Advertising Possibilities Are Endless For Small Business

Often, the biggest obstacle that most, if not all, small businesses have is a limited budget. Let’s face it. Having a small business makes it difficult for you to have the most glamorous marketing campaign such as that of the big firms and Fortune 500 companies.

And you know for a fact that advertising is truly expensive. If you don’t look out, you might just wake up one day with your funds depleted, and strapped with a marketing campaign that provides lackluster performance.

Knowing you have other things to allocate your funds for, you know that you have to consider all things first before you can shell out your hard earned dollars for your coveted marketing tool. Be it full color flyers, or even a large format poster, you can’t afford to be picky when you’re looking at a very small fund to stretch.

With the funds you’re operating on is just enough to get you a decent marketing campaign for your business, it’s no wonder that many business owners and marketers are turning to other alternative promotional vehicles to introduce their brands. In fact, most marketers and advertisers are looking at ways to get attractive and compelling marketing campaigns for the price they can afford of course.

But this is a common misconception of most business owners and advertisers about advertising that should be changed right away. Although a limited budget may mean limited access to the most expensive ads such as your full color flyer printing campaign or your large format poster printing project, it doesn’t mean that you should settle for a mediocre piece.

On the contrary, having a limited budget means you will be able to come up with a more creative ad campaign that will help you effectively introduce your business to your target market.

And it’s not all print ads actually. Marketing your business can be advantageous in a way because you’re able to hand out to your target clients your message in a nice piece of paper. But as always, you can also try some alternatives that can help you promote your business better.

You might want to try co-sponsoring a worthwhile activity, for example. It may be in promotions, events, trade shows, and exhibits located locally. This way, as a small business, you’ll be recognized as a supporter of your community endeavors. This is actually what most big companies do to market their name and brand. As a potential client looks at the new ads, they will be eager to see that you are a staunch supporter of the local community, and hence, a better choice between you and your competitors.

The key is not therefore be frustrated just because you happen to work on a very limited amount. Small businesses are often very imaginative, especially when it comes to stretching their money and making sure that every penny is put to good use. They may not have the money, but they do have excellent marketing tools that show professionalism and credibility.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Search Engines and The Small Business Website

If you're doing any type of business on the internet than search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! could play a large role in the success or failure of your business. Even though most internet user have experience using search engines, many don't know how the engines work.

For website owners it is important to understand how, at least at a high level, search engines work so they can take advantage of the website traffic that only search engines can deliver.

Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

- They search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on important words,
- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and
- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.

Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.

Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.

To increase the likely-hood that the spiders find your website make sure you are listed on high ranked websites like Merchant Circle. You can create a free business page and blog that will not only increase your chances of being found but also be another place for potential visitors to find about about your website.

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:

- The information stored with the data, and
- The method by which the information is indexed.

In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

You can get a customized Page Critic Analysis Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you how YOUR webpages should be set up to make sure give the search engines what they are looking for when they review your page.

An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.

The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's effectiveness.

When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.

Not sure what keywords you should use? Picking the right, or wrong ones, can make or break your chances at online success. Consider getting a customized Key Word Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you which keywords you should and should not consider for your site. These keywords are specific to YOUR website not a generic list of keywords.

So, why are search engines important to business website owners? Simple. You need traffic and Search Engines have lots of it. And, their purpose is to drive traffic to sites that they think match their visitors' needs.

The way to get a portion of that traffic, is to optimize your website (you've likely heard of Search Engine Optimization or SEO). That way when a someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your website, the search engines includes a link to your website in the search results. That puts traffic and potential visitors just a click away from you website.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Is Link Marketing Important To My Business?

Link marketing has become something of a wonder. Some will say that if you do it, you’ll end up hurt. Others will tell you that you have to follow specific steps to being successful. In any case, the bottom line is that anything positive that you can do to aid your website in getting more visitors should be something that you do, at least to a point. Today, there are hundreds of strategies about what will work in search engine ranking. Some people believe in optimization while others believe in quality content. When it comes to link marketing, there are several things that you should know.

First, realize that there are several types of link marketing to consider.

One way links: To be short, this is one of the best ways to use link marketing. If you use one way links, you are having other website owners list your website link on their page. That may sound strange and you may not realize why anyone would actually want to do that, but the truth is that you can do it. One way links help you to build traffic to your website. They are also highly regarded by the search engines because someone is saying that your website is high quality enough to direct others to it. To use them, visit article directories. Add in a few directories with your link attached and off you go.

Reciprocal links: This type of link is like a trade off. You will place your link on someone’s website and then you’ll need to place their link on yours. It’s a fair trade, so to speak. But, the difference here is how you do it. If you go about adding links to your website that do not have anything to do with your site, or add a ton of them all at once because you purchased them, your website may actually be lowered in the search engine ranks. This is because this is considered a way of cheating the search engines and therefore its not worth it. But, if you put them on correctly, from relevant websites in the proper way, they can help you to improve your website ranking.

The important thing to know about link marketing is that it should not be the only thing that you use to get your website ranking well. There are many things to consider that may actually be more important. For example, having quality content on your site, an easy flowing site and even one that will have your visitors coming back are better choices.

When it comes down to it, using link marketing in your website business is important. It should be a part of your strategy of building a well founded, high quality website. After all, you do want the search engines to rank you well enough to get visitors. Why not use other people’s rankings to help you to get a few of those visitors as well? In short, using link marketing is a tool you should consider for a successful website design that ranks well with the search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods

Starting up a company of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent? Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer.  Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared. Look for ones that will allow you to leave a link. This will boost your SEO rankings as well.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who sign up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could grab the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other businesses and people.Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs. 

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles.When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer.You could do your own but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.
Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods described here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

The Quick And Easy Way To PPC Advertising

You should be able to find several useful facts about PPC Advertising in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1.You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2.Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3.No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.(but it helps alot because its free)
4.Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5.You can make use any search engine available.
6.You can type in any keyword you like.


But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

Think about what you've read so far. Does it reinforce what you already know about PPC Advertising? Or was there something completely new? What about the remaining paragraphs?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry. These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten "very specific" keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad's promise - but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques.

PPC advertising is sorta new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

If you've picked some pointers about PPC Advertising that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won't really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don't use it.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Advertising And Branding Today

Watch any given television long enough, and you’ll be greeted by advertisements. And in today’s ever-competitive market, the real story is behind the scenes, where companies face a constant battle to stay ahead of the competition. And with brand names offering hugely lucrative contracts for the right image, the art of advertising today is massively important.

The actual art of advertising and branding is a lot more sophisticated and in-depth than the consumers they target may realize. Long before an advertisement even reaches the screen, or print, it has been subject to pain-staking research, focus groups, marketing surveys, and many other methods of determining the current state of the target market. Without this information, releasing a product runs the risk of commercial suicide if the consumer isn’t ready. There’s no such thing as luck where advertising a brand, either established or new, is involved. It takes a lot of hard work, grueling hours in meetings and highly skilled teams of creative minds to finalize a concept.

Part of this process, and a way of determining whether a new brand and accompanying advertisement has succeeded or not, is actually one of the simplest. By providing a group of consumers with either an image, a tag line, or even just a combination of colors and sounds, and they recognize the brand behind the advertising, then the hard work has paid off.

This is where the advertising and branding of a product is so important, by firstly ensuring that consumers will recognize a given product or brand. The next important factor is actually persuading consumers to associate certain attributes with your product. These can range from reliability, pricing, value for money, etc. This is one of the most difficult, yet most intrinsically important sources of advertising and branding success. An instance of this is if you mentioned mouthwash – is there a brand that springs to mind immediately? How about favourite destinations to go on vacation – does one resort receive more recommendations than others? Even if that particular resort hasn’t been visited by everyone who mentioned it, just the fact the advertising of that resort makes it sound so enticing that they perceive it’s the destination they should go to, is a sure sign of successful brand advertising.

Yet if successfully advertising a brand is difficult enough to begin with, it can be even more so trying to reach out to new markets with the same product. The stronger the brand and the more successful the initial advertising campaign, the more difficult it becomes to find new avenues. Despite possibly having the number one product on the market, any new advertising still needs to go through the whole process again from scratch. After all, what worked for one product is not guaranteed to work for another.

And this is where the true power of advertising and branding becomes apparent, and is the strongest proof yet that it’s one of the most important in determining whether a company succeeds or fails.

If you need help branding yourself or your company, creating advertisements, and marketing collateral we can help.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

So, we all know what is at the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful company on the internet. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider what you are doing. If you are contending in these very competitive niches, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.
(You can email us at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com to request a FREE $100 coupon for Adwords to get you started)

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you. Googles Adwords Keyword Tool is free to use and we definitely recommend it.)

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

5 Simple and Easy Ways to Advertise Online

Most people in business agree that advertising is everything! Regardless of whether you have a product, a service, a hobby website or just want to share pictures of your vacation, you have to advertise it to get traffic to your site, blog, or whatever the case maybe.

Not all traffic is equal. There are services that can help you drive tons and tons of traffic to your site like safelists and traffic exchanges and it won't do you any good at all because it's not targeted.

For example all of the many different 'surf for traffic' or 'traffic clicking' programs that are out there. If you have a website that is about your hobby model airplanes (like my grandpa,) then what good is this traffic really going to do for you? Who's uses these services?

Webmasters and marketers who want traffic on their own site. So they most likely won't spend any more time on your page than is required by the little timer these services use and then they will be gone again. Even if your site is about these traffic services (this is about the only time you will see any benefit from using such a tool) you will still have to spend a ton of time just surfing and clicking around to get a real benefit from these programs. Once marketers realized this they switched gears. They started promoting all the different programs to a lot of other marketers to get them in their down lines, so they could get some traffic as a bonus.

The Bottom-line is... You need targeted traffic. So here are some tips on how you can generate exactly the traffic you need and bring the visitors you want to your website without having to chase after them.

1. Content
What is your site about? Do you just have a page with a lot of links and not much else?

If this is the case, think about adding some content to your website that will be of value to any potential visitors. You can write articles or find articles at one of the many directories that you can reprint on your site.

2. Talk about your experiences in your subject matter.
You don't have to put up some kind of resume (although that can work too), but rather try writing about what you are doing, as it relates to your topic of choice. Let's look at the model airplanes again briefly, you could talk or write about the latest plane type you built, how the last time flying your plane went, what challenges you run into or perhaps even post some pictures of your plane or of you flying it.

3. Forums and bulletin boards.
You could add a forum or bulletin board to your website where your visitors can interact with each other. There are a lot of free services available out there that you can use to either remotely host a forum for you, or even software you can install on your website's server. To find some of these, just head over to your favorite search engine and you will definitely find plenty to choose from. (I love google!)

While you are visiting the search engine, why not run a search for any bulletin boards and forums that are already out there on your chosen topic? You could visit those and interact with the visitors there and since many allow you to post a signature or a profile, you could add a little line about your own site with a link (just check the rules of the forum first so
you don't violate any of them).

4. Start a blog.
Blogs are very popular and search engines love them because they provide constantly new and fresh content. Your blog would be a great place to talk about what you are up to that day. So if you spent some time today buying new parts for your plane you could write about where you found them, how much they cost you, why you chose those parts, anything really goes.

The really great part about this is that you can point links from your blog back to your website, so when the search engine stops by to grab and index your latest content, it will also stop by your website and you will start seeing very targeted traffic heading your way.

5. Write articles.
Writing articles isn't hard and can be a great source of fresh, new traffic to your website. There are a lot of ezines on any topic out there and there are also a lot of directories where you can share your article.

Basically, what you do is write an article and then add a small resource box that links back to your website (just like a signature) and then let other ezine publishers know that you are allowing them to print your article in their ezine. And many publishers go to the article directories to find new content for their newsletter and even their websites. And since there are
websites and ezine newsletters on any imaginable topic out there, you can't lose. Write an article every couple of days and post it in the directories (even one a week or every two weeks will start getting you traffic). Very soon you will find new traffic coming from search engines, newsletters and websites.

Best of all, these 5 simple tips will bring targeted traffic, meaning the visitors are coming to you because they are interested in what you wrote and they are absolutely free!

So there you have it. Whether you have a simple and basic Work at Home Business or a significant Internet Marketing enterprise you can benefit from these 5 easy and simple ways to advertise and drive traffic to your website at absolutely no cost.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

3 Foolproof Ways To Outsmart Your Competition

Let's face it...competition is here to stay.  There will always be someone waiting in the wings to take your customers away from you and into their realm.  Yeah, you're always going to have to be on the lookout for new ways to outdo the competition, but there are 3 ways you can minimize the impact they have on your business.

1. Implement Unconventional Marketing Strategies
Standing out from the crowd is sometimes hard to do with so many businesses mimicking the marketing campaigns of their competitors.  Sure, we all want to be successful, and when we see others using a method and prospering there's an urge to jump on the band wagon and enjoy the same success.

Rather than joining the pack, look for ways to advertise that no one else is using. Internet marketing is a good example.  Most Internet marketers use ...you guessed it the Internet to market their products.  Why not get high impact postcards printed and use them to direct people to your Website?  Hey, no one else is doing it!

2. Discover Hidden Markets
Your competitors are missing out on something!  Dig around until you discover what it is, and get a corner on that market niche.  Once you've discovered your secret gold mine, revise your sales copy, and Website to address the specific market you've uncovered.

If you're a Multi Level Marketing representative you might want to consider the following niches.

"    Employees:  The freedom that comes with being your own boss is a dream that many employees hope for, but never experience.  Go ahead...let them know that dreams do come true...there's an opportunity to be their own boss waiting just for them.
"    Stay-at-home Moms:  Most stay at home. Moms are sacrificing finances for the well-being of their children. They would jump at the chance to raise their children and make a little money too.
"    Retirees:  What does the future hold for someone looking at retirement?  It could be that there is a lot of spark, and dreams still pulsing inside...and now...they'll have the time to invest their long time dreams!

3. Become the Expert
We all respect the opinions and insight of someone who really knows a subject inside and out.  Yeah, take the time to research, get to know all of the ins and outs of your product...then emphasize it in your marketing campaign. True knowledge can't be faked. Consumers will know who the expert is. 

You don't have to put all of your eggs in one basket to zero in on one product, but you can emphasize your expertise in one area. Remember that people often expect to pay more for expert advice! You may want to raise your price a little bit, get testimonials, and find another expert to endorse you. 

You don't have to let the competition get one over on you when you position yourself for success!

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

A Pay Per Click Beginner's Guide.

Should you Pay Per Click?

Commonly refered to as PPC among the savy internet marketers. If you have been marketing online for any length of time you have probably seen PPC eat up your advertising dollars with little or no results.

You research and choose the hottest keywords, then burn through your daily budget in an hour with no sales. The myth that mega traffic produces mega profits is just that. A myth.

Traffic is great. Traffic improves your search engine ranking. It increases word of mouth advertising. Traffic gets you more traffic, but when you are paying a pretty penny for each and every click you want sales.

You may remember the class action law suit against Google. A group of businesses sued Google claiming the company didn't do enough to prevent click fraud so they lost money in their PPC campaigns.

In my less than humble opinion, click fraud was not the culprit. For those who don't know, click fraud is when someone who publishes Google Adsense ads clicks on ads on their own sight to make money with no intention of purchasing the product advertised.

As I said, in my opinion click fraud was not the culprit. It was badly chosen keyword phrases. Instructions on how to choose and bid on keyword phrases are available on the PPC sites so I won't go into the mechanics of bidding.

The important thing is, if you chose the most popular keyword your ad will show up in hundreds maybe even thousands of searches an hour. This means you will recieve hundreds maybe even thousands of clicks a day.

Mega traffic right? For instants. If you are selling hand painted porcelain piggy banks and you bid on the keyword "bank". Who will see your ad and possibly click on it? People looking for online banking, people looking for a rock band called "Bank", kids writing a report for school on the banking industry. In other words, people who don't want what you are selling.

They will click on your ad without reading the whole thing and go "This isn't what I want." and hit the back button. Remember, it cost you money for them to click. It costs them nothing, so people aren't careful about what they click on.

Choose your phrase carefully. You want clicks from visitors who are looking to buy what you are selling. Target your phrase. Bid on "porcelain hand painted piggy banks" if that is what you are selling. People who do broad searches are just looking. People who target their searches are looking to buy.

Will you get less traffic? Yes. Will you make more sales? Maybe, depending on your product, how easy your site is to navigate, your prices, etc, etc...

The point is, with PPC, looky loos cost you money. Save the most popular keywords for your free traffic sources. Target your PPC so that only credit card in hand buyers click your ads.

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Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

7 Things You Can Do Today To Make Google Fall Head Over Heels In Love With Your Small Business Website

Creating your own small business website can be a scary thing to do and extremely tough. It requires some planning to get it right and make Google sit up and take notice of your site at first glance. Small business website search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the keys, but all too often, business people leave the creation of their websites up to a family member or a friend who happens to know something about it. This is strange, for they wouldn't dream of letting the same people build their bricks and mortar store or office. This is why business owners should leave it to the professionals.

Of course, getting an expert who fully understands small business SEO to build your website is not likely to come cheap, but it may be the best solution if you are starting out from scratch. However, this article is aimed at those small businesses that already have a website, but are disappointed at how poorly it performs. If you're frustrated because your website appears on page 42 of the Google search results, and no one is visiting your website, here are 7 things you can do to quickly improve your results.

1. Create an Effective Website Title Tag, Description Meta Tag,
and Keywords Meta Tag

The most important part of any website page (in the eyes of the search engines) is the title tag. The title is enclosed between the opening title tag: and the closing title tag: . It is located in the head section of an HTML document, or web page. You should use your page's main keyword in your title. Try to use your main keyword near the beginning of your title, and perhaps again near the end. But always strive to make your title readable, and not obviously keyword stuffed. You must also make sure it appears on the main page at least 3 times, but don't be to repetitive.

Your description tag plays an important role in SEO for your local small business. This tag is used by most of the search engines in their listings, so you need to spend some time getting this right. The description tag looks like this:

<meta name="description" content=

and it is also found in the head section of your web page.

Something brief such as, "Acme Dynamite, Makers of Green Dynamite," gets the message across, but you could do much better. Try to list benefits rather than features, and use your main keyword in your description as well. Keep your description reasonably brief, but not too short. Something like, "Acme, Inc., Makers of the Strongest, Most Powerful and Affordable Dynamite on the Planet" is better.

Like a headline for an ad or sales flyer, your description may take time to develop. Start with a list of all of the benefits your product or service offers and then try to write 20 different descriptions for your site based on those benefits. Test your descriptions by reading them to your customers, employees or others familiar with your business. You'll find out which description resonates most strongly with your potential prospects - and that's good for the search engines and for your sales.

The keywords tag, again found in the head section of your web pages, looks like this:

<meta name="keywords" content=

The keywords you choose for your page are important, because they tell the search engines what should be found on the page. Google and all the other search engines present search results based on relevancy – how relevant your web pages are to the keywords and phrases your prospects are searching for.

Keep your keyword phrases to less than seven and don't repeat the same words. For example, if you have two keyword phrases, which are, "blue widgets" and "bright blue widgets," you should only include unique words after including the first "blue widgets" keyword.

Curious to know what your Title, Description, Meta and Keyword tags currently look like? Here's a simple tip – just go to any page of your website, then click on "View Source" or "View Page Source" from the "View" menu. Or Ctrl+U in most browsers. There you'll be able to see exactly what your tags are telling Google when they crawl your site.

2. Optimize Your Website Copy

Your website copy consists of the words on every page of your site. Try to make it interesting and informative. One simple way to arrange your articles, or informative pages, is to use a simple three-step format. Begin with an introductory paragraph that tells your visitor what you are going to tell them. Then in the next two or three paragraphs, tell them. Finally, wind up the article by telling them what you just told them.

This may seem overly simple, but it works. Speak to your website audience as you would to a seven-year-old child. Don't patronize them, but lay it out clearly in simple steps using straightforward language that anyone can understand.

When writing your copy for each of your pages, make sure to focus on one or two keywords per page. If you are selling dynamite in all colors and you also sell blasting caps, then dynamite should be on one page and blasting caps on another. Keep it simple for your customers and the search engines by focusing on one idea per page and your customers will thank you for it, and Google will thank you too.

3. Establish an Acceptable Keyword Density for Your Website Copy

While optimizing your website copy you also need to establish a keyword density that is acceptable to the search engines. Opinions differ, but somewhere between 2% and 5% is probably about right. This means that for effective small business SEO, your main keyword phrase should appear around three times for every 100 words.

Where your keyword appears is important too. Try to use your main keyword or phrase twice in the first paragraph, once in the second paragraph, once around the middle of the article, and once again near the end of the article. Try to start and end the first paragraph with your main keyword if possible, but don't force it. Always aim for copy that is readable before copy that has perfect keyword density.

4. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Increasingly, the search engines are giving added weight to the number of quality back links your website has. It used to be that reciprocal linking was quite acceptable, and it still is, but now Google and the other search engines give higher credibility to one-way back links as far as your search engine rankings are concerned.

And it's not just any back links either. You need to have quality back links, or back links from sites that are similar to yours. It's not much good getting a back link from a site about butterflies if your site focuses on racing cars. With Google, it's all about relevance. You should also strive to get back links from so-called authority sites. These are sites that the search engines deem to be an authority on their chosen subject. They tend to be quite big and to have been around for some time. Google gives more reward for .edu backlinks and its not really as hard as you would think. I have some from Harvard and I've never been there in my life.

5. Use Local Directories Effectively

If you are marketing to a local market, then make use of local directories. How do you find them? If, for example, you are located in New York, then go to Google and search for, "directory" + "new york." This will return a list of all the local directories in that city. You could even try searching for, "green dynamite directory" + "new york," if you are marketing blue widgets.

Once you find a suitable directory, submit your website to it. People do search on local directories, so even if your product has worldwide appeal, there's a greater chance that you will get the sale if someone finds you in a local directory over someone else located in another continent who can deliver just as cost effectively or as quickly.

6. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Every website should have a site map. This is merely a directory of all your site's pages with links to every one. You should have a link from every page of your site back to your site map, and your site map must be updated whenever a new page is added.

A Google Site Map is also a site map, but one that is in a special format that Google can easily spider. It has the great advantage of allowing Google to instantly "see" your site and evaluate it. It can be a very useful tool in getting Google to index your site more quickly than otherwise. For more information on creating a Google Site Map, go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/.

7. Add Fresh Original Content to Your Website at an Acceptably Measured Pace

Your website should never be considered finished. It should always be a work in progress that is constantly expanding with fresh and original content. The easiest way to do this is to add new articles on specific subjects on a regular basis. One article a week is the least you should aim for, but don't add content too quickly either. Dumping 100 articles a day into your site will ultimately work against you, because the search engines look for organic growth – in other words, growth that seems natural. Since it's not likely that you were able to write 100 articles in one day, Google and the other search engines will see this as unnatural and will count it against you in your page ranking.

SEO for your local small business is easier than you might think. Getting Google to fall head over heels in love with your small business website is not rocket science. You only need to implement a few simple things on a regular basis, and over time Google will notice and your page rank – and your placement with the search engines – will start climbing.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

An Introduction To Search Engine Optimization And Web Design

Create a website and in no time at all you will be receiving visitors, right? Wrong. It can take time before a search engine finds and indexes your site. Once it does, it is by no means any guarantee that you will be one of the first sites listed under your subject. Search engines index billions of pages and even the most obscure subject can have thousands of pages.

So how do you put your webpage at the head of the pack? It all comes down to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the term used to describe methods and tricks used that will help improve how search engines rank your page. The higher that your page ranks, the better chance your page will be selected by someone searching, resulting in more traffic to your site.

Search Engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! use complicated, highly guarded algorithms to rank your website that can be so confusing Einstein himself would have trouble figuring it out. Instead of focusing on those issues, let us instead focus on a few basic areas that will help improve your websites ranking. 

One final note about search engines: The most popular search engine right now is Google.

Keywords
Choosing the right keywords for your page is the most important step in SEO. In actuality, "keywords" usually key phrases since you will be choosing about three or four key phrases for each page of your website and rarely focus on a simple word. It is important that you are specific when picking your phrases. You need to stay away from generic terms such as “cat,” “television,” or “car.” Pick phrases such as “marketing consultant”, “plasma television”, or “Chevy Corvette”. The more specific you can be the higher that your page will be ranked, and the better chance your page will be found by your target audience.

To pick the right phrases, think about what words you would type in when looking for your site. Ask your friends and family members what they would type into the search engine. Understand that television and TV are two different words and not interchangeable in the minds of search engines. Going back to my example of Creative Marketing Consultant, I might choose the keywords of “Creative Marketing Consultant”, “Professional Marketing Consultant”, and “Consultants in Peoria, Illinois” for a marketing consulting website. Keyword phrases should only be about three to four words long.

Domain Name
If you have not picked a domain name, it is best to pick one that uses at least one of your keywords in it. Use dashes to help separate the words, if desired. A website named http://www.marketingconsultingpeoria.com or http://www.creativemarketingconsultants.com is better than http://www.randombusiunessname.com. For even better results, choose something that is specific to your keywords. That said, it is believed that search engines may rank domain names with  two or more hyphens lower because they are usually associated with lower-quality or spam-ridden sites.

Anchor Tags
Anchor tags, also known as anchor text, are the visible hyperlinked text on the page. Search engines typically weigh them heavily. Make sure that your anchor tags contain as many of your keywords as possible. Also, they should not be too long, although there is no limit, and be a clear indication of what the user will find by clicking on it.

Headings
When designing a webpage for search engine optimization, it is important that you use headings (, , ) for your titles instead of graphic images. Search engines weigh headings heavily as an indication of what content to index your pages. Therefore, it is important that your page have headings that include your keywords. Pages without any headings rank lower in search engine results.

Meta Tags
Meta tags help search engines index a website correctly. Although there are quite a few meta tags to choose from, the two most important are description and keywords. If you do not place these two in your heading section of your website, search engines will decide for themselves, usually by taking information from the first text it can find. Here is an example of each of the meta tags.

• meta name="description" content="An introduction to search engine optimization, or SEO, including how to pick and use the right keywords, use meta links, title tags, alt tags, image names, site maps, links, and headings.

•  meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization, SEO, webpage design, choosing keywords, anchor tags, headings, meta tags, title tags, alt tags, image names, site maps, robots.txt, keyword spamming or stuffing, web content development

The description should be about 170 characters long and never exceed 200 characters--including spaces and include all the major keywords for the webpage. Notice that commas separate the keywords and there is no comma after the last keyword in the sequence. Also, try not to repeat a word more than twice in the listing. A lesser important meta tag is the author tag. While it will not help your website be ranked higher, including it will help your company or your name be recognized.

It is critical that your description and keywords are accurate and relate to that page. Listing words or phrases that are not included in the text of the page lowers their relevance ranking. Search engines will rank the relevance of terms based on how many times the term occurs on the page, the position they are located in the document, the length of the document and the “weight” of the search term. Weight is determined by how often and the location of the keyword. Words that appear in the title, headings, and tags are considered heavier than other terms.

Title Tags
Technically, the title is a meta tag but because it is probably the most important one, it is listed separately. It is also what search engines list first, so it should be carefully thought out. Make sure you have a unique title for each of your pages.

The title tag is placed in the header section inside . Most people simply place the name of their site in the title tag, which is not good SEO. Instead, place your most important keywords phrases inside the title tag without listing them. For example, instead of saying “Andy's consulting” say, “Andy's Consulting - Home of the finest creative marketing consultant in Peoria, Illinois”.

Length is also important. Google displays 66 characters of a title tag, cropping between words. Yahoo! allows much longer titles, up to 120 characters. Therefore, you are best to include a title that is at least 66 characters long and subtitle that is an additional 54 characters long. You also want to consider what will be displayed by web browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. What would be displayed if a visitor bookmarked your site or on browser indexes?

Alt Tags and Image Names
Search engines only index text. However, they do index the alt tags associated with images. This is why you should label each image on your website with tags that use your keywords whenever possible and relevant to the image. Do not include alt tags that are simplistic. Be as specific as possible without going overboard.

File names are another great place to include keywords. While you cannot include spaces in a file name, you can separate your keywords with hyphens (-) or underscores ( _ ), which will be perceived as spaces by search engines. Going back to the above picture, instead of naming it “image1.jpg” list it as “american_wirehair_kittens.jpg” or “wirehair_kittens.jpg”.

Site Maps
Site maps are documents that can be submitted to search engines that help them learn the structure of your site. You need to set up a site map that has a direct link to every page on your site and place a text link to that site map on the index page of your site. You can also submit this site map to search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a file that you place on your web server that instructs web robots which directories can or cannot be crawled. A robot is a program that searches the web hypertext structure looking for websites to index. They are also known as web wanderers, web crawlers, or spiders. Robots.txt implements the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows the web site administrator to define what parts of the site are off-limits to specific robots. The very basic robots.txt file will simply contain the text:
    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

This signals that any robot can search all of the pages on your website. If there is a page on your site that you do not want robots to index, simply insert a backslash and list it after disallow. For example, if you want to exclude the page “www.calebscattery.com/friends.html” you would place the following in your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
    Disallow: /friends.html

Once you have created and uploaded your robots.txt file, you can make sure it is valid by going to Robots.txt Checker [http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml].

Keyword Spamming or Stuffing
Keyword spamming, also known as keyword stuffing, is when irrelevant keywords are included on a webpage in the hopes of attracting unsuspecting surfers to the site. This can be done in a variety of ways such as listing phrases at the bottom of the page, including hidden text on the page, or other methods. This is also the most popular of the “black hat SEO” methods, or unethical search engine optimization. DON"T DO IT OR YOUR SITE WILL BE BANNED
Search engines are good at recognizing these tactics. Sites that employ these methods are either ranked lower or, in extreme cases, removed altogether from the search engine. Even if the web robot does not recognize your methods, your competitors might and then report you.  

Web Content Development
Each page of your site needs to contain at least 250 words, although 500 words would be better. When web robot visit, they will read your site from top to bottom, left to right. For that reason, try to include your keywords very early on in your text and then a few more times within your text and in the last sentence of your text. Do not list the words or repeat words just to repeat words. You have to write your content for humans too. ;-)

It is also important to note that web robots “count” any html, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript or other code listed on the site. Learn and use external style sheets to remove it from your page. It is believed that most robots will only look at the first 80-100 lines of code--including any blank lines you may have included. If your text is buried at the bottom, it might not get included when they index your page.

Spending the time to optimize your site for search engines is as important as developing quality content when it comes to finding and keeping visitors. Having the best site in the world does no one any good if it cannot be found. Good SEO should not change the content of your page or alter it significantly. It will only alter its ranking by search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Advertising Your Business With Google Adwords

The object to successful advertising is to find a method of conveying your information to as many people as possible, while keeping the cost on the advertising low to begin with. This is the easiest way to generate traffic, and retain your profits. Google Adwords is a great method of getting both of these objectives done and making your site successful. It is very important to try and maintain a low click through cost when trying to target the appropriate customers.

It is no secret that pay per click can really make your business swell with traffic and customers, by placing the highest bid on a keyword, or keywords you can get great page ranking when someone types your keyword into their browser for a search. If you have heard of Google Adwords you will know that it is not really a pay per click search engine, but a very powerful Google tool that can be used as an advertising template. It is said that the largest Internet based network for marketing is indeed Google. It is a global industry and is a very good way to get exposure on the Internet. If you are interested in the Google Adwords you can find it on just about every page that Google showcases, their ad can be found in a little rectangle by the organic search results that are free.

The basic premise of the Google Adwords realm is quite simple, the member makes their own advertisement, and then has to bid on a keyword, this key word will then trigger the next step of the process. The next step is where the appearance of the ad can be showcased, to the viewers online. A members site consists of approximately 25 words or characters, this will include spaces so be mindful, it will also allow for a description segment of up to 70 words or characters, again spaces included in the total so you must watch what you are using as description. The great thing about this feature is your site will be posted within just a few minutes of you submitting it to Google. It could even become one of the sites that are sponsored, where they will sit on the right hand column of the search engine pages.

Google’s Adwords runs a little differently than the standard pay per click programs, it is not entirely based on the bid you place on the keyword. It has other factors penciled into the equation, such as the click through rate, plus the cost per click. This in turn dictates what your page ranking will be in the end of the ratio. You will need a steady flow of traffic to your site prior to this method to be effective, so it is best to get a good game plan in motion.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Are You Making These 5 Common Pay-per-click Mistakes In Your Small Business?

Because of the ability to specifically target your unique prospects based on interest as well as geography, the ability to tightly control your ad spend and to precisely measure results, Pay-Per-Click (PPC such as Google's Adwords) is probably the greatest breakthrough to come along in advertising since the launch of television.  And, because of those same benefits, it’s much more affordable for the small to mid-size business owner to leverage for their business (as compared with television and many other advertising alternatives).

That being said, PPC is not as easy as it seems at first glance. Business owners looking to launch their first campaign will quickly discover how easily they can spend hundreds – and even thousands – of dollars in wasted efforts while they learn to navigate the PPC waters.

While entire books have been written on the ins-and-outs of pay-per-click advertising, there are 5 common mistakes that I see business owners making when I’m asked to evaluate their pay-per-click campaign strategies.  These mistakes are easy to fix, and doing so will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaign!

The 5 most common PPC mistakes are:

   1. Using your home page as the landing page.  No matter which search engine you use for your campaign – Google, Yahoo!, Bing or any other – you can decide where to direct your new customers when they click on your ad.  The most common mistake I see business owners make when they launch their PPC campaign is directing those clicks to their home page.  The thinking seems to be that their home page is equivalent to the front door of their business, and they want their new customers to walk through – but that’s where they go wrong.  With PPC advertising, your prospect is searching for something highly specific – that’s the “keyword” they’ve entered into the search engine.  Having them land at your home page is the equivalent of having them ask you for a specific item in your store, and you telling them – “it’s in here somewhere, it’s up to you to find it.”  Obviously you wouldn’t do that in person with your customers – and you don’t want to do it online, either.  By designing what’s known as a “landing page” – the place where visitors “land” when they click on your ad - you can present your customer with exactly what they are looking for when they come to your site.  Your landing page should be tightly focused to the keywords you are using for your PPC ad, with no other links or distractions to confuse your prospect. This dramatically increases their satisfaction with your site, as well as the likelihood that they will make a purchase from you.

   2. Not customizing your landing page to your prospects’ keyword searches.  The way an ideal PPC campaign works is something like this:  a prospect enters a search term – for my business it might be “e-mail marketing.”  They are presented with my PPC ad with “e-mail marketing” in the headline AND the ad copy.  My prospect clicks on my ad and is taken to my landing page that is all about our services.  (I will have bid on all of my keywords there to capture searchers entering them).  The likelihood that my prospect will become a customer is high, because there is no confusion about what the page is about – no wondering if he’s in the right place or if we offer what he is looking for.  A common mistake I see business owners making with their PPC campaigns is to try to combine several products or services into one landing page.  This leads to frustration when your searcher clicks on your ad and lands on a page that they aren’t sure offers what they are specifically looking for.  Make sure your landing pages are customized to the keyword your prospect is searching for – and quickly turn prospects into customers.

   3. Using generic ad copy in your PPC ads.  The tricky thing with PPC ads is you don’t have much real estate to work with.  Google allows just 70 characters; Yahoo allows 190 characters (with spaces) in a text ad.  When every single word counts, you can’t afford to use meaningless words like “high quality service,” or “established in 1903.”  While these statements may be true about your business, they don’t target the specific searches your prospects are entering to find the products and services they are looking for.  A mistake I see clients make in their PPC ads is to include these type of generic statements that don’t set their business apart.  When you are writing your ad, you’ll want to include specific keywords that your prospects will likely enter to find what you have to offer.  Your headline must be captivating and should include your main keyword.  The next line of your ad should contain the single biggest benefit you offer to your customers.  What sets your company apart from your competitors?  That’s what goes in your PPC ad.  The 3rd line of your ad should contain a feature of your product or service or an offer – special discounted pricing or something free work well here.  By making your ad specific to the keywords that your prospects will likely enter, you’ll be well on your way not only to increasing clicks, but to turning clicks into cash as well.

   4. Not securing high enough placement with your bids.  All of the search engines use a slightly different method for determining the position for your ad.  Google and Yahoo use a combination of ad relevancy (how relevant your ad is to the keywords you’ve bid on and the landing page you present to your visitors) and bid price.  A big mistake I notice my clients making is not targeting their keywords tightly enough and specific enough to their product or service to allow them to bid high enough on those keywords to secure top placement on the search engines.  It’s estimated that 85% of all PPC clicks occur on ads that appear in one of the top 3 positions on the page.  That means, if you aren’t working hard to find keywords that are specific enough to your niche and not bidding high enough to secure a top spot, you are missing out on a good portion of the clicks that could be yours.  Use a keyword tool such as Wordtracker or Google's Adowrds Keyword tool to research keyword possibilities that you may not have considered.  Look for a Keyword Effectiveness of 10 or greater – meaning that the keyword has sufficient search queries with the engines to result in significant traffic, without a lot of competitors bidding on the same keyword.  When you place your campaign, use these keywords and bid high enough to secure a top spot, ensuring that the people searching for what you have to offer find your website – instead of your competitors.

   5. Not testing your ads to determine their effectiveness.  While there is a “formula” for crafting an effective PPC ad, slight changes – even changing one word – can have a dramatic impact on your click-through-rate (the percentage of people who click on your ad as compared with the number who see it).  A mistake I see business owners making with their campaigns is to choose their keywords and then write only one PPC ad to display.  All of the major search engines offer the capability of creating ad variations so that you can test different ad copy to determine what works best.  This is known as “split testing” or “A/B” testing, as you are comparing the results of two different ads for the same keywords.  Google will alternate the ads for you, and you’ll easily be able to see which ad performs better by looking at your click-through-rate.  When you find an ad that outperforms another, that ad becomes your “control” – or the ad to beat.  Put the under-performing ad on “hold” and create another version, changing one or two words or possibly just the headline.  Then test that ad against your control.  This is a continual process – you are always trying to beat your control to improve your number of clicks.  Not surprisingly, advertisers who test their ads in this method are more successful with PPC, as they tend to know their customers better and are able to target their prospects with captivating ads that turn into an increasing number of clicks – and customers – for them.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

3 Traits Of High Quality Seo Web Design

When it comes to web design, there are so many amazing designers out there.  Most web designers are very creative and have a strong artistic background. They are able to use their talents to create layouts that are guaranteed to catch the eye of your visitors.  Unfortunately, there is one major thing that most web designers are missing. The overwhelmingly vast majority of web designers are not familiar with the concepts and implementation of search engine optimization techniques. Even if a web designer has at least some basic knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization,) they do not worry about implementing search engine optimization strategies into their designs.

While this may seem like a trivial detail, it can actually be the root of some major problems for your site and your businesses bottom line. No matter how attractive your web site is, if it is not indexed by the major search engines, the traffic it receives is going to be minimal. Once you realize this is happening, you are going to have to hire someone with SEO knowledge to fix your layout. Therefore, you may end up paying double for something that should have been done the first time around.  Whether you are a web designer or someone getting ready to hire a web designer, here are three traits of quality SEO web design:

Usability: As a general rule of thumb, if the design of a web site makes it easy for your human visitors to navigate, it will also be relatively easy for search engine robots to access, crawl and index your web site.  Making your site user (and search engine) friendly includes minimizing (or completely eliminating) things such as Flash (in some cases), Javascript navigation and layouts designed with tables.  By designing with usability in mind, you can be sure that your visitors and the search engines will be happy with your web site.

Avoid Being Sneaky: Because web designers are generally very creative people, they like to push the envelope when it comes to designing web sites. Although this mentality can result in some truly amazing web layouts, it can also cause problems if taken too far. When creating a web site layout, it is important to keep the web master guidelines of search engines like Google in mind. Incorporating things like hidden text into your designs is a sure way to get penalized (or de-indexed) by search engines. It is ok to push the envelope with your designs, but just make sure that you avoid doing anything that the search engines tell you not to do.

On-page SEO: Although this is the last item on the list, it is actually the most important.  On-page SEO is the basis for quality SEO web design. It is vital that properly implement things such as title, meta, H1 and H2 tags (header tags), along with internal linking and the other key components of on-page search engine optimization. Taking the time to employ these practices will make a significant difference in where your web site ranks in the search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

5 Reasons Why Your Business Must Have an Online Presence Today

The Internet has officially changed the face of business and in case no one has done this for you already, let me be the first to formally welcome you to the “Information Age”, or should we call it the “Internet Age”. So...Welcome to the 21st Century! Things are going to be different.

The Internet is not a fad or a flavor of the week anymore and hasn't been for some time.  It is the real deal and it is here to stay.  It may morph in one way, shape, or form however, it is here to stay and the most successful businesses are taking advantage of it.

So why exactly should you take your business online?  Although there are tons of reasons, here are 5 key ones:

1. It is expected.  Quite simply, the Internet is the first place people look to find out more about you and find services, your business, and/or your product.  They look for your website as well as information they can find out about you from other websites.  Yes, I dare say it, in 99.9% of the cases, it will damage your credibility to some degree with a prospect if you cannot be found out there.

2. It is cheap.  Never in history has a marketing medium been available to all businesses, no matter the size of their company or bank account that afforded them so much possibility for success.

Obviously money if applied properly can increase your results on the Internet; however, you really can get started with little or no money.  Skeptical, just read some of the books from the “Guerrilla Marketing” series by Jay Conrad Levinson (they are awesome by the way, I've read a few.)

3. It is immediate.  Face it.  We live in a world of instant gratification.  We want everything yesterday.  If something is not immediately available, we just may lose interest or worse yet get it from somewhere else – like your competition.

4. It is 24/7.  The Internet simply never sleeps.  Having and implementing an effective Internet strategy can be like having a well tuned marketing and sales force that continues to do your bidding around the clock.

5. It is global.  Why limit your business to the 15 minute radius surrounding your office?  Your current competition certainly isn’t and new competitors are seemingly coming out of nowhere every day. (I have people visiting me from 150 countries world wide and climbing everyday)

Look at the Internet as a means to allow you to share your genius with prospects who otherwise might not have had the opportunity to experience what you have to offer.


So in closing, what’s the best advice I can muster up on this topic?  Make a sincere effort to understand the Internet and the sheer power and opportunity it brings to your business. Create a plan of attack and get in the game. Play on the grandest court available today, the Internet! 

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Advertising Your Website With Pay-Per-Click

The best way to help optimize your online image is to consider using the pay-per-click advertising. What pay-per-click means is that you purchase sponsored links on the pages of search engine results. Search engines are used every single minute of everyday, which means advertising your website with pay-per-click will greatly increase the advertising of your website and business.

By advertising your website and business with pay-per-click, you are helping to advertise your business in what is usually an inexpensive way that is growing larger and reaching more people everyday. You can also tailor your pay-per-click advertising to fit your business or company budget needs. This is a plus for those of you who are starting out on a budget and want to stay away from paying a lot for advertising that may or may not be seen. By advertising your website with pay-per-click, your ad is going to be seen by your target market. More advantages to advertising your website with pay-per-click include the speed of advertising, the increase in traffic to your website, boosts SEO (Search Engine Optimizations) efforts, and the ability to research and compare data to see what works best for your website.

There are times, however, when advertising your website with pay-per-click can prove to be costly. For example, it will cost you more to use competitive keywords than it will to use ones that are not as competitive. Finely tune your keyword strategies. You can find information on the Internet on this or you might want to consider consulting a professional such as our company Subversion Design Solutions. Also remember not to bite off more than you can chew. Start with one pay-per-click provider first (we recommend Google), using ads you have tested, and then extend your campaign accordingly.

Advertising your website with pay-per-click can be a very quick, inexpensive way to get your website and business rolling. Drawbacks can always pop up, but if you educate and prepare yourself, you will be able to make the most out of advertising your website with pay-per-click.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Using Google Adwords To Promote Your Website or Business

Setting up an account:

To do this you just go here: https://adwords.google.com  Google adwords has provided a very detailed and useful “Sign-up Demo” which is in the form of a video you can use to refer to as you go through the process of signing up.

One of the best things that Google adwords has to offer is the statistical information. This can save you lots of money and help you target your prospects in the most cost effective manner imaginable. BUT, if you don’t understand or use this service you may be throwing you hard earned money away. Now we don’t want to do that because it defeats the purpose. Because there are so many variables involved in using adwords it’s difficult if not impossible to explain exactly how you should run your campaign. The best way is going to be different for everyone reading this, but we can help you to interpret the statistics that you see and then you can “tweak” your ads to get the most out of them for your particular promotion or we can run your campaigns for you. Currently if you sign up to have us run your campaign you will receive $100 in FREE advertising on Google's Adwords. Click here to request a quote or consultation now.

For starters, you should use the “conversion tracking” option.
After you click on “conversion tracking” you’ll need to choose “get Conversion page code”, there you can follow the instructions and choose the one that suits your needs.
The code that Google generates is then pasted into the page described when you choose the option that suits you. To insert this code follow Google’s directions.

Having this code in place will enable Google to provide you with statistics that you can use to assess the effectiveness of a Campaign or ad group.

I recommend having your adwords account running for a day or two before trying to understand this next bit.

For example: (Talking about  Search totals only) if an ad is being shown 1,000 times (Impression) and only has a CTR (click through rate) of 0.20 (displayed as a percentage) it means that your ad is being shown, but the people that see it aren’t clicking on it very often, or they aren’t seeing it. So it could be either because the ad is showing in a poor position (Avg. pos) 213.7 this would be on about page 15 or something, there may be a lot of competition for that word, you would need to raise the bid to try and get it to be seen more often. Or it could be well positioned (Avg.pos) 1.1 but not being clicked on because it is poorly written or not targeted to the keyword people are searching on. Or the key word/s could be too general. 

So you would need to improve the wording of the ad, or choose more targeted key words. This is an extremely generalized synopsis.


Conversion Rate:

It is necessary to consider the (Conv. rate) 20% this is the percentage of actual sales/sign-ups resulting from the “Clicks”, So if you find that your ad is receiving a lot of clicks but the conversion rate is low, it may be an indication that your ad is misleading! People click on the ad and go to your landing page expecting to see motor cycles and find chickens there! Or it could mean that your landing page is just poorly constructed, and not conducive to getting the sign up or making the sale.

A rule of thumb to get started is this: Use Google’s “Keyword tool” to select keywords from your landing page this will help ensure the keywords match the landing page. Let’s say you’re selling apples. People searching to buy apples will search for a keyword like “apples for sale” you will have “apples” as one of your keywords for the ad, because you would have “apples” on your landing page. Your ad wording might be something like, “we sell Apples”. So The customer is looking for apples finds an ad that says “go here to buy apples” they land on a page that sells apples, we have a synchronization happening all the way through, and that is cost effective target market tactics.

A Campaign can contain many different ad groups; an ad group can contain many different ads.

Split Testing:

And ads can be split tested. This means running two ads using the same keywords and settings as though they are one ad, but alternating shows of each ad, Google adwords does this part of it for you. After you make the ad that you wish to test, you then let it run for at least a day or two, and then you can assess which ad is better, using Google’s stats such as Clicks – CTR – CPC (cost per click) , and the number of times each ad has been shown, over a given period of time “Served” then discard the looser. Like a competition.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic

It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.
  
  
  Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Advantages Of A Professional Web Design Vs Doing It Yourself

Your website says a great deal about you and your business. It can make the difference between making a sell and the consumer using another website for their purchase. It is quite possible to design a website on your own, but it isn’t always the best choice.

A professional web designer has insight about what consumers are going to focus on and how to set your site up to offer them exactly what they are looking for. They are also very skilled in how to promote various aspects of your website to help you generate even more sales.

Having a professional design your website generally means you won’t have to spend so much of your time focusing on this aspect of the business. Websites continually need changes and updates so you can see how that will eat away at your time. This means the navigation tools will often need revamping to keep up with such changes. A professional web designer is an expert in making everything fall into place. You want the consumer to be able to click and access on your website without having to consider how to make it happen.

A professional web designer does cost more than doing it yourself, but you can avoid common mistakes that plague do it your self website projects. A huge issue is the scripting of the website. It takes more than good spelling and grammar to make it interesting and attractive to the consumer. Graphic designs look great, but do you know how they affect the consumer? It may attract their attention but if it takes too long for the graphic to open they will likely move on to another website.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com