Why Should We Go to Professionals to Design a Website

Business success and internet-visibility go hand in hand. But what matters is how presentable your online identity is, as it will make or break your success online!

It’s the dawn of the Information age and the Web with its reach and scope is the best example of the phenomenon. The Web today not only serves as a medium of dispensing information but also more importantly as a platform to conduct business. A basic requirement for someone wishing to avail the might of the Web is an online site or an interface where one can present oneself and interact with potential customers.

A plethora of web-sites building stuff is nowadays available where one can get acquainted with the know-how about designing an online site and thinking about the high stakes involved it's become a well specialized domain in itself involving the latest technologies and programming designs that often take years to master. A job for the professionals indeed thinking about the complicated applications like Flash that are utilized to give the net site a futuristic look. Today, a lot of multimedia add-ons which include banners, picture galleries and videos have given designers a variety to pick and effectively put across to web-site visitors what the company wishes to highlight as the first impression is definitely the last impression in the realm of designing.

Several technocrats have come up to provide their expertise to companies and add the power of the Web to their business acumen which in the long run has a lovely return on investment quotient. Founded by dedicated professionals these ventures have a powerful dedication to technical expertise and a result driven approach to make positive proactive client support. A remarkable example is RCG Infosoft, a leading web designing company with a proven track record and clientele ranging from retail to finance and actual estate to medicine depicting its versatility. Offering the latest in web services RCG Infosoft systems is a one cease shop for the final web experience driven by innovative expertise. Custom-made to suit business and budget requirement the company has proven expertise in designing beautiful and original sites with an simple to make use of interface. In the realm of web designing the company has an established presence, incorporating the new-end and popular Open Source applications that include Drupal, Joomla, E commerce solutions and blogs permitting simple interaction.

The traffic that a professionally managed and designed site generates is as a rule several times higher as confirmed by various clients who have benefited from professional expertise. Think about a comment that a client vouched for regarding a professional team" RCG Infosoft group continue to provide excellent service to us on a consistent basis, every week." A right combination of lovely search engine optimization, relevant content, simple to make use of interface, and eye catching designs is a positive shot way to accomplish best results to various clients translating in to better business opportunities. A dedication with RCG Infosoft goes a long way with efficient web-site maintenance that guarantees a keeping with the times and continuous improvement. RCG Infosoft vision is to bring values and integrity, provide solutions and options, sort out issues and introduce newness to each and every transaction with its esteemed clients.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

5 Marketing Solutions that Work

Bet you never thought man would move to space.... Well he has... to cyberspace that is. If everyone lives there, then companies need to start marketing themselves there. Here are 5 solutions to your Internet marketing needs:

1.Analysis

Analysis involves identifying target segments as well as competitors. Before launching a product it's important to know who would be interested in having one. Where do those people shop, what do they read, what are they influenced by? These are all critical points to know. Similarly it's essential to know what other competing products are currently on the market and how yours can beat them.

2.Sales and Marketing

Once the analysis component is complete, a company must devise strategies to reach their target market. This might be achieved through email marketing or a social media campaign. The objective is to get buyers attention, get them interested, and then ask for the sale.

3.Design

Design is a massive component of successful internet marketing. A website should be designed to appeal to its target audience and make it as easy as possible for them to navigate their way through to the end. This requires performing user testing, and constantly tweaking to enhance the site for repeat visits. A unique layout is another way for a company to differentiate themselves.

4.Content Development

Ever been to a website and left with no idea of what was being sold? Or worse yet, have you ever read a blog that sounds like it was written by someone with one voice intonation? Well strong written content can drive people back to your site and get them interested in your brand. Moreover, creating high impact titles and headlines can increase a company's search engine optomisation.

5.Ecommerce Solutions

By effectively carrying out the first four of these solutions, companies will automatically be improving the Ecommerce component of their site. A website that has a user friendly design will significantly increase its conversion rates. Outside support and maintenance are recommended to Ecommerce sites, as is third party application integration.

Internet marketing is here to stay, so it's critical that companies start getting really comfortable with what they're doing and how they're training their staff. Often companies who are unfamiliar with these concepts will look externally for assistance and extra resources. This is not a bad idea, especially for those just getting started. Those choosing to outsource should ensure that they are properly trained in all of the systems and applications that have been set up for them.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Social Media - How Can I Get It to Work for My Business?

Social media web sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are ever growing in popularity. Most everyone has a Facebook account with which you re-connect with friends and family and share thoughts, opinions, and pictures to name just a few features and don't forget about all those games they offer. That's the personal side; however, social media has a lot to offer for the business side.

Facebook Facebook is by far the most active social media site having more than 500 million active users. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

Facebook has several good networking and marketing options for anyone who is in the EP business or anyone looking to get into the business.

1. Create or Join a Facebook Group There several million groups that have been created on Facebook. Do a search on bodyguard, security or executive protection. Join them those groups that are active and relative to the business. Participate in them. Glean from these groups all you can. Make contacts with others in the group.

2. Don't Mix Business with Pleasure Whether you are in the business or not, create a separate Facebook account expressly for marketing your services and business.

3. Create Your own Facebook Ad I know that they can sometimes be annoying, just like Google; Facebook offers you the ability to create an ad for as little as $1.00 per day.

4. Create a Fan Page A Fan page is great way to communicate to Facebook users who are interested in your services or your products. It is a must have in my opinion.

Twitter is another social networking service and unlike Facebook, you can communicate not just to people who "follow" you but to everyone within Twitter. Also unlike Facebook your updates or messages called "tweets", can't be longer than 140 characters and can only contain text. Twitter includes a search for you to find people or businesses that you are interested in and follow them however; people are not obligated to follow you.

LinkedIn is a pure business professional social medium. You can create an online resume and connect with peers in current or past occupations. You can also search and join professional groups for networking. LinkedIn is not as large as Twitter or Facebook but it is getting more popular. You can attach your Twitter or Wordpress accounts directly to your LinkedIn profile. You can seek out new connections and build your network.

If you have a penchant for writing and what to share with the public at large about your experiences in the business or how you got in the business or your likes and dislikes about the latest gizmo then blogs are for you. Blogger and Wordpress are free and are easy to use. If you can't afford the expenses of owning a website with a domain then start a blog. The more your content grows the higher your visibility in search engines and the more recognition you'll receive. You'll start to grow a following which will create a good network.

Here are the problems with blogs. You are only as successful as your content and the frequency in which you post. You have to post to your blog at least once a day and the content must be original and offer your opinion.

Now the question you have to ask is what will work for my business? Should I use LinkedIn and Twitter, or the blog and Facebook? Well the good news is that they are all free and quite popular. The bad news is you'll have to figure out which social media presence that works best for your business or organization.

In my opinion you should use all of them to some degree. Some people might disagree with me here but I feel LinkedIn is an absolute must. If you just starting out in business or have had a successful career LinkedIn is my first stop.

Facebook would be my second choice. Although you will start with mainly family and friends - promote you and your business and market your fan page.

Next would be Twitter. Start following businesses and beware of spammers looking to follow you. Post something on Twitter at least once a week. Last would be a blog. Blogs are time consuming and if your heart isn't in it you won't get any value out of it.

One last thing: these are SOCIAL media web sites. So go and be social, be engaging, share information, opinions and network with others. You get what you put into it.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Does Your Small Business Have the Regional SEO Advantage?

This is the most important question that small and medium-sized businesses should be asking themselves, particularly if they aren't tuned towards the international market. It has been noticed that most of the SEO service providers fail to ensure the most critical demand for any brand that has a neighborhood or regional presence-its visibility in the local search engines and the ability to gain online popularity for the regional audience.
The more established SEO firms provide packaged services for small businesses that are trying to occupy a share of the local market. Such SEO services are often highlighted as SEO for regional domains or Geo-targeted optimization.

These packages are also suited for a brand that has a country-specific focus. For instance, a business in New York might be trying to capture the increasing green market consumer trends in a south-east Asian nation. Thus, the brand needs something beyond the usual SEO services, i.e. its online visibility in a particular nation.

These services make sense since Google's search patterns seem to have a distinct, regionalization pattern. Every time a search for a product or service is made, the results listed on Google's SERP seem to be attuned towards listing a few, high-ranking sites followed by a preference for most of the local businesses that have been able to maintain their online marketing standards as per Google's benchmarks.

In fact, most of the search engines seem a bit inclined towards listing the results with an emphasis on providing information with the viewpoint that local businesses in the vicinity or regional search engine results would be more useful to the browser.

If you are a small business or a start-up that is aimed towards promoting good or services in a particular city, province or the state, it is imperative that you establish an aggressive, regional search engine optimization outline for your website.

Most of the SEO specialists and webmasters agree that any local business should be following some basic SEO guidelines to make their site search-friendly for the regional, online searches. Some commonly-advocated recommendations in this regard include:

USING GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS-it is imperative that the webmaster taking care of a regional portal mentions the country in the Google Webmaster Tools. This Google application also provides the freedom of adding any specific, national association that the business might be associated with. Google refers to this application as Geotargeting. As a part of the tools, the webmaster can use the geographic target tool application that is oriented towards improving the relevance of geographic queries made on Google. Please understand that this kind of data is not meant to increase the page rank but to make the search results more relevant.

LISTING DETAILED CONTACT INFORMATION-rather than specifying a general address, a business should list local landmarks, business lanes, nearby markets, historic places in the vicinity and any other information that can underline the businesses' presence in a particular geographical location. This makes the site more relevant to Google's indexing patterns when indexing information for a regional audience.

LISTING LOCAL DIRECTORIES-nearly every SEO firm provides services like manual submission of the site in link directories and social book-marks listings. However, a regionally-oriented business needs to ensure that its site is fed to the local directories rather than international directories that receive millions of submissions from across the world. This is a simple and effective way of targeting the local audience. Most importantly, a business should be working with an SEO provider who can keep a check on the latest of trends that might affect the geographical or regional listing of the site.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

3 Can't Miss Online Branding Strategies

Online branding is a very shrewd strategy for any business looking to gain a competitive edge when marketing on the internet. Developing a unique business brand will help to make you more easily identifiable setting you apart from the pack online. This will result in you being able to deliver any marketing message more effectively as well! So how do you go about developing and establishing a 'competition busting' image that will work to your advantage when marketing on the internet?

Here are 3 simple yet powerful strategies you can use to establish your own business brand that will set you apart from other markers online.

Label Yourself

Use an image, likeness, photo or logo that best represents what it is you are trying to identify with. People find this easy and convenient to use, as you will also. Relevance is the key here! By placing this 'likeness' in your email, on your website and/or blog and even in your signature file you can easily and effortlessly reinforce your business brand. Develop an appropriate and appealing image and start using this as your logo today!

Get Social

Social sites or media use helps to better 'connect' you with others online. These sites are growing more popular everyday therefore it is a great place to find people and make an impression. These sites are not only very effective for building a business brand but also for marketing on the internet as well! Choose a few sites that you are the most comfortable with and start getting 'active' by making friends. Remember you first need to 'win friends' before you can 'influence people' so do not enter these sites as a marketing 'gunslinger!'

Circulate Content

Contrary to some opinions 'text' is not dead and you need to make good use of it to reinforce your marketing message and the image you are creating. Content also has a long life span and serves many uses for many people. Whether you write articles, publish newsletters and blog posts or perhaps create viral reports, get your content out there. This is a great way to increase your exposure and reinforce your business brand.

Online branding is a key component of establishing yourself when marketing on the internet in terms of gaining a competitive edge. By distinguishing yourself from others with your own unique business brand you can be more easily heard over the 'noise' of your competitors. By accomplishing this you are now able to more effectively deliver your marketing message. The 3 strategies reviewed above are simple yet powerful tactics you can use to develop a brand that will boost your business to the next level and beyond!

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Why Building a Website is Not Enough to Promote Your Business Online

One of the first things that any business should consider when reaching out to customers is to create a website. However, there is a lot more to web presence than simply a website, blog or Facebook page. With so many companies seizing the opportunities provided through networks like Facebook and Twitter, it may become necessary to hire a social media marketing company to handle your company's online marketing efforts. Here are some things to consider when managing your company's online presence.

A good starting point for marketing your company online is to create a website. However, this can be a very technical and time consuming task, and let's face it: you're already busy running your company. You may find that it is necessary to hire some web design help to get you started on your Internet marketing journey. Make sure that you have enough money budgeted for the website's design as you may end up needing to pay more for more advanced features and services.

Once you have the overall layout of your site established, you may be asking yourself how you can target your current customers. Although you can try to reach out to them face-to-face from your store or place of business, for many people, this may not be convenient. One way that many businesses are reaching out to their current customers is through social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. Although these are likely to help you get exposure from new customers, you can also find ways to reward your current customers by providing updated feeds about discounts, sales or specials that your company offers. You can set up an RSS feed to allow your visitors to receive updates on your blog's latest entries, or set up a mailing list which your site's visitors can sign up for while they're perusing your site.

If you're interested in going further with the Internet presence management of your company, you may need to go beyond web design and begin optimizing your site for search engines like Google and Yahoo. Although you may be able to go to your web designer for help with this, unless they are part of an SEO affiliate program, you might need to look outside for more help with these matters. Make sure that you ask your web designer what services they provide so that you can get the best value for your Internet marketing efforts.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Get Ahead of Your Competition with these Effective Internet Marketing Tips

You can use a wide variety of internet marketing methods to make money online. There are new online marketing strategies, software programs and ways to advertise popping up all the time. To really succeed with internet marketing, you have to understand the basics. In this article we will be discussing few tips that will help you get successful with your Internet marketing venture.


The single most valuable advice on internet marketing that you can apply is to always think of how you can help your prospects. You want to be someone who your target audience seeks out for information or advice in your niche. The reason for this is, the Internet is filled of scamsters trying to take advantage of the vulnerable. That's why it's important that you reach out and offer people real assistance. Then it will be clear that you are not just promoting products but are also providing a service. Soon your credibility will be such that your prospects will be open to receiving offers from you. Don't try too hard to sell anything, but simply explain to them how buying your product may be beneficial to them. It's much easier to sell to customers when you are providing them with exactly what they are looking for. Your goal should not be to make single sales, but to get repeat customers who return to you over and over again, so stay in touch with people who purchase from you. It's all about balancing your marketing with effective relationship building. You will always be more successful by meeting the needs of your customers.

Social networks can be of great use to you for publicizing your website and products. It is now simple to connect with millions of potential customers on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. You can easily create a Twitter account and add relevant followers to whom you can market your products. You can also have your existing customers in your follower list that you can provide customer service to or help out with their questions. You can find many additional social networking services that can help you to promote your site and products. These Web 2.0 properties receive high traffic on a regular basis and tapping in them isn't that difficult with the right techniques.

One of the secrets of internet marketing success is to promote your site in many different ways. Some internet marketers use pre-internet style advertising to generate targeted visitors, such as placing ads in newspapers or using direct mail promotions. If you use techniques such as these, remember to use testing and tracking. You want to know how many people are finding your site from your offline ads, so use a special landing page to track this. This will give you a fair idea on how people are responding and what the response rate is like.

Testing is the only way to know how well your advertising dollars are performing.

You always want to know things like which sites are giving you traffic and how your various campaigns are converting. These practices are what makes the difference between success and failure for online marketers. If you take internet marketing step by step, it isn't as complicated as it may first appear. You can take it as far as you want, depending on how much energy you put into it.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Social Media Marketing is a Technique for Marketing Your Products

Internet marketing as a whole has seen some impressive gains and advances in recent years. So in that spirit we want to talk more about some IM tips and solid advice based on years of experience.

Having your own product is as important as knowing how to drive your sales sky high to really succeed as an internet marketer. Real financial success is possible with internet marketing is you know how to play the game. You’ve created a product in a niche with high demand. Now, how do you get the sales? Are you going to do all of the work? Take advantage of the value available through affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs can direct traffic to your site all day long, meaning you earn money even when you’re not actively working. Affiliates will handle all of your promotional needs with no upfront cost. Once you see results, then you pay them. Nowadays, it isn’t that difficult to have your own affiliate program running due to independent networks and software tools that make it easy for you. Clickbank, for example, gives you access to over 100,000 affiliates if you’re selling a downloadable product. The nice thing about this network is they do all the work for you, including making payments. This is one of the ways that starting your own internet marketing business has gotten easier. When you utilize the power of affiliate networks you will see immediate results.

Regardless of what you’re marketing, you’ll see much better results if you actively try to create good value for your customers. Your aim here is to build a long term business and at the same time stand out of the heavy competition. Just one approach to add almost instant value boost is to make sure your bonus offerings are great. There are numerous solutions to this, so you just need to make sure your bonuses are relevant to the main offer and are of genuine value. The more good value you offer, the more your efforts will be rewarded. It’s critical that your bonuses complement the primary product you’re offering.

Social media marketing is a fast growing technique for marketing your products online. Check out sites such as facebook and twitter for the opportunities they offer. Marketing on social networks allows you to accomplish two things, build your brand and drive targeted traffic to your site. Just think out of the box and experiment with your own strategies.

You can create an online business and take it to great heights if you are committed to it and persistent. Just remember that it takes consistent work and commitment to achieve your goals.

Courtesy: www.toysauce.com

Keys To Successful Software Testing

For many years, the major software development companies have only focused on just the development of software rather than caring enough for its ‘verification’ and ‘validation’. But with time and with the losses that companies have experienced because of faulty software, software testing has appeared as an extremely important part of the software development cycle. Successful testing is a critical concern for most of the software majors. While some leave it to their in-house human resources to take care of, some pay extra to hire trained staff, specifically skilled to take care of core software testing manually.

But before we go on to discuss about the keys to successful software testing, it is necessary to understand its importance. Software testing does not necessarily deal only with the inefficiencies of the software application or bugs within it. It rather safeguards the software from being labeled as defective – which may create a negative ripple on the market regarding the product as well as the parent company itself. When a company develops a product, the acceptance of the product among its target audience is a vital factor regulating its critical and commercial success. Therefore, preparing an assessment report is always a pre-requisite for a company before investing in a particular software product. This can, therefore, be considered as one of the primary points for successful software testing.

The second key to successful software testing reveals two important aspects - termed ‘verification’ and ‘validation’. It is the primary duty of software testers to point out whether the developed software has been designed keeping in mind the technical requirements (‘verification’) and whether it fulfils the client requirements (‘validation’) as well.

Individual companies have their own software testing guidelines. But in general, most of them adhere to an accepted list of points that have been listed below:

Software testing has to be planned much before the actual testing begins, possibly right from the inception of the software itself. Also to ensure the best results, an independent and unbiased third party should be handed the assignment of software testing.

A detailed test plan is chalked out with consistent strategies. The ‘Testbed’ is also created at this stage.

The testers are to start with specific areas, i.e. with a ‘small’ scope, and widen their scope (generalize) as they progress.

Defects and errors tend to be detected based on a common factor – staff inexperience or complexity of the software for instance. Targeting these areas will solve majority of the problem.

A set of tests are not to be run repetitively, since repetitive tests do not produce better results. Instead their error-detection capacity decreases with monotony. Alternate software testing methods should also be tried in parallel to the conventional tests to ensure better effect.

Successful software testing detects problems early, and saves fixing costs as well. This is because once the software is available to the users, fixing errors and implementing damage control can cost fortunes to the company.

Rechecking of defects by a fresh team of software testers, or after a considerable period of time.

‘Regression tests’ and proper documentation are also a vital part of successful software testing, as without these, debugging the software application would be impossible.

The last key to successful software testing is closing the test and saving all the output results, solutions, methods, and analysis reports for future reference.

And finally, no software can be completely tested and branded as 100% defect free. It is the acumen of the project managers to group and design test scenarios from the infinite set of test cases and do this with a risk based approach.

Successful software testing is all about providing quality products to consumers and eliminating possible bugs at each level. Always remember that a successful software testing program helps detecting yet-to-be-discovered errors, thereby, saving both grace and money for the parent company.

Courtesy: www.a1articles.com

Why Outsourcing Software Testing Services India?

Outsourcing software testing - while stressing high quality work you can count on - one should decide clearly whether it is really beneficial to outsource software testing. A growing trend among software companies is to focus on developing software, while outsourcing testing and validation. That is because outsourcing software testing offers touchable business benefits. These include independent assessment leading to enhanced delivery confidence, reduced time to market, lower infrastructure investment, predictable software quality and increased time to focus on designing better solutions.


In last few years many types of software testing methods have been developed to meet up with the various business requirements. In order to offer the best software solution, today it has become very important to execute the finest quality standards, software testing procedures and professionals indulged software development process have to constantly focus on enhancement of their software products. Thus the success of any software development directly depends upon software testing.

Dedicated Testing Services unit focuses on verification and validation of products and applications. Software testing team will work closely with you from the requirements analysis phase. Software Testing Services include Life cycle testing, Test automation and specialized testing.

There is Prominent Software Testing services include:

• Usability testing
• Regression testing
• Reliability testing
• White Box testing
• Documentation testing & verification
• Security testing
• Localization/Internationalization testing
• API/SDK testing

Industry analysts predict that during the second half of this decade, increases in software testing activity will be fuelled by software testing automation. Automated software testing services reduces the expenses of regression testing and also speeds up test turn around time. It provides ground for environment testing. Through automated testing we assist you to create test scripts, generate test data and analyze test logs.

What are the benefits of outsourcing software testing services?

• Minimized operating costs
• Documentation of testing processes
• Error-free software products
• Stringent quality assurance processes
• Quick turnaround time
• Experienced, trained and skilled software testing team

Software testing services spanning the entire software release lifecycle. Software testing services help you deliver your software with confidence and compete better in the market. This includes formulating the test plan & test cases, execution, defect reporting, defect analysis, risk assessments and recommendations.

Courtesy: www.a1articles.com

Do you need to re-design?

As daunting of a task as it may seem, your website is your company’s image and needs to look presentable. Ask yourself, how long have I had my current web site design? If your answer is more than 3 years, then its time to start thinking redesign.

Web technology advancements are very rapid and every year the web breaks through with new and improved web applications, usability, design and back end programming. Car manufacturers often change their models every 3-5 years. Always introducing something new, more sleeker, faster, with better gas mileage etc. If the Honda Accord still looked the same as the one from the year 2000, their competition would definitely surpass them. But they still make minor changes every year to give their customers something new to look forward to. Just like cars, web sites also need a fresh design every once in a while. If you aren’t going to do it, your competitors will. Your site may look great to you, after all you approved on the design and paid for it, but in reality it may not be all that groovy.

You may ask, who is to say what looks good and what doesn’t. Well, nobody really. Even web designers differ in taste and may sometimes be on opposite ends of the spectrum. To do a quick reality check, look at some web sites throughout your industry. See what they offer, how they have designed it. Is it appealing to you? Do these sites give you ideas for your own? Does it bring out the competitive edge in you? Sure, some sites may make you feel just down right heroic inside. We aren’t saying your current website is super UGLY, although that maybe the case. That is why it is important to sit and evaluate your web site. No matter how great your product or service may be, if your web site doesn’t grab your potential customer’s attention within the first 3 seconds, they most likely will hit that infamous BACK button or close the browser all together. Sadly, web surfers aren't very patient and need something stimulating to look at once they hit that GO button.

1. Evaluate your site’s usability, the look and feel and most importantly content and it’s placement.
2. Send a quick survey to some of your customers and gather their input. Your customer will appreciate that you value their opinion and will gladly provide you with constructive feedback.
3. If possible, contact a professional web design firm and ask them what they think. Actually, contact a few. Most web design companies will usually give you their professional opinion for free, with hopes that you select them as your service provider.
4. Look through your site, and see how well it conveys your products and services to someone who knows nothing about it.
5. Take a peek at your competitor’s Websites in your industry and other industries to obtain ideas.
6. Ask yourself, was your site launched just because everyone else had one and forgotten, or does it really do something tangible?
7. Get your hands on a web analytics report that tells you how many users have visited your site. You can usually obtain this by logging into your host’s website or by calling them. This can give you needed information on how many hits your site gets, where most of your viewers go and how long they stay. This is also a great tool to gain some insight on your next big marketing campaign.

Once you have gathered all this data, evaluate your budget and see if there is some room for a web site redesign. If so, then please get it done. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make it the right one. Appearance is so important and will only continue to increase the demand of great designed sites, so stay with the flow. Don’t drown your organization in this sea of ugly web sites.

Courtesy: www.wpdfd.com

Top Five Ways to Make Your Site More Popular

The Web has grown into a real jungle, and finding cool new sites nowadays isn't always the easiest thing in the world. If you have a Website yourself, you're dealing with the other end of this issue. How do you get noticed online, and is there anything you can do to increase your popularity?

There certainly is! Here are the top five ways you can strengthen your site and increase your online visibility.

1. Strong Hosting

This first point is mostly important for those who don’t have their own Website yet but eagerly want to create one. After you have selected your domain name, the next step is to choose a hosting plan. There are many good, affordable alternatives, but what professionals usually recommend is specialized blog hosting. This form of Web hosting allows you to set up a professional-looking Website in no time at all. Why is this important to mention when it comes to making your site more popular? Well, without strong hosting, you won’t be able to handle a traffic to your new Website, which means you’ll have no chance at all of becoming well liked.

Of course, finding strong hosting is often easier said than done. The hosting industry has grown very popular in recent years, and this has lead to large numbers of companies offering various hosting services. But don’t be fooled by their tricky ways of making it sound as if they are the best in the industry. We would recommend you partner up with a company that has a strong reputation and experience in the business. You might start at Web Hosting Search for reviews and other information to help you find the right fit.

When it comes to hosting, you should compare the different features included with the plan. Make sure you are guaranteed at least 99.9% uptime and that customer support is easy to get hold of. You never know when you could need them. Likewise, it is also good to know exactly what kind of numbers in terms of disc space and bandwidth will you be allowed to use and manage. Some providers also forbid their clients to upload music or video files to their servers even if it is for personal use. It's important to ask customer support to resolve such issues before purchasing a plan. Some other things you might consider asking are whether your domain name registry information will be protected and how many different e-mail accounts will you be allowed to use as part of the hosting agreement.

2. Optimize Your Website

In order to be truly successful online, you will have to get a high ranking in search engines. To succeed in this, you should learn as much as you possibly can about search engine optimization (SEO). The subject of SEO is vast and can be quite daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to see the benefits immediately and will probably wonder why you didn’t get started with it earlier. A few things you can do to get started are to make sure you're using the proper keywords and to write for your visitors as well as for search engines. Writing for search engines is important, since you want to get high rankings, and writing for visitors is of the essence because you want them to stick around and return to your Website.

When you are satisfied with the keywords and content on your site, it is time to start working with link building. Search engines determine much of the value of a certain page/site by looking at the number of inbound links. Link exchange is one of the most popular and successful ways to get a good rank on search engines, and it’s really easy to do. Simply visit a Website that you like and ask the Webmaster if they are interested in a link exchange — it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Having something interesting and distinctive on your page is a great way to attract potential link partners. For example, if you are running a Website about domain names, why not add a domain name availability checker to your homepage? It will most likely attract links from other sites related to the niche, and people will tend to come back again if they want to know whether a domain is available or not. Try to be extra creative to set yourself apart from competitors.

3. Take Advantage of Social Media Optimization

Even though SEO should be a big part of your site optimization, it shouldn’t end there. Social Media Optimization is probably just as important, since it’s one of the strongest marketing tools available today. A social media optimization campaign should include a few different things. First, make sure the content on your site or blog is relevant to your topic and not out of date. Visit similar sites and join the discussion in leaving comments on posts/articles — don’t be afraid to say what's on your mind. Make yourself visible on Facebook and MySpace. Three other sites that can be useful for social media optimization are Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The two latter ones are not always applicable. Make sure you only take advantage of them when the time is right — you might do more harm than good if you don’t.

Obviously, don’t forget to include outbound links to your Website on any social media site you utilize. Even if your link has a "nofollow" attribute attached to it (e.g. like in Facebook), you will still attract new visitors and potential customers to the site. Lastly, your campaign should be built on friendly platforms, such as CoffeeCup Flash™ Blogger, which make it easy to create and edit content.

4. Get Your Visitors Involved

A crucial point to make your site grow in the number of visitors is by getting them involved. Try to write in a personal style, and don’t be afraid to leave an open question. If this shouldn’t do it, why not hold a contest? This will most likely get people talking about your site. The prize doesn’t have to cost a fortune, since people like to compete regardless of what the award is — it's human nature.

Other easy ways of getting your visitors involved is by including a forum on your site or the possibility to comment on your posts/articles. Everyone wants to express their own personal ideas and thoughts on topics, and by allowing them doing so, you also increase the chance of visitors returning to see how was their feedback appreciated. As an added bonus, if the topic is extra popular, the discussion could attract interest from other Websites as well!

5. Emphasize Usability in Your Design

Investing in a good design is more important than some people seem to think. With a beautiful design, you will grow in trust among your readers/visitors. An important fact to remember is not over-designing the Website. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve put into designing the site if no one understands how to use it. Let some non-Internet-savvy friends navigate through your Website before launching it at a full scale. If they find it easy, so will the rest of your visitors.

It is difficult to say exactly what makes a beautiful and functional design. What looks good to one person might seem terrible for another. However, there are basic trends in Web design, and if you follow these, you can be sure to please most of your visitors. A few popular Web design trends for 2009 are multi-column layouts, large illustrations, and lots of white space.

If you wish to stay on the safe side, then it is a good call to make the layout and design features on the page easily accessible and simple to understand. Try to use standard coding and avoid over-the-top Flash animations. Some people may have browser settings that prevent them from viewing Flash, which means you might lose valuable visitors. Try to think how the visitor thinks, and your Website will grow more popular and respected day after day.

Courtesy: www.wpdfd.com

Website Ranking With the Search Engine

Search engine optimization is the main way you should use to increase your internet based business traffic, the basic relation for that is the higher the ranking of this engine the more traffic is likely to pass through. Content should be unique and full of keywords and with the on page optimization set up for your website; this should attract the search engines bots to index it quickly.

The basic to SEO is content. This means any website which aspires to get top rankings and increase traffic has to have good, valuable content which are search engine friendly. You no longer write as you please.

Without the ranking accompanying your traffic, your website is as good as dead, regardless of how great your services or products are. Here are some tips to help you and your website to rank well and start getting endless supply of your targeted traffic from Bing Search Engine.

On the other hand, intense competition has made it very difficult for the websites to achieve those desirable high SEO rankings. As web masters does not know the way of working of web crawlers, SEO professionals of any good search engine marketing firm must be hired by the web masters to achieve higher SEO rankings.

The appropriate keyword density will help in the right optimization of the website without drawing the suspicion of spam. Apart from spreading these keywords in the article, you may include them in the heading and link of the website as well for better results.

Search engine optimization is the most important as well as necessary tool to improve your website ranking. Take time enough to analyze the follies in your website design and also check for any kind of deficiencies in the coding that can deter your website ranking.

Content management is another search engine marketing tip that can boost your business's prospects immensely. Through content management you can constantly update all the information in your site.

Once the page was stored on the search engines server a second program, called an indexer, extracted additional information from the webpage, and determines the weight of specific words.

The process may also depend on the original structure of your website. If your website uses templates that are not easily read by crawlers, for instance, this set of SEO techniques will go the extra mile to make sure that your pages are indexed by adding other website components.

The content of the website should also be constantly updated in order to achieve a higher ranking on the search engine. Contents should also be unique in order to improve on search ranking. A VA can update your website on a daily basis and keep track of the keywords or phrases being used to write each content or page of the website.

Once you determine the right keywords from your keyword research you will use them to drive highly targeted organic traffic to your website. If you know how to use SEO effectively you can significantly improve your website's ranking with the search engines and help your targeted audience to find your product or service.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Yahoo Now Including Bing Results - Tips for Optimizing

Yahoo has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft. Up to 25% of its search traffic in the U.S. may see organic listings from Microsoft, and up to 3.5% may see paid listings from Microsoft ad-Center. I guess you could say that the early stages of the Search Alliance's transition have begun.

"The primary change for these tests is that the listings are coming from Microsoft," says Yahoo's VP of Search Product Operations, Kartik Ramakrishnan. "However, the overall page should look the same as the Yahoo! Search you're used to – with rich content and unique tools and features from Yahoo!. If you happen to fall into our tests, you might also notice some differences in how we’re displaying select search results due to a variety of product configurations we are testing."

Yahoo provides the following example, in which the Microsoft-powered parts are represented by the boxes:

As far as SEO is concerned, the Yahoo Search Marketing Team provides the following tips for organic search:


1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.


2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.

3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

Microsoft's Satya Nadella also says that "now is a good time for you to review your crawl policies in your robots.txt and ensure that you have identical polices for the msnbot/Bingbot and Yahoo’s bots. Just to note, you should not see an increase in bingbot traffic as a result of the transition."
 
The Bingbot is designed to crawl non-optimized sties more easily. The new Bingbot will replace the existing msnbot in October. More on this here.

Also note that the new Bing Webmaster Tools experience is live. This has been completely redone with a bunch of new features (and more features to come). Bing Webmaster Tools Senior Product Manager Anthony M. Garcia summarizes:

The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included. Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.

WebProNews spoke with Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo out at SMX a while back. She had presented on the topic of Bing SEO vs. Organic SEO. As she notes, some businesses actually see better results from Bing than they do from Google, and when Yahoo starts fully using Bing for search, Bing's share of the search market is going to grow dramatically (it also powers search in Facebook, let's not forget).

Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft's mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September. This of course depends on how the testing goes.

Yahoo and Microsoft have created new joint editorial guidelines for advertisers that will become effective in early August.

As we've discussed, Bing optimization is about to get more important, and now the time has come to really look at your Bing strategy if you've not already been doing so.

http://www.webpronews.com

An Introduction FBML: (Facebook Markup Language)

I thought it would be a good idea to go over some of the basics for using FBML. While its not difficult to implement, it can be a little confusing if you’re new to programming or you’ve not programmed with this language before.

For starters, FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language and it works a lot like HTML. Honestly, the biggest difference between the two is that you do not need to include , and tags. Facebook applications rendered with FBML are essentially extensions of the page already, so those tags are already included on the page. Also, depending on what you want your application is or will do; you may not want to use FBML.

So when should you use FBML? For one, if you plan to work on Facebook a lot it can be useful to know a little something about it so you’re prepared for anything. FBML is also very useful for applications that are not external websites and for those that aren’t going to be anywhere else.

What about using iframe? You should use iframe if you already have an external website up and running and simply want to put it on Facebook, too. If you’ve got a lot of Javascript already in place, transforming it into FBJS (Facebook Javascript) will be a hassle. Javascript does not work in an FBML canvas application until it’s been transformed to FBJS.

Facebook suggests you use iframe if you are new to programming; I disagree completely. I find FBML to be far less complex for new users. Using FBML extends far beyond the simple connection with HTML. Facebook utilizes their own Javascript and Ajax objects, both of which are very simple to use, but those will be covered in later posts. Simply put, FBML is much friendlier to new users than iframe will be.

Now, there are a few things you can’t do in FBML that you can with HTML… well, a lot of things. This page in the Facebook Developer Wiki covers all the different tags you can and can’t use here and there. Another thing, if you need a tag that isn’t listed as available there don’t use FBML.

New programmers aren’t going to use a lot of complex HTML tags so FBML doesn’t hurt them there, plus you don’t have to deal with sessions in FBML (Facebook handles it for you). That’s half of why I recommend FBML to new developers. It can hurt experienced developers though, as it may remove some functionality from your applications. It’s also a little odd to go from something you’ve known for quite a while and switch gears to something different. A minor inconvenience in FBML is that you must specify the full web address to items with the ‘src’ attribute (though its good practice to do that in any language).

So what gives an edge, or any for that matter, over good ol’ HTML? It’s simplicity. There are a TON of FBML tags you can add into your application, many of which are not supported outside of an FBML canvas application. Many of these tags add a lot of functionality to your applications. Take a look for yourself.

The other half of why I recommend FBML to new developers? Facebook has essentially “dumbed down” Ajax for one. They’ve simplified Javascript, but the Ajax Facebook utilizes is one of the simplest and easiest tools to learn and use. I find this a great way to introduce Ajax to new developers. At a later date when those developers move on to websites outside of Facebook, they already understand a little bit about how Ajax works and it’s that much easier to learn. All in all, I tend to think of FBML as a “gateway language”.

So let’s recap:

Who should use FBML?

• Developers new to programming.
• Developers who only plan to use their application on Facebook.
• Developers with simple applications.

Who should use iframe?

• Developers who already have an external website up containing the application content.
• Experienced developers.
• Developers who plan to expand to other social networking sites with their application.
• Developers with complex applications.

Website Necessity and Advertisement

Today almost every business has a website to represent them on the web. It's one of the most useful tools for any business that wants to expand their services and products beyond their doors. It's a wonderful way for people to discover what you have to offer as well as you can also offer services that can be done directly online. Communication is much easier and you increase the chances of being reviewed, seen, and also the chances of increasing your customer base. A website is the first step to advancing your advertisement campaign. You will first need a good web designer that can do both an attractive and user friendly web design for your website as well as do the proper research so it has good search engine optimization. Once you have the website set up, you will need to let people know about it so you start getting traffic through it.

Knowing the kind of audience you want to attract to your website is vital when it comes to web design. This you will need to discuss with your web designer in order to get the best results. You will need to make a simple enough design that anyone can navigate through, yet it should also be very attractive to keep them interested and wanting for more. Another very important part of a websites web design is the search engine optimization.

This is the way a website is built to attract search engine spiders as well as searchers. You want it to have plenty of content that is related to your company's services and products, as well as lots of relevant links coming into your website as well as going out. Having proper search engine optimization will make your web site a success and your web design will keep the searchers which it brings in.

Once you have created the website and are satisfied with the web design and see results from the search engine optimization, it's time to let everyone know. A website is just a random page on the web unless people know about it and have an interest in visiting it. This is when email marketing comes in. First out together all of the emails you have collected over the lifetime of your business. These can be current customers, associates, or anyone that has taken interest in your company. Then collect all the email of friends and family, look through your social media pages and see anyone that may be interested in what your company has to offer. Once you have gathered this information you can start with email marketing. Send out an email notifying every one of your new website and any other news about your company.

Today a business really can't survive if it doesn't have a website to back it up. Many people rely on finding companies they want to work with via the internet, so it's logical they will most likely work with someone else because they will not have access to you. Also, it's the perfect way to advertise and increase traffic to your company without them even stepping over the threshold. Email marketing helps bring already people interested in your company to your website and possibly in the future increase traffic and customer base by creating a mailing list with potential customers.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Planning SEO into your Content Creation System

Many web developers think of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a step to be done only after a website is completed. Nothing could be further from the truth. While there are many viable SEO methods that can be applied to any completed site the most effective SEO practices are those included in the structure of the site itself.

Among the most obvious factors to consider when planning the SEO of a site under construction are the tags. Specifically each page should have title tag, Meta description tag and image alt tags all created with your keywords in mind. This is not a suggestion to spam these fields with keywords and keyword variations; rather you should develop a plan with your content creation team on how to tag all your pages creatively, accurately and with the appropriate keywords. It's important to keep in mind the idea that every page should vary slightly in its tags as Google tends too look unfavorably on multiple pages with duplicate Meta and title tags, but more importantly this is the first step in establishing a strong deep-linking strategy. By making sure each page is tagged properly and accurately you can take advantage of your secondary and tertiary keywords and keyword combinations as well as exploiting long-tail niche marketing.

When it comes to the actual content creation there are a number of highly effective strategies which are frequently over-looked by web-developers. Among the most neglected SEO strategies is the proper use of Headings. Google looks to text tagged H1 as being representative of the content found on a particular page. Therefore it is extremely important to include at least one heading (labeled H1) which contains your primary keywords. To fully exploit this opportunity you can go on to include text tagged H2 - H5 for secondary and tertiary keywords or niche keyword combination. Proper use of the heading strategy not only allows search engines to correctly index your site and give you credit for your deep links but it also helps increase unique instances of your keywords which benefits your overall site page rank.

Images are another, often ignored source of SEO benefit. Starting first with the naming of your image files themselves, be sure to use complete descriptive phrases in your file names (I.E. red_keyword_example.jpg) instead of the space-saving shorthand many graphic designers favor. Once the images are embedded in the page (or while you are doing the embedding) make sure to use the same descriptive, SEO-minded keyword approach by labeling images with Alt tags. It's important to be accurate and not just throw in inappropriate keywords either in the Alt tag or the filename. Remember, although you may feel like you are trying to put one over on the search engine your ultimate goal is to benefit yourself by helping visitors find you via true, valuable information.

The textual content of your page is an area ripe for enrichment with SEO content. Many companies now employ copywriters versed in SEO writing for the intent purpose of making certain their text contains just the right keyword density. While no SEO agency claims to know the exact formula of Google's keyword density algorithm most SEO experts agree there is such a thing as going too far. A good rule of thumb is readability. If your text appears 'stuffed' with keywords it will be obvious to a casual reader. A good SEO copywriter will know how to keep this stuffing under control but not neglecting opportunities to introduce the right words and phrases. Some experts go as far as suggesting a low, but safe keyword density count of somewhere between 4% and 6%. The logic being a low-ball density ranking is still better than being blocked (or punitively reduced in rank) for appearing over-optimized.

Internal links can be a very effective method of increasing overall keyword density. By changing link text from innocuous phrases like 'click here' to a more appealing call to action such as 'more keyword here' you not only influence the ranking of the page you are creating but also the page you are linking to. However you should be careful to avoid the overuse of links in the body text itself as it appears clunky and too much of it can cause negative ranking from the Google spider.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com

Major Web Design Challenges of the Future

With a title like this, one might think that there is a consensus among computer, networking and communications professionals as to what these three challenges are. This is not the case, of course. There are many, many challenges for Web designers (past, present and future) and those who stay abreast of high-tech industries could make many lengthy lists. However, there really are just a handful of truly troubling prospects, and this article will introduce you to what truly are three major Web design challenges of the future. There are others, but no one would discount the importance of the three discussed here.

1. Standards: Apple and Adobe are at war, figuratively speaking, over the fact that Apple will not make its iPhone Flash compatible. Not only that, the new Apple developer kit agreement forbids application makers from using non-Apple tools to make iPhone apps. This is a direct slap in the face to Adobe, whose new Creative Studio 5 includes tools for making Flash-based and other apps for Apple's mega-best-selling phone. The larger issue that it points up is that of standards. We are supposed to see video, animation and Flash-like functionality from the upcoming HTML 5. (Upcoming? Our interest is up, but when is it coming?)

If this sort of behavior metastasizes throughout the associated industries, the fluid and predictable nature of Web use may change. It would be hard, especially for small firms, to create various versions of its applications for different devices. Perhaps a few years ago, people would have wondered what the Web, and Web designers, had to do with phones. Today, however, a growing fraction of Web surfing is being done from a wide range of mobile devices. Standards create a predictable, stable environment, and the sooner the next multimedia-centric set is adopted widely, the better.

2. Color calibration: With the number of different devices displaying Web pages, whether the standard pages or alternatives made for some phone displays, there is no simple way to ensure color consistency. At the dawn of the Web (so long ago for some, just yesterday for others) it was common for some publishers to produce two layouts, one in the CMYK four-color space for printing, the other in the computer-monitor RGB color space. (CMYK refers to the four colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black that is used in process color printing. RGB means Red, Green and Blue, the colors that monitors and other displays use.) However, it is not only the color space that affects the way color is perceived, the kind of display matters, too.

Today there are all kinds of different displays (LCD, LED, OLED, TFT, etc.) of all different sizes, some glossy and some matte, and the variation in color display is dramatic. Web designers used to spend tremendous amounts of time producing variations of sites for different displays (computer monitors, mobile phones, TVs, even in-dash car units). Some still do. Others are attempting to find the best single color scheme for their sites, one that will display at least acceptably precise colors on a multiplicity of displays. There is no easy answer to this one, as there are so many variables. Until a new, cross-platform and device-independent color calibration standard is in place, there is nothing else to do but the best possible job with the current tools, techniques and technologies.

3. Displays: In addition to having an impact on the colors used by Web designers, different displays present a problem of what is called screen real estate. If you do not prepare and deploy different sites for different platforms, you will have a site that displays properly in only one place, more than likely the computer monitor. However, mobile Web surfing from small-screen netbooks, handhelds, iPads and smart phones is growing fast, and may one day (soon) move from a strong second to first place in page views.

There is great progress being made in interposing some software routines between the site and the receiver's display, so that the correct size parameters and design alternatives will be presented depending on the size of that display. That part of the problem is being solved, perhaps, but there are other display technologies coming that will present other hurdles. Displays that are 3D, flexible and/or capable of being rolled up in a tube will have properties (and present problems) we do not even know about yet. A major issue with portable displays of every kind, of course, is how they look in sunlight, shade, changing conditions and at different viewing angles. There is an amazing amount of money going into display R&D today, you had better believe it.

Sure, there are other challenges for Web designers, but these three (standards, color calibration and displays) can confidently lay claim to being toward the top of any tech-savvy observer's list.

Courtesy: http://www.goarticles.com

Lead Generation - Top 5 Strategies

Lead generation is an essential part of succeeding in sales, especially on the Web. With so much competition out there, it important to develop a strategy for finding the highest quality leads. How can businesses generate leads online? There are a number of techniques you can use to collect the names, email addresses, and other contact information of potential clients who are interested in learning more about what your business has to offer.


Successful lead generation involves finding prospects that have a genuine need and who actively seeking a way to fill that need. By gathering information on these leads, your sales team can then contact these individuals with further information on your offers, products and services. The following are just a few of the top lead generation strategies that might work well for your business.

Offer Free Online Newsletters

One of the fastest and easiest ways to generate a large number of new leads is to provide a free newsletter on topics that your target customers are interested in. Your newsletter should be information-packed, timely, and full of links to further resources. Before you begin, decide what purpose you want your newsletter to serve. Are you trying to direct users toward content on your website, or are you trying to sell a product directly to your subscribers? By developing a content plan, you can tailor your newsletter to the needs of your business and your audience.

Provide Free Information Seminar

"Webinars," or Web seminars, are a fairly recent online trend popular with both businesses and online users. These free online seminars are a great way to connect with people who are interested in your products, generate contact information, and provide a useful service that will keep customers coming back for more. Choose a topic that you are an expert and in which your audience has a strong interest. Develop your seminar and allow users to sign up and access this valuable information.

Create Expert White Papers

White papers provide a detailed analysis of a topic and often advocate a particular solution. If you specialize in business-to-business sales, offering free white papers on different topics in your industry is an excellent way to advertise your services, generate new leads, and attract new customers. After you have created a white paper, advertise it on various industry sites, forums and other important venues. Include a sign-up link on your site so that interested readers can provide their contact details in order to download the white paper.

Include a Lead Generation Form on Your Website

Your business website is one of the most important lead generation tools at your disposal. Once a reader has visited your site, it is important to make it easy for them to learn more about your business or service. Including a simple lead generation form in a prominent location on your site is one of the most effective ways to generate a number of top quality leads.


Generate Leads with an Affiliate Program

While affiliate programs are often thought of as a way to sell products, these programs are also an excellent way to generate new sales leads. Once you have an affiliate program in place, other marketers can earn a commission or flat rate for referring new leads to your site. While there is some expense associated with starting an affiliate program, it is a great way to dramatically increase the reach of your business and attract a lot of new potential customers.

Courtesy: www.joebucks.com

Marketing Benefits of Using Lead Generation

What is Lead Generation?

Imagine walking into your office on Monday morning and finding ten hot leads flowing into your inbox. What a way to start business on a Monday, huh? Lead Generation is not a new form of gaining new business, but it now has a new approach. Rather than sitting at a trade show table for hours on end, or sitting up a display in hopes that targeted consumers will complete a form, you can have leads generated and sent to you using the technology of the Internet.

How Does Lead Generation Work?

There are agencies that specialize in providing qualified leads to businesses. The process of lead generation is actually very easy. An agency develops a website or partnerships with several websites in which they promote and advertise your product or service. A consumer finds these directories or informational sites and they are able to complete an online quote request form. This form is submitted to the agency. The buyer’s information is verified and matched to the appropriate providers. These matched leads are then sent via email to the prospective providers with full contact information and purchasing requirements.

What Business Industries use Lead Generation?

Lead generation could work for just about any business, but most industries using this type of marketing include insurance agencies, education institutions, office suppliers, and furniture stores. Trends show that lead generation will become even more popular in the future, especially for service oriented businesses.

Why Use Lead Generation?

 

Lead generation is a win-win for both the buyer and seller. A buyer is able to request information from several businesses that offer the product or service that they are looking for and the seller is given the opportunity to pitch their product or service to someone who has given them permission. Conversion rates on leads that you receive often have a higher conversion success rate than cold contacts because the prospect is pre-qualified, before you ever receive the lead.

 

 Lead generation has become popular with businesses because it enables a business to:

• Determine pricing on a per lead basis
• Choose the product or service they wish to offer to prospects
• Select the geographical area that the business is interested in
• Control the number of leads a business wishes to receive per month (this assists with budgeting)
• Pay only for the leads that are received

 

How Much Does it Cost?

Lead generation can be extremely cost effective. Leads range anywhere from $5 to $25. Price often depends on the measure of difficulty in getting the lead. The easier the lead is to get the lower the price seems to be.

 

Agencies that offer lead generation will often charge you a setup or maintenance fee. This can range in-between $50 to $200 per year.

Is Lead Generation for You?

If your calendar is empty and you need business fast lead generation is a way that you can grow your business rather quickly. It's an easy way to increase your ROI and get more business on your books. Approach it just like you would any other advertising endeavor, set aside a reasonable budget to test it and see if it works for your business. The key to being successful in lead generation is to brush up on your sales and marketing skills so that the leads you receive convert at a high sales rate. Do not try to approach this method of marketing without the ability to follow through and close the sale.

Courtesy: http://www.about.com/

 

Why Lead Generation Matters

Lead generation is incredibly important to the success of almost any kind of business. If you need clients, you need to generate leads to find those clients. Don't assume that your business will draw new customers automatically or you could end up paying for those assumptions. Here are a few quick things to keep in mind during lead generation to optimize the results you get.

The Importance of Lead Generation

Many businesses wonder if the money they pour into lead generation is as important as they're constantly being told. Think of it this way - if you want to make money you have to spend money and if you want to generate business, you need to build your business. You need to build a good impression of your business by diversifying your client base and building a wide array of possible network connections.

If someone uses your services or buys your products and likes them, they're much more likely to tell their friends and cause your sales to grow. However, if you don't generate new leads, your customer base will stagnate and never grow.

The Value of Online Lead Generation

While lead generation before the digital age was a much harder prospect, finding the right people today is both easier and a bit overwhelming. Almost everyone in existence is on the Internet in one form or another and it is your job through lead generation to track down those people that are best suited to offer a sales pitch to. This means you need to have a website and you need to be able to leverage that website into new leads. This can mean a blog, an opt-in list for a newsletter or free updates, or anything through which you can gather information (legally) about the people interested in your company.
Once you know how vital your lead generation is and how important the Internet is in maintaining your efforts, you may want to start building a lead generation plan. Such a plan would be vital in creating the necessary process that draws prospects to you and then converts them into viable leads. It’s very vital for an organization to effectively manage the generated leads.

Many companies choose to go with a lead generation service or software to help in meeting the lead requirements. It can be hard to know what a good lead is and what a bad lead is, especially when you get onto the Internet and everyone seems like a good lead.

It is very important for an organization to understand the need for lead generation. Lead generation helps to grow and improve customer base of a business. It helps in stretching to new geographical outlays via the Internet, creating word of mouth through diverse customers and ensuring new sales through solid lead management, your business is all guaranteed to grow.

Courtesy: http://www.articlesbase.com/

Three Tools for Successful Lead Generation

Successful lead generation is one of those things that will lead almost any business to massive success when implemented properly. However, it can often be hard to ensure that you have all the tools and resources you need in house to do your own lead generation. So, many people turn to outside tools that will help make lead generation a bit easier. But, which tools and resources are going to provide the most benefit for your time and money? Here are three quick examples of what you can do to get started:

Branding Tools

Anything that helps you brand your company more successfully is going to be a major tool in lead generation. After all, if a lead is contacted and hears that a company named ABC Enterprises wants to discuss their product with them, their first question is "Who is ABC enterprises?" and their second question is "Why should I care?" They receive dozens of these calls a week and they have no desire to be bothered. By building a recognizable and respected brand, you can enjoy a much better reception during lead generation.

Building Effective Lists

Lead generation cannot be random, nor can it be done without the full support of a dedicated team. For this reason, many companies choose to outsource lead generation to a third party that knows what kinds of leads are best and which ones will convert better. They can develop scripts, use professionals for first contact and ensure that your list of prospective leads is as accurate and likely to convert as possible.

Providing Value

The last tool and probably the least tangible of any tool or resource you can use for lead generation is to build value into your generation techniques. This means that if you are doing cold calls from your office to generate leads, what benefits do potential leads get in answering and talking on the phone? This might come in the form of extra information about your product, an expert to discuss their problems with or some incentive to draw them into your company. Whatever you choose to use as your bait, lead generation is always much more effective when there is a catch to draw someone in with.

Lead generation is a tough process, especially for anyone that has not spent a great deal of time and money setting up a department and training employees in the processes required to effectively create and build leads. For this reason, you need to be sure that what tools you are using are the best possible ones around.

There are many options in this regard. While the tips above are going to get you further in your lead generation processes, the truly best way to go about it is to ensure that whoever is generating leads knows what they are doing. This might be an outside firm with a great deal of experience in handling lead generation or an internal hire that is trained and dedicated to the process. In either case, it is vital that whoever is doing the work knows their job well and is capable of dynamically generating leads at all times.

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How Taguchi Testing Can Improve Traffic to Your Website

Taguchi testing, also called multivariate testing is a way to test multiple variables at the same time. Testing is sometimes not a clear cut issue. There may be many different variables involved in making a decision.


In regular testing, one variable may be used to test or several different tests can run using one variable each. But with Taguchi testing, several variables can be tested all at once, saving a tremendous amount of time and providing much more accurate results.

So what does this have to do with online marketing?

Taguchi testing wasn't developed for online purposes. It was started to test factory production methods such as in car manufacturing, to improve the way factories run their expensive tests. But what began on the factory floor has now been proven to be useful even in cyberspace.


Taguchi testing has been found to be compatible with PPC ads, web copy, landing pages, and other forms of online advertising. To use the Taguchi testing method, choose an area to be tested. If you have a sales or landing page that you are interested in testing, decide on the variables that might affect that page. This can be the font style, size, color, layout and graphics, anything that you are thinking about changing. Alternatives then have to be created for each item that needs to be changed such as font, style, graphics etc. The next step is to set up several permutations and combinations of the variables. This multivariate testing is conducted using specialized software.

Are these tests actually worth it?

Think about the alterations you do to your websites in terms of regular font adjustments, modifying paragraph, updating data, adding a new graphic etc. Imagine if you could do it all at once and be able to preview all of the different variations that your changes might create before committing to them.

Some of the variables might not have been things you thought to test in the first place. Even page elements that you thought were fine might end up looking a lot better in combination with the altered variables. But putting them all together, the time savings alone is worth exploring this type of testing. You may find new combinations that bring in more buyers to your improved page.

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Offshore Software Testing

Software testing methodologies ensures the efficient functioning of a software system. It is regarded as the most crucial phase in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Testing not reveals bugs and eliminates them but is also a tool for verification, validation and certification.

Offshore software testing teams conduct a complete check on the softwares to detect unfinished gaps. They identify potential problems in a cost-effective manner. A successful test always unfolds a problem that needs resolving.

Software products cannot be released in the market without proper quality checks. But organizations do not always have a resource team in-house to conduct a thorough professional test on the software.This is where an offshore software testing company usually comes into play.

Offshore software testing involves a lot of different techniques to ensure a bug free output. Initially the individual modules are tested separately which is followed by testing of the software as a whole.

Testing is primarily done in two different phases.

Phases of offshore software testing:

Alpha Testing: Conducted from the programmer's side, alpha testing usually involves the entire team participation. They go through the complete software, examining in different ways, looking out for flaws and problems. The designers and programmers then provide adequate solutions. Everyone in the team is open to new and better ideas to improve the software.

Beta Testing: This is conducted by the client using the software or visiting your site for the first time. It is like proof reading the software. The communication flow between the tester and the designer should be smooth so that all problems are detected and understood to obtain a solution.

The offshore software testing company has to perform the testing process meticulously. Attention has to be paid to the minutest of details to ensure a smooth flow in the software. A small flaw or bug may leave a negative impression of the product in the mind of the client. While testing the software, the designer or the tester should pay attention to the usability and the utility factor making the product bug free and up to the mark of the client.

The value and importance of flawless software cannot be overlooked. Businesses are always under continuous pressure to deliver high-quality software products. Companies therefore insist on conducting both alpha and beta offshore software testing to ensure that their softwares are bug-free and can be used by their clients with ease.

There are individuals and companies with expert teams who specialize in the art of software testing, equipped with the most up-to-date tools and perspectives to accomplish the testing mission.

Therefore the best option is to decide on an experienced offshore testing company to save time, resources and money while guaranteeing flawless software testing.

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Search Engine Optimization Processes

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process is a multifaceted one. That’s the truism that we sometimes tend to overlook. In other words, we might have a single, unilateral opinion on what needs to be done to make a SEO program effective. Doing the same thing time and time again may lead to some results. However, problems will arise because you will be limited to outcomes based on the same approach.

So, what are the methods people employ to boost their SEO potential? There are a variety of methods you can employ.

Here are some of the common ones:

Link building: Without doubt, this is the fundamental strategy that needs to be employed when looking to get the most out of your SEO ventures. Effective link building will lead to effective search engine ranking. Never lose sight of this fact.

Article marketing: This is a SEO tactic that entails quite a bit of work and a little extra effort. However, in terms of the impact it can have on SEO success and traffic generation, it is an excellent venture worth exploring. Article marketing requires you to write articles based on subjects similar to the content of your website. These articles are then published on various directories where they aid in boosting the search engine rankings of your site. They will also provide the basis for a great deal of organic traffic from the readers.

Promotional Blogging: Blogging is very similar to the aforementioned article marketing with the difference being that you will promote your own blog as the primary promotional vehicle as opposed to submitting material to an article directory. Is this one better than the other? This really is not the question you should be asking. Rather, you would be better served employing both methods to get positive results.

On a side note, working with a helpful article spinning software program might help the process. An article spinner would basically create unique variants of a particular article. You would then be able to post scores of articles on different blogs and article directories. The end result of which would create a significant impact on your SEO goals.

Social Media Marketing: While most people look towards developing a promotional social networking site as a means of traffic generation, it can also be an excellent source for the SEO process. Adding links to a profile, using the profile's blogging platform and raising general awareness towards your primary website can all be done through social media networks. These methods will aid in boosting your SEO potential immensely.
 
In all honesty, the key to a successful SEO process is to always employ different methods to deliver exceptional results. This will ultimately help your cause and deliver the desired outcome or atleast get you as close to it as possible.

Courtesy: www.goarticles.com