Developing Business Presence Online: Mobile Site or App?

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Web Presence Optimization Coordinator

Mobile devices have become a staple in any authoritative business’ online presence. The percentage of you potential clients and customers using their mobile devices to learn more about your company has increased greatly over the last couple years. Maximizing your target audience is a key element to online success, for all businesses.

Mobile Devices

Mobile Devices

When considering how to reach your mobile audience, two options that stand on the table are mobile websites or mobile applications (apps). Aside from the basic factors of availability, compatibility, upgrades, and accessibility, these two mediums have their own unique contributions to developing your business’ presence online. But, the question most businesses ask is: “which one is best?”

There’s a relatively significant difference between a mobile website and a mobile app. A mobile website is optimized to render on mobile devices whereas a mobile app is downloaded to your phone or mobile devise.

There are many tools out there to create a mobile website for you, however, BUYER BEWARE! These sites will often take your content off your site and put it on your new mobile site. They’ll give you a simple code to add to your website so that when someone visits your site from a mobile device, the mobile version will load. How convenient, right? WRONG! Here are just a few issues this can cause:

• Duplicate Content Penalty
• The code they give you, redirects YOUR mobile traffic to your content on their site!

Then what happens when those “free” sites change their terms and you have to pay to keep your site or pay for the features you enjoyed at no cost?

o You’ll lose your authority
o Even if the content is unique, you risk losing the content.
o Clients/Customers that have bookmarked your “mobile site” will be invalid.

The same holds true for mobile app sites. It is best to have your mobile site or mobile app built for your needs, hosted on your servers, and linking to your website.

DMS CNC Routers Responsive Design

DMS CNC Routers Responsive Design

 

While we see the importance of reaching your mobile audience, we go about things a little bit differently. We prefer to build your website with a Responsive Design. Responsive design is the same website and content view-able from a desktop computer, however, it simply changes the layout to fit a smaller screen. The benefits include:

 

• Traffic stays on your site
• Navigation items and content is the same whether viewed on a Desktop or Mobile Device.

Mobile applications are still a great way for companies to utilize the mobile device usage idea. However, mobile apps have a different kind of usage, as opposed to a responsive mobile site. With apps, they first have to be developed by a web design company and then downloaded, occasionally for a fee, by the potential customer before being able to be used. Once the development, download, and purchase are completed, the customer then can use a company’s app on their mobile device. The app may not appear the same as your branded website so the overall look and feel may give off a different vibe than intended. Either option is great, but if you’re a company wanting some kind of mobile presence tool, you must evaluate your own personal business needs and determine which medium works best for you.

At Q2 Interactive Media, we strongly believe mobile usage is growing at an incredible rate and is an extremely important aspect to a business’ online success. Most everyone is mobile now, in some way or another, so a step must be taken toward understanding and developing a mobile strategy and using that to your business’ advantage. Q2 is available to produce top notch responsive mobile websites, as well as mobile device applications. Both mediums are a great way to develop and expand your company’s presence online and increase your search audience. Q2’s preference is a responsive website that can showcase mobile friendliness, while giving the same experience to the mobile user as the desktop user. One may work better for client A than it would for client B so please feel free to consult with us to see which glove best fits your business’ needs. Call us today at 719-266-2299, contact us on online at www.q2im.com or send us an email at info@q2im.com.

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GR8 FAQ’s about SEO & PPC FWiW

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Web Presence Optimization Coordinator

USA, NFL, ADD, TBD – all acronyms we are all familiar with and use with subconscious ease. The letters each have a word attached to them with a connected meaning that really goes unspoken. Well, what about SEO or PPC?  If you’re a business of any size or product, these two acronyms should have a great deal of meaning to your company. If not, then you may a problem.

Starting with the simplistic definitions of these acronyms is probably the best route to take to increase your knowledge about your company’s web presence. To begin, SEO = Search Engine Optimization and PPC = Pay Per Click.

Search Engine Optimization is the strategy behind receiving top online ORGANIC rankings for your website. Organic rankings are not positions that you can pay to obtain. Your website passes through an algorithm and the site with the best relevancy, authority plus a number of other metrics will be awarded a position 1-100! SEO / Organic optimization efforts can have an impact on multiple search engines.

Pay Per Click is a form of paid advertising to drive traffic to your company’s website. You bid on keywords through an auction of sorts. Bids and keywords are managed separately by each engine you want to appear on.

The difference between SEO and PPC is like black and white with a shading of gray. In a nutshell, SEO helps the ranking a company receives through organic search results.  Your website’s organic ranks stem from optimizing  targeted keywords. This is done by being relevant and authoritative for the keywords, having a high page ranking on search engines like Google and Yahoo, and having a large amount of relevant backlinks form other relevant sites to the targeted website. PPC is pretty much like paying for an ad or paying for  keywords to automatically push the website to the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP). To put it simply, the highest bidder generally wins so it may not necessarily be the “best” company in that field, just the richest. There are other factors that come into play here called Quality Score, but we’ll address this in another post.

Now it’s important to point out that not every company should engage in both SEO and PPC. One company may not have many competitors, so PPC would just be a waste of time and money, or another company may have a lot money put into paid ads, but just are not ranking organically at all. The latter company may want to actually run both SEO and PPC campaigns, depending on their own personal goals. Obviously, it’s extremely important for your  business to evaluate your needs, wants, budget, and goals to see if either tactic will help or if you only need just one.

SEO vs. PPC can wear many different masks, varying upon what your company’s website provides its customers. The first step in deciding which realm to delve into, is to ask yourself where your company’s web presence currently is and where you want it to be. That is difficult to digest, however you can always ask the experts at Q2 Interactive Media for their advice and guidance. We know SEO and PPC like the back of our hand, so contact us for more information about our WPO Program.

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Online Listing Befuddlement? Not Anymore…

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Web Presence Optimization Coordinator

In a recent study, ConstantContact’s SinglePlatform division asked 350 small businesses about their online marketing effectiveness. Specifically, they focused on the online listings of businesses and how accurate those listings are. Sadly, 49 percent of those companies exposed that they have actually NEVER checked their online listings.

“If your online listings on major search sites, directory sites and local search apps are a main source of traffic for your website, why wouldn’t you want make sure they were accurate or even present?”

To make this scenario even better, ConstantContact’s survey also revealed that 50 percent of small businesses have inaccurate listings on the web, 70 percent of those companies said they “don’t have the time to manage the listings” their customers are viewing. In addition, only 23 percent of them are aware of how listings drive traffic to their business and how important it is to their company.

So why don’t they make online listings a higher priority?

We’re uncertain why not, but Q2 Interactive Media is aware of this marketing issue and is available to help all those businesses that “don’t have the time” to supervise their listings.

All of these findings show that small business’ listings are likely to be missing accurate content that consumers are unfortunately finding and using; such as

  • Wrong Phone Numbers
  • Wrong Postal Addresses
  • Wrong Contact People
  • Wrong Email Address

Also, assuming that original errors in the listings have never being corrected, potential customers are going to get frustrated with not being able to contact your business. Be proactive and avoid the loss of customers over simple listing fixes that can easily be made.

Q2 Interactive Media’s Web Presence Optimization, or WPO, is a vital key to the success of a company’s online presence. Current and correct listings online are often the root from which traffic to your website is directed from. Q2 Interactive Media measures this out efficiently and uses this knowledge to the advantage of our clients and their online goals. Our WPO program not only can browse the internet and find all your company’s listings, but we will also correct and optimize new ones for you as well.

Don’t let your business fall through the cracks, stand on top of the building blocks of online listings!

 

(Source: http://searchengineland.com/survey-half-of-small-businesses-never-update-their-listings-online-147459?utm_source=sel&utm_medium=scap&utm_campaign=email)

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Fake Facebook Likes

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Web Presence Optimization Coordinator

Recently, I wrote about Search Engine Submission Services and the harm those types of services can do. Today, I feel I’m forced to write a post about fake Facebook likes, Twitter Followers, etc.

Again and again we come up against “competition” that is trying to sell a client on increasing their Facebook likes, Twitter followers, Google+ circles, etc. by using BLACK HAT techniques – there is no grey area! If you’re not growing your social following organically, what good is it doing your business? Look at it this way, if you’re having a Black Friday sale, and you pay a company to advertise the sale for you and they guarantee thousands of people will show up for the sale. The sale gets blasted out there, thousands of people show up and not a one of them buys anything… you have to ask yourself, “was it a campaign worth running?” Just because thousands of people show up, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re actually making any sales, right?

The argument is that with social media, the more followers, likes, etc. you have, the more popular or credible you appear to the “real” customer. I’d rather see a following of a few dozen people and know that those people really, truly like the company they’re following rather than see a small business has 2,000 likes, yet no one is participating in the wall discussions.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, is quoted here as saying:

“The main thing is that people should avoid looking for shortcuts,” Cutts said. “In competitive market areas, there has always been a need to figure out how to differentiate yourself, and nothing has changed today. Think about how you can create compelling content or a compelling experience for users.”

Facebook has been pretty vocal and clear about it too:

“A Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one…”

“To be clear, we do not and have never permitted the purchase or sale of Facebook Likes as we only want people connecting to the Pages and brands with whom they have chosen to connect. Beyond the need to maintain authentic relationships on Facebook, these third-party vendors often attempt to use malware or other forms of deception to generate fraudulent Likes.”

“We also highly recommend that Page owners vet any business that offers marketing services to build your Facebook presence, to make sure that these companies are using only legitimate practices, which do not violate the Facebook Terms.”

So, not only does Facebook clearly say don’t do it, the choice to allow a company to “purchase Likes” on your behalf can actually harm you or your REAL customers!

The bottom line is don’t try to cheat the system. Natural backlinks, Facebook Likes, directory submissions, etc. should be only done by someone that understands the harm that can be done by doing something unethical. Just because you can today, doesn’t mean you should and it doesn’t mean the system won’t catch up eventually. As a business owner, do you really have the money to waste on marketing efforts that will only hurt your long term web presence and online marketing strategy?

 

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Search Engine Submission Services

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Web Presence Optimization Coordinator

Recently, Barry Schwartz wrote and article on a search engine optimization community website discussing the automated Search Engine submission services often seen advertised all across the web. Barry adds to a response on Google’s Webmaster Help -where a user asked:

“I’ve been [sic] Googling awhile and I stumbled on some sites that offer mass website submissions to search engines. Will it effect our website ranking if we use that kind of service [sic]?”

John Au, a Webmaster Trends Analyst with Google Switzerland responds with:

“…these services are not needed and can even be counter-productive (if they create unnatural links for your site, which would be against our Webmaster Guidelines).”

I can attest to John’s comments, we had a client who paid a company – which “guaranteed results”. They got results alright! A problem that would never go away. The client hired us to help with their Search Engine Optimization and we manually edited a majority of the directories just to have our data overwritten again and again! The Search Engine Rankings and Google Local results would climb, then fall. Same thing happened over and over again. Finally, we determined the culprit and contacted the company and asked them to stop overwriting the changes we made. It took 3 months before they quit!

Nothing beats manually optimizing these directories, choosing categories that best match your business, and using the descriptions to accurately and uniquely describe your business.

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