17 Jan 2019

Affordable SEO Services in San Diego

Looking for affordable SEO Services in San Diego?

Web Hosting Logic is a reputable San Diego SEO company. We are full-service marketing agency capable of working within any business size and niche to deliver results.

We provide the following services: SEO – Search Engine Optimization, PPC – Pay per Click Advertising, Web design and Development, Content Management, Ecommerce, Social Media & CRM Management.

To get started, contact our San Diego Specialist today at (866) 945-4678.

SEO San Diego

3 Essential Tips for a Successful SEO Strategy for Your Business

In a world where time is money, more and more business owners are turning to the internet to generate new customers and grow their company revenue. But achieving success online is not as easy as it once was.

With more and more companies jumping online the competition is getting fierce. Regardless, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) still provides one of the best returns for marketing investment. With more and more people using Google to conduct research before making a purchase, it is essential that your business can be found on Google.

However, if you are like most business owners I talk with you don’t have the time to market your own business online. After all staying up to date with the latest search engine guidelines and rules is a full-time job.

It makes sense that most business owners would rather hire a professional SEO specialist to complete this work for them.

If this is you then make sure you follow these 3 essential tips to achieve a successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy for your business.

Tip #1 – Choose a Local Provider

The internet and advancements in communication technology now allows us to connect with someone on the other side of the world in real-time. With this technology you may be tempted to find anyone in the world to provide your SEO services.

By finding a local SEO expert, agency or SEO company to carry out your search engine optimization campaign, you have the flexibility of being able to catch up with them in person. You can get a lot out of meeting someone in the flesh as opposed to only meeting them via email, texts or even a phone call. Also when dealing with large amounts of money over the internet I am always cautious until I have a good understanding of who I am doing business with.

Create a strong relationship between you and your SEO provider by meeting in person, to ensure a strong result from your campaign.

Tip #2 – Get a Customised SEO Strategy

Achieving a successful SEO strategy requires complex analysis and planning. There are no one-size-fits-all approaches when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And for that reason you should not choose an SEO package off the shelf and expect to achieve awesome results.

All reputable SEO providers offer a search engine optimisation service that is custom designed for each business they partner with. Reason being is that every business is different in terms of their market, products and services, and business goals.

A successful SEO strategy must take all of this into account and needs to be tailored to the individual business to meet their exact needs.

Tip #3 – Get Progress Reports

Another vital tip is to ensure that your local SEO provider provides progress reports.

Most common is to have a monthly report showing what work was done and how your website rank is tracking. If you are not getting this data then your SEO agency could be doing nothing while taking your money.

Make sure you review this report each time you get it and ensure progress is being made on your business goals.

Play Safe, choose wisely

At the end of the day choosing who to partner with to provide your SEO services is not an easy task.

No-one said choosing an SEO provider would be easy. However, by following these 5 essential tips you will have a much better chance at success.

Do your research and take your time in your decision for choosing who to partner with for your SEO strategy. And also be aware that SEO does take time. But when all the quality work starts to gain momentum your SEO strategy will cause your business to steamroll ahead. Best of luck.

SEO Services San Diego

Disclaimer: This article was written by Greg Davids. Article Source: EzineArticles.com

11 Dec 2018

Why You Should Hire an SEO Agency?

San Diego SEO Company

Web Hosting Logic is a leading San Diego SEO company. We are full-service marketing agency capable of working within any business size and niche to deliver results. To get started, call (866) 945-4678.

SEO San DiegoShould You Use an SEO Agency for Your Business?

8 Benefits of Engaging SEO Agencies to Boost Your Online Presence!

Advertising has transformed to one of the most demanding and crucial aspects of having to run a business. This ultimately means that the overall success of your business is going to depend mainly on the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.

Nowadays, online is where everyone’s at, which is also the reason why most businesses look to promote their products or services online. To do that, one needs to have a business website which will run their internet marketing campaign. With an abundance of spam links and countless other websites floating around in cyberspace, it’s easy for a business website to get lost or rank so low in the SERPs, that the chances of searchers to find the website are seriously diminished.

Since, paying a search engine to place your business website at the top of its list doesn’t come cheap, the next best thing one can do is to use search engine optimization or SEO techniques to increase the clicks to the website and help it work its way up the search engine’s results page.

Why You Should Hire a SEO Agency?

Optimizing a website for a search engine can be not only a tough, but also costly process, mainly because there is just too many business websites competing for the coveted number one spot on the page rank, by using the exact same keywords.

While businesses can opt to do their own SEO, hiring a SEO agency that has experienced search engine specialist will no doubt, help businesses reap ROI in the long run. One of the best ways in which businesses can do that is by outsourcing their SEO needs to qualified SEO agencies.

The growing demand for SEO services has lead to a mushrooming of many a great number of SEO agencies fulfilling their business objective, which has lead many businesses seeking SEO services asking the question, “how do we find the best SEO service provider?”

Obviously, all those searching for SEO agencies will have to make their selection by passing SEO companies through careful and meticulous scrutiny, in order for them to get the best in search engine optimization for their business website.

Benefits of Using SEO

One of the most obvious advantages of using the services of SEO agencies is their ability to enhance the visibility of a business website, but that being said, business owners also raise concerns on affordability, which can only be analyzed when businesses know the benefits of using the services of SEO agencies. In more ways than one, the following are some of the benefits of using search engine optimization services, especially the right ones, which can allow businesses to enjoy the following advantages.

Target Traffic

While businesses embark on an SEO marketing campaign, they should realize that an entire marketing campaign can fall flat on its face if a business is unable to reach the masses, that is, their target audience. It doesn’t really matter whether your business website is attracting hundreds of clicks per day, if those visits are not from your intended target demographic, you will only be seeing them spending time on your website without actually buying anything, which is really the opposite of your marketing intentions.

Get a Well-Made Business Website

Even though, search engine optimization is necessary for businesses to compete with one another online, the importance of the website design cannot be undermined. While hiring the services of a good SEO agency can get you good marketing copy for your website and an effective use of the related keywords, having a brilliantly designed website will help a lot when it comes to attracting people and even the search engines to your website. This is true because search engines always take into account different aspects of usability and the overall layout of the business website.

Cost Effectiveness

The fact of the matter remains that while using radio and TV advertisements can be an effective means of marketing a business’s product or service, it still is very expensive, especially for start-up businesses. By taking their marketing needs online and hiring the services of an experienced SEO agency, a business is able to reach thousands, or even millions of people which they would have not been able to otherwise.

Using SEO Best Practices

Hiring an experienced SEO agency will allow you to get information on the various techniques they have adopted in their SEO tactics. Hiring a SEO agency that has been in the game for a while will also provide you with the added advantage of not having to worry about them using any SEO techniques while working on your business website.

Hiring experienced SEO experts will ensure that your website climbs the search engine ranks without using any illegal practices or short cuts that could produce short term spikes in the website’s ranking, but eventually lead to your website having to pay penalties.

Access to Latest SEO Techniques

Needless to say the field of SEO is constantly evolving, which means that it is important for businesses to stay abreast on all the latest SEO techniques that can help them stay in the game. That being said, businesses usually have little or no time to keep up with the latest developments in SEO techniques. However, an agency providing SEO services is all about being proactive in keeping up-to-date with the latest search engine news and changes in SEO techniques.

Cutting-Edge Tools

Keeping in mind the last point, SEO companies are fluent in navigating through a wide range of online marketing tools that helps increase the value of your marketing strategy. Whether it’s using web analytics for carrying out research or conversion tools that monitor and report the usage of important keywords, SEO agencies know how and where to get the information they need to save time and reduce your in-house cost.

Comprehensive SEO Knowledge

As mentioned earlier, SEO agencies are usually the most qualified in dealing with various verticals of online marketing, mainly due to the nature of their work. Therefore, an SEO agency is able to solve a multitude of problems which a business simply cannot handle by itself. An SEO company can work together with a business to provide an added perspective, when it comes to understanding and developing marketing strategies for different sectors and various types of business websites.

Bottom Line

Lastly, search engines like Google realize all too well that websites that don’t add value to a searcher’s experience on the internet are not worth a mention in their index. Furthermore, in some cases Google might also decide to drop your website from the SERPs altogether if you’ve used spam to get a higher page ranking.

The two main goals of SEO agencies who develop marketing strategies to push your product or service online, is to make sure online content is interesting and no techniques have been used for obtaining your goals. So, are SEO agencies worth it? Absolutely!

Looking for SEO specialist in San Diego? Contact Web Hosting Logic, a reputable SEO company based in San Diego, CA. To get started, call us at (866) 945-4678. Or Send us an Email.

SEO San Diego

Disclaimer: This article is written by Shane Elrock. Article Source: EzineArticles.com

07 Dec 2018

15 Local SEO tools to Improve Your Ranking

San Diego SEO Company

Looking for Local SEO specialist in San Diego, CA? Web Hosting Logic is a leading San Diego SEO company. We design, build, manage and provide SEO for your WordPress Site. To get started, call us today (866) 945-4678.

Local SEO San DiegoThe Most Outstanding 15 Local SEO Tools To Improve Your Ranking

The Importance Of Local SEO

Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy, especially if you’re a smaller to mid-sized company that relies on the business of local customers. There are many different strategies that you can implement, from optimizing your content using keywords to submitting your NAP (name, address and phone number) to various local directories. To help organize, streamline and track all of your local SEO efforts, you should make use of these local SEO tools.

The following are 15 different local SEO tools that you might find extremely useful, some of which are available at a small cost and some of which are free also.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

This tool works for strengthening your local SEO keywords. During the keyword research phase, you can identify the traffic for specific keywords as well as find new local keywords based on local searches. The Keyword Planner tool even lets you conduct research based on geographic regions. Not only it is a useful tool to have for your local SEO keyword efforts, it’s free to boot, and arguably one of the most useful free SEO tools available as well.

2. SEOProfiler

The most powerful local SEO tools that you can put in SEOProfiler, as it includes features such as a website audit tool, website page optimization, a link disinfection tool that identifies bad backlinks, the ability to identify strong local keywords and even customizable PDF reports.

3. Moz Local

Moz Local is a basic local listing management tool that allows users to manage local listings as well as claim and verify listing submissions. The tool also works with data aggregators to help push listings, making sure that your business is visible. Additionally, the tool will scan through your citations and notify you of any errors that it finds which could be hurting your local SEO. Moz Local will give you a rundown on what kind of categories you’re listed under and what type of media is used for your citation.

4. BuzzStream

BuzzStream is a tool for earning local backlinks as it can help you identify and build relationships with local influencers to help drive word-of-mouth traffic as well as boost local awareness of your brand. The tool is also effective for content promotion and digital PR.

5. SEOPressor

SEOPressor is a tool that scores your site’s overall SEO strength and provides guidance and recommendations for how you can improve it, which will in turn help with your local SEO even if it’s not specifically built for that. Particularly useful is its audit feature that will notify you of any pages that need to be optimized in certain ways, it’s a feature that has earned SEOPressor as one of the best SEO tools for small business.

6. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

The most full-fledged local listing management tool that you can invest is Whitespark Local Citation Finder. In addition to basic local listing management, the tool finds where you should list your business to improve local SEO rankings. It also boasts a number of additional features, including the ability to collect customer feedback and online reviews, monitor local search rankings by a city, discover create link opportunities and more.

7. Synup

Synup is useful for submitting your NAP to local directories. It’s a tool that allows you to easily manage your local listings as well as review and analyze your listings and NAP data. It’s one of the most comprehensive directory lists that you can have and it will allow you to check listings to see if you have existing credentials on them, to add your NAP to listings and fix incorrect data on existing listings.

8. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog helps to audit and index the website’s HTML and Meta Data in addition to helping you find any broken links to avoid hurting your local SEO rankings. There are advanced features available as well, but for a price.

9. Serplify

Serplify is web software that will help you to achieve a page one ranking on Google’s results pages by adding domains and locations you want to rank for and automatically adding thousands of optimized unique pages of content for every keyword, as well as automatically mass indexing, optimizing and syndicating your content.

10. Local SEO Checklist

This tool will ensure that you can boost your local SEO rankings. As this tool offers 40 different options that detail specific tasks to help you optimize your site and increase your ranking by developing your blog, your on-page SEO, your social media and more.

11. Upcity Free Website Analyzer

UpCity is basically an SEO report card. All you have to submit your website as it will analyze every aspect of the page, giving you an overall score out of 100 that compares your page to your competitors.

12. ReviewTrackers

ReviewTrackers is a tool that tracks the customer reviews of your business. It plays a big part in your local SEO strategy, not to mention your reputation, which makes this tool very useful. Basically, it collects online reviews and feedback from over 70 review sites that you can use to determine your brand’s reputation as well as awareness.

13. Copyscape

Nothing will hurt your site more than copied content. Duplicate content is a way to damage your ranking, for regular SEO and local SEO. Put your content through Copyscape to make sure it’s completely original and it avoid plagiarism, whether it’s content duplicated from your own site or content duplicated from another source outside of your site.

14. PageSpeed Insights

The rate at which your web pages load will have a huge impact on your local SEO rankings. The slower your pages load, will less likely visitors are to remain on your page. This can have a big impact on your bounce rate, which could hurt your rankings. PageSpeed Insights will not only review the load times of your site but also make suggestions on how to improve it.

15. Ahrefs

Ahrefs can help with your local SEO strategy by providing a detailed backlink profile for any website you want. This allows you to see who is linking to your site, what anchor text they’re using for backlinks and how strong your backlinks are. It also allows you to check the strength of your competitor’s backlinks. The tool is used by thousands of users throughout the world.

SEO is incredibly important to the success of your online marketing efforts, because of this, a lot of marketers implement various SEO tools including local SEO tools, some of which can be found for free, in order to track, measure and analyze their SEO efforts. You may already even be using some of the more common SEO tools, such as Google Analytics. However, it’s important that you don’t forget about your local SEO efforts as well.

Local SEO Services in San Diego

Looking for Local SEO specialist in San Diego, CA? Contact Web Hosting Logic, a reputable Local SEO company based in San Diego. To get started, call us at (866) 945-4678. Or Send us an Email.

SEO San Diego

Disclaimer: This article is written by Gananath Shenoy. Article Source: EzineArticles.com

06 Dec 2018

10 Secrets to Hiring the Right SEO Company

San Diego SEO Company

Are you looking for an experienced SEO company in San Diego? You are at the right place! Web Hosting Logic is a leading San Diego SEO company. We are full-service marketing agency capable of working within any business size and niche to deliver results. To get started, call us today (866) 945-4678.

San Diego SEO CompanyHiring the Right SEO Company

Even if you are armed with an abundance of knowledge in SEO, you may still need the services of a professional SEO company. Having strong knowledge of SEO is hardly sufficient in some cases. Even if you are doing your best to attempt to obtain a good ranking for your website, you might still wind up wondering why your website is simply not doing well. For starters, you must understand that your website will have to be fully optimized in all elements. Not just that, but your website has to be maintained on a regular basis. SEO is a continuous process that includes a great deal of time and effort. To make things simpler, you will be better off utilizing the services of a competent SEO company to do the work for your website.

There are numerous SEO companies today, and there are a lot of trustworthy companies as well as unreliable ones. Thus, it is crucial that you select the perfect SEO Company. Here are 10 important points that you must keep in mind when selecting SEO services:

Site Evaluation Guide

Does the SEO firm offer you a site evaluation guide? A reliable Search Engine Optimization firm should have the ability to provide you with an extensive analysis of your site, regarding ranking and design structure. This can be done by performing a website audit. The result of this website audit will allow the SEO firm to offer you a proposal of how much work needs to be done to bring you to a certain level of ranking. They must be able to advise and troubleshoot all aspects related to performance, content, and design that might hinder the reading or indexing of your pages.

Tools in Figuring out Keywords

What tools does the SEO Agency use to look for keywords? Do they offer competitive analysis based on your chosen keywords? Understanding what methodology the SEO Agency utilizes for keyword evaluation or research is very important. It will be a great help if you perform your own due diligence using basic tools, such as conducting keyword research and analysis through the use of keyword planner in Google AdWords.

Backlinks to Website

Where will the SEO Company return links from? Backlinks are just as, if not more, vital in SEO than onsite optimization. The Search Engine Optimization Company should be able to obtain high-quality backlinks from reputable websites that are highly related to your niche. Ask your SEO Company what techniques they employ for gathering backlinks.

Cost Structure

A dependable SEO Company will not just give you a quote once they figure out how much work has to be included. Charging you high costs will not necessarily ensure you receive high quality services. It also doesn’t ensure that the rate being quoted is proportional and consistent with the services you anticipate the SEO Company will provide. A good SEO Agency should be able to give you a rundown of services to which the performance and price contract will be based upon.

The Timeline

Does your SEO Company provide you with a timeline? It is through hard work and correct planning that results can be attained on time. Some SEO Firms offer SEO plans that claim to put you in the very first page of search results in just a matter of 10 days. Realistically, however, no SEO Company can guarantee you the number 1 position in Google in as short as 10 days.

An SEO campaign will take 6-18 months to deliver the top outcomes you expect. Make sure you don’t give in to false pledges. Conversely, avoid SEO services that provide you with a time limit. A good SEO company knows that optimization is an ongoing process and they should be able to offer you regular maintenance, customer support and proper upgrading.

SEO Technique

What SEO strategy will your SEO Company use to raise your ranking? You should look out for companies that will utilize spam advertising methods to rank you on top in no time. If the strategy includes any form of dishonest practice, such as spamming or deceiving online search engines, then you should instantly turn away.

An excellent SEO company will certainly see to it that you will not be subjected to spam or misleading services. Keep in mind that if it is based on using deceitful strategies, your site might be taken out of Google’s indexing, which will certainly lead your site to being blacklisted. Knowing your SEO Company and doing your own research on how proper SEO is done is extremely vital in choosing the ideal firm.

Providing Targeted Traffic

Do they understand the distinction between plain traffic and targeted traffic? You will hire the services of an SEO Company mainly due to the fact that you need to attract traffic into your website. However, what you need is targeted traffic that gets you visitors who might be genuinely interested in purchasing your products or services. This is based on your desired keywords in order to generate leads.

You don’t want irrelevant traffic that comes to your website because of irrelevant keywords. Unqualified traffic only enhances your bounce rate (surfers that arrive on your page and immediately leave) and not your sales. The right SEO Company will create relevant content for your website and distribute it to relevant channels, social media and Press Releases (PR). This will potentially lead to natural backlinks that will enhance your overall ranking in the search engine.

Transparent Deliverables

A professional SEO Company should have a clear course of action to attain the desired results in a given time frame. They should be able to show the client what’s being completed for the first month and subsequent months. With this, you will be able to determine how much work is being done in relation to your costs, allowing you to determine your ROI. A clear outline of work in the proposal should be available at any time to show the extent of the campaign. This includes how much fresh and high quality relevant content they are going to publish on your website every week. How many distribution channels? What social media, article directories and websites are they going to use to distribute your content? How many PR submissions? And how many backlinks have been generated? These are the qualifying questions that need to be answered by a good SEO firm.

Reporting

A comprehensive report system should be provided to show the progress of the SEO campaign, as well as ranking status of the site. This reporting could be monthly or quarterly. The report should be clear and concise, using the right combination of graphics and texts. This will be the bench mark of how the firm is progressing towards your desired ranking status.

Performance Guarantee

Does the SEO Company offer some kind of guarantee, such as a percentage increase in traffic? Although there are a lot of factors involved in an SEO campaign, a professional SEO company will be able to give performance guarantees based on their years of experience and proven methodology.

These are the major considerations you need to look at when hiring an SEO Agency to make sure that you don’t pour your money down the drain. SEO is a vital marketing strategy to make your brand highly visible online to your target market and to grow your business. It is a time-consuming effort, but it has greater ROI in the long run when compared to other marketing options.

Search Engine Optimization Services in San Diego

Looking for SEO specialist in San Diego? Contact Web Hosting Logic, a reputable SEO company based in San Diego, CA. To get started, call us at (866) 945-4678. Or Send us an Email.

SEO San Diego

Disclaimer: This article is written by Newman Ramirez. Article Source: EzineArticles.com

03 Dec 2018

Social Media for Small Businesses

Social media has become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Businesses of all size and shapes have started making the most of available mediums.

San Diego Social MediaToday we will try to anatomize tips on social media for small businesses. There are a plethora of small businesses eyeing social medium to promote their business/services. However, majorly these small businesses are failing or not being able to make optimum use of social media for their business growth. There are many theories and strategies on how to effectively use social media for established brands, but the topic social media for small businesses is seldom addressed. According to Digital state of eMarketing India 2017 Octane Research:

  • 60% small businesses promote their business on social media. 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multichannel marketing funnel.
  • 70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
  • 52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
  • More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.

The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.

Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefiting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.

10 Tips to effectively use Social Media for Small Businesses

Define your Target Audience

The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the desired results.

Set achievable goals

Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.

Choose the right medium

By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.

Promote your core product/services

Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.

Create quality content

Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.

Create a content calendar

Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.

Test and re-test

Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.

Look for inspiration

Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.

Calculate ROI

Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.

Analyze and Re-strategize

There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.

Final Thoughts

Social Media Marketing San Diego

Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions. To get started, call us today at (866) 945-4678.

Disclaimer: This article is written by Shashank Dhadiwal. Article Source: EzineArticles.com

03 Dec 2018

Custom eCommerce Solution Boosts the Online Business

Small or big, your business is going to yield good returns through Custom eCommerce Solutions. Custom eCommerce Solutions consists of attracting new customers, delivering a satisfactory shopping experience, offering you the tools to manage efficiently.

San Diego Ecommerce

Time has become the rarest commodity in this technology oriented era. Naturally, shopping has taken a back seat. But technology has come to rescue shopping as well. You can shop sitting at home maintaining your privacy; and if you are a business owner, custom eCommerce solutions will help you catering to your needs. Custom eCommerce solutions are meant for both business owners and customers.

Sometimes you feel hampered because your standard plug – in applications will not suffice your needs. At the same time custom ecommerce solutions can be tailor made based on your exact needs. Web companies will first understand and work on your designs and development, integration and implementation.

This ecommerce shopping cart platform supports you with its features to boost your online retail business. The best part of this is, you do not need any in house technical support. Everything is managed by feature rich online store, which is customized according to the needs of customers. From the most modern pricing schemes to versatile catalogs to intelligent sales data analysis, Power shop helps you survive the tough competition. An eCommerce solution is based on rich experience in design and development and also implementation.

Web development agencies have created wonderful ecommerce solutions. eCommerce means everything, related to shopping is done online. You can even shop sitting at home in privacy. eCommerce has been growing helping its customers to the fullest. It is convenient, quick and choice is in your hand. It is just like manual shopping but the difference is you save time, energy, and commuting. In this technology era, everyone is so busy that it becomes difficult to go for manual shopping! eCommerce is a solution for all these hassles. Customers are given access to product/ service section completely.

Most of the businesses have turned online, so also service providers. It means eCommerce has been clicking more than their expectations. There are multiple agencies cropped up offering ecommerce solutions as a package deal. eCommerce sets its own target whether it is product selling or client service. For any business you should have an individualistic approach in eCommerce. Here custom ecommerce solutions play a greater and important role.

eCommerce shopping cart solution is the most favorite of all. Shopping cart can be used for multiple purposes on ecommerce platform. Payment procedure has been managed by shopping cart so meticulously, since it is a major part of eCommerce. These features of shopping cart make it the hottest on e-platform. Here are examples where custom eCommerce solutions have bigger roles. These are the areas custom eCommerce solutions helps us.

  • Ecommerce Trading Exchanges.
  • Electronic Market-places and Online Shopping Malls.
  • Supply Chain Management.
  • Inventory & Product Catalog Management System.
  • Order Entry & Fulfillment Systems.
  • Real-time payment processing.
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System.

ECommerce is booming with high potential in marketing. It is a powerful package for easy ordering, security of data and payment, with quick and proficient delivery. Custom eCommerce Solution is in practice since 1996.

Take Your Online Business to the Next Level! Call Us Today at (866) 945-4678.

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Disclaimer: This article is written by Henrika.  Article Source: EzineArticles.com

29 Nov 2018

Website Development for Business

Effective Website Development For Business

Website Design and Development San Diego

As a website development company, we argue there is much more to effective website development than simply choosing the lowest cost supplier, giving them a minimum brief on required outcomes and leaving them to it. If you would like your website development to be a benefit not simply a cost then you will need to invest a little time in the process before going anywhere near any potential supplier.

First it is important to list your objectives for the website and consider its primary function. Is it intended simply to attract more business from existing customers? Or is it intended to attract a mix of both new customers and more business from existing customers and if so what is the split. If the website purpose is to find more customers describe them, who are they, where are they and why should they buy from you.

If the target is existing customers then what is the purpose of the website. Assuming they know what you do, the basic products you supply and how they can get hold of you then what is the function of the website? It is suggested the website should provide useful relevant information which will keep customers coming back for more and give you the opportunity to up sell / cross sell.

For new customers the website will need to provide some background on the company and boost your credibility. After all the hard work to get prospects to your website you need to engage them and keep them there at least long enough for them to understand that you can deliver what they need and are a credible supplier. You then need to keep them coming back for more until they are ready to buy.

Some key numbers should be identified. What is the budget for the website development process (note the word process – more on that below)? With this figure to hand what return on investment do you expect (break even, 5x, 10x, more) and in what timescales.

If new customers are part of the website objective then part of the overall budget will need to be kept back for search engine marketing. There is little point investing in a website if it will not be found by prospects searching for your products or services online.

Let’s assume the website development budget is GBP1000 and the required return on investment is 5x then it is a simple task to establish how many more products or services need to be purchased as a direct result of the website. Track purchases if practical or as a minimum website visitors to establish if the target is hit.

There is much to consider during the business website development process. It is important to do the research and groundwork before any supplier is approached to ensure the investment is not wasted. With the website in place success should be monitored and content modified and updated on an ongoing basis to achieve the desired result.

Take Your Online Business to the Next Level! Call Us Today at (866) 945-4678.

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Disclaimer: This article is written by Phil D Smith. Article Source: EzineArticles.com.

20 Nov 2018

Creating an Ecommerce Website

Selling products on-line requires a very different setup from your run-of-the-mill blogging site. Let’s look at the things you’ll need to think about when setting up an eCommerce website and help to explain why they cost more to design.

Ecommerce San Diego

First let me tell you what we’re not going to cover in this article.

We’re not assuming that an eCommerce website is a single web page with some PayPal button codes inserted onto it.

The PayPal buttons are great and work very well for those selling a handful of items, but we’re taking eCommerce to the next level and giving the customer a better on-line shopping experience.

Most modern eCommerce website are applications. They have a user interface, administration settings, store data in a database and follow a work-flow of processes. We’re going to touch on some of these areas.

The Basics

An eCommerce website can be thought of as a play with actors performing it’s scenes.

The main actors in an eCommerce website are:

  • The Customer – buys products
  • The Website Owner – ships bought products & gets paid
  • The eCommerce Application – interface between all the actors
  • The Payment Gateway – handles payment transactions (more on this later)
  • The Merchant/Business Bank Account – Website owner’s business bank account (more on this later)

The main buying process of an eCommerce website (‘the play’) happens as follows:

  1. Customer browses product catalogue
  2. Customer adds product to basket
  3. Customer buys product and enters check-out process
  4. eCommerce Application contacts a Payment Gateway
  5. Payment Gateway provides secure customer shipping and payment details entry form
  6. Customer securely enters shipping and payment information
  7. Payment Gateway contacts Website Owners’ Merchant Bank Account
  8. Merchant Bank Account processes payment transaction and returns control to Payment Gateway
  9. Payment Gateway returns Customer to eCommerce Application
  10. eCommerce Application notifies Customer of successful (or failed) payment
  11. eCommerce Application notifies Website Owner of purchase
  12. Website Owner ships product to Customer

Of course there’s a lot more detail going on in each step, but hopefully you get the general idea that setting up an eCommerce application is a tad more complicated than your regular blog-style website.

Where Do You Start?

Sounds silly right, but the first step you need to do is think about the types of things you’ll be selling on-line.
Are these products?, i.e. physical items that require packaging and posting or services provided by yourself or another provider e.g. Professional Yak Grooming.

How may products or types of services are you going to offer? Local or International? Are some seasonal? Do you have a finite stock level for particular items? Do you plan to use special offers & discounts? Do you even like yaks?

This leads to customer and payment questions.

Who are your customers? Where are they? How are they going to pay; credit card, cheque, PayPal? Which bank account will I need to set up?

And then there are the support questions.

How do you handle returned goods? How do you refund payments? How do you handle complaints?

Having a think about the products and services you’re going to offer is vital because the first thing a web designer is going to ask you when you’re requesting a quote is “How many things are you selling and to whom?”

The reason is of course time and costs.

Selling 50 products to a UK only customer base using PayPal requires a very different setup and hence costs, to one selling 1000+ products internationally and taking credit card payments.

Lets look closer at some of the important eCommerce application areas.

The eCommerce Application

Essentially, an eCommerce application is a bespoke Content Management System (CMS). So as well as updating posts and blogs it specialises in updating products and services and supporting commerce functions.

Like any CMS, the application splits the eCommerce website into two major parts; the front-end or shop-front where the customer can browse and buy goods and the back-end where you login to an administration dashboard and manage the website options, including the product catalogue.

The Product Catalogue

eCommerce San DiegoThis will likely be your most important concern and is central to any eCommerce website design.

The product catalogue is where all your goods-for-sale data lives. The product name, description, cost, stock level, pictures etc. are all stored in here.

We sometimes get people asking which files their products are stored in and they get in bit of a tizzy when they can’t find them on the server.

Usually, product catalogues are stored in a database, but don’t worry – you don’t have to know how to use a database. The eCommerce application does that for you through the product catalogue interface in the Administration Dashboard.

Being able to manage this yourself is vital, otherwise you’ll be going back and forward to the web developer and the costs will rack up.

Thankfully, the eCommerce applications that we use, Magento and WordPress e-Commerce, once installed, allow you to manage your own product catalogue from within the web browser.

The Magento product catalogue has advanced options and allows for things like adding discount codes, customer reviews, product videos etc., whereas the WordPress e-Commerce catalogue offers a simpler solution while still covering the essential requirements you’ll need to sell stuff on-line.

So how do you go about entering and updating all this product information?

The Admin Dashboard

Accessing a special web page on your site and entering a username and password will take you to the options part of your eCommerce website. This is commonly known as the Admin Dashboard.

Here, you will be able to update almost every aspect of the website including accessing the product catalogue, shipping costs, currency exchange rates, payment gateways, sales reports etc.

Whichever eCommerce solution you choose from us, we’ll setup some or all of your product catalogue and make sure that customers can purchase items and that you get paid through a payment gateway (more on that late

The Shop Design

Of course your shop will need a look and feel to fit in with your business brand.

Again, just like other CMS’s a web designer will be needed to develop a theme or template which will transform the default shop-front into whatever design you have in mind for your customers.

Themes can be bought off-the-shelf for both WordPress e-Commere and Magento and you can apply these yourself, however, you may prefer to have a design exactly the way you imagined it and different from any of your competitors.

Themes are applied from the Administration Dashboard. You may be able to change a few aspects of the theme, such as your logo, background colour, text colour, however, you’re not going to be able to move parts of the theme around to different areas of the screen. A web designer will need to do this by updating the theme’s code.

Domain Name and Website Hosting

You will of course need a domain name to trade with and a hosting plan to store the website files and databases.

It’s usually best not to purchase a hosting plan until you’ve spoken to a web designer and they have given you an idea of the best solution to implement.

Many of the cheaper hosting plans that are offered to you when purchasing a domain name, do not support databases or database applications. They may charge an extra setup and yearly fee for setting this up.

So try to avoid buying a hosting plan until you talk to a web designer and have an idea of the type of eCommerce solution you’ll need to implement your ideas.

Merchant Bank Accounts vs Business Bank Accounts

Certainly in the UK, you must have a business bank account to legally trade as a business.

Business bank accounts can be used just fine with an eCommerce application but you will need to setup a Payment Gateway service to handle the payment transactions and get the customers money into your bank account.

If you’re opening up a business bank account and your account manager knows you’re going to be running an eCommerce website you may be offered a merchant bank account which is a specialised version of the business account.

The merchant account gives you a Merchant ID number and access to a Payment Gateway service that the bank uses or owns.

It’s likely you’ll need to pay for the setup of a merchant account and it will incur fees, usually on a per-transaction basis.

If you have already setup a merchant account then you will need to make sure your eCommerce application can support the particular payment gateway your bank has given you access to, otherwise you won’t get your money.

e.g. Lloyds TSB uses the Cardnet merchant payment gateway. Royal Bank of Scotland uses the WorldPay merchant payment gateway.

If you were a Royal Bank of Scotland business customer with a merchant account, you would need to make sure your eCommerce application supported the WorldPay gateway.

You don’t need to use the particular merchant account that your business bank offers to trade on-line, but you do need a payment gateway of some sort to handle payments.

That leads us nicely onto payment gateways.

Payment Gateways

We’ve touched on this in the previous section. Essentially, a merchant bank account will give you a payment gateway to use, but you’re limited to just the one that your business bank is affiliated with.

A payment gateway is a service offered by a company.

It handles the payment part of the eCommerce application when a customer proceeds to the checkout to purchase an item.

The payment gateway collects the customers details and payment information securely and contacts your business bank account to complete the money transaction.

This is great for security too as your customers banking details aren’t kept on your eCommerce website, so that’s one less thing to worry about securing.

There are many different payment gateway services with different features and options. As a supplied service they all charge a fee for their use. The fees can include a setup charge and a % commission of the total price of a transaction.

Some payment gateways allow you to pay a monthly or annual fee if your number of transactions are high. This can work out more cost effective for you if your single transactions are high volume but low individual cost.

You’ve probably heard of some of the more well known gateway service providers and not known what they. You’ve also likely used them without even realising they are there. Some of the popular payment gateways are: PayPal, Google Checkout, SagePay, WorldPay and ChronoPay.

It’s great that you have a choice and the services are very competitively priced so take some time to check out which is best for your business model. If you need some help, we’d be happy to meet up and walk you through the options.

Some payment gateways offer two types of general services; hosted and inclusive.

Hosted Payment Gateways

These options usually don’t require a set-up or monthly fee, however, transaction costs can be higher than an inclusive service.

The PayPal Website Payments Standard service is a good example of this.

Essentially, it limits your customers to having a PayPal account (they must register with the PayPal site) and when it comes to check-out, the customers are transferred from your eCommerce website to the PayPal website for the information gathering and payment transaction, then upon completion redirected back to your eCommerce website.

The downside of this method is really from a branding point of view. You have very limited control of how the payment gateway service, PayPal in this case, looks and operates before it redirects back to your website.

Some customers can be put off by redirecting to another site as confidence in security can be questioned (although PayPal in this instance has a very good reputation).

You’re also limiting the payment method to just those customers who are willing to use the payment gateway’s choice of payment. In this case, the customer must have a registered PayPal account.

A similar process happens if you use the Google Checkout payment gateway.

So what’s the other option?

Inclusive Payment Gateways

Inclusive payment gateways will allow your customers to go through the whole checkout process without (the appearance of) leaving your branded eCommerce website.

I added in “the appearance of” because in some cases your customers will actually leave your website and use the payment gateway service, however, the way it is implemented and embedded makes it looks as if it’s all part of your website and business brand.

So what’s the catch?

There’s usually a setup fee, a minimum subscription period (say 12 months), a monthly fee and of course a whole heap of conditions that apply.

Some particular conditions to look out for are thresholds on the number of transactions per month, or total monthly funds transferred. Payment gateway services can charge extra or insist you upgrade your service if these thresholds are exceeded in a similar way that mobile phone companies will charge you extra if you use up all your inclusive talk or SMS time.

The best benefit of using an inclusive payment gateway is that the whole customer experience from browsing to payment is hosted on your own website. This gives the customer a greater sense of confidence that their data will be kept safe and makes your whole business look and feel more professional.

A good example of this type of service is the PayPal Web Payments Pro.

Securing The Data

If you’re using a payment gateway then the good news is it’s unlikely you’ll be storing sensitive customer payment details on your eCommerce website.

Those types of data will be kept securely in your payment gateway account.

Of course you will be collecting a whole lot of other important and confidential customer information such as name, email, perhaps address, likes, dislikes, a username and password for your site.

All this information needs to be kept secure and your eCommerce application will help with that. The Administration Dashboard will have lots of sections that control who and what can see parts of the collected data.

But that’s not the only security you’ll have to think about. Do you know what happens when you fill out a form on a website and click on submit?

If you have a look at the top of the web browser in the address bar you’ll see the website’s URL address. Most sites will start with http://

(For those that want to know, URL stands for Uniform Resource Location and HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)

Any web page starting with http:// is transferring data to and from a web server in Plain Text.

This means, that the web page contents, code, images, text, form data are all sent in a format that’s readable to humans. OK, it may not be that readable, but in essence all the information is there in English characters (or whatever language character set your website uses).

Now for some more techie stuff.

When your web page is sent to or received from a web server, there isn’t a 1-to-1 direct connection between your website and the server. The web page data is transferred through hundreds of networks across different countries and through thousands of routing computers and other network devices before arriving at your computer.

This means that at any point during it’s travel, your web page data has the potential to be intercepted and read by whomever.

There isn’t much you can do about the interception part but there is something you can do to make it a darn lot harder for somebody to read and use your eCommerce web page data.

SSL Certificates

Now we’re talking.

Let’s skip the techie bit and quickly tell you what these are and what they do.

You buy an SSL certificate from a web hosting company (annual renewal most likely), install it into your eCommerce website and it encrypts your web page data. Hooorah!

You’ll now notice that parts of your website, likely those that require personal form data to be collected and sent, now start with https://

The addition of that little “s” letter, standing for “Secure”, means that the web page data is encrypted when sent and decoded only at the two end-points; your computer and a web server.

Anyone reading the page in between will see garbled non-readable characters.

You may also see additional signs of a secured web page such as a closed padlock icon.

We would strongly advise you buy an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and get this installed and configured for use with your hosting account and eCommerce website.

In Summary

Creating an eCommerce website requires a fair amount of planning.

You’ll need a good web design and web development team to implement your business venture.

It will cost you more and take longer to create than a regular blog or brochure-ware website because of all the design and setup.

You’ll make money – and that’s what’s it’s all about after all…

We hope this helps you start your eCommerce website journey. Of course there’s a heap of things we just didn’t have the time to cover.

free website design and development San Diego

Take Your Online Business to the Next Level! Call Us Today at (866) 945-4678.

Disclaimer: This article is written by Wil Brown. Article Source: EzineArticles.com.

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