Chat with Your Customers on Social Media Pages

Now You Can Answer Questions Live on Facebook

Some of our clients have been taking customer service to a new level by offering live chat services with their customers on social media pages. By adding a chat button to their corporate Facebook page, they are making themselves more available to anyone interested in their services. With the ever-increasing importance of social media, company Facebook pages can be as important as your main website. This will allow your clients and visitors to ask questions and interact with your staff in a more personable way.

This icon will appear on your site
when you're available to chat live

Live Chat is an interactive web tool that was built for companies to use on their main website. It is an interactive and cost effective tool that helps you sell your product online and give superior customer support. With just the click of the mouse, your website visitors can contact your support team for live assistance through the Provide Support live chat system. This system also does more than allow you to provide the best customer service out there. It also gives you real-time monitoring; letting you see a visitor list, geo location maps, navigation history, referal url and much more. It also includes a large variety of useful traffic stats to help you learn more about where your visitors are coming from and for what.

Foremost Media offers these services to you to help you increase your level of customer service. Live Chat is an amazing way for you to make things easier on yourself and your company, as well as provide help to your customers like never before. You must have this program installed on your actual website to be able to incorporate it into your social media pages.

If you're interested in this service on your website or on your Facebook page, please contact our Social Media Expert Aaron Manogue at amanogue@foremostmedia.com or call at (608) 758-4841. Even if you'd just like to talk about the service a little bit more and get more information, he'd be happy to talk to you.

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Tell me what you want me to do!

Have you ever sat through one of those time share pitches?  I've had the privilege of sitting through several in my life time and each one wraps up with a clear message-  "BUY NOW".  Time share sales folks want you to sign up before you leave.  They know that if you leave the presentation and think it over you probably won't be back or you might go look at a competitor.  They wouldn't sell many time shares if they gave you a big sales pitch and never asked you to buy, but that is just what a lot of websites do.

Many website owners spend a lot of time and money getting people to their website but don't make it clear to the visitor exactly what they want them to do when they get there.  Should they call you?  Do you want them to make a purchase?  Should they download a demo, or watch a video?  Every page of your website should have a clear call to action!

Posted By Jon Ballard

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Hold the spam when promoting your website

Almost every day I delete links from companies that are putting useless comments on our blog like:

Hello, I love reading through your blog, I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. Wish you best of luck for all your best efforts. web designing companies Delhi, website making company in Delhi

this is really nice. thank you for sharing.By Tallahassee web design on Do Outside Blogs Help Your Websites Search Engine ...

As you can see the post aren't necessarily negative but one thing is consistent between all these "Spam Comments". They all have key word rich hyper-links that link back to their respective websites (I've removed the links for this post)

The purpose of this blog post is two fold:

1. If your a spammer please stop posting stuff like this on our blog. We will delete it. We welcome comments that add value to the conversation but if we think that the goal of the comment is to get a back link to your site your comment will be marked as spam and deleted promptly.
   
2. I wanted to answer the question- Why do companies bother posting comments on blogs as a way to build back links? I can sum it up in one word: Backlinks.
   
   Backlinks are the links from other sites which link to your blog or webpage. The major search engines view back links to your site as a vote of editorial confidence and good quality links from other sites can help boost your rankings in the search engines especially if that link is from a site that has related content themes to your site.

So comment spam is a good thing right?-- Wrong-  let me leave you with this little warning from the Official Google Webmaster Blog:

FACT: Comment spammers are often trying to improve their site's organic search ranking by creating dubious inbound links to their site. Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links. Think of all the more productive things one could do with that time and energy that would provide much more value for one's site in the long run.

Promote your site without comment spam

If you want to improve your site's visibility in the search results, spamming comments is definitely not the way to go. Instead, think about whether your site offers what people are looking for, such as useful information and tools.

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What to Post on Your Company's Social Media Pages

It seems like more and more we get clients that are joining the trend and having us put together social media pages for their companies. This is such a smart thing for them to do. The only problem is, once they're all set up and looking great, what in the world are they supposed to post? What follows is my (Aaron Manogue, Search Engine & Social Media Marketing Expert) response to a recent email that I received. Take a look and learn a few tips that will help you know what to post and how.

Hi Aaron,

Now that our LinkedIn page is set up, how do we make the most of our company profile?  Do we put a LinkedIn button on our website?  How often should we post company updates? Are there ‘best practices’ to get the most from our profile?

Thank you,

"Client"

This was my response to their email:

Dear "Client",
What I always try and tell people is to post to their social media pages on Thursday or Friday of each week, or at least every other week. This includes LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter if you have them all. You don’t have to make 3 different posts to each one, just post the same thing to them all because your followers on Twitter may not follow you on Facebook or YouTube and vice versa. The reason I tell companies to do this is because they can sit down and think about a recap of what was going on in the company that week. Posting a link to a new product you’re working on or simply talking about what’s going on in the company (new products, expansions, community service, etc.) is exactly what you should post. And remember to be personable and professional. Write it like you’re telling your good friend about the exciting stuff that’s going on at work. Sometimes that’s hard to do because work isn’t always exciting, :) but if you write it like you’re talking to a friend, while staying as professional as possible, makes it easier and more interesting to read.

I would definitely put a linkedin button on your site as well as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube if you have them. Make a transition from your site to your (social media) pages and back again as seamless as possible, is great for getting people to follow you on social media.

Important Items Highlighted:

1. Post every Thursday or Friday (This depends on your industry as well. If you're a restaurant with daily specials, post them each day)

2. Be professional and personable

3. Talk about what's going on inside the company (New products, company/individual awards or certifications, involvement in the community, etc.)

4. It doesn't always have to be strictly business. Wish your followers a Happy Holiday or weekend or just plain tell them to have a great day! Being personable and not just being all about business shows customers that your care about them outside of sales.

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Measuring Return on Investment on PPC

Everyone knows that using Google and Facebook advertising is a very effective way to get your products and services in front of your target market. Facebook is possibly the most targeted platform to advertise on because of the fact that 92% of the 800 million + users willingly submit personal data such as age, sex, race, etc. to it. Google is right on track with their advertising because of their in-depth program and years of experience. So given the fact that they are both very good forms of advertisement, which do you use? And how much do you spend each month? But most importantly, how do you figure out if you are getting a decent return on investment each month.

Here are some sample numbers that I'm using to make this a little bit easier. simply substitute your statistics to apply to you and your accounts:

Unique Visitors: April 1st - November 9th, 2011 = 19,815
Average Sale on the Site: $206.16
# of Sales on the Site (Given Date): = 622

# of Sales/Visitors= 3.1 % Conversion Rate

Google Pay-Per-Click ROI Calculation

Google PPC Clicks to the Site: 1290

Total Cost PPC Campaign: $1,290 @ $1/click

With 3.1% Site Conversion Rate: 38.7 Purcahses x $206.16 = $7,979.39 (Gross Sales) or $6,689.39 after cost of PPC

Let's assume you have a 40% Profit Margin = $4,013.63 net

Facebook PPC ROI Calculation:
Facebook PPC Clicks To The Site: 636
Total Cost PPC Campaign:  $750.48 @ $1.18/click
With 3.1% Site Conversion Rate: 19.7 Purchases x $206.16 = $4,061.359 (Gross Sales) = Net After PPC= $3,310.87
Lets assume you have a 40% Profit Margin= $1,324.34 Net

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Is Social Media Necessary for Your Company?

Every day now it seems like we talk with a client or prospective client that asks us why it's important for "a company like theirs" to use social media. Most of them belong to major manufacturing or industrial companies, that if you think about it, might not make any sales off of a site like Facebook or Twitter. So why is it STILL important for companies like that to be involved in social media. It's because the amount of brand awareness, company exposure and potential client base that you can build essentially for free is limitless. We put together an infographic to visually express why we think it's important every company has some sort of presence on social media.

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What the New Facebook Means for Businesses

Everyone that uses the "almighty" Facebook has definitely noticed their big changes that they implemented last week. And as many of you know, not very many people are happy about them. You are just worried about that business Facebook page that they've spent hundred of hours on building, maintaining and expanding. So what do all of these changes mean for you and your business page?

There are two major underlying changes that business owners need to be aware of when it comes to posting on their Facebook wall. Oversharing and overloading. They sound like one in the same, right? Not really. As always, being a business owner on Facebook is a challenging task. You must interact with customers on a personal and positive level, but you have to make sure that you don't over do it. Just like any other type of marketing material, people don't want to be flooded with hundreds of ads continuously. I always tell people, "Effective marketing messages with minimal contact." Make what you put out there such high quality that you don't need to contact potential customers 100 times to have them get the point. This goes the same for Facebook posts. Make your posts valuable and effective so you don't have to post every single day.

On the other hand, overloading is loading up your page with so many applications that when people come to your page, they are distracted by all the bright shiny lights, applications and games that have nothing to do with your products and services. Games and applications are great ways to get people to your page, don't get me wrong. But if you have so many that people have no idea what your products and services are, what's the point? My suggestion is to stick to the basics, be personable and give people quality.

The less you waste people's time and the more you seem like an actual person instead of a business, the more interaction you will receive. And interaction leads to relationships, and better relationships, lead to sales.

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Facebook Edgerank: How to Get Your Posts to Appear More Often on Your Fan's News Feeds

You make interesting posts and you try to be as personable as possible, but it just seems like your posts aren't popping up on your fan's feeds very often. What is it that determines which posts appear more often and higher on news feeds? It's called Facebook Edgerank and the higher you can make your rank, the more exposure you'll get to your fans. It's a win/win. Edgerank is a complicated algorithm seen below, so what the heck does it mean to you?

Huh? You're still lost? Yeah, so are we.

Ue= affinity score between viewing user and edge creator

We= weight of this edge type (create, comment, like, tag, etc.) Essentially it means, how popular is the post

De= time decay factor based on how long ago the edge was created

Affinity

This is a score based on the proximity or how friendly you are with someone. You've probably noticed this before; checking out someone's page a few times within an hour and all of a sudden they are in your news feed more often

Edge (Post) Weight

This is a basic formula which determines the importance of a post. Pictures are more important than text posts, videos are more important than someone "liking" a page, etc. There's no set-in-stone hierarchy to certain types of posts, but there are certain types of posts that clearly do have higher Edgerank than others.

Recency

The final element of this equation is related to frequency, also known as time decay.  The longer a post has been up, the more it has "decayed." Newer posts have higher edgerank because of the fact that they're news! People want recent information, not something from two days ago.

Don't worry about the math, just do the following to up the "weight" of your edgerank and effectively increase your prominence on fan's feeds.

There are a few distinct post types you can use to raise your Edgerank and increase your visibility to your fans:

1. Videos Posting videos are seen as an action of high value and importance. People would rather watch videos than read long posts about your products. Let's face it...people like information to come easy.

2. Links Links automatically generate a short summary and picture from the page you're linking to, which makes your post stick out a ton more than a typical text post.

3. Encourage Interaction Asking for input, suggestions, or opinions is a great way to get your fans to interact with your page and company. Making sure people understand that you value their input is a huge part in the success of your business.

4. Be Personable It doesn't always have to be business! Wishing your fans a happy holiday or to have a nice weekend goes a long way to get people to value your company and it's products and services. Be a friend before you try selling them something and your sales pitches will go a lot further.

5. Post During the Social Media Rush Hour There have been thousands of studies on when the best time to post is, but in our experience, posting between 3 and 5 pm is by far the best time. We think this is true because people are getting done with work and logging into Facebook to check on what is going on. Numbers have shown that Facebook traffic almost doubles between these hours.

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New .xxx domain names- How will they effect my business or trade mark?

ICANN (The domain name governing body) has recently announced the release of .xxx domain extensions. Members of the adult entertainment industry are now submitting registration requests for domain names with the new .XXX extension which correspond to their existing domain names and trademarks.

Many of our clients have received solicitations from domain registrars encouraging them to file an application to block their domain from the .xxx extension with costs for this service between $200-$1,000 per year.

I'm not a lawyer but here is my opinion on this:

As the Internet grows ICANN is going to keep coming out with extensions (.biz. net .xxx).  I feel that it's a waste of time and money to keep buying up extensions just to protect your brand. People looking for a legit product or service won't be typing in yourdomain.xxx they Google you or use the domain printed on your marketing materials.

At Foremost Media, we own the .com, .net and .biz extensions and we use them for different purposes like a support site, email and server routing. I wont be blocking ForemostMedia.xxx. In my opinion this is a tactic by domain registrars to get you to spend money. I would also believe that .xxx sites would be the subject of heavy filtering on search engines so unless your looking for porn they I just don't see .xxx domains popping up on a Foremost Media searches.

If you do decide to pass on blocking your the .xxx version of your trademark or domain ICANN also provides opportunities to challenge trade mark violations in domains down the road via their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy ("UDRP").

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When to Tweet

I read a great article about when to tweet by Andrew Phelps who was basically reaping a presentation from Dan Zarrella so for those of you with  a short attention span like me here is my summary of Andrew's article that summarizes Dan's presentation.

When and how often to tweet - A few key takeaways:

• If your goal is more followers Tweet More: Twitter’s A-listers — those with the most followers — tweet an average of 22 times a day
• If your goal is more visitors to your site tweet less - accounts that share two or more links an hour show a dramatically lower clickthrough rate than those who share no more than one
• The trick is to reach people when the noise of the crowd has died down. - That time is the afternoon when news sites are slower and on the weekend
• Retweet activity is highest late in the work day, between 2 and 5 p.m.
• Check out TweetWhen to find out what time of day is the best time to tweet for you. Turns out my prime time is Thursdays at 10PM- I guess I have some late night followers @jonballard
• It's ok to tweet the same links two or three times a day- change up the verbiage and let it rip.

Here are Dan's Power Point Slides: The Science of Timing

 

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Facebook Losing Millions of Users

Over the past month, there have been several national publications that have been reporting on the decline in user on the infamous social networking site Facebook. In response to the growing reports, Facebook released the following statement.

"From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source of tracking the overall growth of Facebook. "

Recently, CNN interviewed social media expert and author Paul Gillin about the sudden decline in the social media outlet that has changed our lives more than we know. Gillin doesn't agree with Facebook's claim that these reports are inaccurate based off of their methodology stating, 

"Facebook has never criticized the methodology before. The fact is that the methodology that was used to determine these numbers has been consistent and has shown about a 4% decline in U.S. membership over the last month."

So if not for the inaccurate methodology, and Facebook really is losing ground, what could be the possible factors? 

College Graduates: Originally, Facebook was actually limited to college students.  You needed an active college email address to become a member. College age students also now make up a vast majority of the active users on Facebook. So why would they delete their accounts? Graduation! Each year, Facebook experiences a loss of users due to the fact that students who are graduating college are on the job hunt, and don't want potential employers seeing pictures of them doing keg stands on the internet.

Privacy and Bullying Concerns: There is a growing number of parents that are concerned with their children being on the internet and having pictures and tons of information about them out there for anyone to see. The trend has been parents refusing to let their children even be part of Facebook until they are of legal age. Bullying online has also become a growing concern for children and parents alike. Access to a child's interests and every move is perfect ammunition for bullies to hound and badger fellow classmates online.

Law of Diminishing Returns: Facebook has reached every nook and cranny of the world, especially the United States.  Over half of the U.S. population has a Facebook account currently, meaning the room for growth has started to hit it's sealing meaning Facebook has had to focus on expanding overseas to other markets.

Spam: We all have experienced this in some way or another on Facebook. We don't want to see our friends high scores on Farmville or Mafia Wars 30 times in an hour. Facebook has started to implement privacy and publishing restrictions customizable by individual users as to what is posted on their wall or Status Feed to help reduce this, but it's inevitable to continue.

So our fellow Facebook junkies, what do you credit for the diminishing users on the world's #1 social media site? 

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How much traffic do you need to make money with Google AdSense?

Recently we have built quite a few sites that offer freeware software or free content on a subject matter with an advertiser monetized publishing model and the majority of these clients are looking to AdSense as their revenue source.  For those of you that don't know Google AdSense is:

"Google Ad Sense As defined by Google- An ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis"

One question I often here is:

How much money will I make with AdSense?

With our clients permission we took a look at the Click Through Rates and the Cost Per Click on 3 different sites (Golf, Health and Wellness and Hunting) going back to 2007.  We averaged the Cost per click and the Click Through Rates across the three sites.  It is important to note that the placement of the ads and the color of the ads is different on each site but all 3 sites have ads on all the pages in very visible areas.

Year	Click Through Rate (CTR)	Clicks/ 20,000 Page Views	Cost Per Click	Earnings/20,000 Page Views
2011	1.13%	226	.30	$67.80
2010	1.58%	316	.32	$101.12
2009	1.22%	244	.28	$68.32
2008	1.93%	386	.21	$81.06
2007	3.00%	600	.18	$108.00

So what is this chart telling us?  For one thing people are clicking on far less ads today then they were in 2007.  The second big thing that jumped out to me is that cost per click is way up from .18 cents in 2007 to .30 cents in the first quarter of 2011 (Across these three sites anyway).

So back to the original question (How much money can I make with AdSense?)-  The three sites we looked at average around 3 pages per visit so it takes around 6,666 people to the site to generate 20,000 page views.  In 2011 that is about a penny per visitor.

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Why Facebook Fans are Valuable and How to Properly Supply Them with Marketing

They are as common in every day life now as eating, sleeping, and breathing. They are in magazines, on commercials, in stores; literally, everywhere we go. They are the begs and pleas from companies of all types to become a fan or "like" their Facebook page. Most people just tend to think, "What are we in high school again where everything is a popularity contest and the more people you know the better?" Well, in a way, yeah.

What good can having more Facebook "likes" do for you business? So, someone takes a mere 2 seconds out of their day to click "Like" on your page. Big deal, right? It is a big deal! These people are voluntarily electing to opt-in to your future posts.  This means they are subjecting themselves to your marketing efforts at your will. So every time you make a post or an update on a special, all of your fans are given the opportunity to see the special, and then they can easily, with just a few clicks, post it for their friends to see as well.

"Expand the reach of your business beyond the reaches of you location and much further than traditional advertising could ever take you with a Facebook Fan Campaign from Foremost Media"

If their friends like the deal that means a few things:
1) They'll more than likely participate in the deal and spend money with you
2) They'll "like" your page on Facebook, further expanding the reach of future posts
3) They'll share future deals or news with their friends, and the cycle continues.

• -On average, fans spend an extra $71.84 they would not otherwise spend on products they describe themselves fans of
• -Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand
• -Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends

Keep Fans Interested!
Now that we know why these fans and likes are important to your online success, what are the best practices to continue to keep fans interested and entice other people to become fans.

1) Be Personable: You're running a business, but you're on Facebook, a SOCIAL network.  Make posts like you would on your own personal Facebook page. Make posts that aren't always about business.  Wish them a good weekend or a Happy Holiday! Be funny (without being offensive), be inviting, and most of all, just talk like you're a human and NOT marketing verbiage read off of a piece of paper.

For Example:
-Don't: "Our 3400 Series of Swing Sets are built with durable wood and quality metal parts. Visit our website to purchase today!"
-Do: "The weather this weekend is supposed to be sunny and warm!  Get your kids out of the house and try out our 3400 Series of Swing Sets. 10% this week only! Now that's what we call a great family weekend!"

2) Be Professional: After all, you are running a business. Make sure your spelling is accurate and you always present yourself as a high quality company. If I'm someone who's never heard of your company, what am I going to think the very first time I visit your page and read your posts?

3) Entice Interaction: The most successful Facebook campaigns are those that get fans to interact with the page. Ask questions about things having to do with your company, or be personable (again) and ask questions like "It's going to be a gorgeous weekend! What does everyone have planned?"  The more you can entice readers to respond and interact with you on a positive note, the more likely they'll remember you when they need your goods and services.

4) Be Interesting: Don't post things that don't make any sense to anyone that isn't in your industry.  Speak to people using the most understandable terms. Use things that are unique and interesting to catch their attention and again entice them to interact. Your company is special, make sure people can see why you're different than the rest.

5) Do NOT Overdo It:  People have chosen to be submitted to your marketing and thoughts at YOUR will. But this doesn't mean you want to flood their Facebook Pages with updates from your company. Making a schedule or at least a pattern of releasing posts or updates is very important.  Give people what they want, but don't force feed them. Making a schedule to post something new 2-3 times every week is good for some companies, but once a day may be more appropriate for others.  Getting a feel for the type of information people want and the frequency they want to receive it is essential.

Interested in Starting a Facebook Fan Campaign with us and Igniting your Facebook Page? Click Below!

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Do Outside Blogs Help Your Websites Search Engine Rankings?

One of the questions we get quite often around here is "Does having a blog for my company help my search engine rankings?"

My answer is Yes- a blog can absolutely help your search engine rankings. With that said let me be clear- Manipulation of search rankings is not the reason to start a blog. I know what your thinking, "Jon, you just totally contradicted yourself". Let me explain: 

If your going to do a blog it needs to be a good blog with valuable content that is related to your core business.

By design blogs do a lot of things very well and when used regularly and correctly can help you earn better search engine rankings. In fact setting up a blog on a different domain like .blogger.com or .wordpress.com can often achieve rankings faster than a brand new websites. Here is why- AGE - Most search engine experts agree that the longer your domain has been registered the better it will rank. When you set up a blog using a subdomain like .wordpress.com or .blogger.com (Two sites that have been in existence for a long time) and age of your blog's domain makes Google Happy!

Here are a few more reasons to start a blog for your business:

• Blogs invite user comment which essentially keeps content fresh and fresh content makes Google Happy.
  
• Blogs are often easier to publish to than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often and fresh content makes Google Happy.
  
• A blog is a great place to post content that is related to your business but just doesn't quite fit into the professional nature of your website and this type of related content that links to your website makes Google Happy.
  
  Note- When creating a new blog post, be sure that the content in the post offers valuable content. If your blog post is realted to a service or product your company provides link to that product or service from your blog post. This is one of the biggest benefits of a blog. You can generate good related content and link it to your site. The other obivous benifit is that your blog can send your website visitors. Remember, people will be more likley to click on the links in your blog if your blog offers value. 

The bottom line is a good blog with links to your site can and will improve your link popularity, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings and that makes your bosses happy!

Here a great resources on increasing blog traffic:

• 21 Tactics To Increase Blog Traffic

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SEO for Local Businesses

Foremost Media Local SEO for Businesses

Every day more and more people are putting away that big yellow phonebook and turning to local internet searches in their hometown. According to a recent article published on EntireWeb.com, research has shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of households do some kind of search for a local product or serviceEVERY SINGLE DAY! What does this mean for your local business? It means you need to be in the right places when people are searching for your business.

"It's a GOOD THING that you're a small business, because that means we can position you to compete against only those businesses within your area, not any national businesses or coporations" 

3 Steps to Local Business Success

Site Optimization Just as any SEO program, local or not, you need to make sure that your website is doing everything it can to be detected by seach engines when someone in your local area is looking for a business with the services you offer. We make sure your site has the location and service area of your business in all the places the Google, Bing and Yahoo look for. We're talking page titles, footers, meta tags and much more that is imperative that you include your address and service area. We help you find the keywords that people are searching for already within your industry and transform your pages and site structure to conform to the things that search engines look for when ranking these terms. Doing this is your way of telling the search engine "I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!" "I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!" -Keyword Research & Analysis -Page Titles -Header and Footer Adjustments -Link Building

Social Media It doesn’t matter where you go, Facebook and Twitter are EVERYWHERE! Most local companies we talk to think this is stuff for the big wigs at giant corporations and thehigh money rollers on Wall Street…WRONG! If social media is built for anyone, it’s built perfectly for local businesses like yours. Running a local business is all about building and maintaining a good relationship with your customers and what better a place then being able to let them know about specials, sales and anything new then in their own home or on their smart phone.  Facebook is making it possible to offer discounts and coupons for those who frequent your store, sent directly to their computer or phone. Being able to reach out and interact with your customers when they aren’t even in your store or at your shop is extremely powerful. So let us help you build your Facebook and Twitter pages and we’ll show you the power of maintaining relationships with customers outside the walls of your business, and how easy it can be.

Google Places Getting Found Online by People in Your Community -Help customers find your business on Google -Show photos, respond to reviews, offer coupons and more -Get insights to make better business decisions When you search Google or Yahoo for a product or service with location phrases in your keywords (Janesville web design, Rock County heating & cooling, etc.), you will see the search engines display a map at the top of the search results with up to 10 “Local” search results. Below is an example of a local search on Google for “Janesville Wisconsin Web design.” The first ten listings are local Janesville Web Design companies, followed by natural listings. New Features of Google Local Search Google Tags: Want to help your business stand out from the competition? Add Google Tags, a new advertising feature, to your Google Places Local Search account: Tags are yellow markers that allow you the business owner to promote important aspects of their businesses. Scroll over tags on Google or click the sponsored link to view coupons, photos, or other select features. Get more customers  Save time advertising  Control your budget  Service Area: Let potential customers see your service area to show the reach of your company’s services and products Some companies operate from a home address, but offer services and products far beyond the reach of the business’ front door. Now you are no longer are you limited to only list your business location and address. You can now show customers searching for your services your service area customizable specifically for your business by location or distance from your business address. We offer all of this for a one time fee of $425! Sign up for our Local SEO package today and start attracting more local customers! (608) 758-4841 and ask for our SEO Expert Aaron Manogue!   For more information on getting started with Google Local and to start getting your business found online locally, contact Foremost Media at (608)758‐4841 or to speak with our Social Media & Search Engine Marketing expert Aaron Manogue, email him at amanogue@foremostmedia.com to see what Foremost Media can do for your local business TODAY!

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The Best Link Building Letter Ever

Let me preface this post by saying that building good quality links to your website is one the most effective things you can do to get better search engine rankings.  Apart from the actual content on your site much of where your positioned in the search engine rankings depends on the number of good quality related links to your site.

Here at Foremost Media we manage a lot of websites for a lot of different companies and there is hardly a day that goes by when I don't get an email from someone working on a link building campaign.  Typically those folks look at the "Whois" information (Domain Registration Records) for one of our clients sites and some how end up in my email box (Technical Contact).  Most link campaign letters sound something like this:

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
Reciprocal link request

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
I'm the webmaster of a MyWebsiteHere website at www.mywebsitehere.com

We are interested in putting a link to your site and we ask in return that you put a link to our website with the following information: (Info Deleted for blog post) 

Please give us a title, a description and an address to link to. We will put a link to your website, in the relevant region, as soon as you agree to the exchange 

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us and please identify the website you are representing if you are a third party representative.

Today I received a really well written link request from a company claiming to be from a "Cancer Center Advocacy Website" (A specific type of cancer that has a lot of advertising around it):

GOOD EMAIL LINK BUILDING SUBJECT LINE (Almost):
Fire Sfaety Resource (They Spelled Fire Safety Wrong but other then that the letter was really pretty good)

GREAT EMAIL LINK BUILDING BODY:
Hi,
I was browsing through state fire associations online and I like that you have a section dedicated to fire safety/ health resources at myclientswebsiteaddress.com  (One of our fire department clients).

My name is Real Persons Name (I deleted it for the purpose of this post but a real name is a nice touch) and I'm the Public Awareness Coordinator for the "Cancer Center" (Name Changed Here). We understand that local fire departments are tasked with keeping the community safe. Thus, as a public service, we are teaming up with fire departments across the country to help educate the nation about the dangers of asbestos and how to avoid it. This can include how to spot asbestos (pictures), common locations, how to test the air, and even asbestos information specific to your community. 

I noticed you currently have some mesothelioma information on your site. I would be honored if you would explore our site, provide us with feedback, and consider using our site as a resource on your links page as an additional resource.

Anything you can do to help us spread awareness would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for the information you provide to your community. I look forward to hearing from you and have a great afternoon! 

Best Regards,
Real Persons Name (Once again I deleted the real name)    
Public Awareness Director

I can't confirm or deny this next statement but my guess is that the "Cancer Center" is not a real place but rather a website built with the sole intention of generating leads for lawyers.  While the site does contains a ton of great info on Mesothelioma it also contains some not so subtle links to receive a free informational packet on Mesothelioma.  Anyway, that's not the point of this post so let's get back to the good link building email.  Here are the key things I think this email does right:

1.  It's not a hard sell- They appear to be offering me some help.
2.  It's from a real person with a real title.
3.  It's actually targeted at a page on my clients site that is relevant.
4.  The email is actually tailored to my clients industry (Fire Departments).

I hope you find this post interesting.  I would guess that the odds of successful link building would be much higher for the "Cancer Center" then the firsts email example I gave.  For the record I'm not a big fan of spam emails to webmasters requesting links but as I said before incoming links are very important to search engine marketing.  My best advice to you is "If you really want to build good links build GREAT CONTENT and folks will link to it naturally!"

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Multiple Language Sites Done Right

Over the past year the Foremost Media team has completed over a half dozen multi language website development projects. At the start of each of these projects one of the most common questions we receive is "Should we build the site with all the languages on the same domain or you use local domains for each language (example.de, example.it,example.nl, etc.)?"

Google's Matt Cutts answers how webmasters should handle local content of a website.

One message that we got loud and clear form this video is that if your thinking about going the easy route and using an auto-translation tool to generate your translation websites Google might consider that spam.

According to Matt (Google) when ever possible, it's best to put your translated content on separate international domains. Doing this sends a clear message to the search engines about what language/country your website is targeted at.

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QR Codes Have Come Of Age

So how is your company using QR Codes?  Do you know what a QR Code is?  I recently read an article about how over half of the connections made to the internet on any given day in 2012 will be on a mobile device.  We have been using QR Codes in our written proposals for the last few months.  Below is an example of one of the little graphics we use in our presentations:

The time has come to take another look at these unique codes.  Your going to be seeing a lot of these guys!

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SEO Basics Episode 1 Keword Research | Foremost Media

SEO Basics Episode 1 Key Word Research | Foremost Media


Tune in and watch the Foremost Media team as we break down the steps involved in getting your site to rank well on the search engines. In this episode we discuss keyword research. Key word research is one of the first steps in the search engine optimization process and is often overlooked by webmasters. Jon Ballard breaks down some of the keyword basics and provides links to several tools used by our professional Search Engine Marketers to do Keyword Research.

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Have a Google Adwords campaign? Beware of "Invalid Clicks" or "Click Fraud"

Recently we had a client who we run a large Adwords campaign for that asked us, "Why are all of these credits to my account appearing on my statement for Google Adwords as "Invalid Clicks"? An "Invalid Click" is defined by Google as:

"Invalid click activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings, and for which we decide not to charge the advertiser. This includes, but is not limited to, clicks or impressions generated by a publisher clicking on his own ads, a publisher encouraging clicks on his ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software"

So since we clearly aren't going through and clicking on our own ads to run our cost up, what does this mean? Clearly there are certainly going to be instances that people click the ads and accidentally double click them or maybe they click the ad and then bookmark your page, meaning the cookie that Google puts into their browser on that page turns into a "click" each time they go back to your page.

But then there's the darker side of it all. Our client sat down with us and went over his Adwords invoice and there were typical "invalid click" credits to his account for $.10-.60 at a time.  These are obviously from the innocent double clicks or something of that nature. Then we spotted a few credits that seemed extremely suspicious to us. Two credits between $100-150; a considerable amount of money especially considering daily budgets are rarely set any higher than $50-100/day.

This meant that someone, more than likely a competitor, was purposely going and clicking our clients ads hundreds even thousands of times in order to reach their daily budget, thus shutting down the ads for the day.  They could have been doing so in many ways: paying someone to sit there and click the ads (Yes, there are companies out there that pay people to do this), sitting there themselves and doing it, or paying for a bot to go through and automatically click the ads until they don't appear anymore.

The client was very upset by this (and rightfully so) and wanted to know what action he could take to figure out who it was and take further action if necessary. Google offers little help on this end due to privacy laws in finding out who or what (bots) was causing the invalid clicks. Basically we were left with the following answer from Google (This is only a synopsis of what Google sent us):

"WHO IS CLICKING ON YOUR ADS : We are not able to release any information on the users that are clicking on your ads. However, if you have access to your site's web logs, they will often contain information on the IP addresses of the users that are clicking on your ads. You can obtain this information from your webmaster. 

HOW GOOGLE DEALS WITH INVALID CLICKS : The security of AdWords advertisers is a top priority for Google. Please be assured that we will continue to monitor all clicks on your ads to prevent abuse. For more information about the steps we take to combat invalid click activity, please visithttp://www.google.com/adwords/adtrafficquality/overview..html"

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How secure are your passwords?

Hackers are getting more sophisticated all the time.   Let's look at a few common passwords and the maximum time it would take a hacker to figure out each password using a simple key search attack:

Passwords using just numbers (0123456789):

• 2-4 number passwords etc: Less then 1 Second
• 5-6 number passwords:  About 10 seconds
• 7 number passwords: 17 Minutes 

Passwords using the standard alphabet all lower case or all upper case (abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxyz):

• 3 letter passwords: Less then 2 Seconds
• 4 letter passwords:  Less then 46 Seconds
• 5 letter passwords: 20 Minutes
• 6 letter passwords: 8.5 Hours
• 7 letter passwords: 9 days

Passwords using a combination of numbers and letters all upper case and all lower case or all upper case ( 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxyz):

• 3 character passwords or less: 4 Seconds or less
• 5 character passwords: 1.5 Hours

 Passwords using letters and numbers with mixed upper and lower case combinations:

• 4 characters: 24.5 Minutes
• 5 characters: 1 Day
• 7 characters: 11 Years

Below is a list of some of the most common passwords used on the internet:

• 123456
• 12345
• pass
• iloveyou
• password
• abc123 

By avoiding common passwords and using a combination of letters and numbers in both upper and lower case you can greatly reduce your risk of getting hacked.  Throw in a unusual character like a $ or ! and your odds are even less of being hacked.  Most experts recommend a minimum of 7 characters as well.

Learn more about password strength here

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