WSI Net Advantage - Online Business Marketing Blog

Landscape Magazine has posted a case study on their website of how WSI Net Advantage worked (and still does!) with Arborwell Professional Tree Management in Hayward, CA on their Internet Marketing.

Here is a snippet…read more!

It’s no secret that landscape professionals are looking for affordable means of marketing in this challenging economic climate. But to optimize your marketing and advertising efforts, it’s important to evaluate dollars spent compared to leads generated. This type of analysis can yield invaluable information and, in turn, lucrative results.

Take Hayward, CA-based Arborwell for example. The locally owned professional tree and landscape management company enlisted the help of the digital marketing company WSI Net Advantage about six years ago when Arborwell owned a slow, outdated website that was originally built in Flash, making it difficult to update and maintain the website. Arborwell was also looking to increase its presence on the web through search engines.  

Arborwell has been recognized on the San Francisco Business Times ‘Fast 100’list for the past seven years, but less than a decade ago, the small but growing company lacked the state-of-the-art web tools it needed to achieve its potential for growth and success. Besides having a slow, outdated website that required a total content makeover, Arborwell was in serious need of search engine optimization (SEO) work, which is an extremely important aspect of building a solid online presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO combines various tactics to improve the visibility of a website when users are searching key words on the web. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding, as well as adding backlinks and inbound links.

Read more on Web Marketing in the Green Industry and contact WSI Net Advantage to learn how we can help YOU!

Led by Becker Media, Oakland, CA, one of the premier lead generation services for schools, with marketing and site support from WSI Net Advantage, the Saint Louis College of Health Careers has launched its new prospect development site.  With updated layout and design, and crisp page content and calls to action, the new site is expected to generate more leads for the career college.

We are proud to have assisted SLCHC with their efforts to improve their online presence.

World Golf Tour (www.WGT.com) announced on April 13 the release of The 2010 Virtual Majors.  Compete in two Virtual Majors and play well enough to be crowned the Champion of the USGA Virtual Open and The Virtual Open Championship 2010.  The best online golf experience…with Prizes.  We highly recommend it!

If you’re working on selecting directories to submit your site to, here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Start with DMOZ and other directories that require manual addition. These sites typically have the best rankings and get the most usage by searchers.

• Visit Alexa and search for directories. Choose the ones with the highest ranking first and submit your site to as many of the good ones as you can.

• Search for directories in your specific niche. If you sell computer parts, why would you submit your site to a crafts directory? Look for places where visitors in your niche could find your site and submit to them.

• Don’t bother submitting to directories in other countries, link farms, or directories that obviously allow any listing with no SPAM filtering in place. Not only will no one find you in such a listing, but it could also potentially harm your search engine rankings.

• Follow the rules for inclusion at each site. If the directory submission page says you have to link back to their site to be included and you’re not interested or willing to do so, then don’t submit your link. Don’t waste their time or yours.

• Never SPAM a directory! Submit your link once. If you truly aren’t listed within the time period they say to allow (typically up to three weeks), then try again. But be patient, getting listed in quality directories takes time.

• If a directory ranks high enough in Alexa, don’t discount paying for submission. While many people have the attitude that only free directories are worth the effort, paying to be listed in a quality, often-used directory may be worth your money, especially if it targets your particular niche.

Just as with any other form of SEO or SEM, quality is much more important than quantity. Choose the best directories, submit your site as directed and wait for inclusion.

Directories are a worthwhile means of getting backlinks and giving visitors an opportunity to find you. Use them wisely and they can make a difference in your search engine results.

So, you’ve generated traffic to your website through search-engine optimization, pay-per-click, and smart marketing. That’s the first step — but where does a strong business go from there?

The answer is simple: once someone comes to your website, content is king. That means that if you don’t have strong, well-written, and focused web content, you could lose your viewer in the time it takes to click the Back button.

What does your content need to deliver? On its most basic form, it has to present you as a professional. That means that spelling errors, grammar goofs, and poor syntax are immediate red flags. At the very least, this is an absolute must-fix problem, and it’s something that plagues more small businesses than you’d think!

Another area to worry about is format. Remember, the human eye tends to read a computer monitor different from the printed word. So if you have something that works effectively on a printed brochure, there’s no guarantee that it’ll grab the attention of someone surfing the web.
Big blocks of text can quickly fall to the wayside as web surfers tend to scan the information on screen until they latch on to a specific message — in most cases, only then will they actually read things line by line. Give it a try — go to your favorite business, sports, or news website like you normally would and take note of how you read the headlines and blurbs. Chances are, you’ll find your eyes bouncing from place to place.

But how do you format something to optimally structure it? That’s an in-depth discussion we’ll tackle on a later post.

Finally, your content must have a focused, consistent message. This is a basic marketing principle but it applies even more so in the case of web content. Because you can have web surfers land in just about any page on your site depending what led them there, you never know what order they’ll view pages in. This dynamic target makes consistency absolutely critical, not only for brand representation but for the purposes of giving your customer the information they want. In other words, if a customer sees mixed messages across different web pages, they won’t have that gut feeling of certainty — and that’s a quick way to lose a potential customer.

Start with quality, structure, and consistency.

Though there’s a lot more to creating truly effective web content, those three keys are the foundations for any good website.