online marketing

7 Factors That Make a Marketing Link “Good”

Online marketingJust like SEO, link building is a part of online marketing that is continuously evolving—so much so that some have stopped the practice altogether. This may be due to recent comments made in a Google + hangout by Google’s webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller, who stated that link building could potentially do your website more harm than good.

While it’s true that search engines have gotten much better at determining the quality of a link, this just means that you need to make sure that you’re only using quality links. Read on for seven things to look for in determining the quality of a link.

1. Relevancy.

This means that the content on the site that you’re linking to is relevant to your content and your business offerings.

2. Links should be trusted.

This means that the page you are linking to has a good PageRank with Google. In other words, Google has deemed the site as having “authority.”

3. It’s a text link.

This means that the link is not a logo or image link, but simply text.

4. The link is not a redirect.

This means that it’s a direct link, not one that uses referral script.

5. The IP address is trusted.

The page you’re linking to is on a site from an IP address that hosts no spammy sites.

6. The link doesn’t have a lot of company.

In an ideal world, a link to your site would be the first and only link on that page. “Only” may be a far reach; if it’s one of few outbound links that can work.

7. The link is not reciprocal.

Google frowns upon exchange reciprocal links and will penalize your site of there are too many taking place between two sources.

As you can see, link building can be tricky, which is why your best route is to let experts do it for you. For information on our link building and online marketing services, click here.

Why SEO is Essential for e-Commerce

Why SEO is Essential for e-Commerce Website Design

No matter how big or small your e-Commerce site is, implementing a solid SEO strategy is crucial to the success of your business. Good SEO practices boosts traffic and increases revenues, while helping you keep up with and dominate the competition.

Why Search Matters

SEO is one of the most fundamental ways to help customers find your company and its products. Nine times out of 10, if you log into your Google Analytics account, organic search will rank as one of your top sources of sales and traffic. Studies show that the majority of online purchase decisions are made with the help of search engine rankings. This means it’s essential to get your target keyphrases ranking—on page one, if possible. When your company doesn’t show up in the first few pages of search results, fewer customers will know about your products and your company will sell less. In addition to helping potential customers and clients find you, SEO helps you stay visible and even stand out amongst the competition.

Another important thing to consider about SEO is that it promises an avenue for growth. When you invest serious numbers into the website design of your e-Commerce site and product development, it only makes sense to pursue every opportunity to increase brand visibility. By usurping average search engine rankings, your company will experience a surge of traffic that can significantly boost your profits.

Cost-Effectiveness

When it comes to the cost-effectiveness of implementing marketing strategies, organic SEO gives you more targeted results with a lower bounce rate than many ads and PPC campaigns can generate. More importantly, SEO’s effects are long lasting, making it a better investment than an ad that disappears when the campaign ends, leaving no lasting impact on your search engine rankings. In addition, cost per click and banner ads can be expensive, while an effective SEO strategy can be implemented at a fixed monthly cost. It can keep your sales coming and achieve revenues in a very cost-effective way.

Visit this link to learn about our website design services for e-Commerce sites.

Managed Hosting Services

Why Managed Hosting Services are Essential

Managed Hosting ServicesWith so many options for hosting, it can be difficult to know what the right option is for you. Due to the flexibility and level of support provided, our managed hosting services are ideal for everyone from individuals to small and medium-sized businesses. Managed hosting is essential for websites that contain confidential data or require constant maintenance, and offers the best protection against hackers and other unforeseen issues.

While larger companies have the budget for a full IT staff, many smaller companies do not. Our managed hosting services provide the technical support you need to keep your website operating optimally. If your website fails, we will get it working correctly as quickly and efficiently as possible—and at no extra cost in addition to your monthly subscription fees. No need for outside services, third party webmasters or in-house IT employees.

One of the most important and valuable aspects of our managed hosting package is the regular backups that we perform. We backup website database information on a daily basis and perform backups of site files twice a week. This way, your website is always safe and secure—you will never lose the content and information that is so crucial for both your website and business.

Our managed hosting services also alleviate the stress of WordPress Core and Plug-in maintenance. Often times, clients encounter errors when they try to make updates and are unable to resolve them due to interaction issues between plugins. Our team of experts monitor your site and provide all the necessary plug-and-play solutions to manage it and keep it up-to-date. On a monthly basis, we update all plugins and WordPress core and resolve any issues that arise during this technical process.

Managed hosting services allow you to focus on what’s important—the products or services you offer—instead of worrying about server failures and errors. Whenever a problem arises, our team solves it so you can focus on generating more revenue.

Visit this link to learn more about our managed hosting services and other backup solutions.

online marketing

3 Ways to Improve Email Blasts

online marketingIf you spend a lot of time and effort crafting online marketing campaigns like email blasts and newsletters, it’s disappointing when your recipients don’t open and read them. It doesn’t matter if you have a huge subscriber list if no one is opening your emails—the whole point is to boost traffic and increase sales. If you’re not happy with your current open and click rates, here are a few things you can do to better engage your audience and improve your online marketing results.

1. Be consistent with online marketing.

While there’s a difference between staying on subscribers’ minds and flooding their inboxes, research shows that most businesses don’t email their subscribers enough. Send an email blast as soon as they sign up, and then stay on their mind by sending a content-rich email or two in the first week—studies show that engagement is greatest within the first three to seven days after signup. Make sure there is engaging content and a nice discount or promo in the email, so that you make an indelible positive impression on your audience. LeadPages touts some interesting data in regards to this—they’ve found that 50 percent of conversions occur during the first month after signup, and 75 percent happens with the first three months.

2. Make subject lines long.

According to Get Response, emails with subject lines longer than 61 characters had the greatest open rate—to the tune of 12.38 percent. Do your own study by splitting an email campaign and using a long subject line for half of your recipients and one below 61 characters for the second half of your list.

3. Engage your audience’s curiosity.

Much research shows that an open loop technique in the subject line increases your open rate. Give general information that will pique your subscriber’s curiosity, such as “Learn how to boost website traffic,” “Lose weight without depriving yourself” or “Take 10 years off your face,” without giving the specifics of how you plan to tell your readers how to achieve their goals. Make sure that your copy delivers what you promise.

Click through for information on our online marketing services.

Google Analytics Spam Refferal

How to Filter Spam Referral Traffic from Google Analytics

Have you noticed spam traffic showing up in your Google Analytics data? While it can be annoying, it’s a very common issue and something many of us face on a daily basis. If you’re new to the process, filtering spam referral traffic from Google Analytics may not be as easy at it appears. Here is the best way to filter out that unwanted traffic and show accurate data.

Step 1

Login to your Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics Filter Spam Referral Traffic Audience overview

 

Step 2

Locate the domain where the “spam referral” traffic is coming from. Usually you can find these links by sorting by bounce rate or session duration. A real person will interact with your website or be on your site for longer than one second.

Google Analytics Filter Spam Referral Traffic all sessions

Step 3

After you have found the URL you want to filter out, head over to your admin page and select “filters.”

During this step, you can create a new “view” if you want to keep all the web and filtered traffic separate.

google analytics Filter Spam Referral Traffic acquition

Step 4

To set set up the filter to remove the spam referral traffic, you need to exclude the campaign source. While there is a referral option, this is the best way to have it not show up again.

google analytics Filter Spam Referral Traffic options


google analytics Filter Spam Referral Traffic admin

Step 5

Great news–you’re done! Now that the filter is set, you shouldn’t see the traffic from that spam domain anymore. If you set up a different view, you can change between views and see the data you wish to see.

Be sure to see our help document on how to make someone a Facebook admin if you’re interested in other tutorials.

internet marketing strategies

5 Tips to Maximize Holiday Internet Marketing Strategies

5 Tips to Maximize Holiday Internet Marketing StrategiesNow is the perfect time to optimize your holiday internet marketing strategies campaign to boost sales and increase exposure for your business. Here are a few tips for maximizing sales this and every holiday season.

1. Host a holiday event.

If you have a store or a brick and mortar location, host a holiday party to show customer appreciation. Add an exciting yet relevant element to it—if your business is a clothing store, have a trunk show. If the business you’re promoting is a hair salon, have event styling or makeover services taking place. If you own a gourmet food and wine store, have lots of sampling and a cooking or wine pairing demonstration.

2. Do a holiday email blast.

Make sure to send out a blast offering a holiday discount, a BOGO offer or free shipping. Include gift ideas if relevant so that you can feature special products and promotions. You can also do a savvy email holiday card that includes a discount as well. Now is the time to plan for everything from your Black Friday to after-Christmas sales. Craft all of your announcements and specials now and set up your blasts in advance.

3. Post a holiday gift guide on your blog.

Feature products specials, packages and any holiday discounts in a listing that includes descriptions of what you’re offering and who they make the perfect gift for. Include photos of customers buying gifts or using your products.

4. Incentivize.

Provide exciting incentives that are relevant to your business, such as a raffle for a vacation if you own a travel agency. If you own a bakery, do one for holiday treats.

5. Post all your specials and products on social media.

Let your customers know about special deals on social media and offer specific discounts that are only for your followers—this is easily done with promo codes. Post different gift ideas every day to increase exposure of your products and services.

Visit this link for information about our internet marketing strategies and other services.

How To Make Someone a Facebook Ad Partner

A common question we get here at Extima is how to make someone a Facebook Ad partner. Providing a partner access to your Facebook Ad account can help with scheduling, monitoring and overall management. Here’s how to make someone an admin to your Facebook Ad partner.

1. Locate the Ad Manager

Log-in to your Facebook account. Locate the Facebook ad manager button on the left column.

2. Select Ad Account Setting

Once in the Facebook Ad manager, highlight the “All tools” option to expand the options. Then select the “Ad Account Settings” tab in the top right.

step2

3. Click “+ Add a Person”

Now that you have accessed the Facebook Ad account settings for your Facebook Ads, scroll down a little and click “add a person” on the left.

step3

4. Set the Admin email

Now you will set the users’ role to “Ad Account admin” . If you change your mind, you can change the role options later.

step4

Enter the email of the person you wish to make an Admin of your Facebook page. After that, click “submit.”

step5

5. You’re Finished.

The user should receive a message about the Ad account. Now both you and your partner have control over the Ads that Facebook users will see. If you need further help with anything, contact Extima Web development.

How to Make Someone a Facebook Page Admin

Many clients ask how to make someone a Facebook admin for their account. The Facebook admin role allows someone else to have control of your Facebook page alongside of you. Here’s how to make someone a admin to your Facebook page.

1. Locate the page

Log-in to your Facebook account. Locate the Facebook page you wish to edit.

facebookadmin12

2. Select Settings

Once you’re in the Facebook page you wish to edit, select the “Settings” tab in the top right.

facebookadmin2

3. Select Page roles

Now that you are in the settings for your Facebook page, click “Page Roles” in the left column.

facebookadmin3

4. Set the Admin email

Enter the email of the person you wish to make an Admin of your Facebook page. After that, click the little triangle under the email type box. Change from “editor” to “admin.”

facebookadmin4

5. Save and you’re finished.

Scroll down and click save in the bottom right.

savefacebook

 

Now you and the Facebook admin you have designated both have control over the page. If you need further help, contact Extima Web development.

strategies for online marketing

The 5 Most Important SEO Tasks

strategies for online marketingStrategies for online marketing and SEO are constantly changing. It can be overwhelming for even the savviest marketers to keep up with. The most basic tasks seem to change in terms of priority and the way to do them correctly, making it more important than ever to stay on top of all the changes in this ever changing industry.

Since it’s become more important than ever to organize the many tasks involved by priority, we’re sharing our list of some of the things that you should focus from the get go to keep your strategies for online marketing effective and successful.

1. Remove duplicate content.

This is one of Google’s favorite things to penalize you for—it’s seen as spammy and confusing, so make sure your site is free from any duplicate content.

2. Make sure your site is mobile-responsive.

If you haven’t done this by now, you’re way behind the game. Research shows that more than half of all web searches take place using mobile devices—if your site isn’t responsive and doesn’t look pretty on a small screen, visitors are not going to give it a second glance.

3. Have clear, straightforward navigation.

The architecture of your site needs to be clear, cohesive and user-friendly. Visitors have no patience with a confusing site—and this leads to a rising bounce rate.

4. Get indexed.

Make sure that your site is being indexed by Google! To check this, set up a Google Webmaster Tools account and click the ‘Google Index’ tab. This will show you the total number of pages indexed by Google. Having this and a Google Analytics account should be a non-brainer in this day and age, but we’re just making sure.

5. Create local search accounts.

This is another fundamental step of an effective SEO campaign, which should be done at the get go. This is especially important for local businesses striving to attract customers from the neighborhood.

Visit this link for more information about our SEO and online marketing strategies.

GetDripo is launched!

GetDripo

 

Extima is excited to announce the launch of GetDripo new website. It’s the most innovative coffeemaker we’ve ever seen! Dripo looks and acts like a tumbler, but it’s also a 2-in-1 iced-drip coffeemaker. It’s convenient and compact—75% smaller than traditional Dutch iced-drip coffee makers—and its simple design makes it easy to use. You can make cold-brew in your Dripo as well!