I think everyone on the web has used Craigslist at some time or another. Of course I’m usually wrong when I assume thigns like that but in general I think a majority of web users have heard of the web’s largest classifieds ads site. Craigslist is more infamous than famous in many ways with a number of legal issues taking place for users of the site and many calling it a “cess pool” of crime and sex.

Whatever your opinions are on any of that we must all face the fact that huge numbers of people are using Craigslist to search for items for sale and service providers in their area. As a small business owner and a big fan of free advertising I have been using Craigslist for years to run classified ads for employment and to advertise my available services. I have listings on the Small Business Ads section in Ocala advertising my web services and also other areas nearby where potential clients can search for web development and internet marketing services and find my advertisements.

The response to my own ads has been a little bit weaker than the response some clients have had and they type of business you do may have a lot to do with the success you have on Craigslist. My business is web marketing and to be honest everyone thinks they are a web marketer these days so the competition is fierce and it takes more to make more as they say. The response for my web services has been watered down by the volume of other so called web professionals who may be able to do a decent job on a single facet of internet marketing but lack the comprehensive skills and experience necessary to be a true webmaster in Ocala.

I have one client who provides a home related service in North Florida and he has had great success using the Craigslist marketing to generate new business leads and make $100′s in profits from some simple online classified advertisements in Ocala. We run a twice weekly advertisement which usually keeps his advertisement live on the front page of the classifieds directory and in the face of any potential new clients searching for his services. Craigslist ads can have HTML links and photos or even videos with content as well as complete contact information such as name, email and telephone plus also links to maps and directions if necessary and basically makes it easy for anyone to contact you or your business.

I put together a Craigslist advertisement as part of every new client package now because it takes very little to do and the gains can be well worth the efforts. If you would like some tips and advice on marketing your Ocala business using Craigslist and internet marketing please contact us for details.

Check out the source at Can you market your business on Craigslist?

Google is the all powerful search engine and still the number one and most effective tool for marketing your business online. The Google Search Engine drives more traffic than all social networks and more relevalt results lead to greater conversions so Google Traffic generally leads to more business.

IN their quest to provide the most relevant results Google has begun to provide more local results by leveraging the power of Google Maps and the Google Places local listings for business. Any small business owner can claim their Google Places Page and have a confirmation post card delivered to their business address or a confirmation phone call to their business phone number and Google will validate the listing as “Owner Verified” so that business owners can provide up to date detaiils on their bsuienss including photos, videos and “Updates” or short messages with current or seasonal information.

Business owners can also add “Google Offers” to their Places page and offer discount coupons to new business clients who act on your Google Places listing. your Places page is increasingly more important as more mobile users utilize their mobile devices for location based searches and information discovery. The information on your Places page is formatted for mobile users so they can view your photos and videos online, ;post comments or reviews and even “check-in” for your location upon arrival.

The upside to this is that your business will benefit from the immediate reaction clients have to your services and the ability to inform the world about your business success and of course the downside is that businesses will have an immediate reaction to your products or services and the ability to inform the world of your business failure. it is the proverbial double edge sword which cuts both ways so you really need to make sure you care for your clients and address any outstanding issues or your failures will be posted online for the world to see forever.  A series of negative reviews online can have a debilitating effect on yout business so be careful before you proceed online.

Have you claimed your Google Places Page? Is your Local Business Marketing Strategy optimized for Google local search?

Check out the source at Optimize Your Google Places Page for Local Business Marketing

SERP’s or Search Engine Results Page’s are simple enough to the average user of the Google Search Engine but there are some details that can be overlooked or misunderstood if you do not know what you are looking at.

My job for the last decade has been to monitor the Google SERP’s pages and to game the GoogleBot and Google Algorithm in a constant game of cat amd nouse for the top rankings on any keyword combination. In the beginning things were easy and getting a top rank on Google was just a matter of adding some meta tag keywords to yoru website and boom you were ranking for any keyword you wanted pretty fast actually.

Eventually people caught on to the keyword meta tags and Google began to change the algorithm to place more emphasis on PageRank or the numerical ranking that Google assigned to each page based on more than 200 factors. PageRank was the foundation of the Google Search Patent and has been a major part of the search engine for many years. One of the most important factors in a pages total rank became the links on other websites which pointed at any particular page or the “inbound links” as they are commonly referred to.

Once it became clear that your inbound links improved your website ranking the race was on for more text links and to this day we deal with massive amounts of blog comments and link spam from marketers trying to boost their links count and website ranking. Inbound links still play a big role in your website ranking and the text used to link to a website is just as important. The “anchor text” has to do with the keywords which are used to link from one website to another. The keywords used to link to a page help search engines determine what the page is about and so having your top keywords used on many other sites as the anchor text linking back to yours became more important over time and still holds value today although that seems to be changing.

The Google Search engine has now meshed with the Google+ Social Network and we are now seeing an unprecedented level of personalization in the SERP’s and it can be seen as a game changer in many ways. If you login to your Gmail, YouTube or Google account and use the Google Search engine your results will be littered with personalized search results from these and other popular social properties such as Twitter and FourSquare. Tweet about a restaurant or friend a local business and when you do a search related to their business their website or social media profile will now showup in your results regardless of their organic or natural website ranking.

Understanding your SERP’s requires that you understand how you are interacting with the Google Search engine. Are you logged into a Google property? Are you using your personal computer or are you logged in elsewhere? Your geographic search can be changed by your login location and Google will often try to show you results based on your physical location.

In the example below I search for the generic term “chiropractor” and as you can see by the results my being logged into my Google Account makes a lot of changes to my SERP’s. Click on the image below in a new tab if you can because it’s kinda large to show you the detail.

Once you look at the image in detail you will see the level of personalization involved in each page and how this changes the way search marketing is done. Google has such an awesome reach at this point that there really is no way to stay totally clear of their personalized search services. You would have to be diligent about not being logged in and clearing your computer cache of cookies and history in order to stay clear of personalized searches. These modified search results tend to drive more traffic to the same destinations and less traffic to new websites outside of your personal network and social media profiles. Google is sending more traffic to fewer total websites and this makes ranking for a search term more difficult for search engine optimization and marketing purposes.

As a side note if you look at the very bottom results in the image above you will see that the related searches all seem to point to career and job related searches. I have been witnessing this trend now for more than a year and it has reached an even higher level with as much as half or more of the related searches for some generic keywords are job related. These related searches are generated by Google’s historical data and match trends in current search patterns so that Google can provide the most relevant results in the shortest time. What Google is telling us by these results is that more people are searching for “chiropractor jobs” than they are for any other related terms. What that says about our economy I think is clear.

The convergence of search engines and social media has made it so any good search marketer is also your social media marketer or at the very least the two work together in a combined effort to promote your business online. Search engines still drive more traffic than social media websites but for how long no one knows. It is know to be true that more content is being produced and published on the “closed web” on websites like Facebook where information is locked inside a walled garden of passwords and privacy policies.

What does all of this mean to the future of search marketing? Well just as Google has merged the search engine with the social network so to will your marketing strategy have to merge and manage a dual campaign of search engine and social media optimization. How we do that is another blog post but suffice it say that a comprehensive approach to web marketing is the way to move forward and there is no single surefire way to beat the competition. If you plan to succeed in marketing online you have to be prepared to take on all aspects of internet marketing in a singular approach which saturates all available marketing channels.

Check out the source at Understanding SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page’s) and Personalized Search

Facebook has made some major changes to their Business Pages features including the introduction of the Timeline features which has many social media marketers crying foul for “making it harder to get Likes” and “ruining a great business model” as some are claiming.

Facebook has become one of the most important websites for online marketing and 1000′s of aspiring webmasters and web marketers have been building their business on the backs of Facebook and other social media sites. A Facebook marketers primary job function seems to have become focused solely on getting more and more people to “Like” a Page and often times it seems with no thoughts or care to who is actually liking the page but rather in some desperate chase to achieve the highest number possible as if size really matters.

Marketing on Facebook is much the same as any other form of advertising. Yes, the message matters but who hears the message is as important if not more so than what is being said when you consider that if the wrong people hear the right message it won’t translate to any business and in the end wastes your advertising budget and time chasing business with no potential.

One client recently came to me raving about how they could get 200 Facebook Likes by purchasing them for $5 on Fiverr.com and after they paid the price and received the likes it was obvious why they were so cheap. All 200+ likes came from India and Southeast Asia and had absolutely no relation or interest in doing business with an American printing company. So its great they now have about 500 total likes but roughly half or more are absolutely useless.

What’s the point in boosting useless metrics? Who cares how may “Likes” your Page has if none of them are actually interested in your products or services? Is there some narcissistic need to have more “Likes” or is there an impression that bigger is always better or is it more likely that bad marketers have tricked unknowing consumers into buying into a useless statistic which is easy to fake? My thoughts are that people are easily convinced with big numbers and it just makes it easier to keep plugging away at the total number of likes than it is to actually engage potential clients in a real discussion.

Take a look at most Facebook pages and study how many people actually interact with the Page content and also how often the Page owner actually engages in a conversation rather than shouting out the next message. What’s the point of daily Wall posts if no one “Likes” them or “Shares” them with others? Social media is all about content sharing and if your Facebook subscribers are not engaging your content then you are wasting all your efforts. It’s all about the content and your content usage is the most important statistic you can monitor. Use your Facebook Page Insights and take a look at the total reach and use of your Page content and that is the real mark of success for a Facebook Marketing Campaign, not who “Likes” your Page but rather who actually uses your Page is the key.

Most of the changes to the new Facebook Business Pages are covered in this Mashable article but they seem at first to revolve around the user experience and in some ways they are but most of us old school marketers can see it was more about making people pay for “Likes” than anything. Old FB Pages allowed us to set the “Default Landing Tab” so we could create a special “Tab” on your Facebook page with custom content related to your website which could only be accessed if the user “Liked” your page.

This has been deemed to be deceptive by Facebook and this single change has earned the most gripes and complaints because now users are forced to land on the main Wall of your Facebook page and must now chose to “Like” your page for the content and not just so they can access it. Facebook has a motive in this and of course it has to do with money. By making it harder to get people to “Like” a Page Facebook realizes that more small business owners will use the Facebook Advertising Platform to buy advertisements which drive more “Likes” when what a small business owner should be doing is focusing on the content and the overall user experience.

Developing a list of subscribers who are genuinely intersted in your content will lead to an inceased conversion of sales and that is the only metric that matters folks.

Does your Facebook Page cost you money or does your Facebook Page make you money?

Check out the source at Facebook Business Pages change to Timeline and Facebook marketers cry foul

Flash websites are pretty cool and lots of small business clients have asked me about using Adobe Flash to design their websites for them. I will be the first to admit that I am not as good as many of the professional graphic artists out there who build some pretty incredible websites using Flash motion graphics. Unfortunately these super cool custom built Flash websites are most often super expensive and cost prohibitive for most small business owners.

What many others also do not realize is that there are some other challenges to Flash website design including search engine optimization and marketing of Flash based websites because most of the content included in the Flash video is basically hidden from the search engines and most Flash websites look almost empty to sites like Google and Bing. There are some Flash SEO tricks that can be used to offset some of that but it’s still not the same and many Flash based websites will also have a blog where they can post content for the search engine spiders to feed on and for other websites to link to also.

If you understand the marketing drawbacks to Flash web design and want to work around those issues there are less expensive options for having a super cool website that looks and functions just great at a considerable discount to custom Flash websites and many webmasters are now using Flash Full Website Templates and also Flash Intro Templates for huge savings on a cutting edge Flash website personalized for your business.

Flash website templates are perfect for just about every small business and especially so for start-ups or new businesses who want to control their upfront investments and better utilize their budget without spending it all on a fancy website. As a marketing expert with more than a decade building websites I can tell you that ugly websites do make money but Flash website templates such as those from Template Monster can do the same and look a lot better at the same time.

Check out the source at Custom Flash Website Templates Designer

In the never ending quest for relevant search results most search engines now highlight local resources for many web searches. If you search for a car dealership  on Google then the first results will have a corresponding Google Places pin on a Google Maps inset to help you make a faster choice as the the closest car dealer in the area.

Google Places can be a powerful business marketing tool for local small business owners with a physical store location and it is obvious by looking at search engine results pages that local SEO is now based on geo location based. Users can leave instant reviews and receive turn by turn directions on most smartphones and the true power of local search has only just begun. As more users gravitate to gps enabled smart phones and more users log on to geo targeted search engines it is inevitable that more emphasis be place on geo usage.

Facebook recently announced their new geo location feature with Facebook Places which is similar to Google Places in that you can mark yourself or “check in” on your GPS enabled cell phones and mobile devices letting others in your social network know your actual physical location at the time. Facebook Places is a boon for local business owners who were finding it hard to get noticed online and the ability to rank in local search results based on your geographic business listing has caused a definite shift in website traffic. Large national chains are being beat by smaller local business owners in the competition for screen space on any computer and having your company listed in the local related searches can be vital to any new growth marketing plan.

Foursquare was the pioneer in geo location search and check ins and their community is more robust and feature rich with a more mature product and navigation structure. Foursquare leverages the power of geo location and users can become “Mayor” of a local business after achieving more “check ins” than other members. Checking in has become more popular as more users live with web enabled mobile devices and the use them in their everyday life. Adding  your Ocala venue to Foursquare is easy enough but having your customers check-in and leave positive reviews can be a trick. Foursquare offers local advertising services and companies can offer discounted products or services to customers that check-in to a physical location.

Yelp offers geo targeted reviews of local businesses including restaurants, bars and retail shopping plus also services such as auto repair, electricians, plumbers and other home services or just about any business model you can think of. The peer driven community of member approved reviews keeps the overall quality and trust in commentary higher than on most sites. Yelp offers smartphone applications and geo targeting for sharing reviews and recommending local businesses to visit in any area and makes picking out a great restaurant so much easier than just dropping by..

Having your business listed on all the major geo location search portals is more important than you might imagine. Ocala Webmaster offers geo location, local search engine optimization and marketing services to small business clients in Ocala and Marion County Central Florida.

Contact us and get your business website listed with the leading geo location portals and motivate your clients to check in using their mobile devices.

Check out the source at The Importance of Geo Marketing and Local Search

Facebook has quickly become the largest social network with more than 500 million users sharing millions of photos, videos and websites each and every day. Facebook Marketing is the new buzz word for internet and search marketing agents who want to gain the most exposure for their clients websites or online projects and many speculate that over time Facebook Advertising will take over Google Advertising as the number one form of online advertising for business.

It takes more than a Facebook account and profile to attract attention for your business and there are actually a number of ways to promote using Facebook including Fan Pages, Groups and Pay Per Click Advertising. Marketing on Facebook for businesses is done primarily with the promotion of Fan Pages where Facebook users can “Like” a product or service offered by business owners from around the world. Facebook Fan Pages are where artists, businesses and organizations promote their brands, products or services and having the most friends or “Likes” will increase your pages popularity and gain more exposure by having your page shared on hundreds if not thousands of your friends Wall postings to be seen by there network of friends and associates.

Facebook Fan Pages are free for anyone to create and offer an incredible opportunity to tap into the huge market of users but marketing a Facebook Fan Page is not as simple as it may seem. Optimizing your Facebook Page with proper keywords will help drive relevant traffic and attract the type of friends or visitors who are most likely to use your product or services. Proper design and management of a Facebook Page is important because of the ability users may have to post unsolicited opinions and comments which will remain on your Facebook page. Decisions must be made to determine how much or how little Facebook users will be allowed to post direct on your Page and what the proper response should be when controversy does arise.

Many small business owners have been hurt by poor Facebook management and proper setup and usage can lessen the damage an irate customer may create. Opening your business up to the huge customer service and relations aspect of Facebook may seem scary for many business owners but with the guidance of an experienced Facebook marketer you can make the difference between success and failure of your Facebook marketing efforts. It is always best to have a qualified person manage your Facebook account when you consider just how badly things can go for the inexperienced user who does not understand the intricacies and nuances of social networking.

Facebook Advertising is but another avenue a business owner has for promoting online with Facebook now offering a pay per click advertising model where business owners can create advertisements to drive clients to their Fan Page. Pay per click ads on Facebook show up in the right hand sidebar on related pages and are an excellent way to target social network users with relevant ads for your products or services. Facebook ads are quick and easy to setup but optimizing them for maximum impact will help generate higher click through rates and more traffic overall. Managing your Facebook marketing efforts can be a daunting task for the average small business owner and OcalaWebmaster offers professional Facebook Management services for clients who want to maximize their return on investment in the most efficient manner.

If you have or want a Facebook Page and are in need of assistance with Marketing on Facebook please contact Alfred for details on how we can help you market your project to over 500 million users.

Check out the source at Facebook Marketing and Advertising Management

WordPress has become the web’s dominant blog platform with some estimates showing they now host about 13.9 million blogs at WordPress.com plus 13.8 million self hosted installations of the WordPress.org software which is about 8% of all websites by some estimates.

Why is WordPress so popular? Well simplicity and ease of use are the top reason but a powerful and robust set of built in features and the endless number of plugins make for limitless enhancements and customizations which allow for truly unique and personal websites. The famous 5 minute installation and intuitive administration features such as easy updates, click to install themes and plugins plus a variety of media features makes setting up and managing a basic blog easy for anyone with basic internet skills.

A basic WordPress blog is about as easy to manage as any word processor application and if you can navigate Microsoft Word or post content on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook you can very easily operate a default installation of a WordPress. The raw power and huge number of customizations can allow for very personalized installations of WordPress which scale up to allow development of very large websites that power a number of popular online communirties such as TechCrunch and The Ney York Times blogs.

WordPress design is accomplished with the simple installation of WordPress themes readily available online which are easy to customize so you can create your own look and set of desired website features. Custom WordPress themes allow you to turn a blog into a powerful online business with social media integration, content syndication and customer service features built in for easy business management so that any small business can take advantage of the power of internet marketing without the daunting task of learning everything there is to know about website design and development.

Ocala Webmaster offers custom WordPress design and hosting for small business owners in Ocala Florida with free WordPress installation on all of our hosting packages through the Cpanel website administration. Our WordPress hosting packages start at less than $10 per month and come with a free basic WordPress blogs that you can have your custom business website up and running in just a few hours. WordPress theme customization will make your website stand out and match your business model with custom photography and graphic arts plus promotional audio and video to reach your customers from around the world with your business message. Our WordPress marketing services includes custom plugins for WordPress SEO and website promotions which help drive qualified traffic to your WordPress blog for maximum return on investment and conversion to leads or sales.

Check out the source at WordPress Blog Design, Hosting & Marketing

Social Media or Social Networks such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hi-5 and Twitter all share one thing in common which is they all are designed for users to share information such as photos, videos and text messages with other users, most often called “friends“, online where they can be found by almost anyone.

In the past few short years the social media phenom has taken over the daily lives of many internet users who find themselves consumed with sharing, tweeting and blogging about their daily activities and lifestyles. Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have 100′s of millions of users who share and reshare millions of websites, photos and videos each and every day and tapping into this vast marketing channel is a daunting task for even the most experienced internet marketer.

The average small business owner can barely get a grasp on how huge and how important a social media marketing campaign can be much less can they design and execute a proper social media strategy due to limitations in the understanding of how social networks function and the best way to market your products or services through social network channels. It takes a lot more than simply creating a Facebook or Twitter page to engage users and attract friends or potential clients for new business owners and for existing businesses it can lead to a customer service nightmare when something goes wrong.

Anything posted online stays online so many business owners are skeptical about taking their message to the masses when they consider just how badly things can go when they do go wrong with social marketing. Being scared of social media and the repercussions of social marketing done wrong is reasonable but no reason to not embrace the new advertising medium. Instead that fear should be used to proceed cautiously with a well thought out plan for your social marketing message.

Ocala Webmaster has been marketing on social media channels since the very beginning with numerous successful marketing campaigns and 1000′s of satisfied friends online. Let us help you create and execute a successful social media marketing strategy and take your business to a new level with an optimized mass media campaign.

Check out the source at Social Media Marketing and Optimization

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM as it is referred to by internet marketers, is the process of design, development and promotion of websites in search engines with the specific goal of gaining a high ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) for a desired keyword or phrase. Search engine marketing may include search engine optimization, paid search engine inclusion, pay per click bid management and contextual advertising with a goal of promoting a website to increase targeted website traffic generally for specific keywords related to the website.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it has come to be known, is the process of optimizing a website or page for better ranking in search engines such as Google or Bing. Search engines look for certain elements in a webpage to determine what keywords are relevant and what ranking to apply to each page for that desired keyword. SEO includes all aspects of actual on page optimization such as proper HTML formatting of important meta tags including the all important Title, Description and Keyword tags plus lesser known but equally important tags such as H1, H2 and H3 headings, Alt Image tags, internal link structure and most importantly keyword rich website text.

For the professional search engine marketer the SEO process always begins with proper keyword research to determine exactly which keywords you wish to target on each individual page which should be optimized for one keyword set. Website ad copy will be created to describe each keyword set and proper formatting techniques will be applied to include the desired keywords in each of the aforementioned HTML tags. Proper keyword research is vital in driving qualified website traffic which in turn leads to better conversions to sales or leads and maximized return on investment for the small business owner.

SEO can be broken down into two camps, white hat seo and black hat seo which refers to how aggressive an internet marketer will get with their optimization strategies. White hat seo agents will utilize industry standard best practices in a safe approach to avoid being penalized or banned for certain unaccepted seo practices. Black hat seo agents take a no holds barred approach with more cutting edge techniques that may be frowned upon by search engines and can lead to a website being banned when the techniques are discovered. Black hat seo techniques include keyword stuffing, hidden text, link spamming, cloaking and other non standard practices which are a direct violation of webmaster guidelines as provided by Google. Black hat seo is generally utilized on disposable websites which may achieve high rankings quickly but will most likely be banned eventually and white hat seo is more often the approach taken by those committed to building a long term and lasting ranking in search engines.

Ocala Webmaster offers white hat seo services in Ocala Florida with a goal of long term rankings for your business website.

Check out the source at Ocala Search Engine Marketing & Optimization