Wednesday, Mar 10, 2010

Posts Tagged ‘b2b internet marketing’

Designing for Brand Identity

Posted by David Redfern in Blog, Branding, Design Wednesday, 3 March 2010 10:10 No Comments

Brand identity is probably the most critical element of retail and business design. As a packaging designer you must be able to offer branding services as part of your design services package. Brand identity is the overall graphic representation that people will associate with a company or product.

In todays market, competition for customers is fierce, so you can see why a strong brand identity is crucial for companies.

Business owners rely on design professionals to invest time into researching, defining, and ultimately building a brand that people can trust. One could say that branding is the foundation of your design and marketing campaign.

For graphic designers who are new to building brand recognition this article will highlight the research process that experienced designers who are successful at building brands will implement in their graphic approach before offering up any directions. When building brands it’s not simply a matter of creativity it’s a matter of doing the right research.

Whether you’re branding a product or a company you will need to put in a good amount of time doing research.

Ask yourself some key questions such as:

* What kind of company are you trying to establish a graphic representation for?
* Who are their clients?
* What is the company’s target demographic?
* What services do they provide, etc.?

The same applies to product branding.

* What kind of product is it?
* Is the product targeted at males or females and what age group?
* How should the product be associated with the company that is selling the product?

Once you’ve collected your preliminary data from your initial questions, filter through and analyze your information to really hone in on your target audience. The ultimate goal of branding is to speak directly to your target audience in order to motivate them to action. In order to do this you better be sure that your target market is clearly defined.

Establishing your target market means identifying who your audience is specifically. To help you find out who your target audience is exactly ask questions like:

* Where is my audience located geographically?
* What colors should be associated with the product or company?
* Who is my brands direct competition?
* What elements have made my competition successful?
* Who are my competitors targeting?

You can do a large amount of this investigating on line. The more accurately you can assess your target market the more effective your brand will be.

If you spend enough time properly researching answers to your questions you will find that you have provided yourself with a guide to direct your creativity in the design process.

Remember, every element of your design is something that will be associated with the business or product you are branding. These elements should evoke emotion, create a reaction, and will not only define the company but be a part of it for as long as it exists.

These may seem like very simple questions, but the trick is making sure that you spend the time to answer them properly.

Many designers throw the term branding around without a true understanding of what that term means or how effective branding is accomplished.

A strong brand builds relevance, credibility and establishes trust. A strong brand speaks to your target market – it motivates customers to act. When done correctly it establishes the company or product as an industry leader.

By answering a few core questions you will be provided with a system of guides to help direct you when it comes to the actual design process. This is your map to an effective brand.


Squidoo Can Play a Central Role In Any Social Media Marketing

Posted by David Redfern in Blog, Latest News, SEO Friday, 19 February 2010 13:00 No Comments

As a knowledge sharing platform, Squidoo can play a central role in any social media marketing, brand reputation or search engine optimisation campaign. From a business perspective, creating and maintaining a lens offers an opportunity to reach out to your target market on an informal level, sharing tips, knowledge and advice about company products and services.

Squidoo is very well rated to by the most popular search engines and is rapidly becoming too good an SEO opportunity to pass up. Within the lens you can add links back to your own web site so an authority lens can make a big contribution to better site rankings overall.

Getting Started

Get the basics out of the way – create a user account, log in and familiarize yourself with the easy to use dashboard. Click the ‘create a lens’ button and then decide on a name. At this point, you must keep basic SEO principles in mind. Your Squidoo lens is a chance to take up another spot on the search engine results pages so you’ll want to include your product name, company name and priority keywords if possible. Keep the title short and catchy.

Squidoo allows you to rate the lens in much the same way as films are rated – most will be suitable for all audience, but take time to read the other options just in case some material is unsuitable for certain audiences. At this second stage you’re also invited to choose your own Squidoo URL. Again, keep in mind SEO optimisation principles and branding considerations to give visibility a helping hand.

With the lens now named, you can start to add keywords. Although you’re limited to three initially, you can add more later so choose the most relevant three for the moment.

First Updates

When you complete the set up process, you’re presented with the basics of a good lens. Among the choices when you first begin to add content to your new Squidoo page are welcome text, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, a guestbook, Google Blog search and Amazon voting.

You probably won’t be able to complete each of the modules straight off (you may need to enlist the help of other departments or hunt down relevant pictures for example) but make an appointment to start populating the modules you don’t complete at this first pass. A good Squidoo lens will take a lot of time and work to create and maintain but it’s worth putting in the extra effort to give your page a chance of appearing in the SERPS. There are millions of mediocre lenses just as there are millions of blogs and community pages that were left to fade into obscurity after the first flush of enthusiasm. A mediocre page won’t contribute to your ranking positions or drive traffic to your web site though so do try and keep to a realistic update schedule.

Using Modules

Regular updates are essential but that doesn’t mean that you have to write reams and reams of text. Of course, if you have white papers or insights into any aspect of your industry or product use, it pays to add them to your lens but if you’re short on time, you can get creative with the pre-loaded modules that Squidoo offers. A great way to ensure cohesion of message is to link your Squidoo lens to your other social media outlets – you can do this by going to Add Modules at the top of the dashboard and then selecting the new content type you would like to load in.

The best lenses blend a variety of modules to create a useful, informative page that visitors will return to time and time again. Link to your eBay shop to generate additional revenue, add Twitter Follow or Lists to increase your Twitter followers, add Wikipedia knowledge, slideshare, even videos from Saturday Night Live.

Optimisation

Whatever kind of content you add, make sure to always include relevant tags for the post and link back to your own web site where appropriate. You can use HTML code within text modules, so choose anchor text wisely and try other optimization tips such as the use of H2 and H3 tags for longer chunks of text. Remember, you want to apply as many SEO techniques as possible to make your lens stand out in the SERPS. This will ultimately drive more traffic and brand awareness your way.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.


Why Link Architecture is a Crucial Part of Your Website Design

Posted by David Redfern in Latest News, SEO Friday, 19 February 2010 12:49 No Comments

In an ideal world, a search engine spider would start at the homepage of your site and crawl through each subsequent page in turn until it had processed every part of your domain. In practice, search engines can struggle to find each page. If your sitemap isn’t up-to-date, for example, and no inbound links have been built from external sites, a search bot may not know that a new page even exists. This is where SEO of your internal linking comes into play.

While search engines are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to crawl through a site and can follow text links, hyperlinked images, and image maps contained within graphics, they still struggle to crawl and follow dynamic HTML pages, JavaScript, and content built in Flash. If the search engines come across this type of content, they may stop their exploration and not crawl any deeper into the site. This is very bad for your SEO efforts, as the more pages crawled on the site, the more search results you will appear in. If the spiders can’t crawl through the whole site, you’ll inevitably be missing out on some listings.

Link architecture is a crucial part of your site design and search engine optimisation strategy . It controls the process of directing the flow of traffic from one page to the next. It can help address the problem of new pages not being found and be used to help search engine spiders circumnavigate their way around Flash or JavaScript road blocks rather than abandoning the site altogether. Equally importantly, good link architecture will ensure that your visitors can find the information they are looking for easily and enjoy visiting your site.

Text-based linking within your site should be intuitive. To ensure you’re building the best possible site for both better search engine rankings and the user experience, you must make it easy to find information and travel deeper within the site. If the visitor doesn’t use your sophisticated navigation system or click through to the sitemap, is there still a route through the site? If not, you may see a high bounce rate on certain pages. Similarly, a user clicking through an organic ranking, other external link, or selecting a paid advert will rarely land on the home page. If they miss this front door to the site, link architecture steps in to help them find their way from page to page.

Text links are not just for the human visitor. Keeping link architecture in mind when creating new content will also encourage the search engines to rank you a little more favorably. Using optimized anchor text, much like that used for inbound linking, is a great signal to the search engines what the next page is about. Using keywords in the text link helps them identify what they should be considering ranking the page for.

Particularly if your website does employ Flash or JavaScript based menus, use the Google Webmaster tools to check that the Googlebot is finding your newly crafted internal links.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.


Developing a Social Media Strategy for Success

Posted by David Redfern in Blog, Latest News, SEO, Selling Tips Friday, 19 February 2010 12:42 No Comments

To develop any business strategy, be it marketing, sales or operational, you must ask yourself what you are doing, what kind of environment you are operating in and what your goals are. Only by drilling down to the very essence of your organization can you develop a plan for moving forwards. Developing a social media strategy for search engine optimisation (SEO) success  follows the same pattern- it’s essential you know what you are doing, how you are doing it and most importantly, why.

Millions of businesses jumped on the social media express train over the last 12 months but, many of them do not know why they have a Facebook account or why it was so important that they have a presence on Twitter. Even those companies that have dedicated personnel in-house to work on their social media presence often struggle to justify the investment – they just know that they ought to be participating in social media, often as part of their SEO efforts. This mindset means that money and effort is being extended with no means of tracking progress, measuring return or monitoring conversions.

Social media in 2010 can be much more than ‘ought to be participating’ or ‘no idea why we are on Facebook’. 2010 can be the year that your organization develops a definitive social media strategy, with a clear what, where and why. As part of this, specific goals and objectives must be defined and definitive means of tracking progress towards them implemented. This knowledge, if dissimilated through the various layers of your organization could transform something you’re already doing to something that really starts to reap rewards and makes a positive contribution to your business practices.

About Footprints-SEO.com

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.


How to hire an Online Marketing Agency?

Posted by David Redfern in Blog, Latest News, SEO Friday, 19 February 2010 12:33 No Comments

If, despite your best efforts, your website is not making the inroads you would hope in the search engine rankings, it may be time to consider recruiting a online marketing agency like Footprints SEO.

The job of appointing a search engine optimisation company can be daunting if you have never worked with an SEO specialist, will likely make or break your online success. For many firms, their SEO is a sales tool so you’ll want to be sure you’re making the right decision. Hiring an online marketing agency can also be difficult if your own web site optimisation knowledge is basic as you do not want to be blinded by science or thrown off course by the use of technical jargon.

As we speak to hundreds of businesses throughout the UK, Europe and USA, we’ve compiled this guide of questions to ask.

1. What new SEO related skills and services have been recently developed?

Online Marketing consultancy is a crowded and competitive marketplace, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding companies to approach. Because SEO changes so quickly, you’ll want your new agency to be on top of their game. A great opening question is to ask the SEO agency you are considering what new techniques they have added to their optimisation repertoire in the last 3 months. Although search engines like Google keep their algorithms a closely guarded secret, a good SEO company will constantly be adapting and updating their methodology and services.

2. Can they offer an SEO site review?

If possible, ask agencies to produce a brief report focusing on problems and opportunities with your current website in search engine optimisation terms prior to signing an agreement. This doesn’t have to be a detailed report, a conversation about the site will suffice. Can the SEO consultant identify possible barriers to stronger rankings? Do they approach the site in a methodical and logical manner? Do they ask questions to get some background to the site and previous SEO efforts? You can request an SEO site audit from Footprints SEO here.

3. What kind of link building strategies will be used and what is their position on link buying and link bait?

The importance of an experienced link builder cannot be underestimated, so have a detailed discussion about the SEO firm’s preferred methodology and previous experience. Be sure to check that link building and off page optimisation is included in the package quoted as some Online Marketing agency representatives will quote separately for each SEO module so you may be looking at an extra cost. All Footprints SEO packages include link building.

Look for an emphasis on relevant links and tactics to increase inbound links from sources likely to drive good quality traffic to the site.

4. What kind of reporting and analytics packages will be used to track SEO results?

You’d expect any direct hire to be able to report back to you about job progress and tasks completed, so don’t expect any less from your new online marketing consultancy. Ask for a breakdown of reporting methodology and copies of dummy reports.

5. Will competitor analysis be used in on and off page optimisation?

Keeping an eye on the competition is a must in any well-executed SEO campaign, so you’ll need to know that your SEO consultancy can bring competitor analysis skills to the table. Ask for examples and a detailed breakdown of what will be included in the competitor research. It’s also worth checking that you can specify sites yourself to be included.

About Footprints SEO

Footprints-SEO.com is an internet marketing company whose priority is to make your organization rise above the competition, we are a group of talented and dedicated individuals with a passion for search engine optimization. We will custom-tailor marketing strategies that are right for you and your business, while ensuring top search engine optimization and web-site design.

Footprints-SEO.com has the answer to all your internet marketing needs.