Albee Digital - Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Search Engine Optimizing

ALBEE Digital — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:31:48 +0000

What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Optimization is the process of arranges the text and data of a webpage so that search engines will like it better than other webpages. This gives that page a higher ranking on the results pages when people search for a certain keyword or keyword phrase.

Why Do I Need Search Engine Optimizing?
Today, search engine queries are responsible for between 85% and 90% of all first time traffic to a website.

These results can be broken into two categories.

- Sponsored Results

- Organic Results

Sponsored results are paid for just like a listing in a Yellow Page or Advertising directory. A website owner pays for a search word or phrase and anytime someone uses that search word or phrase the page link shows up at the top of the page. Although you get good placement, this can amount in LARGE monthly payments to the Search Engine and may or may-not make you any return on your investment.

While an Organic Result listing show up below a Sponsored Result on most of the search engines, Organic results attract over 85% of all search engines users. Organic Results are proven to attract more traffic because they tend to be more specific. Search Engine Optimizing is a lot more affordable and when done correctly, it will be listed at the top of the Organic Result results.

Your Website Must be More Than JUST Pretty

ALBEE Digital — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:21:15 +0000

Websites must be more than just pretty to be effective.

Internet Marketing is a lot more than just posting a few nice looking pages of information on the Internet.

Yes, your Website should be appealing, but it also must be designed to be fast, informative, and easy for your customers and prospective customers to use. It should also be easy to find.

All of these attributes are key to a successful Internet marketing campaign.
When you are looking for a website design firm, look for one that offers website design and development services designed for you and your budget.

The company you choose should have your best interest in mind and work with you to help you build a strong, lasting relationship with your current customers and at the same time help you find new customers more efficiently.

It is also important to define the goals of your website project, and make sure that the designer can offer you proven strategies to accomplish those goals.

We have the knowledge and website design experience that it takes to design a website that will generate traffic and convert website visitors into customers.

Visit our Website at: http://www.albeedigital.com

What Is the Differance Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

ALBEE Digital — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:42:45 +0000

Advertising in the current age of electronic media is much different than it was even five years ago. Old school marketing techniques like trade shows, seminars, cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and print advertising is just not that effective anymore. Even some of the techniques developed as little as 5 years ago are becoming out of date. Things like Pop-up ads and bulk email blasts are for the most part ineffective.
These methods are often referred to as outbound marketing. Outbound marketing, describes the action of pushing your message on the masses by continually exposing them (often times when they are least likely to be receptive) in the hopes that it will resonate with some of them and make them want to buy what you are selling.
Outbound marketing is less effective for two main reasons. First, the buying public, (your potential customers), are being inundated with thousands of outbound marketing interruptions every day via radio, TV, phone and Email and they have figured out how to block them out. These ways include caller id boxes, E-mail spam filtering, media recording devices like Tivo, and by subscribing to satellite radio broadcasts. Secondly, the lower cost of learning about something new or shopping for something new using the Internet has made it cheaper and more convenient. We all know that it is now much cheaper, (and faster), to use the Internet to learn something, verses going to a seminar at the Hilton. We also know that buying tickets online can be much cheaper and it is much more convenient than getting that same ticket at the ticket counter or from a travel agent.
Marketing to people who are trying to block your message out is at the very least, counter productive. Also, based on the percent of ROI it can be very costly.
“Inbound marketing” on the other hand, is the art of “getting found” by people who have already learned about your products or services and have begun shopping for someone to provide it to them. In order to “get found” you need to have your website set up so that it attracts these prospective customers naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and also through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others.
Statistics show that most businesses today spend 80% to 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and only 10% to 20% on inbound marketing. In order to maximize profits in this economy and get more market share, these ratios should really be flipped.
It also stands to reason that if you target customers who are ready to buy what you sell, you will make more sales.

Social Media 2010: Ice Cream Shop vs. Large Metro Newspaper

ALBEE Digital — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:19:51 +0000

The report out yesterday that newspaper circulation declined another 5% in the latest reporting period got me thinking about ice cream for two reasons:

First, anyone who loves newspapers would rather ruminate about rum raisin than the relentless, 20-year slide that has brought weekday circulation to less than 40 million copies today from an all-time high of 63.3 million as recently as 1984.

Second, it reminded me that the folks following the tweets of my favorite ice cream shop in San Francisco – a quirky place called Humphry Slocombe – now vastly outnumber those who buy the San Francisco Chronicle on any given day of the week.

The shop, which produces such exotic flavors as prosciutto ice cream and beet sorbet, has 301,352 followers on Twitter vs. the 223,539 individuals who buy the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle on an average weekday or the 10,639 people who follow the paper’s website on Twitter. Think about it: A barely two-year-old business with no marketing budget in a modest storefront in a less-than-fashionable part of town now has a larger and arguably more passionate audience than a once-mighty metro daily that traces its history back to 1865. How did it happen and what does it portend for what’s left of the Chronicle and the newspaper business?

Apart from the fantastic Fudgesicle sorbet and Guinness gingerbread ice cream on offer at Humphry Slocombe, the unassuming start-up has mastered the art of zero-cost online marketing through such media as Twitter, Facebook and Google Local.

“We started with online marketing because it was free,” said founder Jake Godby, who can be readily identified when you visit the shop by the ice cream cones tattooed on his forearms. “There is no time gap between what you are thinking about and actually doing it.”

Godby and his partner, Sean Vahey, quickly learned to leverage the social media to build a community around their product. Friends told friends in food-crazed San Francisco about the place and the owners played into the game by rotating the flavors every day to create a sense of novelty, scarcity and excitement. When word gets out on Twitter that duck-fat pecan pies are available, people stop what they are doing and race to the Mission District in the hopes of snagging one before the always-limited supply is exhausted. The effort, by all accounts, is well worth it. It didn’t take long for the Humphry buzz to extend to Yelp, where fans themselves took up the cause of helping to promote the business. On the Fourth of July, the mother of all mainstream media joined in: The New York Times treated the shop to a mouth-watering, six-page spread in its Sunday magazine.

Through the skillful use of social media, Humphry Slocombe has built the sort of passion and engagement that would be the envy of any brand. In an age of user-controlled and user-generated media, every successful brand will have to do the same thing.

You Can’t Make This Schtick Up!

ALBEE Digital — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:35:42 +0000

One of the most absolutely awful mistakes small businesses make when they start a blog (or create a Facebook page for their business), is they think they’re selling something. I always try to keep our blog as conversational as possible. Have you ever read most corporate blogs? BORING!!! Just like entertainment & sports blogs work to engage you by having interesting content, your business blog must do the same. There’s a time and place for everything, and marketing copy belongs on your website, not in your blog. Your business blog should be more about starting a conversation with your readers. What it’s REALLY about is building a relationship!

THIS WEEK’S PERFECT EXAMPLE: Our Best Blog Entry of the Week award goes to JetBlue’s Blog, “Blue Tales:”

You Can’t Make This Shtick Up: We Can Hear You!
As told by our Customer Support Crewmember, Richard:

I had an older lady call and get a quote on a package to San Juan. It was a screaming deal and when I tried to close the sale, she said she would need to call her husband, who wasn’t there, and OK it with him first. I told her I could wait if she had another phone to use. She said she did and would try but didn’t know if she would be able to reach him. She set the phone down and yelled to her husband (who was not a phone calla way, but rather in another room) to come quick, that she had a really good deal. I listened to their entire conversation and the husband said he wanted to go to Montreal, not San Juan. She came back to the phone and said, “I can’t get a hold of him but I left a very urgent message for him to call me.”