Below are some of the key avenues I am referring to. If you are able to begin using these effectively you will be on your way to improving your online presence which translates to: broadening your reach to many more potential customers online.

Search Engine Optimisation

Optimise your website for keywords relating to your business to ensure you have a strong presence in organic search results in Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Further improve your presence on search engines by targeting paid search results. Try running a Google AdWords campaign and tracking it with Google Analytics to see how it is performing.

Social Media

There’s no denying that the explosion of social media has created an entirely new online market. Increase your online presence by making yourself visible on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn. A company should be utilizing these channels as methods for presenting news, deals, and articles to a wider audience. Social media accounts are also useful for networking with other business.

Mobile Content

Activity on the web via mobile phones is undeniably an increasing trend. Since the introduction of smart phones, the potential of attracting clients has reached a new level. The mobile environment allows you to target web user’s on-the-go. To increase your online presence within the mobile environment, consider having a mobile friendly website, or better yet have mobile-version of your website created.

Fresh Website Content

A company can increase its online presence by adding fresh content to its website. Fresh content creates more opportunities for web users to link back to your website, spreading the word about your company across the internet. Consider adding new pages or a blog that you can add articles to.

Utilizing the avenues above to increase your online presence will create a network for your company that will act like a catchment area for prospective clients on the web.

Google is changing its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Commencing March 1st, Google is making changes to simplify the user experience across their products.

Those logged in to their Google accounts will notice a more streamlined experience that allows users to share and collaborate data across Google platforms with ease. Google is also providing a more tailored experience, making it quicker and easier for the user to access information they want.

While the benefits working more seamlessly and efficiently are a positive, to achieve this Google will be using information you’ve provided or interests you’ve expressed while using Google’s products such as Google+, Gmail and YouTube.

It’s important to be aware that Google will be accessing this information. It is even more important to be informed about what they are doing with this information and how it may affect you.

Read about the changes at:
http://www.google.com/policies

Is SEO Just Another Hack?

No. SEO is a valid, researchable method of advertising, organizing and distributing your site among other web content and within search rankings. Many professionals attend online schools to learn advanced SEO techniques.

When Can I Start Using an SEO Service?

You can start a strong, valid SEO campaign immediately. Contact your SEO site professionals (or get a reference from an actively online business) and talk to the pros about your goals for the future. Ask them about all of the options available, have them quote a price for you, and be sure to understand the budget requirements to receive steady, ongoing, new web content for your site.

Is SEO Really All That Effective?

Yes, it is. Businesses which employ valid SEO Professionals, such as Blink Digital, find that they can achieve a much larger customer base and that, in time, 80% of their customers can come from their online business listings.

What are the Downsides of Using SEO?

SEO is a tool. As with any tool, it can be abused. However, the only true abuse which can occur is a light form of spamming. Users and search engines identify and mark spamming characteristics, so even this form of abuse is extremely short-lived. Otherwise, there are zero downsides to using SEO.

Can I Get a Money-Back Guarantee with My SEO Service Purchase?

This is something which you must discuss with your SEO Provider. Their business may give a guarantee on search engine rankings, but the guarantee may only cover “some” improvement, without delineating how much improvement there will be. There is no way to fully guarantee ranking as number one in searches, but the amount of effort (and funding) involved will directly tie in to how far your site will climb.

Can I do SEO on My Own?

Yes, you can. However, it is not recommended for two reasons: First, you must study, research and become extremely adept at using SEO, which is a huge, time-consuming process. Secondly, in order to achieve and maintain high search engine rankings, you must provide fresh, poignant, daily content for your site. This is not only time-consuming, but it can also be frustrating if you lack the knack for writing.

What is the Difference Between Hiring an SEO Company and Doing It Myself?

The difference is: everything. SEO Professionals have received extensive training and knowledge on the ins and outs of the search engine universe, how to manipulate various factors in your success, and to reach your goals quickly and efficiently. They have spent the time and effort on learning this trade so that you do not have to. They are computer, internet and programming experts. While you may achieve a small amount of success doing it yourself, the results from hiring a professional company are astounding.

How Much Does SEO Cost?

This is also depending upon your SEO Service Provider. However, the cost per month or year with a quality SEO Provider, such as Blink Digital, is significantly cheaper than a pay-per-click advertising campaign.

Do I Have to Keep Doing SEO Forever?

In a nutshell, yes. This does NOT mean that you have to spend money which you do not have. A quality SEO campaign will increase your sales within five to seven weeks so significantly that it will more than pay for itself. You will never have to “eek out a living” by carefully balancing your SEO budget and your online income. If, after five to seven weeks, you are not beginning to make double the cost of your SEO campaign…shop for other SEO Providers. Remember that search engines cannot be coerced to rank at will, so it WILL take some time in the beginning, but you should have noticeable results within four months.

The Caterpillars Listen to Your Peers

Search engines are not sentient, and therefore do not know if a site is spam or not. A site which receives many regular visitors is probably not spam and is indexed accordingly by the search engines. If a site is repeatedly blocked, reported or ignored by visitors, then it drops in ranking until it is not visible or it is on the bottom of the list in searches.

In addition to this, if a site is not organized according to specific subjects, then it can be regarded as spam by search engines. Keep your subjects, keywords and topic-related items together. Try to avoid setting up a site devoted to Baseball, Healthy Foods and Eczema. That will confuse the search engines. If these are your three passions, consider setting up a site for each of them.  If a site never made it past the homepage in development, it probably never made to any search engine results.

Organic Searches are Healthier for Your Site

Let us say that your site on Ants has “Ants” in the title, “six-legged” in the sub-title, and other pages or blog posts which include words like “anthill,” “ant traps,” or “how to get rid of ants.” The search engines understand that these are all related topics and that your site certainly appears to be legitimate. They will index and rank your site accordingly.

However, let us say that you were sloppy when setting up your site, you know nothing of SEO techniques, and you decide to pay for a PPC ad campaign. The search engines look at your site, see “Ants” in the title, “bowling” in the subtitle, and blog posts of your daily college life on other pages. Since your site is not well-organized on a specific subject, search engines will rank it very low and the only visibility you will receive is from your pay-per-click campaign. Once your money has depleted, your visibility will drop to zero. Incorporate proper SEO into your site to keep visibility high when negotiating your ad campaigns.

Organic Searches Explained

Organic searches are searches based upon subject matter, peer reviews and interest in your site. Rather than clicking on a “Kill Ants Now” advertisement, your updated content will attract people who are looking for information on Ants, not how many beers you put away last weekend. SEO helps organize and index your site properly so that it receives plenty of visibility.

One Time SEO Boost for Your Website

Blink Digital offers a one-time, non-repeating SEO Boost for your website. First, we will integrate Google’s Webmaster Tools into your site in order to determine your ranking on search engines in comparison with other similar and similarly-searched sites. Next, we will organize your site with respect to topics of importance and which pages will be ranked where in search engine directories. We will also be performing advance keyword research, incorporating any additional keywords you would personally like to add, changing your website’s document structure and adding you to Google’s Local Business Listings. When we are finished with your site and SEO structure, link building and ranking, we will compile a before-and-after report after the new settings have been in place for four-to-six weeks.

SEO Consulting Package

Our SEO Consulting Package offers everything in our One Time SEO Boost, with additional features. We will be setting up your site on social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. We perform an extensive link building campaign with other websites, forums and blogs, which will increase your organic search ratings. If you are interested, we offer blog setup and maintenance, as well as personal consulting as to how to set up your site with more appeal for both clientele and search engines. We also deal with local search engines and specific directories to increase traffic to your site.

SEO Custom Package

We offer an SEO Custom Package which includes everything in our One Time SEO Boost, everything in our SEO Consulting Package, plus some amazing, additional custom features. We will personally handle all structural changes to your site, write custom articles and blog posts which are tailored to your sites keyword, ranking and popularity needs, and handle new content, pages and applications which need to be fed into your site to keep it balanced and healthy. We also put forth immense effort in quality link building which will keep your site live and increase ratings among customers and search engines alike.

At Blink Digital, we offer specialized tools and Professional Analysts to give you the exact package needed to kick-start your search engine rankings and, if needed, maintain website popularity as an ongoing process. With us, your site will transform from just a simple webpage to a recognizable brand name.

Google is a major search engine with many components available for improving your business, your business ratings and your visibility. When starting up and maintaining an online business, you will want to make sure that you see and understand as many of these features as possible. One of these applications is Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Search engines track all of your site activity, including who visits your site, how much search engine clout they have, where they are located, and whether or not they buy anything from your website. The underbelly of major search engines show page numbers, views per day, page ranking, validity, spamming qualities, value of content and relative interest in your site.

With Google Analytics, all of the above information is available for your perusal. Rather than guessing about what your site statistics are, you can sign up for a free account to monitor your progress and ratings.

How Can Your Leverage These Assets?

You can use Google Analytics to test any advertising and SEO campaigns you set up. A good, strong SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Company, like Blink Digital, would be ideal in increasing your site’s search engine rankings. Set up a free Google Analytics account and watch your site popularity increase with increased optimization. This is an excellent tool to use to monitor your site’s current statistics for a while before you choose a valid SEO campaign. Google Analytics will show if your SEO Company is doing their job effectively. Be sure to wait four to six weeks for your results, though.

When setting up a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign using Google Adwords or another service, you will want to know how effective your keywords are. Google Analytics shows you the keywords used to find your site through searches, how effective your paid keywords are, and if you need to alter your campaign to fit the current market trends. Graphs, charts and data are on the front page as you log in to your Analytics account, and you can even find out the locations and numbers of visitors to your site, in case you are interested in targeting local areas.

Who Can Help You and How to Find Them

When using Google Analytics, you will want to have a solid SEO Company backing you, such as Blink Digital. Blink Digital offers stellar SEO Campaign packages in a variety of sizes and budgets. You can find their site here.

You should also feel free to explore all of the different options available in Google Analytics. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to contact your SEO and PPC Campaign managers.

What Can You Start Using Right Now?

If you already have a website, feel free to sign up for a free account with Google Analytics right now. You can also sign up for an SEO or PPC Campaign to bring more visibility to your site. Ask your Campaign manager to explain keyword trends and ranking factors. Be sure to tell them you are interesting in watching your site progress in popularity and importance over time, so you would like to know what to look for in your Google Analytics data charts. They will be happy to help you.

While Google offers many different choices when it comes to internet usage, when you are a business owner or a website operator, Google Analytics can be an invaluable tool and is worth a look.

How Far Can You Zoom In to a Google Map?

Google Maps has different types of maps, from regular road map-type format to satellite imaging showing the real landscape as it is in real life. However, in certain areas such as major cities and important landmarks, you can also zoom in on the map until it reaches “street level” view. At this point, you can see the map as if you were standing on location on that particular street. You can click and drag the view all the way around for 360 degrees. If you zoom back out to overhead view, you can pick another street or focal point and zoom back in. You will be standing on the new street and can turn around and look around at your surroundings.

When you are in this viewing mode, be sure that the focal point is the address you entered. Some street level viewing is not available at the exact address which you chose, but there is visibility at an address nearby, so you might be transferred to a new location in order to reach street viewing. Check the address focal point in the map to make sure that you are in the correct location.

What Happens If My Address is Not Listed or is Listed in an Incorrect Location?

If you look up your house address or you would like to set up a local business listing at your office address, the address may not exist or the location may be altered somewhat. If this is the case, then Google Maps technicians are available to correct such problems. You can learn about reporting a problem and submit a problem to Google Maps here. Before you submit a problem or incorrect location to the Google Maps, spend some time, even a day or two, browsing around the map area with your location, determining if the map marker is really in the incorrect location. Because we are not used to seeing our areas from a bird’s eye view, we sometimes feel that a map location is incorrect, when it is accurate.

How Can I Submit Listing or Business Information to Google Maps?

Writing map information for areas currently being mapped is very different from, say, submitting your business listing to show up on local maps. Countries which are currently being mapped are found here, and if you live there, you can submit information regarding those maps here.

However, if you are only looking to input business information, business street level photographs or business reviews, then this is the place you should visit. Adding your business to local Google Maps allows traveling visitors to see where the nearest restaurants, services and products are. If your address is difficult to locate, having your business listing marked on a map will make it easy to find.

Google Maps is a wealth of information, resources and map planning guides. Map out road trips, along with written directions, multiple stops, sight-seeing and careful guidance between points A and B. This is certainly a business asset, as well as a personal one.

How is this Feature Enabled?

Google Maps is able to offer Street View because they equip vehicles, which drive on our public streets, with advanced imaging technology. According to Google Maps, some of the data comes directly from them and some of the data from partners.

Google Maps Street View vehicles started out as a van with an apparatus attached at the top. Because of the need for versatility, Street View vehicles became smaller with lighter-weight apparatuses. A Street View car was perfected and, later on, a trike, with the Street View technology carried in back, was used to document bike trails, hiking trails, campuses and places only accessible by foot or bike. This increased the versatility and areas which could be covered by Street View, making it more popular and readily available to the public.

How Can I Alter Street View?

Street View offers a feature where accidentally-documented, inappropriate images can be identified and reported. You can report those images here. Although nothing is shown on Google Maps that you would not ordinarily see by driving down a public street in the middle of the day, some images can be inappropriate because, after all, humans perform illegal acts at any time of the day.

You can also adjust the location of the map marker if your business listing is incorrectly displayed on Street View. Sign in to your Google Places account and edit your listing by following these instructions. You can also use these instructions to add photos to your business listing, which will show up when someone hovers their mouse pointer over the map marker. Your business listing will appear, followed by any photographs you have uploaded, and address and phone numbers associated with your business.

Please note that any alterations you report will be thoroughly researched by a variety of sources before they are posted to the site. This means that, if you accidentally report something that is inaccurate or slightly incorrect, Google Maps will know about it and will not let the faulty information be displayed live.

Fun Things to Do with Street View

One of the interesting things you can do with Street View is travel to famous and exotic locations, seemingly on foot, without having to wonder whether the information you are being given is correct or made up by some prankster. Check out this link to see some of the interesting places you can explore “on foot.” When the map loads, click anywhere on the picture, hold your mouse button down, and drag the pointer across the picture to swivel the image. Find out other interesting, personal or business-related things to do with Street View by clicking here.

Google Maps brought innovation to your computer, website and company with Street View technology. Do not allow this interesting modern update pass you by! Learn all about Street View systems and learn to incorporate new ways to advertise and spark up your business.

A Variety of Link Building Services

Your SEO campaign should employ a variety of link building services. If there are links to your website from only three different sites, forums or blogs, then it will not make you look very valid or popular to search engines. Your SEO campaign should employ a wide variety of link building options, putting your site into search engine indices, directories, sites and forums. The more often search engines see your site, the better they like it.

Hands-On Link Building, Not Automated Bots

When purchasing an SEO campaign from a company, you will want them to do the hard work for you, not pawn the work onto some automated bot. Hands-on treatment from a Professional SEO Analyst is worth a thousand mindless bots. Get your link building done by a sentient creature. This helps to ensure that links are not wasted in rarely used or invalid directories and to make sure that the optimum sites receive topic-specific links to your website.

Thorough Research into Optimum Link Placement

A Professional SEO Analyst understands the importance of keyword and link placement research. Narrowing the topic of your site, researching the market, categorizing correctly, and getting your brand name out there are all part of proper link building. If you are paying a company to do SEO for you, then you should not be doing any of the research on your own. That is their job and their responsibility.

Links from Valid, Reputable Sites

You do not want links being built up in dead directories, empty forums or sites with low visibility. This is all part of getting hands-on treatment, rather than the automated sort. Hands-on service from a live professional will get you links built not only on valid site directories, but also on websites with high visibility in order to increase the number of unique visitors and back-links to your site.

Noticeable Change in Rankings in Three to Five Weeks

Using correct link building, your website should see noticeable change in search engine rankings in three to five weeks. Results will not show up immediately, but they will increase over time and should be noticeable and measurable in just a few weeks. If your hired SEO company asks you to perform any tasks, do them, but you should not have to do anything except set up your plan and answer their initial questions. Your SEO service will perform all of the research and do all of the time-consuming work for you. That is why they are getting paid, right?

Although link building is only part of a complete SEO campaign, it is an important, irreplaceable part. You cannot achieve total success without link building by a live human in proper directories and target sites. Make sure your new SEO plan includes plenty of link building services.

SEO vs. PPC

PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising is an advertising campaign based upon search engine queries. You are familiar with the little box advertisements which appear above and on either side of Google and Yahoo search results. Well, every time you click on one of those links, the business has to pay Google several (or many) cents per click. Even though you may not buy anything from that business and the PPC ratings do not, in any way, increase their search engine rankings, they still must pay for their ads to receive any traffic.

You will notice when you search for a topic on a search engine that you are far more likely to click on the natural results springing from your query than you are the little ads. You are also far more likely to buy from the businesses at the top of your query. These businesses are first in Google search rankings precisely because they have employed SEO techniques which draw visitors and search engines to their doors. Wouldn’t you like your business to have that sort of reputation, rather than a desperate plea for attention from a paid advertisement?

SEO vs. Going It Alone

Some people set up their website and believe that this is all that is necessary in order to receive decent online clientele. However, unless you are a famous name brand, your business will simply not receive any online visibility unless it is through search engines. Search engines are giant indexers which sort through, not just sites, but individual pages, determining which pages are hacks and which pages are useful to the online community. Setting up your site in an organized manner makes it search engine-friendly. They are able to understand and validate the content of your material, which will make your site more searchable.

Paid SEO vs. DIY SEO

When you pay for an SEO campaign, you are trusting your content with Professional Analysts and Professional Writers. If you engage in Do-It-Yourself SEO, you must spend hundreds of hours, not only on self education to learn SEO, but also on writing your unique web content which must be updated regularly in order to keep your search engine rankings high. Allow the professionals to do all of your time-consuming work for you!

Get Curious About SEO

When we do not understand a concept or an important business practice, it can be tempting to hide our heads in the sand and not jump into new, unfamiliar territory. Rather than beginning an entire online education, simply contact SEO Professionals and ask them your questions! They have been trained in all of the techniques which give you the upper edge. Make sure they have a reputable (and provable) business portfolio, ask them about all of the techniques they will employ to help you, and get some real information fast.