The internet is used more and more by potential customers to make decisions on which brand of a certain product they will buy. If you are the owner of a company or are in any way responsible for the company’s reputation you need to be keenly aware of what is being said, by whom, and when. You should also be well versed in the practices you can use to combat negative information. Online reputation management is now a real part of business and will continue to be an important factor as more consumers log on.
Of course you may already have a stellar reputation. It is certainly possible that your sales representatives, support group, and any other customer-facing part of your business is doing there job quite well, and people may be singing your praises all over the internet, but you need to know for sure.
Of course you may be experiencing just the opposite. Whether you are enduing a reputation soiled by a real problem or rumor, you need to be aware of what caused the problem of why the rumor is being spread and you must understand what you can do to combat the negativity.
If you are going to run a successful business in today’s internet environment you will need to be aware of both the good and the bad things that people are saying about your products and services. You will need to recognize the way these comments can help to determine your company’s bottom line at the end of every month.
Today, all is takes is a grass roots effort, malicious or otherwise, by someone on one of the many social networks. These things often spread like wild fire as information travels fast on the internet, and people tend to gravitate to bad news or pile on when they feel a big business has slighted a customer in some way.
Managing your reputation online is actually a process. It is a combination of marketing strategies and and publicity. To overcome negative comments, factual or otherwise, you need a few things. You need a high level of visibility and you need high page rankings from the various search engines. These two things help to squash negative comments to the back pages, so to speak.
You must monitor the various outlets for public opinion at all times. Social networks and blogs are a good place to start. You need to take a hard look at what is being said about your business and, among other things, you need to protect your business trademark at all times and at all costs.
As you begin to look more at your strategies for online reputation management you will discover there are many companies who offer this service, They can help you maintain a good online reputation and they can also help you recover from a bad one should it become necessary. Search for these companies and learn more about the services they offer and put one to work for you. Good news travels fast. Bad news travels even faster, and you need to be ahead of the negativity at all times.
Online reputation management is an essential part of business and will continue to be as more clients and customers log on. Get exclusive inside information instantly in our Online Reputation Management for Doctors review.
The notion of sitemap is not a new one neither for search engine optimisation consultants nor beginners in SEO. However, it looks like not all online businesses understand the importance of having a sitemap as part of search engine marketing strategy.
Briefly, a sitemap is the map of your site. This should have one page where you should include the structure of your site, its sections as well as the links between them. They are seen as a vital way of communication with search engines. In robots.txt you tell search engines which parts of your site to include and which pages to exclude from indexing, whereas in your site map you guide search engines about the main categories, sub-categories and products in an orderly fashion. Complex sites with thousands of products need a well designed site map to enable site visitor understand the whole site in nut shell. You may create a HTML site map for the site visitors and an XML map for robots of search engines.
According to Sitemaps.org -
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
The webmaster can generate a Sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines. Since Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask use the same protocol now, having a Sitemap would let the biggest search engines have the updated pages information. The search engine submission process for your sitemap is very straightforward: once you have created the sitemap, you need to upload it to your site and notify search engines.
From a search engine optimisation perspective there are a number of benefits for using a Sitemap:
* Your website gains easier navigation and better visibility from search engines.
* You get the opportunity to have your content changes indexed faster. Through the sitemap you basically inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site.
* A Sitemap gives you more freedom regarding your relation to external links, which usually have the role of bringing search engines to your site.
* It can be of help with accidentally broken internal links or orphaned pages that cannot be reached in other ways.
* It is of high importance for new sites to have a Sitemap: it speeds the process of indexing pages.
* It is of great help in classifying your site content better. Although it does not mean the search engines will necessarily classify a page as belonging to a particular category or as matching a particular keyword only because of your sitemap, there is an increased likelihood that they would.
Using a sitemap is of great importance for both humans and spiders (such as GoogleBot). As mentioned above, it makes it user friendly for humans and easier for spiders to ’see’ it.
Syscomm are SEO consultants and a Internet Marketing Agency. For more information on Search Engine Marketing, Click here to contact us.
PPC search engine internet advertising is nowadays used by most companies that are trying to get the most out of their online presence. They are using pay per click advertising to reach their exact targeted audience and convince them to purchase from their brand. Also, having quite clear using guidelines, they are a good option for online businesses. However, the efficiency of pay per click advertising in terms of clicks and conversions is highly dependent on the quality of your ad copy. As search engine optimisation consultant we have decided to compile a list of tips and techniques that can help your ad stand out. Google, Yahoo and MSN offer their pay per click services to businesses, therefore the suggestions bellow are of great value for any of them:
1. The most important element of a PPC copy is considered to be the title. Try focusing on it and making it attractive!
2. Insert your targeted keywords in the ad title.
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3. Rely on your unique selling proposition (USP) when writing the ad copy. If your prices are low as compared to the others in the industry, then make sure you place prices in the title ad. If you have the widest variety of products, then emphasise this aspect in your ad.
4. Whenever possible, include a Special Offer in the ad text. People respond better when seeing any “Free” add-on offers in the ad title. One example could be: free delivery, free bonus software, or free 30-day trial.
5. Try to always include a Special Offer in the ad text. People respond better when seeing any “Free” add-on offers in the ad title. One example could be: free delivery, free bonus software, or free 30-day trial.
6. Use capitalization in the displayed URL if possible. It helps in getting your URL memorized easier.
7. Credibility indicators are important for your customers, so they need to be your priority as well.Try to add one. For example: 30-day money-back guarantee.
8. Use Google’s Keyword Insertion Feature. Through it, you can place a code into your ad copy that will auto-populate your ad with whatever search query is used, provided that particular keyword is being targeted in your ad group. The keyword insertion feature has the potential of getting more clicks, because generally people are tempted to click on an ad that exactly matches their search.
9. Pay attention to your competition. Research what your competitors’ are doing on their PPC campaigns and try to work on making yours better, distinct from theirs.
10. Never underestimate the power of language. Use clear, precise sentences. The language you use is of great importance.
Most search engines are by now offering pay per click advertising services. That is because they are giving online businesses the opportunity to reach their exact audience and promote their services to those directly interested.
SysComm International is a Social Networking Company Web Analytics, Online Reputation Management.
The number of social networking sites a business can use to promote itself and interact with existing and potential clients is very high at the moment. Just to mention few of the most popular at the moment: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Bebo etc. However, there is one social network with very unique features, due to its focusing on a particular niche. LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals with a huge potential of helping both you as a person and as a company. Some of the benefits one could get from having a complete and well developed profile on LinkedIn are: increase visibility, improve your connectability, enhance your search engine marketing results, increase the relevancy of your job search, ask for advice, as well as research one your competition, customers or partners.
According to the official statistics published on LinkedIn, the network
* Has more than 60 million members
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* A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
* Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members
The main steps to consider when integrating LinkedIn as part of your online marketing strategy are:
1. Create your complete profile!
When you will interact with others on LinkedIn, your profile will be the first item users will see. Therefore, it needs to be complete! Make sure you fill in all relevant information about yourself, your area of expertise as well as your experience.
Upload a professional photo of yourself. People tend to give more credibility to profiles with pictures and they engage more as well to those profiles.
Keep in mind that the better you optimize your profile, the more relevant it will be in the searches.
Therefore, follow some basic search engine optimisation techniques:
* Hyperlink using targeted keywords! Include in your profile URLs for your blog and your company, but customize them with your keywords. For example, instead of linking your blog to just ‘My Blog’, you can choose keywords such as ‘SEO blog’.
* Use keywords in descriptions! When writing your summary, specialities or experience, include your keywords, to make your profile more searchable.
* Include the links to your blog and website to your profile.
* Set up a vanity URL for your profile.
2. Build a strong network of contacts!
Once your profile is complete and well optimised, you need to start adding connections. First you can search for friends and work colleagues. However, you can also find those that are considered authorities in your industry and try to get in touch with them. Also, if you are interested in people working in a particular company/industry you can try the advanced search options from LinkedIn.
3. Promote your profile!
There are two ways to promote your profile:
* On LinkedIn
* Through other channels
On LinkedIn, you can do that by joining groups on topics in your industry and start engaging by answering questions and participating in discussions.
Outside the social network by posting your profile on your website, your blog, your business card, your e-mail signature and integrate it in other social networking sites you are using.
4. Stay engaged on LinkedIn!
The more you engage the more feedback you are likely to get. Also, if the LinkedIn community sees you as a valuable contributor, you will gain trust and credibility.
You can engage frequently by:
* Participating in discussions
* Updating your status on a regular basis
* Ask questions yourself
5. Keep your profile updated!
As mentioned above, the process of gaining credibility involves active engagement. Therefore, updating all information of your profile on a regular basis is essential.
6. Use third-party applications to make the most of your profile!
There are a great number of third-party applications on LinkedIn that can help you promote yourself, your website and your blog effectively. You can use Slideshare for sharing with your network your business presentations, Company Buzz to monitor messages sent out on Twitter about your company or subjects of interest to you or Box.net to add links to files like resumes.
You can also synchronise your Wordpress blog and it will add a box to your profile which will show your last posts and a summary of them. Since I have mentioned above the importance of updating your status, but since we are all using so any social networks, I would suggest synchronising your Twitter with your LinkedIn profile. This way your profile will be automatically updated from Twitter.
7. Get recommended!
Your profile is not complete as long as you do not have at least a recommendation. You can request for a recommendation from previous employers, current employers or other business contacts that could provide you with a recommendations. Why getting a recommendation is a must? It adds credibility to your profile. Your expertise is this way recognised by a person who has actually collaborated with you.
8. Start a group!
Show your involvement and desire to share information on a certain industry by creating a group. To get it started right, you need to keep in mind the following:
* Choose a relevant name. The name of your blog needs to contain keywords. It needs to be searchable for all those who might be interested in that industry.
* Add a logo. Just as a profile picture is important to gain credibility, a good logo takes your group one step further in its popularity.
* Make sure the size of your logo fits the required size.
* Use the available option to display your group in the Group Directory and on member’s profile.
9. Promote and manage your group!
Creating a group and abandoning it will not bring you any benefits. You need to promote it and manage it. Get members and then keep them engaged. In order to get members, you need to promote your group. Of course, you can start by inviting your connections that might be interested in that industry. But your group should not be limited to your connections.
Therefore you should promote it through:
* Adding the linked logo of the group on your website/blog;
* Sending an email newsletter to your subscribers to announce them of your new group,
* Promoting the group on other social media groups.
Some tips in managing your group effectively are:
* Add discussions and news,
* Post jobs, if relevant,
* Send announcements to the members of the group,
* Import your blog RSS feed.
LinkedIn is a social network for professionals that are looking to promote both themselves and their company. For business purposes, LinkedIn gives you an amazing opportunity to generate new leads.
If you have any comments or questions regarding using LinkedIn for your business, we would love to hear from you! As a social media marketing, online reputation management and search engine marketing company, SysComm offers LinkedIn promotion services. If you would like to find out more about how SysComm can help you build and manage your online presence, please click here.
SysComm International is a social networking company, online reputation management and search engine marketing company. Click here to contact us.