A big part of building your online presence is to have content on your website that is valuable and relevant to people searching online. When search engines see how relevant your content is and how connected or "linked" your website is, your ranking will improve on the search results page.

As marketing and business consultants we have the privilege of meeting with a lot of businesses out there who are doing their best to keep up with the ever changing world of marketing. They recognize the importance of the internet and the fact that they need to increase website conversion to keep their sales funnel moving forward. With so much out there that feels new, where do you begin to make sure that your efforts really do increase website conversion and don’t just become a bunch of activities that make your marketing folks look busy, but don’t really make a difference?

When I was a Droid user (gasp!) I still got excited about Apple’s newest iPhone reveal. Why? Because Apple is cool and I wanted to be informed of the latest coolness. I’ve since crossed over and become an iPhone user, which doesn’t really matter except that now I’m even more aware of Apple iPhone announcements and pay closer attention. But Apple and iPhones are constantly in my world, and might not be in yours. So in case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard about Apple’s big, shiny, new announcement – times two – keep reading today’s internet marketing tips to get brought up to speed.

Double the Fun

As a small business owner, your marketing goals should be to inform people about your message, promote your product or service and engage your customers and audience. Why is social media important to your internet marketing strategy? It is a channel to successfully to just that: inform, promote and engage your business through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.

Welcome to today’s blog on how to write a press release for an event that attracts views. We all want our press releases to receive a high amount of views and visitors, so here are a few techniques that could give your next press release a little boost.

You’ve probably heard of the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the multiple ways you can “SEO your website.” One way to do this is paying for link building services. It’s probably the area that is the most confusing for people and where it’s easiest to fall victim to scams if you aren’t informed.

Have you seen the books titled “_____for Dummies” on every topic you can imagine? Well they‘re the inspiration for this blog post.  As I was thinking through how we feel when we don’t have background knowledge or basic vocabulary on a subject, we tend to feel like a “dummy” even though we are brilliant in other areas. We all have expertise in one area or another, but there are also those topics we know very little about. If you own your own business or are a leader in a small company you may not have much experience with or background knowledge in SEO services for small business and that can make it very hard to follow a conversation or take the next sales call. If this feels familiar, then this post is for you!

I woke up this morning thinking about In-N-Out Burger and how its menu reflects a key piece of what defines good marketing. It’s simple…one thing. One thing, one focus, one piece of information. If you eat at In-N-Out you know what you are getting. Burger and Fries. Simple, straightforward, a single focus. Your only decision is if you want a single or a double, and if cheese and grilled onions should be involved!  While most restaurants go for the broad offering and add new menu items regularly, In-N-Out has chosen a simple, single focus. That might be the single most difficult thing to do in marketing, maybe in communication overall.

Google has once again changed the way it does something and this time it is all about keyword research, which will affect you when deciding how to add keywords to a website.  It has changed the way you and I can search for keywords by taking away the old interface on the Google Keyword Search tool and replacing it with the Keyword Planner Tool.  Change is always a bit annoying and when software is involved you never know if it is a good change or not.

Yee-haw! Your blog is written and you have that ecstatic feeling that’s a mixture of both relief and pure joy that comes after you actually sat down to write your blog and lo and behold, finished it! You might be so dang proud of yourself and confident of the pure genius you just produced that you simply click publish and move on. Whoa there, cowboy! It’s time to pull back the reins a bit because remember that feeling you also get when you don’t see results? It’s time to cowboy up and take a moment to review your blogging checklist before galloping onto the next project.