February 8th, 2010
For years, businesses have been paying thousands of dollars to be listed in the Yellow Pages – the printed version, that is. Did you know that you can get listed in the online version of the Yellow Pages for free? How much benefit does paying for a listing in the printed Yellow Pages really bring to businesses?
Over 1000 Australians were surveyed in May 2009 and one third of people under 29 years of age claimed that they never used the printed version of the Yellow Pages. In addition, 78% of those who took the survey stated that they want to be asked if they even want the Yellow Pages delivered and 58% of Australians said that they would stop having the printed Yellow Pages delivered if they had the choice. Not only have many people simply stopped using the book, but the majority of respondents believe that having the printed Yellow Pages delivered has a negative impact on the environment.
Craig Phillips, the head of market intelligence at CoreData, said the survey showed that two million Yellow Pages were thrown into the recycling bin each year.
Whether or not being listed in the printed Yellow Pages is still worth it depends on the benefit you’re actually seeing your business get from the printed listing. If a business is getting regular customers through the printed Yellow Pages, no survey is going to justify pulling the plug.
However, the new-found data shows that the printed version of the Yellow Pages is not being used by as many consumers as potentially previously thought. Whether you choose to keep investing in printed Yellow Pages ads or not, consider listing your business in the Yellow Pages online directory for free. Businesses and online marketers have been seeing a trend toward using the internet to find local businesses and an online Yellow Pages listing could only help to increase a business’s visibility to potential customers. The number of people using the internet in Australia each year is growing exponentially. In 2000, internet users accounted for 33.8% of the population. In 2009, this number was 79.6% 1.
In addition to listing your business on the Yellow Pages online, consider asking your online marketing company about other reputable business directories in which you can list your business details. The more exposure your business can get online through business listings, SEO, and/or Google AdWords, the more opportunity you have to attract new leads and customers.
1 Internet World Stats – Usage and Population Statistics
Tags: adwords, online marketing, PPC, SEO, yellow pages
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »
January 28th, 2010
Online marketers around the world are predicting that 2010 is going to be the year of mobile search. Over recent years we have seen the mobile phone technology advance exponentially to product handsets that can carry out almost any task. New products such as the iPhone, Blackberry and various handsets running Google’s Android operating system, are all vying for top spot in 2010 - the year of mobile search!
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: google adwords, mobile search, online marketing, PPC
Posted in PPC | 2 Comments »
December 8th, 2009
Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most measurable advertising mediums. As we approach the festive season retailers brace themselves for their busiest trading period. Effective PPC advertising in Australia is showing increasing potential to provide a lucrative return on investment and help support overall sales by directing high quality leads to your online store.
It is important to have an effective PPC advertising campaign in order to provide enticing advertisements that separate your company from the competition. An integral part of this is correctly evaluating the market and creating a PPC strategy to most effectively target your campaign during the festive period. With increasing understanding of your target market and their search behaviour you can intelligently refine your PPC campaigns to target geographic, demographic and time strategies. All of which help to ensure your ads are reaching your target market, maximising your Return on Investment (ROI).
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: advertising, adwords, adwords advertising, effective ppc advertising, pcc, pcc campaigns
Posted in PPC | No Comments »
November 30th, 2009
Writing Email Marketing Copy
Writing effective email marketing copy can be tricky; grammatical errors, misspellings, the wrong tone and more can derail your e-mail campaign before it has a chance to get off the ground. We’ve put together the following guidelines to help you write successful email marketing copy:
The Subject is the headline
The subject line is the first thing a reader will see of your email, so it needs to communicate your email’s message precisely and grab your audience’s attention. It’s marketing copy, you need to make sure it’s compelling and encourages readers to open your email – if there is an offer include the offer
Remember, don’t use repetition of punctuation while writing email marketing copy (eg. ‘!!!!’) or words like ‘FREE’ in your subject line, these are red flags for SPAM filters.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: copy, copywriting, email, email copy, Email Marketing, email marketing copy, writing email marketing copy
Posted in Email Marketing | 1 Comment »
September 10th, 2009
Google Caffeine Update
Google is getting ready to roll out its biggest update since the “Big Daddy” update which happened back in 2006. They’re calling it the Google Caffeine update and are claiming that this new under-the-hood infrastructure will improve the speed and accuracy with which Google will index web pages.
“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”
- Google Webmaster Central Blog
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, calls the Google Caffine update “A rewrite of our indexing system”.
A rewrite is a big thing; it’s important to take a look at what exactly this means for businesses running search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: caffeine, caffeine update, google, google caffeine, google caffeine seo, google caffeine update, search engine update
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
August 28th, 2009
Businesses can increase their web presence, engage with their customers, and improve web traffic and search engine rankings by blogging about their industry.
What is an Online Blog?
First, it’s important to take a look at what exactly a blog is.
“Blog” is short for weblog. It is a type of website which is regularly updated with commentary, reviews and descriptions of events, graphics, video, news, and other content. Readers of the blog can usually post comments and thoughts about individual blog entries.
An online blog is comprised of individual blog entries, which are listed from the most recent to the oldest on the page.
How a Business Blog can Help You
So, how can blogging help to promote your business?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blogging, blogs, business blog, business blogging, business blogs, online blog, online blogging, online marketing blog, online marketing blogs
Posted in Online Blog Marketing | No Comments »
August 4th, 2009
On July 29, 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! signed an agreement confirming that Microsoft’s search engine Bing will power Yahoo! search. Online marketing agencies and businesses should analyse how this will affect their search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.
Microsoft and Yahoo!, as well as quite a few online marketing agencies, are probably hoping that this “merger” of sorts will put the pressure on Google and begin taking over some of its current market share. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, is certainly throwing down the gauntlet in his announcement about the deal:
“Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”
As it stands, Google currently owns approximately 79% of the total search engine market share according to global market share statistics. Yahoo! comes in second with 7.16% and Bing is third with 3.17%. These figures are likely to change by the time these search engine changes are implemented but as it stands, combined, Yahoo! and Microsoft make up about 10.33% of the market share.
When it comes to online marketing agencies and businesses running SEO campaigns, perhaps the most important point to understand is that this deal does not mean that Yahoo! search is dead. Microsoft will be acquiring a 10 year license to all of Yahoo!’s core search technologies, which means that we will most likely see some of Yahoo!’s technology being integrated with that of Bing to improve overall performance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bing, Bing and Yahoo! Deal, Microsoft, online marketing, Online Marketing Agencies, Search Engine Market Share, Yahoo!
Posted in SEO | 5 Comments »
July 29th, 2009
When you contact a search engine optimisation (SEO) company, you will likely hear terms like “organic or natural listings”, “ranking reports”, “keywords”, and more. It can get confusing, but understanding what these terms mean can help business owners to make smarter decisions when it comes to their SEO campaigns.
So, what do SEO companies do?
SEO companies improve your website’s rankings on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN/Live). A search engine like Google has two main types of listings - organic (also known as natural) listings and sponsored listings. Sponsored listings are the links you see running along the top and right hand sides of the Google search result page. For example, if you type “Online Marketing Perth” in to www.google.com.au, you will see the following:
An SEO company’s job is to improve a website’s organic listings for chosen keywords. The closer your website listing is to the top, the more people will click on it to visit your website.
…many users are at the search egine’s mercy and mainly click the top links…” - Jacko Nielsen’s User Skills Research
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Search Engine Optimisation, search engine optimisation perth, seo companies, seo company, SEO Perth, top seo company
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
We’ve spoken about Bing’s contract with Twitter in our previous post about 
