Small business websites do not necessarily have to be expensive or explicitly large. Selling your product and or service to the client or potential client is what matters the most and therefore the web site should be directly to the point and focus on the needs and analysis of what the client expects.

There are numerous ways that a small business web site can be developed and designed and then, once completion of design and all touch ups are made, the marketing can begin. Including marketing techniques such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Optimization, Managed Google AdWords Campaigns and Banner Advertising can all help make the company more visible and desirable to potential clients.

Marketing is a very important aspect of all business whether they are large or small. Gone are the days when business cards were necessary. Today people just throw them away! Rather choose a simple and easy domain name to remember and just tell people or email it to them. You could also make small stickers, fridge magnets, pens, calendars and the like for promotion of your website and your business both online and offline. These are all affordable techniques that ensure that you can make the most of your business efforts and become more acquainted with the marketing of your business.

If you decide that you would like your business to at least have a domain name then you should talk to a web designer and or developer to have it registered for you so that you can then go ahead and start using an email address at your personalised domain name. It is very unprofessional to be using an email address for a provider like Gmail or Yahoo! for your business purposes.

A professional web designer and developer would be able to properly ensure that you get all the right information that you need to make your business presence online a successful one. If finances are low then you could negotiate a payment plan with your web developer and ensure that you get the work that you need done on your website fully up to date.

The information provided here is the opinion of me and I am delighted to say that whenever I develop a site for clients I find that they are completely satisfied because they know that they are getting their monies worth.

There are literally millions of blogs world wide on almost every topic imaginable and they all have something to say. However, it’s the ones that are deemed most USEFUL by the public that truly get the attention of search engines.

A mild indication if success can be garnered through website traffic analytics which ultimately show you the success or failure of a chosen topic. Rare niches are also a great way to ensure sustained traffic. It is also important to remember that traffic volume is not as important as traffic QUALITY especially when you have a product to sell on a website or a service to provide to the online public.

Having specific content written for your own usage within a niche brings a certain personality appeal to your overall online presence and can greatly magnify the interest that is gained by your website visitors.

Almost any that I write here will inevitably be redundant. Everything has been said. The point is to say it better than anyone else and presto! You have the highest ranking pages in any website engine.*

*Disclaimer – you need to properly market it first! – Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Article Marketing and the like will all help to bring you to the top of pages that are essential to the survival of your online presence.

You see, Google Ad Manager seems to have it all. It will track your AdSense campaigns; ensure that the best ads are severed and that you receive the highest possible revenue per ad serving. Now while all of this might be possible with OpenX one could argue the value of ad placements within the network. I have always tried to track AdSense clicks within OpenX with no luck. This could just be my lack of understanding, which once again, just makes Google Ad Manager look a lot better.

Both ad serving platforms offer third party ads which can replace your direct serving ads if y ou choose. As a result your earning potential increases and in most cases your Click Through Ratio will improve as well.

Little things like setting up a cron job for maintance on OpenX might look Google Ad Manager look better to people that do not know how to go about doing this. The support from Google and the Google community will certainly out weigh that of OpenX (personal opinion).

So what is it about OpenX that might keep people using it more that the newly launched Ad Manager from Google? Ownership. One powerful word that could be the basis of my own decision in choosing a platform. Not everyone likes the fact that Google reserves its right to terminate your account at their own discretion. Just imagine losing thousands in revenue because of a mistake or misunderstanding? Imagine how long it would take to setup your ads all over again if Google had to for any reason shut your account down? Yup, I think that I am convinced that ownership in this case is that much more important.

I personally do not even trust my GMail account. I prefer my emails being saved on a hosting account that I pay for and backup regularly.

So what would your decision be? Keep your work in the hands of a well known and respected third party who are sometimes very strict with their terms and conditions? Or rather keep your work safe with OWNERSHIP belonging to yourself and go through a few technicalities to getting it working right? Let me know, leave a comment. 

Advertise Online | Your Options

Internet Yellow Pages. Yes, it’s the online version of the tried and true yellow page directory. Simple enough to understand right? For example, check out YellowPages.com, SuperPages.com, and Yellowbook.com. Each of these offers a free listing for your business and you can also pay for a more prominent listing… again, just like the regular yellow pages.

Online Directories. These sites make it easy for Internet users to search for a local business like yours. Yahoo! Local, Local.com, and InsiderPages are local directories you should consider. There may also be directories that just focus on your type of business. For example, if you own a restaurant then you probably want to be listed in UrbanSpoon. Many directories offer free business listings… and if you’re willing to pay, your business can show up higher in search results!

City Guides. These websites are more about “what’s great” and “what to do” in your local area… and user reviews and popularity are important factors in determining which businesses get the most attention. Citysearch and Yelp are good examples. And like the Internet yellow pages and online directories, you can get a business listing and promote your business in search results.

Paid Search. Of course you can always pay Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to show up in their local search results. For example, if you’re a dentist located in Chicago, it may make sense to buy a paid search ad for the keywords “dentists, Chicago” to drive local prospects to your website. Keep in mind that setting up, testing, and managing your paid search programs can be time consuming and complicated… so you may want to turn to firms like Yodle or ReachLocal to help out.

Online Newspapers. Don’t forget your local newspaper! It attracts lots of online readers from your neighborhood. And just like the print version, you can buy ads in different sections like the news, sports, and entertainment pages of their site. But this may be a better option if you have your own website and a bit more of a marketing budget.

Local Websites. There are many other websites that cater specifically to your local market. For example, your city magazine probably has an online version. Plus there are local blogs that focus on community news, real estate, parenting, sports, and even nightlife. And some may be looking for advertisers just like you. The key is to find local websites that do a great job of reaching your target audience.

All good and helpful information right? But where do you start? Well… that depends.

What if you have no website or budget? At least get your free business listings with the Internet Yellow Pages, Online Directories, and City Guides. A business listing is like a one-page website showing your company name, address, phone number… and maybe more. That way the millions of people searching these sites can now find your business! And if you have some budget to spend then consider upgrading to a paid and more prominent listing (about $50 per month). You should also start testing some of the advertising programs these sites offer ($100 to $400 per month) to see what works best… to get the phones ringing!

What if you have a great website and $500 or more per month to spend marketing your business? Then, in addition to advertising in the Internet Yellow Pages, Online Directories, and City Guides, you should also be running local paid search ads. And if you’re looking to spend over $1,500 monthly on advertising your local website (lucky you!)… definitely consider adding your online newspaper and local websites to the mix.

Btw… right now someone in your neighborhood is searching the Internet for a business like yours. Hurry up and get started… to make it easy for them to find you!

Come visit us at www.leadtail.com

Guest Author

Carter Hostelley is a founding member of the Leadtail Community. What is Leadtail? A company founded with the mission of making online advertising easier for marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Come visit us at www.leadtail.com.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers,” a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), also includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, but SEO is a separate discipline with most sources, including the New York Times defining SEM as ‘the practice of buying paid search listings’.

The explanations above have been taken from Wikipedia and clearly show the differences between one and the other. So, Search Engine Optimization is about increasing visibility to search engines and to generate traffic from search results and to increase the positioning of a web site in search engines, whereas, Search Engine Marketing involves paid listings in Search Engines such as Google’s Adwords, to ensure that you will come across highly in search results. I believe that Search Engine Optimization is more powerful and will be much more long lasting in continuing to generate quality traffic to a web site as long as quality content is kept a constant. There is no need to use paid listings although, budget permitting, it can be rather useful.

[video filename=http://www.proniit.com/videos/1.flv /]

It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to keep the pace with technology and design – therefore many designers in particular fail. A good way to overcome this is to simply gather as much information as you can and start sifting through it until you can reach the likes of the more inspired web designers. It doesn’t heard to try new things and always remember that overwhelming amounts of information can be categorized, filed and learned in small bits and chunks until you get exactly what you are looking for.

In the near future I will be posting some tutorials on using photo galleries on your sites! Stick around, subscribe to my feed and stay updated with me.

Bear in mind that everyone requirements are different from the next person. you should ensure that your web design and development house can see your vision and goal and understands your market as much as you do, if not, better. Some people require simple web pages with just company information and contact details and in this case you can find a less reputable and/or established company and pay next to nothing to have your web presence available. However, there are companies that need online payments processed, large online stores and major graphics and or development tactics. In that case you should be prepared to pay the price or experience the negatives of amateurs.

Below are a six things to look for in a web design and development company:

1) Number of projects done. This is helpful to measure the amount of experience that a company has.

2) Will you be getting individual attention? This is important because you should a single point of contact so that you can have the necessities explain to you in language that you can understand and not technical jargon that would just confuse you more.

3) Don’t compromise on price. I cannot stress how important this is! Many people can design web sites, in fact, so can you. That said, how much do you actually know about design and implementation of a real, user friendly, dynamic website designed and implemented using PHP to allow for user interaction -  do you know how to implement analytics, on page optimization, search engine optimization – etc? Well, if you do then stop looking for a web host and start designing your site! However, what happens if you do not? Then I suggest that you leave it to the professionals as it can take literally years to learn all that there is to make your website stand out, stand up and stand proud.

4) Quality – chances are that if the companies site itself is horrible looking (like so many “web designers’ out there) then they aren’t going to magically make yours look stunning. Also try and ensure that the company isn’t using templates for your site as this will inevitable bring down the value of your site and tarnish the image of your company.

5) Latest Technology – Prod and probe the company in question to ensure that they have the latest available technology and KNOW how to make use of it. The internet and technology is growing daily and your site needs to be a level above the rest.

6) Knowledge base and resources - How much does the company know about web design and development? Well, if you ask a simple question and recieve a whole of complicated answers with various potential pitfalls and the solutions thereof then you are probably dealing with someone who knows exactly what they are talking about! You should also ensure that the company in question has many resiurces avaiable and knows how to make use of them. No one knows everything but the company you work should be able to find and offer you solutions to the project that you want done.

Web Design and Development - Dalesh Kowlesar

‘Ping’ is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer, or as a speed test. It works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies. Ping measures the round-trip time[1] and records any packet loss, and prints when finished a statistical summary of the echo response packets received, the minimum, mean, max and in some versions the standard deviation of the round trip time.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

Well, that’s according to Wikipedia. As far as I know, when using blogging software you can automatically inform social networks like Technorati of your updates using a Ping. As soon as you hit the publish button the network (site) is pinged and notified of the updates and made available for others to see.

Here is the list that I have of updated ping services:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.rssfwd.com/xmlrpc/api

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Hope you find it useful. (“,)

Bear in mind that these techniques (online advertising, Search Engine Optimization, media releases via the internet and social marketing) are not modules that can studied at university. Therefore we encourage you to ask questions, engage with your desired advertising company (even if it is us) and make the decision that you feel most comfortable with. Also, ensure that you find a solid example of a project that the company has worked on.

Web Site Specific Advertising (Banner, text and links)

Online marketing is a skilled technique that requires diligence and a lot of time to undertake. It requires that online marketer completely understands his target market and the caliber of people visiting a site before he or she decides to place advertising on any particular site. online, web site specific adverting, is much more precise and yields a greater amount of new leads, inquisitions and or subscribers to a particular service and or product.

Because of the complexity and precision of the entire process, you can be sure that your advertising will yield the desired result in a particular time frame. With the advanced analyzing statistics that web sites can and should be generating, it is possible to determine who exactly you are advertising to, how many people will respond to your ad and the entire profit that will be generated for your service and or product.

Successful advertising within the online world requires that you choose the right compnay that has various in which to help you and that they make this very clear to you in document form and pitching thier techique and methods used directly to you.

Most advertising agencies offer up your adverts on another person’s or company website. With The Proniit Group however, all your advertising is placed across the sites that we personally own and make up The Proniit Group – from insurances to cooking and everything in between. Whatever your market is, we have your niche.

More important factors:

1>You want to ensure that millions of people see your advertising. Great! We have all the traffic that you need within our network!

2> You don’t want someone from the USA seeing your ad and trying to buy from you (unless you do, then we have another great system for you!) so we geo-target your advertisements to South Africa ONLY.

(SEO) Search Engine Optimization

Lets assume that you have an online business and want more visitors (traffic) more targeted leads and more sales. With our unique return on investment strategies we will continue to grow your business and you can watch as you soar higher way out of the reach of your competitors. We will ensure that you rank for you keywords, thereby driving only interested clients to your site. We won’t stop there – we will ensure that there is continued success for your business by keeping afloat both the online advertising and the SEO strategies that we have learned.

If you do not have a web site we will help you there as well! Just contact us, view our rates and lets’ have a chat about what would be best for your business and how we can grow it for you.

The bottom line is that you want value for your money and more clients. Once we are done with an entire campaign for you, you listings will stay constant and may from time to time need a boost here and there. But you can be assured that you will reap the rewards in the end.

For valuable marketing decisions and advice to get your site ranked and advertised contact us now.

Dalesh Kowlesar
The Proniit Group
CEO / Founder