Reputation Management – How

Does Your Business Compare ?

In this digital era it is now more important than ever before to consider reputation management for your business. People are able to access more information about you due to the internet and this involves being able to discover what other people have said about their own personal experience with you and your business.

Getting feedback, even from complete strangers, now really forms the basis of the decision as to whether to spend money with you or not and this applies no matter if you are online or offline. It is therefore clear that you need to be aware of what people are saying about your business so you can then act accordingly as this will help to attract more people in to potentially using your business.

The first thing you need to do is actively encourage those people who have positive things to say about you to actually post about it online. This can be done via a number of sites as well as social media networks because obviously the more positive things said about you the better the impact it has on the minds of those people who are undecided.

Much better to have a

5 star rating

How you do this does vary depending upon whether you work purely on the internet or offline and it comes down to finding the point where you really do interact with your customers. For example, if you own a restaurant, then seek some feedback once they have finished their meal, or, if you are online, send emails after they have completed their purchase to see what they thought of the entire service.

Getting positive feedback is easy however, it is with negative comments and feedback that a business has to be creative and professional with its reputation management. Negative comments can spread quicker than positive however the way it is handled can certainly show the company in a good light.

What can you do about the

1 star rating

It is extremely important to face up to them when doing your reputation management but it is essential that you are not confrontational. Instead, you must appear to be acting on any problems they encountered and try to come up with a resolution that then makes them happy. By doing this you let other potential customers see that you take on board comments, even when they are not that nice, and respect what they say which then makes them feel customer service does matter to you.

How you handle the negative reports does depend upon what they say as clearly comments about poor service have to be dealt with differently from those about bad products. It may be the case that for poor service you need to, in a way, wine and dine them or at least offer to or with bad products give them a discount specifically for them.

Reputation management is therefore something that simply cannot be ignored by a business as it will have a direct impact on your revenue. By getting positive comments you will entice people in to try you and dealing with negative feedback will show you care about your customers which is something the public undoubtedly love to know.

Reputation management in today’s world, read more at Wiki

To improve your online reputation management now  go to…

WordPress Security Needs Your

Immediate Attention.

wordpress security

“WARNING: Your Business Website is Vulnerable to Attack”

It only takes 4 simple tests to ensure your website is safe from problems.

What would happen if there was a theft at your place of business? I’m sure you have decent locks and other security systems in place to protect your business assets.

Unfortunately, the same has not been done for most WordPress security on most websites.

Your site is vulnerable to hacking by the “bad guys” and I wanted to show you some tips to fix it right away. Time is ticking …

The things WordPress security fail on are as follows:

i. Configuration file is in insecure location – Your passwords can be read

ii. Version number is publicly readable – It’s easier to find known exploits which even inexperienced hackers can use.

iii. It’s displaying unnecessary detail on failed logins which allows them to run automated solutions to crack your password.

iv. Your installation script is still available and someone can simply destroy your current website with the click on a button.

I strongly recommend you get these 4 basic issues fixed asap before your site gets defaced. There are scammers out there who deface websites for fun and some for even more sinister reasons.

The repercussions are not good. Google can render your site unsafe for browsing and even de-index it. It can take months and a lot of pleading before it comes back – even after you fix everything.

If you fix the 4 issues I’ve mentioned above, you should be ahead of around 74% of other business owners, but it still leaves your website vulnerable to the “advanced hackers”.Who can easily break in to poor wordpress security on websites.

I’m offering an audit, review and website security fix for wordpress websites as a service to business owners , for a very small fee right now.

Because what I do is proprietary, I can’t talk to your technical people or webmaster and will only be able to talk to you. Please contact me by entering your details on the adjacent form or  by phone at 01524 858670.

I look forward to helping you secure your website as soon as possible.

I can fix this for you in approximately 2-4 hours (if it’s not infected). However, if you contact me directly, i have a limited time offer. Call me at 01524 858670 or e-mail to info@annoco.co.uk

Take your WordPress security seriously, before the trouble begins !

More information on WordPress security

Mobile revolution

Join The Mobile Revolution -Text

Marketing

FACTS: 

Almost all adults keep cell phones with them all day and night!

73% actually want tο receive offers & coupons οn cell phones!

Customers that you keep regular contact with spend 67% more!

97% of text messages аrе read within minutes!

YES, Text Message SMS Marketing has become the easiest, fastest

& most cost effective way to market to customers – bar none.

Find below what Business Link . Gov have to say

Generate business from your

e-marketing plan

SMS marketing

Text messages or short messaging service (SMS) messages are the messages that people send from their mobile phones.

Text messaging is growing at an enormous rate. One of the primary reasons behind this growth is that text messaging has become increasingly used as a business tool.

Text messaging enables information to be sent to groups of people quickly and conveniently in much the same way as email, making it an increasing popular e-marketing channel.

Advantages of SMS marketing

• The personal nature of mobile phones make SMS marketing a very powerful tool.
• Most people take their mobile phones everywhere – meaning they can be effective for time sensitive messages.
• People tend to read virtually every text they get – unlike junk mail, spam or adverts which can be ignored.
• Your message has to be short – you do not have much space to get your message across.
• People respond negatively to unwanted texts. Make sure you have their permission to send them texts and that your SMS marketing complies with privacy and data protection rules.
• People are wary of responding to SMS messages due to an increase in fraudulent messages. Under the E-commerce Regulations, you are required to make it clear who the message is from.

Potential disadvantages of SMS marketing

Costs

You will need to employ a mobile phone agency to send out the texts for you. Companies tend to price their services by packages – so check their delivery rates, try before you buy, and make sure the support services are satisfactory. You can also brand your messages so you send messages from your company name, not just your number, while the development of 3G (third generation) and smartphones, which have larger screens and can play music and video clips, has also made multimedia messaging service (known as MMS) possible.

We will set you up, cost free an unlimited messaging service so you can contact your existing and future customers FOR FREE !

Outperforms radio, TV, direct mail, newspapers, website visitors

Give us a ring or pop your details into the form ( Top Right) and join the revolution.

2012 Stats

Your Business Needs A Mobile

Website

More people now use smart phones to search the Internet than use Computers in their homes. If your website is not user friendly, does not give them your contact details quickly and easily they will hit the back button.

Large picture files of big Flash files is not what people want when they look for your site,in fact iphones show blank pages, if flash is used, User’s on the run want fast, quick reliable information. QR codes are being used with mobile phones and posters, advertising so the code can be scanned and your details are stored on the potential customers phone.

Mobile website design is more important than your main website, so it has to be correct, mobile site design keeps thinks simple, easy to use , easy to read and quick to load on all major devices. Mobile website development is quickly growing and more information is now available for the smart devices, but you need to get your business site, user friendly. 80%+ of mobile users are “local information seekers” use this to your advantage.

Local business needs to use the power of the Internet and mobile to attract new customers and to contact existing clients. How far away from you is your mobile ?

Just watch the video below, this shows how serious Google take the growing mobile marketplace.

We will check your site for free and recommend a mobile website design that gives your customers what they want.

Just pop your details in the form   >>>>

Mobile Website Design will make your website easy to use and navigate  for information certain categories like cakes, restaurants, hotels, wine bars and sports clubs need to move on this NOW!

Does Your Web Site Marketing

        Need A Boost ?

Web Site Marketing for small businesses became a whole lot more difficult in the past year. Big business could adapt and pay an Internet marketing consultant and his team whatever it took to adapt, to how Google was changing the search displays for organic traffic. Using the “new media” as the primary web site marketing tool for your business, is sensible and in fact, probably a must, digital sales and on line sales have increased in most sectors this last year. Mobile use and the growth in apps is staggering.

So make sure your web site marketing conforms to the requirements of Google, below i have attached a recent post from an Ozzie ! Matt Carter – But he hits the nail on the head. Original here

Affordable SEO

 ” SEO Quality Score

There has been a lot of talk in 2011 about the changes at Google, which we all refer to as Panda. That Panda caused quite a stir in the SEO community and everybody seemed to have an opinion, or a horror story of the “Panda attacking them”.In this post I’ll explain some new things I’ve learned about Google and what they’re looking for and also reinforce a few things I’ve mentioned in webinars I’ve done recently on this topic.

Give Google What They WantI think the key underlying theme of all this, is to give Google what they want and don’t try to trick Google, well not too much anyway!If we take a step back and look at the organic listings in Google, from Google’s stand point, the most important thing for them is quality. Google introduced what is known as their “Quality Score” for Adwords campaigns some years ago now, and was a way to assess the quality of sites that were using their paid Adwords platform.Google does this so that they ensure the user experience from people who are clicking their ads is a good one.

The biggest threat to Google’s business is people not having a good experience when using Google and deciding, enough is enough, and choosing another search engine or other means of finding what they want. If this happens, Google is done for! So with that said, you can see why quality control at Google is pretty high on the agenda.However what’s more interesting is that many SEO marketers heard of the horror stories of people getting their accounts slapped with a low quality score from Google Adwords and having to pay sky high prices for clicks, or worse yet get their accounts shut down completely (which has now happened to a vast majority of affiliates who use to use Adwords) and perhaps somewhat naively thought “glad I don’t use Adwords…it will not effect me!” Along comes the Google Panda on the hunt for low quality sites to chew on, and all of a sudden the tables turn.My point is, all SEO marketers should have known that Panda was on the agenda, as the organic listings are just as important to Google as their Adwords, because people use Google for the free organics primarily, and click the ads as a result, so quality across the board is key.I think the difference is that with Adwords, Google has humans checking accounts more than organic, therefore accurate quality checks were easier to assess. However with more and more human reviewers checking organic listings now, and Google using their feedback, they have now worked quality into their algorithm, hence Google Panda.

What Should We Do Now Then?

The first thing to do is panic, run for your lives now!!!….no only joking, everyone always says the opposite of that, so I couldn’t help myself. Ok so the first thing I suggest doing is start looking at your SEO, and mainly your on page SEO, from a view point of quality rather than a view point of super optimized.

Content Quality is now a ranking signal and Google is looking for certain things that tell them that your sites is a quality one. Some obvious indicators are that you have well written, grammatically correct, original content. So be super careful when hiring writers to produce your websites content for you.I recently hired a writer and only checked one or two articles and even I skimmed then super fast, as I was too busy with other things. However after chatting with a friend about quality, I soon realized that I need to check my content more carefully.When I did check this content, to my horror I found spelling mistake and poor grammer all over it, and even worse the content really wasn’t that helpful. If I had arrived on a page with this content, I would have been dissapointed with it.At all costs try to make sure you content doesn’t come across as really salesy and only trying to make you money and not help the reader. This is low quality and somewhat sleezy content and while it might last for a while in Google, they will work it out soon enough, as quality control is only going to keep getting better at Google.

Website Features

Some of the things I’m about to list next, will not apply to everyone, as affiliate marketing sites may not be able to encorporate all of these.

Blog comments – if you can have blog comments, then have them on, and interact with your readers on the site. I do this on this blog, as you’ll see below and on other posts. If your content doesn’t lean towards having people comment on it, then you might want to look at your content and your style of site.

Social links – Social media is only getting bigger, and Google is looking for signals that websites are getting interaction and links from places like Facebook, Twitter and more recently Google +1. The first and most obvious thing to do is add a social link buttons to your content, as I’ve done below. The more interaction you get from these the better, and I assume Google +1 will be a big player soon enough.I also think, that if you have good content, which of course you will, is to ask your readers to help spread the word by giving you a Google +1. With that said….hint hint…go on click the Google +1 one for me! ha ha…

Low ad to content ratio – Another indication of low quality content is having too many ads in your content. Ads can be in many forms too, such as Adsesne, banners, affiliate links. Again just keep in mind what a quality user experience looks like for you, and don’t go overbaord with your affiliates links. Yes we all know that if you have less affiliate links it will reduce conversions, but the alternative is to lose your rankings when you get slapped with a low quality score and then your conversions are zero!

Important pages – make sure you have pages such as: disclaimer, contact, privacy and any other important pages that you see high quality sites have on them. This is a pretty obvious indicator to Google that you care about your site and take it seriously.

Over Optimization – This is actually something that my friend Jackson pointed out, and is a very good point indeed. Post Panda, you want to be careful not to over optimize your pages so that they look spammy. What this means is, when writing the title for your page, don’t just have the exact keyword, especially if the keyword looks odd.For example, if you are trying to rank for “Cheap Wart Cream” then just having that and that alone, does look a little strange, it’s not too bad, but let’s say you were a webmaster that is not intentially trying to rank in Google and is just writing about wart cream because its your hobby!!! ha ha…anyway, if that were the case, then I think you would not use a title like that, and would probably use something like this “Where to find cheap wart cream online”. You can see the second title looks more natural and less obviously optimized.

Logins – If you can have a way for people to login to your site, such as a forum, then this shows Google your site is important to people and is another indication of quality.In closing, the main thing to think about when doing your SEO, is always keep QUALITY in mind, and how to make sure the user has a good experience on your site. You ideally want the kind of site that people like to come back to, like to bookmark, like to read other pages on it. I always take time to write quality posts on this blog, and as a result I can see that people go back through older posts that I write, to see what else they can learn. This is what you want to create on all sites from now on I believe. ”

Now you see there is more to web site marketing than just having a website online, knowing how and where to promote it, to get the best results is the key.

The majority of business owners do not understand the importance of web site marketing, the quality required and the consistent regular updates. many sites just sit there unloved, but are expected to bring in new business, HOW. For free assessment of your web site go here.

Please click the like button, Thanks

Internet Marketing Consultant Or

DIY ?

Reading about SEO, website optimisation, search engine marketing or PPC the information leads people to think that an internet marketing consultant is either not required, too expensive or you can do a good job yourself as an internet marketing consultant is a spammer or a con man.

Well believe it or not must of us do a great job are honest and reliable and have our customers best interests at the heart of everything we do.

Like every trade there good and bad, but the good ones are so much better, faster and know ore tricks than DIY. As an internet marketing consultant for many years, the short cuts promised by some individuals and companies are just not practical or true.

Realistic goals, that you both agree on is the starting point for your relationship with an internet marketing consultant, they will then work with you and customise a strategy on the things that are to benefit YOUR business.

Below is a List of 10 points that are important, for website traffic. Just having a website is not enough,you need to get visitors to your site and take some action.

Your Internet Marketing Consultant will make that happen.

Professional Help

Here is the ten points reported from here.

Showing up on search engines is one of the most critical ways to increase website traffic and expose your content, product or service to people who might be interested in what you have to offer. Most of the major search engines utilize an algorithm to determine where a website ranks. The search engines have set up specific criteria that a website must meet to get to the top of the list. The criteria are different for every engine, but all engines share several commonalities. It all boils down to the type and amount of content provided on a given website, the level of optimization done on the site, and the popularity of the website (link popularity/PageRank). Tailoring your website for improved search engine rankings is also known widely as search engine optimization, or SEO.

1.  Research the keywords. Decide what search queries you want to show up for. Do some research on how many people are actually searching for your site. Many times it is best to consult a “natural search engine optimization” professional during this process. There are several tools available from Google, Overture, and third party software developers that can make the keyword research process easier.

2. Target niche keywords with low competition. Try to use Google Adwords to check how competitive before deciding on it. Besure that the keywords has enough searches. Try using broadkeywords too

3. Think outside of the box. Don’t just focus on your main keywords. The first thing to realize when targeting keywords is that it is not all about ranking for the most popular keyword. The most successful search engine marketing and optimization campaigns target the most relevant keywords. For example, if you are a realtor in a particular area, don’t just optimize your site for “real estate.” Optimize your site for dentist, florist, movie theaters, etc. You would be amazed how many unique visitors will come through to your site when “outside of the box” thinking occurs.

4. Focus on the end user. If you spend too much time trying to please the Search Engine Spiders, you may forget about the end user. Think about what your target market needs to accomplish their goals, and then put it on your site so that they can find it. The phrase “content is king” was born about 6 years ago, and it still holds true today. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, than you need superior or at least highly competitive content. Write about 225-300 words of copy for each keyword and plant it on your site each day. Grow, grow, and grow. On average, one can target between 3-5 like keyword phrases per page. Make it as natural as possible and the Search Engines will reward you with a first-page ranking.

5. Make sure that all the pages of the site have custom titles and descriptions. If your site is using the same tags for all the pages, you are not helping search engines figure out the subject or relevance of your individual pages. Regarding Meta Tags, there are 2 very important fields:

Title Tag – arguably the most important SEO tag for any website. Google supports approx. 60 characters in the title, while Yahoo allows for up to 110 characters in the title. It is important to target the most critical keywords in the Title. Every page should have a unique Title.

META Description Tag – These were once important but are no longer. Some engines do display the description defined, while others do not. Some search engines do read the description tag, and do utilize the content found within in the ranking process. Google, MSN and Yahoo give very little weight to no weight for these.

6. To make sure that you have not missed any tags or damaged any links in the process, use an inspection tool to look over your website. In the process of inspection, you will also automatically be provided with a sitemap (refer to step 7 for significance).

7. Keep the structure, navigation and URL structure of your site simple enough for search engines to follow. Remember that search engines cannot parse your navigation if it’s using flash or javascript. So try to stay close to standard HTML when it comes to Navigation. URLs with dynamic parameters (?, &, SIDs) usually do not perform when it comes to search engine rankings.

8. Create a site map that tells people where everything is on your site. You will get about a 1% click through rate to your site map. However, it will do wonders for those who know what site maps do, and the Search Engines will like it as well.

9. Build up your popularity. So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you’ve created all of the necessary content, and you’ve optimized all of the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations – you’re now in the top 80th percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you’re trying to target. So how do you get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page listing? The answer is quite simple: You have to be the most popular, too. That’s right, it’s a popularity contest. In other words, how many other websites know you (link to you), and how popular are they? This is typically referred to as link popularity, or called PageRank by Google. The more sites that link to your site the better, and the more popular the site linking to you the more value you will receive for your link popularity. The best types of “link building” are directory registration, text link advertising, and press release distribution. Try to offer valuable information or tools so that other people are motivated to link to your site. Well-linked sites (that don’t use spamming) do better in search engines.

10. Build up good quality content. This will draw regular visitors to your website.

 

Now you can do this work yourself, like you could build your house, or fix your car, or fly an aeroplane BUT the time or the cost would be a hurdle. So get an Internet marketing consultant to take a look at your site, make out a report and then agree the strategy going forward. More customers, more visitors and more profit if your conversion funnel is a good one ?

Local Google Directory List – Like

Yellowpages.

For any local business listings in the local Google directory list is very important. Google trawls these sites on a regular basis to get up to date information for their local searches. But what happens if they do not find YOUR business ? well two things happen they merge the info they can get and guess the rest !

So your business listing in the Local Google Directory list could be doing your business more harm than good . Mis-information is the scourge of the internet, often deliberately added, but in this case Google is trying to help, but is gathering the information from non verified sources.

yellowpages - unused

What can i do ?

In the days of yellowpages, when people actually used them, the accuracy was very high, because the business owner was contacted to verify the details. With the  Local Google Directory list you have to CLAIM your listing to make sure it is accurate.

Business name, address, post code and telephone number all need to be the same in all the listings.

Do a search on your business and see what the Local Google Directory List  produces for your business. Look at the results, are the details correct if not fix the now.

Without any extra back linking or article writing you can improve your ranking by just doing this simple check. There are hundreds of  directories in the UK but you only need to have a listing on as many as possible on the Local Google Directory List.

Here are some you want a listing on.

Hotfrog

Qype

Local Data Search

Thomson Local

Yelp

UpMyStreet

Trusted Places

Bview

Tipped

We Love Local

Brown Book

Infoserve

Yell.com

TouchLocal

Scoot

Ufindus

SmileLocal

I hope you find this useful and take action to improve your Local Google Directory List on these important “to Google ” listings.

Facebook Goldmine For Local

Business.

Facebook Places Claim Yours Now.

Most local businesses know the power of claiming their Google places listing ! it is a free webpage, that appears on page one of Google and can therefore get your business more exposure and potential customers. If you have not claimed your place page do it now.

Facebook have a similiar named offering called Facebook places, but this works completely differently to the Google service. Served from a smartphone app for Facebook it provides a place page for your business. It started just over 12 months ago and many large companies like Gap and Mcdonalds are using it to build their following and getting huge numbers of users to spread their message. Just think how your business could benefit from this viral marketing.

Facebook places was just for mobile but they have recently changed this function to be far more powerful by allowing a cross device tagging feature, which will integrate the use into the core facebook experience.

This allows users to “check in” when at your business and will tell the users freinds where they are using the news feed and wall to make the social connections. Friends tagged when out together will appear under the “Here Now” heading.

Within place you can then offer one of four  ”deals”

Individual – as a one time discount

Friends/groups – for up to 8 friends to come as a group t get the deal.

Loyalty – Were users have to check in from 2 – 20 times, your choice, to get a better loyalty deal.

Charity – when a percentage of the spend is donated to a selected charity.

All these can be used to great effect to interact with your customers.

Bars, restaurants, clubs, shops, hairdressers could all benefit. In fact any business were people visit regularly.

Claiming the places feature to start with can be a little frustrating and setting the ” check in ” deals in countries other than the USA takes a lttle time, but Facebook users are using this feature in ever increasng numbers.

Many Facebook places pages have large numbers of  check ins ( done by customers ) and the owners of the businesses don’t even know, see the attached screen shot as an example ! (673) could you ignore 600 of your customers ?

Facebook Place Page

Now just think about this..Every person on Facebook as an average of 130 friends

So if you could get just 50 ” check ins ” only 25 of their friends check in and 12 of their friends, followed by 5 of their friends, now that is REALISTIC how many relevant people would receive your message….75,000 for FREE

Claim Yours Now …

For users they, go to the Facebook app on their smartphone, tap check in, tap on the places icon, the tear drop, tap on the listing in the drop down menu, the “deal” will appear, then they tap on the “claim deal” and just follow the instructions from there, easy!

Online marketing is the smart way to promote your local business.

If you need help give us a call +44 01524 858670

For Successful Marketing Using Articles You Need.

Yes, article marketing is still an effective way to distribute your content and get back links.Article directories which are of poor quality should be avoided, so check out the authority and the page rank of the site before submitting to them.
Make sure you include your anchor text links, 3 are recommended, one in the body that points to your category, two in the bio or resource box one to the homepage and one to the post itself.
Do not outsource, unless you know the quality is very good and you check that it is unique not just copied. Quality is the key to good syndication of your articles.
The search engine will only show the best version with the most authority or back links in the search results, so use your keyword headline only in the copy on your website Otherwise the other spun versions, or those published on other sites might well get a better rating than yours !
Successful marketing using articles can be hard work but, it still is one of the best ways to spread the word around the Internet and to get anchor text back links to you website.
Good content, well written will always comply with the Google terms and conditions, just remember to manually audit the results before publication, more so if you are using a spinner, to leverage your work.

With the new Smartphone’s more and more people are using them to search for local businesses, text friends and invite them to meet ups, at their place of choice.That could be your cafe,restaurant,shop or business.
They also download apps that have GPS with maps, so they can easily find your premises or contact details.
Do you answer your mobile or at least pick it up when it rings ? of course and so do the majority of people, so think about that !
Direct mail get’s put into the trash, so do email junk, but NOT mobile ads.
Before the spammers get to greedy and ruin a good marketing medium, get your business information mobile friendly,then use the power to get your message out to your existing customers and NEW customers.
A simple text invite at quiet times could transform your profit figures.
Here is a video that explains things a lot better than i can, if you need any help give me a ring and we can arrange your first successful mobile campaign.