During the first week of October 2014, your team at CrucialClicks.com visited the Big Apple to attend the Search Marketing Expo - East 2014 conference. We attend the Search Marketing Expo, annually, to brush up on our search marketing skills. We attend to discover changes in the marketing landscape and to learn best practices. We apply this knowledge to enhance our products and services on behalf of our current and future customers. Each year, a wide range of topics are covered. This year’s topics include the latest Google Search algorithm updates, how to find hidden potential keywords, new Twitter and Facebook technologies, schema and rich snippets, Google+ Places, site auditing, and much more. Here are some of our key takeaways from the conference: SEO is not a project, it’s an ongoing exercise. Become a trusted expert. Social is discovery; Search is validation. Google’s true market share is 86%, based on aggregated analytical results gathered by many SEO leade...

In part one of SEO Basics , we went over three points: Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and Heading Tags. In today’s blog, “SEO Basics for your Website: Part Two”, we will cover three more major points that play an important role for On Page SEO. They are: Content, Canonicalization of Duplicate Content, and URL Structure. Today, Content is King. The search engines are giving priority to websites that have fresh and interesting content. Since Google’s Panda Algorithm, you can no longer get away with thin content. You need unique and informative content. You also need to prioritize your content and spend more of your time on it. Your website needs to offer interesting content to your visitors. A feature that can greatly improve your website’s On Page SEO is to create a Blog where you can write about subjects that attract your prospective customers. You can start by using Google’s Keyword Planner to get keywords related to your industry and for relevant blog ideas. Another tip is to use ...

By Karina Tama Are you wondering how much more you can do to improve your Social Media Marketing ? Have you already tried the most popular social media marketing outlets without results? Well, stop worrying about it! I will explain in details four unique ways to engage people. First, you can start to host Social Media Events by organizing a virtual event on Facebook. This can be done by creating nice images and posting them on your Facebook FanPage . Plus, you can also send them to all your contacts. However, you need to think about an eye-catching name for the event such as: Happy Get Together. Then have the event for at least 24 hours so that you allow people to publish their Facebook Fan Page on your wall. Furthermore, you can get a lot of new fans, build loyal followers, and be the leader of this kind of event in your community. Welcome to our Facebook Party! I recommend using this approach once a month so that it will always build excitement. Send the event invita...

By Karina Tama Are bad reviews destroying your business reputation? Reputation Management for your business is a must! Do you know how much a customer can cost you? Can your business afford to lose repeating and new customers due to bad reviews and harmful comments on the Internet? I am sure the answer is NO. So let’s go over this subject in depth! What is Online Reputation Management? We will do an easy exercise, Google your company’s name, brand and products. What do you see? Do you like what you see? Do you see something negative or you can’t find your business name in the search results? After you get your results or answers you will realize the importance of reputation management? If you see any bad comments or reviews, you need to take action in order to respond to harmful posts. If you don’t find your business on the Internet, you will need to update your business listing. Online Reputation Management involves everything about establishing trust in your business, brand...

By Karina Tama CrucialClicks.com , leaders in Internet Marketing, is excited to announce that they have been selected to host an exclusive Google Partners Connect Event in Coral Spring, FL. The FREE event (link removed) aimed to educate business owners about how to best leverage their online presence and increase brand awareness across digital platforms. Local Business Owners of all industries located in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach Counties are welcome to attend. A panel of three top executives from Google Arjan Dijk, Fred Vallaeys and Ben Wood will be sharing their ideas on how to grow your businesses online. Arjan Dijk, VP, Global Small Business Marketing - Arjan , author of The Small Think Big Book, will share unique insights, inspirational stories, and actionable ideas to help small businesses thrive in a hyper-connected marketplace. Fred Vallaeys, Google AdWords Evangelist - Fred will examine how businesses can navigate online advertising and expand their online presen...

By Karina Tama Today, everything has gone global. That’s why Internet Marketing plays an important role in any business. Your business needs Social Media Marketing in order to inform, engage, generate leads, and acquire new customers. First, people are looking for solutions not for products. Now, Customers are trusting peer recommendations. Your business has to inform the audience about how your products or services work. Social Media is the best way to do it because traditional marketing will not reach out to all people. Internet Marketing does do this by using Social Media outlets. Therefore, you will get your audience updated about your business. Second, using Social Media and its tools, will engage your audience through different Social Media Outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Facebook is the biggest Social Media outlet. It has 1,310,000,000 billion active monthly users. Facebook gives you a huge exposure for your business. Twit...

By Karina Tama Here are this week's latest updates in Social Media. Enjoy reading and take advantage of the amazing things that are happening now! Facebook Facebook’s new feature: with a single click you can manage your groups "NEW Facebook feature: Manage the Groups you Admin with a single click" Announcing FB Newswire "Today, we're excited to announce FB Newswire, a resource that will make it easier for journalists and newsrooms to find, share and embed newsworthy content from Facebook in the media they produce." Facebook Nearby Friends "If you turn on Nearby Friends, you'll occasionally be notified when friends are nearby, so you can get in touch with them and meet up" LinkedIn LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Updates API and Partner Programs "Sponsored Updates Partners help companies improve the ROI for their campaigns" LinkedIn announced Certified Content Partners "They help connect companies with publis...

By Karina Tama Everybody wants to engage their audience through Social Media . There are several ways of doing it such as: creating a bond, providing content with interesting writing (Blogs), giving prizes to get leads and so on. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Nobody has the magic formula to get results from Social Media. There are so many outlets. Which one is the right fit for your industry? How to help my company that sells software in Pinterest ? How to get followers on Instagram ? People write about these topics all the time, but we will only know that what works for each industry is when we try. So, let's try several tips and see how we engage the audience in the most consistent way. Sean Gardner, said “Social Media is not just an activity; it is an investment of valuable time and resources.” Getting followers and likes are important. Finding the right keywords while writing content to be indexed by the search engines can also help SEO . But the reality is: we need con...

By Karina Tama Email Marketing is a piece of cake that needs your attention. Many people said that Email Marketing is dead, but it is not true. 3.3% is the Click-Through Rate (CTR) for Email Marketing . All of this depends on the way it is performed. Why lose that 3.3%? It would be better to go and get it. First of all, don’t buy any list. If there is a good list of Email Contacts, it won't be on sale. Nobody likes Spam, and when you buy a list, you are doing Spam. Buying a list will hurt your business because people will block your emails, and then you will never reach them. You are better off building your own healthy organic list. Now you say to yourself: “easier said than done”. Well, it will take time and effort, but hard work pays off. The best way to get your own Email Contact List is by Blogging. Begin by writing relevant content for your audience. Then you will build traffic and get conversions. I will explain this better here: Writing Blogs with titles that yo...

In order to make a difference, it’s important to create your own images . There is a reason why it is important to go an extra mile and work on designing copyright images. The reasons are: Google can't read an image, pictures have copyrights, and images are a great storyteller for Social Media. First, Google can't read images. We need to give the Search Engine extra information when we use an image. How do we that? Image ALT Attribute (ALT Tag) describes the image in readable text format and helps Search Engine crawlers to interpret the image content. However, how will we Image ALT Attribute (ALT Tag) an image that doesn't belong to us? We can only use some keywords. It works better to use your own images and use the ones that we can give titles to. The titles will include a keyword that we want to target with the name of our business such as: <img src="mylogo.jpg" width="257" height="329" alt="My Logo is Awesome">. ...

Nowadays, Internet Marketing is the new approach for businesses to stay ahead. Organic Social Media is the main component that supports Internet Marketing. The guidelines of the Search Engine changes often and people demand more for Social Media. The audience wants to be informed and be heard. Social Media is not anymore a channel to post news about goods and services. Instead Social Media has become a channel to interact with followers, listen to their needs, and provide information to your business. In this article we will discuss five ways to build a great Organic Social Media Plan for any business. First, the beginning of any Organic Social Media Campaign is the creation of the outlets such as: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. It is important to choose wisely the ones that are oriented in the industry we work for. For example, if the marketing campaign is for the Shoe Industry, it’s important to create Pinterest and Instagram. After interest...

There are a few things that are really important about a successful Local SEO Tips . We have to add other marketing tools which can’t be underestimated. The goal here is to optimize a business that is found in the search engines. These tools are: Social Media, Blogging for rating and reviews, listings, etc. First, Social Media gets the name of any business out there. Then the Social Media outlets help to prospect customers in finding information about different products. Karina Tama said, "Customers look for solutions not for products. Currently, the consuming economy is moving based on brand recognition, customer satisfaction, and feedback from prior consumers". The social presence plays an important role for local businesses. Today, it will really help to boost any Local SEO Tips. Second, the creation of blog inner page in the business website will drive traffic because fresh content is part of the new Google algorithm. Having blogs posting several times a week will pro...

Building a website is a task that can be done by anybody. It just needs some templates and plenty of time to figure out how to build it. Developing a good website that meets your business needs is different. After an interview with Michael Schulman, Chief Technology Officer at CrucialClicks.com , I understood the difference better between a website that displays information and an optimized website for a successful business. Schulman said “A good website should be organized, friendly, fast, and have a mobile version”. First, an organized website should have a useful layout that meets any business needs. In the Self-Storage Industry, the customer should be able to navigate easily through the pages and find the information that he is looking for. The most relevant information about this business is the location page, the prices and the space availability. CrucialClicks.com specializes in the Self-Storage Industry. They have developed an API interface to integrate the website with Se...

The Self Storage Association (SSA) has recently updated its statistics, facts and forecast for 2014. It has a total of 52,500 storage facilities across the country with a market value of 83.9%. We can also say that it has 2.3 billion square feet that are destined for rental space in the Self-Storage Industry. This can be compared with 7.3 square feet of storage for every person in the U.S, or 21 square feet of storage for every household in the U.S. The properties that are used as facilities or spaces for rent can be compared with three times the space in Manhattan. The number of households that need Self-Storage has increased since 1995. It has increased to 65% by 2012. This year looks really good for the growth of this industry. Furthermore, Self-Storage has been a growing segment of commercial real estate over the last 35 years. In the real estate recession of 2007-2009, this niche of commercial real estate in the Self-Storage facilities only lost 2% in comparison with other com...

By Karina Tama If you receive a call from a prospect and the customer asks for security devices, such as video surveillance, climate control units, and more, it’s possible that the person wants to book a unit in your self-storage facility. Nowadays, many storage businesses are losing customers due to the fact that the sales people don't do their job the right way. The Infographics have shown that 43% of all search connected conversion happens over the phone. 65% that take advantage of the business considers the phone calls their highest quality lead supply. Also, there is a 10% (percent) increase in clicks through rates for pay–per-click ads with a number. Crucialclicks.com is concerned about the important needs of our customers. Self-Storage Businesses close their deals 30% of the times over the phone. That’s why we have a great product in our portfolio called “Call Tracking Phone Number” . This is a great tool that is needed now so that you don't lose customers. For ...