology Group encourages everyone that we work with to take these steps before our first meeting to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness of our planning.

Questions To Think About

The first thing to consider is what you want out of the search engine optimization strategy. Generally, we see two main goals: either general company awareness, or pushing of a specific product. While the general strategy for search engine marketing remains similar between the two, there are important differences, which make determining which one you want to focus on a rather crucial decision.

In addition, you’ll need to decide how much you want to invest in your web design, and then how much you want to invest in search engine marketing. There are many different types of plans which can be created and tweaked depending on your budget. Although determining the exact cost of each ahead of time can be infeasible, deciding whether you want to work on a shoestring, a moderate budget, or a maximum campaign is an important choice.

Deciding What Questions To Ask

It’s just as important to know what you want to ask the search engine marketing experts. We always want you to ask questions – it helps ensure that the solutions we create are achieving your goals. Depending on your own knowledge of search engine optimization, your questions may be very basic or very complex. Don’t hesitate to ask anything; there is a lot of misinformation on the internet about search engine marketing, and we’re happy to set the record straight.

Come Prepared With Your Current Marketing Materials

Deciding what type of web design and marketing will serve you best is much easier if we have a thorough understanding of what you’re currently doing. Bring any samples that you have from current initiatives, including clips of video spots. Everything you bring will help provide a better sense of what you’re looking for out of search engine optimization. In addition, it will help determine what (if anything) you want to keep from the themes of your previous campaigns. If you’ve developed a particularly recognizable logo, that may be worth keeping. Of course, you may also want a complete change – it depends on your situation.

Make Notes Of Any Major Search Engine Marketing Initiatives From The Past

The final step to prepare you for your first strategy session is to bring information about any kind of search engine optimization or search engine marketing that you’ve done in the past. Whether it was minor and ineffective or had a great impact doesn’t matter. Knowing what’s been done recently will help with planning for the future. Having this history be as complete as possible is helpful, but not required. Just collect what information you can.

Having all of these facts gathered together will help your first search engine marketing strategy session proceed much more smoothly. You’ll have to answer these questions and gather the data eventually; collecting it before your first web design meeting will simply speed up the timeline and speed up the results.

The Future Of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is widely recognized as one of the most exciting developing fields in advertising. Search engine optimization offers new opportunities to appeal to your best group of new customers, and chances to employ web marketing grow every day. In this climate, it’s easy to become focused on the current changes existing in search engine optimization, and lose track of the changes that are likely to come in the next months or years. Today, we’re looking ahead, beyond current trends in search engine marketing and forward to what might be expected in the future.

Search Engine Optimization Will Always Be About The Searchers

Whenever you think about search engine marketing, you must first remember that search engines exist for one simple reason: to help people find what they are looking for. They do not exist for the purpose of marketing your company; they’re a utility first and foremost. In fact, most good search engines will go out of their way to protect that legitimacy and reinforce the idea that they are providing only useful links.

That fact will never change, no matter how long search engines and search engine optimization continue to exist. Everything will always be geared toward the searchers, and any search engines that focus more on search engine marketing than on appealing to a good search crowd won’t succeed.

The Impact Of Technology On Search Engine Marketing

It’s almost impossible to predict where technology will be a year from now, let alone five or ten years down the road. What we can say is that search engine marketing is likely to become a lot more accessible to people no matter where they are. Technology has shown a remarkable history of migrating more and more into daily life. For example, it now exists on our cellphones and our tablet PCs. We’re becoming progressively interconnected, and it’s unlikely that will change.

Many of today’s customers already use search engine marketing to help them make decisions about what to buy or where to go. Although cellphones and other mobile devices can be a bit unwieldy to use for internet access, they still provide a valuable amount of information that people cannot otherwise receive. In the future, this access is likely to be more common and even more streamlined. This easy access will mean that search engine optimization becomes increasingly important. People will be able to ask search engines for advice at every turn in their lives, and will likely use this information for decisions ranging from where to eat right up to what car they buy.

New Features Will Bring New Life To Websites

There have been many developments over the past few years that have added content and richness to search engine marketing by enriching the web pages that it promotes. Flash-based games and presentations have only just begun to reach their potential to engage and excite website visitors. As technology continues to develop, it is almost impossible to imagine how that growth will impact search engine optimization in the future. One thing is certain: websites will only get more exciting, which will make it easier to combine search engine optimization with other aspects of web marketing, driving your company’s page to the top.

What This Means For You

Don’t try to guess the future. Instead of planning ahead for search engine optimization a year down the road, work with a company like Upton Technology Group that knows how to adapt in a changing marketing. Search engine marketing works best when you know all the tools and can use them to their best advantage. Upton Technology Group knows the tools now, and we look forward to watching them change and mastering the new ones in years to come.

How To Use Google Analytics To Inform Your Search Engine Optimization Choices

A few weeks ago we discussed the many different ways to measure the success of search engine optimization. We talked a little bit about Google Analytics, and mentioned that it was a powerful tool for tracking a number of different website marketing metrics. In fact, Google Analytics is a key component of any search engine marketing strategy because it provides some of the best info available in a clear, concise fashion. Best of all, it’s free to use and easy to incorporate into your webpage.

Getting Started With Google Analytics Website Marketing Metrics

The first step for using Google Analytics is to actually sign up for it. This is as simple as registering for a Google webmaster account, and linking your webpage to that account. The full details for how to do this are readily available through Google. Depending on whether you were in charge of your search engine optimization or you had another company do it for you, your website might already be registered and tracking your metrics. Ask your search engine marketing provider whether they set it up, and if so ensure that you’ve got a way to access the results.

If it’s not set up, you’ll have to place actual lines of website code inside your page. You may need to ask your website marketing company for help here, but it’s well worth it for the information that you will receive. The task itself is fairly simple, but can be overwhelming for a first-time user. Upton Tech generally provides this service for our clients.

What Search Engine Optimization Info Does It Provide?

The data gathered by Google Analytics is directly useful for website marketing. The code you place on your website will track everyone coming into your website and leaving again. This simple tracking yields powerful search engine marketing results because it tracks in rather great detail. For example, it can tell you where someone came from. Did they get to your page through online ads for website marketing? Did they arrive directly? Or did they click over from Google’s search engine, indicating that your search engine optimization is taking effect?

Taking Your Search Engine Marketing To The Next Level

There are many layers of detail which can be viewed through Google Analytics. For companies just starting out with website marketing, the raw data of visitors to the homepage is usually sufficient information for most decisions. As your business grows, you can begin exploring the more in-depth elements of Google Analytics. It is a very powerful service, capable of revealing where most visitor traffic originates, how long they viewed each page, and more. This more detailed information might overwhelm a new user, but is perfectly suited to a more experienced search engine optimization consultant.

Most companies who are serious about search engine optimization in the long term will install Google Analytics quickly and start using it right away. This powerful tool is something that no website marketing team should miss, It is completely safe for your website and has no impact on user privacy, yet provides valuable information for your search engine optimization team.

Is Your Website Designed For Maximum Search Engine Optimization Success?

Although content is the single most important element of search engine optimization, many search engine marketing companies overlook an important element: the actual web design of your company’s online presence. There are many technical adjustments which must be made in order for any web design to maximize availability to search engines. In addition, there are visual tweaks which can help appeal to the new audience that your search engine optimization brings. Being aware of these and implementing them on your website will be a major help to your search engine marketing strategy.

Web Design Could Be Hiding Your Webpage From Search Engines

Unless your website was created by a company that knows the rules of search engine optimization, you could have elements within the code of your website that makes it hide from search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all allow developers to temporarily opt out of having their web design projects listed in search engines by having them marked as noindex or nofollow. That simply means that the search engines won’t index that page, and won’t count links from that page in their ranking calculations.

The first thing you should do before starting a search engine marketing campaign is make sure that none of these markers have been placed in the code for your website. You want the search engines to be finding your page and indexing it for their rankings. Otherwise, your search engine optimization efforts won’t be successful. Most web design companies will have at least some knowledge of search engine optimization techniques, but it’s always wise to check for the presence of these tags before starting your search engine marketing.

Creating A Web Page With The Right Appeal

Your web design is the backdrop for your search engine optimization. The words are what really tell the story and drive the sale, but the strongest search engine marketing goes beyond just text. It includes a full examination of current web design to determine whether or not you want to make changes. Successful search engine optimization will draw in a totally new group of visitors. They are less likely to know your company, and less likely to be specialists in your product field. An overly specialized or niche web design may counteract the effects of your search engine optimization strategy by driving them away.

When we suggest search engine marketing packages, we always try to include some form of web design evaluation. The best search engine marketing web design will include a detailed look at your industry, especially if you’re looking to break into a new market or a new market segment. Understanding the details of the new market and creating a web design based on that will help you ensure that you make the most of the new traffic generated by your search engine optimization.   

Whether you’re looking to add search engine marketing to an already existing web design, or want to start from scratch, Upton Technology Group can help you make the most of your online presence. We will ensure that every element of your web design is search engine optimization friendly, and that you’re using the right search engine marketing techniques to really drive traffic.

Measuring Search Engine Optimization Results

Virtually every search engine optimization expert recommends that you track the results of every campaign that you run. They’ll tell you the benefits of using that data to gain insight for future search engine marketing endeavors, as well as for modifying current website marketing strategies. The problem is, they rarely tell you much about how to best measure your search engine optimization results.

That’s partly because the field of search engine marketing metrics is still developing, but it’s primarily because most website marketing experts don’t want to worry about tracking their performance. Here, we’ll discuss several different ways to measure website marketing results, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each different method.

Search Engine Marketing Metric #1: Your Bottom Line

The first method is the most simplistic. In this method, the effectiveness of your search engine marketing is measured against your bottom line. If profits improve, then you’ve succeeded. It’s a very simple measurement to obtain. Simply record your profits in the quarter before you begin website marketing, and then record them afterward. Unfortunately, this method often returns the least valuable information about what’s going on with your search engine optimization.

The reason is simple: there are so many other factors beyond web marketing that can impact your revenues. It changes with the season, it’s impacted by overall market trends, and it’s also affected by other marketing endeavors that might be totally unrelated to search engine optimization. Most companies don’t think it’s worth it to measure search engine marketing success by their bottom line – there are too many other things which can influence revenues.

Search Engine Optimization Metric #2: Website Traffic

This method can be less easy to track, but its results really let you narrow in on the success of your website marketing in particular. With this method, you’ll need to use some form of counting add-on for your website. Google Analytics allows you to track a number of different aspects of your website, and is an absolute must have for any kind of search engine optimization — regardless of how closely you intend to track your results.

Increasing your web traffic is almost certainly one of your primary web marketing goals. In addition, increased web traffic is unlikely to be the result of something else — and if it might be, you’ll know (you’ll be running a concurrent conventional media program, or something else that would easily explain it.) 

Website Marketing Metric #3: Watch Your Search Engine Ranking

This is another simple metric to observe. It generally isn’t impacted by factors beyond your search engine optimization efforts, and it’s really quite easy to track with benchmarks for as many keywords as you like. The problem is, higher ranking in search engine marketing isn’t necessarily going to accomplish your longer term goals. Rankings do indicate successful search engine optimization, but the same content that put you at the top of the results might not succeed in turning increased traffic into sales.

The Solution: Use All Of The Methods!

Tracking every method mentioned here isn’t actually that tough. Look for overall trends in the data. For example, are you seeing more traffic to your website and higher search engine marketing rankings, but not a lot more sales? Then you might need to look at your website marketing content and see if you can make it more powerful. If you’re seeing that most visitors to your website are ultimately becoming customers, but that you’re still low in the search rankings, you should probably look at what elements of search engine optimization you might be missing.

Upton Technology Group can help you examine your current search engine marketing program or start one up from scratch. We’ll use metrics and analysis to determine the best search engine optimization strategies for you, and then we’ll help you make any adjustments needed in the future to ensure that your website marketing always puts you on top.