SEM is an acronym for Search Engine Marketing, and when it comes to effective Internet Marketing, one must consider not only the website design and development, but also the search engine optimization (SEO), link building strategy, pay-per-click (PPC), e-mail marketing, and website statistics elements.  RSS and blogging can be a powerful tools, and Social Media is exploding! Leveraging your Content Management System (CMS) is critical to good SEO performance. Something as seemingly trivial as choosing your Domain Name can have a significant impact on your search engine ranking and subsequent website traffic.  The weight of W3C Compliance with respect to SEO requires some consideration, as does Online Reputation Management (ORM).  Choosing reliable website hosting helps to build a solid foundation.

Internet usage and the number of daily searches are increasing at a dramatic rate.  Your competition is securing desirable domain names.

A customized SEM Strategy has become mandatory for driving targeted traffic to your site!

Content Is King!

If you do nothing else... Remember that "Content is King", so keep your content dynamic, engaging, and make every effort to keep your content "fresh" with constant updates. Do this, and you will be rewarded with higher ranking on the search engines and more visitors to your site. The more targeted your content, the more targeted your traffic will be.

S.M.A.R.T. Site

When developing a website, make sure that it is a S.M.A.R.T. Site™:

How S.M.A.R.T. is Your Website?

Web 1.0 - 2.0 - 3.0

Web 1.0 - One-way flow of information (ex: Google, Yahoo, MSN)

Web 2.0 - Two-way flow of information (ex: forums, blogs, social media - MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)

Web 3.0 - Real-Time Web / Semantic Web

How HTML 5 Makes Using Audio and Video in Web Pages Easy

Web pages and their design are laid out using HTML. HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark-up Language. HTML is comprised of 'tags' or elements that tell your browser what the different areas of your webpage are. You can use these elements to define paragraph areas, images and their dimensions and also font sizes, colors and styles etc. There are many HTML elements and a lot of these have varying attributes like width, height, name, etc... read more

Take Control Of Your Online Reputation

Like it or not, the Internet influences consumer buying decisions. A survey released in April 2009 by the Opinion Research Corp. in Princeton, N.J., found that two-thirds of all respondents checked some type of online review forum when considering a purchase, and that those reviews had a significant impact on their own purchasing decisions. So if you're not monitoring what people are saying about you and your business on the Web, you could be unwittingly losing customers and leaving your brand vulnerable to attack... read more

12 Favorite and Little Known Tips for LinkedIn

Most business professionals are on LinkedIn at this point. LinkedIn tells us that:

    • LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries.

    • A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.

    • Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

... read more

9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic

For the past few weeks I've been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic - their owners hoped to find out why. I love these kinds of reviews because it's like solving a mystery or figuring out a puzzle. While it's not always possible to determine the exact cause for the traffic loss, I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics. Here are 9 steps you can take to diagnose the cause of lost search engine traffic... read more

Web Design FAQ - 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing a Website

Many site owners make the mistake of building a website without laying out a clear plan for their online business. This is a sure set-up for failure. There are 1000s of abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning. Before designing your website you should ask yourself some questions to avoid making mistakes down the road... read more

5 Steps to a Social Media Avalanche of Customers

"Build it and they will come" the saying goes. Not. You can build a blog or video site and you can still be lacking connections. Connection is the nuclear core of social media. But you must make an effort in order for that to happen. Whether you have a social media home business, traditional brick and mortar business, or an online business, you must get into the social trenches and connect and converse. It is that simple and that plain... read more