Another important association has recently accepted Big Shark Marketing- The Better Business Bureau. We are now confirmed members of the Online Reliability Trust Mark.
http://www.bbbonline.org/cks.asp?id=1080205115729867%20

Big Shark celebrates 1 year anniversary!! Although we have been providing search engine optimization, web design and other forms of marketing services for over a decade, the company “Big Shark Marketing” is a new venture for us.

We see a lot of great things coming for the new year and we look forward to growing our Web Marketing Company to a whole new level!

I just had to post this as I think this is a handy tool for others out there migrating from Windows to a MAC.I was in a bind this past week with my email. Now that I’m using Entourage, you cannot move all your email over from Outlook with ease. I found this great tool called MessageSave that easily takes all your email (subfolders, even Tasks, and Address Book) and saves it into an mbox file. I just saved it, published it to my server, downloaded it here onto my macbook and dragged it over to Entourage… voila! All email was there ready and waiting for me!! Very cool. You do have to buy it if you have over 50 messages. Single user costs about $50 but it’s very worth it.  http://www.techhit.com/messagesave/dl.html 

Wishing everyone a wonderful and prosperous 2008! Big Shark is entering year 2 of it’s business, and we are really excited with how quickly this web marketing company is growing! Stay tuned! 

Less than 3 weeks away we celebrate 2008.  It’s hard to even imagine this year is finally over. We’ve been quite busy here at Big Shark with many new web design, marketing and pay per click clients.

Many people have been planning their marketing strategies for next year. I was surprised to see in some of my networking groups that many have not even thought about their Online Marketing.

If you have a web site for your business, it is crucial that you stay ahead of the times when it comes to effective marketing, promotions and conversions of your sales and services.

Here are some basic tips to consider for 2008:

• Web Site Review- How does your site look? Is it out of date? If you haven’t modified it since the late 90’s you defnitely need to!
• Test all your web pages- do they link correctly? Use a free, handy dandy tool called Xenu’s Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html)
• Fix any broken links, images, or anything that seems out of whack.
• Does the site show up in both browsers- Internet Explorer and Firefox?
• Write down ideas or thoughts you have about your web site… for example, did you always want to change the colors from black and white to blue and grey? Are their outdated photos that you need to replace? Have you always wanted to add some sort of ecommerce capabilities but didn’t know how?

Marketing the Web Site:

• Do you rank in the search engines?
• Do you have Pay Per Click accounts at Google AdWords, Yahoo, MSN AdCenter, ASK, etc?
• If you do have Pay Per Click, is it working? Are you tracking conversions or any traffic data for that matter? Are you testing and re-testing ads? Do you need a professional to review the accounts and offer some insight?
• Articles and Online Press Releases- this is an area of Web Marketing that is really taking off and I suspect will be pretty big in 2008. The value is incredible- added content which helps your organic rankings in the search engines, as well as pushing the social networking to unbelievable measures. Think of Digg, Technorati, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, ETC… ETC… If you don’t know about these, make it a point in 2008 to learn. It’s FREE and very valuable.
• Email Marketing- Still a good tool for effective promotion. If  you have never sent an email to your clients defnitely do this in 2008. There are a lot of creative outlets available that shouldn’t cost a fortune. Just PLEASE look into options carefully so that you don’t spend 08 explaining your actions to ISPs who may be considering your emails as SPAM.
• Link Popularity- Also a good tool for promoting your site in the Search Engines. Also, an area you have to be careful in. Link farms, Link Spams, still exist. Only link with sites you feel will make your site better and are of value to the type of business you have.
• Videos- If you have a business that can show demonstrations of products or services, consider making a video. Places like You Tube are more than just bored teens (and adults). If you can create something that isn’t tacky, and is helpful to your online visitors, you can have another means of promotion for your business– and again FREE!.

You can have a very successful 2008 if you plan now on how to go about it. Of course, companies like Big Shark Marketing can help too! Contact us for a Free Web Site Review and Consultation, and let’s see how we can make your web site grow.

Earlier this year (May-ish) Google became “universal” in their search results. While SEO Pros definitely noticed it right away, many site owners have not. Recently I have found myself explaining Universal Search to several of my clients, and decided to explain it again this time in a blog in hopes of educating more visitors out there.

Basically, Universal search in Google is everything Google offers in one result. For example, let’s say you type in the phrase, “swimming pools”. Depending on how Google is displaying the results that time, you may see several photos of swimming pools, then 2-3 maps for local swimming pool companies, then 5 organic results and finally at the bottom of the page, several links to news feeds related to swimming pools. This is Universal Search. Google’s way of combining all the options they offer into one.

This doesn’t mean each time you search, you will see this. I’ve seen nothing but organic results sometimes while other times, I see AdWords, followed by 3 organic listings, 1 You Tube video 2 more organic listings, a press release and 4 archived news feeds from the NY Times.

So what does this mean to your site? It is imporant that you consider other avenues of Web Marketing other than just SEO and Pay Per Click. Online Press Releases, Articles, Images, even You Tube videos can help.  The beauty of it is most of these areas can actually be FREE to you. It’s free to create a You Tube account, Free to submit many articles and there are many low cost and even free places to submit a press release.

Whether your launching your brand new web site, or trying to increase current business from the web, you should be using both pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) in your internet marketing plan.

Why both? Quite simply they can compliment each other. Pay Per Click is a fast, very controlable form of internet marketing. Search Engine Optimization is a viable, must needed method to promote your site ‘organically’ in Google, Yahoo, MSN and so-on.

Search engine optimization takes time. If you are a brand new site, consider a good 6 months to a year (yes that long) to really start seeing some good ranking results on the search engines. While you build up your organic SEO, you can have Pay Per Click in place helping you bring in leads by promoting sales, offers, specific products and services. Pay Per Click can literally turn on within a day, use a very specific budget (monthly, daily, etc), track results to and from your web site and even be geographically or industry targeted.

As your organic side of internet marketing grows, consider slowing down the pay per click side. For example, if you have a great keyword ranking in the top 10 positions of Google (the left hand side of their search engine), then you may want to scale back on the paid version of this keyword to save money. The beauty of this is simple testing, re-testing and reviewing your campaigns to see what works, what’s already ranking and what can be removed to save you on marketing costs.

Pay Per Click Marketing is a valuable component of your web marketing strategies. Unfortunately so many people believe in setting up the account, write some ads and set a budget and let it take its course. Pay Per Click (PPC as we call it) can only work for you if you make it a point to pay attention to it on a regular basis.

The beauty of PPC is the ability to add, delete or modify ads anytime you wish. If you sell products online and rely on the holiday season for your sales, this is absolutely critical for your web business to focus on.

Testing ads means just that; test an ad to see how well it is working for your business. You should many categories handy in your campaigns. For example, create a sale category in your campaign and use it soley to test various sales and offers you plan to run. Ads should point to various pages and not soley on the home page. Let’s say you want to offer a “Refer a Friend and Receive Free Shipping”. It would be wise to create a web page specifically for this target. This page should speak of the offer, and display some items of ‘choice’. 

PPC programs such as Yahoo will allow you to set up time limits on your campaigns. This means if you are indeed running a promotion, you can easily set it up to run the amount of time it’s available. Even if you are not running a promo, this is yet another great way to test your ads.

Beyond testing, you have to make sure you are tracking. Just about every big PPC search engine out there offers some form of  tracking or analytics. You should be able to see where your buyer came from to determine which ads work better than others.

Just applying  1-2 hours a week can make a big difference on how well (and how much you spend) on your Pay Per Click campaigns.

With the holidays approaching, web sites are gearing up for the last push of sales for 2007. One thing that still amazes me is the lack of gift certificate or coupon options available on so many ecommerce sites.

Even if your site doesn’t directly sell a product online, you should consider offering some form of ‘gift giving’ options. A cleaning service for example doesn’t offer a tangible item, but many out there (including myself) would love to receive a certificate for home cleaning services.

It’s actually pretty easy to offer such options on your site. Many shopping cart programs come with this feature. Start by asking your programmer or web design service if this is part of your cart program or if they have a script available to install.

If you manage the web site yourself and shopping cart certificates are not an option, consider offering your own version using PayPal.

Another creative way is to create your own using a simple printshop program. Place links on your site offering gift certificate denominations of 10, 15, 25, 100, whatever you choose.

Some other options:

Try to partner with sites that offer programs such as http://www.giftcertificates.com

Pre-paid cards are another option: http://www.parago.com/GiftcardPrograms

Keep in mind if you do decide to offer gift certificates or coupons that you have a way of tracking the purchased items. If someone does purchase via a shopping cart or PayPal you should be able to add a tracking number, code, phrase, etc that will allow you to enter whenever the certificate/coupon is used either in your site or at your store.

I read online reviews before making a purchase online do you? According to a recent Deloitte Consumer Product Group Study, virtually all consumers interviewed find online product reviews to be credible. 62% of internet users  read product reviews written by other consumers. As mentioned in a recent emarketer article, “More than eight in 10 respondents in the Deloitte study who read consumer reviews said that the reviews had affected their buying intentions: either they became more determined to buy the product or they changed their minds and bought a different product altogether.”

 More than 2/3 of US online retailers did NOT allow consumers to post reviews this dispite the high percentage of consumers relying so heavily on this information to determine whether or not to buy the product or service online. Another recent survey found that 42% of US internet shoppers thought that featuring consumer reviews on Web sites increased consumer trust in the web site and products.

As the holidays are right around the corner, one would think ecommerce sites would rethink their strategy in such a viable (and free) tool.