So you’ve created a YouTube channel, yet you have no views on your videos? There are several easy things you can do right now to increase your channel traffic. First things first, add a YouTube icon on your website to link viewers from your website to your YouTube channel and influence more traffic. YouTube remains the leading source for video file-sharing and can be a powerful business-to-business networking tool. An added benefit of hosting videos on YouTube is that every channel is free and offers unlimited bandwidth, which saves you money by not using extra memory and bandwidth on your paid hosting site.

If you want your YouTube channel and videos to stand apart from your competitors’, start using Annotations – a unique way to add text, links to other videos, playlists and channels right into your video. This is a good way to engage your audience and create a call-to-action, feedback requests and clickable links. Adding annotations to your videos also gives viewers something to do once the video is finished. You can direct viewers to another video, your channel, or just ask them to subscribe to your channel.

Having a custom YouTube channel is another way to make a great first impression. How better to show off your logo and products than with a custom background and themes and colors that better match your brand? To see examples of custom YouTube channels designed by X-Factor Web Marketing, visit www.youtube.com/southernglove and www.youtube.com/muratamachinery.

When creating your YouTube channel, use specific keywords on your video’s title and description to maximize the opportunity for them to be easily found in search-engine searches. Keywords can and should include anything within your niche.

Just like Google, YouTube has analytics that can give you valuable information about your visitors. By simply checking your insight data once a week, you can determine how your videos are performing, how people are finding your content, and who is watching. Explore ways to increase your channel-discovery and viewership by adjusting your keywords, video titles and descriptions every month.

Add your URL to your profile and videos. By doing so, you allow viewers to learn more about your company by giving them a quick link back to the website.

Review your comments. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on your comments, delete any spam and always follow up on questions being asked or positive reviews.

Just a few hours a week can make a huge difference in your online marketing efforts and keep visitors coming back.

By Mary Lou Yelton

With mobile Internet leading the future of the Web, most businesses are trying to grasp a new marketing direction. In March 2011, a full 80 percent of smart phone users accessed the Internet via their phones.

A mobile website is the ideal way to showcase your business to customers who are accessing your information via their phones. If creating a second website just for mobile users is not in your budget at the moment, consider starting out with a mobile landing page.

A mobile landing page takes your most important information – such as contact info, business hours and directions to your location – and puts it all on one page easily accessible to your viewers. Designed for smaller mobile screens, the page is easy to navigate with one finger, and it allows features such as click-to-call and map applications. For users who require more information, mobile landing pages also provide a direct link to your main website.

Major search engines index mobile websites providing the opportunity to use additional keyphrases. Competition for search in mobile websites is reduced due to the fact that there are fewer mobile websites than traditional ones.

Don’t wait to get on the mobile Internet bandwagon. A mobile website or landing page is a great, cost-effective way to start attracting more of those customers who want to contact you while they’re on the go!

Your website is the core of your marketing program.  It is working for you 24/7.  Is it working as effectively as it can be? Do you know who your online competitors are?  Is your competition outranking your website on major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing?

An online competitive analysis is essential for businesses today. Just as you would evaluate your competitors if you had a storefront, you must now review other websites that sell the same product or service as you do. Your online competitors are not the same as your traditional storefront competitors. Your online competitors are the companies whose websites are ranking higher than yours on search engines for keywords related to your industry.

An online competitive analysis aims to provide you with detailed information on how your competitors are using the Internet to promote their products and services, which strategiesthey are employing and which tactics they are using to attract web traffic.  For example, which keywords are your competitors targeting? Is their website optimized for search engines?  Do they have more external links pointing to their website than you do?  Do they have a social media presence?  When you know what your online competitors’ strengths and weaknesses are, you will be better able to structure your marketing program to get more leads and sales directly from your website and outrank your competition.

Many companies operate without understanding the value of their website to their overall marketing performance. Some feel that if they have a website, their job is done. The most beneficial websites to prospects are those that change frequently, have beneficial case studies and demonstrate how a company’s products and services add  value to a prospect.

Once the web presence is tightened up, one can’t expect to operate under the “Field of Dreams” scenario, “if we build it, they will come”. Promotion of the site in major search engines is essential to attracting the most desirable prospects. Proper web promotion really begins with keyword/key phrase selection. I would venture to say only 10% of all corporate websites are optimized correctly. The majority of websites we review either have no optimization or keywords included  only on the home page. Even then, the keywords are generic, obvious and not likely to rank well due to tremendous competition on the web.

To inspect your own website, open your website in an internet browser and under “View” open “Source” or “Page Source”. Near the top you will see “Title”, “Description” and “Keywords”. “Title’ and “Description”  become the two items that appear in a Google Search as the underlined  title and the short description that hopefully entices the browser to  select your listing out of a list of competitive options. These tags should be written with keywords, and should entice someone to click on your site for more information. Every page of your website is an opportunity for search optimization, open subsequent pages and “View  Source” to see if you even are optimized beyond the home page.  Another classic problem is the use of the same keywords on every page. This is a web designer’s lame attempt at optimization and not very effective.

You can test this “lame optimization” theory by using your own keywords to “Google yourself”. If your company doesn’t turn up in the first two or three  pages of the search for your main product or service, you can be assured that your website  needs attention and quick!

Did your web developer add Google Analytics to your website? Great!  That’s the first step in measuring your website’s success.  Now, do you know how to actually read all of those great reports?

It can be a bit overwhelming. Here are a few things to look for when reviewing the data:

Dashboard View:

• This snapshot report gives you a general overview of all report summaries.  Each summary can be opened to view a more detailed analysis.

Site Usage

• Visits – Indicates how many total visits there were to your website in the time period indicated
• Page Views – Indicates how many different pages of your website were viewed
• Pages Per Visit – the average number of pages viewed per visit
• Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. We use this to measure visit quality. A high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

Visitors Overview

• Indicates how many individual visitors viewed your website, and how they found your site (which browsers, mobile devices, etc.).

Map Overlay

• This report shows where your visitors are located geographically.  You can break this report down into specific states to see where most of your traffic is located.

Traffic Sources Overview

• This report will show you where your traffic is coming from (i.e. search engines such as Google or Yahoo, referring sites that are linked back to your site, or direct traffic – users typing in your  website directly).  You can open this report to see which specific sites or search engines are referring the most traffic to your website.  It will also show you which keywords users are typing into search engines that are leading them to your site.

Content Overview

• This report will give you an analysis of which pages on your sites are getting viewed the most, and which are not being viewed very often.  It will also indicate how visitors navigate through your website, which pages are landed on most often, and which pages are exited most often.

Need more help? X-Factor can study your Google Analytics reports on a monthly basis, provide pro-active suggestions, and will make changes as necessary to improve your website position and performance based on these results.

The Internet has revolutionized the marketing world.  In fact, online marketing initiatives are arguably more powerful and affordable than traditional advertising strategies because of the wider reach the Internet offers.  Not everyone watches the same television or reads certain publications, so marketing towards traditional media forms exclusively can cost companies thousands (if not more) in potential lost revenues.

One of the most popular online marketing strategies is utilizing online distribution for articles and press releases.  Just a few of the benefits of online article and press release distribution include:

1.  Spending much less than on traditional radio, television or print advertising.  Internet marketing, while still competitive, is much more affordable than traditional media advertising (probably in large part because print and broadcast media have been steadily losing advertisers for the past several years, and they have to make up for that by charging more for the space and time they do sell).

2.  Reaching an immediate audience. The Internet is immediate so the second you release an item for publication, it’s already attracting your target audience.  Even better is that your audience could be in the millions, simply because you’re not just targeting a small group in a specific demographic, but anyone in the world who is interested in your product/services/area of expertise.  Potential buyers seek you out through a “pull” strategy as opposed to the traditional “pushing” of a message.

3.  Establishing your name as an industry expert. The Internet has given anyone the power to be an instant author AND gain credibility as an expert, and publication is often as quick as pressing a submit button.  If you can reach reputable sites or establish a respected blog, you can instantly boost your industry credentials.

By Woody Stoudemire

What is marketing? Marketing is everything that leads up to the sale of a product. Many people confuse advertising or public relations with marketing when in fact, they fall under the marketing umbrella.

“Push,” or traditional marketing, is what we think of as interruptive advertising: TV ads, radio spots, billboards, direct mail, email, etc. They “push” the message at you to attract your attention, compel you to engage emotionally with the message and, ultimately, result in purchasing intent.

This pushing technique worked very well when television was new and there were only three major networks to view. Procter & Gamble, Mattel and other companies enjoyed great success by employing traditional “push” advertising. Today, a variety of media daily inundate us with about 3,000 advertising messages. To succeed with a “push” campaign, you need a product or service with a narrow niche, and you need a lot of money to make your message heard.

“Pull” marketing involves attracting the market to a website, engaging visitors with content written specifically for the market, and inviting them to act on an offer. It may be a low-risk offer such as a free white paper on a topic or access to a free interest calculator. The idea behind “pull” marketing is accepting that the browser is completely in charge of the purchasing decision. The method works best if you pave a path for your ideal prospect in a process that would look like this:

Some combination of “push” and “pull” techniques usually works best. In either case, market research on consumer attitudes and buying trends can remove much of the guesswork. Whether it’s “push” or “pull” – keep on marketing!

Fifteen years ago there was only one resource to shop for services- the Yellow Pages. Ironically, many marketers are still trapped in a time capsule, spending ungodly amounts of money to have the biggest Yellow Page ad in the directory. I live in a town of 35,000 people and we are delivered at least three different phone books (which are never used!). To effectively saturate this small market, a lawyer or doctor would have to repeat these costly ads three times to ensure that they are found.

The majority of people today use Google or another major search engine to quickly find services.  For people who are new in town and are looking for a new vet, medical doctor, childcare etc., they would typically type in “Veterinarian, Charlotte, NC”.  This makes having your company listed high on a search engine result page for a geographically specific search even more important.

It’s critical for your business to be found on page one of the search results- browsers typically don’t delve much deeper into a search.  One way to accomplish this is by optimizing your website for prospects that are seeking services within a 30-mile radius of your business, also known as Local Search Engine Optimization.

Depending on site size, this can be accomplished for less than $3000. Unlike the Yellow Pages, the leads generated through Local Search are all tracked through Google Analytics.  Local search engine optimization  is typically a one-time expense and only requires occasional tweaking for key phrases that are not working as well as others. Another benefit to local search engine optimization is that you can dictate selling your most profitable products and services with the key phrases that are incorporated into your website.

Find out how our Local Internet Marketing services, including medical website marketing, can help your website gain more traffic, and your business gain more customers!

Marketers in 2009 experienced a brutal year. Trade show attendance is down due to limited corporate travel; some trade publications simply closed up shop because of decreased ad revenues. Sales were harder to come by and often, optimal margins were not realized due to desperation in competing companies driving bids down.

There is a shift in the landscape of marketing, however, that has been gradually happening since websites came into vogue in 1995. Traditional or “off line” marketing in venues like trade shows or print advertising is being supplemented by “on line” promotion. Savvy marketers are using their website as a sales tool. To do so, they are providing their clients all the information they need to make a purchasing decision, including pricing, product specs and corporate methodology. For lead generation, password protected, downloadable, free information is given away to capture opt in email addresses. This tactic forms an unspoken bond of trust between the prospect and the company.

For the cost of one print ad design and insertion, a corporate website could be optimized for search engines. Optimization of a website will not fully replace all of the marketing tactics at your disposal, but it will provide the best measurable return for the money.  It will help browsers to easily stumble across your website when doing a search related to your services. Your primary focus should be on the website content. Does it effectively sell your products and services? Is it easy to navigate? Does it compel anyone to act? Will it allow you to capture prospect names? Would someone be compelled to call you after finding your site upon randomly searching Google, Yahoo or Bing?

Redesigning your website to be more search engine friendly?  Don’t forget these important SEO tips to help your new website attract more qualified visitors and provide a user-friendly experience:

1 – Do your research.  Find out which keywords are being searched for most in your industry.  The key is to find keywords with a high search volume, yet low competition on the web.  Check your competitor’s websites.   Are they optimized with keywords?  Do they have a blog?  Do they have a News page?  How big is their site? Be sure to stay one step ahead of the competition.

2 – Create unique, keyword-rich metatags for each page of the website.  These tags are an important factor in ranking well on search engines.  Metatags allow you to tell the search engines what each page is about.

3- Develop web pages focused on each of your main keywords.  Professional web content writing makes a substantial difference in visitor retention. Unique and relevant content on your website will help your site rank high in Google searches and can often be linked to by other sites and spread throughout the Internet via social media outlets.  Search-optimized content helps to “catch” the prospects interested in your most profitable products and services.

4- Don’t forget your sitemaps!  Xml sitemaps help ensure that search engines know about all of the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by the normal crawling process. An html sitemap is similar to a table of contents for your website.  It lists all of the pages of the website, and is meant to help users find the information they need.

5- Analytics – Now you’ve got a great looking, search optimized website, but are you measuring your results? Installing an analytics program can give valuable information, including the number of visitors, length of time on the website, geographical location of visitors, pages viewed most, keywords used to find the website, traffic sources, etc.

6- Lastly, promote your website using online public relations, social media sites, online directories, trade organization sites and traditional media.