Tag Archives: web marketing

Does Your Publicity Campaign Include Tagging?

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It’s not graffiti anymore, it’s pr

When you first hear or read the word TAGGING, you probably think of taggers who do graffiti on the walls. Well, think publicity and then think Internet, now you’re getting closer to tagging in today’s terms.
tagging and video publicity marketing
It is the linking of web sites. This old term is what describes how we use links to each other sites making search engines locate us faster.

It seems that this "linking" has been around in the earlier days of the Internet. Spammers were probably using this technique of marketing and when we were all hit hard with spam, search engines became more intelligent by counter acting their tactics.

You or your web designer, programmers often use tagging with your site. You have heard the words meta tags, keywords, right? Well, that is a form of tagging.

When a company wants to optimize your web site, this is one of the tagging areas that are often refined.

If you are in publicity and think this stuff is too deep in conversation and you don’t have an IT person, then use this handy tool for creating links. It is Yahoo’s Del.iclo.us. This is a tool bar that you can download from Yahoo’s site.

Tagging can help your publicity in many ways. For example, tagging can be done with pictures that are in your press release (which should be in your pressroom’s web site), or online video. Many sites have this available such as Yahoo 360, or Technorati’s blog that addresses tagging.

Publicity campaigns are no longer a list of releases or articles; it is your web site and making it SEO friendly with tagging, as well as other unique optimizing tricks. But that’s another subject.

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Build an SEO Web Site

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Make your web site a publicity magnet

Do you currently have a web site? Is it attracting clients? What about the media?

If you are ready to launch a new web site, or about to modify your existing site, you need to do these things first!
What I am about to explain, is based on your site being SEO friendly. That means it has been optimized correctly, the use of flash is correctly displayed and that your site is NOT built with frames. Optimizing a site is more than placing a bunch of keywords into your HTML or in your main text. If you are not sure if the site you are about to launch, contact a company who understands web marketing to help you increase the traffic and publicity attention your company needs.

INCOMING LINKS
You have heard this many times before, but building external links is still a high priority with all the major search engines. Make sure the links you setup are with those who have a Page Rank in excess of 3/10.

PRESS RELEASES
I can’t stress enough that this section of your site can be a main channel to the media. Your site should include a "press room". In this area you should place all your press releases that are optimized. Yes, even press releases, articles and short stories about the company need to be optimized. If not, then your pressroom is only another page. Also, be sure to submit the releases to all the appropriate online media. If you need help with your publicity, hire a company that can help you.

PURCHASE TEXT LINKS
Yes, there are times that you need to make some purchases to get the site in a high position and to attract clients/customers. Be wise in your purchase. One company that can help is called text link ads.

LINK EXCHANGE
Another excellent marketing tip. Be sure to get as many relevant links exchanged. Make sure these are companies in your related industry.

BLOG SITE
I cannot say this enough times. A blog "company" site, or a blog site from the CEO, President, or other noteworthy person in your company can be another excellent marketing tool. It does require daily attention. This can be done with the assistance of other staff members of the company that the author can then review the blogs prior to posting.

Want more leads, more traffic? Try these tips and if you really want to jump start a Publicity program, give us a call.

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Regal Medical Group Chooses Carson

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Medical account sees positive marketing

Not very often do we get the opportunity to shout and let the world know of our new accounts. But this was one we need to mention.

Regal Medical GroupRegal Medical Group is a new company that offers the services to its doctors and patients’ bringing them health plans and government programs for better family healthcare.

As we do with all new accounts, we had a fact-finding meeting to review the goals and objectives with the different marketing and publicity strategies to make "positive things happen" for Regal Medial Group. Priority for the company was to develop several brochures for the doctor’s directories for the different regions in Orange County, CA. The challenge was to meet a rigid deadline. It was successful and we did it all in record time, and within budget.

The medical program has quickly grown and now we are developing literature for the Inland Empire. Regal Medical is having us work closely with them to identify the best marketing and pr strategies to target their audience.

I’m telling you these things, because it is great when clients fully trust your input and work together as part of an overall team. It is this open relationship, which we started from our first meeting that will have positive impacts on both sides.

We will be working on all areas of web marketing, publicity, direct mail, incentive programs, literature and marketing.

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Building More Quality Traffic

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Web Marketing and Publicity

What? You still think those people in the IT department are not part of the overall publicity program? If you cannot work with your web marketing staff, or outside source (if you don’t do this in-house), then you’re work on that publicity campaign can have little impact.

Meta Tags and KeywordsThe word that still means success is TEAM. Working together can generate a lot of positive results. Especially when any campaign directs pr clients, customers, or B2B companies to visit your web site. Hey, if all the publicity you’re doing doesn’t include the web address then you’re missing out.

Ok, let’s get to building traffic.

As we all know, Google and Yahoo as well as MSN have taken over the search world. They are also changing how search works. By knowing some of these tips, pr people can better understand the mysterious world of search to improve their press releases, articles, and even how to find things on the net.

An important element now is TAGS. Yes, these are the same tags that were once considered a few years ago as a way into the hearts of the search engines. These were the metatags, title, tags, etc. But unlike they were before; there are new twists to making tags more successful. Understanding optimization and knowing how this new system is working, is very important in SEO marketing for web sites.

Let me give you a few tips that I read about the NEW Yahoo My Web. For example:

  • You can now share bookmarks
  • Tagging images. This is great for pr stuff and bloggers

Publicity agencies and pr people as well as pr clients now need to get more serious about optimization. It is how companies’ web sites will survive in the next couple of years.

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Link Your Site Before You Launch It

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How to generate traffic

Sometimes it is difficult to explain to pr clients how to get more traffic to a company’s web site in these short blogs. The reason is that it takes more than just a few keywords or phrases embedded into the HTML codes. It requires a plan to get fully indexed and recognized by search engines (SEO).

For those of you who understand the behind-the-scenes, and for those who have a fair knowledge of web marketing, then this is for you.

Before launching your new web site, or your updated site, you need to make sure the following has been completed.

  • First, make sure your domain name is registered, or renewed
  • Review your home page and the other key pages, these could be up to 5 or 6 different pages
  • Make links to your page with other high ranking pages that are already indexed. This will give your site immediate recognition by the search engines
  • Develop a PR campaign with releases on your site. These can be releases that have been distributed to the media
  • START A BLOG SITE! Not that I haven’t said this a few times before, but a blog site with your company web site will build high rankings with search bots as they crawl the different sites and your links
  • Make sure you write articles that are relevant about your company, the products or services you offer. Write articles about topics that you can later submit to other Ezines

One last item for this blog. Get links from other indexed sites to your company site. That completes the cycle.

If you need help with web marketing, give us a call.

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Public Relations Needs Web Marketing

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Get more traffic using these tools

No matter what your clients or pr agency says, you cannot have a successful pr campaign if your web site isn’t visible to the search engines.

So what does all this mean? By working with your pr staff, or your publicity agency, and the marketing people and the web IT department, you will see positive results.

Now let’s talk briefly about your web marketing. Maybe you do not have a web marketing or IT department, or your web designer doesn’t do marketing for web sites. No matter what your situation is, start building links to your web site. First, let me remind you that the site needs to be optimized for any site to gain credibility and ranking. If you are not sure how to optimize the site, contact me and I will give you a FREE analysis of your site’s optimization.

In previous blogs, I have addressed the two types of links. They are:

  • ONE WAY links. This is when you ask someone to have him or her place a link to your site on his or her site.
  • RECIPROCAL links. These are the type of links that you exchange with another relevant web site. Basically, you are linking to each other’s site.

Remember that it is always best to link to a high-ranking web site. And it is more critical to link to a site that is relevant to your industry. If not, then you are defeating the process and the search engines will penalize your site.

Some other web marketing tips:

1- Do Not link to too many sites too fast. For example, Google wants to see a slow progression of links built

2- Try to get about 5 or 6 new links per day

3- Make sure your keywords are relevant and placed into the text (body) of your message and into your title pages

If you want to learn more, contact me.

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Getting More Out Of Your Camapign

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Mass media and Online Media


When you take advantage of the tools you have for publicity and marketing you can extend the life of a pr campaign a lot longer. This in turn will get you more publicity for pr clients and increase your product or service awareness.

How do you integrate the two?

One example is to make use of the print or TV campaign and integrate that into your web site. For example, Hardee’s, a known hamburger chain that is owned and operated by Carl’s Jr., made use of a clever TV campaign.

They, Hardee’s, is known for very large, monster burgers. This particular ad focused on their new Philly Cheese Steak ThickBurger. The web site home page was the platform of their new commercial. The commercial could be uploaded to an iPod, added to a MySpace.com page or sent to a friend. Hardee’s invited customers to comment on the TV spot.

This gets their customers involved with the product and gets the word out at the same time. Hardee’s had an email sign up form to become part of their loyalty marketing program, which has benefits.

This is one company that understands integration of publicity, web marketing and reaching mass media. They are one of the few to make this work for them. Other companies shy away from their publicity departments and marketing departments. Keeping them separate. This can only slow your process to gain favorable publicity.

Learn how to make use of these media. It can only help promote your company further.

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Where is Search Going

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Search Engines Build Momentum

Search engine marketing is not something that just happens by chance. It is an art, a science, and a lot of work.

Many clients think the old ways of adding meta tag descriptions, or key words and submissions to all the search engines will get results. Not true anymore.

The search engine (SE) battle to be the biggest and best is heating up again.

More companies are finally realizing they can build an ecommerce web site while maintaining a traditional storefront. With this attention, the SE’s are getting more sophisticated on how they list a web site.

I saw an article by Kevin Ryan titled "Search and the Brand". He mentioned a lot of interesting things, besides the awards stuff for this event.

For example, at the Advertising Week event, Mr. David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americans, pointed out a study that was completed in December of 2004 showed 92% of consumer electronics and other computer purchases. This is only one category. But it illustrates how consumers are using the net for more ease of purchasing. That means they will be using SE’s more often to find products, companies and places to make purchases.

HP saw their click volume increase 45% and the transactions increased 65%.

At this Advertising Week event, it was noted that keyword purchasing hit an all-time high as well. Some advertisers were now purchasing odd words, like "possum". Popular words such as "automobile" or "Honda Element’ are still expensive.

So what’s the other solution to fighting this marketing battle? Try "street smart marketing". By this I mean it’s time you have a plan that includes a blog site with back end tie-ins. Publicity should be part of that overall plan. Together, these become powerful marketing tools and can build a brand name within a few months.

Keyword Prices

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Up or Down?

A follow up to yesterday’s blog, I thought it would be of interest to know a little more about keyword prices.

An article in the Research Brief appeared today that listed the top browsers and top categories in the financial industry. It identifies the number of unique audience (visitors, users). This in turn is one of the sources that companies use to gauge the value of key words in an industry. Then the bidding begins.

In another article by the Research Brief dated Feb 2, 2006, it mentions that keyword bidding prices are on the decline.

Hold up, you need to really read the full article. Only segments within an industry might be less costly. They based this report on the fact that more keywords and phrases are being developed by companies and are used in the bidding process, which in turn means more specific choices for customers to type in the search engines.

In all, costs are not really going down, just more choices. More targeted words are being used.

An example shows that in the automotive market, from Oct 2005 to Dec 2005, the average keyword went from $1.30 to $1.52. In contrast, such as a saturated market like Mortgages-Finance went from $3.66 to $3.30 (in that same period).

This further reinforces my point from yesterday. Keywords are good sources to build traffic, but can you really afford it?

I guess it all depends on your outlook, your budget and how aggressive you want to be.

The best way to get positive results is with a mix of keywords (if you are a believer in this media) plus a solid publicity program and a good web marketing campaign. This will build the image and branding you need along with qualified results.

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Are Keywords Important?

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Buying Keywords, is it for you?

Companies are always trying to get more out of their web sites, and they should. But too many times, when the site isn’t generating enough sales, or leads, marketing executives turn to buying of keywords.

Is it right for you?

You need to seriously think about this before putting marketing money into these types of programs. Yes, it can bring "people" to your site. Notice I said people, not customers, or clients. There is a BIG difference.

The search engines make their millions, or billions on ad dollars. One of those ad dollars is the purchasing of key words. Google has a program called AdWords. It is a bidding process that you do when you want a key word.

A good article explains this in more detail from MarketingProfs.com. They tell you that you need to be careful in selecting, or choosing a word to bid on. If it is too general, such as coffee (let’s say your company sells something like this), then you don’t want that keyword. Of course a lot of people will be typing that word into the search, but that means this word will be very expensive. You need to find a niche or specific coffee that cost of your competitors would not purchase.

After you do all this experimenting, and buying different keywords (hey, did you think you’re going to get a lot of business buying only one keywrod?), you need to track your results and compre it to the sales.

That’s just one thing to consider. Read the article to get the full scoop and then decide.

My reason for bringing this to your attention, is that keyword bidding can be good, but it can be costly. The return can also be good, but at what cost?

I suggest that if you really believe in this media, then be sure to follow it closely.

I also recommend that you have a strong media mix in your plan. Let’s day blogging! I like that suggestion, or other web marketing strategies.

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