Showing posts with label chicago marketing firm. Show all posts

Why Your Company Needs a Blog

Thursday, January 17, 2013 · Posted in , , , , , , ,

Yes, we have decided that we are going to 'blog' about 'blogging' today.  If you constantly find yourself putting off starting up a blog for your company, you should get started as soon as possible.  There are about a million good reasons why a company should have a blog and as a Chicago SEO company, we cannot stress a blog's importance enough.  If you have been putting it off, here's why you should get started today:

1- A blog is essential to boost your SEO: As a Chicago SEO company, we constantly tell our customers how effective a blog is for boosting their website's SEO rankings.  Search engine crawlers love, love, love fresh, brand new content being added to a website on a constant basis.  Sticking a blog right on your website will give you the ability to add that fresh content every time you post something new.  Postings give you a chance to utilize keywords and show search engines that you are actively using and updating your website.  When we do web design for a client we typically create a built in blog right on the client's website.  We suggest having multiple blogs if you can keep up with it.  The more blogs your company has that link back to your company's website, the better off you are in the world of search engine optimization. A blog, whether your blog is through blogger or you are using a blog on your website, gives you a great place to add links back to your website, which is also a great way (if not the best way) to boost SEO rankings.

2- A blog is a great place to show that you are the expert in your industry: Refine your list of potential blog topics and stick to talking about topics related to your company's industry.  Say you own a coffee shop, then topics that you should blog about should all surround the industry you belong to.  Keeping it relevant will help search engine's crawlers identify who your business is and what you do and will give you a chance to become the expert in your industry.  Your blog gives you a special place to show what you know and impress potential customers.  

3- A blog is a great way to interact with potential and current customers: A blog is a great place to spearhead conversations with your potential and current customers.  Your blog will keep your customers informed and has the ability to help you reel in potential customers.  Just like your social media profiles, blogging is another great way to bring the social aspect to your business.

4- Your blog will help you build your brand: Blogging is a simple way of helping you establish your brand.  Blogging gives you the ability to make your brand more personal and drive more traffic to your company's website, which in turn helps you build your brand.  Perhaps lots of people begin reading your company blog, then great!  Put on your sales hat and lead those blog readers back to your company's website.  That gives your company all the more potential to get that brand exposure you have been craving.

5- Blogging will help keep yourself and your customers in the loop:  Since your company blog should take on topics related to your industry, it can serve as a learning tool not only for your readers and customers, but also for yourself.  A great way to stay current with the latest industry trends is to blog about it.  Your blog could also serve as a vehicle for communicating the latest company news almost like a company newsletter.

Looking for tips on creating a company blog?  We'd be happy to discuss blogging with you.  Feel free to comment below or contact us.


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Social Bookmarking and SEO

Thursday, January 3, 2013 · Posted in , , , ,

When it comes to search engine optimization there are a million little external things you can be doing to improve your website's rankings.  Submitting to local directories, backlinking, blogging, using social media regularly, and social bookmarking all aid in helping your website to rank highly for your chosen keywords.  If you have yet to dive into social bookmarking as one of your external SEO tactics our SEO specialists suggest you give it a chance, and here's why:

Social bookmarking provides fast indexing

Social bookmarking is one of the quickest ways to get your website found and indexed by search engines.  Search engine crawlers quite regularly index the popular social bookmarking sites, which will boost your chances of being indexed by the search engines.  Social bookmarking gives you and your website the changes to be found a lot faster, which is a good draw. Social bookmarking allows you to put your keywords to good use only helping your SEO rankings.

Social bookmarking gives you the opportunity to drive some serious traffic

If you are putting out great, relevant content you can expect some great web traffic from social bookmarking.  If you're looking to drive some serious traffic to your website just remember that quality content really does go a long way.  The more social bookmarking sites you submit to the more opportunities you have to draw traffic back to your website.  Attracting your target audience has never been easier.

Social bookmarking makes online branding easy

Social bookmarking gives you a great space to create more links back to your website, but also make your business more personable.  Social bookmarking sites can become great personalized spaces for you and your business allowing you to get some brand recognition.

What Social Bookmarking Sites Should You Use?

Just like the ones displayed up above in the picture, there are a plethora of social bookmarking sites that you can utilize to help you start your social bookmarking and improve your rankings.  As an SEO Firm in Chicago we suggest using as many as you can keep up with.  A few of the main social bookmarking sites that we suggest using for search engine optimization purposes include Digg, Reddit, Fark, Blinklist, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.  We rely on a mix of those when doing search engine optimization for clients.  Some social bookmarking sites give you the option to do a trial, so test a few out if you can and see how they work before committing to using one.

Comments or questions on doing social bookmarking to help improve your search engine rankings, feel free to leave us a comment below or contact us.


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Social Media’s Role on SEO

Thursday, December 27, 2012 · Posted in , , , , , , ,



The new year is vastly approaching and you want to drive more traffic to your website.  Makes perfect sense to us!  As a team of web designers and SEO specialists, we cannot stress the importance of SEO enough when it comes to getting more traffic to your website.  We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: social media greatly affects SEO rankings, but what is social media’s role in it all?  Here’s a few ways that social mediacan and will affect your SEO rankings:

Social media site content speaks to the search engines

Okay, well sort of!  Social media content, when updated regularly and when well written, lets search engines know that your business is an active online participant.  If and when social media engagement becomes a ranking factor for your website, you will surely benefit if you spend time on social media sites.  If you haven’t immersed yourself or your business in social media, now is the time to do it.  Don’t have the time?  Set up a consultation with a social media companyor a marketing company well-versed in speaking social media. 

The more links back to your website the better

The more sites that link back to your website, the better your SEO rankings will be, so this means all those social media sites you have created and began using are great links back to your website.  Because social media sites point back to your website, it will help create better SEO rankings for your website.  As an SEO firm, we always tell clients to picture their website in the center of a spider’s web and that it’s their job to create extensions from that web that will bring people straight to their website.  That is exactly what creating and using social media sites will do for you.  Perhaps someone didn’t find your website yet, but they did find your social media page.  Great.  Now bring them to your website and sell them on your services and products.  That’s what it is all about!

Be an active participant

Don’t expect to receive any kind of rankings boost just because you finally set up that Twitter account last week.  You have to be an active participant and yes, the search engines know who is an active participant and who’s not.  This means that if set up your social media accounts a year ago, but have never used them, they will not do you any good.  Try to set aside time out of your day each day to post some relevant content for potential customers to read and for search engines to grab on to.  Being an active social media participant means that you are posting great, original content, reposting other people’s great content, and interacting with potential customers.  If you find that you just do not have the time consider speaking with a social media firm or a marketing company.

Social media sites provide an opportunity for optimization

Social media sites are a great place for optimization tactics to take place.  Utilize social media sites as a way to get friends, fans and followers back to your website.  Social media profiles can be optimized for search similar to internally optimizing a website, so tag your images, write a great about us or company bio and utilize those keywords. 

The ability of sharing content greatly affects rankings

Encourage friends, fans and followers to share your content.  Sharing content is a great way to give your search engine rankings a boost.  Use strong calls to action in all of your posts and encourage readers to share your content through social networks.

Comment or questions are always welcome, feel free to comment below or contact us.

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Things You Need to Know About SEO

Thursday, December 13, 2012 · Posted in , , , , , ,




As a Chicago SEO Company we know that starting the all-important process of Search Engine Optimization is no walk in the park.  While many people want to see results overnight, the truth is that it could take anywhere from three months to an entire year to begin seeing solid numbers.  When starting SEO there are some basics you need to take into account to help see your website begin ranking for your chosen keywords.  Here’s our list of the core basics:

1- NO duplicate content: Under no circumstances should you copy content from someone else’s website and paste it on your own and not because that is just plain stealing, but because you will be punished by the search engines for such conduct.  The search engines are looking for original content and in that process, they are apt to rank websites with original content much more highly and penalize anyone who has duplicated content.  Search engine's are all-knowing.  They know who put up the content first and who put it up second and will punish the website that has the bootlegged content accordingly.    

2- Backlinking: Backlinking, what most SEO companies deem as an external SEO service, is the process of providing links to places outside of your website that link directly back to your website.  When you create links from external sites they need to be carefully created to be valuable as links for search engine positioning.  Backlinks are a great external SEO tactic to help your website to improve in search engine rankings. 

3- Quality content: As we already addressed, not only can your website content not be duplicated from another source, but it also needs to be good quality content.  Keyword stuffing your content, which just means filling your content with as many keywords as possible, will only hurt your rankings and the search engines will see that you are doing that and penalize you and your website accordingly.  Instead create great, engaging content that utilizes your keywords properly and that will help you increase your SEOrankings.

4- NO hidden text:  Are you hiding text in your website in hopes that you can trick the search engines into ranking you?  Think again!  Search engines are extremely smart and know when text is being hidden and yes, they will penalize you and your website for it.  Just say NO to hidden text!  Stick to lots of visible, quality text.

5- Powerful title tags:  Title tags are undoubtedly one of the most important parts of searchengine optimization.  Your title tags should comply with the theme of the page.  Each page should have a different title tag since all of your pages are different.  Search engines look to title tags as a simple phrase that lets them know what the page is all about.  It helps greatly with rankings, so make sure you are creating great title tags for all the pages belonging to your website.

Check back with us next Thursday as we continue on with our SEO-themed Thursdays.  If you have any comments or question regarding SEO, feel free to leave us a comment below or contact us with questions.  

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Social Media Marketing Tactics for 2013

Friday, November 30, 2012 · Posted in , , , ,


2013 is rapidly approaching and hopefully by now you and your company have already determined exactly what is going into your 2013 social media marketing plans.  Perhaps you are behind or you are looking to really boost your marketing plans for 2013, then consider a few of our social media marketing tactics for your 2013 plans:

1- Bump up your use of photos:  Consumers love great photographs.  These days we all may be too busy to stop and read a story, but what's great about a good photo is that it can easily grab people's attention.  For 2013, we suggest creating an entire integrated content strategy around photographs using social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, or even Facebook.  

2- Focus on building consumer trust:  Since trust is such a big part of what makes or breaks a brand, work your hardest on building consumer trust.  Consumers today are savvy and know when they are just being pushed into purchasing a product.  What do you do?  Rather than just plastering ads everywhere, consider sticking relevant and useful content in a multitude of places.  Nowadays, consumers are apt to trust content that comes from a multitude of places in multiple formats.

3- Use your connections: We're all pretty aware that these days consumers are much more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than social media ads.  Make 2013 a year full of great customer referrals.  Encourage customers to share your company's information via social media.

4- Get personal:  If you are hoping to built trust with customers through social media marketing, get personal.  No one wants to speak to the robot behind the company.  Consumers want to see who your brand really is, so make sure that in the 2013 months you are making an effort to get more personal with your customers.  Social media marketing is a great way to do just that.

5- Build on relationships formed via social media:  One of the best parts of engaging your business in social media is the relationships you are able to form just by using it.  For 2013 make it your personal mission to take social media relationships further.  Take relationships formed on social media to the next level and try out an email campaign to continually reach your audience.

Looking for more tips on improving your social media marketing for 2013?  Leave a comment below or contact us.

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Creating a Content Strategy

Monday, November 26, 2012 · Posted in , , , , , ,


We've said it before and we're saying it again... Content most certainly is king, especially in the world of search engine optimization.  Search engines reward those websites that successfully provide fresh, plentiful and relevant content, which is why creating a content strategy is so vital to your business's growth.   As a Chicago SEO Company, we know the power of good content and truly believe that good content not only attracts your target audience, but it also educates and builds trust with them.  Think of content as the foundation for your internet marketing efforts.  Consider the following tips when creating a content strategy:

Step 1- Assess and identify your goals:  Assessing and identifying your goals are definitely step one.  In order to figure out where you want to be, you have to first assess where you currently are.  Ask yourself questions such as: What are you currently happy with?  What would you like to see change?  Who are you trying to reach?  Are you looking to increase brand awareness?  Make a list of your goals first so you can begin to form specific content strategies around your goals.

Step 2- The message:  The crux of a content strategy is determining what your target audience needs to know.  To figure out what your target audience or customer needs to know you have to "swim in the same pool they swim in."  If your target audience is predominately on Facebook, join Facebook and interact with them.  Get a feel for who they are and what they want to know and begin to structure your content around them and their needs.

Step 3- Taking action:  Whenever you put out content for your customers you must identify what action your want readers to take upon reading your content.  Do you want them to buy your product immediately?  Do you want them to read more about your services?  Do you want them to simply contact you for more information?  Structure your content around the action you would like to see your customer take.  When it's done correctly, you'll begin to see the kind of participation you are looking for.

Step 4- Content distribution: There are a variety of ways that you can disseminate your content with options such as emails, blogs, social networking posts, press releases, articles, case studies, reviews, testimonials, etc.  It's not recommended to choose one and just see what happens.  Try a mix and determine which works best for your company and target audience.

Step 5- The results: Now what good would all of your hard work developing a content strategy be if you didn't track your results?  Probably not much good at all since you would have no way of determining what the new strategy has achieved without measuring.  Web analytics are a great way to measure your traffic, visitor activity, and whole lot more.  Measuring results lets you know what you are doing right and what you need to be doing in the future, especially when you compare your results against your initial goals.  

If you're looking for more tips on creating a content strategy, feel free to comment below or contact us.

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Optimize Your Pinterest

Monday, August 27, 2012 · Posted in , , , , , , , ,



The power of search engine optimization doesn’t need to just be confined to your website and blog.  All of your social media pages, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Pinterest, should be optimized.  When we optimize, we prefer to optimize all the way, so this way you are maximizing your potential to be ranked higher by search engines.  While algorithms probably have not been accounting for likes, pins and comments quite yet, we certainly are starting to see more and more Pinterest results appearing in Google.  Here are some tips on optimizing your Pinterest page:

Don’t just repin, upload some of your own images:  Don’t get us wrong, repining is a big part of Pinterest’s purpose, but try to have an equal balance of pins that are repined from others and your own uploads.  Uploading your own images will have more weight when it comes to optimization.  Repining other peoples’ pins can help increase your page’s popularity.  After all, this is social media!

Pin from a variety of sources: Don’t pull all of your pins from one source.  Try uploading from multiple sources.  Having a variety of images from all different sources will help make your Pinterest page more interesting as opposed to other people or companies' pages repining from the same sources all the time.  Variety is the spice of life!

Name images you upload with keywords: The file name you have saved your images as can become important when it comes to optimizing your Pinterest page.  Instead of uploading a picture with a file name like 5832058209.jpg try something like chocolate-cake-recipe.jpg.  Make the file name relevant to what your picture and board are about.  If your entire board is about chocolate cake and the picture you’re uploading is a picture of chocolate cake with a recipe attached, then name it accordingly.  You want your chocolate cake board to utilize the keywords chocolate cake as much as possible. 

Leave lengthy descriptions: Pinterest always allows users to leave a description of up to 500 words.  Here’s the challenge: 500 words can be a little lengthy and perhaps be deemed as annoying or overkill, but we say use those words up.  Make your descriptions lengthy with plenty of keywords. 

Name your board appropriately: Pay close attention to what you name your boards since the titles of your boards will be apart of the search engine optimization process.  Say you own an Italian Restaurant and you want your page to come up in Italian Cuisine search results, then don’t name your board “Food We Love” or “Food We Make.”  Name it simply “Our Italian Cuisine.” 

As a Chicago Marketing Company, we have really been able to see the different search engine optimization makes for our clients.  Don't just optimize your website.  Optimize your social media pages as well to achieve optimal results.  If you have comments or questions on anything SEO related feel free to drop us a comment or contact us.  

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Making a Social Media Plan

Monday, August 13, 2012 · Posted in , , , , , ,




Creating a social media plan is probably one of the smartest tactics to implement to help your business succeed.  A social media plan will outline your goals for your social media use and will help you achieve them.  Even as a Chicago Internet Marketing Firm we have our own social media plan for ourselves and our clients.  Being successful using social media isn’t all about posting a million times a day (if anything, don’t do that, people will ignore you!) it’s about the quality of what you’re posting and doing it on a rather regular basis.  Here are a few steps you should take when you develop a social media plan for your business: 

Step ONE: Outline Your goals- First, identify what you hope to accomplish with social media. Not all social media sites are created equal, so outlining your goals will help you choose what sites will best help you work towards your goals and eventually, achieve them.

Step TWO: Stay Focused- Establishing your presence on social media takes time, so don’t lose hope and try to stay focused.  Be patient.  Use the goals you outlined in step one to help you stay focused and on the right track.  If you feel unfocused, remind yourself of what you want to achieve and reengage yourself!

Step THREE: Check out your target audience or current fans- Does your business already have fans?  If so, see where they hang out in the realm of social media and start there.  Engage with them by being a strong presence wherever they are.  No fans yet?  That’s okay.  Start by identifying your target audience and check out their social media site use via demographic research.  You and your business need to be in the center of where your fans or target audience are.

Step FOUR: Scheduling- Create a schedule to help you determine how and when (frequency) you’ll engage with your fans or target audience.  Creating a schedule keeps you accountable and when it becomes a habit you’ll be able to keep up with posting more easily and perhaps stay engaged more easily as well.  Start engaging with your target audience and users and you may be surprised by how often they’ll begin engaging with you.

Step FIVE: Content, Content, Content!- Social media isn’t all about selling yourself and your product.  It’s about being social and connecting with people, who may (if you do it right!) at some point, be very interested in what your company is selling.  Don’t provide them with endless amounts of status updates or tweets about your company.  Give them something to talk about at the water cooler.  Give them industry information.  Your posts and tweets should mainly be relevant to the industry your business is in.  Write a blog, explore relevant trends and show your fans and target audience case studies and infographics.  Position yourself as the expert in your industry and you’re likely to succeed. 

Step SIX: Contests and Promotions- Every couple of months run a contest or promotion to keep your fans and target audience coming back for more.  A contest or promotion is an opportunity for you and your business to be seen by a greater number of people on a larger platform.  A contest or promotion encourages fans and followers to keep up with you and your company, so it’s worth the legwork. 

These steps will help keep you and your business on the right track with your social media use.  Looking for more tips on creating a social media plan or have a comment?  We always love to talk social media, so contact us.

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Create More Engagement on Pinterest

Thursday, August 9, 2012 · Posted in , , ,





We are not just Chicago Graphic Designers, we are also social media experts.  We love trying new social media sites and seeing how they can help our clients.  When it’s being used by the right client, Pinterest has a ton of potential to capture a target audience.  Here are some of our tips on how to create more engagement on your Pinterest page:
 (1) Fill your boards with tons of pictures:  Every once and awhile you may come across something you want to pin that doesn’t have a picture that is attached.  Try to only pin things that have a picture since pictures are a big part of what makes Pinterest interesting for users.  Aesthetically, it will look better on your boards as well.  

(2) Make your boards interesting: Your boards need to do two things for followers- help and entertain.  Typically, Pinterest users are looking to learn or be entertained, so do a little of both.  Provide followers with boards that will be entertaining, but will also teach them something related to your brand.  Just keep all your boards and pins related to your company and industry. 

(3) Allow contributors: Pinterest gives you the option to allow contributors to post on your boards.  Allowing contributor posts helps you draw in fans of your company.  Allowing someone to contribute to your boards means you’ll have more people adding pins to your boards besides just yourself.   Adding contributors helps shape your page and boards around your audience and will help increase your popularity. 

(4) Contests:  There are a wide variety of different contests or competitions you can run for your Pinterest page these days.  Contests are great because they drive interactivity on your page.  Scavenger hunts, pin and wins, and most repins are common types of contests found on the social media site, so try out a contest and see how many people you can get involved.  There could be a huge payoff in the form of people visiting your website. 

(5) Analyze your page: As you should with all of your social media sites, make sure you are taking the time to analyze your Pinterest progress. Check out the “Popular Pins” section often.  This page shows you what pins are the most popular and who is sharing them.  The people sharing those pins may be people you want to connect with.  The popular pins section also gives you ideas on what types of things you should pin to drive traffic on your Pinterest page.  You should keep track of what is being pinned from your site to help get a better idea of the types of things you should pin more frequently.

Use these tips on your Pinterest page or build off of these tips as a springboard for even bigger ideas.  Looking for social media tips and tricks, contact us.  

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