Web Strategies

While we’re on the topic of marketing for the local dining, bar and entertainment scene, today marks the grand opening of Zing Restaurant located in an historic building at 543 Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis.  From all that I can find about this cool up and comer, it sounds like an awesome concept.  A social dining experience, high brow fare, newly renovated facilities - sounds great!  (More information here: http://indianapolis.dbusinessnews.com/shownews.php?newsid=164714&type_news=latest).

The problem?  I’m interested!  Where can I find out more?  After spending a little over 5 minutes (an eternity on Google’s watch) searching for terms like zing, zing indianapolis, zing restaurant indianapolis, zing bar indianapolis - I come up empty handed.  A few blog posts here and there about the architectural renovations of 543 Indiana Avenue, a mention of their grand opening on Indy.com and that’s about it.  Anything of value?  Nothing, nada.    Where can I see photos, make a reservation, check out the menu, day dream about how great my next hot date at Zing is going to be and sign up to get updates of things happening at this awesome new place?

The lesson?  If you’re going to go in to business, you’ve got to get in the conversation and the conversation IS happening online.  If you don’t write about your brand, someone else will and it may not be the information you’d like to share.  So, c’mon, Zing, don’t be afraid - join the conversation!

For more on joining in, I’d turn you to Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins’ recent blog post at Ubernoggin’ or get in touch and we can help!

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I’ve done a lot of research lately on corporate and small business blogging and what businesses can do to have a blog that really focuses on ROI (return on investment).  In summary, blogs have really evolved over the past 5 years from being only something that some nut with an agenda rants in to being a valuable tool to candidly learn more about a particular subject or what a particular company brings to the table in terms of expertise.

Small business blogging can be a good idea for a number of reasons.  First off, SEO (search engine optimization).  By developing and to build a blog with your team, you’re rallying the organization around a cause that will enhance your site’s performance in search engines.  Building a library of valuable and timely content driven information will raise your site’s rankings on Google, Yahoo! and other major search engines.  Simply by building the blog and sharing information relevant to your business, you can bring your organization (be it large or small) from page 10 to top 3 in no time.

Secondly, we’ve gotta face it - we’re not all in a position to make all the right decisions for our business or personal life right now, today.  Typically, the average consumer will visit seven websites before deciding on one to actually engage and do business with.  Whether you sell a product online or in stores, generate leads or you’re just looking to spread your message, a blog can help turn strangers in to friends, then friends in to customers.  It allows you to build rapport and share information in a lively, candid and no obligation manner.

That said, keep reading our blog and take all the free information you care to have - we’ll keep dishing it up for you!  Ours is a business model built on service and education of why and how our web design services can work for you.  Contact the staff at Intero Design Group if you’re ready to get started on your own small business blog.

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Great. You got your website ready and it looks great and functions great. Now you want to show it to the people so that they can visit it and you can actually get benefit of your website. But how people will know about your website?

Here is where SEO would come to your help.

What is an SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is optimizing your site and content for a search engine. Yet many Web developers/designers either don’t take time to code a site properly or don’t know how to do proper SEO. The basics of code optimization are just sound HTML coding practices; when followed, they go a long way toward SEO.

If your Web site doesn’t have a page appearing in the top 10 search engine results, the chances of someone clicking on your site listing and actually visiting your site, drop dramatically. If you’re not in the top 20 you have almost no chance that someone will go through more listings to find your page. You too do the same, correct? So your site need to be listed in top 20 for sure, if not in top 10.

SEO efforts involve a site’s coding, presentation, structure and fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other efforts includes adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users.

But how to do Search Engine Optimization?

Well, there is a lot needed to be done to optimize your Web site for search engines, from the code level, keywords, alt tags, meta tags, page title, link building and the actual content, for which you will need help of SEOs, that is Search Engine Optimizers. Understanding how to tag the content, and where to place it in the HTML, is critical. This is the basic outline, to create search engine friendly pages. Your pages will be easily indexed by the search engine spiders and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged, those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines. I will cover more about each part of search engine optimization separately, in my next article.

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As I meet with clients from Indianapolis and across the country and work with developers and designers from across the world, it often comes up - why the web?  Why should we all be devoting so much time and attention to Internet-based marketing versus the traditional marketing machines that are already tried and true?  Why is web marketing better than traditional marketing?

First and foremost, is the concept of permission marketing versus interruption marketing.  This is the idea that there are customers looking for exactly what you have to offer without you reaching out to 1,000,000 people with a shotgun approach ad.  Only the most targeted of customer needs to even bother knocking on your door or wasting your time.  If you run a Toyota dealership in Tuscon, why waste time taking calls from someone interested in a Fiat in Fargo?  At the same time, wouldn’t it be nice to get calls from someone in Tulsa that is, in fact, interested in Toyotas?  Afterall, the world is flat and you can ship that new 2009 Avalon right over.

Secondly is metrics, measurability and scalability.  The typical small business used to run a classified ad in the Sunday paper as a one shot deal and sit by the phone in hopes of calls.  In today’s fast-paced, web driven marketing world, you can deploy your message, measure results, modify your message and make it as small as your local market or as large as a global campaign within days all with the few clicks of a mouse and a little help from some web design pros.

I’m sure I could go on for hours, but I’ll close with the notion that the web is where your customers are.  If you’ve noticed that your “yellow pages” ad and billboard aren’t delivering the calls that they once did, then you’re not alone - it’s okay.  Use of the world wide web as the first stop for information on anything from sports scores and movie times to big decisions like airline tickets and new homes will continue to grow.  You can be the champion in your business by helping to create an effective web presence.

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Welcome to the corporate blog of Indianapolis web design company, Intero Design Group. Our global team in Indianapolis, Indiana and Surat, India is excited to share this blog with you, the small business owner, and shed some light on the ins and outs of small business marketing on the web.

In an ongoing, candid and constantly updated fashion, we’ll be covering a range of topics from quality web design to email marketing - even corporate blogging and why your business should be communicating with your prospects in this new, off-the-cuff manner.

Best of all, our entire staff has been invited to get in on the action! So you have at your disposal not one, but twenty something web design professionals from across the globe.

As President of Intero Design Group, I extend a warm welcome and look forward sharing our insights as we grow our company in the Indianapolis market and answering any questions you may have.

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