Category Archives: Internet Marketing News

How much should you pay for SEO Services?

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SEO cost

SEO?!?!?!! Seems like every website owner at one points hears about the need for it but, if you are a business owner and not in the Internet Marketing space, how would you lnow how much to pay for an SEO companies services?

There are many SEO payment models. Some are from Individuals and others from organizations. We will help you decide on the best model for your business and how to pay.

Lets get started…

Monthly Retainers- In monthly retainer model, the client has to pay a fixed amount every month for stipulated range of services. It’s the most common form of payment model due to its high ROI. The amount to be paid in this model depends on the size of the business and the array of SEO services selected. It may cost from $75 to $5000.

Contract Services at Fixed Price- This service is taken by companies to test the results of SEO efforts of the SEO agency. Usually all those who opt for monthly retainers go for this model first and try to figure out where does the agency stands in terms of efficiency. Usually, SEO service providers post all the services offered by them on their own sites along with price codes. These services generally include SEO copy writing (ranging from $0.15 to $0.50 per word), social media site setup (ranging from $500 to $3,000), link profile audit (ranging from $500 to $7,500) and site content audit (ranging from $500 to $7,500).

Project Based Pricing- This model is very much similar to the contract services model. As obvious by the name, in this payment model, custom projects are created specifically for each client individually. In this model, the prices of the services depend significantly on the projects. Due to variations in the projects, a huge difference in the SEO costs may be seen. It may range from $1,000 to $30,000.

Hourly Consulting- As suggested by the name, in this model one has to pay the agency as per the number of hours worked. It features hourly fee for SEO services and information. The best thing is that you don’t have to contact an SEO company for it; this service is paid by individual SEO professionals as well. Its price ranges from $100 to $300.

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5 Key Tips for Instagram Marketing for Businesses

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Instagram Marketing for Business? Yes! It’s not just about liking foodie pictures selfies!

Instagram continues to explode in popularity with now over 100 million active users. Instagram users deliver over 40 million photos per day, 8500 likes per second, and 1000 comments per second as well. The user engagement is extremely easy, usability of the app is simplistic, and users get lost in the seemingly endless news feed of photos. There is no Facebook clutter, no private message spam, and no advertising either (at least not yet…).

Third party developers have also joined the exciting trend of the app by engineering ground breaking analytics tools providing insightful data for social users and businesses alike seeking to monetize their growing Instagram networks.  Its relatively progressive API allows for easy integration and data mining from the app. Companies like Statigr.am have developed tools for growth monitoring, community insights, account history, and optimization tips.

Major brands such as Mercedes Benz and Coca-Cola have used Instagram to effectively drive mobile marketing campaigns to their user’s handsets. It’s a simple tool that when used correctly can be VERY powerful.

Just like other social networks that came before it, using Instagram as a part of your online marketing initiatives can help you showcase new products, before and after shots, photo contests based on hashtags and more. You can build a sense of a community in seconds and gain online exposure via sharing without much effort.

At WebitMD, we have put together our Top 5 Instagram secrets for marketing your business. Let’s get to them…

1. Building and Managing Contests

Building a contest is a sure way to build a solid follower foundation as a newbie to Instagram for business use. The key is to keep these followers engaged though in order to have a successful account.  The like of Justin Bieber does this well by offering giveaway to Bieber product and show tickets on his Instagram page. It keeps his following engaged and waiting to hear more. You may not be Justin Bieber but you can surely follow a contest model to build your own activity.

Use custom hashtags that is just for your company to allow people to also include that tag in their own postings. For example, if you are a fitness studio in Los Angeles giving away a FREE 1 Month membership use a hashtag like #1monthfreefitness when posting photos about the contest on your Instagram page. eConsultancy published a great post a few months back about some successful Instagram photo contests if you would like further examples/ideas.

2. Consistent Engagement via “Photo a Day or Week Calendar”

Not sure what we are talking about? Check out these photos…

photo-a-day

Create a challenge for the day or week where users should post a photo related to a specific topic only. Keep that topic in a hastag and keep the comments rolling. The user engagement will be extremely high!

 3. Hashtags!!!

Seems like a given right? Yes they are but don’t just flood each one of your photos with 10+ hashtags. Instead use hashtags in reverse methodologies to search for a particular topic that you are trying to promote yourself.

For example, if you are a yoga apparel company seeking to promote your new pants use hashtags like #yoga, #yogi, #yogalife, etc..

Top-hashtags.com will show you the most popular trending topics on Instagram that can help you get a good idea of what’s trending.

 4.  Cross Promotion

We have seen countless Instagram business accounts where they are not linked to your other social profiles. Link them!! Place your company LinkedIn profile or CEO’s Facebook account (if his/her pictures are kosher…) and drive users from one platform to the other. Do not place your personal email address on your Instagram profile but rather have people contact you via social networks.

 5. Be Personal BUT be Careful

Instagram is a platform of photos only. As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, so be careful what you post and how personal you get. It’s great to relate to your followers on a personal level and it’s also great to humanize the individuals behind your brand but just be careful and post only what you don’t mind the world viewing. Be genuine and be sure to craft a strategy for your Instagram followers that is suitable for your audience and will build your relationship for the future.

 

This blog was written by Mattan Danino, Director of Business Development at WebitMD Inc.

WebitMD Inc. is an integrated Internet Marketing & Web/Mobile Development agency based in Los Angeles and Orange County. Their creative team for web and mobile development utilize the latest in technologies while our Internet Marketing teams are internationally recognized in SEO, PPC, and Conversion Optimization services delivered to our robust clientele. We take a systematic approach to marketing and drive all our strategies by proven internal methodologies. Our client’s feedback over the years in business has always been that we provide an enterprise level marketing solution with a boutique agency feel. We like to keep it that way!

 

 

Why SMBs should focus on Search Rather Than Social Media Marketing?

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Search-engine-marketing-sem-concept

Social media is definitely a magnificent platform for businesses to establish their brands but when it comes to acquisition of new customers from small and medium businesses (SMB), it’s not that effective. Let’s see what makes searches a better option that social media marketing.

Search Takes SMBs to Those Customers Who Don’t Know Much About It- Not all the SMBs has enough resources to invest a great deal of money in brand establishment campaigns. Moreover, such campaigns take long time to pay back. The main purpose of SEO campaigns of any SMB is to acquire new customers. Search makes it possible. It takes the company or its brand to those who are currently not aware about the products and services offered by it.

Searchers Usually Convert into Customers- Obviously, social media is for socialization and searches are for finding something. Online searches are made by those who are looking for products and services offered by the company. So, it’s pretty obvious that people interested in the products are more likely to be turned into customers.

Searches Convey Contact Details- Search engines are very efficient platforms to convey the contact details of your business like phone number, address, email id etc. It will make proposed customers of your business to find your business and communicate with you easily. And as you know, interaction is the first step of any deal.

Social Media Marketing isn’t Everyone’s Cup of Tea- Most people think that social media marketing is very easy and low-cost but actually it isn’t. A good campaign of this type requires utmost concentration. It becomes even more difficult when you have to acquire new customers. A company which uses Twitter to tell its follower about the new year celebration at the office, no new customers are going to be impressed by that.

Search is the Most Effective Tool for Customer Acquisition- It’s been proven that searches are way more effective in creating new customer bases. Popularity of laptops, tablets and Smartphones has enhanced its effectiveness to a much broader extent. So it should be the foremost thing to be focused by SMBs. Usually these businesses don’t have much funds for marketing, in such a situation it would be better to invest in a proven tool.

Any SMB which is planning an SEO campaign must consider the above points! Don’t be left behind with an outdated strategy.

SEO mistakes that should be avoided at all costs

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Over the past few years SEO strategies have seen many changes and SEO optimizers seem to overlook some important issues. We have put them together here to try and help you out!

Seo Mistakes

Mistake# 1: Too rich anchor text links
After the penguin update by Google everyone knows that building rich anchor text links can spell danger for your site. A case post penguin update case study shows that it is possible for a new website to rank higher by few exact matches anchored links if they are from highly relevant pages on relevant sites.

Mistake #2: Too many links can lower your rank
Google’s algorithms are sophisticated and they keep records of various websites and know how many links a website generates on an average thus if you are building links at a very fast pace it won’t guarantee higher rankings of your website.
Building more than 1000 links in a day will surely make your website reach the zenith, but after a few weeks you will find out that your website has been pushed back and creating so many links was a waste of time and efforts. A few quality links can do the trick apart from this; SEO is a practice which needs dedication and perseverance. Continuous efforts and quality links will alone help you reap benefits in the long run.

Mistake #3: Building too many links to your home page is worthless
Wikipedia is a classic example of the point in question. Wikipedia is the sixth most popular site in the world which has only 1% of its links directed towards its home page and almost 99% of its links are directed towards the internal pages. The site is doing really well and is at the top of the SERPS pages for ages now. Thus directing links to the internal pages of your website will prove beneficial for its ranking.

Mistake #4: Thin content should be avoided
Mediocre or low quality content should be avoided at all times. Content which has no meaning, grammar and spelling errors, stale and uninformative content will never help your site move up the SERPS. A detailed account on the subject with informative and captivating content of about 2400 words will be considered by Google as good content. So be sure to research on this and you will see that Google is judging content by its length, information and quality provided.
Recent changes in the SEO practices should be closely monitored at all times to do justice to your hard work and efforts.

SEO turns into a long tail game. Are you keeping up with the changing trend?

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A lot has been spoken and written about the changing scenario of SEO. Experts, through blogs and other interactive forums, are suggesting the best ways of doing SEO in order to get maximum traffic to a website. So, let’s have an insight on the overall all conclusion proposed by different experts. If you are one among the many, who are in the habit of eagerly tracking your keywords to see the increased ranking of your website, then there is something that you must learn about. Those days are gone when tracking the ranking on the basis of keywords used to be effective enough. Now, the modern day SEO has changed in a long tail game, and if you are really willing to get the maximum traffic to your website then you must also focus on long tail SEO.

Long Tail SEO Strategy

Now, if you have any query regarding what is long tail SEO is all about then you can understand this as a strategy where low volume but high converting keywords are fused together to bring the major impact. For example, if you are an appliance repair service provider in California, then your prime keyword will be appliance repair in California. This is a high volume keyword and getting high rank with this keyword is costly and competitive as well, and at the same time the keyword is not converting. But if you use keyword like Mixer Grinder Appliance Repair California, then its’ a low volume word but high in converting; moreover getting rankings with this keyword won't be that competitive and less costly at the same time. Hence, this is basically what Long tail in SEO is, and one who is dealing with SEO must need to understand the changing track of SEO towards long tail keyword.

Long Tail Keywords Strategy

Now, what's the most apt way of using Long tail in SEO? Well reputed SEO experts are suggesting that you can use long tail SEO in the paragraph underlining your Info-graphics. Info-graphics are effective in kicking off the long tail SEO. But in relation to Info-graphics there are certain points t that one must keep in mind.

You must make the topic of your Info-graphic very unique in order to make it original and successful. Next, you must be very choosy in selecting the topic and must ensure that the topic benefit the readers. For instance if your info-graphics speak something like “how color affects purchase; it will more likely to attract your readers than the info-graphic that speaks about “which US brands spend the most on advertising”. You can make your info-graphic more interesting by using stats. Although you shouldn’t over crowd with use of stats but at least 5 to 7 main points will serve the purpose. Last but not the least you must get your infographs designed by good designer, who can provide you a unique look that will stand out.

Rest, content continues to be the best way to boost long tail SEO. The content has to be reader friendly and detailed. Next, you must utilize the social web as the prime platform to promote your content.

Are you all set To Start New Adwords Account?

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Thinking about a Pay per Click Campaign for your business? Here are the top points you should know before getting started:

1. Budget – Managing a budget is important in case of Adwords. To handle the budget rightly, you should go into determining your overall budget for the monthly PPC advertising campaign. From the overall budget, determine the amount you can allot for Google AdWords and then divide the total amount over the span of one month. Likewise, you can realize the daily budget for your AdWords campaigns. It is important that you pay heed to the displaying frequency of your ads. You must choose the standard delivery method so that your ads get spaced throughout the course of the day, based on your daily budget. In terms of ad delivery method, it’s important to make the deliverance “the right place at the right time.” Besides, there is ad scheduling through which you can specify hours of the day when your ads will get displayed.

2. Network – You must choose the right search network for displaying your ads. No doubt, getting a place for the ads in the Google search will be most rewarding. Other search network like AOL, and Bing.com from Microsoft also provide great search platforms that generally run at a lower cost per click (CPC).

3. Keyword Bidding -How much to bid on a keyword or phrase in your campaign is a cruicial part to the initial setup. Google can help you choose, setting and managing the cost bids but manual bidding is advised for more experienced users. Maximum CPC is the default bid, but you can always select your own cost bid or let Google for it for you with the Budget Optimizer.

4. Ad Serving – There are the major options for how you would like your Ad served once launched. If your any ad campaign is under-performing, then first you got to check your adwords delivery method for major settings such as; time of day to display, geographical settings, languages targeted, budget per day, and Ad rotation as well. Google will allow you to optimize your ads and rotate them evenly to better determine which Ad is preforming better and then display that Ad more often.

New WebitMD.com v3.0 Site is Live!

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We are excited to announce the launch yesterday of our latest 3.0 version of the WebitMD.com website.

Our agency has grown tremendously in the last 2 years and needed to revamp the site to depict that. We have big plans for 2011 including the launch of our Mobile SEO service in Q2.

Our new site includes our latest service offerings and NEW packages available for SEO, PPC, and Web Design projects. Follow our blog at www.WebitMD.com/Blog for all the latest industry news and company updates. You can also follow us on FB and Twitter with the links on the new site.

I hope you like the new site and any feedback is appreciated. Have a great week!

Contact Information:

WebitMD Sales
Sales@webitmd.com
Tel – (800) 601-2990

Location-specific Mobile Advertising on the Rise

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WebitMD offers solutions for small businesses to market on Andriod, iPhone, and Blackberry Platforms. Contact Us toady for more information!!

A recent study by JiWire, a Wi-Fi provider and mobile ad server, found that most users of its public Wi-Fi services spent more than 30 minutes a day using smartphone apps. 63% of users frequently use apps that require them to give their location to serve specific content. A little more than half were willing to give their location just to receive more relevant advertisements.

Over a third of respondents were more likely to click on a mobile ad that was customized for their specific location. Almost half said that it would not make a difference. Overall, 76% of users preferred ad-supported free apps over paid ones. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses desiring to utilize location specific advertising, as more than one-half of mobile device users had clicked an in-app ad, went to the advertiser’s website, or made a purchase.

Millennial Media, a mobile advertising network, found through a recent study that smartphones account for almost one-half of mobile ad impressions in the US. Even though more subscribers have feature phones, these users have less interaction with advanced mobile content, and therefore only account for one-third of mobile ad views.

iPhones continue to dominate ad impressions within the smartphone category, followed by BlackBerrys and Androids. Androids have seen that largest increase in ad requests, rising 72% month over month. March was the first month the Android phone was one of the three top smartphone operating systems. Requests were up 20% from Apple phones and 25% from BlackBerrys.

On other mobile devices, such as iPads, iPod touches and connected video gaming devices, Millennial Media found that those devices took a significant share of impressions. iPad impressions climbed 713% during the first full week the device was available for purchase. Numbers will only climb as the iPad and similar mobile devices continue to proliferate.

While Apple’s tight hold on the smartphone market continues, the Android has gained significant ground because of its high customer satisfaction and loyalty. Indications that Android also represents a robust mobile app platform also point to a greater share of mobile ad impressions in the future.

Measuring Online Marketing Effectiveness

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In a recent survey by Omniture, marketers stated that marketing cost, order size, and conversion rate were most important in measuring marketing effectiveness. However, measuring visits, page views, and click-throughs were easier to accurately measure. Therefore, click-through continues to lead as the top metric used in measuring online marketing success.

Similar measurement problems existed in mobile, social, and video channels. Overall, 80% of respondents stated that it was important to measure ROI from online activities, but only 31% could effectively do so. Respondents indicated that having a talented staff with expertise was necessary to effectively measure marketing effectiveness. However, lack of budget is indicated as the top reason they lacked the talent they needed.

Job Recruiting Moves from the Campus to the Internet

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As the Internet has become a huge repository of entry-level job advertisements, recruiters have pulled back from on-campus job fairs and recruiting efforts. A recent study by Monster.com found that over 90% of companies utilize online advertising for job recruiting. About 25% are also using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to advertise entry-level openings.

Monster.com also found that college students and recent graduates sought out friends and family (78%) and online job boards (67%) the most for job opportunities. Social networking sites were only utilized by 38% of respondents. However, this shows a huge gain over last year’s survey, when social networking sites were utilized only 15% of the time by new graduates.

While social networking sites continue to proliferate in their uses, the line has become increasingly blurred between public and private content. 55% of college job seekers said they have tailored their online profiles to make them more appropriate for viewing by potential employers.