How Is Branding More Than Just a Logo Design?

“I wish to develop a brand identity system for my company…the only thing I require is a corporate logo.” This is the typical false impression among many customers who are seeking to create their business identity. They misinterpret a brand identity for a simple icon, logo or a signature used on a signpost on the organization’s doorway. On the other hand, the actuality is otherwise…the development of logo design is just a tiny portion of whole branding procedure. It is the singular factor that divides huge business leaders from their subtle rivals. The prime issue faced by visual artists is clients with insignificant brand awareness. Sometimes a designer makes a visual identity for a customer but the business isn’t able to institute its existence in the marketplace. The consumer punches all the responsibility of failing on the substandard logo. While in actual fact, it was not the logo that dropped short and is the brand that was unsuccessful. How is brand more than a Logo? Imagine if you had never seen the Nike brand or heard of their products. Now when you are unacquainted with the organization and what it has to provide you, you observe the famous ‘Swoosh’ logo. Will it have an impact on you? I presume it won’t because the branding was unable to memorize the logo in your mind. This is where the distinction between a logo and a brand is made. * Leave an Endless Impression: This is the greatest misconception committed by most people about branding. Your brand is not simply an emblem or an icon that you put on your business entrance. In contrast, a brand has the power to leave a deep impact on your clientele that is long lasting and endless. * Who creates a Brand: For those who consider that a brand is erected by simply developing a logo, then think again. Your business identity is not a physical thing that can be designed tentatively. A brand features whatever its clients should think about the company. In a nut shell, you can develop a company logo, but the brand identity is erected by the clientele. * Safeguard Company Reputation: Your company logo is an evident manifestation of the organization. It strongly portrays the message of the business’s everyday activities in the market. But a brand moves one gear up in defending the reputation of the company. Whatever image, remembrance and reputation you collect through your logo is secured by your brand identity. To place it simply, a logo design sets the groundwork of a brand but is not entirely adequate to determine its existence. Company advertising does not simply end on a logo. They must be thoroughly conveyed and instilled to be able to be acknowledged.

Matt Cutts Explains Submitting to Index via Google Webmaster Tools

Matt Cutts Explains Submitting to Index via Google Webmaster Tools In this video Matt Cutts explains a feature in Google Webmaster Tools that you may not have heard about and explains how when using fetch as Googlebot you can also use it to request to submit a page to the index. Matt Cutts explains how this option could be helpful for you and how you can use it to build your internet business. Learn more about this feature in the Webmaster Tools Help Center

How Can social networking can help your business?

  Business networking is always the significant activity for any offline business as this is the best way to make relationships with new suppliers, finding new products and services by communicating with associates and competitors, and you can also get new targeted leads and customers. The activity of business networking is not a new issue, but it was never too easy, simple, cost effective and interesting before the inclusion of today’s social networking sites like G +, Facebook, linkedin and Twitter.

It’s odd that it’s taken so long for social software to make inroads in the business world. Social networking has a natural home in the enterprise because the relationships there have a purpose.
James uses twitter and his wife hung out on Facebook for a while. I never joined any particular network, because I just didn’t see the point. It’s just a bunch of folks hanging out, after all. I’d much rather do that in person.
I eventually signed up for LinkedIn, because it was a good way of staying in touch with former coworkers. It’s also a great resource for finding a new job, and it sure beats carrying around a stack of paper resumes. But I only check in occasionally.
First thing first, whatever the industry, target market, field or the niche your offline business are in almost certainly has a relationship, and in today’s world few industry associations don’t have websites where the members can communicate about issues, trade referrals and all the other aspects of business networking. If the association of the industry you are in is helpful to you before, imagine how much more significant they would be to your offline business if they also become a hub of contact details and targeted leads for your business?

Secondly, all professional associations that cross the boundaries of the niche they are in, can be a major boost to the networking efforts of any business. For instance, retail councils, wholesaler associations, even advocacy groups, pressure groups, manufacturing associations, and even others have website where, with a bit of research and carefulness, you can get ways to extend your business community with social networking. It is safe to say that building relationships is essential to flourish a business and social networking is a great tool to do so.
Thirdly, there are the real social networking sites available online. These social networking sites are designed to cover all the areas of business for both offline and online businesses alike. LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter are the most common examples where each employee or employer in a company have their own resume-style page where they can list what they do and for whom they are working with. You may also build company listing pages as well reflecting which members of that company have pages online. A glance at these sites can help you see a dream come true for an offline business looking for networking opportunities.
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, and other Web 2.0 properties like Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz aren’t designed particularly for the use of business professional. But at the same time social networking sites are extremely helpful to build a business community because the people targeting you never seem to be business utilitarian groups and thus it helps you make a personal relationship that in return indirectly helps you in your business enhancements. Allow your employees to educate each other for how to best represent your company on these social networking sites and then allow some time each day to network and make associations with the people. Efforts can help you to find suppliers, and get referrals to targeted leads. These efforts can even help you get more customer base to the online presence of you company and directly through the front doors of your offline business networking.

How to Find The Right Keyword Phrases For Your Niche

Keyword research is a crucial foundation for any online business. This is because all sales will come due to the fact that

somebody starts by searching online for the items they want to buy. It is your responsibility to find the phrases that

people are using to find your products. You must put some thought into this process and make sure you end up with a

list of buyer motivated phrases. These are phrases that a person types in when they are ready to buy the item you offer.

If you find phrases that appear to be informational in nature, that is to say that it is a phrase somebody would type

when looking for information but not something that details an actual product then you will not use these phrases as

main keyword phrases in your business.

Everything you do with marketing your business will be affected by these key phrases. Without them you have nothing.

It is only because people type key phrases that you are able to create a site that makes you money so you must first do

some serious research with key phrases. This may take 3 - 10 hours of work and likely will require several hours each

week as you begin and of course when you start on a new site to duplicate the process. Pay attention to the phrases you

see and think about what people are looking for when they type in those phrases. You need a list of phrases that

indicate people are looking to buy the products you offer for sale.

Once you create this list you will use the phrases throughout the content in your site and in all the marketing you will do

to help drive traffic to your site. With a list of phrases and the research done on the competition for each phrase

(allintitle) you will be able to determine which phrases will be easiest for you to target so you can get your pages ranked

for them.

Main criteria

1. Most important criteria is relevancy

a. Buyer motivated phrases relevant to your products

b. Obvious searches to buy a product

2. Second most important criteria is competition (allintitle or similar search)

3. Third most important criteria is demand (monthly searches)

Build your list

So when you are ready to start marketing you must first start with a list of keyword phrases that people are using to find your

product. Start with some ideas of your own. Don’t create a large list based on guesses however. You have likely seen at least

some of the phrases that come from the keyword tool. Google has proven they are the masters at search engine technology

so we will use their tool as a standard. This tool will show you everything from the phrases used to the number of searches

and even other data we won’t go into here.

Using this tool, you can download a spreadsheet of possibly hundreds of phrases that people are using to find what you sell. It

is important that you qualify each phrase you might use so set aside some time to apply to keyword phrase research each

week. Start with a few seed phrases that you can enter into the tool. 2 or 3 phrases will get you started. Enter the chosen

phrases into Google’s keyword tool found here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

1. First, make sure you setup a google adwords account.

a. On the keyword tool page click

b. If you have a google (

sign in at the top rightgmail) account already it should let you sign in with that, if not create one now at

www.gmail.com

c. Enter your settings for time zone, location and currency

and then proceed with these instructions2

d. You

should take you back to the keyword tool

Do NOT need to setup your first campaign or ads yet, just get the basic registration done and then it

Now that you are signed in you can enter some phrases

NOTE:

campaign. Go ahead and call them

you hang up with them, pause the campaign

you make it effective but you should never activate and run the one they setup for you.

You will get a postcard or email from Google in a few weeks offering you a credit if you call them and setup your firstat that time and let them help you setup your first campaign but then immediately after. They will set it up to help them and NOT you. I will give you the details to help

Tips for Adwords setup:

1. When you do setup your billing and account be sure to set the account to

PRE PAY and NOT Post Pay.

Here is a screen shot of the Google keyword tool as of December 2011:

Notice the many columns of information that are shown. Your account will likely show different columns. I am going to show

you how to adjust the columns to just the ones you need for basic keyword research right now. To get started you need to

enter some keyword phrases and click on Search and google will provide you with a larger list of phrases and the data for each

phrase.

Here is how to change the columns:

3

At the top of your list to the right you will see a button that reads Columns. You should only select the Local Monthly Searches

column right now. The other information is not important for what you are doing at this time. After clearing all checks but that

one, click apply.

4

This is what your search results will look like

:

Match type:

Next look for the Match Types check boxes on the left side of your screen and check only the

Phrase match check box.

Uncheck

target the best phrases with good demand.

Here is some explanation about the different match types:

the Broad. This will give you more precise demand numbers on actual phrases and therefore will help you to

•

other words

Broad match results will likely contain all the words but they may be in any order, and may include

•

the phrase

Phrase match results will contain all the words, in order, and may include other words before or after

•

Exact match results will contain only your words in this order

5

Broad beginnings

Start your research with one to three general phrases related to your niche. When you type in one or more general

phrases to the Keyword tool and then click search it will take that list and show you hundreds of other phrases that

Google thinks are related to the seed phrases you typed in. Then you download the entire list and continue the research

as outlined here.

Download CSV

Once you have the results from Google click on the link at the top of the column titled Local Search Results to sort your

results be the Local demand number. Once you have it sorted, Click the download button at the top left to download the

file to your computer. Choose All and then change format from CSV for excel to CSV and then press Download. In the

next step you need to allow and open it and begin cleaning your list. The next steps are important.

Save the original file with one name and then save the file again giving it a different name. This way you always have the

original file if you decide you need that data. Now you can start cleaning the list you have and separating phrases. You

can create other workbooks or you can simply add a new sheet at the bottom of the one you are working on currently.

(Note) If you have not worked with excel much, don’t be intimidated. It is a simple program. You are smart enough to

learn how to work with it. If you need to, search on Google for anything you don’t know how to do. For example if my

instruction to create a new sheet in the existing workbook confuses you then search on Google for

sheet in an excel workbook

how to create a newand you will find a tutorial to walk you through it.

6

Clean the list

If you are looking at creating a site about Barbeque smokers then perhaps you want to focus your first one on Bradley

smokers. If this is the case then you will be searching for phrases related specifically to Bradley smoker. On the new copy you

will keep only those phrases that you feel most directly relate to your products. Use these as you write articles and to add to

your product titles and anywhere else you want to optimize. All other phrases will be deleted. To delete the irrelevant

phrases;

1. Right click on the number of the row you want to delete

2. Find the word delete in the right click menu and click delete to delete the entire row of data.

What to delete

When looking at your list there are a few things you need to take into account to decide if they are relevant.

1. The phrase must be directly relevant to your niche

2. The phrase should be relevant to an actual product you sell

3. The phrase should be a buyer motivated phrase which means you think somebody who searches with that

phrase knows what they want to buy

Buyer motivated phrases vs info search phrases

A buyer motivated phrase is one that a person types in when they know what they want. If I am searching for a baby

backpack carrier I might start with a phrase like How to carry a baby while hiking. This is an informational search phrase.

Once I look at what is available I am going to find the item I want and do a new search for that. My buyer motivated

phrase then will be something like backpack baby carrier or baby carrier backpack. These are buyer motivated phrases

because now I know what I want.

Once you have cleaned the initial list to have only relevant phrases you can take the smaller number of phrases and go

back to the Google keyword tool and search just for phrases related to your niche. You can copy up to 100 phrases from

your refined list and paste those all into the Google keyword tool.

This will ensure that the resulting phrases are very closely related to your niche. It is a good idea to use some simpler

terms when needed so keep that in mind. For example, if you are looking for Bradley smokers then you might try

searching for just Bradley or even smoker and then check the box under the word or phrase text box that reads Only

show ideas closely related to my search terms. This will enable you to find the phrases that really matter for the current

list you are working on.

If you delete only the data and not the entire row then your numbers will not match up. You must delete the entire row.

You can even delete multiple rows at once. If you have 10 rows or so in a row that you want to remove click the number

of the first one and drag down to the last to be removed and then right click on the highlighted section and choose

delete.

Once you complete your research you need to

you do the rest of your research. You should have the following columns in your spreadsheet:

remove any irrelevant columns and add one or change a heading to help7

For this example I was researching for a smoker site.

In the next steps you will add a column called allintitle and add data to the allintitle column.

Competition

If you expect to gain ranking in the search engines then you will need to have serious original content on your pages that

will offer people ideas, how to tutorials, top 10 lists or other valuable information related to the phrases they are

searching. It will be easier to gain recognition with phrases that have a lower competition. Keep in mind that your results

are relative to your niche. Therefore, I am not going to give any specific numbers or rather I would ask that you not limit

yourself to specific numbers. Use any numbers discussed as a

targeting the phrases in

Once you have searched for demand, which is the Local Monthly Searches you will get a list of phrases. Now you can

start doing the research for your competition and narrow your list to the phrases that will be easiest to target. A simple

approach to help you understand your competition is a simple allintitle search.

guide only and recognize that you need to start byyour list that have the lower competition while still being relevant and still showing demand.

Allintitle

Allintitle is a simple search that will give you an indication of competition for each phrase you research. This is not the

only way to determine your success but it is a simple approach to start with. The search for allintitle results simply shows

the number of pages that use that phrase in their page meta title which indicates they are targeting the phrase.

1. Add a new column in your spreadsheet and title it allintitle. Using each phrase go to

allintitle: keyword phrase.

2. Replace the term keyword phrase with your actual phrase from your list.

3. Make sure you leave the quotes in place. They play an active role to make sure the results are related directly to

that phrase with the words in that exact order.

4. When you do the search for your first phrase, make note of the number of results that are shown under the

search bar.

5. Type that number into your spreadsheet in the cell next to the appropriate phrase.

6. After you get the number for the first phrase repeat the search for all the other phrases in your list of 20-30

phrases.

www.Google.com and type8

a.

7. Type this number in the allintitle column in your spreadsheet.

a.

8.

Multiple phrases

Perhaps one of the most important items you need to take note of here is that you have many phrases that you can target.

You are not limited to just one phrase or even just 5 for your marketing and optimization. You will usually find dozens of key

phrases that you can work with. These will be the many different key phrases you will use throughout your site content for

optimization and in all your marketing. You have a lesson in your Education Center titled

discussed how to use keyword phrases for website optimization.

Here are some of the common places you will use your list of phrases:

Optimizing Your Website that

•

Site content

•

Article titles

•

Google Merchant Center

•

Twitter posts

•

Blog posts

9

If you have 50 products then you have the ability to optimize on at least 50 phrases for Google merchant center. That is 50

chances of being seen at the top of results instead of just 2 or 3.

Demand

You should look for phrases that have a phrase match Local Monthly Searches of 800 or more. Of course it stands to

reason that the more demand you have the more potential for visitors and therefore profit. It is important to keep in

mind however that the higher the demand the higher the possibility of competition as well. This does not mean that

every phrase with 100000 searches will be impossible to compete with. You need to do some other research to verify

how difficult each phrase will be to compete but it is a good likelihood that high demand means higher competition.

Perhaps an optimal range to look for would be over 880 phrase match Local Monthly Searches and up to around 50000

Local Monthly Searches on the high end. I do not recommend removing any relevant phrases from the list if they are

outside this range. This is a broad range and it is not a hard and fast rule but it should give you some guidelines. The

most important thing to look at is that you have enough people looking for the phrase to be able to target the phrase

and make money from it. Generally if you have 3000 Local Monthly Searches you will have plenty of traffic when you get

your site ranked for that phrase. Don’t be afraid to target phrases that are under the 880 if you feel they are relevant.

Just don’t build an entire marketing strategy with those small demand phrases.

High Demand Not Mandatory

High demand is not a requirement for your keyword phrase list. There will be some phrases that do not have a high demand

but can still be very valuable for you. If the phrase is sought after even 20 times a month you want those twenty visitors

coming to your site. You will not spend as much time and effort perhaps for those few visitors up front but those phrases may

still be valuable for you. Try to incorporate over time as many phrases as you can. I am several years into my business and still

I come up with additional phrases that I can use to optimize my site that I am not currently using.

Now you have a cleaned list that will provide you with dozens of phrases to use to get more traffic. Put these phrases to use

one phrase at a time as you write articles, upload merchant Center products, add new products and engage in social media

marketing efforts. Every form of marketing will require the use of keyword phrases. They will be used in different ways

perhaps with each strategy of marketing but they are the foundation of all you will do to get traffic to your site.

Get going!

Now that you know the demand for each phrase and you have a general idea of the competition you are ready to start

your marketing in earnest. You can choose the easiest phrases to start targeting in your site content for SEO and for

articles, directories and other marketing strategies. You will look at a combination of all the data to determine which

phrases to target first. Keep in mind that the phrases with the most competition will be the hardest to get ranked for.

There may be some valuable phrases in that high competition list but they are not the only phrases.

Look for the phrases that have lower competition while still offering a fair demand. The demand number needs to

indicate that there are enough people looking for the product that you will be able to get several visits each day.

Generally this means for the first main phrases that you target as you begin your marketing, you might want to use

phrases that have over 500 searches per month. If you have 40000 searches for a phrase but the competition is one of

the highest then look for a phrase that has lower competition but still has some good demand. I like to organize my list

sorted by competition A-Z or lowest at the top. Then I look at the demand numbers at the top of the list and start

targeting the phrases that are close to or over 500 searches per month. Then as I continue to market I will move down

the list targeting other phrases. I actually have a site which has few phrases with demand around only 200 or 300

searches per month and I simply target the best phrases I can find for that niche and since my profit is so high it is still

very valuable for me. So keep in mind that none of these numbers are written in stone and they are not hard and fast

rules.

Target the best phrases for your niche whether that means 1000’s of searches per month or just hundreds.

How to determine if a phrase is great:

Is it directly relevant to your products?

•

Does it appear to be a buyer motivated search phrase?

•

Does it have any search demand?

•

If a phrase passes with this criteria, you have one to keep!Is the competition low compared to your other relevant phrases?

Why Research key phrases?

7 Phases of the Marketing hourglass