By Blast creative and Brenda Segna
When I first joined Facebook it was to reconnect with high school classmates, to share pictures and updates with relatives who lived in Canada, Italy and across the country. But today, Social Media has revolutionized the way that we do business! Social Media Sites assist companies to give up to the date information to their clients and to receive comments and/or feedback from their clients/customers instantly!
Social Media has become the key to many companies, celebrities, and non-profits success. Has your company tapped into this powerful market yet?
According to The Wall Street Journal, the city of New York is seeking to hire an in-house social media specialist to handle their Facebook and Twitter accounts, confirming the fact that Social Media is the new frontier! It used to be that you had to run ads in the newspaper or magazines to reach your targeted audience, not anymore, thanks to Social Media Sites!
Should you tweet or use Facebook? Absolutely and use both! These social media platforms provide a powerful stage for success! For most of us, these sites have proven invaluable, driving sales and awareness like no other tool in history has done before!
If you are a new startup company, then part of your strategic planning should include social media sites! Part of your marketing budget needs to be earmarked for Social Media Marketing if you want to succeed in today’s world and stay steps ahead of your competition.
The world of Social Media is massive, the do’s and the don’ts, how to reach your targeted audience and the list goes on. It overwhelms many business owners and that is where Blast creative comes into play. They have a finely tuned process that enables them to gain the right exposure that will drive sales and company awareness for your business.
Business owners need to realize the importance of Social Media Marketing and the ability of these social media sites to gain the attention of your targeted market.
Blast creative assists business owners like financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate and others by managing every aspect of your social networking experience. We know all the social media lingo, we are continuously attending seminars and classes to learn the latest applications and tools, Blast creative can make a buzz about your business that will make an impact.
Over the past 5 years there has been a dramatic increase for Social Media Coaches/Specialists to assist business owners to correctly run their social media campaigns so that businesses are effective in obtaining customer attention and interaction!
It doesn’t matter whether you’re an established business or just starting out, the use of Social Media in the year 2010 is key to the success of your business. This path of awareness supersedes traditional marketing paths and puts a real value on the customer base you are targeting. Word of mouth can now be found on Social Media Sites!
For more information, contact Brenda Segna at Blast creative today!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Basic Facebook
If you would like to learn more about Facebook, then sign up for my Basic Facebook Seminar on my Facebook page. Basic Facebook Webinar for beginners. If you own in a business in financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate and others, this is for you. Everything you need to know about setting up your account, finding friends, uploading and tagging photos, creating profiles, groups and like pages. Learn to grow your business on Facebook.
Basic Facebook Webinar Topics
1. How to Set-Up Account
2. Facebook Layout
3. How Facebook Works
4. How to Deal with Long Lost Family Members
5. Your Profile Picture
6. How to Upload & Tag Photos
7. How to Write a Note
8. How to Post a Link
9. How to Upload a Video
10. How to Upload & Tag Photos
11. How to Create a User Name
12. How to Find Friends
13. How to Create a Group and a Fan Page
14. How to Invite People to an Event on Facebook
Basic Facebook Webinar Topics
1. How to Set-Up Account
2. Facebook Layout
3. How Facebook Works
4. How to Deal with Long Lost Family Members
5. Your Profile Picture
6. How to Upload & Tag Photos
7. How to Write a Note
8. How to Post a Link
9. How to Upload a Video
10. How to Upload & Tag Photos
11. How to Create a User Name
12. How to Find Friends
13. How to Create a Group and a Fan Page
14. How to Invite People to an Event on Facebook
Friday, January 8, 2010
5 Big Things That Will Impact You with Google Caffeine
1. Social Media Sites is where it’s at! Twitter and Facebook have moved up in the ranks. With Google indexing Twitters and Facebook syncing it’s post with Twitter. This is good news for the little guy who is working his social media sites; this can really help with your search updates.
2. On and Off the Site Optimization Still Counts! When it’s all said and done, best practices still apply. Staying focused on this area keeps your program focused on gaining sustainable long-term natural search benefits, and not taking a backward-looking approach that just may jeopardize future returns for the sake of trying to spare last week's positive algorithmic bias. This means paying attention to core elements like content, link structure, site architecture and structure, promotion in the right offsite networks, and all other general best practices.
3. The index size, or “competition,” of single keyword search relevance will increase. Your web site will compete against a larger pool of web catalog pages indexed for single word brand or head terms. It appears that Google will index more pages on the Web, so the prospective “results pool” will be greater and thus more competitive for those trying to get to the top of the page. This adds value for searchers because it will possibly increase the preciseness of results.
4. You’ll see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.In contrast to the increased number of pages being indexed for single word brand and head terms, the index size for multi-keyword phrase searches in Caffeine appears to yield less competition via Google’s Web catalog / Index. Therefore, if Google were to get a “Caffeine” jolt, your pages would likely compete against a smaller pool of pages for more exacting searches. This might be the key to Google’s logic when it comes to improving accuracy. This could also give larger brands an advantage for their product and deep level pages, which could potentially see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.
5. You’ll get results (SERPs) in half the time, on average.While it would be hard to notice with the naked eye, the new engine appears to generate SERPs in half the time. This would improve usability and user experience on Google. After all, searchers want accuracy– but they also don’t like waiting around.
2. On and Off the Site Optimization Still Counts! When it’s all said and done, best practices still apply. Staying focused on this area keeps your program focused on gaining sustainable long-term natural search benefits, and not taking a backward-looking approach that just may jeopardize future returns for the sake of trying to spare last week's positive algorithmic bias. This means paying attention to core elements like content, link structure, site architecture and structure, promotion in the right offsite networks, and all other general best practices.
3. The index size, or “competition,” of single keyword search relevance will increase. Your web site will compete against a larger pool of web catalog pages indexed for single word brand or head terms. It appears that Google will index more pages on the Web, so the prospective “results pool” will be greater and thus more competitive for those trying to get to the top of the page. This adds value for searchers because it will possibly increase the preciseness of results.
4. You’ll see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.In contrast to the increased number of pages being indexed for single word brand and head terms, the index size for multi-keyword phrase searches in Caffeine appears to yield less competition via Google’s Web catalog / Index. Therefore, if Google were to get a “Caffeine” jolt, your pages would likely compete against a smaller pool of pages for more exacting searches. This might be the key to Google’s logic when it comes to improving accuracy. This could also give larger brands an advantage for their product and deep level pages, which could potentially see a boost in relevance for long-tail searches.
5. You’ll get results (SERPs) in half the time, on average.While it would be hard to notice with the naked eye, the new engine appears to generate SERPs in half the time. This would improve usability and user experience on Google. After all, searchers want accuracy– but they also don’t like waiting around.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
SEO Services In A Tough Economy
I don't know of anyone who isn't feeling the pinch in these tough economic times. Now more then ever businesses need good SEO services and Internet marketing to drive traffic to their sites. There are several things that can be done that to increase your sites page rank and drive traffic to your site.
A good SEO Service Provider and Internet Marketing Company will review your site and customize a plan that meets your needs and your budget. SEO is not rocket science, but it is time consuming and needs to be done consistently in order to see results.
At BLaST creative we have learned from years of experience that when doing white hat seo and organic seo that it typically takes 3 months before you start to see results. And depending on the competition and what they are doing as far as SEO, it could take longer.
Some things that you can do to help increase traffic to your site as well as increase your page rank and search engine listing.
1. Meta tags-if your site doesn't have them, they need to be added, especially a good description and keywords.
2. Heading tags, alt tags-if you currently aren't utilizing these on your site then you need to update them.
3. Content-is it fresh and does it contain the keywords that you are trying to target? If not you need to update this as well.
4. Backlinks-Google just changed their algorithm again, you need to get relevant organic backlinks for your site.
If you own a business in these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate or any business, and are interested in more information on SEO Services and Internet Marketing, please contact BLaST creative today!
A good SEO Service Provider and Internet Marketing Company will review your site and customize a plan that meets your needs and your budget. SEO is not rocket science, but it is time consuming and needs to be done consistently in order to see results.
At BLaST creative we have learned from years of experience that when doing white hat seo and organic seo that it typically takes 3 months before you start to see results. And depending on the competition and what they are doing as far as SEO, it could take longer.
Some things that you can do to help increase traffic to your site as well as increase your page rank and search engine listing.
1. Meta tags-if your site doesn't have them, they need to be added, especially a good description and keywords.
2. Heading tags, alt tags-if you currently aren't utilizing these on your site then you need to update them.
3. Content-is it fresh and does it contain the keywords that you are trying to target? If not you need to update this as well.
4. Backlinks-Google just changed their algorithm again, you need to get relevant organic backlinks for your site.
If you own a business in these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate or any business, and are interested in more information on SEO Services and Internet Marketing, please contact BLaST creative today!
Friday, May 1, 2009
Detecting and Fixing Site Visibility Issues
In terms of the Integrated Approach, site visibility refers to compliance of a page's source code with the requirements and needs of search engine spiders. This topic is based on the knowledge that the spiders are computer programs instructed to parse your HTML pages, then analyze certain page areas and undertake certain actions such as requesting other pages by following the hyperlinks found on the given page.
Thus, we can make the conclusion that specific page areas bear a certain importance for spiders and thus play a role in overall search engine visibility. Another conclusion is that consistent site structure is an essential factor for spiders to be able to effectively crawl your site.
Following are the main visibility problems that are usually encountered on a website (especially large sites):
• Broken links;
• Broken redirects;
• Missing ALT attributes;
• Missing TITLE and META (keywords and description) tags
• Old pages which are not regularly updated
• Deep pages (located far from the home page or from the page where the spider enters your site)
• Excessive length of TITLE and META tags
Most of these problems (except for broken links and redirects) will not frustrate your visitors. These flaws, however, are potentially dangerous for your positions in the SERP (search engine result pages) and for indexing of your whole site by search engine spiders.
Let's get into a deeper explanation for each of these problems.
Broken links
Broken links are a common scourge for webmasters, especially with large and dynamic sites. A search engine robot will not be able to access a page that is hidden behind a broken link. Most robots, however, will not stop spidering your site when they meet a broken internal link, provided they have some other links to follow. But if the broken link is intended to point to a strategically important content page, the page won't be indexed and the problem then becomes more serious.
Broken external links are not as critical from the visibility point of view; rather they state problems for the visibility of the site or page they're pointing to.
Redirects and broken redirects
Most common redirect codes are 301 (Moved Permanently), 302 (Found), 304 (Not Modified), 305 (Use Proxy) and 307 (Temporary Redirect).
As a webmaster, you may implement a redirect in a number of different ways: either by sending the corresponding HTTP headers from within your server-side code (PHP, ASP, PERL etc), or by putting the instructions into the ".htaccess" file in the directory on the server, or by putting a special META REFRESH tag directly into the HTML code of the page:
meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http:www.mywebsite.com/new-file.htm
In this case, the user-agent (either a visitor's browser or a search engine spider) will treat the tag as if it has met a 301 (Moved Permanently) redirect.
Actually, from all the redirects enumerated above, only one (301) is considered search engine-friendly and is recommended by the search engines. The others have been abused by spammers in the past (and are still often used in black-hat SEO) for creating doorway pages for search engines and for cloaking a website. Thus, search engines apply strict policies to pages for which they get all the other redirect response codes from the server (300,302 and above).
Moreover, this redirect abuse led some search engines to ban sites that use META refresh tags for redirecting the visitor. AltaVista is the strictest: sites with the refresh attribute set to less than 30 seconds have been banned as spam. The policy of other search engines varies. In the past, Google hasn't been too worried about spam since it relies mainly on link popularity to rank sites - but they have recently started to pay more attention to these issues.
Because of this, we recommend that you use a server-side redirect with the help of a dynamic technology like PHP or ASP. If this isn't possible, use the ".htaccess" file (on apache servers) with the following line:
Redirect 301 /page1.htm http://www.yoursite.com/page2.htm
to redirect the visitors from page1.htm to page2.htm.
Broken redirects will lead to the same results as the broken links, that is, spiders will not be able to index the pages hidden behind the broken redirect, unless they find that page through some other links or redirects used on your website.
Missing ALT attributes
ALT attributes are used within the "< IMG >" HTML tags to describe images textually if the browser will not display the image. The ALT attribute is also useful in providing additional information when a user hovers the mouse cursor over a displayed image.
Nowadays ALT attributes are not as important for search visibility as they used to be a couple of years ago. Therefore, there won't be any harm for your rankings if you omit them. However, it's useful to include ALT attributes, especially to get your images ranked for particular keywords in the image search, which also brings you organic traffic.
Missing TITLE and META tags
This is probably the most serious gap in your readiness for the SEO campaign. The TITLE tag, META keywords and META description tags are the primary regions where search engines attempt to find relevant keywords for your site. If some of your pages are missing these TITLE and META tags, you should put these on your page before starting any further optimization analysis.
Old pages
One of the algorithms Google now applies for ranking Web pages is the SandBox algorithm. It means that the pages that haven't been updated for a long time will gradually lose their positions in the rankings even if they initially had high positions. Google constantly crawls the Web and adds thousands of new pages to its index. These new pages have unique content, but it is the novelty or “newness” of these pages that may cause Google to rank them higher than the actual content would otherwise dictate. Google assumes that newer pages probably contain more updated information than older ones. This process will gradually "dissolve" your site in the competition, while your pages get "crowded out" by the new additions from the top results.
To retain your high positions, you not only need to constantly add to your link popularity, but also update your pages often and add new content pages from time to time.
Deep Pages
An average search engine spider will not crawl your site deeper than 2 levels away from the home page and the most advanced spiders are instructed not to go further than 4 levels deep. Under "depth" we mean number of jumps which should be made from page to page along the links to get to the destination page from the source page (which is, most often, your home page). So, if a spider enters your site on your home page, it will read all pages linked to it, then all pages those pages link to and then most spiders will stop. If your site has any pages that link any deeper than this your site structure needs optimization.
It's important to understand that the link structure and file structure are two different things: you may keep all your 500 pages in the root directory, yet some of them may be 5 and more levels deep according to the link jumps.
TITLE and META tags length
The information placed in the TITLE, "keywords" and "description" META tags is indexed by search engine spiders for use on the search results page. There is a limited amount of space for these. If they are too long, they will be cut off in the search results display. Moreover, search engines will not read more than certain amount of characters in the tag. Even further, some search engine spiders may consider an excessive amount of characters as spamming. Therefore, it's useful to check whether the length of these vital page areas is within sensible limits.
For information Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing and Web Design, please contact BLaST creative today!
Thus, we can make the conclusion that specific page areas bear a certain importance for spiders and thus play a role in overall search engine visibility. Another conclusion is that consistent site structure is an essential factor for spiders to be able to effectively crawl your site.
Following are the main visibility problems that are usually encountered on a website (especially large sites):
• Broken links;
• Broken redirects;
• Missing ALT attributes;
• Missing TITLE and META (keywords and description) tags
• Old pages which are not regularly updated
• Deep pages (located far from the home page or from the page where the spider enters your site)
• Excessive length of TITLE and META tags
Most of these problems (except for broken links and redirects) will not frustrate your visitors. These flaws, however, are potentially dangerous for your positions in the SERP (search engine result pages) and for indexing of your whole site by search engine spiders.
Let's get into a deeper explanation for each of these problems.
Broken links
Broken links are a common scourge for webmasters, especially with large and dynamic sites. A search engine robot will not be able to access a page that is hidden behind a broken link. Most robots, however, will not stop spidering your site when they meet a broken internal link, provided they have some other links to follow. But if the broken link is intended to point to a strategically important content page, the page won't be indexed and the problem then becomes more serious.
Broken external links are not as critical from the visibility point of view; rather they state problems for the visibility of the site or page they're pointing to.
Redirects and broken redirects
Most common redirect codes are 301 (Moved Permanently), 302 (Found), 304 (Not Modified), 305 (Use Proxy) and 307 (Temporary Redirect).
As a webmaster, you may implement a redirect in a number of different ways: either by sending the corresponding HTTP headers from within your server-side code (PHP, ASP, PERL etc), or by putting the instructions into the ".htaccess" file in the directory on the server, or by putting a special META REFRESH tag directly into the HTML code of the page:
meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http:www.mywebsite.com/new-file.htm
In this case, the user-agent (either a visitor's browser or a search engine spider) will treat the tag as if it has met a 301 (Moved Permanently) redirect.
Actually, from all the redirects enumerated above, only one (301) is considered search engine-friendly and is recommended by the search engines. The others have been abused by spammers in the past (and are still often used in black-hat SEO) for creating doorway pages for search engines and for cloaking a website. Thus, search engines apply strict policies to pages for which they get all the other redirect response codes from the server (300,302 and above).
Moreover, this redirect abuse led some search engines to ban sites that use META refresh tags for redirecting the visitor. AltaVista is the strictest: sites with the refresh attribute set to less than 30 seconds have been banned as spam. The policy of other search engines varies. In the past, Google hasn't been too worried about spam since it relies mainly on link popularity to rank sites - but they have recently started to pay more attention to these issues.
Because of this, we recommend that you use a server-side redirect with the help of a dynamic technology like PHP or ASP. If this isn't possible, use the ".htaccess" file (on apache servers) with the following line:
Redirect 301 /page1.htm http://www.yoursite.com/page2.htm
to redirect the visitors from page1.htm to page2.htm.
Broken redirects will lead to the same results as the broken links, that is, spiders will not be able to index the pages hidden behind the broken redirect, unless they find that page through some other links or redirects used on your website.
Missing ALT attributes
ALT attributes are used within the "< IMG >" HTML tags to describe images textually if the browser will not display the image. The ALT attribute is also useful in providing additional information when a user hovers the mouse cursor over a displayed image.
Nowadays ALT attributes are not as important for search visibility as they used to be a couple of years ago. Therefore, there won't be any harm for your rankings if you omit them. However, it's useful to include ALT attributes, especially to get your images ranked for particular keywords in the image search, which also brings you organic traffic.
Missing TITLE and META tags
This is probably the most serious gap in your readiness for the SEO campaign. The TITLE tag, META keywords and META description tags are the primary regions where search engines attempt to find relevant keywords for your site. If some of your pages are missing these TITLE and META tags, you should put these on your page before starting any further optimization analysis.
Old pages
One of the algorithms Google now applies for ranking Web pages is the SandBox algorithm. It means that the pages that haven't been updated for a long time will gradually lose their positions in the rankings even if they initially had high positions. Google constantly crawls the Web and adds thousands of new pages to its index. These new pages have unique content, but it is the novelty or “newness” of these pages that may cause Google to rank them higher than the actual content would otherwise dictate. Google assumes that newer pages probably contain more updated information than older ones. This process will gradually "dissolve" your site in the competition, while your pages get "crowded out" by the new additions from the top results.
To retain your high positions, you not only need to constantly add to your link popularity, but also update your pages often and add new content pages from time to time.
Deep Pages
An average search engine spider will not crawl your site deeper than 2 levels away from the home page and the most advanced spiders are instructed not to go further than 4 levels deep. Under "depth" we mean number of jumps which should be made from page to page along the links to get to the destination page from the source page (which is, most often, your home page). So, if a spider enters your site on your home page, it will read all pages linked to it, then all pages those pages link to and then most spiders will stop. If your site has any pages that link any deeper than this your site structure needs optimization.
It's important to understand that the link structure and file structure are two different things: you may keep all your 500 pages in the root directory, yet some of them may be 5 and more levels deep according to the link jumps.
TITLE and META tags length
The information placed in the TITLE, "keywords" and "description" META tags is indexed by search engine spiders for use on the search results page. There is a limited amount of space for these. If they are too long, they will be cut off in the search results display. Moreover, search engines will not read more than certain amount of characters in the tag. Even further, some search engine spiders may consider an excessive amount of characters as spamming. Therefore, it's useful to check whether the length of these vital page areas is within sensible limits.
For information Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing and Web Design, please contact BLaST creative today!
Friday, December 19, 2008
Gift Cards for SEO?
SEO, search engine optimization comes all shapes and sizes, but gift cards? Well, in a round about way, you can utilize gift cards sites like CityDeals.com to enhance your SEO standings. By purchasing a banner ad from City Deals that links to your site, you basically have purchased a backlink for your site. The added bonus being that sites that are linked to City Deals are quickly indexed and pulled to the top of the search engines.
For sites like the Windmill Restaurant, a Montana Steakhouse, who has a page rank of zero, this can be very beneficial. For sites like Focus Sped, a school in Plano Texas that helps kids with Autism and other learning disabilities, this can not only help their page rank, but City Deals receives over 50,000 visitors a month with over 297,000 page views. Now that’s a lot of traffic, a lot of people viewing your banner ad and it’s great for SEO!
For sites like Doug Batts Prepaid Legal Services, it can mean a double bonus. SEO for page rank and literally thousands of visitors viewing his banner ad with the ability to click straight through to his site and that’s one way to generate new business for your site. Meredith Haberfeld Coaching is another site that reap the benefits of SEO from using City Deals gift cards site.
The thing that I like best about utilizing sites like City Deals for SEO purposes, is that not only do you help increase your own page rank, you get exposure for your business, plus you can shop for awesome deals on discounted gift cards.
Gift Cards for SEO? The answer to that question is an absolute yes! Take advantage of the sight today! For more information about SEO and Internet Marketing, contact BLaST creative today!
For sites like the Windmill Restaurant, a Montana Steakhouse, who has a page rank of zero, this can be very beneficial. For sites like Focus Sped, a school in Plano Texas that helps kids with Autism and other learning disabilities, this can not only help their page rank, but City Deals receives over 50,000 visitors a month with over 297,000 page views. Now that’s a lot of traffic, a lot of people viewing your banner ad and it’s great for SEO!
For sites like Doug Batts Prepaid Legal Services, it can mean a double bonus. SEO for page rank and literally thousands of visitors viewing his banner ad with the ability to click straight through to his site and that’s one way to generate new business for your site. Meredith Haberfeld Coaching is another site that reap the benefits of SEO from using City Deals gift cards site.
The thing that I like best about utilizing sites like City Deals for SEO purposes, is that not only do you help increase your own page rank, you get exposure for your business, plus you can shop for awesome deals on discounted gift cards.
Gift Cards for SEO? The answer to that question is an absolute yes! Take advantage of the sight today! For more information about SEO and Internet Marketing, contact BLaST creative today!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The $5 Article with Original Content
The world.wide.web has opened the door for new avenues of enterprise for many entrepreneurs including the freelance writer. The problem is that no one wants to pay for the services of the professional writer adequately. The request comes in for original content, a quote for statistics and lets don’t forget that you should be able to do this in 15 minutes.
The 15 minutes is my favorite line, obviously it’s not a writer who is making the request. The research alone for any good article is going to take a minimum of 1 hour. And while I am an excellent writer, even I need more than 15 minutes. Writing for the web has been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a bazillion things, but it is still work and worthy of decent pay.
Yes, there is plagiarism, but don’t assume or accuse every writer out there of it. I hate the ad that says; “I check for plagiarism,” so don’t apply. Okay, well if you paid more than $5 an article for “original” content, you wouldn’t get the bottom of the barrel writers.
I love writing! I love what I do, but like many Americans, I too am trying to make a living. I’ll give you original content, content that is SEO friendly, content that is full of facts, is accurate and up to date and original. But what I can’t do is give you that copy for $5.
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
The 15 minutes is my favorite line, obviously it’s not a writer who is making the request. The research alone for any good article is going to take a minimum of 1 hour. And while I am an excellent writer, even I need more than 15 minutes. Writing for the web has been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a bazillion things, but it is still work and worthy of decent pay.
Yes, there is plagiarism, but don’t assume or accuse every writer out there of it. I hate the ad that says; “I check for plagiarism,” so don’t apply. Okay, well if you paid more than $5 an article for “original” content, you wouldn’t get the bottom of the barrel writers.
I love writing! I love what I do, but like many Americans, I too am trying to make a living. I’ll give you original content, content that is SEO friendly, content that is full of facts, is accurate and up to date and original. But what I can’t do is give you that copy for $5.
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
BLaST Creative Copywriting for Your Website
When I write an article for a magazine or newspaper, I get straight to the point. It’s necessary to have a hook in the first paragraph or you lose your reader. So you have to start with the facts immediately!
People surf the web in a similar manner to the way that they skim newspapers, stopping to read stories and/or blogs that grab their attention and they leave your site as soon as they get bored. So lets cover a few steps that will assist you in writing attention-grabbing copy.
The intro
When you are writing copy, the most important part of your content is the first sentence. In 30 words or less it is necessary for you to grab your readers attention and explain what it is that you want them to know. A boring intro can send your readers to another site.
Begin your drama from the first word
Try to make the first word of your copy as dramatic as possible. For example which of these intros do you like the best?
Having already burned 300 acres, the Cascade fire is still burning out of control.
Cascade Fire Crews brace for weather.
The five Ws and an H
So now that you have an intro it’s time to help your reader discover the rest of the story and you don’t want to leave them with any questions.
So reread your copy and make sure that you’ve answered the following questions:
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• How
In everyarticle or copy, you’ll need to tell your readers what happened, who or what did it, but don’t worry about answering all six questions in the first paragraph.
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
People surf the web in a similar manner to the way that they skim newspapers, stopping to read stories and/or blogs that grab their attention and they leave your site as soon as they get bored. So lets cover a few steps that will assist you in writing attention-grabbing copy.
The intro
When you are writing copy, the most important part of your content is the first sentence. In 30 words or less it is necessary for you to grab your readers attention and explain what it is that you want them to know. A boring intro can send your readers to another site.
Begin your drama from the first word
Try to make the first word of your copy as dramatic as possible. For example which of these intros do you like the best?
Having already burned 300 acres, the Cascade fire is still burning out of control.
Cascade Fire Crews brace for weather.
The five Ws and an H
So now that you have an intro it’s time to help your reader discover the rest of the story and you don’t want to leave them with any questions.
So reread your copy and make sure that you’ve answered the following questions:
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• How
In everyarticle or copy, you’ll need to tell your readers what happened, who or what did it, but don’t worry about answering all six questions in the first paragraph.
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
BLaST Creative Web Content
Let’s face it, the biggest reason that any of use the web is to save time. It’s waaay faster to look up what time the movie is playing at the local Cineplex on the website the to have to listen to all of the list and times, etc on the phone or even driving there in person to see what’s what!
The same is true for the content on your web pages. Your content needs to be relevant and short, if you have a lot to say, it’s better to write a paragraph or two and link the rest to a separate page, giving the reader a choice. Why have your visitors come to your site and what do they want to know? Let them have the information the quickest way possible.
Don’t use BIG words, don’t talk over people’s head, talk to the lay person. Speak in your own voice, don’t use words that are extraordinarily looooong!
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to register students for dance class, sell dance clothes, or just tell about your business, if people can’t understand what you’re trying to say, you will fail.
Even if you’re writing for a specialist audience, like doctors or rocket scientists, ask yourself if you’re using bigger words to help your site reach its goal or to make yourself sound clever.
Along that same line of thinking, don’t be too short, give descriptive detail so they know what it’s about instead of searching somewhere else because they need more detail.
If you are a business owner in any of these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate, or any business owner and want more information on Internet Marketing, please contact Blast Creative today!
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
The same is true for the content on your web pages. Your content needs to be relevant and short, if you have a lot to say, it’s better to write a paragraph or two and link the rest to a separate page, giving the reader a choice. Why have your visitors come to your site and what do they want to know? Let them have the information the quickest way possible.
Don’t use BIG words, don’t talk over people’s head, talk to the lay person. Speak in your own voice, don’t use words that are extraordinarily looooong!
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to register students for dance class, sell dance clothes, or just tell about your business, if people can’t understand what you’re trying to say, you will fail.
Even if you’re writing for a specialist audience, like doctors or rocket scientists, ask yourself if you’re using bigger words to help your site reach its goal or to make yourself sound clever.
Along that same line of thinking, don’t be too short, give descriptive detail so they know what it’s about instead of searching somewhere else because they need more detail.
If you are a business owner in any of these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate, or any business owner and want more information on Internet Marketing, please contact Blast Creative today!
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
Monday, June 9, 2008
BLaST Creative Search Engine Optimization
There are lots of things that can be done for search engine optimization or SEO. One of the things that we do at BLaST Creative for SEO Services is utilize pay-per-click advertising like Google AdWords.
Google Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising networks work by paying a set fee every time somebody clicks on an ad for your site. This may sound expensive, but it really isn’t. You can set an amount of $25 per month and all of the other parameters as well. If people are clicking too much or not enough, you can change how it’s setup.
Other things that are helpful for search engine optimization include setting up a blog about your business, podcasting, utilizing online press releases, and of course you can always use traditional advertising through local newspapers or flyers.
In order for your website to do well people will need to find your site by utilizing search engines. Google is number one right now on the search engine lists, followed by Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. There are literally hundreds of search engines, but if you can get listed on the top ones, the rest will follow suit.
BLaST Creative SEO Services can help your web pages perform as well as possible in Google and the other major search engines. There are literally hundreds of things that you can do to help your web pages rank higher in the search engines’ results pages.
But don’t waste too much,SEO techniques become obsolete rather quickly. Search engines have to constantly change their algorithms and they way that they index web pages, because some people try to cheat the system, therefore, the search engines have to stay ahead of the game so that it’s fair to everyone!
At BLaST Creative we are certified in Internet Marketing and can assist you with all of your Internet Marketing needs. For more assistance, please contact BLaST Creative.
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