2013 Graphic Design Trends

2013 Graphic Design Trends

Just like the fashion industry, graphic design styles change with each passing year. This year, 2013, is no different. Check out the latest graphic design trends that will have your website looking fresh, clean and up-to-date.

Clean Look

This year it’s all about white space, which gives the site a clean simplistic look that is easy on the eyes. Not to mention it makes it easier to send a clear message to the audience which action you want them to take when they land on your site.

Original Art

2013 is all about large images and infographics that are eye catching as well as original. More and more designers and photographers are making the effort to create original illustrations and photographs for websites. This trend can really bring originality and sincerity to your site. Not to mention, set you apart from the competition.

Typography

They days of being confined to 3-4 fonts are over. As seen last year and continuing to this year, designers are using a variety of rich fonts to make your brand stand out clearly and creatively in the crowd. Vintage and retro typography have really made a comeback and will continue to be the trend.

Interaction

Gamification is the name of the game. Flashing annoying ads are a thing of the past. Today, you have to engage your audience and get them to interact with your ad or website. A small reward can go along way to bringing in new customers and retaining current customers.

Colors

What’s hot on the catwalk is hot on the web. Look for this year’s vibrant and bold fashion color palette to walk off the runway and right onto your favorite site.

If you want to freshen up the look of your site and stay ahead of the competition, contact us today. One of our design experts will be happy to craft a new look for your website.

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Free Google SEO Tools

Free Google SEO Tools

Learn how your personal or company website can benefit greatly from some of the free Google SEO tools. These online tools will help you optimize and analyse your site to ensure you are running an effective search engine optimization campaign.

The free Google SEO tools are designed to be easy to use. You can find tutorials and help online to assist you in getting the most out of each tool.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool will help you get a good idea of which keywords and phrases you will need to use in your content to drive the correct traffic to your site.

Google Analytics

You can install Google Analytics to your site to review reports and statistics to let you know how your site is doing. You will be able to see your visitors’ behavior, measure conversion, view traffic trends and more. This can assist you in identifying where you need to optimize your site.

Google Webmaster Tool

With the Google Webmaster Tool you will be able to see how Google is ranking your site. You can view data that will let you know where Google is having trouble crawling your site. This information is vital to let you know where you have to architecturally make changes to your site so it is easy for Google and other search engines to crawl and rank it.

Google Alerts

Another great component to the Google SEO Tools library are Google Alerts. You can sign up for these email alerts to stay abreast of trending topics in your industry. You choose to receive the email alerts daily, weekly or monthly. They are filled with informative blogs, websites links and news articles.

Google+

Tap into social media by adding your business to Google+. You will be able to connect with your audience and increase backlinking to your site. This will help you to get your brand out to your consumers at the grassroots level.

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Nile Marketing - 2013 SEO Solutions

2013 SEO Solutions


SEO Solutions

Get a leg up on your competition and develop your SEO solutions for the rest of the year. Start the summer with a new SEO plan that will get you noticed and on your way to getting even more social with your customers.

In case you are late to the party, it is becoming more apparent that the search engines are pushing SEO to the forefront. The days of companies gaming the system is over.

There were many businesses that learned their lesson the hard way after Google’s release of Panda and Penguin earlier this year, and 2013 is proving to be even more SEO driven. You have to understand that the goal of each search engine is to return the most relevant results to their users.

So here is where SEO and social media come into play. Those two marketing pieces actually go hand-in-hand. Once you set a plan in motion to sync those two aspects together, you will see a dramatic difference in your efforts.

SEO Friendly Content

Content has always been important but it is vital this year. The content on your site will have to be relevant, high quality and informative. It will have to be a perfect marriage of keywords and a style that is consumer friendly.

You will also have to update the content on your site frequently. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is by having a blog on your site. A blog not only sets you up as an industry leader to your readers but it gives the search engines new content to crawl.

Mixing and Mingling

An important part of your SEO solutions must be social media. Some companies are sitting back and wishing it would go away and they are in for a rude awakening. Social media is how most of society engages with friends, family and the companies where they shop. It’s ok if you don’t know it all, just get out there and learn or hire an agency to help you.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter allow you to interact with your audience in a friendly down-to-earth manner. These platforms allow you to potentially set your brand viral in a matter of minutes. Social media is the easiest way for your customers to also share your brand with their circle of friends.

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Which Website Marketing Services are Right for You

Which Website Marketing Services are Right for You

Whether you are going to do it yourself or hire an online marketing agency, you need to know which website marketing services are right for your company. You want to ensure you have an effective online marketing strategy to get your target market engaged with your brand.

Most agencies will offer a package of website marketing services tailored to your specific needs. Your plan will include services that target your demographics and will bring in and retain quality customers.

Website Design

You will need a website that is built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. The architecture of the site has to be designed so that the search engines can find it, easily crawl it and rank it accordingly. It also has to be designed to be easily navigated by your customers.

Social Media

Launching a social media campaign on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more will give you a broad online presence. Most people today use social media to inform their friends and family of their interests. Having your brand in the social media medium will make it that much easier for your audience to spread the word about your services or products.

SEO Strategy

Having an SEO strategy will make your content more attractive to search engines like Bing, Yahoo! and Google. The higher you rank with the search engines, the easier it is for your target market to find your site. SEO can also help your site be informative, relevant and up-to-date.

Blogs

Including a blog section on your site is key to keeping the site continually updated with fresh content. Not only do search engines love this, your customers will too. New content that positions you as an industry expert is important to attracting new customer and retaining your current customers.

Implementing these website marketing services into your overall online marketing plan will give you a heads up against your competition. If you are not sure which services would benefit you the most, hire an online marketing agency so they can customize a plan to get you above your competition.

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Nile Marketing - Marketing Your Website

Marketing Your Website

Marketing your website is the most effective step you can take to showcase your brand, services and products to your target market. Just because you build a flashy site doesn’t mean people will automatically know about it.

Developing a results driven online marketing strategy will help you organize the steps you need to take to get your website noticed by potential customers and the search engines. Remember to focus on quality and not quantity. Driving quality customers who are interested in your products and services is more important than getting 100 customers that are uninterested and will click off your site.

Even before you build your company site, you should make a plan on how you will market your website. Making sure your site is build in an SEO friendly manner will help search engines to see it and rank it properly. Also having SEO optimized content will help you rank higher with search engines like Google and Yahoo!

Having a blog on your site and posting relevant content frequently will help keep your site fresh and fully optimized. Also guest blogging will help connect your site to other relevant sites to help you with search engine rankings. It also helps you grow your customer base as your brand will be put in front of more potential customers.

Marketing your website cannot all be done for free. You will have to spend money to make money. Run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to effectively target your audience. Also if it fits your demographics, post ads on sites like Facebook.

You will also want to run a re-targeting campaign. Re targeting uses cookies which are placed on the computers of the visitors that come to your site. Once they leave your site, the cookie will show them ads which will drive them back to your site. This is an effective way to bring a customer back who went to your site, browsed and left.

These are just a few ideas to add to your plan when marketing your website. An online marketing agency can help you plan your online strategy to get you a good return on your investment.

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Is There Such Thing as Free Internet Marketing ??

Is there such Thing as Free Online Marketing?

Nile Marketing

Free online marketing – it does exist and you can achieve some of it through organic search rankings, different social media platforms and blog writing. These are all online mediums that are free and you can research any one of them easily on the internet. Now with said, remember the old saying – you get what you pay for. Using an experienced online marketing company is recommended but if you decide to go it alone, below are a few tips to get free online marketing for your business.

Organic Search Rankings

Organic search rankings are when search engines crawl the content of your site according to their algorithms and give your site a ranking. Then when a potential customer searches for a keyword, your site will hopefully be listed on the first page of results.

In order to achieve good organic ranking, your site will have to be optimized. This means your site is build in a way that makes it easy for search engines to crawl. Also, the content on your site will have to be optimized for SEO using targeted keywords. Your content will have to be relevant to your target audience. Finally, your content also has to read naturally so your customers understand your product and services.

Social Media Platforms

Social media is now even more important than ever before. The internet allows users to give opinion and comments about your products or services. Your goal is to position your company as reliable, dependable and one that easily interacts with its audience and customers on social media platforms.

For example having a company page on Facebook and interacting with your audience is key. This is a word of mouth platform that can give you free publicity if you do your part. Positive comments are key but even if you get a negative comment or review, your audience can see how you interact with that individual and you could spin it into a positive.

Blogs

Site blogs are a great way to keep relevant content fresh and new on your site. Make sure you post regularly and that the content positions you as the expert in your field. Also, make sure you are using keywords. A blog has two functions: to get better organic rankings and to answer and inform your audience.

Free online marketing is possible if you know what you are doing. But if you need help, don’t hesitate to look to an online marketing company to get the best rankings for your site.

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Is Facebook Advertising a Good Investment ?

Nile Marketing - Is Facebook Advertising a Good Investment?


In 2012,BBC tested Facebook Advertising by putting out ads for a fictitious small business dubbed VirtualBagel. For one week, BBC ran display ads to boost fan page likes. The conclusion at the end of the week: Facebook ads are a waste of money.

Very bad news for online marketers and small business owners, right? Not necessarily.

It does not take much examination of BBC’s experiment to find some serious design flaws. BBC’s study design misused one of Facebook’s key value propositions — robust demographic targeting. Success with Facebook advertising relies heavily on efficiency and precision. You cannot simply jump in blind and expect immediate results.

Use of Multifaceted Social Targeting Features is Key

On Facebook’s advertising platform, marketers are able to target campaigns based on many different factors such as location, age, gender, interests, community connections, and many more.

If you are not leveraging at least two of these advanced targeting features in your Facebook advertising campaign, you are not fully utilizing the platform tools that are available.

In order to develop a strong end goal of achievement for your campaign, you should first ask yourself some core questions:
What are your campaign goals?
Who is your target audience?

Facebook Display Ads Work Best to Promote Brand Awareness

Facebook display ads are designed to be visually appealing. With a small thumbnail image, you can show your product or another attention-grabbing photo, encouraging more engagement overall. This is an advantage over Google Adwords PPC campaigns.

Social Connections

If you are deciding whether or not to advertise on Facebook, don’t forget to factor in the platform’s social component. The ads you run on Facebook will be seen not only by the audience your are specifically targeting, but also by their social connections as well. This effect is embedded in the social nature of the site in and of itself. For marketers, this means that these residual organic connections lower the average cost of acquisition per user.

To Sum It Up

Facebook advertising is not a platform that works for every company or product. This is why it is very important to know how and why you are using the platform from the outset. For example, a direct response ad campaign to an e-commerce site would not be a good fit for Facebook (people are on Facebook to be social, not to shop). On the other hand, a branding campaign works perfectly for Facebook.

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Brand Development Strategy Simplified

Brand Development Strategy Simplified - Nile Marketing


Even though brand development is not a new concept, many business owners still do not completely understand the concept or its importance. Similarly, it is a myth that brand development initiatives need to be multi-million dollar campaigns to be successful.

Understanding the basic principles of brand development can give you perspective on your own current brand and marketing plans. Here are three key elements to any branding strategy:

1. Who are you?

The first step in developing a brand is to clearly define what your brand is and what you want it to stand for. How will any marketing tactics communicate the value of your brand if you, yourself do not have a solid understand of your brand?

2. Who needs to know?

This is just another way of saying “Who is your target market?”– and “everyone” is not a valid answer. To determine who is your target market, first write down every relevant element of your ideal customer’s persona: age, gender, location, education level, relationship status, ethnicity, interests, etc (it is just fine to have more than one ideal customer persona).

Knowing your different customer personas will help you to craft the message that you are trying to communicate to them, and to highlight the relevant aspects of your product or service that will be valuable to them.

3. Why should they care?

Now that you know exactly who you are, and who your ideal customer is, its time to figure out why that customer should care.

4. Social Connections

If you are deciding whether or not to advertise on Facebook, don’t forget to factor in the platform’s social component. The ads you run on Facebook will be seen not only by the audience your are specifically targeting, but also by their social connections as well. This effect is embedded in the social nature of the site in and of itself. For marketers, this means that these residual organic connections lower the average cost of acquisition per user.

To Sum It Up

Facebook advertising is not a platform that works for every company or product. This is why it is very important to know how and why you are using the platform from the outset. For example, a direct response ad campaign to an e-commerce site would not be a good fit for Facebook (people are on Facebook to be social, not to shop). On the other hand, a branding campaign works perfectly for Facebook.

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Nile Marketing - Google AdSense

Google AdSense :



What's Google AdSense ??


Increase earnings from your online content. An simple way to generate earnings from your online content. Google AdSense is a program run by Google Inc. AdSense has become a popular in developing and putting banner advertising on a website and has been important for promotion income to small websites that do not have the sources for developing promotion sales to produce income.

EASY WAY TO PRODUCE INCOME ONLINE

Get paid for showing focused Search engines ads on your website.
Personalize ads to go with your website's look and feel.
It's free with AdSense, you'll pay nothing, spend little time on set-up.
Earn cash from your website.



GOOGLE ADSENSE


Actions to generate income from Google adsense program:


Stimulate Google adsense for your web site

To Implement Google adsense account check out http://www.google.com/adsense and complete the approval and validate an e-mail that Search engines will deliver you. If you ownseveral websites you need to make use of only once. After this Search engines will assess your website and follow-up with you e-mail within 2-3 days. If your system is approved you will be able to sign in to your ad feeling account.



Putting Google adsense Ads on your web site

Logon to your adsense account and choose the appropriate ads for your website. Then duplicate the ads value and insert on your websites. Once you copied and pasted the value on your websites, next step is to publish your websites. Putting the Ads properly is very transfer for excellent income.


Ads on the Top of the Page


Advertisements at the top of the site execute well. Find the ads structure which blends with your web page design and shade.

Ads on the end of the Page


Ads on the end of web page does not execute well. So, don't focus on the end web page ads.


Ads on the right bar


Usually the right bar is for website routing, usually right side ads functions best.


Ads on the remaining bar


The remaining bar ads performance is also excellent.

Observe You Earning


Now your website is generating for you. Your website will generate while you are getting to sleep. You can logon to the Google adsense account and check your income.

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Nile Marketing - Two Ways Of Doing SEO

Two ways of doing SEO:


1.On-Page SEO

2. Off-Page SEO

By Nile Marketing

1. On-Page SEO

Is providing excellent content, right keywords,placing keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every web page. on-page optimization which covers what can be done on the webpages of the website. On-Page Optimizing can be defined as: factors effect on your web site that will be listed in the natural search engine optimization search engine webpages.

On-Page SEO Checklist:

Keyword selection, testing and research
Meta Description tag
Internal linking technique
H1 tags
URL structure
ALT tags
Keyword density
Content
Site maps
Assume results in 6-12 months

Common mistakes in on page SEO:

Duplicate content
URL variants
Off-site images
Duplicate tags






On Page Optimizing Factors:



1. Keyword Research – Keywords are the most important in Seo see that the right keyword is optimized for your web page. Keywords are strings that describe the content of your web site best .Use Google Keyword Suggestion Tool which allows you to type in a word or phrase associated with the subject.

2. Optimize Keywords in URL –Create sure your URL is optimized for search engines and fill your website with keywords appropriate to the topic. Create your file names appropriate to the content contained with-in the site .


3. Optimize Keywords in Title Tag – The title tag is most important to increase your search-engine positions for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. Search-engines will show the title tag at the top of each product in the listings web page (SERPs). Minimize your title tags to 65 characters.

4. Optimize Keywords in Description Meta Tag – Optimize every meta description tag on your web site because they are displaying information that visitors see your site is listed in the search engine results pages.They are essential in increasing user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs).Note that your post should not to exceed 160 characters.

5. Optimize Keywords in Heading Tags –h1, h2, h3 tags – Use the header tags to implement importance to subjects on your web page and consist of keyword words or phrases .The h1 tag should be just like the title tag and use only one h1 tag for your article, however recurring h2 lower tags are acceptable are appropriate.

6. Optimize Keywords in Anchor Text – Anchor-text is linkable terminology that would be involved in your routing to outside resources, and inner linking within your site.Visitors should have easy route to linking webpages from every page of your website will help decrease your jump rate.

7. Optimize Keyword Density – Keyword Density is number of times your keyword or keyword appears on the site , versus the number of words on the site.

8. Text Modifiers to Emphasize Your Keywords – Use the BOLD or STRONG tags to emphasize your keyword or keyword phrase at least once.

9. Optimize Image ALT tag - Image optimizations are involved in SEO best methods and help in identifying relevance as spiders crawl the site. Name the pictures with dash-separated search phrases, and complete the Alt feature with a short descriptive phrase and dont use same Alt Image tag more than once.



2. Off-Page SEO

Off page SEO is doing things off site to improve your sites internet seo positions. The only thing you can do off site to increase your positions is build up more links. More links will generally lead to better Google PageRank and better internet seo positions This includes link-building, increasing link-building by submitting in open directories, google, exchanging links etc.


Directory Submission
Social Bookmarking
Article Submission
Classifieds Submission
Blogging
Forum Postings
Search Engine Submission
Press Release Promotion
PPC
Answers



SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

1. WHITE HAT SEO:



An SEO strategy is considered as White Hat if it follows the followings:

If it is in accordance to the search engine rules.
If it does not includes any fraud.
It guarantees that the content a look for search engine crawls
It guarantees that a Web Page content created for the users and not just for the search engines.
It guarantees the high quality of the web pages
It guarantees the useful content available on the web pages.


2. BLACK HAT SEO:


Redirecting users from a web page that is built for search engines to one that is more individual friendly.
Serving one edition of a web page to look for website optimization spiders/bots and another edition to human visitors. This is known as Cloaking SEO tactic.
Using Hidden or invisible text or with the site background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This is known as Meta tag stuffing.
Determined position of keywords and phrases within a web page to raise the search term count, variety, and density of the site. This is known as Keyword stuffing .
Developing low-quality websites that contain very little material but are instead stuffed with very identical key material. These webpages are known as Doorway or Gateway Pages.
Reflection websites by hosting multiple websites all with conceptually identical content but using different URLs.
Developing a fake copy of a popular web site which shows material just like the original to a web spider, but redirects to irrelevant or harmful web websites. This is known as Page hijacking.


SEO Major Benefits:

SEO can improve the variety of visitors who search for your products or services .
To research important activities of search engine optimization can make your website more available to all users.
You can focus on users who are looking for items which are exactly relevant to your company and improve brand credit and identification.
Writing content which are carefully relevant to your product becomes to improve public protection.
To achieve your company's objectives SEO is necessary if you are doing internet business.

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