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For the past few years, we’ve heard pundits declaring each year as “year of the mobile Web”; each year trying to sound more convincing than the previous. Whether 2011 will be the real “year of the mobile” remains to be seen, but what is indisputable is the fact that the mobile usage of the Web is growing and evolving. As it evolves, so does the mobile user experience, driven by advances in mobile device technology — from better browsers on basic mobile phones (or feature phones — remember the Motorola RAZR?) to the increased adoption of smartphones and tablets.

The term “Mobile Web” is commonly used to describe accessing the internet using a mobile device. This definition is broad enough to cover everything from using a browser on a feature phone, to using highly customized apps on smartphones or tablets. “There’s an app for that” has made device-specific applications the rage of the day, with some companies starting off backwards with “we need an iPhone app” instead of first understanding what their users actually need when they are mobile, the devices that they use, and then deciding the best approach for going mobile, which may not be an app, but could be a mobile website instead. Mobile websites are universally accessible, less expensive to develop and maintain, and can be searched and accessed by most mobile phones.

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By: Ari B. Adler with Digital Pivot

With a new mobile Web site and downloadable apps, the Lansing (Michigan) Convention and Visitors Bureau is focused on Tourism 3.0.

The bureau describes its new offering as putting “Greater Lansing in the palm of your hand.” The bureau’s Web site notes you can, “Turn your smart phone into a location-aware travel guide loaded with maps, info on nearby events, entertainment, dining, shopping and more.” Read the rest of this entry »

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When selling your own services and products online, you should have targeted traffic. The major search engines will start to send you targeted prospects, and lots of them, whenever you adopt specific steps.

The first step within your own search engine advertising campaign is not search engine optimization. Your first step would be to understand the Internet and the way to effectively utilize it to market your services. The web can be described as a subject material driven medium. Searchers are searching for information and facts. They really don’t wish to be sold to. They desire value. It is possible to supply this kind of value with the subject material you are writing for use on your Internet site, as well as the particular content material you’re posting for your promotions.

As a result, you should create a complete, content managing technique. Your own content managing technique needs to be customer focused, content material driven, in addition to being optimized regarding the major search engines. Your current content managing method must look into both in page and off page optimization points. In page elements consist of optimizing your web page regarding keywords and phrases relevant to your site, titles, as well as website descriptions. Off page aspects incorporate link swapping in addition to one way link creation.

Once you have selected the subject for the web page, you’ll want to create your site. Come to a decision on just what subject material you will use. Your content may consist of articles, press announcements, and product or service review articles. It’s also possible to generate free ebooks, reports and news letters, provided the information you include is going to be useful to your site customer. You will also need to do some investigation. Discover what Internet users are trying to find. There are many free resources and software on the net to help you complete this particular undertaking. Basically, search for a keyword phrase similar to “key phrase recommendation software.”

The moment you are ready to write your sites subject material, select 2 to 3 keywords and phrases to make use of all the way through the actual text for the page. Write your own content material after which optimize your page for all these keyword phrases. Though on page optimization can help you when you don’t have lots of competition for the keywords you picked, it is not enough should you be targeting large competition keywords. To raise your web sites’ search positions, you will need to get as many links as you can from high traffic web pages with high Google page rank. Establishing one way links from other web pages can even make it easier to boost your search positions.

Perform a search in your favorite search engine to find Internet sites you’ll be able to link to. Examine these websites. Check to see just what key phrases they use in order to enhance their web pages. Find out if they swap hyperlinks, and if that’s the case, ask for a link exchange.

The way to succeed when you find yourself using search engine marketing techniques is always to do your homework before you generate your site. The bottom line is that no matter the amount of links you have got pointing back to your Internet site, or how effectively you enhance your web page for the various search engines, you will not gain a high position for key phrases that are way too competitive without having a long time along with lots of energy put in, even up to a year or more.

You should also understand that you will not reach your goals in any kind of home business that you aren’t going to be enthusiastic about. Choose a subject you prefer, which has its own marketplace and then develop a articles and other content rich, search engine friendly web page. Get your name out there and constantly keep advertising your product or service. You will be successful in the end.

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If you are doing business online, consider your web site as your main product and your readers, your customers. You can’t always think that people really spend their time and money on your web site so it’s essential that you make a periodic audit to figure out if your customers have really meet their needs and not just reach out to them through social media and blogging.

People are diverse but when it comes to the Internet, we all look for a few things in selecting who to follow, trust, and patronize. The following is a list of seven essential things that every web site should have.

Ease of Use

Your web site should not be confusing or hard to navigate. Web customers typically look for simple things: your products, information about you, your blog, your contact page. These should always be prominent and easy to find, as should any other information or links you want people to follow. The font should be easy to read and the links should be keyword-rich and easy to spot.

Clarity of Content

Your content, including the call-to-action, should be easy to understand. This applies to every single page of your web site. If your readers can’t understand you, they will leave.

Credibility

First, your web site should definitely have a dedicated contact page with a contact form, e-mail address (avoid free email addresses like @gmail or @yahoo) and a physical location and phone number. Credibility also includes not only on-page content like testimonials and comments, but also third-party validation in the form of Twitter followers, Facebook fans and awards or certifications. The quicker readers are able to discover that you are a thriving business vouched for by other people, the sooner they can make the decision to trust you.

Uniqueness

This applies to your site design, to your product and to your content. If your site doesn’t look interesting, people are not gonna waste their time looking on it. If you’re like every other business in the market, why should your readers listen to you?

Participation / Ability to Give Feedback

If your customers can’t reach you easily, they’ll give up. If they contact you but don’t receive a speedy respond, they’ll leave and either forget you or damage your credibility. So provide an easy way for customers to interact with you and give them as many options as you can
handle: phone number, social media, contact form, and blogging are some of the most popular ones. People will likely trust and be loyal to you if they see that you are open and are always available.

Personalization

Remember that every single person you interact with or sell to is unique and has his or her own expectations from your product and services. No one likes to be referred to as “Dear Customer” in an e-mail, and everyone likes offers and products about subjects that are of special interest to them! So get to know your customers, store the individual information they share with you and use it to build personal and lasting relationships.

Security

Readers and customers want to be sure that any and all personal information provided to you will stay confidential and not be sold to third parties or misused. If you are selling products, this means SSL security. If you are asking for e-mail addresses for a marketing list, this means respecting your readers’ privacy. If you are connecting with people on social media, this means discretion on your part about any and all personal interactions.

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You must get your web site’s search engine optimization right, mainly because proper SEO will increase your chances of obtaining those all important top rankings in the search engines. Besides, a well optimized site or page, will go a long way in weathering any abrupt changes on the web.

Below are some tips when it comes to proper search engine optimization techniques:

1. Place your main keyword phrase in your Domain Name. Over time you will see higher rankings for that phrase and keywords related to it. With Google going to Instant Search, it is believed that you will see these keyworded domains playing a much greater role in what is listed first. You still have to get those quality back-links, but having a good keyworded domain will be half your battle.

2. Place your keyword phrase in the URL for your webpage.
Place it in the title, description and in the H1 tags on your page. Also place this keyword phrase and variations of it throughout your page, including at the very bottom. As for keyword density, try to keep it under 6%, this is the limit that Ezinearticles puts on their contributed content, go above this percentage and they won’t take it.

3. Place related keyworded interior links on your page.
That is, keep all your content and links keyword-related to one another. This makes it easy for the search engines to index your pages and content.

4. Make sure you have an XML Sitemap which the search engines can use to quickly index your new pages. This is not only for the search engines but to help your visitors more easily navigate your site; never leave a visitor stranded.

5. Make sure all your pages load quickly. Reduce any large images that you have and break content/articles up into different pages to reduce load times.

6. Make sure your site handles 404 mistakes and your visitors are directed to your sitemap or another page on your site.
If you don’t know how to correct this problem, just do a Google search for “how to set up a custom 404 file not found page” or contact your web host support to fix this issue.

7. Don’t have duplicate content on your site. Do a proper 301 redirect for the www and non-www versions of your site, since this may fool some of the search engines into believing you have two versions of your site, one with www and one without the www in the URL. For Apache servers  simply place this bit of code in the .htaccess file on your server.

8. Link out to other high quality keyword related sites. Linking out to high quality sites have helped sites’ search engine rankings. Search engines, especially Google, want to see you’re connected to quality content and besides, pleasing your visitor is what it’s really all about.

9. Keep all your interior site navigation as simple as possible. Make it extremely easy for your visitors to find their way around your site. I usually don’t have any pages more than three clicks away from my homepage. All main categories or sub-categories of my site are not only listed on my home/index page but also on every page of my site. Again, never leave your visitors or the search engines stranded.

10. Place YouTube videos on content pages. Sure you will lose some visitors to YouTube, but it also connects your content with this very popular site which is owned by Google. We all know Google says it doesn’t promote its own interests, but what publicly traded company doesn’t? Completely inter-connecting all your pages and content with the countless Google programs will ensure your content won’t be missed.

To read this article in its entirety, click here.

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Nicole Wagner

Below are three things that I recommend that every web site has to be Green and mobile friendly in 2011:

Sitemap Page
The best thing you can have on your web site in order to make it search engine friendly is a Sitemap page. Search engines love links and a Sitemap page is basically an outline of all the content your web site contains. All search engines use Sitemaps when adding a web site to their search indexes. Sitemaps help search engines quickly find new content on your web site. They allow you to tell them what’s important, what’s new, and what changes often. Using Sitemaps you can dramatically improve the position of your web site and quickly and effectively.

Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

  • Your site has dynamic content.
  • Your site has pages that aren’t easily discovered by search engines during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
  • Your site is new and has few links to it. Search engines crawl the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn’t well linked, it may be hard for them to discover it.
  • Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

Green Company Page
Global warming has emerged as the most important issue of our generation and the topic of “the environment” is hot these days- no pun intended. We as businesspeople are becoming conscious of our ability to take an active role in solving our societies environmental crisis. At the same time, studies show that people will choose an eco-friendly or green option if given the opportunity. Increasingly, consumers are “voting with their dollars” to support green businesses that are reducing their carbon footprint and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.

Given this reality, it makes business sense for each of us to make our companies as eco-friendly as possible and communicate that out to our audience. Adding a page on your website to communicate how your company is working towards being eco-friendly will help to show you are taking action on this important initiate of today’s time period.

Mobile Friendly Web Pages
It’s estimated that nearly a third of individuals now use their mobile to browse the Internet and this figure will be substantially higher among smart phone users. Additionally, Nielsen.com predicts that smart phones will account for nearly half of worldwide sales by 2013. This is a staggering figure and it’s safe to assume will radically alter the way consumers interact with the Internet.

The very least one should think about in 2011 is offering a limited version of your web site in mobile form. Think about the key content required off your web site by an audience member ‘on the go’ and make this content easy to download via a phone. This should include contact information, directions, and links to phone numbers where they can call and get more information.

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Nicole Wagner

Are you in the hospitality industry and looking to improve your company’s web site? Below are some tips from Stevens & Tate Marketing that will help you improve your site and make it more user-friendly for your visitors to generate more conversions:

Accommodations and Special Packages Are What They Are Looking For
Accommodations are the key pages for users. The guest really wants to know what the room looks like that they are considering to stay in. Make sure you present your rooms in the best light. This is also an area where you can upgrade users by presenting multiple rooms on one page and showcasing the amenities for each room type.

Specials and packages pages are key. Steer price sensitive customer to dates you need to fill by offering specials they can’t refuse when they visit this section of your website.

Headlines Should Be Clear
Hotels typically want to do fluffy text but their focus groups has found they need to be succinct. Make sure your headlines tell people what the copy is about so they can easily find what they are looking for. This also helps you be found within the search engines.

Content is King
Place your key content in prominent positions, but don’t be afraid to finish your story. If you are offering information that is valuable to the reader they will scroll and continue to read. Don’t overwhelm them in website content on one page however. Be sure to make the website appear simple so a user is not overwhelmed with the amount of copy on one page.

Use Skimming Words
Remember that users still skim your web pages. Make sure to incorporate key words that will resonate with the reader to draw them into the copy they are looking for. Bold headlines and short paragraphs help for them to find what they are looking for and for what you want them to read.

Coordinate Ads Into the Site

If you are trying to draw attention to special promotions or features in your website and you want to add call outs on different pages don’t make them look like ads. Make your ads look like part of the website rather than stand apart. Users will trust and read them more than if you make them look like banner ads.

Unique Audience Pages
You have different audiences visiting your website. Make pages unique to each audience and be sure to speak to them in their own language. From the home page call out these different audience segments and lead them to the pages that are meant for them.

Do Not Overdue Main Navigation
No more than 9 main navigation elements. Nine is all that a user can digest to make a logical decision without being confused. Make your navigation easy to understand and try to withstand from catchy phrases that may cause confusion.

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