Just how serious is your business about using digital channels?

Any other year, I may have used the words “online channels” instead of “digital channels,” but 2010 tilted the marketing world. We can’t just talk about world-class websites and getting found on search engines any more. The pervasiveness of mobile smartphones (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry), tablets (iPad, Samsung, Dell) and the entire app economy that surrounds it is quickly becoming a dominant business force.

We also can’t ignore the powering growth of Facebook. Over the holiday break, Facebook was named the most-visited site in 2010, beating out Google. And we’re not just talking about big business, either. Groupon -which enables local businesses to offer a unique discount once a pre-determined amount of people commit to purchasing the deal -turned down a $6-billion acquisition attempt by Google, which validated the idea that hyper-local marketing has finally arrived.

Read the rest of this article form the Vancouver Sun.

“Ecommerce software companies love to advertise that they’re SEO friendly, which is why most ecommerce solutions provide a variety of tools for you to optimize your storefront.  Unfortunately, unless you’re an SEO expert, you may not even know how to harness the full potential of these tools.  In this series of SEO Tips for Ecommerce Success, I first spoke about choosing an SEO firm to drive traffic to your online store, which is a great way to get your site optimized if you don’t have the time to do it yourself and have the money to hire an expert. ”

Read the rest of this article from ZippyCart.

1. Choose the right domain name
2. Choose the right web designer
3. Choose the right ISP and Web Host
4. Create a professional looking Website
5. Optimize your Website for the Search Engines and directories
6. Make sure your Website is easy to navigate
7. Establish your credibility early and in many different ways
8. Create lots of free information and up-to-date content
9. Write and publish your own Free Ezine
10. Gather customer testimonials & publish them on your Website
11. Establish great customer support right from the start
12. Choose products and services that sell easily on the Internet
13. Develop powerful benefit packed sales letter and ads
14. Follow-up all sales letters and ads at least 7 times
15. Test and re-test all marketing efforts
16. The power of Email Marketing is a key to online success
17. Use opt-in email marketing with autoresponders
18. Build up your own opt-in database
19. Sell over and over to your own house list
20. Accept credit cards and all other online payment options
21. Automate your Website to process orders and to track data
22. Create your own Affiliate or Associate program
23. Develop Joint Venture projects
24. Constantly work at building your Brand name Online
25. Make it easy for your visitors to return to your Website

“Everyone wants to achieve good website rankings, but how do you get to the top on the major search engines like Google or Yahoo? We’ll this really the million dollar question and unfortunately there is no definitive answer, however we have listed what we think, are the top 10 SEO tips that you can implement yourself, which will ultimately help your websites visibility on the search engines.”

Read the rest of this article from 28Creative.

“Let’s be clear, getting a site indexed is the first step to ranking well in the search engines, and simply means that the search engines (in this case Google) are aware of your site.  The site is in their index (database), which is different than getting your site ranked high on the search results pages for keywords you are targeting (much more complex).  To get indexed, one could certainly submit a URL to Google for consideration, and while that is a good approach, I think I have one that may be faster.”

Read the rest of this article from Marketing Professor.

Read this article from Canadian Marketing Blog.

Read this article from HiSocial.

Not by website hits, according to Avinash Kaushik, Google’s analytics evangelist and the man who debunks many traditional attempts to measure the rate of return on companies’ website investments.

“‘We got this many visits to this many pages, or people spent this much time on the site’ — all these metrics don’t matter,” said Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and his soon to be released Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity.

“What I want to know is what is the loyalty of those visitors. Measure behaviour, not hits.”

Read this article from the Vancouver Sun.

“For most businesses, a web site is one of the most important investments you can make. Entrepreneurs are either overspending or underspending on their web sites, and many have no idea what they’re doing or why.

So today I’m going to talk about why a good, solid web site really matters to your business, and in the next two weeks, I’ll follow up with articles on the core components your web site needs to work well for you, and how to hire a solid web firm to build your site affordably.”

In part one I will discuss the highly requested topic of website keywords. In follow-up articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest analysis technologies including eye tracking software.”