Interested in learning how Google Analytics and Google AdWords works? Here are three useful Google slideshows I found in a Mashable blog post this morning that you might find useful as you prepare your marketing plans for the New Year:
- An Introduction to Google Analytics - A quick explanation of what Google Analytics is and how it works.
- Google Analytics: Measuring Interactions - Demonstrates how Google Analytics measures website interactions (beyond pageviews).
- Google AdWords- A demonstration of how Google AdWords works. It provides tips and suggestions too!
Can your email address build your brand? Absolutely. Part of my job here at WeddingWire is to manage our email communications with our member base. When I look at an email list of vendors I’m constantly amazed with how many vendors still use email addresses from Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and local ISP’s (ie - Verizon, SBC Global) as their business email address. What’s more amazing is that they have websites with their own personal URL. If you own your domain name, there’s no reason for you to not have an email address that uses your domain. Having your company name in your email address is branding and I’d say adds to your credibility. It’s an ultra competitive wedding market right now and these are the little things that speak to your credibility as a business owner. This is one of those things that potential clients won’t notice when you have your domain in your email address, but when you don’t, it definitely gets noticed.
It’s easier than ever to use your domain in your email address. If you host with a company like 1and1.com or GoDaddy.com, then you defintely have email addresses waiting for you. If you use a private company to manage your website, contant them about new emails immediately as they should have emails for you as well. Even if you’re a true do it yourselfer and host your website on a computer in your own home and only have a domain, Google Apps provides business solutions to manage email through Gmail while still maintaining email addresses that end in your domain and not gmail.com.
The bottom line is having your company in your email address is a must these days. Even you think too many people have your current email address to change, simply start replying to emails with your new one and people will have your and improved email address.
There are lots of factors to being included on search results in search engines, but one such factor are sitemaps. Sitemaps make your website easier for the search engine spiders to read the pages of your website. If you’re unfamiliar with sitemaps, that’s fine and it’s actually quite easy. Hopefully you’ve taken advantage of Google’s free webmaster tools. (If not it’s free and easy to setup) Once you’re in your webmaster tools, you can upload your sitemap for your website.
Not sure how to create a sitemap? No problem. Go to www.xml-sitemaps.com to create and download your free sitemap. It only takes a few minutes so give it a try.
If you haven’t submitted your website to the major search engines in a while (as a fews months) or better yet since the last time you changed the content on your site, I thought I’d just provide links to the major ones for your convience. Enjoy.
You may have heard the buzz surrounding Microsoft’s recently launched search engine, Bing. Bing is the long-awaited site which many are already calling a worthy competitor to Google, the search engine phenomenon. Developers refer to Bing as a ‘decision engine,’ rather than a ‘search engine.’ Why? Because Bing is intended to help you make better decisions rather than to simply provide you with a wealth of information which may or may not answer to your needs.
