Arine Solutions - 3 Proven Strategies To Help Your E-Commerce Sales

With e-commerce sales on the rise, more and more companies are relying on web space to competitively sell their products and services. As consumers become more comfortable shopping online, it is becoming much more difficult for businesses to compete for online sales. Furthermore, with all the latest Panda and Penguin changes, it has become very confusing and increasingly frustrating to figure out which channels to invest in for producing the greatest ROI. In such volatility and uncertainty, how do e-commerce websites compete for consumers and grow their revenue? Here are  proven strategies that will help you to increase your e-commerce sales.

1) Measure Everything
From email marketing to an Google Google Adwords campaign, it’s important to track every lead. For example, let’s say that you are sending a promotional email to your audience. In this case, it’s relatively easy to measure campaign performance by using URL shorteners such as Google’s URL shortener. It’s extremely important to take your time and properly tag each and every link. It’s not enough to know which email campaign produced the most results. You need to know how many people clicked on a link, how much revenue is generated from customers clicking on that link, how many total transactions have been generated as a result of individuals clicking on that link, and the average value and e-commerce conversion rate. Each and every piece of the marketing campaign should be very carefully and meticulously tracked. As a result of this effort, it will be possible to take the most successful pieces of the advertising campaigns and combine them together to produce a much more powerful lead generation campaign that yields more ROI. Every time you enact a marketing initiative, ask yourself: How can I measure and track it?

2) Rely on Multiple Sources of Leads
With all the algorithmic changes such as Panda and Penguin, it has become increasingly difficult to compete for organic space. Relying on a single source of leads, such as the organic section of the search engine, can put your business efforts in very dangerous territory. Algorithmic changes will continue to occur; therefore diversifying your lead generation efforts will give you balance and more certainty.
There are many ways to drive qualified traffic to your e-commerce website. Some good choices are: email marketing, Facebook Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, LinkedIn LinkedIn Ads, StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery, Reddit’s Ads, Google Merchant, Yahoo Yahoo Ads, etc. In the effort to diversify and increase leads, it is necessary to continuously search for more ways to promote your products or services. First, test your advertising efforts on a small scale, and if it works, than continue scaling it. Every e-commerce business is different and will respond differently to each advertising effort. Try not to invest too much time reading and researching various studies. You will need to try something for yourself to see what works. Each business is unique. Other studies or results might not correlate to your own business.
I’ve tried hundreds of ways to generate leads, and after all this time, I still don’t understand why some lead generation efforts outperformed others. Furthermore, it is not beneficial for me to spend a lot of time figuring out why some people buy and some people don’t. What makes my efforts successful is trying things on a small scale and scaling up successful ones and scaling back unsuccessful ones. I would also recommend that you don’t completely give up on unsuccessful campaigns. Consumer sentiment changes over time, so repeating an unsuccessful campaign in a different time frame could bring tremendous results. The most important thing to remember is to constantly search for new ways to generate sales and always test to see what works.

3) Use the 80/20 Principle to Your Advantage
In e-commerce, the 80/20 principle is extremely useful–especially in determining the success of each individual lead generation initiative. I always like to do more of things that work and less of things that aren’t working. It only makes sense to concentrate one’s energy on successful outcomes, rather than shooting in the dark hoping to produce a positive ROI. The 80/20 principle works extremely well when applied to e-commerce KPIs such as: Product Revenue broken down by specific Product/SKU, E-commerce Conversion Rate broken down by each Source/Medium, Revenue broken down to specific day and time of the week, and Bounce Rate on each particular Landing page. The 80/20 principle is also extremely useful when looking at products sold. A lot of times, 20% of products result in roughly 80% of profit. Therefore, why not cross-sell the most popular products on relevant product pages? Why not move these products toward the top of category pages? Or, why not include these top sellers on a home page?
When it comes to specific times of the day and day of the week KPIs, you may see that a Google Adwords campaign generates the most sales on weekdays between 12:00 pm and 11:30 pm. Why not take 80% of the budget and apply it towards that particular time frame? However, before spending cost of the budget on a whole campaign, it is very important to understand that each campaign should be designed with a micro focus in mind. The more specific a campaign is, the easier it is to measure and scale.
When it comes to e-commerce success, you will need to measure each campaign all the way down to tracking each and every individual link, rely on multiple lead generation sources, and apply the 80/20 principle while analyzing some of the e-commerce KPIs. All of this can significantly help you increase e-commerce sales.

For more details visit our website http://www.arinesolutions.com
Our facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/ArineSolutions
Our LinkedIn Page : http://www.linkedin.com/company/arine-solutions
Our Twitter Page : https://twitter.com/ArineSolutions
Our Google+ Page : https://plus.google.com/+Arinesolutions


Read More : http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2013/07/30/3-proven-strategies-to-help-your-e-commerce-sales

Arine Solutions - How to Create a Search-Friendly Website

All of the effort you've invested in building your website won't mean a thing if search engines can't access your content correctly. One important way to make sure this doesn't happen is to have search-friendly website architecture.

To understand this issue, you need to know how search engines build the indices from which they derive the website listings displayed on their results pages. Google and the other search engines don't have teams of people who archive every single page on the Web. It relies on programs called "spiders" -- automated robots that move between links and store information in a site's code in their databases.

Making sure these spiders can access all of the content on your site is extremely important for SEO. Unfortunately, a number of website architecture mistakes can make large portions of your site unavailable to the search engines' spider programs.

Here are a few of the most common mistakes, as well as tips on how you can avoid them.

1. Overuse of content in image or script files.
Because they aren't living, breathing human readers, search engine spiders can read only the text-based content that's presented to them. If you store information in image files, Flash animations or Javascript codes, such as your website's header graphic or introductory video, the spiders may be unable to process the content appropriately.

The solution is to duplicate the information stored in these alternative formats with text versions. Try using a tool such as Webconf's Search Engine Spider Simulator to observe what the spiders see after arriving on your site. If you notice that chunks of content are missing, either provide the excluded information as text elsewhere on the page or use your site's robot.txt file -- what gives instructions about your site to search engines -- to redirect the spiders to specially designed, text-based pages you've created to provide them with the same information.

2. Deep vs. shallow navigation.
Many beginning webmasters run into trouble when a site's navigation becomes too deep. Because search engine spiders move between the pages of your site through the links you've created, it's important to make this movement as easy as possible for them. If your navigation structure is deep, meaning certain pages can be accessed only after a long string of sequential clicks, you run the risk that the spiders won't penetrate deeply enough into your site to index all of your pages appropriately.

The solution is to implement a "shallow" navigation structure, in which every single page on your website can be accessed by both visitors and search engine spiders within two to three clicks. You can accomplish this task by breaking up your navigation structure into sub-categories or incorporating additional internal links.


3. Inconsistent linking practices.
As you build these links, you'll want to be careful about how you name them. Again, because the search engines can't apply human judgment to see what you meant to do, their spider programs may index the URLs "www.yoursite.com/page1.html" and "yoursite.com/page1.html" as two separate pages -- even though both links direct visitors to the same location.

To prevent these indexing errors, be consistent in the way you build and name links. If you've made this mistake in the past, use 301 redirects to let the search engine spiders know that both the "www" and "non-www" versions of your URLs are the same.

4. Incorrect redirections.
When it comes to 301 redirects, any time you move the pages on your website -- whether you're simply renaming them or transferring your entire site to a new hosting account or URL – you'll want to put the correct redirects into place. Failing to do so can result in future indexing errors and eliminate the benefits provided by the backlinks you've spent time acquiring, as these links no longer point to valid pages. Both of these issues can reduce the search engine results rankings you've worked hard to develop.

Because this topic can get technical and can't be covered adequately in a few sentences, you might want to seek out online resources for additional reference, such as SEOmoz's guide to website redirections.


5. Failure to include a site map.
As you improve the accessibility features of your website's architecture, make sure you have a site map in place. This file provides the spiders with an accessible reference of all the pages on your site, allowing indexing to proceed correctly. For instance, here's Entrepreneur.com's site map.

If your site runs on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento or any other established platform, you should be able to install a plugin that will automatically generate a site map page for you. If not, creating a site map can be as simple as building a single HTML page with links to all of your other pages and submitting it to the search engines for consideration.

For more details visit our website http://www.arinesolutions.com
Our facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/ArineSolutions
Our LinkedIn Page : http://www.linkedin.com/company/arine-solutions
Our Twitter Page : https://twitter.com/ArineSolutions
Our Google+ Page : https://plus.google.com/+Arinesolutions



Read More : http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223722

Arine Solutions - Social Media Optimization (SMO) - 10 Tips

Why Social Media?  Share product announcements  Drive traffic to your site  Run contests  Share useful content  Publicize job openings  Gain subscriptions  Have fun  Promote your blog postings  Show your personality  Share photos of employees, partners and customers  Share important industry news  Promote your next event ACTIVITIES BENEFITS  Get noticed  Have your message amplified  Get people to promote your brand  Generate awareness  Attain thought leadership  Generate sales leads  Get people to share on your behalf  Accelerate the sales cycle  Attract media attention  Retain customers  Drive new revenue opportunities  Attract new employees  Attract new investors Tweet me: “94% of businesses surveyed use or plan to begin using social recruiting in 2013 (source: @Jobvite)”

10 Social Media Tips in 30 Minutes

1) Consistent branding across channels. Challenge: Can you identify the inconsistency (above)?

2) Strategically hyperlink from profile pages. Arine Solutions and social profiles Arine Solutions: “Hyperlinks in social media profiles can drive clicks and SEO”

3) Reciprocate (follow and add back). Twitter  Retain new followers by “following back”  Allow followers to “DM” (Direct Message) you  Facilitate social listening Facebook  “Like” brand pages who follow you Google+  As users add you, add them back to your Circle(s) Tweet me: “Reciprocate on social media: as you gain followers and friends, follow back #DNN”

4) Tag (link to) other users. Twitter  Sharing content: include the author’s Twitter handle in the tweet Facebook  “Tag” a brand’s Facebook page in your post Google+  Include users’ Google+ handles in posts LinkedIn  Ask employees and partners to link to your Company Page in profile updates Tweet me: “Get noticed on social media by tagging other users #DNN”

5) Learn the tricks of the trade for each network.  The retweet on Twitter  Tagging on Facebook  The “@ mention” on Twitter  Managing circles on Google+  Creating product listings on your LinkedIn Company page  Hosting Google+ Hangouts  Tailoring the title and description of your Facebook posts Tweet me: “Not every social network is the same. Learn the tricks of the trade for each one #DNN”

6) Measure, evaluate, adjust. Evaluate Content type Topic Time of day Post length Post messaging Humor vs. no humor Tweet me: “On social media: measure, evaluate and adjust is the new rinse and repeat #DNN” Measure Reach Engagement Website traffic New followers Click-through rate

7) Mix it up. Tweet me: “Don’t be an automaton: mix it up on social media #DNN” Respond to others Retweet compelling content Recruit your next hire Share content your audience craves

8) Engage proactively and respond promptly.  Interact with thought leaders around their content  Help users with their issues or challenges  Give thanks for content shares  Thank users for compliments  Address negative comments  Reinforce your “brand personality”  Respond in a timely manner (same-day far better than next week; same-hour = nirvana.) Relevant reading: Forrester Wave on Social Relationship Platforms ($) Tweet me: “It’s important to engage proactively and respond promptly on social media #DNN”

9) Cross-promote your social channels.  Expand your following across channels  Promote YouTube videos on Twitter  Promote Google+ Hangouts on Facebook  Promote Facebook Contests on Google+  List social channels on your LinkedIn Company Page  List social channels (and our blog!) on your Google+ profile  Promote your SlideShare presentations on Twitter Tweet me: “Tip: have your social media channels help support one another #DNN” Click here for a “permalink” to the Facebook post, which you can then share elsewhere

10) Experiment with paid advertising  Promoted Tweets (Twitter)  Facebook Ads  Sponsored Updates (LinkedIn)  Video Ads (YouTube) Tweet me: “Paid advertising can be effective for supplementing your social media marketing #DNN” VEHICLES BENEFITS  Higher likelihood that followers see your content  Expanded reach (new users)  Gain followers  Drive revenue.



For more details visit our website http://www.arinesolutions.com
Our facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/ArineSolutions
Our LinkedIn Page : http://www.linkedin.com/company/arine-solutions
Our Twitter Page : https://twitter.com/ArineSolutions
Our Google+ Page : https://plus.google.com/+Arinesolutions

Arine Solutions - 7 Simple Strategies For SMS Marketing Mastery

When most people think of text messaging, they think about texting a friend, family member, or getting a Candy Crush notification, but in reality texting can be put to use in countless ways to help you communicate better with your contacts and grow your business.

Here’s a few ways in which you want use SMS to enhance your business.



Automated Marketing
When a new subscriber joins your group through a webform or by texting in your keyword to our short code, you can create a series of “drip messages” or followups to automatically send messages to your subscribers.
What we find that works well from clients is providing a message to the person right away. Then maybe 5 days later provide a discount on your product or service if they have not purchased yet.


Appointment Reminders
It’s a problem.
See many businesses suffer from this. People set their appointment and never show up. In many cases it’s simply because they forgot. This forgetfulness is costing you and your business a lot of money.
A great way to increase your appointment attendance and decrease no-shows is by sending a simple and automated text message appointment reminder. We find that the best time to send the reminder is right after they set the appointment and 2 days before the appointment.
In the message be sure to include a phone number for people to call to change or cancel their appointment.

SMS Contests
A fantastic way to build your list of by hosting and coordinating an sms contest. In your contest you can offer a great prize, a free consulting package, a free product, or a service to one winner.
I’d suggest running your contest for 2-4 weeks and heavily promote it across the web. After the deadline date, just search in your subscribers area and select a winner! It’s that easy.

SMS Coupons & Text Promotions
What’s the fastest way to see an ROI on our text message marketing?
One of the easiest ways to build your list and see an immediate return on investment is to give an sms coupon or promotional discount when they text in your keyword or optin from your online webform.
Once people optin, you can send to them a unique coupon with an expiration date on when they can redeem this offer. A good incentive is to something like “$10 off their first purchase.” This works really well for building your list and generating sales at the same time.

Billing Automation
With Call Loop and our Infusionsoft sms integration, when a customers credit card fails our system automatically sends a text message to that customer to alert them about their credit card failing.
We also send a voice broadcast to the customer to deliver an automated phone call to let them know that their credit card has failed. Using the call transfers feature, the listener can press 1 on their keypad to immediately get transferred to our support team to handle the matter.
This alone has helped us recapture thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

Arine Solutions - How to create internet marketing strategy

Online and brick-and-mortar businesses require Internet marketing strategies. A comprehensive Internet marketing strategy can launch or increase sales substantially for a business. Internet marketing requires a knowledge of social media, search engine optimization (SEO), blogs, email lists, affiliate marketing and more. If you do not already recognize these terms, you may want to learn more about Internet marketing. If you are ready to launch a business or a product, then you should research, create and track a marketing strategy online as well as in print. Read the steps to find out how to create an Internet marketing strategy.

1. Develop your brand name and image before communicating with your market.
In today's marketing world, a brand name and image is as important as the strategy itself. Your brand makes you recognizable amongst competitors, so pick a name, trademark, website, letterhead and business plan before launching a strategy.

2. Study your competitors.
Study them from their website through their sales process, including their marketing strategies. Identify the past and ongoing marketing strategies of your largest competitors, so you know what works in your given market.

3. Study your market.
Decide if you are part of a niche market. If so, you will want to center your strategy on that demographic, instead of all Internet consumers.

• Choose your ideal consumer. Decide who your demographic is, in order to target it with your strategy. Focus the majority of your online marketing budget on your ideal demographic.

4. Mimic the successful marketing strategies of your competitors.

Your market research should tell you how many followers your competitors have on Facebook, how many people they send their email list to and how many people comment on their blog entries. This means that the demographic responds well, and these campaigns should be the first on your list for your strategy.

5. Create a multi-faceted Internet marketing strategy.
In order to increase your brand recognition you should launch several marketing campaigns at once. The following are marketing strategies that you should look at starting within a few weeks of each other:

• Create social media accounts and assign someone to launch interesting material every day. In order to attract followers, social media accounts and blogs must be consistently updated.
• Create or pay someone to write SEO articles. Articles that mention popular keywords related to your product, but also offer tips or advice are a great way to introduce people to your product. They also help your website to show up on the first pages of an Internet search. Do not scrimp on the money you spend for SEO articles, Google has created a way to list top quality articles first.
• Collect or buy email lists. People who have stores have most likely collected emails throughout the years, which can be used for email blasts. If you do not have any emails, you can buy them from marketing companies or neighboring markets. Send an initial blast and monthly blasts updating your customers on new products.
• Create videos of people using your product, how-tos or people vouching for your product. You can launch these videos via your website, You Tube, Vimeo, Facebook or other places in order to draw interest to your website.
• Buy ads on sites that cater to your market. Communicate your brand image, videos or other product info on banner ads. If you don't have the skills to craft a well-designed ad, hire a graphic designer to create a good ad.

6. Set up tracking capabilities for all of your campaigns.
The easiest way to do this is to set up a Google Analytics account through your main Google account. Create a campaign for each facet of your strategy so that you can look back later and see which ones had the best return on investment (ROI).

• Consider buying print ads that cater to your market that also launch at the same time as our Internet marketing campaign. Track this ad by buying a similar domain name that redirects to your site. Let a Google Analytics campaign track the success of the print ad, in comparison to your Internet marketing, through this other domain.

7. Launch your campaign in the same few days and weeks.
Be consistent, if your method requires communication with customers. Follow through with all of your orders as quickly as possible, in order to create good reviews on your website and other marketplaces.

8. Evaluate your ROI and repeat any strategies that were successful, if and when you launch new products.
Some campaigns are ongoing and you can try to slowly or virally increase your following.

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

Arine Solutions - The Online Reputation Management Guide

Introduction

Two decades ago, an executive made a very public and damaging mistake. They spent years regretting that decision and abandoned their profession. They found a new, honest career and in 2007 took a promising job. In 2008, a coworker dug up their past on Google. They were instantly terminated.

In 2008, a business owner found their personal beliefs exposed to the public. There was an immediate and hostile reaction that cemented itself at the top of the search results for both their name and the company’s. The company’s bottom line suffered.

In 2009, an industry leader found that they were the subjects of a disparaging article from one of the world’s major news networks. In a matter of hours, the article was ranking in the search engines for the company’s name. Clients started calling inquiring about the news report, asking “are the allegations true?” They weren’t, but their reputation was tarnished.

In 2009, a small business found their former employee posting negative remarks on an industry-specific forum with an anonymous username. A day later, the forum was ranking second on Google for the company’s name. In the midst of an economic recession, responding to their accuser wasted precious time and energy.

What do those situations have in common?
Neither the executive, the business owner, the industry leader nor the small business were proactive in managing their online reputation. The executive’s name only appeared in legal documents from two decades ago that were now public record online. The business owner had no presence online outside of small news blurbs and people searches. The industry leader only had a brochure site and a number of casual references. The small business was only mentioned online in their flash site, a handful of press releases and on competitive research sites.

When prospective customers, clients or employees are searching for you, what do they see? Is a hate site or Rip Off Report the number two listing for your name? Or, is there a news report telling the story of your incredible growth in the industry?

Let’s assume the old AOL click data percents from 2006 are still accurate:

Photo credit: SEO Book, Google Ranking Value

How many of those users are absorbing the top ten search results before they click? With embedded videos, indented news results and other Universal Search listings, users’ eyes and clicks are getting drawn deeper down the page. If they see a sensational or negative result, how much more likely are they to click on that versus the positive? And, if you don’t have a negative listing, how many of the results are relevant and within your control?

Why do you need an online reputation?

If you don’t control your brand online, someone else will. Consider recent advancements on the major search engines in:

Universal search

Personalized search

Enhanced search results

Rich snippets

There are more opportunities than ever before to quickly rank negative or slanderous results. If you don’t protect yourself, someone can easily post a comment, make a video, create a blog post, file a complaint, promote your competition, develop a hate site and more. Or even worse, an angry employee will leave the company with revenge on their mind and reek havoc with to yours. Managing your online reputation isn’t shameless promotion, it’s a means of defense and best practice.

Who cares about your online reputation?

Your online reputation can be seen in a number of ways. Whether you’re seeking employment, selling a product, looking for an investor or trying to score a date, someone is going to turn to a search engine to learn more about you. The most common groups are:

• Consumers
• Business partners
• Stock holders
• Marketers
• Journalists
• Prospective employers
• Co-workers
• Personal contacts

How can a negative online reputation affect you?

The results of a negative online reputation may be as subtle as a user clicking on a competitor’s search result instead of yours or as damaging as an industry-wide boycott of your products and/or services. Besides the obvious financial implications of having a company’s credibility called into question, there are potential legal ramifications that could dominate your time and cripple your financial sustainability, as well. This will often cement trusted news and legal results in the top search rankings so that even if a case is dismissed or resolved, you’ll be living with the consequences for years to come. Things like, determining who is responsible for the negative reputation, if you’ll have to reposition or remove certain employees or dealing with potential losses in workforce, add further monetary, morale and growth consequences.

How do you assess your online reputation?

Most users won’t look past the first page or two of search results, so you only need to look at a couple pages for each keyword on the major search engines. Start with simple searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN for all that apply:

• Your Name
• Company
• Brand(s)
• Product(s)
• High profile employees
• Handles/usernames

Given advancements in personalized search, results can show large discrepancies based on your location and search history, especially when searching for vanity terms you look at often. To get the most accurate search results, first log out of your account on the search engines or, if you’re searching on Google, use a shortcut for disabled personalized search.

ORM Assessment How do you decide whether you need to build or fix your online reputation? Once you’ve searched for the relevant keyword phrases on each search engine, use a simple spreadsheet or list to determine whether you need to manage your online reputation. Click here to download a basic sample of an online reputation management assessment sheet.

Now that you’ve recorded the top thirty search results for each relevant keyword phrase and search engine, tally the results. You want to record how many were negative, indifferent and how many weren’t about you. These numbers will tell you whether you need to build or manage your online reputation.

The Potential Problem
If you find that you have a number of search results ranking for your name/company that aren’t about you (especially in the top 10), you will need to start building your reputation. Even though there isn’t an obvious problem, you still need to worry. If you haven’t actively grown your search results, then it’s much easier for something to creep to the top when someone does have a problem with your company or personal brand. By not being proactive about creating your online reputation, you leave yourself vulnerable for someone to do it for you.

The exception to this is when you share a name with a celebrity, politician, another company, etc. Unless you have a reputation management disaster, it’s unlikely that you or others will be able to rank well for your name when you share it with a high profile subject. With that said, people will still want to find you online, so consider how others will refine their searches to locate you. Will they add an industry, location or product to the search terms? Filter the search results to locate oddities and a significant lack of results, both of which can negatively impact your reputation.

The Not-So-Obvious Problem
If there are a number of search results that are about you, but they’re indifferent, you still need to focus on growing your online reputation. Why?

When consumers, shareholders, employers, the media, etc. are seeking information about you, you want them to find relevant and positive results. If the search results are crowded with indifferent Web sites detailing competitive research and company profiles, the user isn’t finding something that immediately wins them over. It’s to be expected that you’ll have a Wikipedia entry if you’re a big business, or a directory listing, but if that’s the majority of your search presence, how is the information gatherer supposed to build a positive impression of you? They’ve simply recognized that there’s nothing glaringly wrong.

Also, how many of those results are within your control? For example, a Web site you own, a social profile you registered, a local listing you’ve verified, etc. The more results you see that are within your control, the better. Of course, high profile and positive news results or interviews can only help lend credibility to your brand, but the more results you physically manage, the more control you have over your perceived reputation online.

The Obvious Problem
If someone reports your company to a consumer watch group, a competitor follows you around leaving negative comments or an angered customer devotes hours to publicly hating you, then it’s pretty obvious you have an online reputation management problem. Is that negatively impacting the search results though? If you find a number of, or even one, negative search result, you need to fix it.

The most common reputation management problems come from (ordered by least to most severe):

• Squatted usernames
• Squatted domains
• Doppelgangers
• Job changes
• Name changes
• Negative comments
• False information
• Fake profiles
• Trademark infringement
• Bad news coverage
• Legal documents
• Complaint sites
• Competitor attacks
• Hate sites
• Personal scandals
• Corporate scandals
• Industry perceptions

What should you do about those problems? Seek professional online reputation management services if you don’t already have someone that can effectively fix the situation. We’d recommend contacting Arine Solutions.

Build Your Reputation
The following are simple steps you can take to build your own online reputation.


Protect Your Name
The first step to building your online reputation is to register your username. Purchase all relevant domains and TLDs. If you haven’t yet, also register your username with these five essential social networks:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Naymz

Everyday a new social network pops up and if you don’t act fast, someone else can claim your name. Nearly every client we’ve worked with has had a situation where one or more social networks didn’t have their name available and it was causing a major gap in their brand strategy. In many of those situations, the individual that registered the brand’s username was an affiliate, an angry customer or just someone squatting on the username hoping to get cash from the real owner.

Building your brand is difficult when you don’t have the same handle across each of the social networks. Unfortunately, individuals and business owners don’t have time to chase after those names. Use a service like KnowEm to quickly check and register your name, handle, company, products, high profile employees, domain, etc. across more than two hundred social networks. You can also subscribe to their monthly service and KnowEm will continue to build your profiles as new networks surface on the Web.

Set Privacy Settings

Once you’ve secured your username, you need to protect it. If it’s a personal account, manage your privacy settings. With the widespread adoption of social networking, more and more users have found themselves facing a reputation disaster at the hand of drunk photos, inappropriate remarks, slanderous statements or other poor decisions. Most users don’t realize how their social profiles are getting indexed in search results or how they appear to users outside of their network. Familiarize yourself with the settings of each network you belong to.

Facebook
You can control whether your Facebook page appears in the search engines by selecting “create a public search listing for me”. Edit this by going to:

Settings > Privacy > Search > [select search visibility]

You can now also control the types of information displayed on your Facebook profile if it is indexed in the search engines. By default, your profile picture, friend list, link to add me as a friend, link to send me a message and pages you’re a fan of are public.

If you want to build your online reputation, keep your profile public and everything visible, but be aware of what you’re using as your profile picture and whether anyone would be shocked by your choose of friends. You can find more information about Facebook privacy settings here:

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
• How to Block Facebook Photos

MySpace
MySpace is less advanced than Facebook when it comes to privacy settings, but you can still control how much the public is seeing. If you want your profile to remain private go to:

My Account > Privacy > [select “profile viewable by”]

Twitter

Twitter accounts rank very well if you use your real name as your handle and/or in your profile. Keep in mind that users can find you if they have your email address and tweets are constantly scraped and archived. You should be very cautious about what you tweet unless you’re selective about your friends and make your profile private:

Settings > Account > [select “Protect my updates”]

LinkedIn
LinkedIn has the most robust controls for the types of information you can show on your public profile. You can choose which fields get indexed in search engines or you can turn your public profile off entirely. Find these settings from:

Account & Settings > Public Profile Settings > [select view preference]

Online Reputation Monitoring
Outspoken LogoAn important component to building your online reputation is to monitor what is already being said. The tools below are designed to help you track the important conversations happening around your brand so that you can identify opportunities to get involved, locate people to engage, and to handle small customer service issues before they grow out of control.

Tools to Track Your Online Reputation
Set up alerts and feeds to catch every mention of your name, company, brand, employees, domain, etc. You want to get notification before a problem escalates or enters the top search results. There are hundreds of tools that can help you manage your online reputation, but as a small business owner or individual, the following are the most comprehensive and user-friendly solutions we’ve found.

Feed Reader
Google LogoSet up a feed reader to help you view the custom feeds you’ll be tracking for your keyword phrases. Your reader can be as simple as a gadget on your iGoogle home page or a full feed service like Google Reader.

Google Alerts
Google LogoSet up Google Alerts for free to track Web results, news, blogs, video and groups. Subscribe via email or through a feed.

Yahoo Alerts
Yahoo LogoSet up Yahoo Alerts for free to track news by keyword, stocks, local news, feeds and more. Receive notifications via email, Yahoo Messenger or mobile.

Twitter Search
Twitter LogoFormerly known as Summize, Twitter Search makes it simple to search Twitter for any mentions of a particular keyword phrase. There is also an array of advanced search parameters that let you search by location, sentiment, dates, links, a particular person and more. Subscribe to the feed for your search results.

Technorati
Technorati LogoSearch Technorati to find mentions of your blog or specific keywords across other blogs. Subscribe to the search results feed and get notified of new mentions.

BackType
One of the most robust comment solutions is BackType. With it, you can claim your comments on blogs, find comments that mention a particular keyword, view all conversations from a particular post or article and subscribe to those conversations.

Social Mention
Social Mention is similar to Google Alerts, but specifically tailored for social media. Since Google Alerts can be buggy, Social Mention helps catch immediate conversations around a specific keyword. Subscribe to the feed, get email alerts or download the Excel file.

BoardReader
Track conversations across forums and message boards with BoardReader. You can refine results by date, from a particular domain and by relevance.

Q&A Tracking
Yahoo LogoIf anyone is asking questions about you, your company or a particular keyword, you can track those on certain Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. Do an advanced search for a particular keyword and then subscribe to the RSS feed at the bottom of the page to allow you to keep track of future mentions.

Trackur
Trackur pulls keyword mentions from a variety of sources, not just Google Alerts, but its biggest use comes from the ability to save, sort, tag, share and subscribe to particular feeds. It costs less than $20 a month and is perfect for small businesses.

Get Involved
Now that you’ve secured your username, set up your profiles and created ways to track your keywords, you have to dive into the conversation. What’s being said about you? If there isn’t much, it’s time to get involved. Besides building your credibility, each of the following suggestions will help strengthen your rankings in the search engines.

Build your professional and personal networks. Find your coworkers, friends, clients and business partners, then befriend them. Get involved in their conversations, answers questions, keep them informed of your life or business, etc. Do this on:

• Professional sites like LinkedIn, Naymz and Plaxo
• Personal sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace
• School-related sites like Classmates and Reunion
• Corporate sites like BusinessWeek, Crunchbase and FastCompany
• Review sites like Yelp and Amazon
• Media sites like Flickr, YouTube or Vimeo
• Resume sites like Emurse, Resume Social and Rezume
• Bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg or Mixx
• Popular industry blogs
• Industry-specific social networks, forums and groups
• Local social networks, forums and groups
• Special interest or lifestyle social networks, forums and groups

Position yourself as an authority in your space. When you become an authority, the community is more likely to link to you, send business opportunities, refer you to the media, etc. Here are several ways to grow your authority:

• Start a group, organization, MeetUp or TweetUp
• Participate in Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers or ChaCha.com
• Optimize your corporate profile on the company site (if applicable)
• Create a personal Web site
• List your business in relevant local listings
• Make videos
• Make podcasts
• Create a personal blog or Tumblr
• List your blog in relevant blog directories
• Write guest posts on popular industry blogs
• Conduct interviews with industry leaders on your blog
• Get interviewed on other’s blogs or podcasts on sites like Odeo
• Speak at industry events and/or conferences
• Get quoted in local, regional and national news
• Donate to charity
• Sponsor an event or conference
• Receive nominations and awards
• Promote news-worthy information through press releases

Prevent Reputation Problems
As you grow your presence online, you’ll find that there is more to keep track of. This isn’t a bad thing, but you do need to monitor and manage it to prevent potential problems. You can do this by using different social media management tools, being accessible to your customers/clients, responding to customer service inquiries, owning your negatives, building credibility and responding to criticism.

Social Media Management

Use tools like HootSuite and EasyTweets to manage multiple Twitter accounts.
Use Ping.fm to distribute tweets to multiple social profiles at once.
Use Disqus to track your comment threads.
Use Atom Keep to update multiple profiles at once.
And, keep an eye out for SocialStream to aggregate multiple social accounts

Be Accessible

Most reputation problems start because the user isn’t able to effectively communicate with the business or individual. Then, in frustration, they turn to “simpler” channels like Twitter, blogs or complaint sites. To help combat this, display accurate contact information on and off-site. If you can’t respond within 24 hours, tell users that you will get to them within a specific time frame. Provide multiple forms of contact information. Some users will not want to contact you through email or the telephone. Make both options available to them.

Invest in Customer Service

If you don’t have the budget for a costly contact management system or call center, build a Web-based customer service portal on site. Use tools like Suggestion Box or Get Satisfaction to help you do this.

Own Your Negatives

Why would you ever purchase the domain [companyname]sucks.com? Because if a user is searching for an alternative to your brand or looking to express frustration, wouldn’t you like a chance to win them over? By ranking for your negatives, you give your company one last chance to convince a user why they should stay with your service or give your product another try. You should also purchase negative domains so that others can’t make a simple hate site and rank on domain relevance.

Another important way to own your negatives is to create a Frequently Asked Question or customer service area on your site that asks questions with those phrases in the text like “What are some alternatives to [product name]?” Then give them a different version of your product or services or send them to a friendly partner’s site.

Build Credibility
Do you have client or customer testimonials? If you don’t already have those testimonials, make an effort to collect them in the future. Then, post those testimonials on the site. You can also track positive mentions on sites like Twitter or LinkedIn and add those to your site. Give customers the ability to add product reviews. In short, engage your community to give them recognition for finding you and build your credibility to prospective users in the process.

If you belong to industry-specific associations or groups, establish trust by displaying those logos on your site. Do the same with quality rating services like the Better Business Bureau and security logos (like Verisign, Thwarte and McAfee Secure to name a few). And, give your users a guarantee (that you can keep), so they feel more secure with their decision.

Respond to Criticism
Once you start monitoring your online reputation and you discover there are negative comments being made, how should you respond? If someone is genuinely upset, contact them and try to resolve the issue. Don’t get defensive, just apologize and give them something comparable to the situation whether it’s a promise that they’ll be treated differently in the future, a refund or free products/services. If the user appears to be a troll, a response may not be the best solution, learn how to respond to negative reviews and print out the Air Force Blog Assessment to help you assess users.

If you find yourself facing a serious reputation management problem, contact us for professional online reputation management services.

The ORM Industry
Outspoken LogoStay informed about the latest online reputation management and monitoring news, products and techniques. Here are some industry books, additional guides and articles to read if you can’t get enough ORM.

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

Read more : http://outspokenmedia.com/guides/orm-guide/

Google Webmaster Tools Adds “Security Issues” Section

                   

Google has announced the addition of a new section within Webmaster Tools named “Security Issues.” This new section is aimed at better communicating to website owners security issues, such as site hacks, malware, and so on and then giving a more detailed and concise method of fixing the problem and submitting a review request.

In the new security issues section, you’ll be able to:

• Find more information about the security issues on your site, in one place.
• Pinpoint the problem faster with detailed code snippets.
• Request review for all issues in one go through the new simplified process.

Find More Information:

You’ll be able to see all sorts of security issues that may be on your site, including malware code injection, error template injection, SQL injection, content injection for spam and much more.

Here is a screen shot of some of these security issues as seen in Webmaster Tools:

Pinpoint The Security Threat:

Google will then let you zoom into the actual hack or malware, so you can quickly scan your site for a match on that suspicious snippet of code or content. Here is an example of what that may look like:

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Worry About An SEO Down Side To Responsive Design, There Is None

In a video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, he said you don’t have to worry about there being a down side, related to SEO, when using a responsive design approach for mobile web sites.

The question posed to him was:

Is there an SEO disadvantage to using responsive design instead of separate mobile URLs?

The answer is no, in fact, there is no duplication of efforts when it comes to linking and PageRank, which does have a benefit when compared to using separate mobile URLs.

Here is the video:


For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

Google’s Matt Cutts: When Commenting On Blog Posts, Try To Use Your Real Name

In a recent video published by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts talks about are blog comments with links spam?

In short, most of the time, commenting and leaving links to your site or resources is not directly spam but like anything, it can be abused.

Matt offers some tips on how to make sure your comments are not considered spam by Google or the site you are leaving it on:

(1) Use your real name when commenting. When you use a company name or anchor text you want to rank for, it makes it look like you are leaving the comment for commercial marketing purposes and thus may look spammy.

(2) If your primary link building strategy is about leaving links in blog post comments and it shows that a majority of your links come from blog comments, then that might raise a red flag.

Here is Matt’s video:

Google Offering Online Site Reviews This Monday, November 18th

Google’s John Mueller announced that on this Monday’s Google office-hours, Google will be offering “short website reviews” for webmasters who are looking for advice.

To participate, you must add your website to thisGoogle Moderator page. Then, if Google has time and wants to review your site, Google will review it live, this Monday, November 18th at 10am EDT via Google+ Hangouts.

If you want to be live on the hangout yourself, you can add the event to your calendar and then wait for Google to launch the Google+ Hangout on air.

The site reviews will last one-hour and seems like it will be lead by John Mueller. I am not sure if John will have other Googlers helping him with the site reviews or not.

John explained:

For this hangout, we’ll review sites that are submitted via the moderator page and give a short comment on where you might want to focus your efforts, assuming there are any issues from Google’s point of view.  :)

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com 

How to Increase your SEO with Google Plus

Categories: Google Plus, Google plus marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Google Plus is more than just a social media site. It can be a tool that can help boost a website’s ranking on Google’s search engine.
With the changes and updates on the Google algorithm which was introduced as the Hummingbird, Google Plus becomes an integral part of any online marketing and SEO strategies of bloggers, webmasters and internet marketers.
So what is Google Plus, really?
Google describes the service as connecting social, communication and people which is designed to build your website’s ability to rank higher on search. Here we show you how to increase your SEO with Google+.

4 tips to build content relevance on Google Plus

Blogger and content marketers use their Google Plus profile to associate their content to their own authorship. By writing high quality content about subjects belonging to your business category will help the search engine to identify you as an authority within your niche. Your content should always be relevant to your business industry to help the search engine identify your business niche where you are trying to build your authorship.

The main objective of Google Plus is to improve the user’s experience by integrating quality content publication to your social networks. It requires that your content should be one that is relevant, accurate and updated for the benefits of your readers.

In order to help the search engine identify your authorship and field of business industry, Google Webmasters offer the following tips to help you build your content relevance on search:

• Optimize your Google Plus profile. It is important to optimize your Google Plus profile in order to make it more revealing to your followers. As much as possible, complete all the required fields from your Google profile such as adding your profile image (no one will like to follow an  anonymous Google Plus author), website URL, business details and description. If you can, have your Google Plus Page get verified by Google to improve your credibility. 

• Link your Google Plus Page to your site and social extensions. By adding your Google Plus Page directly on your website will make it easier for the search engine to associate your website to your Google Plus profile. Use the snippet of the code for your Page and connect the code to your Adwords campaign as well as to your social extensions. Using the Google Plus badge or the +1 button will also make it easier for your social connections to follow and identify your authorship to your website.

• Be consistent in posting high quality content. People are more likely to follow you if you are able to constantly connect with them by posting high quality content that they find useful. By writing highly relevant content,  the search engine queries can assist you in achieving high rankings in Google web search and even on the Google Plus search results. 

• Make your content dynamically engaging. To make your post engaging, offer your readers solutions to their problems. Commenting on the conversations on your Google Plus page will help your readers to easily connect to your content, making it more relevant to their needs and to the search engine as well.

Creating your Google Plus page and snippet

In order to help your authorship become more popular in the search engine, you need to optimize your Google Plus snippet. This will be crucial in order to drive traffic to your Google Plus Page. The Google Plus snippet will show your Google Plus Page image alongside your content in the search result. Web users can also immediately find the number of your Google Plus circles directly from the snippet.

The benefits that can be derived from optimizing your snippet include:

• Building more credibility and professionalism on your content and authorship.
• It can capture the attention of web users that can encourage more clicks and grow the number of followers.
• It can also be a good tool for building your own personal branding.

All these can help boost your website’s rank on the search engine through your Google Plus authorship popularity online.

How the Google +1 button can boost your search ranking

The Google +1 button is another tool available that comes with your Google Plus profile. If you are already familiar with the Like button on Facebook, the Google +1 works in a similar way but much better.

The button provides its users the benefits of conveniently sharing their content in their social media networks and to encourage others to click on the button to express how cool the content is. This can significantly increase the traffic of your website and helps boost its search rank. Each time a web user clicks on your Google +1 button, it is a way of sharing your content to their networks. The more people sharing your button sends signals the search engine that your content is relevant and worth sharing to others. This gives your authorship a boost in the search engine calculations.

The use of the Google +1 helps your search engine ranking as well. Google announced upon the launching of the Google Plus that they will be using the Google +1 button as a social signal for website ranking on the search engine and will likely to be used on search quality in the long term. Each time someone clicks on your Google +1 button it adds to your credit on the search rank that adds more relevance and credibility to your website.

Adding the Google + button to your website is easy with these steps:

1. Go to the Google Developers (https://developers.google.com/+/web/+1button/) Google+ Platform under the Products section.
2. Select the options that are available to suit your preferences as to where you want the Google+ button to be annotated on your website and the button size. There are also advanced options available for you to tweak upon to create your button.
3. The tool will then generate the code for your Google+ button. Use this code to paste on your website which should appear like this on your HTML:

<html>
<head>
<title>+1 demo: Basic page</title>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com” />
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js”>
</script>
</head>
<body>
<g:plusone></g:plusone>
</body>
</html>

It is best to position the Google+ button on a specific area in your content that will make it more accessible to your reader’s viewing. Google Webmaster suggests that you should place the button above the fold to make it more visible to your website visitors. It can also be placed near the title of your content. These positions will optimally make your button more easily accessible without the need of scrolling down your website page.

So what about you?

Have you set up a Google+ page? Have you created Google Plus one sharing buttons on your site? Do you enjoy using Google+?

Look forward to hearing your insights and stories in the comments below.

Guest author Kelly Wilson 

Want to learn how to make your blog a success with social media marketing and contagious content?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.

For our Services and to Contact us visit http://www.arinesolutions.com

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/11/11/how-to-increase-your-seo-with-google-plus/#WF6ACUK1C3bjU5dD.99