Tag Archives: Internet Marketing

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PPC Updates for December 2018

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For more information on these PPC updates and latest SEO Trends

Connect with us to learn more!

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80% of All WordPress Websites Will Be Vulnerable To Hacking At The End Of This Month

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If you have a WordPress site or manage one for others, then you need to stop everything & check the PHP version of the site. The PHP version 5.6 & 7.0 will no longer receive security patch from 31st December & 3rd December respectively, which makes them very prone to hacking.

WordPress has released data which shows that most of the sites are built on these two or even older version of the PHP. Only a limited few sites are using 7.1 or higher version of the PHP.

If you are not sure how to check the version of the PHP your site is built on, you can simply contact your hosting company.

Alternatively, you can also install this PHP plugin to see. To know the life cycle of the all the PHP versions, please see the below table:php-lifecycle-table

Be informed that updating PHP is not that complicated. However, the outdated plug-ins & themes can make it a bit daunting. So we advise you to back up all your website before making any changes. Not all the Plug-ins that you are currently using would be compatible with the latest version of the PHP that is 7.1 & higher. So before you even start to upgrade, make sure you identify all the plug-ins and themes that can be updated and, remove those that are not compatible with the latest version of the PHP. And The PHP compatibility checker will help with just that.

It’s vital that you remove any plug-ins that are not compatible with the latest version of PHP because they pose a security threat. So upgrading your site’s PHP version will go like this:

1. Create a full backup of your WordPress site.

2. Check the PHP version.

3. Plugin Compatibility With New PHP Versions

4. Find an alternative to those plug-ins that can’t be updated.

5. Go to your web hosting control panel & click on the PHP section.

6. Update the PHP version.

In case you are stuck anywhere between the whole process, make sure to reach out to your hosting provider and ask them your specific question. Alternatively, you can also reach out to us. Our expert team we will be more than happy to assist you.

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Youtube is Determined To Provide Measurements You Trust

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In order to help YouTube advertisers drive more conversion, Google added new features that combine the power of YouTube’s creative canvas with Google’s machine learning and measurement solution.

YouTube advertisers soon will be able to use a wide variety of ad extensions, so that they can provide interesting information and compel the audience to take actions.

Google now wants to encourage viewers to complete a lower funnel action, i.e.: booking flight, downloading app etc. & for that, they are testing additional use cases.

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Google also wants to enable YouTube advertisers to measure the full impact of their video campaigns by evolving Brand Lift. They are also partnering with IRI so that it will get easier for the advertisers to act upon upper and lower funnel metrics.

They also have introduced new metrics:

Lifted Users: To know the estimated number of users whose perception changed after seeing your ads.

Cost-per-lifted-users: To know the average cost of the lifted users.

Google also added that in order to utilize this new measurement tools to the fullest, you should use Maximize Lift bidding.

Furthermore, Google is investing heavily in Google Measurement Partners to ensure that the measurements you receive is authentic & not exaggerated. Google said that it’s their topmost priority to provide measurements that advertisers can trust, as it is crucial to their overall advertising efforts.

Since Facebook drastically exaggerated activity reports (As much as 900%), having a measurement that you can trust is vital to the success of the ad campaigns. Google also announced their “New MRC accreditations and partners for Google and YouTube ads measurement”.

In the end, we would like to add that if you are a big brand, then you surely want to check all the new measurement tools and metrics that YouTube has to offer in order to get the most out of your YouTube ad campaigns.

For more information on Youtube’s latest and great measurement tools and how to implement it for your content, contact us!

What Precautions You Need to Take While Hiring an SEO Company

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Search Engine Optimization is an extremely effective method of advertising your business on the internet. With the ever-growing popularity of search engines and technology this trend will continue to increase. However, some SEO companies are not as ‘real’ as they seem.

1. Shy away from SEO consultants who guarantees you to be on the first page of a search engine.

2. Be sure to ask for references to call on before hiring the SEO company you are considering. A world of information can be learned by calling on a few past clients.

3. Make sure they provide you with a clear report on what they are doing to improve your rankings as well as a report on the status of your keywords in regards to where they are ranking on a weekly to monthly basis.

 

Resource Box: SEOsolutions.us a Chicago SEO company is ready for all of the above and more. We do not make any guarantees we cannot keep and we always practice Google friendly SEO tactics to prevent your site from being blacklisted from Search Engines.

How Small Businesses Find Their Way on the Internet

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Small businesses don’t typically have a whole lot of money to spend on advertising. They search for ways to get their name out to the public as efficiently as possible, word of mouth is great. However, a very large amount of small businesses are starting to use the internet to promote themselves. This is because they can experience the best and most efficient results from internet marketing. Their message and advertising campaign can be customized and tailored to their specific needs in thousands of ways.

Almost all small businesses nowadays have websites. This is the window for the world to see them through; their personal viewing portal that can be accessed by anyone at any time. With a million small businesses comes a million websites, so now the key is to get your site found. Every small businesses website can bring them to greater successes in their business.

  • Creating a sound SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program is one option to choose from when advertising on the internet. It is one of the best marketing methods and produces one of the highest ROI’s.
  • Choosing to use a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign can be effective for specific products, especially during the holiday season!
  • Another good way to add to your websites traffic is to keep a steady stream of information flowing through the site.  Blogging with good relative content can be an extremely effective way of keeping your consumer interested. If they have visited your site they are clearly interested in your service or product and may want to stay informed.
  • Social media is another good way for consumers to follow your company which allows you to provide good material on your product or service for the consumer to digest in their own life on their own time.

With an ever-growing Internet population keeping a strong presence on the internet for your small business is critical in the growth process. A good website with streaming content that can be found by those who need it will thrive on the internet. This type of website will allow for a company to grow beyond its current potential and reach new heights in sales.

If you’re small business is looking for an SEO consultant, look at www.seosolutions.us. We are a Chicago SEO company that specializes in Search Engine Marketing and other Internet marketing techniques.

SEO – It Takes Time

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Search Engine Optimization is a process. During the first years of search you could get away with grabbing keywords and stuffing them into your website to drive rankings. Another method people used to get away with was using meaningless links from and to their websites. Google’s algorithm has changed immensely since 1998 when it was introduced to the public. Now if you want your website to appear on the first page of Google there are several important steps to take and some things to avoid as well.

First things first, content is king. Having a website with good content is extremely important. Having the right amount of keywords mixed into that content is also important. To many keywords can get your rankings lowered while to little keywords can do the same thing. Maintaining a relevant website that provides people with important information will not only increase your rankings but will also increase your websites retention rate which is just the amount of first time visitors that return to your website for a second and third view.

Second, links are no longer viewed as always being a good thing. Google has caught onto the fact that people are link farming; simply linking to as many websites as they can (relevant or not) in an attempt to increase their websites rankings. In order to maintain your rankings or increase them your link building needs to be appropriate. Linking to other sites related to yours that are seen as ‘good’ sites by Google (meaning they follow the rules and provide relevant content) is a great way to increase rankings.

Third, don’t think keywords and good content is the silver bullet. Stay in the mix of things by creating strong social presence; Google and other search engines are taking into account social circles more than ever. In an attempt to compete with Facebook, Google launched Google circles, a new social media site where you can invite people into different circles based on their relationship to you; work, school, friends, family. These social circles (facebook or Google Circles/Google+) are the new way for Google to start ranking how important/relevant your site is.

Finally, stay relevant with good OFFPAGE optimization. Some good ways to do this is to write articles about your industry and submit them to article directories which are basically phone directories for websites on the internet. While articles are great, you can blog about your industry and stay social while doing it. Creating a blog that people read and learn from is a great way to bring traffic to your website. You can also guest blog on other peoples websites in order to increase your online presence.

Remember that content is King! Good content and the right targeted keywords will increase your rankings. Stay focused on good content with about 8% keywords and brining your website efforts to social media and other online activities such as blogging and you will have a nice SEO start.

www.seosolutions .us – An Illinois SEO company, Chicago based.

A Few Words on SEO / Important UPDATES!

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SEO UPDATES!

Search has become one of the best marketing tactics to increase ROI since marketing was invented. Not only does it produce results but it allows the marketer to geo-target, check important analytics and act on those analytics to implement stronger and stronger campaigns month after month.

With the new Panda Updates Google has deployed websites that use a tactic called link farming are being punished. Farming links, which is at its core, building links to your site to make it look popular when the content is nothing but garbage.  So what do we do now? Well those of us who use unique content and a little bit of hard work to drive rankings are in luck. We continue to blog and write press releases every week. That’s how you stay relevant; you give people what they want without shoving it down their throats!

The beauty of a good search campaign is that once you deploy all the right tactics and you “get rolling”. It is much easier for you to continue to drive your rankings. The tough part is getting started. This may be because results aren’t immediate and small businesses typically don’t have money to blow without seeing an ROI relatively fast. However, medium sized businesses seem to stick around long enough to truly reap the benefits of a campaign that is driven and lead to a strong online community and presence that is interactive and growing.

Search Engine Optimization: The Basics

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Let’s concentrate on the basics. What exactly is search engine optimization? It is the process (and it is a process indeed) of organizing your site with specific keywords while creating links to your site via social media, blogging and other marketing venues.

 Keywords can be single words or phrases. A keyword for a construction company may be for example; Campbell Construction, Illinois. This keyword would be considered a phrase. Notice how Illinois is also attached the end of the phrase. This is an excellent way to geo-target your marketing audience. This also works by county, township and can also be done using zip codes.

Another huge aspect of creating a great Search Campaign is making sure that the site is set up correctly on-page. This may be anything from having a strong domain name to load-time to having strong written content, and the amount of content and the specific ratios of keywords mixed into your content will affect rankings.

However, off page optimization is also important, these are all the activities performed away from the website but are in one way or another linked back to your website. Off page optimization activities range from a large number of things from blogging, to social media campaigns to video creation and deployment, press releases and more. It is important for most businesses to concentrate on their own business while hiring an outside firm to implement a strong online campaign that will boost search engine rankings.

Shocking Statistics about Search:

  •  Google is the most popular search engine.
  • Over 500 million searches are completed daily
  • 85% of online traffic only views the first page on search engines
  • 85% of traffic finds accurate information which is useful to them.
  • 81% of online users find new websites from using search engines.
  • 73% of online transactions start with the use of search engines

 

 

SEO: Search Engine Optimization – Your Path To Profits

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Why SEO and Who Needs It
In this age of information when searching for something on the Internet people normally look it up in popular search engines like: Google, Alexa, Gigablast, or Yahoo. They do not go beyond the first or second page of the searched results i.e. the first 20-40 of the hundreds of thousands results popped up by the search engines. If the information is available on the Internet, it is found, more often than not, in these first few search results. Browsing through the top websites thrown up by the search engines related to the information suffices. Studies on internet search behavior and eye tracking have confirmed this.

As obtaining information and doing business online has become a popular practice, individuals and organizations that are conducting business on the Internet fully or partially should be more visible on the Internet. Websites of such organizations need to come up among the top ten/twenty of the search results to be noticed by people. Small businesses as well as large organizations that depend on online business need to rank high up on the search engines. The higher the rank of a website more is its number of visitors, and possibly more business for the website.

The websites that come at the top of the search engine results are not there by accident. Careful planning, designing, and programming are the factors behind pushing the ranking of a website higher up. The process of elevating a website to a better ranking and higher visibility is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

How SEO Works
Imagine the World Wide Web to be a huge library stacked up with innumerable websites. When somebody tries to search for specific information using a search form, a robot (much like a library assistant) scans the relevant section of the library of websites. Similar to libraries that have categorized sections for books, the search engines have indexes for the crawlers to search through. The robot (also known as spider or crawler) searches through HTML data bases and selects the most relevant websites first. Search engines use different algorithms to judge relevance of websites to the information searched for.

SEO consultants help in designing websites by using keywords and other methodologies. They attempt to make the meta tags, contents, and links of the websites become more tractable for search engine algorithm. Search engines outline their own policies of search engine optimization and it’s the responsibility of the SEO consultant to adhere to those. Failing which search engines can ban websites. Therefore SEO consultants have to strike a balance between ‘keyword stuffing or spamdexing’ and ‘paucity of keywords’.

Search engine optimization has gained importance with the growth of online business. A website foraying in to the World Wide Web without using SEO techniques is akin to a soldier rushing in to battle without a gun. Obviously, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.”No wonder, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.

 

Search Engine Marketing & Mobile Websites: IMPACTFUL!

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In 2011, Search Engine Marketing’s ROI increased over 18% quarter on quarter. This statistic simply means that marketing through search engines continues to bring in more and more dollars, per dollar spent on the advertisement you displayed (and at an increasing rate).

Today, Google has increased its share of advertising on the internet to over 45%. Search Engines are where modern businesses, potential customers, clients or whoever; goes to find what to do, what to buy, where and what to eat and how to get there to make the final purchase. Google it! You can literally get prices, pictures, virtual tours, dimensions, ingredients and much more, all from going to a website! The key for small business owners is being that website that stands out and gets found.

Realizing the impact of such a powerful, speedy and reliable form of marketing is just the beginning for many small business owners. Taking advantage of this concept is when small business owners truly see an impact on their own profits. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth and having a Facebook page is very impactful marketing, however, if you want to see a true trending growth in your business, keeping your businesses website presence substantial and up to date is an absolute must. That is as long as you’re also willing and able to keep up with the sure to be incoming business yourself.

This means that part of staying on the top of people’s minds when they want to make a purchase is keeping up with how the internet is accessed. Mobile websites are fast becoming the new, and they reach 86% of the global population! Why go to a computer downstairs and leave the comfort of your couch or bed to check your Facebook page or look up a good restaurant to eat at tonight when you can do it right from your phone, and just as fast if not faster. Or when you’re out and about, a desktop computer is not even an option for finding services or products. It is fast becoming the norm for people to pull out their phones and quickly check the closest needed product or service with a few quick finger strokes.

Keeping your website available on desktop and mobile devices, fast loading and full of correct and up to date information is crucial to growing your small business. You’re an entrepreneur and your expertise might be selling clothing or selling household items such as vases and lamps so staying on the first page of Google might seem like a difficult task. However, the right SEO company can provide you with weekly reports of your Google rankings and keep your site active so that Google views it as a site that is healthy and viable for the first few pages of Google.

If you’re not on the internet and your next potential customer is, well then they are just that, a potential client. To make sure that they become a customer you need to make sure they find you on the internet can access your website and view your products in a fast, clean and efficient manner. But you don’t specialize in uploading content to the internet, so what do you do, you hire somebody to do it for you.