In terms of the basic list you should be checking off when hiring a Toronto marketing agency, the details you are looking at all revolve around the credibility and effectiveness of the company. Firstly, you have to make sure the company has some kind of experience. Don’t simply look at the date the company was established, but also past client reviews and the record of each professional the agency employs. It is not only important that they have been historically successful, but that they are consistently successful. Furthermore, try to establish the philosophy of the marketing agency you are looking at early on: do they take on a wide range of projects or like to specialize on only one type? Both approaches have their positives and negatives and it is up to you to decide what you prefer. Finally, you should do some case studies into their past projects in order to see if their style is cohesive with your business’s vision.

When we look at online marketing, there are two types of SEO companies- White Hat and Black Hat. If you are interested in promoting the long term success of your company rather than having a short term financial pay out, it is of integral importance that you hire a White Hat SEO company. Black Hat SEO uses overly aggressive strategies which are focused on cheating algorithms and tricking search engines instead of concentrating on the human aspect. Websites employing Black Hat SEO techniques are often penalized either by a reduction in search engine rankings or an outright elimination from search engine databases.

Here are some examples of good and bad SEO strategies:

Good:

• Link building: creating content that attracts people to link back to your site.

• Guest blogging: writing a blog post about your site for another person’s site.

• Quality content: good content will lead to more human visitors, more re-posting, and ultimately higher results in search engines.

Bad:

• Keyword stuffing: overloading keywords into the tags and content of your website. Inorganic and repetitive, it ultimately draws people and search engines away from the site.

• Blog spamming: posting a link to your website everywhere you can, including comments on blogs, wikis, and guestbooks.

• Hidden text: text which is somehow concealed from your readers but is loaded with keywords. All major search engines can easily identify this as spam.

No internet marketer becomes successful without having to learn the basics about search engine marketing. This form of marketing involves the use of search engines as a traffic source by optimizing websites to rank high for specific keywords. Once these keywords are queried by internet users on search engines, websites that rank high for the specific keyword enjoy visibility to interested parties because their website links appear on the first pages of the search engine results. Because of the huge impact of this marketing method in internet marketing, many internet marketers spend more time, effort, and money implementing search engine optimization tactics than the website creation process itself.

There are two main types of search engine marketing – paid and organic. Paid search engine marketing involves website owners paying search engines to have their website links displayed on the search engine results pages along with the top results. Organic search engine marketing on the other hand involves optimizing a website or a webpage through search engine optimization practices which include the effective use of keywords, keyword density, and backlinks among others. Although both have their advantages and disadvantages, it is generally accepted in the internet marketing world that paid and organic search engine marketing are very important to ensure a steady flow of visitors to the website which translates into buyers.

All serious internet marketers invest a great amount of time, effort, and money to implement any of the two, or even both search engine marketing strategies because of their advantages which include:

Targeted Traffic

With search engine marketing, internet users are only shown links to websites whose keywords they have queried through the search engines. For the website owners, this means they target only those visitors that are interested in their keywords which most likely involve the products or services they offer. This means that the website owner is not wasting resources such as time, money, and bandwidth getting plenty of visitors most of which have no plan whatsoever in purchasing what is being offered.

Inexpensive Website Promotion

Search engine marketing compared to other marketing methods is considerably inexpensive. Organic SEO can be done without spending a dime but can take a lot of time to see great results if there are any. Opting to invest in SEO tools or services meanwhile can be a big expense but results are sure to appear faster, are long term, and the expenditures are nothing compared to traditional advertising. Paid search engine marketing on the other hand is paid for each click made making it an efficient form of website promotion compared to other online advertising strategies.

Reaching a Wider Audience

With search engine marketing, the whole internet becomes a marketplace which means there are no borders when it comes to dealing with customers even from other countries. By reaching a global audience, there is a bigger chance to make a sale because of the bigger number of visitors possible unlike traditional advertising which only reaches out to a certain locality or region. At present, two billion people use the internet regularly and tapping into this gigantic traffic source can play a huge role in maximizing the profit of any online business.

If you are interested in running a search engine marketing campaign for your company, contact me via email and I can give you a free consultation for both search marketing and search engine optimization to help your business grow!

There are lots of companies out there claiming to be SEO companies at the moment. The fact is, there are a lot of cowboy operations looking to make a fast buck out of those that simply are unaware of the black art process of SEO or ‘search engine optimization’. In order to try and separate the good from the bad and in order to help those who are not aware of the true SEO process, here is what good idea of the types of conversations a sound SEO company should be talking about with you. Others that don’t discuss these points with you will simply take your money and run!

Keyword Identification Research:

The first thing a good SEO company will do is discuss your proposed keywords and search phrases. Using keyword research tools they should discuss and recommend the most appropriate keyword and search phrase selection for your business. There’s no point having a website at the top of Google for a phrase which no one ever searches for is there?

Website Analysis:

Is your current website search engine friendly? Website structures and how your website is built, plays an extremely important role in a good SEO strategy. Having an ability to program a website to tell the search engines who you are, what you do and where you do it, is just as important as the search engines being able to read and index content on your website. A quick online analysis will help identify what they have to work with and will tell them what work needs doing to your website either on or off page.

SEO Copywriting:

After assessing your website, a good SEO company will mention this to you as they will have identified what SEO work is needed on your website. If a so called SEO company doesn’t touch your website then you cant be getting proper SEO, its a fact. There are 2 types of SEO copywriting on and off.

On page copywriting is the use of appropriate keywords on a website that you and I the users can read.

Off page SEO copywriting is what programs a website to tell the search engines at the back end of a website (predominantly what the user cant see) who you are, what you do and where you do it. A large part of off page copywriting is programming what is called metadata. Without this, your website will never be indexed by the search engines.

Competitor Analysis:

An excellent indicator of what level of SEO work is required in order to achieve your online marketing objectives is to always analyze the competition.The amount of time, effort and money that your competitors have invested into SEO including link building, article writing and submission, will always influence and determine how much you have to invest in order to achieve similar results.

SEO Link Building:

Once your website has solid foundations, your SEO company should be talking to you about your link building. Your website will rank higher up in the search engines the more one way, incoming links from other high ranking websites your website has. This is often a very time consuming process and should be ongoing.

Feasibility Study:

A SEO expert will be able to quickly tell you how feasible your objectives are. Even if they find that your online goals are unrealistic and unachievable given either time, website structure or budgetary constraints, they should always be able to provide you with an SEO solutions which often involves a staged approach in terms of both time and investment.

SEO Proposal:

After discussing all of the above with you, an SEO company should be able to provide you with an approximate quote for your SEO solution. As long as an SEO company is open honest and transparent with what they are doing and how they are going to do it, you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

The moral of the story is, if your so called SEO company has not talked through any of the above with you, then its highly likely they’re not a proper SEO company and simply want your money. What you do need are proper SEO experts from a proper SEO agency.

If you feel your company is in need of a good SEO expert, contact me through my site and I can give you a free consultation and proposal to show you what your site needs to be search engine friendly.

Hence targeting a large group of audience is also one of the best features of promotion through internet. The feedback received for the advertisement, will not be known to the company, when it is advertised through the television. The response or the liking of the audience will never be understood by the company. But in case of internet marketing, the scenario is different. One can easily keep track of the number of times that a particular page of a site, has been visited. The demographics as well as the statistics, associated with the people who have viewed the sites form different regions at different times, can be clearly captured. This will provide a clear picture of the target audience and their core interests.

If you or your company are looking for help in setting your business apart from the rest through an SEO or PPC campaign contact me through my site for a free consultation and proposal.

The PPC Model of online marketing is one of the most powerful tools you could utilize while building up your website for generic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). PPC stands for Pay Per Click and it is a type of online advertising that can easily generate a lot of traffic onto your business. The agreement is done between the advertiser and a publisher. The publisher is the website or online group that will display the online adverts. You could always form an agreement to post click ads on associate websites but these days people rely more on posting PPC ads on search engines like Google. As a matter of fact Google has one of the most powerful PPC models in the online world with their AdSense and AdWord tools.

The PPC ad will appear on the top section of the search engine results page (SERP) and on the right side as well. In Google, they are short advertisements comprised of just four lines including the link to the specific page you are linking the ad to. The rest of the SERP page (the left and middle section) is dedicated to generic search results.

How Does PPC Work?

There are generally two ways to look at Pay Per Click advertisements. The first model involves a flat rate. You will pay the publisher a flat rate for every click on a posted advertisement. This is a common scheme when advertisers place their ads on associate websites. They are more or less targeting niche consumers they are a little bit surer that the people clicking on their ads (who will be directed to their website displaying their products and services) are more likely become direct consumers. This is why they can afford a flat rate charge per click.

Then there is the bid system. This is the system used in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Advertisers have to bid in a type of auction for keywords. The highest bidder will be able to associate the auctioned keywords with their advertisement. There are a lot of little technical details but this is the basic gist of how the PPC model works. To put it simply, you post a click advertisement. When people search online, your advertisement will appear when certain keywords are used. You will have to pay the publisher for each consumer click on the advertisement but you’ll be earning profits since people are directly adverted to your products and services online.

Google’s PPC Model

Google’s PPC model is very unique. They have several tools such as the following:
AdSense, AdMob and AdWords

AdWords is the PPC model of Google. This is exactly what was being discussed above. The advertiser just bids for keywords, sets up their four-liner advertisement, includes the link to their direct landing page, and Google will find the appropriate publishers (including the Google Search Page as well) where these ads can be placed. The advertiser will just have to pay per click or per performance of these ads.

AdSense is mostly for publishers. It is a series of codes that allows publishers to include Google’s AdWords and AdSense system into their website. By including these codes in their site, Google will send crawlers to their pages and associate AdWords advertisements onto their page beside the page’s content.

For example:

You are an advertiser who is using the AdWords PPC model to direct consumers to your site about internet marketing in Toronto. You bid high for keywords like “affiliate marketing in Toronto” and “internet marketing Toronto”. Now Google will display your ad on the SERP page whenever consumers do a generic keyword search. Your ads will also appear on websites that have related content. Say for example that one website is using AdSense codes and the content of their page is about the benefits of internet marketing in Toronto, Canada. Beside their article your ad will be posted. This drives a lot of web traffic to your site.

Why the Google Pay Per Click Model is Important:
There are a lot of benefits of relying on the Google model over others. First of all Google has a lot of anti-fraudulent systems. Back in the day, an advertiser would be surprised that a lot of people clicked on their ad but they see very little profits due to low sales. The reality was that competitors would constantly click on the ads. Sometimes the publishers would constantly click on the ads to raise their profits from the flat rate cost per click. Google has several detectors to prevent this from happening.

Another benefit is that Google has several options that allow you to freely customize how you market. Again, say for example you want to market your advert only in the local vicinity of Toronto. You can set these restrictions so that your internet marketing Toronto ads will only appear when the users are doing searches in Toronto. This limits your competition and puts you above in niche marketing. You can set this off and advertise all over the world.

Google also has several analytical tools to help you monitor the performance of your Pay Per Click ads. You can always adjust how much you bid for and what keywords you want to associate your ads with. Both AdWords and AdSense are some of the most versatile marketing tools in the web. You can always go back and edit what you are advertising. You can always edit your budget restrictions to let you lower your bids or raise the bar and get more out of your advertising campaign.

These are all good techniques if you are still beginning your online business. You may not have yet created a wealthy bank of back links and online content for strong generic SERP but with pay per click advertising you can immediately gain traffic. SEO content takes some time to generate traffic and you need to spend time creating quality content and then spend a lot of effort spreading back links. Pay Per Click models and the Google tools are good ways to boost your website’s page rank and earn traffic when you are still working on web content and SEO. You just have to look in between the lines to make sure you follow the restrictions. This will help you make the most out of the system and lets your ad pop up on relevant searches.

The benefits of social media marketing are many. It empowers businesses of all kinds to harness the power of the internet to promote and expose their brand to millions of potential customers at minimal cost. It is the easiest way to promote the business, update customers, advertise discounts, special offers, and give the business a high profile and rock solid reputation.

Social Media Marketing Strategies
A business needs to get to know its audience well. Social media marketing is about influence, interactions, and relationships. Devising ways of encouraging participation on your social media pages allows a business to develop relevant marketing strategies for further engagement of followers. By contributing to discussions, forums and running competitions, a business will capture the interest of individuals who will join up and build the social network of the business. From these followers, precious marketing information and demographic information can be gathered to feed into further campaigns and refine who the typical customer of the business is.

Establish clear social media marketing goals. Prepare campaigns with the aim of getting a set amount of followers in a set period. For example every 100th person signing up to your newsletter recives a free entry to a draw for a holiday or receives a small promotional gift. Regular contests always attract new join ups.

Find a unique message for your social media marketing strategy. Followers will connect with a business if they are ironic, funny; has a serious message or set of values. Therefore, define your company online image as you would for yourself. Live your mission statement and propagate the integrity of the business building trust. Provide interesting hints, tips, and facts and update your social media everyday or multiple times a day to promote awareness in the consciousness of your followers.

Monitor the size of your follower base and keep them hooked into your social media marketing strategy. Followers will become bored if you have nothing new to offer them, so be stimulating, exciting, and entertaining in your interactions. Having a company representative who is your voice on discussion forums to answer customer questions and make a contribution to discussions adds a human side to any business.

Social media marketing is powerful and can take a business to new levels of growth and success. The power of the internet and social media in marketing is something that most companies are only beginning to scratch the surface of. Make sure to plan your well-thought out strategies and campaigns ahead of time to keep a leading edge on your competitors who are blindly using the internet without a proper social media marketing strategy in place. Most businesses will see an increase in awareness of their brand and an increase in sales if they follow the right social media marketing strategies.

After the trip to Asukasa which was mainly just to see the Sensoji temple (I will be going back mainly because they have a 2-3 floor 100 yen store that I have heard is pretty good to get random goodies).
The next trip was a bit of a subway ride south to Shimashi station which is the more business district in Tokyo..or so I was told. It was cool though I got to see the building for Channel 4 (from what I was told this is the station for Gaki no Tsukai, by far the best show EVER! You can check it out below), and a few other interesting offices. We went into the ‘Dentsu’ building which is a crazy looking building in itself. It is shaped like a blade and is super tall. The entire building (47 stories I believe) is owned by 1 company called ‘Dentsu’ which is an advertising agency. There are a number of shops and restaurants in the basement and top floors of this building, all pretty high class places. The view from the top floor is unreal though, it overlooks Tokyo Bay and you can see just about everything. Odaiba Island, Tsukiji, Sumida River and some part of the Imperial Palace.

We left soon after seeing the top floor view since the tour was soon to be over, so we decided to check out Ueno’s Ameyoko street which is pretty much a collection of small streets and one big street which is all small stores. There was a huge variety of places: restaurants, jewellery stores, fish stores, tea stores, etc, etc, etc. I got lost there this morning when I went to find a place to buy luggage. I also managed to find a pachinko parlour and a very small 100 yen shop where I bought a few cool things like some cell phone straps, a few fans and some crazy awesome letter paper.
Pretty much that was my day yesterday and today just random walking around. I found a yakitori place which was my goal this week, so I am going to check it out tonight since most of them dont open till after 7/8pm. My super awesome Akiba tour that was planned fell through, they couldnt find me an english guide in time, but I found a new place which is even better! You get guided by a person dressed as a maid! So I dont even have to hit up a maid cafe So if I can book that it should be an interesting tour.

Anyways I will keep everyone posted if I can remember to bring cameras lol

P.S. Sorry in advance, the camera lens on my iPhone is messed up so the pictures come out all weird looking.