Month: April 2012

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Are You Focused On Building Your Mobile Empire?

Everything I have been reading lately is really pushing the growth trend of mobile and I have to say I think that the growth and opportunities for doing business and connecting with others via mobile phones and tablets is a sector to really watch. I think that for pay per click programs there are some real growth opportunities for advertisers to move into mobile before the cost per click goes up to the level of desktops. I think that more casual surfing will be done with tablets, but I don’t think that laptops will ever go away – at least not yet.

As for me, I love being untethered to my desk, with full email access on my smartphone. Not only do I do email, but I use my smartphone for a mobile hotspot to power my tablet and laptop. I use my smartphone’s navigation tools and do review deals and discounts to decide if I will visit a new store for the first time. I consider having the information at my fingertips wildly freeing. But my usage only reflects about 40% of the US market at this time. That means there is about 60% more of the population who will, in the near future, be using new smartphones to connect the way I am now. That means astronomical growth and market positioning for those businesses who embrace this new way to connect with customers or at least to give additional options to connect now.

For many the first step into the mobile market it to advertise there, and that’s a great start. AdWords allows you to target smartphones with full Internet browsers and tablets separately from desktops. What I’ve found is that for high cost keywords the mobile and tablet click prices are cheaper, they do have less impression activity, but they do still generate conversions.

Think about what you should be doing in regards to positioning your own business to take advantage of this new trend in mobile and you may just find yourself riding a new crest of traffic and sales that takes your business to the next level.

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Can You Still Place Organically In Your Industry?

This is the million dollar question isn’t it? In today’s search arena can you and should you even work to improve organic placement or should you instead just concentrate on pay per click advertising. Personally, I think that the answer straddles both sides. This is what I recommend for organic placement and good website visibility.

Do Everything Right Consistently

  • That means improve the quality of your content on your website. Write with your reader in mind.
  • Make sure you are blogging under your own domain so you get the spider benefits.
  • Look to add new articles, white papers, and thoughtful insights regularly to your website pages.
  • Syndicate some of your content on article syndication sites.
  • Do a monthly e-newsletter and archive it back on your website.
  • Get going with social media and try to become an active part of a community.

Invest in Pay Per Click Advertising

  • Put money into Google AdWords. Don’t break the bank, but make sure you have a presence and are using it to your advantage.
  • Make sure you are using conversion tracking and have phone calling enabled with your programs.

You’ve just got to cover your bases in this changing world of search engines. You simply can’t go wrong with these approaches, they are simply sure to pay off in the long run in regards to organic placement, link building, and website visibility.

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Working with WordPress Backbone Websites

I am in the process of finishing up and readying for launch a new website built on the back bone of WordPress. I have to say the website has turned out nice, but I wanted to share with you a few of my thoughts on using website built like this for search engine placement.

I think that if you want to save money on webmaster services, like the control of being able to add and update your content at will; a well designed website using WordPress has no comparison. But for people, like me, who are used to full and complete source code control for SEO purposes a website built with WordPress leaves much to be desired.

Professionals in my industry know that template based websites (and that is really what a WordPress built site is-  a custom template) do not allow you full source code control. Although the designers that have worked with me on building this site have really done a great job, there are instances when I wanted to name my uploaded images my own way; I wanted to custom design my site architecture and be able to change the names and structure easily if I needed to down the road; I wanted to add special design or style elements to my pages without having to create hacks to make the page work the way I wanted it to within the template constraints. In other words, there is an element of control, subtle though it may be, that is simply missing with a WordPress site versus a custom created, built from the source code up, website.

I guess with all new improvements to allow customers to control their own content there are trade offs, but I’m not sure that I want to lose that control for every customer.

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Facebook App Pages Can You Find Them?

Wow, it took me days to figure this out and I don’t consider myself a Facebook newbie at all. On business pages the new tabs are not tabs at all, here’s the lowdown. Underneath your cover photo are several text links that are spread out across the width of the page. Everyone gets a maximum of five links but you can change the order of some of the links. By clicking the down button on the very last image above the last link you can open an additional field that will show more apps and tab options.

Although Facebook calls these links tabs, they certainly are not. Remember when Facebook business pages first came out and you had real tabs at the top of your page? That was not so long ago and I liked the real tabs much better than this nearly hidden set up.  In fact, if you don’t have your own business page and just had a personal profile, you would never ever even think to open the list up or dig around to uncover these hidden pages.

When you do happen to click one of these five text links under the cover photo, you are taken to a mini website backend that is now a part of every business page. This hidden section is navigated by a drop down menu on the top left just to the left of the page’s name. Man, talk about hidden! All your apps and pages are stored in this drop down. This is the new place where your welcome page, promotion, notes, events, and the new like page now reside. See how long it takes you to find them when you migrate your own business page to the new timeline!

Based on what I see and how long it took me to figure this out, I would consider that these hidden pages will get very little if any real traffic. You can however link to many of these hidden pages if you create a Facebook advertising ad. It will be very interesting to see if big brands start to develop these hidden pages and how they will be using them. For now the new business page layout and Facebook page changes have simply caused serious grumbling and complaining in my industry.

I will reserve judgment on my end how I like these new changes, until I see if I get more or less interaction from fans. I like the visual appeal of the new timeline, but think that many of the changes will force business owners to move into Twitter and Google+ and abandon Facebook in the long run. Sorry Facebook, but I just don’t think that any business in reality is going to sit down and fill up the timeline from business inception to now and that fans will even care to read about that company history in the long run.