Posts by iJoe

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Optimizing Your Title Tags for Impact

Posted by on Nov 1, 2011 in Uncategorized

There are a number of best practices to optimize your website. This blog article will focus on one very impactful method known as the title tag. Focus your energy on the title tags to get found online. This is a powerful and intimate exercise. Its a great first step in improving your website’s findability by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Title tags are text that appear in the top line of a user’s web browser. Safari is a great browser to see these tags visually displayed (see screen shot). They appear in every browser but Safari displays a nice clean view across the very top. These are the keywords describing the content related to your web page.

Think about crafting these keywords as advertising text. The url, title tag and alt text (naming graphics/images) correlate very well with high search performance.

Many search pros believe the title tags are the only HTML meta tags on our website that search engines crawl to find your website online. There are 3 main tags but for purposes of this blog, we will focus on title tags. HTML title tags are not a meta tag, but it’s worth discussing in relation to them.

For impact, lets focus on what Google practices in search.

Title tags can only display up to 70 characters in your browser. It is recommended to keep your title tags under 70 characters. In addition, much of the research points to placing your most descriptive keyword/phrase to describe your page as far forward in the string of 70 characters as possible. If your page is touting ‘website results,’ make sure it’s the first phrase in the 70-character string.

Page titles tell visitors what a page is about. From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it is good to keep your page titles concise. If your page title is too long, it will dilute the importance of each term in the title. This might prevent you from ranking well on any of the words in your page title.

Come up with a concise but keyword-rich description of your page. Make that your page title. Choosing long-tail phrases are an effective solution. Long-tail keywords are more specific and target less competitive niche markets instead of highly competitive broad keywords. Long-tail phrases containing commonly used words may significantly improve a website’s search ranking.

Your company name should not be the start of the page title. The first few words in a page title are the most influential in search engine results. You want people that don’t know about your brand to be able to find you, so using more general industry keywords is important.

Use three methods to understand your customers’ perception of your products or services: web analytics, customer survey, and competitors’ content.

After compiling a keyword glossary from research, narrow your selection based on four criteria: category, popularity, competition, and relevance.

Now, find the middle. It is important to find words that both uniquely describe your company’s services and are commonly used.

If I had to start in one place to increase my presence online, it would be with my website’s title tags.

There are two online training videos available to successfully walk you through this process. Navigate to Crash Course in SEO and Advanced SEO Tactics.

ijoe Title Tag example

Example of Title Tags from iJoe.us About Page.

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Getting the Max out your Google (gmail) Account

Posted by on Oct 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

Online inbound marketing is the primary way to get customers these days. So what handy tools are there to up your inbound marketing game?

Well, here’s a tip from us at Ijoe Inbound Marketing: try Google!

Here are a few of their free online marketing tools:

* Feedburner: This is handy popular free online tool. Have you ever seen an RSS (rich site summary) feed icon? Chances are you have, and it basically indicates that a user on any site, blog, newscast or otherwise, can choose to subscribe to that page (usually by clicking on the above icon). Subscribers then receive an automatic feed on whatever device or site they choose when the content is updated. Use an RSS feed to keep your clients up-to-date and to spread your service around on the web!
* Webmaster Tools: This tool will, in a manner of speaking, educate you on how well your site is performing against other sites. If you submit your site to Google, they will run several ‘tests’ to look at basic things like if your site is ranking on search engines, if your site is being linked properly, monitor your site’s performance and gives you tips on how to create a successful site. It offers you the 101 on SEO for your site, and this is especially handy for those of you that are the real webmasters of your site/product.
*  Google Analytics: This is by and far the most popular tool for inbound marketing strategies. It will tell you everything you need to know about how successful your current marketing strategies are. It tracks sales and conversions, how marketing campaigns are related to content and keywords, what kind of traffic you are generating on your site, and whether it is all giving you the results you want!
* Product Search: It’s online shopping gone viral. Add your product or figure out who else is selling a similar product, and market it right there on Google, for free.
* Google Alerts & Google Trends: Use these to keep tabs on the competition or monitor a new developing story. They keep you up-to-date on new content on the web, and can give you fresh content ideas on what is “trending” right now, in your area!

Be sure to check out some of their other handy gadgets at Google Products.

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Traditional Media vs New Media

Posted by on Sep 26, 2011 in Uncategorized

Traditionally, marketing strategies have always revolved strongly around what is often called, ‘outbound lead generation’. This involves using cold calls, snail mail, and more recently email, as the media by which to sell your product or information. Other traditional media used for outbound marketing have of course also been television commercials, radio, and –let us not forget- the myriad of billboards seen lining our highways.

Billboard blocked by a tree.

Everything imaginable is blocking Traditional Media.

However, as quickly as outbound marketing media strategies have grown in the last 60+ years, technology to block this ‘traditional’ media has outpaced it. So we have had caller I.D., spam blockers, satellite (no ads) radio and TV (SKIP FWD), and now even our billboards are blocked by trees and given little regard. The point? Our traditional media forms used as outbound marketing are increasingly ineffective, and so we must turn to new media and new strategies.

New Media and iJoe Inbound Marketing

To successfully market our products these days, we make use primarily of the internet. More specifically, we draw the client in as they search for product and services -79% of all adult Americans use the internet. This is called ‘inbound marketing’. At iJoe Inbound Marketing we will create a strong web presence by creating CMS websites, blogs, optimizing social media, strengthening email subscriptions, demonstrating products through webinars, videos, podcasts, whitepapers and more. The client doesn’t waste time on a content management systems or SEO that doesn’t work, iJoe measures and analyzes all efforts. We track which effort will be most effective for drawing in your target audience. No webmaster needed. We will introduce easy to use platforms that are easily managed by you or someone on your team. And, at a much lower cost than the old, traditional forms of media.

Gone are the days of traditional media! They are no longer capturing the audience as they used to, easily controlled and turned-off by anyone. The customer now has more power to filter what they see and hear, and so we must reach them as they start searching for you.

 

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Lusso Receives Certification in Inbound Marketing

Posted by on Aug 29, 2011 in Uncategorized

Certification Awarded by HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University Training Program

Minneapolis – August 2011– Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification to Joe Lusso as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program (http://inboundmarketing.com).

This certification acknowledges Lusso’s proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Lusso joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. Over 2,000 individuals have successfully passed the IMU program.

To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, Lusso completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam. (View the full list of classes: http://inboundmarketing.com/university/classes)

The courses are taught by a knowledgeable faculty of professors, including New York Times’ best-selling author Chris Brogan, Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, best-selling author and international speaker David Meerman Scott, and more. (View all professors: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university/professors)

This certification is administered by HubSpot.

About InboundMarketing.com

InboundMarketing.com is an online community and certification program for marketers. The site’s content teaches a new style of marketing that emphasizes business uses of social media, content creation and search engine optimization for marketing. InboundMarketing.com is hosted and moderated by HubSpot, Inc. Register for InboundMarketing.com at http://inboundmarketing.com/user/register.

About HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc. provides Internet marketing software that helps businesses get found online, generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of those leads into paying customers. HubSpot’s software platform includes tools that allow professional marketers and business owners to manage search engine optimization, blogging and social media, as well as landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics. Based in Cambridge, MA, HubSpot can be found at http://www.hubspot.com. HubSpot’s free marketing tools can be found at http://grader.com.

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Welcome to iJoe Inbound Marketing Blog!

Posted by on Jul 25, 2011 in Uncategorized

HubSpot’s vision is to provide a (killer) marketing application and provide great advice to small businesses enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to “get found” by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers.

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