Internet Marketing News – Search Engine Marketing

No two email advertising campaigns are alike, just as no two email messages are alike. A good email marketing campaign consists of many different ingredients. These ingredients include proper wording, a strong call to action, and identifying and attending to your target audience’s needs, wants, and desires. Do you know what good email advertising is? Can you identify it when you see it?

Good vs. Bad Email Advertising

Good email advertising makes you read on. It is the type of email advertising that encourages you to click on an email because the subject line is enticing. Email advertising done right ensures you not only open the email, but also read it and click through to the site or purchase a product or service.

How do you get to that point? Any good email advertiser knows that you have to figure out how to inspire people if you want to get them to buy your products and services. How do you do that? It isn’t as hard as you may think. Here are some tips for creating great messages as part of your email advertising campaign. Keep in mind that email advertising should be included as part of a comprehensive Internet marketing campaign.

* First, get personal. It is difficult to connect with a target audience through a computer, but start by greeting your prospects, and then identifying with them. To do this, figure out what needs you can fulfill for your prospects, and then define them.

* Next, stay personal. People want to feel like you care about them, and are not just selling a product or service. One effective tactic is storytelling. People like to read stories – but only if they’re plausible. If you continue a storyline through the course of several email advertising messages, most people will keep reading just to find out what happens.

* Make sure your sales copy is not over the top. People don’t like to be harassed when they enter a retail store by sales personnel. The same is true of email advertising. No one wants to open an email message, only to be bombarded by a sales pitch right away or by a call to action BEFORE you get to know him or her. While your email messages should always include a call for action, make sure you approach your prospects gently – at least in the beginning when you are trying to establish a relationship.

Mobile Internet is one of the biggest Internet phenomena of recent times. Most of us have logged into Facebook at some stage and seen that ’154 friends use Facebook Mobile!’. As smartphones become more affordable, the websites that are designed for mobile use will fast become the most-trafficked sites. Today we check out some top tips from Internet marketing services for integrating mobile strategy into your main SEO campaigns.

How mobile websites differ from the standard
With a maximum of 4 x 3 inches of screen space, just about everything that’s on a website needs to change! It isn’t just that more scrolling is required for people to get the same information – some features don’t show up at all, and some essential parts of your website (like your ordering form or contact page!) may not work properly on mobile devices. You’ll need to re-design your:
* Information architecture
* Copywriting – should be condensed to main points only, no filler
* Call to action strategy. You’ll need to have a strong focus on ‘getting things done’ on your website – because your users probably will also

A good mobile internet marketing service will also collaborate with your web designer to make sure essential features are implemented – clickable phone numbers, an auto-redirect from your standard site to your mobile site when somebody types your main address in from a smartphone, allowing people to select from drop down boxes rather than requiring them to type on those eency weency keypads… etc!

Mobile Internet marketing is more retrospective
Standard Internet marketing is mostly about getting people to your site (assuming you’ve done a decent design job, etc!). Mobile Internet marketing is about keeping people happy on your site once they’ve already used it, so they come back again and again.

Pay attention to Google Suggest
One of the main drivers behind the implementation of the Google Suggest feature is the fact that the average mobile search query is 15 characters long, but takes 30 keypresses to enter! People truly hate those keypads, and so are using the predictive search function more and more. Pay attention to the keywords that pop up in Google Suggest if you want to get ahead in mobile search!

Mobile Internet marketing services are certainly in a brave new world … but if your business is one of the first to try navigating it, you’re guaranteed ‘pioneer’, ‘innovator’ and ‘awesome’ status!

The Internet is a pretty amazing piece of technology. It’s not really amazing that there is data stored in machines all over the world that are accessible via phone lines (or maybe it is, just a little!). What’s really amazing is the ways that people have found to make that data, that connection, and a tiny bit of programming knowledge work for them. We’re at a stage where it is possible to play multiplayer customizable games online, just about read your customers thoughts through web analytics … and yes, even send targeted traffic (people who are quite likely to be interested in your products and services) directly to your site. Most people think it’s too good to be true … here’s what everyone wants to know about targeted traffic!

1. How do the visitors get there?
Most targeted traffic providers run a wide range of very specialized websites, each with decent SEO results and solid through traffic already. When you buy targeted visitors, the visitors may either click on a link from a site that is an outlink-only site, or simply be redirected from a relevant but expired domain.

2. What makes the traffic targeted?
Your traffic will already be searching for keywords that are relevant to your business. Much better than paying for clicks from people who have no natural interest in your business!

3. Is the most expensive targeted traffic the best?
Not necessarily! Just like any consumer experience, pricing for targeted traffic is determined by a huge range of factors. Pricing doesn’t necessarily translate to quality.

4. How can I see how many visitors I’m getting?
Most targeted traffic operators give you their own stats package, and you can check their stats against your own web analytics also. Bear in mind that technical differences can cause some discrepancies.

5. How long does it take to get the visitors to my site?
That depends entirely on the targeted traffic campaign you have chosen. Some providers will offer you a time limit of 7 days, 14 days, 30 days … anywhere up to 6 months. Targeted traffic providers with a small network of specialized sites for redirection will take a little longer to deliver your visitors – that doesn’t mean they’ll be any lower ‘quality’, though.

Business email marketing is seen by some as a low-return strategy, and by others as an outdated medium now that Facebook and Twitter have come about. Yet there are literally thousands of businesses out there that are reaping the rewards of business email marketing every week … and plenty of list subscribers that feel their heart jump a little whenever a blog post or special message lands in their inbox from a particular company. Today we look at why business email marketing is definitely NOT an outdated Internet marketing technique … and why it should actually be at the centre of your social media strategy.

Email marketing is more intimate
The least intimate interactions of all on the net are those on social networking sites like Facebook. Status updates are generalized, messages can be viewed by anyone, etc. Microblogging is necessarily a little more personal, and if you have a personal or company-based blog, this gets more personal still as it allows for individual comments and responses, and offer mostly opinion-based, individually toned content. However, email content can be fully targeted, customized to suit the receiver, and can start a dialogue if you let the user know where to direct replies.

Email marketing doesn’t depend on third-party sites
When you set up a Facebook page, you’re depending on Facebook to maintain a secure site, offer options that allow your company to act in a way consistent with your corporate value, etc. You’re also expecting that the site won’t find an arbitrary reason to take down your content (as often happens with YouTube), and won’t change their terms of service in a way that doesn’t suit you. Business email marketing depends on nothing except having a valid email address.

Business email marketing is more exclusive
If you save your best deals and price offers for your business email marketing, people will soon come to value those little segments of their inbox highly! Business email marketing offers the opportunity to give your communications real value, beyond being another ad that people have to endure.

We’ve been talking recently about how web directory submissions are essential for making sure you stay ahead in the search engine rankings … and also why quality trumps quantity for directory submissions every time! We’ve been looking at what makes a good directory; today we’re going to hop the fence and check out how to diagnose a bad directory. Bear in mind as you read that each of these characteristics, taken alone, does not definitely signal that a directory is ‘bad’. For instance, DMOZ is just about the most general directory on the web. However, when you start combining three or more of these characteristics on a single site, Google starts to get a sense that a directory’s intentions may not be honorable. At worst, that can actually affect your site’s rankings; at best directory submissions to these sites are a waste of time. Here are the magical 10 signs and signals!

They’ll take anybody
As a website owner, I’d prefer not to be listed on the same page with websites that install spyware, promote illegal activities, online pharma, adult or gambling sites.

Have a Premium membership option
Many sites where you can pay for better placement are frowned upon at Google.

Marketed on their link juice, not their traffic
Directories are great for link building, but should primarily be aimed at people! If a directory is well-trafficked, Google is unlikely to shut it down. If the site you’re considering a directory submission to is strangely silent on the matter of traffic and visitors, take it as a warning sign.

Marketed to webmasters, not site owners
Just like every other community on the web, webmasters have their own special places that they hang out. If directories have a lot of links placed in the ‘webmaster neighborhoods’, they are often more manipulative than useful.

They demand reciprocal links
If a directory wants you to link back to it, your directory submission is a waste of everybody’s time … including the site your submitting to!

They cater to many different categories
As we explored in earlier posts, directories about niche subjects are far more likely to be respected by Google (and not earn you a penalty for doing directory submissions to them!).