Many small businesses have to cut corners these days to drive down costs. However, a company’s logo is one thing that should never be taken lightly.

The harsh reality is that scrimping on a professional logo can actually end up costing more money in the long run, because a business can suffer due to the poor professional image created by a badly-designed logo.

Logos are an indicator of a business’s professionalism. If a business’s logo is either poorly executed or non-existent, it can make the business look amateurish, to say the least.

The Importance of Logos
Brand logos are a fundamental element of online marketing that cannot be taken for granted or overlooked.
In some ways, a professional logo is more important to a small business than a larger one, because they are not as well known and have to work harder to drum up business. Online, a good logo is even more important.

A quality website designer will use a company’s logo to influence a website’s color scheme, as well as other visual elements. This approach gives a website a distinctive, cohesive appearance and provides an immediate sense of comfort to visitors.

A Poor Logo Means a Poor Design
Businesses with poor or non-existent logos fail to provide this crucial starting point for a web designer, which can often result in a generic looking site that fails to enhance the business’s image and credibility. When it comes to choosing between two similar businesses, the one with the professional image will win the customer over every time.

While smaller businesses clearly don’t have the budget of a large firm, a professional logo, in the hands of a professional website designer, will result in a professional-looking website design.

A logo is an asset worth investing in.

Copyright 2012 dzine it, Inc. Graphic Design All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

When creating a landing page for a website, it is important to make sure that it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and free of errors.

The landing page of your website fulfils many functions. It’s like the front door to your website.

A website’s landing page should do the following:

• provide users a snapshot of the company’s product or service
• feature a visual design that conveys professionalism and trustworthiness
• provide links that support the structure and content of the overall site
• offer content that reflects attention to detail and dedication

Because a landing page needs to convey so much, it is important to get it right. So, there are five rules to consider when designing a landing page.

1. The inclusion of media. A landing page should always include a picture or video, because a visual representation of your product or service helps the user to see what you have to offer. It also helps to break up text which, when to dense, can scare a user off. Of course, the picture or video should be relevant to the website and the business that it represents.

2. Avoid Clutter. Make sure that the topic of the landing page is focused, keeping links to a minimum in the body text of the main content area. Use designs to frame your content and to fill in blank spaces, but keep them simple and unobtrusive.

3. Use perfect grammar and spelling. Nothing will turn users away more than spelling errors or poorly constructed sentences. Users often attribute spelling and grammar errors to the author’s lack of skill, expertise and authority.

4. Build effective link structures. Make sure that users recognize where the links on your page are located, what they link to, and how they relate to the links around them. Effective linking is the cornerstone of good navigation, particularly when it coems to landing pages.

5. Use colors wisely. Colors have an effect on users.

• Blue conveys trust and reliability.
• Red is exciting, but can also be a warning to stop.
• Black can be evil, but also modern, or stylish.
• Yellows and oranges are fiery, flashy, and bold.
• Green is natural and calm.

If you take your time and pay attention to all these simple rules, you will go a long way to creating a landing page that is professional, inviting and effective.

Copyright 2012 dzine it, Inc. web design company All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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A blog has the potential to significantly impact a company’s popularity and subsequently its discovery by potential customers. Blogging also contributes to a company’s search engine value, which can drive more traffic to its website, increasing the chance of attracting qualified leads and potential customers.”

The benefits of blogging have already been proven. For example, a recent study showed that the average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than companies that don’t blog.

Obviously, the greater the number of visitors to your website, the more popular your pages, and subsequently your business, becomes.

Another study found that 69% of businesses attributed their lead generation success to blogging and 57% of businesses claimed to have acquired a customer through their company blog.

Blogging is a great way to provide information to readers, relative to your company’s product or service, helping them to trust and form an interest in your company.

Consider the following tips for the creation of a successful company blog:

Offer Great Content!
By creating useful, remarkable blog posts, companies will attract an audience that is looking for new information related to its industry. Posts should be written in such a way that they position the company they represent as an authority in their industry.
Use Social Media!
After posting a new blog entry, it is important to update all social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, with a direct link to the post. Also, by placing social media share links at the end of your blog post, you make it easier for readers to share your entry on their own social media accounts.

Allow Comments!

Always allow readers to give feedback on posts. While many companies are hesitant to leave this option available, for fear of negative feedback, it gives the company the perfect opportunity to address concerns directly while utilizing positive feedback.

Use Keywords!

When proper keywords are included in a post, it helps the blog entry get found by the search engines. Proper keyword placement and usage helps the SEO value of the blog, and subsequently the website it is associated with.

Update Regularly!

In order for a blog to be successful, posts should be published approximately 2 to 3 times a week. A continuously updated blog shows audiences, and the search engines, that its authors are experts in their industry.

Copyright 2012 dzine it, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Website visitors tired of receiving stale information are relishing in Google’s recent “freshness update”.

For major search engines, it’s all about offering users the most relevant and fresh information available. That is why we have come up with five tips to boost a company’s online marketing campaign, making it easier to obtain and maintain a reasonable rank on Google’s search results pages.

Just because a business updates or makes corrections to its web pages on a regular basis, doesn’t automatically mean that its website’s freshness value will increase. In fact, Google determines a website’s freshness the first time it crawls its pages.

The goal of the recent freshness update was to deliver the most recent or current information to users when they enter a query into the Google search engine. It does this, in part, by searching for pages that are time stamped, indicating when the information or the webpage was created.

Time-stamping is crucial for businesses that want top spots in Google’s search results, because this factor alone underlines the importance of presenting and maintaining up-to-date information on websites.

To get the most from Google’s freshness update, business owners should consider incorporating the following five strategies to their online marketing plan:

1. Publish press releases consistently. Businesses should use press releases to keep visitors up-to-date on the latest news about their company and their industry. Since press releases are time-sensitive, Google will respond accordingly, but business owners should publish new press releases weekly to maintain a good rank.

2. Create a blog. Using a blog to publish interesting topics related to a business’s industry is a great way to keep that business relevant in the eyes of the search engines. The blog should be updated regularly and contain link bait tied to the company’s website.

3. Utilize social media. It is important for businesses to utilize Facebook, Google+ and Twitter for marketing. The best part is that followers and customers can help a business’s “freshness” campaign by adding comments or content and promoting the site through social sharing.

4. Find your place on Google News. If a business’s press releases are published correctly, they will appear on Google News and this can have a huge impact on a website’s ranking in Google.

5. Contact a trusted website marketing firm. Most SEO and online marketing firms will offer website audits free of charge and can be hired to help a company ensure that social media channels, word-of-mouth marketing, reputation and consumer sentiment monitoring and SEO are being properly managed and maintained.

As you implement these strategies to improve your website’s freshness, you should also make sure that you are using time-stamps correctly.

Google recommends the following format: YYYY-MM-DD.

Businesses should also update their website’s XML sitemaps every time they publish new information.

Copyright 2012 dzine it, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mobile marketing has become the new standard in small business marketing, because it offers the opportunity to reach local customers who’re on-the-go. In addition, local mobile marketing can save businesses money when compared to other types of marketing.

The bottom line is that customers aren’t sitting at a home computer any more, searching for local businesses to patronize. If your Web presence is geared toward traditional Internet surfers, you’re likely missing out on lots of business opportunities.

In order to leverage the new wireless world, businesses need to fuse their local marketing efforts with mobile marketing.

Consider the following six tips on starting a local mobile marketing campaign:

1. Make your website compatible. A business’s first step should be to optimize its website for mobile phones. Now, it is easier than ever to make your website small screen-friendly. If you use WordPress, there are several free and premium plug-ins available to make your site mobile compatible.

2. Join mobile directories. By getting their website listed in a few mobile directories, businesses can easily place their websites on the map, so to speak. Google Places offers one such opportunity.

3. Create a mobile website. At some point, every business will need two versions of their website. Now is as good a time as any to get started.

4. Build traffic through location-based app marketing. Many small businesses use apps like FourSquare, Yelp and even Facebook to attract mobile customers.

5. Consider mobile advertising. Local mobile advertising through Google is an inexpensive way to reach more customers. Businesses can even target multiple mobile devices, from high-end Smartphones to standard cell phones.

6. Connect via QR codes. Quick Response (QR) codes are becoming increasingly popular and are cropping up in magazine ads; on websites, billboards, lawn signs and t-shirts. Once a mobile user scans a business’s QR code, it is easy to connect with them in real-time, sending coupons, event announcements, feed updates, and more.

Copyright 2012 dzine it, Inc. internet marketing All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.