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Three Ways to Modify Your Email Subject Lines and Increase Open Rates

Email Marketing

Written by eTargetMedia.

You can have a skillfully crafted and informative email campaign that potential customers would love to read, but if they’ll never know about it if they don’t open the email first. For this reason alone, it’s imperative for you to pay close attention to your email subject lines. They are the first thing that your customers will notice when they receive your email and the strength of the subject line will likely be the difference between an email being opened or marked for deletion.

So how can you improve your email subject lines to get more people to open your emails? Here are a few tips from leading email marketing firm eTargetMedia:

Straightforward subject lines often are the best. It’s easy to try and create a cute and very creative subject line that will capture the imagination — and attention — of your customers. However, it’s also possible to get so cute that you obscure the message. Whether or not you are using humor in your subject lines, make sure the point of the email is clear.

Numbers and lists attract attention. Just as with online content headlines, people are naturally interested in email subject lines that list the “10 Best…” or “Seven Ways to…” do something. They know that they will be getting information in short, easy-to-digest packets of information.

Include action verbs whenever possible. Directing action verb at people — instead of writing in a passive, third-person voice — can be incredibly powerful. You want people to do something after reading your email, so why not spell that out in the subject line?

eTargetMedia has 20 years of experience delivering online and offline targeted marketing services to clients ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

Why Businesses Prefer Colocation

Web development and Hosting

Written by Rack Alley

At some point in time most businesses would be face with the tough decision of whether to move, consolidate or expand their data center as a part of their IT infrastructure strategy. The decision would involve analyzing the hard and soft costs surrounding the data center and whether to go for colocation or to get a dedicated data justify. Off Site colocation is usually preferred by most companies and some advantages are listed below.

Reduced IT Infrastructure and Management Costs

Lowered costs constitutes of one of the main benefits of colocation. Businesses opting for colocation are able to reduce their total IT management cost. This is because they do not have to invest in HVAC systems, UPS and backup generators in order to store their data. All these investments would be carried out by the colocation provider.

Increased Power Capacity and Redundancy

A high power density is generally required when it comes to upgrading IT applications. An in-house data center would have to cope with such power challenges. Colocation providers enable companies to have access to a higher power-per-square foot ratio in comparison to in-house data centers. This allows companies to target innovation in terms of high density virtualization and computing.

Reliability and Uptime

Network reliability would lead to business continuity. Colocation providers offer various networking options with flexible solutions depending on the needs of the business. For instance, Los Angeles web hosting solutions are among the most reliable in the world. The configuration of the data centers are meant to provide reliability and availability.

Rack Alley specializes in Los Angeles colocation and LA web hosting services for businesses.

Negative Online reviews could be bad for business

Reputation Management

Article was submitted by Peter Z. from Fix Bad Reputation.

I have learned that it is best to never argue with your clients, because your reputation is not worth messing with. Any upset client can go to Yelp or a complaint site like Ripoffreport and leave negative reviews about you that would cost you thousands of dollars in lost business, even if there is no truth to what they say. Some of these sites would never remove these posts even with a court order.

Negative reviews posted on complaint sites can be disastrous. Therefore, the way you should handle customer complaints is to either offer them free service or a partial refund.

On the other hand a happy customer may refer more business to you or leave positive reviews online that would have the opposite effect. In this day and age it is just not worth arguing with clients, specially if it is over a few dollars. Yes sometimes the business owner may be right and sometime the customer may be trying to extort you into a refund, but really it comes down to what you have to lose down the line and if you feel negative reviews would cost you more down the line then try your best to work out issues with your customers before it is too late.

Interesting international search and social media usage facts

SEO

Webcertain recently published some interesting international search and social media usage facts: 1. More than a quarter of the world’s online population log onto Facebook EVERY day 2. Brazil is the world’s by far most socially engaged nation 3. Yandex is the world’s fourth largest search engine, now bigger than Bing 4. Google holds a 71% share of the global search market; Baidu captures 16.5% 5. Central and Eastern Europe’s social audience set to outstrip that of North America next year 6. Incredible climb of 360 Search sees it surge above 20% market share in China 7. Twitter now has 215 million active monthly users globally; LinkedIn 184 million 8

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Interesting international search and social media usage facts

 

Google Analytics, a service for small to medium businesses

SEO, , , , ,

Article Written by : Top SEO Software Reviews

Google’s acquisition of Urchin on Demand in 2005 from Urchin Software Corporation helped Google to design and introduce Google Analytics. A later acquisition of Adaptive Path in 2006 helped Google to redesign the site once more. Since April 2011, a new version of Google Analytics featuring multiple dashboards, options of customer reports and a new interface design is helping small to medium sized businesses.

Google Analytics is a free web analytic service to anyone with a Google account to measure website traffic, sources, conversions (a subset of Segmentation) and sales. Its dashboard, scorecards and motion charts indicate data over time. Since the introduction, it has become the most widely used website statistical analysis service for small to medium companies. It can track all visitors from various sources including search engines and social media. It produces custom reports and allows e-mail based sharing and communication. It can easily integrate with other Google products such as AdWorks, Public Data Explorer and Website Optimizer. It is geared towards small to medium web based companies and therefore, has limited ability to handle big data and not suited for large commercial enterprises. Since it collects data through cookies some raises privacy concerns.

How much advertising to use to keep your ranking high

SEO, , , ,

Article Written by : Web Geek SEO
We know Google Panda algorithm uses advertising as one of its criteria to separate quality content from others. Advertising also can hinder your reader experience, clutter your visual outlook, slows down page loading speed, and frustrate users. A healthy amount of advertising is needed to generate revenue and to promote the site. What will be the healthy advertising ratio that will not compromise Google ranking and turn away users?

First of all, few ads that generate the same amount of revenue are better than more ads that generate the same amount of revenue. In other words three sponsors at $10,000 each are better than 20 ads at $500 each. This is true even if you don’t use ads but your content contains more key words.

Use what Google use to rank their ads to your advantage. Google’s highest ranked ads appear on the top of the page with a colored background while side ads do not carry any colored background. Top ads also include an extension. Google use its Ad Rank and Quality Score to decide which ads qualify for top advertising. Ads have a high relevancy and use right key words. Use these as your guidelines for choosing and placing ads on your site.

Your Presence in Search

SEO, , , ,

Article Written by : Dawn Meson

Pairing up with the right SEO agency for your business is an investment worth your consideration. It would be a gross understatement to say that it’s important to get your services, your reputation, and, in general, your presence in front of the widest swath possible of today’s uncannily diverse Web readership. Given all the niche markets and multitude of social networks in which folks going online congregate, it’s easy to see how you’d be spreading yourself thin if bent on going at it completely alone. Seek out and secure the sagacious assistance you require.

Many within the business community have already figured out that there is a role for SEO companies to play in any growth plan. Developing the best SEO strategy for you and your products and/or services takes commitment and follow-through. It’s not enough merely to work with an SEO agency, if it’s one you trust, you must also act on the advice and recommendations its experts give. Search engine optimization is a long game, and your chips must be correctly in place to get the future gains you’re after. That being said, the placement of said chips is crucial, so seek out real SEO experts. If you haven’t visited the site already, visit www.topseos.com.

Exact Match Domain name Penalty (EMD)

SEO

Google recently launched a new algorithm change that penalizes websites that use Exact Match Domain Names. It is called the Exact Match Domain penalty or EMD.  This is yet part of another round of algorithm changes Google has had recently to penalizes sites using short cuts to get rankings. In last year we have seen Penguin and Panda updates kill rankings for many sites and now comes EMD.

Historically, exact match domain names would give you slight benefit in rankings.  So what is the best way to recover from this and is there a way?

From doing some research, it appears that not all exact match domains are effected, so it appears that Google is looking at other factors to decide if they should penalize EMD sites.

I have also noticed that the websites which have not been updated for long and have not actively been doing link building have lost rankings.

Also, the sites which have been posting too many blog updates, but had low quality back links have also lost rankings.

I have also noticed that only those EMDs have lost rankings which were not being worked upon in a good way and quality backlinks were missing. The EMD sites which were previously ranking only and only due to their domain name but were missing quality links, have lost ranks.

What my recommendation is to stick with white hat SEO. If you have low quality back links start cleaning them up. If you have poorly written or spun content on your websites, start improving them.  Fresh content is good, but only if you have quality content and back links.

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Article submitted by Pierre Zarokian of SubmitExpress.com. If you need SEO Services or have been effected by EMD Penalty, make sure to visit SubmitExpress.com.

Google Keyword Tool

SEO, , , ,

Article Written by : Adworks 24 – Advertising & Marketing News

Google has added a new external keyword tool, approximate search volume numbers recently. Some argue that key words are important to SEOs and some argue it is the content not the keyword that is important. In order to analyze sites and develop strategies to help your clients develop marketing and technical needs, keyword tools are important to SEO. No matter what optimization starts with keyword research and Google Keyword Research Tool offers a solid toolset for free. Once you enter a word or phrase, Google will tell you the number of times it has been searched in a month and how strong the competition for that word or phrase. It is tied directly to Adwords and the account is also free. The Google Keyword Tool has the ability to switch from broad to exact or phrase match volumes. This helps you to identify a niche in selecting a word or phrase.

Some say that the tool has several notable shortcomings. Some argue that since that it is free and therefore, it has no competitive advantage. Some argue that it gives you keywrods without further guidance what to do with the information. You have to organize the information using another tool such as Xcel in order to benefit from the information.

3 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks

SEO

Does your content suck?

Probably it’s the steady trickle of traffic that doesn’t seem to snowball that makes you think this way. Or even the fact that the comments section demonstrates anything but lively discussion.

Must you be patient? Or is it really because your content really sucks?

While there is no certain way to know for sure, here are 3 warning signs as to why your blog might suck:

#1: No Hate or Fan Mail

While both these types of mail are at either extreme, where fan mail indicates that your content was excellent while fan mail says that it isn’t, the truth is that reactions as expressed by readers that swing to either of these extreme are welcome. What isn’t good is if you haven’t received fan or hate mail.

#2: People Leave Very Few Comments if At All

If you have several subscribers and they aren’t leaving any comments that is a warning sign that what you’ve written has no value to them. In other words, your content sucks. Experts believe that the health of a blog can be determined by the number of comments it obtains – and which is something that you should keep in mind when creating content.

#3: Your Blog doesn’t offer information on a niche

Readers don’t come to your blog to read your thoughts but for help that your blogs might be offering. If you go about writing about everything that might necessarily pertain to the needs of your reader, then you can’t expect an enthusiastic response, especially if you’re just a beginner.