QUICK TIP #5 – Social Media

Social media is a great way to keep your customers engaged.  It can also be a great way for you to build up a following and up-sell your products or services. Customers today want to feel a connection with the companies they do business with.  Social media creates this connected community.
 

QUICK TIPS:

  • Don’t Just Talk About YOU!

Your customers or audience will swiftly tune you out if you just talk just about yourself. Post interesting content from other relevant sources.  Make sure your ideal customers will find this content valuable.

  • Be Patient

Social media marketing results do not happen overnight.  It takes persistent and consistent effort to produce successful results.

 

More on Social Media:

Start creating relationships with the customers you do business with.  Try using this weekly social media To-Do List from Hubspot.com to help you get started.

http://blog.hubspot.com/weekly-social-media-list-under-100-words-sr

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QUICK TIP #4 – Display Advertising

People spend 95% of their online time browsing websites with display ads. Whether you are trying to target a regional customer base or focus on nationwide markets, e-Display ads can help you generate online leads, jumpstart stagnant sales, introduce new or seasonal products, and help build your brand.
QUICK TIPS:

  • Using Contextual Targeting

Know who you are selling to. Your demographic settings should be tailored to the audience of these websites. For example, if you sell golf clubs, make sure you maximize your ad spend by targeting your ads to golf related websites.

  • Test, Test, Test

Display Ads are generally a “top of the funnel” campaign. That means it’s very broad. Be patient and test various targeting settings to see which ones are most effective.

  • Monitor Your Campaigns to Increase Efficiency

Check your analytics to find out which demographics, topics and categories are performing best. Spend more of your budget on the websites, or targeting groups that show higher conversion rates.

 

More on Display Advertising:

Thinking about introducing new or seasonal products for the holidays?  In a recent study by Experian.com we can see that nearly 60% of marketers will utilize online display advertising this holiday season, topping other popular channels such as search, email, and print ads.  Click here to read more.

 

http://press.experian.com/United-States/Press-Release/49-percent-of-marketers-will-launch-a-holiday-campaign-before-halloween.aspx

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QUICK TIP #3 – SEO

 

If you own a website, SEO should be a part of your growth strategy. SEO is a combination of strategies, techniques, and procedures which are used to increase site visitors and achieve a higher ranking on the search engine results page. SEO is basically just another way to make your website more eye-catching to the search engines so you get more customers. The search engines are always changing their requirements. Most people don’t know how to work with all these changes, let alone keep up with them. Those that do find that it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to keep up with the SEO process.
 

QUICK TIPS:

  • SEO Your Website

Audit your keywords to make sure they align with your goals. Use a combination of long and short keywords.  Make sure you use your keywords in your title tags and anchor text. Frequently check out your competition to compare your rankings versus theirs.

  • Content is King

If you are trying to perform better in the search engine results, providing new, quality content is a must. Give your customers and audience content that is as informative as possible. One of Google’s biggest pet peeves is low-quality, duplicate, or outdated content.

More on SEO:

Strengthen the quality of your SEO for fall 2013 using these “8 SEO Cleanse and Recharge Ideas” from SearchEngineLand.com. Click here to read more.

http://searchengineland.com/8-fall-2013-seo-cleanse-recharge-ideas-171376

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QUICK TIP #2 – Retargeting

 

Retargeting is a powerful tool in the online advertising world.  Even if you are not using it as part of your current marketing strategy, you’re competition probably is! This technology allows you to place ads in front of visitors who have already been to your website while they browse the internet.  Retargeting is a powerful marketing tool, but it is easy to get wrong, and the consequences can be costly in terms of your budget and brand.

QUICK TIPS:

  • Make Your Ads Impactful

Create eye catching, dynamic ads that include a strong hook. A “hook” gives your prospects a compelling reason to take action right now. Examples of hooks are deals, sale pricing, discounts, or coupon codes. Make sure to include a phone number on all of your ads!

  • Create Multiple Campaigns For Each of Your Goals

Don’t make the common mistake of creating one campaign that contains numerous ad groups. Create multiple campaigns, one for each of your desired goals. Your campaigns will be a lot easier to manage and you will have a better understanding of what is working and what is not.

More on Retargeting:

In a recent Google case study we can see some astonishing results with the use of Dynamic Remarketing. Click here to see the results.

http://www.google.com/think/case-studies/case-study-campmor.html

 

 

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Orange County Restaurant SEO and Local Search Optimization

orange county seoThere are 34 cities and another 19 unincorporated communities across Orange County. Every one of them is loaded with restaurants, eateries, bars, lounges and cafeterias. There are cafes, bistros and lunch counters and all of them miss out on at least some of the people looking on-line for where and when to eat.

Orange County is a savvy market, too. Some of your toughest competition is probably all over the local and mobile SEO scene, but then again, lots of other restaurants are not. There are restaurants well positioned enough that they can get away with basically letting their store-front do all the marketing. But guess what? They’re still leaving the entire Local Search and Mobile Markets to chance.

That’s literally leaving money on the table, so let’s start scooping some of it up!

This article is just to give you a start – with five fast and easy tricks – to optimize your Orange County restaurant for local and mobile search. It’s a big field, but there’s no reason not to get going now.

1. First, Claim Your Google+ Listing!

That might seem obvious. But just because Google has indexed your business and listed you, it doesn’t mean they’re going to optimize things. Do a search and find your listing in Google Plus. If it’s there but the main image is a giant map, then it’s still unclaimed. Google actually makes it pretty easy, to select the “Manage This Page” button and claim the listing. You need to have a Gmail account and you’ll need to verify that you’re the business owner or an authorized rep by telephone or a post card through the mail.

If no listing exists, you’ll need to set one up. Just go to google.com/places and click on “Get Started For Free”. You’ll need to fill out everything as accurately as possible and while you shouldn’t use the page to try to replace or stand in for a website, it’s almost as important. Make sure they get the restaurant name, physical address, and phone number, and the web address right. Categories, especially for food type are tremendously important, too, so select them carefully. You can continue working on it for several weeks or even months so don’t worry about getting it all correct during the first sitting. You’ll also want to add some photos.

2. Check Your Mobile Compatibility

One big reason that your Google Plus page is important is that it’s thoroughly mobile compatible. So even though it’s not recommendable to totally abandon your website in favor of a Google Plus page, you can get away with letting your Google Plus page stand in as a purely mobile page – at least while you’re optimizing for mobile search. It’s a big market, and restaurants are foolish to ignore the growth potential of mobile.

3. Optimize for Local Place Names

As we mentioned above, the city names, unincorporated communities and all kind of place names are an important part of optimizing for local. One good way to distinguish your business from others is with the place name used as a keyword. In many cases, that can mean optimizing pages for your food type and your place name. Santa Ana Pizza is almost ok, but Santa Ana is a pretty big place. If your reputation is good, people will drive across the city for it. Otherwise they’re going to want the Pizza that’s closest. Otherwise, you need to be optimizing for “Heninger Park Pizza” and all the communities you’re serving.

We’ve written a lot about keyword research, and for local search optimization, local, community level and neighborhood names can be among the most important keywords.

4. Do Your Research

Building on that thought, think about how people are likely searching for Pizza, or your food, in your area. Especially if your selling a niche food, or an alternative, such as vegetarian only, you’ve got to be aware of the most important combinations of keywords people are using to search. You should also check the Google Adwords Keyword Planner for a more thorough understanding of how people are searching in your area.

5. Understand Off-Site SEO

Local search SEO for Restaurants is very much an off-site process.

Dozens of directories will help with your rankings, particularly if they accept some reviews (and you get some reviews) but you need to claim the most important of your listings and optimize them. Make sure your contact information is consistent across each of them, and don’t feel overwhelmed. There can be literally hundreds of listing sites. You don’t need to claim and be on every single one, but the most important for your market should be sufficient.

Keep in mind also, that Orange County is home to some listings directories that are in and of themselves as important as the big national directories like Yelp and Foursquare.

BestRestaurantsinOrangeCounty.com is a good place to start. And while the OCStandard.com, for example, will accept your listing for a fee, it’s really the type of market you’re serving that will determine how much, if anything, you might budget toward online marketing or advertising.

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QUICK TIP #1 – SEP –Search Engine Placement

 

If you own a website, it’s natural that you want to be listed at the top of the search results. This is because users will most likely find a website that suits their needs towards the top of the page. The further down the page you are, the more likely it is that many people will miss your website. Whether you are selling products or services, you need strong search engine placement in order to get more business.
QUICK TIPS:

  • Choosing Keywords

Consider how people will search for your web page. The words you visualize them entering into the search box should be your target keywords. Keep in mind the language your business uses is not always the same language your customer uses. For example, you might consider yourself a “software dev staff augmentation firm” but most people would simply search “software development team” or “outsourced software development team”.

  • Don’t Fight the Odds

Make sure your targeted keywords are always at least two or more words long.  Most of the time, single-word searches are too ambiguous to be effective. There are many reasons why someone might search for something like “bicycle.”  Don’t spend all your time fighting the odds. Choose phrases that contain two or more words, and you will have a much higher chance of success.

 

More on SEP:

Illustrating the importance of being on top, an infographic on SearchEngineJournal.com shows clicks from paid search listings are now outnumbering clicks from organic (unpaid) search listings by almost 2:1 in keyword searches with high commercial intent, or keywords where the searcher is looking to buy a product or service. Click here to read more.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/are-google-ads-winning-an-data-filled-infographic/

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