We Are Pleased To Announce...

the addition of Local Marketing Strategies and Mobile Site Design to our available Serivces.

We'd like to talk with you about how using these marketing tools can increase your business' visibility in your local area and beyond.

To learn more, just schedule a Free Consultation today.

How To Build Credibilty Into Your Web Site Design

by Techkat

Credibility is crucial on the web. When you have it, customers trust you and will do business with you. Other websites link to you as a trusted resource. It’s easier to achieve your goals and to succeed.

Online credibility is built in a few important ways. Keep these five credibility tips in mind when you’re creating your web site, content plan and marketing strategy.

  1. Content – Content is how you share your knowledge with your prospects and visitors. When the content provides them with valuable information and help they’re going to begin trusting you as a credible resource.

You can provide content in various forms: informative articles, how-to videos and audio – whichever best fits your products or services.

Tip: Make sure that you are providing value – content that is useful in itself – but leaves your visitors wanting more, and let them know how they can get more.

  1. Testimonials, reviews and endorsements – You can tell others you’re great until the cows come home, but when other people proclaim how wonderful you are, they believe it. Publish reviews, endorsements and testimonials on your website.
  1. Organizations, associations, and certifications – Do you belong to any industry organizations? Do you have any relevant certifications? Publish them on your website. For example, “Recipient of Best of the Web 2009.”
  1. Secure site – If you process payment transactions on your website build trust by including security certifications. Let people know their information is secure on your website.
  1. Easy to use website – When your website looks professional, is easy to navigate and provides valuable information it builds credibility. So many websites are cluttered with ads and miscellaneous distractions. Stay focused on your message and get an instant credibility boost.

There are many ways to help establish your website as one to trust and visit often. Check out LINK to learn more about how to create a top notch website.

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Which Type Of Web Site Is Right For Your Business?

by Techkat

Did you know there are different types of websites?

Depending on your business model and the purpose of your website, it’s important to choose the right format. For example, if your business provides services to your local market your needs are completely different from a business that provides products or services to a national or global market. If the purpose of your web site is to help generate leads for your business, you need a very different site than someone selling products online.

Here are some guidelines to help you choose the right type of site for your business.

Brochure Web Site

A brochure site is the simplest type of business site. It is often a single page site. It may have a few supporting pages including a contact page and an “about us” page. Generally a brochure website is used to promote a service provider.

It can also be used to simply provide information about a business. Many brick and mortar retailers have brochure sites. Their page lists a little bit about their business, their location and their hours.

If they’re really doing it right, a brochure web site will have a squeeze page that offers free tips or a special report to prospects who sign up for their newsletter. The newsletter is then used to provide additional information about the business and notify subscribers of the arrival of new products, special sales or other special events in the business.

Information Website

Many websites you find online are information websites, sometimes called “authority sites”. They’re packed with valuable content in the form of articles, blog posts, videos, audio recordings and even free resources. Generally content is organized by topic or keyword. Examples of authority sites you may be familiar with are Ask.com, Wikipedia.org and eHow.com but there are literally thousands of smaller “niche” sites that provide in-depth information on a vast array of topics.

An information website is right for you if your business model is:

* Information marketer
* Affiliate marketer
* Content marketer (making money from advertising revenue)

You might use this type of website format if you’re a service provider too. For example, you might have a landing page that promotes your services. You’d use an abundance of content to establish credibility and authority as a service provider.

Again, you would want to employ a squeeze page and mailing list to provide updated information on your topic and promote products, either your own, an affiliate product, or someone who pays you for advertising.

Ecommerce

An ecommerce site is used to sell products or services. Amazon.com is a great example of an ecommerce site. If you are a retailer or sell a certain services you will likely use an ecommerce format. On your website people will be able to make purchases.

On this type of site a squeeze page and mailing list is critical as it allows you to notify readers when new products are available or you have special pricing on some items. You can also use your newsletter to educate your subscribers on products or services similar to those they’ve purchased previously.

Of course, these are just three of the most common types of websites. There are also:

* Membership sites
* Social networking sites
* Review sites
* Game sites

Take a look at your business model and the reason you’re creating a website. What website type or format best fits your needs?

Planning your website before you create it is the first key to success. To learn more about creating a website that supports your success contact Techkat to request a Free Consultation. We can help you determine the best type of web site for your business and help you put all the pieces together.

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Five SEO Tips For Happy Spiders

by Techkat

The way that search engines rate and rank sites is by sending out robots, also called “spiders” because they crawl the web. These spiders follow links from page to page and site to site indexing content. Through this process they can determine the quality of a site (PageRank) and the importance of a site (position in search results). The following five SEO tips can help you give the spiders more of what they like.

1. When writing an SEO article for your website make sure that your chosen keyword appears in the opening and closing paragraphs, but do not fill the article with the keyword. A search engine will see an article with a ridiculously high keyword density as spam and the article will be useless for improving your website’s search engine rank.

2. Always include a sitemap page in your website. A site map page ensures that your site can be crawled by search engine spiders. These spiders then index the pages of your website. Site maps also tell the spider about your site’s hierarchy and which pages are the most important.

3. Learn about search engine optimization or hire a company that specializes in it. The work you put into your site will be wasted if the site can’t be found during a web search. A good SEO plan will have you ranking higher in the results of the major search engines for keyword searches that relate to your company.

4. Visit your site and check to make sure that the title tag at the top of your window describes the content that you are looking at. Be sure that it contains the keywords that you want readers to associate with your website. If you are a small local business be sure that the key local search words are included in the title tag.

5. Get to the point with keywords. Most searches are only two or three words, and if your keywords are longer than that, you may be more difficult to spot. Shorter is better. So, if you can eliminate unnecessary words, do it! Your goal is to be seen by as many people as you can, not describe everything you do in the keywords.

By implementing these five SEO tips, webmasters can greatly boost their websites’ position on search engine results pages. It is important that they earn these favored positions, though. This is done by always providing original, relevant content. A site that is tweaked into high standing on the results pages will get a lot of traffic – but it will not keep any of it if the content is sub-par. Content is king.

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Does Your Marketing Strategy Need A Tweak?

Marketing Strategy

How often do you set aside time to review your marketing strategy and update it if necessary? Have you updated your marketing plan within the last year, or when you released your most recent product? You do have a marketing strategy, don’t you? Some businesses start off with a marketing strategy and over time they [...]

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What Is Social Networking?

SEO

It used to be that the only reliable way to find information online was to use a search engine. However, with the advent of what we call Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can now easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend. The most recent [...]

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How We Work With You

SEO

Because your goals, experience, and needs will always vary from our other clients, our first step will be to take you through our Marketing Intelligence Assessment. This questionnaire will give us a holistic and detailed view of not just your traffic or website needs, but more importantly your overall marketing mix and how SEO can [...]

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Illegal SEO Techniques To Avoid

SEO

There are some SEO tactics that can actually backfire on you. They are called “Black Hat”. Not only do they NOT help your search rankings long term, they can actually get you banned from the search engines. And recovering from being banned is a long and arduous process that can set you back for years. [...]

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What Is SEO?

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or Search Marketing(SEM) is a complex, ever changing process. Search engines constantly change their algorithms, shuffle their indexes, merge results and share content. The only consistent thing about marketing your website to them is that what works really well today probably won’t work so well tomorrow. That’s why you need an [...]

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