Custom Website Design News

For small businesses, television advertising can be too expensive and often out of reach. With Google T.V., television advertising is no longer out of reach. Google T.V. ads use the Adwords platform to help create T.V. ads in minutes.

Google T.V. works with the Dish Network to provide impressions based on your budget.  You tell them your budget and they work with you to get you the most impressions on the best channels for your business. We’ll help you define your target markets and provide the tools to reach your audience. Google T.V. also requires no minimum and no long-term commitment. Some of the channels offered include: A&E, ABC Family, Animal Planet, BBC America, Bravo, Cartoon Network, CNBC, Comedy Central, CMT, ESPN, Food Network, History Channel, Lifetime, MTV, SyFy, USA, and many more.

We have developed a strong relationship with Google and with our Google Adwords expert, Seth Rand, will create a strong T.V. campaign for your business. To find out more information about Google T.V. and Icon Website Design visit www.buytvad.com.

As the year comes to a close, I reflect back at the good, the bad, and the ugly that happened in 2009.

The Good…

The biggest thing to hit Social Media, becoming the top word of 2009: Twitter. Twitter blew up in a big way in 2009, the explosion starting somewhere around March from what I can tell. Twitter became a way of life for many of us, the way we received and shared information about anything from current events to who was best dressed last night at the Oscars. For me personally, it was how I learned Social Media, how I became wrapped up in this evolving world of communication. We learned the right and the wrong ways to tweet and how tweeting can benefit your business and also hurt it. Companies like Zappo’s proved to be leaders in customer service while others fell by the way side.

Another word of the year… unfriend; declared by the Oxford Dictionary. The definition: “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

Other honorable mentions include: Facebook in general; whether you mention the acquisition of FriendFeed, exceeding 300 million users, or helping Zynga’s (creator of Farmville) worth exceed $1 billion, Facebook had a pretty amazing year.

The Bad…

The rapid decline in traffic over the year has spurred MySpace to consider other ways to recover from a pretty bad year for the once leading social networking site. Recently, MySpace acquired imeem, a social music service, hoping to spur more traffic to the site. To listen to music on imeem now, you have to create a MySpace profile, plus those previous imeem users have lost their playlists and can no longer access the mobile apps, something MySpace assures will be fixed… we’ll see about that. Speaking as someone who just deleted their MySpace profile this weekend, I’ll go to last.fm or Pandora as I’m sure others will as well. After spending the better part of the year trying to reinvent themselves, it seems they have little to show in terms of progress losing over 5 million users this year. One can only hope they’ll find a way to successfully reinvent themselves, not to stay afloat, but to achieve relevancy again.

The Ugly…

Twitter Celebrity Wars. Do I really need to explain?

As blogging gets more and more popular and effective, businesses are starting to take hold and are finding ways to promote themselves through article writing. Not always an easy task, people often find that what they thought would drive traffic, doesn’t and what would be viewed by many isn’t. Online articles are very different from their traditional format. Paragraphs must be short, the writing style must be consistent, headings must be targeted and compelling, and there are many other “rules” for writing articles for the internet. The “trick” is following all of these rules AND getting to the point quickly!

Instead of trying to break down the “rules” yourself, we can provide our experienced staff that will use all their knowledge and technique to get your company the public attention it deserves. Not only will we compose your professional article for you, but we will also submit the article to Digg and other social bookmarking sites along with promotion through Facebook and Twitter. For more information visit us at www.seocopywritingpros.com.

Many website are stunningly beautiful graphically, show clearly the thought and creativity that was put into them, are the types of sites that you only dream of having as your own, but there’s just one thing; the content is only so-so and not written to be Search Engine Optimization friendly, meaning that the site isn’t going to get the types of results it wants and needs in a search engine because it doesn’t have the right keywords located throughout. Even if the site is search engine optimized, it will not garner the same results that a SEO site with keyword rich content would.

This same problem can be applied to your news articles, blog postings, and press releases as well. Writing smart content that uses SEO friendly keywords will give you a larger audience thus giving you a bigger response.

When looking at your website, are you fully satisfied with its beauty knowing that it could be so much more? Knowing what you know now, wanting copywriting that makes you and your company sound like experts in your field, while having correct spelling and grammar is a no brainer. In addition, you will want the copywriting to be done in an SEO-friendly way, using the right keyword density ratio for search engine optimization purposes.

After developing over 400 search engine friendly websites, Icon Website Design learned that most of their clients did not have the time and experience to write search engine friendly copy for their website. That is why we have launched SEO Copywriting Pros, a professional copywriting service for content that is ready to be used for search engine optimization purposes. To find out more about the clients we have helped and the SEO copywriting services we provide, visit www.seocopywritingpros.com.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become a very popular and effective way to drive traffic to a website. With search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing promoting certifications in their pay-per-click programs, it is clear that this new form of advertising isn’t going anywhere. Google Adwords, the leader in pay-per-click advertising, along with its competitors have created ways to make pay-per-click advertising easy and cost effective. The concept is the same across the board; pick your targeting keywords, create a sponsored ad or link and only pay for each click.

Before diving into pay-per-click advertising it is best to analyze which methods are best for your company and if it will truly benefit you. Some of advantages of pay-per-click advertising are:

• PPC is very targeted. You can decide the time of day and location (country, state, city, etc.) you want your ad to be seen.
• Your campaign can be turned on and off when you want it to be. This is ideal for testing the conversion rates for your website. You can learn when is the best time to achieve the highest conversion rates and set your campaign to turn on then or turn off when it’s not the most lucrative time.
• You pay for CPC (cost per click) in pay-per-click advertising versus cost per impression from traditional banner advertising. This means you only pay for the ad when someone clicks on it, thus you really are paying only for the true traffic you are sent.

While the advantages are significant there are some aspects of pay-per-click advertising you need to be aware of before diving in that may be more disadvantageous to your company.

• As pay-per-click advertising gets more popular, there will be more competition for the top spots thus creating a higher cost to get to the top. This however, is not a major disadvantage as with all business comes the concept of supply and demand.
• Unlike SEO, it is easier for your competitors to outbid you in pay-per-click advertising, especially if they have a larger budget. With that said, spend your advertising dollars and pay-per-click budget wisely to ensure your not digging yourself an early grave.
• Keep track of your quality score. Google uses a quality score to determine how much they will charge you per click for each keyword chosen. The lower the score, the more they will charge.
• Don’t make a novice mistake by not tracking your ROI. Pay-per-click advertising may be easy at first but the whole point is to track your success. If you let it go, you will no doubt be throwing money down the drain.

So now looking at the advantages and disadvantages you may be a little disconcerted about the idea of using pay-per-click advertising, don’t be. Just be smart and hire someone to handle it for you. We, at Icon Website Design are experts in pay-per-click advertising, managing over $2 million dollars a year for our clients. To find out more, visit us at www.iconwebsitedesign.com

There are many benefits to affiliate marketing. The first being that it is low risk but can give high returns. The investment is typically low since you will not have the inventory that a normal business has. Normal costs are the cost to set up your own website and to promote your sponsor’s products and your website. Because you don’t have inventory you remove the worry about unsold inventory and returns. All you have to worry about is promoting to your targeted market and cash in the commission checks.

Another benefit to affiliate marketing is the freedom to work when you want and as hard as you want since you are the boss. Your affiliate business will grow at the pace you want it to. You can promote as much or as little as you want. If you just want to keep your business as a supplementary income, you can slow the pace and just collect a small check. However if you want to earn a good living and replace your current income then you can do this as well. It is all up to you.

To learn more about affiliate marketing and how your business can benefit from it visit us at www.iconwebsitedesign.com. Icon Website Design has experts in affiliate marketing and the connections to get your business where you want it to be.

Often you’ll run across a website that is very simplistic in a boring way not a creative way. Mundane content, lackluster appearance and overall something that looks like it was thrown together. Adding a flash video to your website can make your web site come alive while increasing your conversion rates. It gives a great first impression while allowing the content you want to be absorbed completely.

Another way to grab your visitors attention is with video spokespeople. Having a virtual video spokesperson on your website allows you to introduce your company with your own custom message as well as grab attention unlike your competitors. Video spokespeople can dramatically boost your returns on your online marketing programs.

To find out more about the benefits of flash video and video spokespeople for your website visit Icon Website Design at www.iconwebsitedesign.com.

Email marketing is one of the most popular and effective marketing tools used today. Regardless of the size of your company, email marketing has proven success in driving traffic to your website. If your company is looking into email marketing these are the top 5 reasons you should take advantage.

1. It’s inexpensive. In comparison to direct mail, email marketing has no production costs, no materials expense and no postage expense.
2. It’s effective in that you can effectively communicate your promotion or business to your targeted market, thus increasing sales by driving traffic to your website.
3. Your targeted market receives it immediately, thus allowing for an immediate response.
4. You can be more specific about your desired target market. Choose, location, interests, age groups, etc.
5. Email marketing is easy to create and distribute.

We, at Icon Website Design have access to over 5 million opt-in email addresses and are skilled at designing and targeting your email blast exactly how you want it. To find out more about what we can do for you visit www.iconwebsitedesign.com.