Go for complete on page optimization

On Page optimization refers to making some changes on the website to improve its performance on the search engines, conversions and web user experience. These changes are made after a thorough review of the website and normally include the following:

a) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) –This covers finding the best “searched for keywords” and optimizing the website and its content for those keywords.

b) Optimizing the structural aspects – A lot of times websites have some structural issues which can act as hindrance in the proper indexing of the website. For example: website made in Frames, content in flash etc.,

c) Optimizing for accessibility and usability – Making the website easily accessible and usable for all kinds of web users. For example: Some websites are not compatible with all popular web browsers, some pages take a lot of time to load etc.,

d) Optimizing for a good user experience: This includes making the website more user friendly by optimizing and updating the content, navigation structure, design, call for actions etc., and adding additional helpful features like tour pages etc.,

The users should be able to find any information on the website with ease, have control and would want to stay on the website and return back to it again and again.

This also includes making sure that the website is communicating the right message to the target audience, is creating the desired brand image, is in tandem with the advertising campaigns etc.,

The above would make a good on page optimization campaign. The effectiveness of the on page optimization campaign has to be evaluated on a regular basis and on the basis of the results it has to be tweaked and updated.

Landing Pages – An important aspect of online marketing.

When online marketers are trying to reach out to their target audiences through their Advertising campaigns, it is imperative to include landing pages in their campaigns to provide a logical end to the advertisements and have an effective tool to measure the success of the campaigns. The page which opens when a web user clicks on a link/ advertisement/search engine result etc., is called a landing page.

This page is a continuation of the advertisement that was clicked to reach this page. The purpose of this page is to make the web visitor take a desired action which can be to purchase a product/service, fill up a form, get more information, etc.,

The landing pages can be linked to the website or can be stand alone pages which are an extension of a Advertisement done through paid search engine advertisings, e-mail marketing, banner ads etc.,

How are landing pages helpful:

a) Track the performance of the Ad campaign – landing pages normally have a mechanism to track the traffic coming from specific sources and advertisements. It also helps in tracking how this specific advertisement traffic is interacting with the page. Since Landing Pages are linked to specific ad campaigns, the traffic that they get is only from those ads.

b) Target Focused– the purpose of a landing page is normally to lead the web visitor to perform a specific action like fill up a form, purchase a product etc., There are no multiple targets on the page to confuse the web visitor. Its purpose is to focus the visitor’s attention on only one goal and lead him to do that.

c) A logical completion to your ad campaign – If your ad is focused on a hot selling product that you have an offer on, then making the web visitors reach a page where they can get more relevant information on the offer and product and can buy that product will be much better then making them reach on a general page where they have to look for the product and can be distracted by other information which is not relevant to that page.

d) Test new techniques – Since landing pages are a part of the advertisement, they play an important role in enhancing the performance of a campaign. Since they are generally stand alone pages, it is easier to experiment with them. Various test techniques like A/B Split testing can be used easily and effectively to see what works best. And when some changes are made in the advertisements, landing pages can also be changed in accordance.

e) Ease for visitors: Focused landing pages help the potential customers to take the desired action with ease and without wasting time. Web users do not have the time or inclination to find information that they are interested in and find out how to act. 

Are you working on your content syndication strategy?

Web Content Syndication, as the name suggests involves syndicating various types of content on appropriate websites. There are many ways of syndicating content and each has its own distinct advantage. Since Content Syndication has the potential to increase direct traffic, obtain good amount of high quality incoming links, improve - brand visibility, credibility and conversion rate, it should be an important part of your online marketing strategy.

Mentioned below are some Content Syndication types and their benefits:

a) Articles Syndication – This involves syndicating articles written by you or on the behalf of your company to different articles directories and websites. The articles that are syndicated are generally written on topics that interests your customers which can be related to the products/services you are selling.

b) Press Release Syndication – This involves publishing your company’s press releases to different Press Release websites. In addition to providing all the benefits that Articles Syndication has to offer, it helps in promoting your specific product, services, expertise etc., and updating your customers on your new launches, events and other such information.

c) RSS Syndication – If you update your website or Blog regularly with new content then this is a good way to keep your customers and target audience updated. Since it allows content on almost any format to be syndicated immediately, it is a fast and easy way to reach out to your customers.

A good combination of the above three syndication types along with other syndication methods such as blogs submissions etc., can boost the performance of your website. At VantageWebtech we provide content optimization and syndication services customized to enhance the performance of online businesses. 

Social Bookmarking for your website

In your endeavor to get more traffic and visibility to your website through online marketing, it is important not to overlook the potential of Social bookmarking websites.

What is a social bookmarking website?

With the ability to access internet on different platforms and devices such as Mobile Phones, PDAs, Laptops etc., the need to have web based bookmarking arose. This gave rise to Social Book marking websites such as del.icio.us, digg etc.,. which not only provide the ability to effectively store your bookmarks on the internet but also to find and network with other people who have bookmarked the same web pages.

How’s it important?This has not only helped the web users but also the website owners by helping them to get more targeted traffic, sales, natural search engine rankings and visibility on the internet. This is by far one of the best ways to attract the right kind of audience to your website by networking. A person who bookmarks your website on one of these social bookmarking websites, is actually advertising your website to the people in his network and one person can be a part of one or more than one networks. The bookmark also serves as an incoming link to your website which has user notes and tags in them. This helps in improving the rankings of the website on Search Engines.

Since different bookmarking websites in general attract different types of traffic, it is important to spend time and resources on the ones which can attract good traffic.

So use the potential of social bookmarking websites by incorporating them in your marketing plan. At VantageWebtech we provide social bookmarking recommendations as and when needed as a part of our Online Marketing plan. Contact us for a quote on social bookmarking optimization or our online marketing plan now.

Scoping a Content Management System

A Content Management System (CMS) is a back end application which allows the front end of an application or website to be managed. It can have many features and functions depending upon the requirements of the system administrators. A CMS is being commonly used in most websites these days and there are many ready made CMS like Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal which are readily available to be used.

Features of a CMS can include:

a) Edit existing pages: A simple Content Management System can have a function to easily edit the text, navigation menu names, banners, galleries, images, PDfs, videos and all other media. This type of Content Management System is good for websites which would always have fixed pages.

b) Manage page counts: For sites which would need new pages to be added as well, a Content Management System with the function to add or remove pages is needed. When a new page is added, the navigation menu and the site map should automatically get updated. Similarly when a page is deleted from the system, the link to that page should be automatically erased from the navigation and the sitemap. The design of such sites have to be flexible enough to accommodate increasing or decreasing menus.

c) Manage forms: The administrators can add/delete forms or edit the existing forms.

d) Users types: Websites and applications which have many interfaces and functions cannot be managed by one single Administrator. An Admin user management function is added to allow multiple administrators to manage the website or application. The system has one main administrator who creates sub admin users. These sub admin users can be given access to only certain areas or to the full system. They can be deleted from the system and their details (like password, e-mail id, access areas etc.,) can be easily edited.

e) Manage design: A CMS can have a function to update the design template of the front end. This again can be as simple as changing the color scheme and the background of the template or as advanced as changing the complete structure of the design.

f) Manage Search Engine Optimization: If the CMS is for a commercial website then it should have a system to update the Search Engine Optimization elements on the website such as Meta tags, URLs, image names, ah-refs etc.,

A Content Management System can be either created from scratch using custom coding or from ready to use platforms such as wordpress, joomla and Drupal.

Joomla web development

Joomla is one of the best fee open source development platforms available these days for making content management websites, e-commerce websites, corporate websites and community websites. Some of the reasons why it is a preferred choice:

a) Open Source: Joomla is a very well developed open source platform that can be freely used to create any type of applications or websites. Since Joomla is free to use, the development cost and time is greatly reduced by using it.

b) Host of features: Joomla has good number of inbuilt features which can be needed in the development of an application or a website. It also has many paid and free plugins for advanced features which can be easily added.

c) Flexible: Joomla's code is flexible and can be easily tweaked. Custom coding can be easily done on its existing code.

d) Scalable: It is very easy to add new features on a joomla website and to upgrade a joomla installation. For most of the upgrades, plugins or in built features are readily avilable to be activated,

e) Easy to use: For a non technical user, a joomla admin is very intutive, easy to learn and use.

f) Good multilingual support: Joomla has a good multilingual tool which is excellent for websites that have to be built for different languages.

g) Search Engine Optimization option: Joomla websites can be search engine optimized easily.

Anatomy of a Joomla project

Joomla is a great platform to build websites. It is easy to work with and very flexible. But building a website on Joomla can require a great deal of planning and work. Some basics are mentioned below:

a) Effective design: Joomla has its custom theme that can be used. But to make your website work you need an effective design which enhances your products and services, is user friendly, meets your industry standards and is visually appealing. In short a design that works. For this you need a tam of expert web designers and Joomla coders who can translate any custom design into a Joomla theme.

b) Features: Depending upon the nature of the online business, some additional features will be needed to be added on a website which may not be a part of joomla's default set up. There are many plugins (free and paid) that can be used for adding features. It is also easy to custom create a plugin if it is not available.

c) Search Engine Optimization: Joomla  set up does not come search engine optimized. Some modules ned to be installed and search engine optimization needs to be done.

d) Online Marketing: Like any website, once your Joomla website is launched, it needs a marketing plan which will help theit to gt exposure and customers.

e) Server requirements: Server requirements vary depending upon the nature of the website. All joomla sites need mysql support and some need SSL.

Planning your online marketing campaign

When launching a new website it is important to plan an effective online marketing campaign. A well though out plan will ensure that your business is a success. Here are some ideas:

a) Think long term: While it is important to get customers immediately but the online marketing campaign should also involve long term planning as there are many marketing initiatives which need time to get implemented and reap results. Search Engine Optimization andLink Building are two such examples of initiatives that wll reap more results in the long term than Google Adwords.

b) Explore your niche: Each business is unique in some way which makes it stand apart from all compititors. If you explore your niche you can use that to market yourself and use it as your expertise. Customers like to know what makes you stand apart from the pack.

c) Know your customers: It is good to be thorough about your products and services but only that is not enough. You need to know your customers equally well. Unless you know your customers you will not be able to reach out to them and understand them.

d) Be your own competition: Look within your own business and try to improve it. Share your achievements with your customers or prospects, come up with more innovative ideas to advertise your growth, how you are different and better.

e) Don't keep all your eggs in one basket: Have an online marketing campaign which involves different straegies such as search engine optimization, social media optimization, link building, content syndication, blogging etc., so that you get traffic from different sources.

f) Use only white hat techniques: In search engine marketing applying strategies that are acceptable to searcch engines like google and genuinely serve the web users are called white hat techniques. There are black hat techniques also which should not be used as they would lead your website to get banned on search engines.

It is a good idea to start with a comprehensive marketing reseach which will help in getting answers to the above questions. Using an expert online marketing team or search engine marketing company would help in saving time and money.

Some must haves for e-commerce websites

When developing e-commerce websites there are some things if taken care of will ensure the success of your online business:

Search engine friendly structure: It is important the website to be search engine friendly to allow search engines to index all the pages correctly. The code has to be clean, the struture should not be too deep, the site should have the ability to add seo tags and all pages should be easily readible by search engine crawlers. It is possible to achieve this be planning the structure before the development starts or using search engine friendly platforms such as joomla + virtuemart, os commerce, open cart, zen cart etc.,

Search engine optimization: The main pages of the website should be search engine optimized so that they become relevant for the important keywords.

Online Marketing: It is important to plan an online marketing campaign before the development of the site starts. This is because the website without marketing will get lost in millions of websites on the internet.

Design that works: It is easy to get carried away with a design that looks like an artist's masterpiece. But it actually is not of much use if it is not user friendly, fast to load and trust building. A design should not only look good but also perform.

Newsletter: Newsletters are a great medium of informing your customers about new products, upcoming sales, industry trends, what's new with your company etc., They serve as a good marketing tool and make your site more interactive.

Search function: This is a great tool for customers which comes handy in many situations. If you want to make finding information easier for your customers then go for a basic and advanced search functions. Sort functions are very helpful as well.

Coupons: All customers like to receive discounts ,coupons are a good way of obliging them. Having a good discount system using which you can send discount coupons to regular customers is a good way of doing this.

Easy to find contact information: Many times customers have queries that they want addressed by talking directly to some one in the company. For this purpose it is a must to have phone no.s of the sales department or live chat support.

Security icons: Sharing credit card or personal financial information on the internet is very risky these days with internet frauds on the rise. It is therefore important to have proper security measures in place along with icons that indicate those to build trust and confidence amongst online shoppers.

Feedback form: It is good to have a form where your customers can let you know what they can think. Your customers will appreciate that you consider their feedback.

Easy to manage Admin section: Admin section which allows the staff to manage products, newsletters, offers, orders and analyze the buying trends with ease will ensure complete contol on the business. Softwares like Joomla, virtuemart, Os Commerce and open cart have well developed admin sections.