When Does SEO Start to Work?

SEO professionals are often asked “How long will it take for me to see results?”  The answer varies, but is usually based upon two factors: how long a website has been online, and the current level of competition. There are of course many more elements that contribute to the results of an SEO campaign, including new vs. redesigned/reformatted websites, and the skill and experience of the SEO professional.

To realize when SEO starts working you must also be able to realize that when you are working with a relatively new domain, it is going to be difficult to gain or gage rankings for about three months.  Sometimes this will range closer to 6-9 months to see a significant rise in rankings.  When working to establish a time frame, set realistic expectations and recommendations.  You should also expect these projections to be updated post-launch as your site’s index and crawl patterns are established.

When redesigning a website, one should keep in mind that search engines will still use the old URLs for some of their searches and so many users will find themselves inundated with robots.txt files, 404 errors, etc.  However, if a site relies on home page rankings for top keywords then a redesign will not usually hurt any rankings too much.

New domains should have brand term rankings almost immediately after the initial crawling.  Benchmarking therefore is important to understand how post-redesign crawl behavior is working for a website.  You should be monitoring cherry keywords and measuring them with search engines to better understand how this is working and your rankings. 

Redesigned websites will almost always experience a slight drop (or perhaps a major one) in traffic even when using a SEO.  However, if you do well in maintaining high volume keywords then the dip will not always be based on the redesign but also seasonal dips in your branded traffic.  Perhaps the best way to monitory post-launch success is to use analytics that have been properly configured.  Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer are great tools for finding new and continued rankings.

Perhaps the worst thing for SEO success is lack of SEO implementation.  This can be dangerous because even the smallest problem can become a huge problem later down the line.  When you partner with an SEO provider you should remember the “fear of flying” analogy.  New sites should set their first goal to rank for potentially some local or other modified tail searches and brand.  Rankings should visibly rise within six months.

The first goal for redesigned websites is to maintain their current rankings for traffic.  After this you should expect to establish that your optimization is in place and then you should work to develop the trust of your customers in your new pages.


To learn more about SEO and how an SEO campaign can benefit your website, contact the SEO professionals at Active Web Group for a free SEO analysis of your website.

Online Marketing Solutions for E-Commerce Websites

Perhaps the most important factor improving the chances of success for an e-commerce site is searchability. A high ranking on search engines gets you noticed faster and more often than the sites of your competitiors. To achieve a high ranking, you can utilize either Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which produces what is known as “organic” results, and search engine marketing such as Pay Per Click (PPC), which achieves what is referred to as “paid” results. and Pay Per Ranking (PPR), which is a specialized SEO technique.

SEO Marketing works by integrating targeted keywords and keyphrases within the content of your website to enable search engines to better understand the relevance of the content of your site to specific targeted search terms.

PPC marketing is a type of online advertising, also utilizing relevant keywords. When a search is conducted related to your keywords, a sponsored ad link will appear alongside organic search results. People who click on the ad will be taken to your website or the landing page you’ve designated, and you will a pay a small fee for the click.

The combination of SEO and PPC can be an extremely powerful and effective marketing campaign.

Pay-per-Ranking is an innovative, cost effective Search Engine Optimization service developed by Active Web Group that allows a business to gauge their online web presence and cut down on their marketing expenses that only requires them to pay for results. Pay-per-Ranking® is an extremely attractive marketing strategy for businesses seeking good search engine rankings within the search engine result pages.

Facebook Ads Improve Brand Awareness and Increase Sales

A recent article published in Advertising Age by by Jack Neff discusses the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook and the different types of online advertising strategies available on the popular social networking site.

An excerpt from the article states:

Facebook-home-page ads on average generated a 10% increase in ad recall, a 4% increase in brand awareness and a 2% increase in purchase intent among users who saw them compared with a control group with similar demographics or characteristics who didn't.


But the increase in recall jumped to 16% when ads included mentions of friends who were brand fans, and 30% when the ads coincided with a similar mention in users' news feeds. Brand awareness saw similar bumps: up 2% from just a home-page ad, 8% with a "social ad" bearing mentions of friends who were brand fans and up 13% when a home-page ad appeared along with a mention of friends who were brand fans in the users' news feeds.

Purchase intent was 2% higher among viewers of home-page ads vs. nonviewers, but got a four-times-bigger bump, up 8% either from social ads or when ads appeared alongside organic mentions of the brand in the news feed.

Read the full article: Nielsen: Facebook's Ads Work Pretty Well

Visit Active Web Group for information about online marketing solutions

Email Marketing Embraces Video Emails

Sometimes, despite the best efforts of your online marketing and creative teams, an email marketing campaign can seem stagnant or repetitive. And even when your copywriter has composed outstanding content, the possibility exists that the email might never get read by a significant portion of your target audience.

A growing trend for increasing interest in email and email marketing campaigns is the addition of video files in email: video email marketing. Adding a video to your email marketing messages has the potential to attract and engage new customers and subsequently increase your market share. With the rising online marketing trend of utilizing YouTube videos or video files on a corporate website proving to be increasingly effective, the concept of adding compelling video messages to an email is an obvious transition.

A customer or client may not take the time to read through a few paragraphs of content, but statistics show that 80% of Internet users will in fact sit through a two-minute video, provided it is exciting, informative, engaging and entertaining. Online marketing studies also reveal that approximately 50% will respond to a call to action after viewing the video email.

Creating a video for your email campaign does not need to be expensive. Short videos can be produced quickly and in a cost-effective manner. You can utilize inexpensive video editing software, and using a simple, no-nonsense format works best. Just as email text content should be short and to the point, so should your email video.  Title it effectively so that recipients will know what they are about to watch, and then show that. Eliminate any fluff or filler.

There are several video creation companies who will create email videos for you or your corporate website, but they aren’t wholly necessary. More often than not, a B2B email video appears more authentic and valuable when it doesn’t appear to have a small Hollywood budget.

Thinking of Starting a Small Business Blog? Active Web Group Offers These Top Tips.

The Internet marketing professionals at Active Web Group, Long Island’s leading online marketing solutions agency, know that today’s Internet marketplace is more competitive than ever. Businesses both large and small need to explore every online marketing avenue in order to remain competitive, and a corporate website simply isn’t enough anymore – businesses are utilizing marketing methods such as SEO, PPC, Email Marketing and more. But many fail to recognize the potential benefits of starting a small business blog.

A blog can act as an extension of your website and attract new visitors and customers, and increase sales and brand recognition. But there are important factors to consider before starting a small business blog. Although initiating a blog is a fairly simple process and requires very little or no expense, your company’s marketing efforts may be in vain if the following tips offered by Active Web Group are not considered.

1. Determine your goals – What is your ultimate purpose for starting a blog? Will you be posting informative articles, marketing related content such as press releases and promotional messages, or utilizing the blog as a means to open further communication with your client base? Perhaps all of the above? How closely related will your blog be to your main corporate website?

2. Decide upon a name – The name of your blog should be short, easy to remember, and incorporate targeted keywords that will make it easily searchable by your target market.

3. Who will host the blog – There are many options available for free online blog hosting, making setup quick and painless. Wordpress, Blogger, and others allow you to easily customize templates, colors, fonts, and more, so that your blog can closely resemble the theme of your corporate website if you so desire.

You might also choose to purchase your own blog software and host the blog on your own servers. Assuming you have an employee who is well-versed in such technical skills, then these efforts might be worthwhile.

4. Design & Content – Both will affect how well-received your blog is by visitors. Typically, you’ll want the design of your blog to accurately represent your brand, image, and corporate colors. Most blog software allows you to easily cutom-design your blog. Content is a bit more tricky.

You want to provide content that offers some value to visitors of your blog. This is what will keep them coming back on a consistent basis, serving to increase brand recognition and convert clicks to sales. If you plan on posting a variety of content, it would be best to determine specific categories and integrate this into the blog design, enabling visitors to quickly navigate to the desired section. To increase the searchability of your blog (enabling search engines to find you blog in response to specific search terms ), you’ll want to try to integrate SEO keywords into whatever content you post.

Regardless of whether you’re posting informative articles and industry-related news, press releases, or promotional sales and specials, SEO will go a long way towards attracting new visitors.

Lastly, be sure to update your blog on a regular basis. At least twice a week should be sufficient. A good method of ensuring this practice is to have an in-house copywriter or a freelance or online marketing agency writer deliver a steady flow of blog content so that something is always ready to be posted.

5. Promote Your Blog – Use social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, forums, and Linked:In to promote your blog and post links to articles and postings. Also, be sure to include links to your blog on your corporate website, as well as a reciprocal link from your blog back to the website.

As your blog grows in content and visitors, you’ll want to examine advanced marketing methods such as analytics, and methods of increased interaction with visitors.

Niche Marketing Online Businesses to Rise in 2010

According to the Internet Marketing Center, the number of new online businesses has been steadily increasing since November of 2008. This is likely due to the high rate of unemployment, with consumers searching for new ways to generate income. The lure of being self-employed and running an online business has gained suitable attraction, but of course, without proper marketing, many of these new businesses are becoming lost amidst the hundreds of thousands that populate the vast ocean of the Internet.

Online marketing has also seen an increase, though much it focuses on low risk, low cost solutions such as email marketing which is relatively quick to implement. But while online marketing has definitely played a major role, the most successful online businesses have been those that have tapped into a niche product or service. Competitive pricing and marketing will account for some success, but a niche product will keep a steady tide of consumers repeatedly coming back.

With so much competition online, it can be fairly difficult to find such a product. Consumers who are interested in niche marketing should try and sell a product or service relative to their own knowledge and experience, rather that attempt to market a product in which they possess little or no knowledge.
Then, after suitable market research is conducted, building a website is typically the next step. It is at this point that many online businesses stand to fail before they are even begun. Building a website without first exploring, and more importantly, understanding the different options available, from pre-designed templates to custom-built websites, can result in a website that receives zero visitors, and subsequently zero sales.

It is understandable that once a particular niche product or service is found, you might want to get a website up and running as soon as possible. But just as you’ve properly conducted important research regarding a niche marketing endeavor, so too must you research website design, e-commerce solutions, and search engine optimization (SEO). Understanding these concepts and employing them efficiently are all factors of a successful online business.

To maximize the speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness in which your website is built, it is best to utilize a full service online marketing agency that can handle all of the above online marketing solutions and more. One such company that has worked with a large share of niche marketers is Active Web Group, based on Long Island, NY. With over 70 years combined experience in web marketing, AWG has designed and built websites, as well as implemented other online strategies, for a large variety of niche marketing companies.

To learn more about how to market your own niche product or service online, visit Active Web Group today.