If you are tracking lots of unique visits to your website but your conversions are low, you might want to try some different design elements to improve your analytics. We try and target between 4% and 7% and if your site is converting below that you may have a poor design or your Keywords may also be too broad. Click Here for a good tool to use to research search volume on a particular Keyword so you can also make sure you are not using Keywords in your Title Tags, Meta Tags and URL Strings that are not being searched. Watch the video below.

By Mashable

We already knew that social media marketing budgets were on the rise, but now we know by how much. Forrester Research is out with their Interactive Marketing Forecast for the next five years, and estimates social media marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums.

Of course, social media is starting from a smaller base. Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on the medium this year, growing to $3.1 billion in 2014. At that point, social media will be a bigger marketing channel than both email and mobile, but still just a fraction of the size of search or display advertising ($31.6B and $16.9B, respectively).  Read Entire Article

Google is the pre-eminent search engine (SE) with no close competitor. Given that inclusion is free, your Web pages must be in it. We’ll show you how to top the Google SERPs, that is, be found at the top of the search engine results pages. These techniques are known as search engine optimization (SEO) and require a small investment of your time.

I took two of my sites to the top of the SERPs in three months, so it can be done. My pages have few competitors: my challenge was mainly to get past false positives such as resumes, job vacancies, articles, and so on. If you are competing with “real” sites that are selling competitive products such as the ones you read about in your spam e-mails, you can get there within a year with some persistence.

Goal

Google SERP

You must understand that SERP positioning is dynamic – what you see depends on no single factor. It depends on the viewer’s location, the type of search used (basic, advanced, regional, filtered, and so on), the content of the page, their keyword density, the page rank (PR), the search term (words or phrase), and so on. Therefore, you need to plan your site carefully.

Ten-Point Checklist

1. Domain Name and Server

Get a.ca domain if your audience is likely to look for Canadian sites. Use a global, top-level domain (gTLD) such as.com if your business is not local. A unique, topical name such as “dentist-atlanta.com” should rank higher in the SERPs than “dentist.com” or “smithclinic.com” (if the search term is likely to be “dentist in atlanta” or similar).

It is nice but not essential if the web host gives your site a unique IP address, but it is highly advisable to host your site on your own dedicated server. Shared web hosting means that a server could host thousands of web sites, and Google’s spiders would be slowed down.

If you already have a Web site, you can find out its IP address using cmd.exe or an MS-DOS prompt, e.g. “ping cnn.com” and call up the displayed IP address in the browser. If you don’t see the expected web page, it has a shared IP address.

2. Page Title

An ill-planned page title is the Achilles Heel of a Web page. This is the text that appears at the very top of the browser window.

The Title tag text should be brief and readable, avoiding superfluous words and punctuation marks. Begin with the most valuable keywords, e.g. “Root canal specialist dentist clinic, Mayfair, London”, not something like “***** Fred Smith, BDS – 5 Stars Dental Clinic *****”, or worse, “Welcome to my home page”, or “Untitled”.

3. Style Sheet

Placing style definitions in a.css (Cascading Style Sheet) file moves the body text close to the top of the document and shrinks the page size. Many Javascript effects can be replaced by CSS. Fast-loading pages are good for both humans and search engine crawlers.

4. Meta Tags

Google ignores the Keywords meta tag for ranking but other SEs use it. An extract from the Description meta tag sometimes appears in the SERP; sometimes you see a snippet from the body text. Moderation and relevance should be your benchmark for placing keywords in these tags.

5. Content

• Quality content is rewarded by top placement in the search results. For example, if you sell new cars, used cars, and car service, you would have three branches, each containing pages relevant to that theme.
• Links to popular causes, memorial ribbons, HTML validation, page counters, etc. could distract visitors to other sites.
• Optimise images and keep the page size low.
• Place key phrases towards the top of pages and in heading tags such as H1. Don’t get hung up on a single keyword for the whole site. Pick different ones for different pages so that you have more ways to be found. Optimise for the search terms used by your paying customers, if you can identify them, not casual visitors.

• Consider (this depends on the size and nature of your business) placing noncommercial pages such as staff pages, personal hobbies, genealogy and so on at a secondary level but not linked from the entry page. Some of my ranking success comes from hosting my hobby pages below my commercial site, because I cannot justify buying a domain for each of my interests. I legitimately link them to my resume, which has a link to my business site. This enables free placement of the secondary pages in otherwise for-fee directories.6. Links and Folders
• Link a site map from the home page so that crawlers can find the rest of your pages.
• Link each page to the home page and to others in its logical group (but not to every other page in the site). The anchor text should use key phrases and words.
• Use keywords for folders, image names and Alt text but don’t overdo it. e.g. /hamilton/lawyer/divorce.htm, alt=”Perth plumber” The deeper your directory structure, the less likely it will be spidered regularly.7. Neighbourhood WatchGet quality incoming links from sites that share your theme. Without referrals, it’s near impossible to be visited by Googlebot. Try to get such links from sites with PR3 (Page Rank – see below) or better, not from link farms that are clearly built to boost PR. Make it easy for other sites to use keyword-loaded phrases in their links, say, by offering a cut-and-paste slice of HTML anchor code. Here is an example you can use to link to this page:Links from lower-ranking peers will not penalise you; they simply won’t appear in Google’s list of backward links to your page. You cannot control who links to you, but you have control over who you link to.Add a judicious number of outbound links to topical peers of the same or better calibre. Google likes links to authoritative sites, but don’t overdo the external links. Although such sites might not overtly link to your site, their site statistics file might get crawled and constitute a link back to you.8. CloakingCloaking hides content from humans and SEs, which is generally a bad practice. Good reasons to cloak include hiding parts of your optimised pages from amateur competitors or to show different pages to different visitors based on their browsers.Subscriber-only sites also manage to get into SEs. They use a cloaking practice known as “agent name delivery”, which is a slab of code that checks whether the visitor is a crawler or a human. Crawlers get to see the whole site, but others are directed to a sign-up form.9. Avoidable PracticesThe following practices could get your site banned from Google at worst or lower its ranking at best:
• Gimmicks. Pointless Javascript effects such as cursor trails and transitions do nothing for your viewers but place a lot of code above your body text. You want your content close to the top of the page.
• Bad HTML code. Novice hand-coders might copy some HTML tags without understanding their meaning. One webmaster used the robot directive
• Multiple sites with duplicated content, e.g. http://www.example.net and http://www.example.com hosted on the same server or different ones, as this is considered spamming. Use a permanent redirect on all secondary sites to point to the main domain.
• Multiple copies of the same page. This is typically an entry or “doorway” page optmised for different keywords to lure different people, e.g. crackz.htm, serials.htm, passwords.htm, and so on.
• Hidden content. This can be repetitive text on the same colour background or a layer with coordinates that are off the visible page. It begs the question why the author does not put this effort into creating visible text.
• Flash-Only pages. A solution is a user agent entry check that displays Flash to enabled browsers, but plain HTML to crawlers and other human visitors.
• Frames. Googlebot will crawl links in the Noframes text, but not ones in the framed pages. Other SEs might not crawl frames, so it is better to use tables and more so to use CSS. If you must use frames, ensure that you use the correct Doctype declaration for frames. I have noticed that Googlebot can now crawl links in frames but sometimes it cannot.
• Submission software or service. They could submit your site to thousands of unknown SEs. You will get a lot of spam, abuse, and possible inclusion in link farms that will ruin your reputation in Google’s eyes. After all, can you name more than five major SEs?
• Session IDs. Sites that require session IDs from crawlers will get poor visibility because the previous session will have expired by the time Googlebot returns.
• Over-optimisation. [Update 11/2003] Many sites that followed a strict “SEO formula” found that they could not be found at the top of the SERPs, or in the index at all. There is speculation that such tactics cause the sites to be filtered out of the search results.10. PatienceHaving optimized and submitted your pages to Google, get on with growing your business, because Google takes time to rank you. Work on getting quality, inbound links from high-ranking sites that feature the same subject matter. Increase your content and keep it fresh. Get free or paid listings in Google AdWords, Overture, Yahoo, Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), and reputable engines such as MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves.

A candidate recently asked me, “How do I find a hiring manager in a large company like Microsoft?” There are a lot of ways to do this but one of the easiest and best is using LinkedIn. When I recommended this to the candidate he completely agreed, however, the problem was he only had about 60 connections. Too few to be effective.

Some benefits to a large LinkedIn database of contacts:

1. People can find you. The more people at the second and third degrees of separation the more times you will show up in a search. For example, I have around 500 contacts. However, I am linked to over 5 million people on LinkedIn. When I search for a candidate that is a huge database.
2. LinkedIn will eliminate the need for resume databases on Ladders, Monster, Careerbuilder and other job boards. This is because it costs on average between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars to have access to these resume databases. LinkedIn is free. Why would a recruiter or any company pay that when we can use LinkedIn for free.
3. Resumes databases by the job boards are not pick up by Google or any search engine. These are the ones you want to make sure you show up on. LinkedIn is and you can even improve your search results for as little as $25 a month. (See prior blog article SEO Your Search On Google)
4. It helps you find the people you want an introduction to. This is very powerful. I have helped numerous people with introductions as a result of LinkedIn. On a weekly basis I receive requests indicating they found a person in my connections and would I make an introduction. I always agree.
5. Even when working this is a great tool for resources, customer contacts and introductions, references, service providers and even potential hires for you or your company.
6. On a personal basis it is a great way to stay in-touch with friends, colleagues, prior employees and networking contacts. When you update your profile they will get a notice and likewise when they update theirs.

Work hard at building your connections. Make every effort to reach that magic 500+. If you use Outlook download the LinkedIn tool bar. It makes inviting people very easy.

There are many more positives to building your LinkedIn network than there are negatives. Many have resisted. I believe this recession has proven to be good thing for everyone’s network.

If you have other ideas share them by adding a comment. Lets help everyone build a strong network.

A good way to start is building a network is making sure your profile is complete. If it isn’t start there and then begin expanding your contacts. Don’t miss the opportunity to get a high ranking on Google.

You can download for free our “8 Matrix LinkedIn Profile Assessment” tool.

We are seeing more and more restaurants using Facebook as a way to get more customers.  With the new FBML technology we can now build full Facebook Platform applications for our customers that deeply integrate into a user’s Facebook experience.  We can hook into several Facebook integration points, including the profile, profile actions, Facebook canvas, News Feed and Mini-Feed. This a real breakthrough and if you or anyone you know owns a bar or restaurant they should read this article on 8 ways restaurants can use Facebook pages to gain more clients. MySpace had this and I used it for my Golden Spoon Yogurt Stores goldenspoonyogurt to learn how to use Facbook Pages and build your fans click this link  Read More

Here is a list of 15 Easy Ways to Get Visitors & Tips to Build Traffic to a New Blog or a New Website:

1. Focus on creating content – do not create content just for search engines. Eventually people will stop coming if your content is useless.
2. Create New Content. This is easier said than done. Or you could create different content. As an example, you will find thousands of websites showing how to set up a free blog on WordPress. There is nothing new you can write about it. However, you can create a demo video about that. That’s different! Off course, there has to be good text around the video to please the search engines as well.
3. Look for exciting topics that people have consistently looked for. Typically, if your blog is not as famous as the New York Times or the CNN, people will most likely not come to you to find out what is the latest development in national politics! Instead focus on something that has proved to be popular for a long time.
4. Keep your blog software updated. Older versions often do not have many unique functionalities to make your presentation attractive. Google, for instance, noted that it will index WordPress blogs that use the most updated versions to prevent security flaws.
5. Create content regularly. And when you do, do not repeat your previous articles blatantly. Regularity is very important. It serves 2 purposes – search engines always look for newer, updated content to index & deliver in search results & keeps your blog fresh in the minds of your readers.
6. Write sincerely on the subject. Allow due credits in case you are using someone else’s content. Be cautious that you do not end up creating another set of links. There are too many directories with links telling what others are doing. There is always a serious need to sincere people who are offering something new.
7. If you have to show ads, then show them. But keep in mind that ads distract readers. Especially flashing ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, exit ads irritate the users. Moreover, such ads often conflict with the readers’ browser causing them to crash inadvertently. Go with Text & Image ads or Shopping Ads to begin with.
8. Get to know people who are equally trying to get traffic. Social networking is very important in the long run. But it could be a challenge to have your links up on the blog of a famous blogger. So look for other bloggers who are starting new & you could start sharing links with them. When I began, I used to request everyone to share my RSS feeds. Many did and many more did not. But whoever did, helped me in getting attention from their friends.
9. Write with facts. There is a saying that controversy gets attention. This is true. You can definitely write about something controversial, but at the same time, be open to criticism. Controversy also gets you harsh comments & critics. Also, while talking on a controversial subject, do not write false information. Keep the facts straight.
10. Write is very lucid language. Think of the reader while you write. Read your own post before publishing & correct grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes & data errors.
11. Be open to ask for opinions. Not every readers would bother to write a comment, some will. Comments often form a sort of a mini-forum for your readers to talk on the subject. Remember to moderate such comments & always allow a healthy discussion.
12. Submit to search engines regularly, especially when you blog is very new. Once in a couple of months is a good time to submit your blog to search engines. If you are publishing a blog, submit to blog search engines as well. We have listed the important search engines that you should consider submitting your blogs.
13. Allow readers more than one way to keep in touch. Twitter, Facebook, Technorati are good examples that millions of readers use to track authors. Subscribing to feeds is another non-intrusive way to connect with your readers.
14. Join popular link exchange programs. They are like free advertising for your blog without paying any money for it. It is a simple system when you show other people’s ads & in turn they show yours.
15. Be consistent on your subject. You may have decided to create niche content or publish general content. But if readers want to keep coming back is because they find you as an expert or someone with good sincere opinion on the subject. If you have too much variety, like you talk to movies & physics in the same blog, you are trying to become a small mediocre news magazine.

By The Pachera Group Executive Search

Be honest. How much time do you devote to building your personal or business network? Do you spend 15 minutes a day? Ok, how about 30 minutes a week?

Make Time To Network Online and Offline

If you answered yes to the latter, don’t worry because you are in good company. Most people spend 60 minutes or less a month on maintaining or building their network. It’s not that people don’t want to have hundreds of movers and shakers in their network. It’s just that the stuff of life gets in the way and pushes this extremely important task to the back burner. Actually, “task” isn’t quite the right word…networking is more rightly called a “discipline”.

“Job seekers and executives routinely admit that one of their regrets (prior to losing their job or quitting a job they didn’t like) was that they ignored their network,” says Mike Vanneman, partner with The Pachera Group, an executive recruiting firm. “All of a sudden, they look at contacts in their Blackberry, Outlook or (gasp!) their dog-eared day planner and realize the only people in their “network” are family members, former classmates or people with whom they would have preferred to lose touch.”

Networking Must Be One Of Your Top Priorities

Building and maintaining your network has to become a top to-do item! At the very least, once a week and ideally every day. Why? Because your network is tantamount to food, water and shelter! It is an asset that pays dividends in the present and in the future. For this reason, it’s a good idea to consider investing in one or a couple time saving online job search tools. This way your time can be focused on expanding your network and getting out there meeting new people.

The good news is that the rise and popularity of sites such as LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse and even Facebook makes building a network easy and even fun.

All you need to do is:

1. Make the decision to start or restart your networking efforts

2. Commit yourself to networking at least one hour per week and ideally for 15 minutes each day

3. Set a goal for how many contacts or connections you want to establish each month

Networking Requires Constant Care and Nurturing

While networking online, be somewhat selective. Invite people that you either already know or who have been recommended to you by a trusted friend. Be careful of what you post on your page. Whatever you post is there for all to see! Be consistent with your online message and professional profiles. Networking sites are like gardens, they require constant care, feeding and nurturing. Don’t let content stay up for too long. Change your profile picture periodically. Contribute to conversations and join discussion groups in your industry.

Use Time Saving Job Search Tools

Using online networking sites and job search time-saver tools should become as much a part of your personal workflow as e-mail and your mobile phone. Maintaining and expanding your network on a daily basis is essential especially in today’s times because you never know when you may need to reach out and connect with someone.

The Pachera Group Executive Search works with technology and media clients nationally in search of sales, marketing, business development and technology leaders. Their unique advantage is their partners — they have all been successful operational executives in the fields they now practice in. Learn more at www.thepacheragroup.com or blog.thepacheragroup.com.