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Many companies have turned to social media networking sites as a means to market their businesses in a cost-efficient way. Of the social media networking sites, Facebook has been found to be one of the most effective ways to market a business and increase the popularity of a certain brand name. Thus, it is not a big surprise that many new businesses have sought out help on how to create effective Facebook pages.

While there are a ton of tips on how to go about creating a good Facebook page, they may be difficult to understand unless you see the tips actually being executed. And so to help you understand better what to do better, we have created a case study on a particularly successful Facebook page, that of Ralph Lauren’s.

The Company Background

Ralph Lauren Corporation is a luxury clothing retail company created by the world renowned fashion designer, Ralph Lauren. The company began in 1967 when Ralph Lauren was backed by Norman Hilton, a financial clothing manufacturer, to start a line of men’s ties under the name “Polo”. Ralph Lauren had been selling ties back when he was still in high school.

In 1969, he was able to open a boutique shop in Manhattan’s Bloomingdale’s and he expanded to selling a line of women’s suits that were tailored in a classic men’s suit style.

In 1971, he launched his first women’s collection and opened his first solo shop in Beverly Hills. He gained worldwide popularity in the following years and by 1981, Ralph Lauren opened up his first international store in London.

Ralph Lauren has now expanded to produce various luxury, casual and semi-formal clothing, accessories, fragrances, furniture, and it even runs a restaurant called RL in Chicago. It also opened up new stores such as Rugby Ralph Lauren and Club Monaco, and is now one of the largest clothing retailers in America.

Polo Ralph Lauren started its official website and online shop in 2000 as a joint venture with NBC. In 2007, they acquired NBC’s share and re-launched their website as ralphlauren.com.

A General Overview of Their Facebook Page

The Ralph Lauren Facebook page began in 2008 and now boasts 4,140,690 likes. It’s been found to get an average of 4,817 new likes each day. It also has 26,473 people “talking about this” and 24,236 people who “were here”. The “talking about this” feature shows how many people liked, shared, and commented on any posts of their Facebook page while the “were here” feature shows how many check-ins or mobile location shares occurred in the stores. These give a good estimate of how well the Facebook page is doing and it also gives an idea of the foot traffic to actual store locations. Take note that the “were here” feature is only available to business pages that include addresses in their Facebook pages.

Upon entering the Ralph Lauren Facebook page, you’ll be confronted with images of classy looking and well-dressed men and women. Ralph Lauren likes to maintain an image of wealth and class which is evident in the dark and rich hues they use for their photographs and it immediately comes off in their Facebook page.

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A website’s basic information or content is one of the most important ingredients in implementing a successful website SEO optimization.  People will usually judge your site within a few seconds of entering it, so make sure you make a good first impression.  If you are outsourcing SEO services even from a trusted SEO company, they can do all the optimizing they can but if your web structure is not properly created and the content is lacking, the results will not be that productive.

You will want to make sure that your website contains all the basic information that people expect to see.  Here are the basic ones:

• About Us page: This is meant to give people who come into your website a quick idea of what your company is about and what it offers.  This is also a great place to share your company vision and mission.
• Description of your products or services: Sell your products or services to prospective customers by explaining how they can directly benefit them in an easy to understand way.  Convince your audience that they need you.
• Contact information: Make sure that your contact information is clear and easy to find so that customers can make inquiries and contact your company easily.  It’s good to give people several means of contacting you like giving your telephone, mobile, email, and mailing addresses.  This helps give your company a more trustworthy image.  Of course, be sure to respond promptly and satisfactorily when people contact any of those contact numbers and addresses.
• FAQ’s page: You can translate inquiries that you frequently get in emails into frequently asked questions on your website.  This helps reduce the hordes of questions you may receive over mail all asking about the same thing and save you the time and effort of responding to all of them.  A FAQ page also increases user satisfaction which would very well increase rankings in search engines as well.
• Keyword optimized articles: Many SEO experts swear by optimized articles as the best way to increase rankings in search engines. Since users expect useful and quality content, search engines strive to find the most informative content that contain all the necessary keywords that were searched for. That’s basically why a SEO company would normally include article writing as one of their SEO services.
• Customer reviews: It’s been found that people are most likely to trust peers over advertisements, even if those peers aren’t actually people they know.  Customer reviews of products and services are the best way for prospective customers to get sold on your product.  It may be wise to ask satisfied customers to provide feedback on your company whenever possible.

So there you have it; the basic content you need to start website SEO optimization.  If you are to outsource SEO services to an SEO company, depending on the company itself (if they are a web development company as well), you can choose to delegate the web development task to them to make sure that all the basics are covered when it comes to your website needs.

WireWalkersVA is very pleased to provide you with this list of Top 10 Web Design Blogs.  We made this list very quick and clean – without a lot of extensive commentary – so that you could explore and decide for yourself which blogs you like the best.

1. Smashing Magazine – This blog is famous for delivering innovative information to all of its readers.  Web designer or not, you’ll find this blog to be one of the inspirational web design blogs / sites out there.
2. A List Apart –  This is a site for “people who make websites”.  This online magazine / blog carries different articles about content, codes, design, process and a whole lot more.
3. Think Vitamin –This blog offers a lot of helpful content to web professionals; it even won a SXSW award for ‘Best Educational Resource’ in 2007.  If you want to be updated with topics such as PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and more, this site will be worth your time.
4. Fuel Your Creativity – If you need an inspiration, or a great idea (and you need a little ‘push’ to come up with it), this blog is a must-visit for you.  The site is quite helpful, indeed.  With the several tutorials and recommended tools they offer, you’ll surely get your creativity ‘fueled’.
5. Web Designer Wall – Owned by a web designer and illustrator (Nick La) who designs WordPress themes, CSS websites and stock icons, this blog houses several design ideas and tutorials.  The blog is also known to produce creative designs and excellent content.
6. Webdesigner Depot –  If you’re looking for web design techniques, samples and tips, Webdesigner Depot is the blog you should visit.  Run by Walter Apai, a web designer, and a bunch of contributors around the world that are web design experts as well, this blog overflows with great web design content.
7. Web Design Ledger (WDL) -  This blog is focused on sharing “web design knowledge and resources” so you’ll find a lot of tips and tutorials here.  If you need design inspiration and more resources, they have compiled several articles all about them as well.
8. Noupe – If you are a web designer or web developer, or aspiring to be one or both, this blog will be most useful for you.  The site publishes blogs about AJAX, Photoshop, CSS, WordPress, and much more.  You’ll also find a bunch of tutorial posts here.
9. Onextrapixel – One of the famous resource sites for web developers and designers, Onextrapixel publishes design and development tips, tutorials, and a compilation of inspirational posts.  It also has a “Freebies” section where you can download icons set for free.
10. Garcya Web Design Blog – This blog offers a lot of things about web design – for FREE.  You’ll find free templates for different platforms, vector graphics, tutorials and tools here.

Which additional blogs would you add to this list?

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Wondering who Matt Cutts is?  And why he and his blog, the Matt Cutts blog, are so popular in the SEO world.  Read on.

Who is Matt Cutts?

Many people in the SEO world would consider Matt Cutts as a very powerful and important man.  You know why?  Well, for one, he is currently working at Google as the head of the “webspam team”.   So yes, the several posts that he published and keep on publishing in his blog are deemed to be influential – even though he mentioned in his blog’s “Disclaimer” page that the Matt Cutts blog is his personal blog, and that what you can see are just his own personal thoughts.  Never mind that.  He is still a Googler and one of the famous of them all when it comes to Google search engine.  Plus, he specializes in search engine optimization and his tips, if taken seriously, can really help a lot of webmasters and companies.  Sometimes, you’ll also see him answer questions from online queries and the press.

Matt Cutts started working at Google in 2000 – as a software engineer.  And as I’ve mentioned above, he is now the “Google’s Webspam Team” head.

Did you know?  That Matt Cutts was tagged as the “Porn Cookie Guy”?  This happened when he was working at ‘SafeSearch’, Google’s family filter.  The story was, he would give out tasty homemade cookies (baked by his wife) to Googlers who would help him find ‘unwanted pornography’ in the search engine results.

The Matt Cutts Blog

“Matt Cutts says watch this… and that …” 

You’ll often encounter ‘Matt Cutts quotes’ to a lot of websites who blogs about him and the recent update and post that he published in his blog, or bloggers who talks about the recent Google update.  That’s what he does, mostly, in this blog.  He gives out advice relating to the use of Google’s search engine and other known and unknown issues.

Matt Cutts’s blog is pretty simple, which is a good thing.  If you’ll visit his blog, you’ll see that there aren’t any fancy designs or ads; what he has is a simple but highly informational blog.  You’ll see five tabs namely “Home” where you’ll see his latest blog posts in all category, “About Me” where you’ll find a bit of information about Matt Cutts himself, “Google/SEO” is where you’ll see posts under that category, “Disclaimer”, and “Disclosure” where he made it clear that he is in fact, an employer of Google and he owns a stock from Google, but he does not and will not accept any kind of compensation from companies and individuals.  He also explains that he doesn’t accept speaking or consulting fees.  To find more about his goodwill, visit http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/.

How about you?  What do you think about Matt Cutts and the Matt Cutts blog?  Let us know in a comment below. Thanks!

When choosing your SEO outsourcing company, it is best if you understand beforehand what SEO services are available and which ones you may need.   In our previous blog, we talked about keyword analysis and strategy.  Today, we are going to take a look at how to effectuate a Google Adwords Campaign – an SEO Service many businesses find useful.

In the Google Adwords control panel you can easily access their Google Adwords Keywords Tool that assists in keyword analysis.   You can then set your own pay-per-click fee and Google will show your ads in search results depending on your bid for keywords.   Of course, if you don’t bid enough and the going rate is higher, it’s possible that none of your ads will be shown at all.

You can get started with a Google Adwords campaign by clicking the previous link.  Click on “Create your First Campaign” and you will be directed to this page:

You can name your campaign and then you will be given the choice of which countries you want to target.  The more countries you choose, the wider the reach.  However, increasing the countries that you target will also lower the quality of traffic.  So try to find a good balance between a wide reach and targeted traffic.  After this, it’s time to write an ad to promote your product.  Try to create an ad that is clear and will capture your target market’s interests.

Next, you will be given a text box where you can add all your chosen keywords.

Finally, set your budget and the cost-per-clicks.  Higher cost-per-clicks usually get you higher rankings in searches and lead to more clicks overall.  However, choose one that still fits into your budget.  $0.50 a click is decent, while a network bid of 10 cents will suffice as a starting point.  (Note: again, this depends on the competitiveness of your keywords and the resulting going rate.  You can’t just bid a rate that’s too far below the going rate if you want any ‘action’.)  If you are within an acceptable range however, you can pick the lowest part of the range to begin with and can increase the rate later if you see a need.

You can analyze your progress by integrating Adwords with Google Analytics.  Simply link your two accounts and then go to the “Tools and Analysis” page on Google Adwords and sign up for conversion tracking.  With this tool, you can find out what keywords referred traffic to your website, and you can sift the good keywords from the bad.

You can opt to launch more than 1 Google Adwords campaign because Google will help find out which ones are most effective.  This will allow you to play around with different words and different target markets to see which combination of factors is the most effective.

Creating a great Adwords campaign will help increase traffic, online sales and help get your brand more recognition so make sure you use it wisely. When you utilize a SEO outsourcing company, you won’t have to worry about this process at all as they will be the one to do it for you. You can certainly choose to have a Google Adwords campaign included in your SEO services package.

Many businesses want to take advantage of social media marketing to increase their reach to crowds and increase their brand recognition. Facebook in particular, is a social media site that most businesses use to market their businesses. There are several sources for tips on launching a successful Facebook page. However sometimes, the best way to learn is through example. So here we provide a case study on one of the most successful Facebook pages out there, the Victoria’s Secret PINK.

With 10,591,783 fans and counting, and nearly 64,000 people “talking about this” (this is a count of people who have engaged with the site on a per weekly basis), this Facebook page definitely got it right when it came to figuring out their target demographic, successful marketing techniques, gathering followers, and engaging with them.

A Little Background on the Company…

Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by a businessman named Roy Raymond. He claimed he felt embarrassed about purchasing lingerie for his wife from a department store with other shoppers present. Victoria’s Secret was meant to be a retail shop specializing in lingerie with staff that were all trained to help both women AND men out in choosing the right styles and sizes. Victoria’s Secret was later sold to Leslie Wexner for 4 million dollars. By the 1990’s, it grew to be the largest American lingerie retailer.

The company is renowned for its use of the best supermodels in their ads and fashion shows to create an incredibly sexy brand image. It now sells bras, panties, hosiers, cosmetics, sleepwear, perfume, and other products in well marketed lines such as Angels, Very Sexy, and Body by Victoria.

PINK is a sub-brand of Victoria’s Secret that was founded in 2004. It was created to cater to late-teens and college-aged women with more age-appropriate underwear, sleepwear, cosmetics, and accessories. Its marketed image is more fun, playful and flirtatious than the original Victoria’s Secret line. Because their target market is a much younger generation, PINK promotes its products in college tours, MTV, and in social media sites. PINK began their Facebook page in 2009 and is now one of the most popular fan pages out there in terms of its following and engagement.

The Facebook Page

Upon finding the Victoria’s secret PINK Facebook page and liking it, we were confronted with a bubbly and bright page with a cute and flirtatious-looking model wearing trendy PINK underwear. It immediately advertised a contest called “The Ultimate Fashion Show Challenge”. The winner of the contest was to be awarded a custom made light-up bra as well as a $400 shopping spree at PINK.

The PINK Facebook page had several extra tabs aside from the regular tabs such as “The Scoop”, Wallpapers, Gift Cards, and Polyvore. We will go through the important tabs and explain the purpose of each, as well as their successful aspects.

► Info

This tab is used by businesses to give the background of their company, explain what they offer, and give links to their other websites. People who go to any Facebook page are likely to see the info page before anything else. PINK tells fans in their info page that their brand is geared towards giving “comfy yet chic wear” for “the independent spirit” to make them feel “absolutely unique”. These power words stick to potential customer’s minds while browsing PINK’s product line and they immediately see the trendiness and comfort factor of PINK’s products.

PINK also includes links to all their websites and social media sites to increase their traffic and followers. This then increases their rankings in search engine results.

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WireWalkersVA is very pleased to provide you with this list of Top 10 Small Business Blogs.  We made this list very quick and clean – without a lot of extensive commentary – so that you could explore and decide for yourself which blogs you like the best.

We also created some great related content so please check them out here:

• Top 4 Small Business SEO Mistakes (Podcast / Transcript)
• Social Media for Small Business (Podcast / Transcript)

1. Small Business Trends – As the name implies, this blog is all about small business.  Get ready to see a lot of small business news, current issues and tips when you visit this blog.  Note:  We’ve actually included this blog as a great source of “Best Business Articles”.  Check it out.
2. You’re the Boss – This is a small business blog by The New York Times (NYtimes.com).  It gives entrepreneurs and small business owners the chance to compare notes, get tips and “learn from each other’s mistakes”.
3. The Global Small Business Blog – As a small business owner or entrepreneur, are you interested to expand your business … internationally?  Well, you should visit this site as this blog, created by Laurel Delaney, is focused exactly to that purpose.
4. Smallbiz Technology – Want to learn more about the right tools and technology you need to grow your business’ productivity which will result in increased revenue and whole lot more?  Smallbiz Technology, by Ramon Ray, may just be the website you should visit.  You’ll learn a lot from the news, articles, resources and analysis the website offers solely dedicated to small business owners and entrepreneurs.
5. Duct Tape Marketing – This blog, owned by John Jantsch (notably called as “The World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert”), talks about small business marketing, ideas and strategies.
6. Small Biz Survival – Written by authors “Becky McCray”, “Jeanne Cole”, “Glenna Mae Hendricks”, and “Jon Swanson”, this blog houses posts about small business, its marketing, development and much more.
7. Small Biz Bee – Created by Matthew Ringer, a successful entrepreneur himself, this blog houses tips and strategies for small business.  The blog also offers a free “5-day marketing course” where you’ll learn a lot about small business marketing.
8. Big Marketing for Small Business – As the name implies, the blog talks all about marketing for small business.  It basically gives out ideas to help entrepreneurs with their marketing.  It also talks about SEO, leadership and social media marketing.
9. BizAbode – This is a site that houses a bunch of articles that give out small business ideas, tips, management, and strategies.
10. Advice for Small Business Owners -  Written by Elie Kochman, you’ll see several articles here about the “common pitfalls of growing a business” and how to avoid them.  Since most of the tips here are from Elie’s personal experiences, you’ll learn a lot when it comes to surviving the small business world.

Which additional blogs would you add to this list?

Please see our other Social Media Resources.

Please let us know what you think in our Forum.

Please share via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn …

Keyword research is one of the most important and rewarding things you can do for search marketing and SEO optimization.  With proper keyword research, you can find out which keywords you should invest more on and which ones aren’t worth your time.  You can also learn more about what your customers want and then be able to tailor your products or services to cater to those needs.

The first step to keyword research is defining and analyzing the keywords you’re targeting.  Make sure that the keywords you’ve chosen are relevant to the information you’re providing in your site.  You could first take a survey, asking people what keywords they associate with your business.  Once you’ve got all the relevant keywords that people associate with your brand, you could then make a search of the key phrases that people relate to your business and scroll down to see the related searches.  From there, you can learn about more keywords related to your industry.  You can gather a hundred or so keywords using this technique.

You could also try using this Google Adwords tool to find out the popularity of your keyword or key phrases.  It will inform you of the competition for that particular keyword, the number of searches it gets, and the estimated cost per click, as well as some tips on other related keywords you could use.  It may be wise to analyze different keywords to come up with a list of valuable keywords and rank them depending on their popularity and the competition for each.  Ideal keywords would be ones with low competition but high search results.

Once you’ve gotten all your chosen keywords, you have to optimize your keywords by splitting them up into 2 to 3 keywords or phrases per page and making each completely relevant to the content (or, vice versa).  Your top 3 keywords should be used for your homepage to optimize it in searches.

Note: There are many other effective and sensible ways to do keyword analysis for SEO optimization so don’t limit yourself.  In the end, the best method is the method that works for you.

WireWalkersVA is very pleased to provide you with this list of Top 10 Leadership Blogs.  We made this list very quick and clean – without a lot of extensive commentary – so that you could explore and decide for yourself which blogs you like the best.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. LeadershipNow – A blog discussing leadership for men, women, children, and basically, for everyone.  If you want to develop the “leader in you”, then visit this site for articles, books and other resources about leadership.
2. Michael Hyatt Blog – This blog is about “intentional leadership”.  It is owned by Michael Hyatt, Chairman of the largest Christian publishing company, “Thomas Nelson Publishers”.  You’ll also find posts here about productivity, social media, publishing and a whole lot more.
3. Great Leadership – As the Director of “Executive Development Programs” at the University of New Hampshire (Whittemore School of Business and Economics), Dan McCarthy (the owner and author of this blog) shares his opinions and some useful information on leadership and its development in this blog.
4. Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage – Do you want to know more about leadership, management and embracing failure?  Bruce Lynn’s blog here is about all of that … and more!  Bruce also talks about leadership strategies in this blog.
5. CEO Blog – Time Leadership – Written by Jim Estill, this blog houses posts about leadership, time management, management tips, personal development and more.
6. Three Star Leadership Blog – This blog is dedicated for leaders (new leaders or otherwise).  It houses several articles that serve as guides and resources for leaders.
7. Leadership Freak – Dan Rockwell (Leadership Freak), the owner of this blog, talks about all things leadership.  From leadership quotes to leadership development, and everything in between, this site has all of them – which will be valuable for every business and leaders.
8. Orrin Woodward Blog– If you want to learn more about different leadership concepts, then this blog is a must-visit for you.  As a leadership and management expert, Orrin Woodward, the founder of the blog, shares his insights and tips in this blog.
9. Terry Starbucker – This blog houses several articles about leadership and customer service.  He also talks about the role of social media to leaders.  This blog is also known for a philosophy called “Half-Fullism”.
10. Leadership Expert – Want to learn more about leadership development and styles?  Simon Teague, the leadership expert and the current owner of the site, talks about them here.  Also, if you want resources and news about leadership, and how to become an effective leader, the site has a community where you can join, to get a hold of some advanced leadership tips and concepts.

WireWalkersVA is pleased to share with you the importance of Search Engine Marketing or SEM – and how a SEO company can be of help with this process.

You may fall under the category of website owners that have great sites with excellent content and feel as though they don’t need to market themselves anymore.   Unfortunately, it becomes an absolute waste of great content when nobody is there to see it.  When you are invisible to search engines, you’re nearly invisible to the rest of the world as well.  This is where SEO services such as Search Engine Marketing comes in.  However, if you’re too busy with other business concerns, you can have a SEO company do the marketing for you.  But sometimes, you may have to learn how to become more visible to search engines yourself by understanding how they work and what they look for when they rank results to queries.

For example, there are certain limitations to search engines which make some useful content not readily available to them.  One major limitation is that search engines can only read content that is in HTML form.  This means that if you have useful content in video, image or audio form, search engines cannot interpret it as being relevant.

Another limitation is that sites that don’t have solid links to interconnect all pages make it difficult for web crawlers to spider and thus become poorly ranked.  Finally, how search engines pull out results is very specific to the queries of its users.  So if your web page has excellent content but the keywords are slightly different from what the average person may type in the search box, then you won’t rank as highly as web pages that do tailor their content specifically to what people actually search for.

Why do you need such SEO services? Why would you need to be highly ranked anyway, you may ask? As was previously mentioned, nearly half of all users click the highest ranked website after performing a search.  The 2^nd ranked and 3^rd ranked get a considerable amount of traffic also but all the ones below them only get less than 5% of clicks.  People simply can’t be bothered to look through several websites that offer them the same thing.  Aside from that, people also tend to view the top ranked sites as more trustworthy while the ones in the next pages more likely to be unreliable, poorly maintained, or spam.  If you have a good product that’s priced well, it still won’t get you the recognition you should be getting if your website is not optimized.  You miss out on the opportunity to get new clients from the hordes of people who search daily for products and services online.

Now you may also be a business that relies more on your store than on your online sales.  You may consider your website as merely a reference (or, ‘brochure’) in case customers need to get contact numbers or ask a question.  However, it has been found that an increasing number of people have been choosing to buy products online, so much that for every $16 spent in stores, $1 is spent online – and, the trend is unmistakably towards increasingly more online sales.

If you’re simply relying on in-store sales, then you’re missing out on potentially huge revenues by not pursuing internet sales as well.  Also, it has been found that people look for new products using the internet and read reviews on them before they make those purchase offline.  If you’re looking for a way to increase the overall purchases in your store, then you have to learn to increase their visibility online.  For your business website to be visible online, you will need different kinds of SEO services like search engine marketing, for example.

It is very understandable that sometimes, you will want to focus more on other aspects of your business. When this happens, and since online presence is really important, it is best that you consult with a SEO company to render SEO services to your business website.