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Why and how to use customer reviews to grow your businees

Why and how to use customer reviews to grow your businees

When you shop online, how do you narrow down your choices? And how do you get reassurance that you will receive what you pay for? Do you read customer reviews before deciding where to buy your laptop from or which plumber to hire to fix your drippy kitchen tap?

Chances are you do, which means that your potential customers are also looking at your business’s reviews before spending their money on your products or services. They’re looking at the testimonials on your website, on Yelp, Facebook, Google and on any other sites or forums they stumble upon in their research online.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at the importance of customer reviews and their influence on your target audience’s opinions and purchases and how you can use them to build trust and drive more sales. Already got reviews? Then checkout this guide to combining web design and customer reviews to help overcome customer objections.

Why customer reviews matter

Studies show that nine in ten people read reviews and that these are becoming more important in the purchasing decision, so important that customers say they trust them as much as personal recommendations.

According to BrightLocal’s annual Local Consumer Review Survey:

88% of consumers read online reviews to determine the quality of a local business
39% read reviews on a regular basis
85% of consumers said that they read up to 10 reviews
72% said that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
88% said that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
Plus, according to Reevoo, a ratings and reviews solutions provider, by simply adding a reviews section to your site sales can rise as much as 18%.

These stats show how important it is for businesses to attract more reviews as well as to manage their online reputation. I have no doubt that these numbers will continue to increase in the coming years so make sure you read on to learn how to use customer reviews to your advantage.

Why do you need them?
Simple: more positive reviews = more customers.

  • Reviews can help you generate more sales. While users can learn the basics about your products or services by reading the description on your site or in an advertisement, good reviews can compel users to actually consider buying from you.
  • They can eliminate any doubts potential customers may have about a product, or can help them choose between products.

Aside from increasing conversions, reviews can also:

  • Provide credibility to your business and help build trust with potential customers online.
  • Increase loyalty among existing customers as it makes them feel like they are part of your brand and that their opinions and feedback matter.
  • Help with your products’ search engine optimization (SEO) efforts as reviews are indexed and used for search results. Think about it – people write reviews using natural language, which targets long-tail keywords and helps to give you an SEO boost. So they’re doing the hard work for you.

What about bad reviews?

Worried that not all of your customer reviews are positive? Don’t be. Nobody’s perfect. What matters is how you respond to a complaint or a negative review. Be friendly and polite when dealing with negative comments and show that you care about resolving the customer’s issue.

In fact, a mix of positive and negative reviews can help to improve customer trust. Stats from Reevoo suggest that the presence of bad reviews actually improves conversions by 67%.

Here’s what they discovered:

68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores
30% suspect censorship or fake reviews when they don’t see any negative opinions on the page
So, don’t freak out if you receive a few bad reviews as these will legitimise the rest of the good reviews and reassure users that the feedback is genuine and written by real customers.

Just make sure there aren’t too many bad reviews because that means your biggest problem is not the negative feedback, but your product or service.

Oh, and don’t think about writing fake reviews. It’s already difficult to build trust online and this trust is dependent on the reviews being authentic. If you get caught by your customers or Google, be prepared to pay up, and not just through the fine you might face, but also with your online reputation which will be destroyed.

Tips to attract more reviews from customers

Want to know what’s the best way to get more reviews for your business? Just ask your customers to leave a comment with their feedback.Here are some simple tips to help you gather more reviews:

  • Make it nice and easy for them to share their feedback directly on your website.
  • Create a separate reviews section on your site or one on every product page and offer customers the option to leave a quick rating out of five and a short summary of their experience purchasing with you.
  • Email customers post-purchase and ask them if they would like to leave feedback.
  • Either create a survey or link to your site or other sites where they can review your business.
  • If at first you don’t succeed, follow up with a second email.
  • Set up profiles on multiple review sites. This obviously includes social media platforms like Google+, Facebook, Twitter plus the sites devoted solely to rating and reviewing businesses such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Local, Angie’s List and more.
  • Educate people on your social networks about where they can review your company.
  • Provide links directly to review websites or to the reviews section on your site.
  • Train your staff to ask for reviews. Make your customer service and sales employees understand the importance of asking for feedback from the customers they work with.
  • Create incentives to motivate them to gather as many reviews as possible.
  • Offer incentives to your customers to encourage them to leave a review. This can be a discount on a future purchase. Just don’t pay people to write positive reviews.
  • Offer free samples or trial versions to get more people to try and test your product. This will increase the number of voices talking about your product.

Reviews are not great just at convincing potential customers to choose you over your competitors but also at helping you understand the needs of your customers and how you can improve your offering to meet their needs. This feedback also helps create a direct line of communication that allows you to monitor customer service and the perception of your brand.

It’s hard to find a reason not to want to gather reviews. So if you want to drive your business to success now’s the time to give reviews some attention. Once you’ve built up a bank of reviews, learn how to use them to build trust and boost sales in an effective manner with this guide.

Five Goals to Strive for with Every Site You Design

Five Goals to Strive for with Every Site You Design

Goals are important to have in life. They are especially important for website design, because without any goals, you have nothing to shoot for in the end and nothing to measure your success by. Goals help designers focus on the important things and not lose sight of what you want in the end; goals are what help designers deliver outstanding sites every time.

The results at the end of the site design process are usually pretty much the same with every project; I end up with a site design and I hand it off to the client. In the beginning, I have an idea of what I want to do and what the client needs, and I know I want to strive for an awesome deliverable in the end. The steps in between follow roughly the same path, however each site design is vastly different in style and character needing some different steps to achieve the proposed outcome. Sometimes I feel the need to sketch and other times I jump right on my computer. Even though the process may be different each time, it’s important to have goals with every site, whether you write them down or keep them in the back of your mind while you design. I’ve compiled a list of 5 goals that are important to think about each time you start a site design.

1. Strive for a design that’s user-friendly and beautiful.
A great user-interface is often sacrificed for a wonderful design, but both are equally important and should go hand in hand. A well-designed site helps users travel through your site with ease. Items are where users expect them to be. If they’re in unusual places, they need to make sense and the site design needs to direct users where to go. The navigation is best near the top of the page not because that’s where it looks best, but because users don’t often know to scroll down to find it. If you expect users to scroll to find the navigation, give them a reason to scroll like some movement in the design that directs their eye downward and they’ll find it more easily.

2. Create a site that targets the appropriate audience.
I’ve seen many gorgeous sites that just don’t fit the target audience. A retro site with funky colors may look great for a design studio or a music producer, and your client may love the look, but it doesn’t fit a law office with a professional, corporate clientele. Your client can give you good insight on their particular audience, who they target and what customers they reach the most. Do your research and see what other similar companies are doing. You don’t have to do the same thing, but the feel your site gives to its users should be similar.

3. Design a user-interface that flows freely, allowing users to navigate easily and find what they need quickly and efficiently.
A good navigation is key for a top notch site. A sitemap done beforehand helps determine where pages should go and what items should be placed together. Many sites often have too large of a navigation because they didn’t plan where information would fit best. You need to minimize the amount of space and maximize the amount of pertinent information. Not everything belongs on a company’s website because not everyone is going to have the patience to read it. Streamline the navigation, determine what’s important and throw away the rest.

4. Give the client what they want plus what they need.
As many designers know, the client usually thinks they know best. They do know their company better than you (in most cases!) so do take their advice on their industry, listen to what they say about their audience and the products they are selling. However, they may not know how to organize the information in the most practical manner, and they may not realize the characteristics of web users. Educate your clients on items that are important for them to know and help them understand why they don’t need certain things that may seem cool, like a 5 minute flashy intro to their site.

5. Increase the site functionality with additional code.
A simple website can be made into a great website with the addition of some fancy features with the use of javascript or php. Users will enjoy the extra added feature and it gives designers a chance to try out a new tutorial. There are so many skills out there to learn and add to your repertoire, why not aim to stretch your design legs and try something new with each site? Try a new jquery tutorial or add a fun php script. There are tons of new things to learn every time you sit down to design a site. If you could learn just one new thing with every site, think of where you could be in one years time.

Goals are definitely an important part of being a designer and moving forward with your design and coding skills. You can’t hope to increase your skills and dazzle your clients if you don’t aim for something. Think of what you want to accomplish when you start a new site and aim not for perfection but for a great site design, each and every time.

Why Your Website Marketing Relies On The Right Web Host

Why Your Website Marketing Relies On The Right Web Host

There are many reasons to create a website for your business, but one of the main ones is for marketing purposes. A website can quickly increase brand awareness, help new customers find you, showcase what the business can do for them, why they should choose you, and often even help to draw the attention of the press or potential investors.

When it’s time for you to create your first, or next, website, there are many decisions to make, from the design and functionality, to the content provided and the search engine optimization work involved. However, one area that marketing managers shouldn’t forget to concentrate on is the actual hosting of the site.

Luckily though, if you ask some smart questions up front, do your research, and find out the pertinent information from each company, and you can avoid getting stuck with horrific hosting that has high fees and poor service. Before you sign on the dotted line for any website hosting plan, make sure you ask the following questions.

The right Web hosting plan is important when it comes to getting good traffic and lots of conversions. You don’t want to end up with a provider that slows down your site, constantly drops out, and that doesn’t provide scalability as the website gains popularity. It can be tricky deciding who to go with though. There are so many business Web hosting options to choose from, and it can be hard to know how to properly compare apples with apples.
What Is the Uptime And Security Guarantee?

One of the most important things when it comes to choosing a website host is finding out what their uptime guarantee is. The last thing you ever want is customers experiencing an error message or a blank screen when they come to visit your site, so make sure you only ever choose a provider with an uptime guarantee of at least 99 percent.

Similarly, you also want a host that is reliable in the area of security. With cybercrime a huge issue for businesses around the world, it’s important to make sure that your website is secure from all angles. Not only your company data, but also that of your customers (such as credit card numbers, passwords, email addresses, and the like) needs to be protected from hackers, as does the actual site so that it doesn’t easily crash and end up offline.

Look for a Web host that has things such as Sitelock (which detects and fixes malware and other system vulnerabilities) and domain privacy, which helps to prevent phishing attacks as well as identity theft.

Will Site Content Automatically Be Backed Up?

It always pays to have your site automatically backed up by your web hosting service, but this isn’t something that every company provides, so make sure you check with a provider before you sign up. You might accidently delete a bunch of information on your website at some stage, or face a hacking issue, so you need to know that all of your important data is backed up somewhere.

While this is something you can do yourself, it is much easier if the process is automatically handled, on a daily basis by your Web host instead. Find out what your potential host’s disaster recovery plan is so that you know you’re covered.

Is The Plan Scalable?

Another element to consider when shopping for a hosting service is whether the company can scale with you as your business grows. You should only ever choose a hosting provider that has different levels of service on offer so that you can upgrade over time if you need to.

As well, it pays to find a host that lets you change plans without charging exit fees or contract cancellation costs. Many good Web hosting companies have a variety of tiers that you can choose from on a month-to-month basis, and which let you change up or down according to your needs. This helps if you have a sudden spike in traffic and need more bandwidth, as you don’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg for additional usage costs on your current plan.

What Support Do They Provide?

Another question you should always ask a hosting provider is if they provide free support, 24 hours a day, and if so, would you get to speak to a local expert? There’s nothing worse than having an issue with your site when you’re just sent out an email newsletter, had an ad run, or some other big sales or marketing tactic that is driving people to your site, only to have it crash. You need to be able to talk to someone in a hurry to get any problems sorted out, no matter the time of day or night.

How to generate and close social leads on Twitter

How to generate and close social leads on Twitter

If social media is not delivering the return on investment (ROI) you expect, the problem isn’t the social networks. Just as a blog won’t make money if it isn’t monetized, you can’t expect social media to generate income for you unless you are using it to drive leads and sales.

Following many people or tweeting great content can get you followers, but what you need is to turn those followers into leads. This can be done manually, but only if you are wise about whom you followed in the first place.

Why You Should Choose Your Followers Carefully

Don’t fall into the trap of just wanting tens of thousands of followers. While this is useful for influencers, even they focus on followers interested in their particular topic or niche. If you operate a local business, you want to follow people in your geo-targeted area.

For your business, you want to follow almost exclusively only the people who are interested in the products or services you offer. This is done by searching for people by their location, titles, what hashtags they use, what Twitter chats they participate in, and what they share.

But that is only the first step. To turn a follower into a customer or client requires building a relationship by interacting with them. Most small businesses fail to do this because they don’t want to invest that much time in social media not knowing for certain there will be a pay-off.

Failure to build a relationship with their followers is where most fail at using social media.

Reaching out to and connecting with your followers is simple. Keeping track of your interactions with each follower is the challenge. If you have only a few followers and a great memory you might do fine for a while.

But as the number of followers grows, remembering them all becomes difficult. You can use something like Commun.it to keep track of interactions and manage multiple Twitter accounts. It suggests new followers, but it wasn’t really built for lead generation.

There are many excellent marketing systems for tracking leads, but they do not typically integrate with social networks. Fortunately, there are now solutions that capture your social media activities for standalone use, or to feed them into your marketing system.

How to Get Social Media Followers Into Your Sales Funnel

The key is to identify who your target audience is, seek them out, and interact with them. This can be done manually, but using a social media solution built specifically to do this is a lot easier – and it can track your results.

Socedo is a new automated lead generation platform specifically designed to identify potential leads based on their Twitter activities. It automatically favorites one of their tweets, waits an hour and then follows them.

When they follow back, it sends them a personalized tweet to either start a conversation or suggest they visit your landing page. Socedo adds them as potential leads for sales and tracks whether your sales team decides to approve (follow-up), decline (not worth following up with) or select later (lower priority potential leads).

Based on your actual results, Socedo can modify your targeting to better qualify your leads.

Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads

Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads

As the battle of Facebook vs Google rages on, it can often be difficult for advertisers to decide where they should focus their attention.

Advertising and creating a brand presence on Facebook has different advantages and requires a different approach than advertising on Google AdWords.

Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads: Which is Better for your Business?

Ideally, you’ll want to implement both Facebook advertising and Google advertising. While there are a number of similarities between advertising on Facebook and advertising on Google, there are some major differences as well.

Facebook vs. Google Advertising: Similarities

Both Google and Facebook have a massive potential audience, and they both are primarily PPC advertising channels.

Facebook and Google each offer paid advertising models in addition to free online marketing tools like Facebook Fan Pages and Google+ Business Pages. These pages don’t require the marketer to pay, but are still great venues for promoting your brand and products.

The key difference for advertisers to understand between Facebook and Google lies in your purpose—are you trying to promote knowledge of your brand, or sell a specific product?

Facebook vs. Google Advertising: Differences

Facebook sessions usually tend to last much longer than a normal Google search session, which would make Facebook preferred for building brand awareness or sending a specific message.

Facebook also allows advertisers some unique targeting options such as creating a message specifically crafted for fans of Arrested Development, or for college alumni groups.

Research shows that Google is the better choice for display advertising because it has superior CPC performance, improved ad targeting options, and an enormous array of ad formats that Facebook lacks. Ideally, it’s best to try both and discover which fits best with your brand.

Facebook vs. Google Plus: Why Google+ Grows in Value

While Facebook still has the advantage in terms of intimate data concerning favorite movies, books, TV shows, etc for advertisers to use, Google plans on giving Facebook a run for its money with Google+. Google+ allows Google to also collect more personal user data, and with users staying logged in to their Google account as they check email, use Google+, and surf the web, it can be expected that Google’s user data will soon surmount Facebook in terms of value.

Google also has the advantage when it comes to web searches, which the search engine giant is known for. Google AdWords is the ideal venue for business looking to drive clicks and conversions for specific products; Google searchers often have a specific intent in mind, while users often go to Facebook simply to hang out and chat with friends.

Facebook gives businesses a way to connect with users on a social, personal level in and intimate and friendly space, whereas Google is what people use when they are looking for something specific, and often looking to make a purchase.

Facebook’s click-through-rates can be as much as 1,000 times lower than Google campaigns with the same intent.

While Facebook offers traditional ad displays, Google ads offer a number of different advertising options such as the Google Display Network. Google AdWords offers geo-targeting and other additional features and functions.

One powerful advertising option that Google offers that Facebook does not is remarketing. Google remarketing, also known as retargeting, involves showing ads to users based on their past web activity on your site. Remarketing allows advertisers to follow users and show ads to them across Google’s large network of partner sites on the Google Display Network. This pales in comparison to Facebook, whose ads only show up on its own site.

Bottom line: While businesses will definitely want to take advantage of Facebook for developing brand awareness and developing messages for specific niche interests, Google is the venue to focus on for advertising because of its wide array of advertising features and numerous options.

Google+ integration has also enabled Google to begin collecting the same kind of personal data that Facebook has long been coveted for.

WordStream Makes Advertising on Google Easy

The only problem with advertising on Google is that small businesses are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available to Google advertisers. WordStream was created to fulfill that need; specifically, to help small businesses manage their Google AdWords account in an efficient and easy manner.

Discover how the WordStream Advisor software can help optimize your PPC campaigns and boost your business—try it free today!

Facebook vs. Google Traffic

While Facebook tends to get more traffic than Google+, Google plus is the site to focus on when it comes to driving traffic to your business.

WordStream conducted a Facebook vs. Google Plus research project in which we measured which social media site drove the most traffic to our site. We then illustrated our results in the Social Media Showdown: Facebook vs. Google+ Infographic.

The results of the Social Media Showdown are as follows:

1st Place: Facebook with 47.26% of visitors
2nd Place: Twitter with 27.51% of visitors
3rd Place: Google+ with 15.42% of visitors
4th Place: LinkedIn with 9.81% of visitors
While Facebook took 1st place for driving traffic to our site, this study was conducted when Google+ was only one month old. With Google+ at this point driving more traffic than LinkedIn, it was clear even then that Google plus was an important social media network to focus on. This was happening when we did not even have a WordStream Google+ page or Google+ buttons on our site!

Facebook vs. Google+ Privacy

Privacy online continues to be a growing issue for internet users. How do Facebook and Google compared in terms of privacy? Check out our Internet Privacy Infographic, which compares Facebook vs. Google Plus privacy policies and settings.

Facebook has long been demonized for altering users’ default privacy setting, resulting in users sharing more private information than they initially realized. Google hasn’t fared much better, receiving heavy criticism for combining the separate privacy policies for each of Google’s services into one, all encompassing new Google privacy policy.

While Google’s new privacy policy doesn’t allow Google to collect more information about users than before, Google is now allowed to do more with that private information collected across different Google services. While many users are less than thrilled with these developments, the new uses of data are exciting for advertisers, who will be able to use this personal data to create more targeted ads for specific user audiences.

How To Get To Number 1 On Google Without Breaking The Rules

How To Get To Number 1 On Google Without Breaking The Rules

The ‘rules’  governing clearly state (in 2016), that if you try to manipulate your rankings through ways Google disapproves of – they will penalise your site – for a long time – and Google disapproves of a LOT. Making a claim for a top spot IN A COMPETITIVE industry without quality links and relevant content over a PERIOD OF SUFFICIENT TIME,  in a vertical with relatively stable rankings, raises a red flag to Google. I’ve seen sites rise and rise and rise and when they get to the top, they get slapped back 40 places. Sometimes immediately – sometimes a few months later.

If you are at the top of the results, you can bet Google will take a closer look at your site. That might be deeper algorithmic analysis of your site, or even a manual review…. sometimes I actually worry about all of a sudden appearing near the top of results. Sometimes, it is shortly followed by a big drop, if the methods used were a little ropey.

If I bag a top ten ranking, I don’t usually push for number 1 in Google anymore – not without a strategy based entirely on making things better – low-quality link building, for instance, is just not a long term plan I want to invest my energies in any more. I normally concentrate on other keywords when I get into the top set of results, and on building domain trust, and usually only focus on the main term if I have a solid gold linking opportunity on a site with mega trust.

Why Is A Top Ranking In Google So Valuable?

Money!

A number 1 ranking in Google:

  • attracts the lion share of visitor clicks and gets
  • a lot more clicks than no2 position, and
  • vastly more than the other 8 listings in the SERP

Of course, that’s assuming your search engine results page (SERP) snippet is as ‘clickable’ and ‘relevant’ as the competing pages’ snippets for that search query.

Organic listings as a whole get more (perhaps double) the clicks a sponsored ad listing attracts according to musings in the SEO industry at the moment but it suits Google to balance that out in the future (because Google makes more money from advertising). I would be more specific with the numbers, but I don’t trust most stats out there these days about such things.

Everyone wants to know:

How to get to number 1 on Google?

…but the truth is Google changes what is number 1 in SERPs pretty often.

Typically there a few obvious ways to get to number 1:

  • Free / Natural / Organic Listings
    • Organic Listings
    • News
    • Video
    • Maps
    • Places
    • Blogs
    • Images
    • Social Updates
    • Shopping
  • Sponsored / Advertising links

A number 1 ranking in Google natural listings is most valuable, because you do not pay for the clicks. Free traffic from Google is the holy grail. Websites with a lot of organic number ones get a lot of free traffic from Google.

In competitive niches, you will need to pay Google to be number 1 using Google Adwords, and this will continue to be the case as Google becomes more an more, a local search engine (IMO). Google Adwords is typically the fast way to get to number one for valuable and competitive keywords and keyphrases.

What Do You What To Rank Top For?

Some companies want to rank for different things and certain links and strategies achieve different results. That’s the end of link building for beginners month on the Hobo site – hope you found it useful.

I’d thought I’d close mentioning you really should have a specific goal every time you start link building.

What do you want to rank no1 in Google for anyways?

  • your company name or brand? Not only do you want to rank for it, you want to control every mention of your company name in Google, easily done by social media participation and using the authority of other sites to rank for your brand. Very easy to achieve with just on page optimisation and a few incoming low-quality links (sometimes, not even).
  • Your service, in your area? – again, fairly easy. Done with on-page optimisation (geographic mentions in the title and in the text for instance), and generally speaking some low-quality links
  • Your service in your country? – slightly more difficult than above, but can be handled with plenty of low-quality links from even low-quality, unrelated sites in some cases
  • Your service? – difficult depending on the niche – you’re going to need some decent links or at least the same amount of crap links your competitors have. Crap anchor text links outweigh unfocused poor anchor text links from even relatively authority sites.
  • Your products? – generally speaking, very difficult, especially if your products can be bought in a 1000 other places. You’re going to UNIQUE CONTENT, need links that pass Pagerank, anchor text and trust ie ranking ability. You’re going to need a few trusted sites to link to you to rank all those products. The more pages on your site, the more Pagerank you will need. To get pr, you need incoming links.

A weight of crap links built over time can beat even a relatively trusted site in Google in 2009 – still. However, it’s these links Google have a lot of brainy people working on attempting to nullify, so why swim against the tide?

ESPECIALLY considering just a few links from one site can transfer instant ranking ability and trust to a new site, or one link from one PR5 page can transfer enough Pagerank to heat up an entire 200 page website with no other links. Finding those sites can be a full time occupation though.

Deciding what you want to rank for and how you want to do it are at the core of link building strategy.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation is the process of making pages ‘as relevant as they can be” for search engines to believe they are valuable enough to be considered for top rankings for as many key-phrases as possible in organic or natural listings.

Nobody knows for sure how to get number 1 on Google, not exactly anyway, but getting to number one in Google is largely down the reputation of your website and how relevant pages are to keyword queries. This of course needs to be manipulated to get the best out of a site, and that’s where companies like Hobo come in.

Typically you get to number 1 by having a good online reputation. Big brands have good reputations. Big brands rank at the top of Google, too. Your reputation is increased by the number of quality web pages that link anywhere to your site. Typically relevant pages with the most, and sometimes the best, links rank at the top of Google natural / organic listings.

Instead of focusing on number 1 in Google, your focus should be to appear in as many Google properties as possible, to give your business as much opportunity as possible to appear for as many searches as possible that are relevant to your business. FOr instance, we are a SEO company, so ranking for ‘hot to get to number 1 on search engines like google, Yahoo or Bing might well be valuable to us.

  • How hard is it to get to number 1 Google? Ultimately this depends on the competition for the keyword or keyphrase and the reputation of your website. New websites typically find good rankings hard to come by in Google in competitive verticals.
  • Placing number 1 on Google and getting no traffic? You must be number 1 for a keyword that is not widely searched for.

You searched for ‘how to get to number 1 on Google’ and I hope this article has shed some light on this – at least you know you should be asking:

  • how to get to no1 in Google organic listings?
  • how to get to no1 on sponsored listings in Google?
  • how to get your site number 1 on Google news?
  • get number 1 listing on Google maps results?
  • how to get number 1 on Google video results?
  • how to get to number 1 in Google image search?
  • how to get number 1 in Google shopping comparison?
  • how to get website 1 in Google blog search?
  • how can i get a site to number in Google updates?
  • how to get number 1 on Google local business (now Google Places)?

You can get to number 1 in Google for free if you know what you are doing, and if you don’t, you can pay Google Adwords or find a search engine optimiser like Hobo who can consult with you to help you rank no1 in Google, Bing & Yahoo search engines’ organic listings.

Beware SEO companies who promise no1 ranking guaranteed. No one can guarantee no 1 rankings in Google.

Why Do Google Rankings Change All The Time?

A big misunderstanding of Google and search engines like Yahoo & MSN is to view them as “one big super-computer.” In fact, they are tens of thousands of machines, located in different “data-centers” (DCs) all over the world.

And they do not get updated all at the same! Instead, changes are rolled out slowly, a few data-centers at a time, and a few machines per datacenter at a time.

As a result of DNS-based load-sharing, the “Google” you connect to right now is not the same “Google” you connected to five minutes ago — It is a different machine at a different IP address so different set of results.

So, you are simply seeing results on different Google machines, depending on when you connect (and where you connect from).

If you see your brand-new site appearing and disappearing, but ranking well with increasing frequency, that is potentially good news.

On the other hand, if you see your well-ranked site dropped with increasing frequency, then that is bad news. It is however possible that you’re connecting to only partially-updated servers (computers), and your data isn’t loaded yet. It doesn’t make sense to panic until your site disappears completely, because it might drop, or it might pop back — You just can’t tell.

This is why no SEO company can promise you No.1 in Google. From minute to minute, even Google engineers don’t know who will be top for a specific search term on a specific computer / datacentre.

We aim to build good quality sites with quality incoming links to ensure at least your site remains bobbing about on Page 1 of the results.

We’re not magicians, nor do we “know” how Google works (no SEO company does!). We just know how to make quality sites that feature high up in Google search rankings. We’ve managed to crack this by following the rules as set down by Google, Yahoo and MSN, a bit of ethical creativity and by doing exhaustive research and testing.

As well as always improving customer positions in SERPs, we are always aiming to keep communication lines open between customers and above all to keep customers happy!

A happy customer is generally:

  1. A customer who sees search engine results improve when we are employed
  2. A customer who is always kept up to date with how we’re achieving these results
  3. A customer who is seeing actual quality traffic land on their website that converts to leads and sales.

 

Why you need a website

Why you need a website

A website will expose you to a larger number of potential customers and increase the size of your target audience.
The people who visit your website are already interested in what you have to offer because they have reached it through searching the internet by content and location. Therefore, your business promotion is more effectively targeted.

Internet Purchases Increasing in Popularity
Researching and purchasing products and services on the internet is becoming increasingly popular. Customers can browse businesses at any time of day and night in the comfort of their own home. They don’t have to run all over town and there are no pushy salesmen, no parking hassles and they don’t have to worry about the kids. A website puts the customer in control of the purchasing process and as a result, shopping on the web is becoming evermore convenient and popular.

Get Customers Early
For many people, a purchasing decision starts with research on the web. They often make their choice long before ever entering a store or making the first phone call. Having a website will mean that you are part of their selection process from their very first step.

Promote Yourself Continuously
For the small initial cost and effort of establishing a website, customers have access 24/7. They can read about you and your work when and where it is convenient for them – often, long after you have finished for the day. With an informative website, you can effectively communicate with potential customers all day and all night.

Win Customer Confidence
By providing appropriate content on your website, you can answer visitor queries and provide valuable information that goes beyond mere marketing. Potential customers value this service and can see that your business is knowledgeable and professional.

Inexpensive
As a form of advertising and marketing, a website is cost-effective and great value. Compare the cost with other forms of advertising, such as printed media, Yellow Pages, or radio and television.

More Information
A website does not limit the volume of content you can present. Other promotional media like print, radio and television, charge you by the word or second. A website allows you to fully explain and display who you are and what you do. You can tell potential customers about your work, qualifications, existing clients, completed projects – in fact just about anything that will benefit your purpose.

Dynamic
A website is a dynamic, easily updateable resource through which you present information to your visitors. Unlike other forms of marketing that are either static, or difficult and expensive to change, a website is easily updated.

Increase Customer Interaction
Visitors can contact you via e-mail directly from your site. You can also have online forms that allow visitors to request more information, provide feedback or place an order.

Increase Your Profile
Customers will perceive you as more professional, dynamic, modern and better able to meet their needs. Can you imagine companies like QANTAS, ColesMyer, BHP or ANZ not having a website? How will potential customers perceive you if your competitors have websites and you don’t?

Measurable Success
You can analyse the comprehensive statistics reports provided by your website to see how many people are visiting, what pages they are viewing and how long they are spending on your site.
REMEMBER – YOUR BUSINESS NEVER CLOSES ON THE INTERNET

Internet security

Internet security

Internet security is a branch of computer security specifically related to the internet, often involving browser security but also network security on a more general level as it applies to other applications, or operating systems on a whole.

A computer user can be tricked or forced into downloading software onto a computer that is of malicious intent. Such software comes in many forms, such as viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, denial of self attack, phishing and Application vulnerabilities.

There are a number of remedies to such malicious software such as Network layer security, Internet protocol security, Electronic mail security, Fire walls among others. However, here are some of the internet security products one can use to protect their programs from attack;

Antivirus. Antivirus software and Internet security programs can protect a programmable device from attack by detecting and eliminating viruses; Antivirus software was mainly shareware in the early years of the Internet, but there are now several free security applications on the Internet to choose from for all platforms.

Password managers. A password manager is a software application that helps a user store and organize passwords. Password managers usually store passwords encrypted, requiring the user to create a master password; a single, ideally very strong password which grants the user access to their entire password database.

Security suites. Security suites were first offered for sale in 2003 and contain a suite of firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware and more. They may now offer theft protection, portable storage device safety check, private Internet browsing, cloud anti-spam, a file shredder or make security-related decisions.

Meaning of web hosting

Meaning of web hosting

When you design a website and you want to get it on the web for the entire world to see, you need a web hosting service. A web hosting service provides a medium that lets a personal website as well as a business website to be accessible on the web. The web hosting companies give the webmaster a space on their server which allows an internet connection. These servers are located in something called data centers. Or when web hosting companies do not own the servers then the servers are stored at a co-location.

There are hundreds and hundreds of web hosting companies out there today. With billions of websites already on the web, the companies are now a dime a dozen. There are many different types of web hosting plans out there. If you want to host a simple web page or a hundred page website, there is something for everyone.

If you have a basic webpage, there is very little processing when you are dealing with only one web page. But when you are hosting a larger site, it becomes more difficult to choose a plan. Some of the plans that web hosting companies offer are Free Web Hosting, Shared Web Hosting, Virtual Web Hosting and Dedicated Hosting Services.

Linux vs Windows hosting (which is better)?

Linux vs Windows hosting (which is better)?

Linux vs Windows hosting

If you’ve already decided you need a hosting account, you might get slipped up when you get asked, “Linux or Windows?” Fortunately, there isn’t a big difference between them and either type of account works for most customers.

To make sure you do get the right type of account, though, you should choose the type of hosting account you want based on how you’re building your site.

Development Tool Linux Windows
WordPress® or other Web apps ✓ –
Dreamweaver or other WYSIWYG apps ✓ –
PHP, MySQL, CGI, Python, or Perl ✓ –
ASP, ASP.NET, MS SQL – ✓
ASP, ASP.NET and PHP, MySQL – ✓
I have no idea what any of this means ✓ –

It’s important to note that these are just our recommendations. Windows accounts will actually support most of these development tools but Linux hosting best fits most customers hosting needs.

In order to decide whether to go for Linux or Microsoft hosting you will have to identify what your website will need supported.

If you need to support Microsoft products such as ASP.net, ASP, MS Access, Microsoft SQL Server or VBScript, then Windows hosting would be better.

Linux is generally a more popular option because of its affordability, stability and many features. Linux supports PHP, Perl, mySQL, PostgreSQL and CGI Scripts.

Both Linux and Windows servers are reliable, stable and secure. Generally, however, more viruses are written to attack Windows servers than Linux servers. If you need to host on a Windows Server ensure that your web hosting company continually upgrades their Windows and Linux servers with the latest fixes and patches available.

Two points to note:

First, just because you use Microsoft Windows on your computer does NOT mean that you need to host on a Windows hosting package. Windows for your home computer is completely different from a Windows server.

Secondly, even if you use Microsoft FrontPage or FrontPage extensions to design your website, you can still use either Linux or Windows hosting as long as your chosen package supports FrontPage.

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