Regardless of the method that one chooses, the common objective is to meet the searcher at a common destination, namely, page 1 for all of the major search engines, whether it be a sponsored listing (paid ad) or an organic listing which are earned by scoring the highest according to the relevancy measurement criteria of each search engine.

As opposed to traditional outbound or outreach marketing, Search Engine Marketing seeks to be “found” rather than to “seek” to be noticed. Traditional marketing such as direct mail, print advertising, radio, TV, cold calling and telemarketing are all largely intrusive and unwelcome by the overwhelming majority of those receiving the outreach. Simply, less than 0.3% of all recipients of outreach attempts are welcomed as only a scant few are actually receiving the outreach are well received, quite coincidentally, at the exact moment in time that they are actually interested and thinking of exactly the same product or service.

Search Engine Marketing is searcher or prospective client-focused; control is in the hands of the searcher. The Search Engine Marketer seeks only to be found at that magical moment when the right person is seeking those products and services offered by the marketer. So the searcher initiates and the successful online marketer is just there because they have “done the right things” to be there. While this may all seem obvious, the psychological advantage and the resulting chance for success for both buyer and seller, is huge. When the buyer is the one deciding the right moment in time that they are interested, have the time, etc to investigate, compare and decide, it would make sense that the chance of an online marketer’s success is maximized by just being there. No one has pushed, cajoled, and hyped the buyer to take any action. This is very powerful.

Paid Search and SEO are the two main subcomponents of Search Engine Marketing. In theory anyone can do Paid Search. For instance, Google Adwords, the Google brand for Paid Search, provides excellent step by step processes and instructions for anyone to setup a paid search campaign; after all its Google’s main revenue stream so they want to make it as easy as possible or at least make it appear very easy to do. Paid Search is merely paid ads that are targeted to individual keywords. The advertiser pays every time the ad is clicked …therefore the term, Pay per Click (PPC). While anyone can technically do it, it really isn’t that easy to do without a professional Internet Marketing Company. These are still ads which require 2 important actions of the searcher … (1) to actually click on the ad and (2) for the ad to convert into a sale or another form of conversion. A professional can optimize the ad itself and use sophisticated multi-variant testing to get the highest click-through rate or CTR. Likewise the same kind of testing involving dozens of variables and specific landing pages are used to optimize the conversion rates of the landing pages. It is not enough to just bid the highest bid; if your ad does not perform (does not get clicked), Google won’t display the ad as often, if at all. Google uses something known as Quality Score to determine how often your ad will be displayed keyword by keyword. Again, this is how Google makes money. They want ads that get clicked the most to be displayed the most.

Organic Search Engine Optimization really cannot be done by just anyone. A professional marketing company is essential to gain top rankings in the organic results. These are coveted for many reasons including:

1. Every click is free.

2. 85% of all searches result in an organic click and NOT a paid click because online searchers have mostly figured out, or at least intuitively understand, that the organic listings are earned due to their relevance and the paid listings are bought.

You need a Professional Search Optimization Company to employ a wide array of processes including:

1. Onsite Optimization – this includes all those things important to the search engines to just understand what your website and each page are actually about. You will hear things like Title Tags, Page Descriptions, metadata, sitemaps, etc that are all about the proper configuration of the site so that search engines can quickly index and understand the content of the pages and how they relate to each other.

2. Off-Site Optimization – the least talked about area but easily the most important. This involves the heavy reliance on relevant content and the successful syndication of that content to generate backlinks. Backlinks are direct one-way links into your website from external websites. These Backlinks represent votes for your website and the search engines value them highly in their ranking algorithms.

3. Social Media Optimization – while backlinks from external websites are important, the rise of social websites are gaining importance everyday and influence search engines directly and indirectly. In brief, Social Media, as the name implies, brings to social conversation into play where people are discussing everything under the sun including the use of all products and services you can imagine. This “chatter” results in recommendations, ratings, etc. Social Bookmarking Sites like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon serve as human voting booths. People respond to this and the websites they are associated with. Backlinks actually arise from these human interactions. Other social sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and many more further create website activity for many reasons. Suffice it to say, that the social media is becoming a more and more important factor affecting website visits and even search engine rankings.

All of these processes have dozens upon dozens of sub-processes and specialties and require the special training, experience and day-to-day attention a Professional Internet Marketing Company.

As with almost everything else in the technology age, the individual is gaining more and more control of what they will do and when they will do it. Search Engine Marketing, however defined, is simply the marketplace response to this phenomenon.

Versatility and Freedom

Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more. There are no limits to creativity with Magento.

Attract + Convert = Growth

Magento’s SEO features and user experience will attract and convert more qualified customers, leading to business growth.

Competitive Low Cost of Ownership

Magento’s commercial open source business model yields a product that is superior for a fraction of the cost.

Mobile Phone & International Support

Mobile Commerce Compatible, Multi-Lingual,  Support for Multiple Currencies

Marketing Promotions and Tools

Flexible Coupons (pricing rules) with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories.  Catalog Promotional Pricing

Analytics and Reporting

Admin Dashboard for Report Overview, Abandoned Shopping Cart Report, Best Customers Report by Total and Number of Orders

Product Browsing

Multiple Images Per Product, Product Image Zoom-in Capability

Payment

Multiple Payment Options Supported, Payment Extensions Available through Magento Connect, Configurable authorization and capturing of funds

Expand Your Market

Reach more customers by creating targeted micro-sites using Magento’s multi-store retailing functionality.

WordPress is web software that you can use to create and maintain a new generation of Web 2.0 sites.  Making WordPress very attractive is the fact that it is both free and priceless at the same time.

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee in addition to a number of other important freedoms.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system, website editor and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes.  It even does social networking!

WordPress is limited only by your (and our) imagination and, of course, budget.

Call us today to find out more. 772-419-8023

(The following is from SmashingMagazine.com’s writer Tim Wright)
With any new technology there has to be a benefit; why else would you use it? If your old code works just as well and efficient as the new code there’s no reason to upgrade. No reason at all, trust me, I checked.

Luckily HTML5 is packed with cool new features, code slimming techniques and a lot of stuff that would be considered very large benefits. Most of which circle around the new APIs and the DOM tree.

Extending the API

The most obvious benefit built into HTML5 is the numerous APIs and the opportunities it opens up for the future of web apps with Holy Grail of application cache and offline capabilities. Google Gears gave us offline data storage and Flash introduced us to the power of application cache (Pandora uses it to save your log in information). With HTML5, these capabilities are now available to use right in the language and can easily be expanded with JavaScript.

HTML5 relies on light scripting to flex its muscles on the Web; this is very possibly the first time, other than jQuery, that one (front-end) technology has fully acknowledged another. Sure, we connect them with classes and IDs but up until now, they have been perceived as separate layers by the principles of progressive enhancement. But as the Web grows we need unity like this across the Web.

Offline Data Storage

The coolest part about HTML5 is definitely its offline capabilities. Programs like Thunderbird and Outlook (and now GMail to an extent) let you browse through your old data while staying offline. With HTML5, you’ll have this same functionality, but in the browser. This is the first serious step towards bridging the gap between the desktop and the Web, and opens all sorts of doors for the future of Web apps.

The W3C has taken the best parts from the various Web technologies and rolled them into, what is being dubbed the most powerful markup language to date.

Some other of the HTML5 APIs

Drag & Drop
The drag and drop API defines an event-based drag and drop system. However, it never defines what “drag and drop” is. This API requires JavaScript to fully work as normal think drag and drop functionality.

Video & Audio
The audio & video APIs are massive upgrades in media embedding. Although support is limited right now, something like video embedding has never been easier.

Geolocation
Geolocation is a very cool API available within HTML5. Its object can be used to programmatically determine location information through a device’s user agent (hint hint: mobile devices).

Call or email us today. 772-419-8023

About.com’s marketing writer Laura Lake say’s, “Your logo is only one piece of your branding strategy.” In her recent article about logos she says “your logo is a symbol that can provide consumers with instant and powerful brand recognitionof your business and the services or products that you offer”.

For our clients, we begin the process of logo design with a focus on your overall branding and developing a marketing strategy going forward. Your logo is important, as it is an ad for your company, but without the strategy behind it, a logo can send the wrong message and actually negatively impact your marketing strategy. You want to keep your brand message consistent to help increase consumer recognition.

To sum it up, Lake says, “Confident branding and a strong branding strategy uses design to communicate a message that attracts the target audience that you want to attract – a message that creates confidence in your brand while differentiating between you and your competitors. Does your logo fulfill this mission? If your answer is no it may be time to consider strengthening your brand strategy and looking at a new logo to re-position your company.”

We design for your customer’s experience, moving your visitor from point A to B quickly and easily. Whether you use one of our great template designs or need something fully custom, we make sure it’s a ‘stand out’ from the crowd design. However, because visitors need to enjoy their experience and time on your site, we focus a great deal on usability. There is a lot that goes into your website design and development, from an analysis of your market competition and customer personality analysis, to prototyping and usability testing. We can send over our process flow document to see the full scope.

How about hosting you ask? You can host your new website on our servers or on your own – either is fine with us.

But once your site is launched, we don’t stop there – we can help you market it as well. We can drive SEO results, plan and execute email marketing campaigns, and design and print marketing materials.

Call or email us today to see how fast you can get going.