Is your online marketing an expense, or an investment?
On this edition of Business Connections Live, we talk to Michael Nagles of Strother Marketing Solutions, When your company gets really big, really successful, and you have a rocking operation that mirrors your vision, you should have someone ‘down the hall’ whose job it is to maintain your website, promote your business through social media and search engine marketing, and stay abreast of the trends in search engine optimization.
How much faster could you grow your business if your web site, social media, online marketing, and overall web presence was paying a return on the money you spend?
Is your online marketing an expense, or an investment?
Key thing to remember
- Securing a Domain name
With the rapidly growing base of the web, now is the best time to secure your domain name, even if you are not yet ready to begin building a website. Securing your domain name is a smart, easy and inexpensive way to protect your brand. If you don’t register your name, someone else might, and getting the rights to it from a rouge can be time consuming and expensive.
- Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC Advertising can be a profitable investment for companies that are looking for an immediate increase in traffic. By utilizing PPC with the right keywords, your text advertisement is placed within searches that are relevant to the users search term.
PPC stands for “Pay Per Click” which means exactly that; you set a daily amount that you’re willing to pay and every time someone clicks on your ad, you’re paying Google that fee. If no one clicks on your ad, then you don’t get charged, but that also means that your ad may not have been as effective as you had hoped. There are many variables including how much you’ll pay, how many keywords to use, how much relevance it has, how many ads to have, etc.
Google reports that PPC ads are clicked on roughly 15% of the time. Which means that even though organic search results are clicked on more often, if someone sees an ad that fits exactly what they are looking for, they’ll certainly click it.
There’s no guarantee that your ad will appear first, second or even third. Google uses an algorithm which dictates whether it shows up based on which keywords you have assigned to your ad, how much you are willing to pay for each click, and how relevant your ad is to the user. The closer you get to your ideal target market, the more your ad will appear and be clicked on.
- What are SSL and Digital Certificates?
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a protocol developed by Netscape in 1996 which quickly became the method of choice for securing data transmissions across the Internet. SSL is an integral part of most Web browsers and Web servers and makes use of the public-and-private key encryption system developed by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman.
In order to make an SSL connection, the SSL protocol requires that a server should have a digital certificate installed. A digital certificate is an electronic file that uniquely identifies individuals and servers. Digital certificates serve as a kind of digital passport or credential which authenticate the server prior to the SSL session being established.
Typically, digital certificates are signed by an independent and trusted third party to ensure their validity. The “signer” of a certificate is known as a Certification Authority (CA), such as VeriSign and GeoTrust.
So what are the practical applications of SSL certificates?
Firstly, looking at categories of data, the most common deployment is for securing transmission of financial information in ecommerce. However, with incidence of identity theft on the rise, protecting the transmission of a broad range of personally-identifiable information is becoming ever more important. This category of data would include identity and social security numbers, e-mail addresses and demographic information as well as account registration and login information.
In terms of applications and protocols, SSL Certificates can be used to secure the following:
• Web Servers
• Mail Servers
• Databases
• FTP Sites
• Internet Chat
• Shopping Carts
Strother Marketing Solutions helps you make smart online marketing decisions based on your vision and your data. Our training, mentoring, and consulting efforts are based on knowledge and experience, thoughtfully delivered so that you can stand above your competitors.
http://www.strotherweb.com/
Business Connections Live Programme 68
This is the Business Connections Live Business Channel on YouTube Business Connections Live Programme 68. Broadcast 21st January 2015