Ever wonder how many people turn to mobile apps for directions and navigation?? Here are some interesting facts that cannot be ignored when it comes to Search Engine Optimization and local search optimization.
Google Spent 213M on Advertising in 2011
For those of you that are not sure about Pay Per Click and other forms of online and mobile ads consider that Google Spent 213M on advertising last year. Google, the most popular search engine was not shy about increasing their own brand recognition across all forms of advertising media.
Ecommerce SEO | Never Force Account Creation Prior to Check Out
We receive varying comments from customers when it comes to newsletter or account sign up in order to check out from a online purchase shopping cart. Some clients require store registration prior to check out while others do not. The ones that due have a great argument in the fact that it is a great way to build their mailing list while others argue they lose sales.
Since we also own online stores we decided to test both approaches. Our findings were pretty conclusive. We first set our store to require account registration prior to check out. In a 30 day period our abandoned cart rate increased 32% and our gross sales dropped proportionately. The following month we set our shopping cart not to require account set up prior to check out. The abandoned cart rate fell back to normal levels almost immediately as did gross sales for the following month.
Our check out system does not require account registration however we do require an email address for order and shipping confirmation. If you simply gather the emails from your shopping cart and add them to your email program manually you will see better sales conversions and you will still grow your email list. It is worth the extra effort.
Tactics to Increase your Blog Traffic
Here is an updated article from the guys over at SEOMOZ. This is a great article for beginning and experienced bloggers alike. It is comprised of a list of 21 important tactics for successful blogging. Continue reading here… and enjoy!
Content Stategies for Small Business Blogging
As most of our readers know we still like blogs for business. They are a great tool to provide traffic and promote your business especially in very competitive markets.
“…your blog however must be successful to drive results!”
Here is an Epic article from our friend and SEO guru Neil Patel on how to Strategize your business blog. Continue Reading… and let us know what you thing.
10 Powerful Ways to End Your Blog Post
There is nothing worse than writing a great blog post about an exciting new topic or a new product or offer only to find yourself coming to a blank stare when trying to wrap it up. Here are my top ten tips to end your awesome blog post.
Tip#1: Include a list of related posts. This can take some time however if your reader enjoyed the information you just provided he/she will likely enjoy similar information and will continue reading or bookmark your site for reading later. Either way your bounce rate and time on site will improve and you will most likely obtain a new reader.
Tip #2: Ask a Question. You will be surprised how often a reader will answer the question in your comments section. This may also engage other readers to comment as well.Try to avoid a question such as “What do you think”, be more specific. You want to engage your readers not patronize them.
Tip#4: Sum it up. A quick summarizing paragraph will help the reader remember the most important parts of the post.
Tip#5: What comes next. If your post is about a topic in which you will be writing a follow up post let your readers know when they can be expecting the follow up post. Each time we write a series of posts on a particular topic we see an increase in blog subscriptions.
Tip #6: Encourage a follow up action. Invite them to integrate some of your thoughts or ideas in their next blog post, or in our case we often encourage readers to implement a simple Search Engine Optimization technique and report the results to us.
Tip#7: Encourage Social Media shares. Simply ask your readers to share, like or tweet your content.
Tip #8: Provides a source link. Link to other sites or newsworthy publications that will benefit the reader.
Tip#9: Provide a short Bio about yourself. This will let the reader know you are a real person and will help give your blog a face behind the article. Also consider leaving your contact information.
Tip #10: Go ahead and promote your product or service…That is what you are typically here for. This is a good place to remind your readers that your are a professional in the industry and can be relied upon to provide a product or service.
If you ever find yourself looking for a great ending to an awesome blog post try a few of these tips and you will be engaging more readers and receiving more comments in no time.
Feel free to contact Organic Marketing Services for all of your SEO and Internet Marketing needs. The call is Free (888) 758-2018
Written by Steven Neubarth Editor-In-Chief of the Official Blog of Organic Marketing Services LLC
With special thanks to: Pro Blogger
SEO Tips | Using the Description Meta Tag
Another important aspect of Search Engine Optimization is making proper use of the “description” meta tag. In SEO terms the description title tag provides Google and other search engines a brief summary of what the page is about. While the value of Search Engine Optimization can be debated the usefulness of the page description is obvious.
The description of your webpage can be a few words, a phrase, or a few sentences. The description meta tag is important because Google, other Search Engines and social networks like Facebook may use this tag for a snippet or descriptions of what your page is about. For proper Search Engine Optimization it is good practice to have an accurate page description in the event a search engine cannot accurately assess what the page is about.
Another benefit for SEO is that the words in your description that match users query are bolded. The bolded text provides the user clues as to whether or not the content on the page is relevant to the users search.
The proper html format for the meta tag “description” is as follows:
<meta name=”description” content=”SEO Tips | Using the Description Meta Tag” />
Best practices for using the meta tag “description”:
1. Provide an accurate summary of your pages description.
2. Keep the length of the description within the search engines maximum readable length. You may contact for complete details on each search engine.
3. Have a different description for each page of your website.
4. eCommerce sites: have a unique Description for each product within your store.
Things to Avoid:
1. Duplicate content.
2. Duplicate content (you see why now)
3. Descriptions with no relevancy to the page
4. Using generic descriptions like “see my website”
5. Keyword stuffing.
In general the Meta Tag “description” will give you a little more control over what people see before deciding what site to click on. The more useful, compelling and accurate the description the better chances you have to be the preferred search result. It is worth the extra time to give you a small edge in your Search Engine Optimization efforts.
SEO Tips | Creating Accurate Page Titles
Any part of a successful Search Engine Optimization plan is to optimize the Title of each page. You should have an accurate title to insure that search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others can properly crawl and index your pages. The title also provides the user information about the topic of the page. Continue reading
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Still Top 3 Search Engines
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo continue to occupy the top three Search Engine spots according to comscore.
Here is the full Chart for December 2011:
As you can see Google is at 187,138,000 Unique visits for the month of December while Microsoft and Yahoo are not far behind with 177,296k and 176,485k respectfully.
This is an important metric for PPC advertising since most advertisers flock to Google, Microsoft and Bing are not far behind and the cost of PPC is typically less and not quite as competitive.
From a Social network pint of view Facebook is still the leader, with 162,486,000 visits compared to Twitter at 37,461,000 visits.
Not surprising was how well the retail sector performed given the fact that it was holiday shopping season. We look for tax and accounting traffic to surge in February and March as well as Job, News and Political sites.
We will continue to monitor traffic trends and place our customers into the top trending website properties for the best Search Engine Optimization and PPC opportunities.
