How to Rank in Google Places

June 13th, 2013

One of the best things you can do to get traffic on local terms at Google is to get ranked in Google Places. Here we take a look at what you need to do to optimize your Places listing. Where Google Places is used in SERPs: 1) in the standard search results, where 7 Places are shown. Note that most of these are below the fold on competitive terms, where there are 3 ads in the Adwords Block at the top of the results. 2)On Google Maps, where there are 10 results, but only 4 or 5 are above the fold. Keep in mind that there are even less places shown on mobile devices.

Optimizing your listing

If you haven’t already done so, go claim your listing. Make sure your business info is 100% complete. This includes paying careful attention to the following fields:

Company/Organization Name – add your name and service if it makes sense. If your name is Water Works and your main service is bathroom renovations then you could set this to ‘Water Works Bathroom Renovations’
Business Categories – You can add up to 5 categories, including custom categories. If you can’t find categories that are specific enough, consider using the closest category you can find then add a custom category that is your niche.
Add photo’s – You really should add a minimum of 5 photos, 10 is the maximum. Google has a tool that resizes the images for you but if they aren’t square to start with, Google squishes them, and then they often look like crap – not what you want representing your company! Crop the images yourself before uploading.
Business Description - Put in your product and services here with your location.

Get Reviews Ask customers to review your business on Google. In many cases, Businesses don’t need too many reviews to stick out from there competitors. You can’s force reviews, but you can encourage them To review you on Google+, get the customer to do a search that you appear for on Google Maps, and then on your listing is the link to Write a Review. Off Site Optimization You also need citations, which are 3rd party websites that list your business name, address & phone number (Commonly called NAP) from places that Google follows. These citations need to have your NAP listed correctly, which means you need to update these citations if your business moves! This also means that you should always use the same phone number in your listings. Try to get listed on these sites:

CitySearch.com (paid)
foursquare.com
hotfrog.com
insiderpages.com
JudysBook.com
Kudzu.com
Local.com
MerchantCircle.com
Superpages.com
Yellowbot.com
Yellowpages.com
Yelp.com

Posted in Oracast News | Comments Off

Benefits of having a blog on your website

June 7th, 2013

Why should you have a blog on your website? A blog is a very powerful tool that allows you to easily publish articles to your website. Article topics can range from the latest news, upcoming events, job postings, industry trends, or any other article that your audience will find useful. However, integrating a blog into your website is only one part of the equation; you want to establish a blogging strategy that can extend into social media platforms and improve your organic rank with search engines.

Here are a few more benefits of having a blog on your website:

With the use of a blog, you create a personal communication channel to your clients and visitors; building relationships and an open forum for discussion. The ability to discuss upcoming and/or current industry trends will keep your clients informed about changes in the industry and how it could affect them; building customer loyalty and trust.
Build credibility and a good reputation with your visitors by offering them information on how your products and services can improve their life; without the pressure of sales.
Having a blog provides you with the opportunity to provide education-based marketing that will help establish your online brand as an authority in your industry.
Every blog article adds another internal link to your website that will help with your Search Engine Optimization efforts. In addition to the increase of internal links, blog posts give search engines a steady stream of new keyword-rich content. This in turn will help increase your search engine ranking; bringing more traffic to your website.
Creating articles will provide you with the opportunity for other websites to link to your blog article as a source of information; creating more external links to your website which will increase web traffic and once again increasing your search engine ranking.
Studies show that websites that create at least 20 blog posts a month see up to 4x more leads than companies that do not use a blog.
With the increased popularity of Facebook and twitter, social media has become a very useful tool for businesses to build relationships with their current and prospective customers. Blogs allow you to integrate into these social media websites and eliminate the need to post on each individual site. By configuring your blog this way it allows you to post an article in one central location and automatically distribute that article to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

The benefits of having a blog are huge and can give you a significant competitive advantage. The good news is that you don’t need a brand new website in order to have a blog. It’s quite easy to add a blog to your existing website without compromising the “look and feel” of your design. If you’re in the market for a new website or are considering a re-design of your existing website, and you are unsure about adding a blog, be sure to consider these benefits when making your decision.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web Design | Comments Off

Rise of Mobile Devices

May 24th, 2013

With the popularity of smart phones and tablets on the rise, web developers have been forced to change the way they build websites. Previously, to accommodate various mobile devices, businesses needed to develop a dedicated mobile website in conjunction with their primary website. The mobile version was typically smaller, straight to the point, and optimized for the mobile experience. Unfortunately however, this approach forced businesses to manage and support two websites instead of one. This method, albeit inefficient to a certain degree, worked well as it provided mobile visitors with a better experience (which is the goal).

For new websites and website re-designs there is no longer a need to create a “mobile version” and a “desktop version” of a website. The constant advancement of technology has provided website companies with the ability to create mobile and desktop websites from the same code-base; meaning you create the primary website and it will work on a variety of different devices from smart phones and tablets to TV’s and game consoles. This new method of development is called Responsive Design. Having a responsive design gives your website the capability to appropriately “scale” to the screen size of your visitor. So whether your visitor is on their desktop, smart phone, or tablet, your primary website will respond and display accordingly. The best part of this experience is that your mobile visitors will have full access to your entire website; not just a few pages like the old days.

In 2012, 28% of internet usage came from mobile phones, and smart phone sales have overtaken PC sales. Some developers predict that by 2015 the internet will be viewed by more people on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets than home computers. If these predictions are true, standalone websites that are not built with mobile users in mind, their website experience will become far less effective and eventually obsolete. If you’re in the process of planning to re-design your existing website, or if you’re creating a new website, be ahead of the curve and choose a responsive design. Chances are high that it will give you a leg-up over your competition while providing a better online experience for your mobile visitors.

Posted in Mobile Optimized Web, Web Design | Comments Off

Getting out of Spreadsheet Hell

May 16th, 2013

The value of using spreadsheets like Excel to keep track and run a portion of your business operation is amazing. In the beginning it’s an excellent way to keep track of hours, or inventory, budgets and so much more. But there comes a time when the demands on your spreadsheet become so big that your spreadsheet becomes a trap that consumes your time and energy, and now you’re stuck in spreadsheet hell.

As an example, lets consider Jim, a property manager who now manages 50 summer rental properties, using Excel to manage availability and pricing. When a customer calls Jim looking to rent a place, he needs to quickly look through his spreadsheet, clicking on little tabs looking for an available unit. The excel spreadsheet works fine for him, but he knows he is near his limits. Keeping track of inventory for 2000 or 5000 properties with his current system is unrealistic, and there are so many vendors that have a large inventory that want to work with him, but he can’t grow his business.

What do you do now? What are the spreadsheet alternatives?

Having a custom web application made is a solution that will save time and effort. In the case of Jim, the application let him enter his properties with pictures, details and availability, and makes them easy to search. He can also choose to have this data show right on his website, letting potential customers see the pictures of each unit with calendars of when that unit is available.

There are many benefits to putting your data into a web application with a database, where your data is in the cloud.

Many people can access your data
Have different levels of users with appropriate access
Data is in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about back ups
Your data is searchable
Solution is scalable – Got LOTS of DATA? No problem

Everyone has custom needs, and converting spreadsheets into web apps is something we do on a regular basis here at Oracast. Whether you need a cloud solution, or you want a mobile app, help is just a phone call away.

Posted in Oracast News, Web Applications | Comments Off

Avoiding Dangers of Adwords Broad Match

May 9th, 2013

Are you using Adwords with broad match (the default match type)? Do you know what search terms are you actually showing up for?

Adwords makes these search terms easy to see, which lets you refine your campaign, which we’ll look at in a bit.

Start by going into an ad group, picking a keyword then clicking on Keyword Details which brings you a menu of options:

Now you get to see some of the search terms that Google actually showed your ad on.

Google doesn’t show you all the search terms – sometimes with good reason, as they claim to not show search terms that contain personal information about their users.

Note that it’s pretty common to have a huge number of your impressions under the Other search terms

How to Use this info?

1. Negative Keywords

When using Broad match, Google will match your keyword to queries that you don’t want. When you see what you are getting clicks on, you will most likely start by adding some keywords as negatives.

Note that if you use the Add as negative keyword button, it defaults to use the [keyword] as your negative, which means just that exact keyword is negative. In the example above, you might want to change the [real estate tools] to just tools, so it won’t appear in any combination of keywords.

2. New ads

Now that you’ve looked at your list of queries, you might be wondering why some users would click on your ad, when their search wasn’t related to your keyword. For example, say you saw shredding chicken in your search terms report, and you’re a paper shredding company advertising the keyword shredding paper. Before you yell out WTF, let’s look at your ads – Are they too generic?

Before	After

In this case, if you were the user doing a search on Google, the ad title is vague enough that you might click, but if the title were Paper Shredding Expert there isn’t a problem. Now’s a good time to review your ads and make sure they have a clear message.

3. New Keywords

The good part about using broad match is that Google may match your ad to keywords you hadn’t thought of originally when you set up the account. In this case, you can select the keywords that you want to add through the check boxes beside each keyword to add them, or create a new add group with more targeted ads.

4. Change Match Type

Using Modified match often makes sense to use when you aren’t happy with the results from broad match. All you need is to add the + before each keyword, and then Google will display variants on that word like plural/singular, but that word is required in order to match the user’s search term.

So for my keyword +real +estate +software the search terms are much closer to my clients service (notice the CTR improvement):

Tags: Adwords, Broad Match, PPC, Search Terms
Posted in Oracast News, Search Engine Marketing | Comments Off

5 SEO Tips for Website Redesign

April 19th, 2013

Are you currently planning or going through a website redesign? As you are probably already aware, there is a lot of thought that must go into a website redesign. From the look and feel to the features and functionality, there are a lot of details that must be considered and managed to make everything go smoothly. Elements of the newly designed website – including the site’s architecture, navigation, content, linking, and calls to action (CTAs) – need to be carefully assessed and tuned to ensure optimal performance with search engines. Here are five tips to help your website redesign yield better results and drive more relevant traffic to your site:

Tip #1: Use search-friendly URLs – they should contain relevant keywords and use hyphens as word separators. Having relevant keywords in the URLs helps with SEO and improves the visitor’s experience by keeping the URL short and memorable.

Tip #2: Map existing URLs to new URLs – when page names – or any URLs – change you must perform 301 redirects to direct visitors and search engines to the new URL.

Tip #3: Update HTML and XML sitemaps – be sure to add (or remove) any URLs in your HTML and XML sitemaps. Keeping your sitemaps up to date is important for both search engines and your visitors.

Tip #4: Keyword-rich content – develop SEO-focused copy that is keyword-rich, unique and informative. Include important keyword phrases as high up on the page as possible to help search engines determine the topic/them of the page. Additionally, use alt tags and image descriptions to help search engines index non-textual content.

Tip #5: Optimize meta data for main site pages – be sure that title tags are around 60-70 characters and use feature-important keywords. Title tags and meta descriptions should be unique and relevant to the page’s content; and make sure that the descriptions are attractive enough to entice the searcher to click through from a search results page.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design | Comments Off

Do You Have A Marketing Background and Eye for Design?

February 26th, 2013

About You

You understand marketing and especially web marketing and lose sleep over the thought of many terrible websites online.
You have an eye for design and creativity and would love to be in charge of a designer to make your vision come to life.
You love working with clients and can focus on their goals and needs to develop a plan.
You understand UI/UX concepts and can wireframe concepts in software to bring your ideas to life.
You are a goal-oriented and self-motivated person. Nobody needs to get you going; you’re a bundle of energy.
You are someone who likes working from home and can work at least a good part of the day during regular office hours.
You are someone that can read and write English clearly (yes, you may talk to some customers … crazy idea isn’t it?).
You are in North America (sorry, we love other countries but we do sleep occasionally).

About Your Role

In your position as a Creative Director you will report to the VP of Operations.
As a Creative Director, you will work with our clients to develop marketing and UI/UX plans that will allow Oracast to build effective websites for our clients. You will work as a permanent contract position working remotely or on-site in Kelowna, BC. You will be responsible for the creative output of Oracast, with oversight of the creative team and creative processes; the ideation, presentation and execution of client branding and marketing communications campaigns; the profitability and creative quality of client projects, and the operational readiness of the creative team, all in fulfillment of our brand promise to our clients.

In this role you will:

White-label your service to become a key part of the Oracast process.
Develop creative online marketing plans with our clients to address short and long term goals.
Create online wireframes following standards based UI/UX guidelines to provide to our designers.
Manage the process of website development for several web projects at once acting as the team lead for standard websites.
Adhere to and providing accurate estimates for the amount of time required to complete an assignment.
Communicate well with Business Development Managers, Supervisors, and Clients in regards to work requests.
Direct the creative function so that the environment, culture, team, capabilities, tools, processes, expectations, work style and other elements support the strategic goals and brand of Oracast
Ensure that the creative function operates in an efficient, profitable manner
Ensure that our creative product remains leading edge and ahead of our competition
Ensure that our high quality of creative and production is upheld, maintaining consistently high standards for him/herself and others on the team
Deliver strategic communication solutions that help our clients attain their marketing and communications objectives
Listening, asking, hearing, prioritizing and translating client situation, marketing goals and information into strategic brand concepts, voice, messages and rationales
Collaborate and contribute to the creative process as a leader of a creative team, and as a member of the account team
Write and present cohesive and persuasive rationales for campaign approaches
Lead the unified process of marketing/concept/design and post-production execution

Keys to Success

Exceeding expectations is not only the key to our company’s success but also the key to your success within this role. At a fundamental level, your performance will depend on the satisfaction of your clients. Additional keys to your success include:

Ability to “rise to a challenge” – as in any programming environment, challenges will occur and we will look to you as a leader to remain flexible, communicate openly regarding obstacles you encounter, and to develop creative strategies to overcome those obstacles.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills – you’ll need to build solid relationships with a wide range of personalities and skill levels in order to do your job.
Self-motivation — in an environment with little to no micro-management, we’ll depend on you to be highly driven, efficient, and organized as you manage competing priorities and work independently to accomplish your goals.
“Team player” attitude — we employ a group of very hard working people, each with his/her own specialty that is essential to the success of the team. We’ll expect you to not only work with those around you in a respectful fashion, but to also be willing to step in and support the team when your skills are in demand.
Integrity – as you know, this is a cash business and we need managers who operate with the highest level of integrity.

More About Our Company

Based in Calgary, AB with an office in Kelowna, BC, Oracast is a results-driven technology firm that architects reliable solutions to help companies maximize profits, reduce costs, and add measurable value. Founded in 2003, Oracast was created to fill the need of quality service in the high-tech industry. This industry is notorious for huge egos, false promises, and terrible customer service. Our customers find us refreshingly down to earth, and we provide the customer service that businesses have been looking for and, rightfully deserves. We love our work and enjoy helping our clients become more efficient and wildly successful. We listen, ask tough questions, and leverage our experience to deliver intelligent solutions on-time and on-budget. Furthermore, we provide outstanding customer service to make sure that questions are answered, and all needs are quickly satisfied. We live by our core values:

Integrity – Tell the truth, don’t lie.
Client Service – Keeping the client’s mission a priority.
Excellence – Going beyond the current standards, developing high quality intellectual capital, giving your best effort and constantly striving for improvement.
Innovation – Encourage the creativity and innovation to find the best approach to a given challenge.
Balance – Develop a culture that encourages work-life balance so that all team members are motivated and enabled to follow their passion.
Teamwork – Sharing knowledge, skill, successes and failures so that everyone excels.

If this sounds like the right mix of challenge and opportunity for you, and if you meet the required qualifications, we look forward to hearing from you! Email us at careers@oracast.com.

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Take your business to the cloud

February 5th, 2013

Why jump on someone else’s cloud when you could have your own? Did you know that it’s possible to centralize and manage almost any aspect of your business in the cloud? If you’re looking for a better way to manage your projects, time tickets, invoices, employees, customers, inventory, resumes, and anything else that’s important to the operations of your business, we can help. For over 10 years we have helped businesses go from spreadsheets and/or manual systems to their very own web-based cloud.

Once you have your very own web-based cloud, customized to your unique business, it is very easy to manage your information in one central location. Furthermore your web-based cloud can easily scale with the increased growth of your business. This is something that most people who have used spreadsheets over a long period of time really appreciate because the amount of spreadsheets typically grow out of control. Many of our customers who quickly embraced their web-based cloud began adding new components to their system such as mobile devices, new features, and additional security policies.

We have also seen a trend with customers who are looking to provide a better experience for their customers; not to mention a competitive advantage. Let’s say you have a customer in downtown Calgary who has hired you to provide staffing for a big job in northern Alberta. With your web-based cloud, your workers up north can enter their time tickets into the system and perhaps upload some pictures showing their progress. You or anyone in your office, depending on their security permissions, can log-in to the system at any time and generate invoices, track invoices, manage projects, communicate with team members, and generate instant analytical reports; just to name a few. Now in the spirit of engaging your customer and maximizing their experience with your company, we can enhance your cloud to allow your client(s) to log-in and see the real-time progress of the project, see pictures of their progress, and communicate with the workers in the field. Try doing that with a spreadsheet.

Taking your business to the cloud will help you become more organized and more efficient; while saving time and money in the process. Is your business ready for a change? Let us help by taking it to the cloud. We’ve been doing it for over 10 years.

Tags: cloud computing, web application development, web applications
Posted in Oracast News, Web Applications | Comments Off

SEO Audit for better website performance

January 28th, 2013

How is your website performing from a technical standpoint? Does it have structural problems or broken links? Are you being punished by Google? Do you even know? Business owners and marketers are constantly striving for better performance with their website, yet many of them do not take the time to “look under the hood” and check for problems that might be holding back their website.

Here are some symptoms that an SEO Audit can help cure:

Few visitors
High bounce rate
Low lead generation
Low conversions
Slow website

Conducting an SEO Audit at least once per year will identify issues with your website, provide solutions to fix those issues, and keep your website as optimized as possible. Not only will your visitors have a better experience when visiting your website, search engines like Google will reward you for having a well-optimized website.

How is your website performing? Want more online leads and better organic ranking? Give us a call and let our experts conduct an SEO Audit on your website today.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Audit
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Search Trends | Comments Off

What’s Your 2013 Online Marketing Strategy

January 15th, 2013

Is your 2013 online marketing strategy ready to go? Are you executing it right now? What does it look like? It’s surprising how few businesses actually develop and implement an online marketing strategy. If you’re one of these businesses and you want to generate more online leads, then you need to get started on an online marketing strategy. There are many options available to you and the effectiveness depends on thoroughly understanding your target market.

To help kick-off the new year and get you started in 2013, here is a quick checklist that you can use to develop your own online marketing strategy:

Social Media Marketing: Do you have a company blog? Is your company leveraging LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube? Social Media has become a big part of lead generation and can help position you as an authority in your industry.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Struggling to be found online and increase website traffic? Is your website generating leads? SEO can target the people who are looking for information on specific products or services by increasing keyword search visibility to grow traffic, leads, and sales.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC): Looking to quickly generate leads and get first-page exposure? By incorporating a PPC campaign in your online marketing strategy, you get instant brand visibility and immediate, measurable results. This is a highly effective way of generating leads.

Email Marketing: Do you have a drip campaign for acquisition and education? Are you building email lists? Email marketing is still a great way to reach customers and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Website Analytics: Do you look at your website’s analytics? How much traffic are you getting? What’s your average bounce rate? Which pages are performing well and which pages aren’t? Knowing the analytics of your website will help you understand its performance and where improvements need to be made.

Content Marketing: Are you frequently publishing blog or news articles? Have you written any whitepapers, case studies, or e-books? Content remains king; and by providing great content to readers and potential customers you are setting yourself up as a great resource and authority in your industry.

Mobile Optimized Website: Is your website optimized for mobile devices? How does it look? Considering the fact that mobile devices have out-sold computers and almost everyone you know has a mobile device, it’s extremely important to provide mobile customers with a great experience.

How many of the above initiatives are you using today? Would you be more successful online if you were to leverage all of them in your 2013 strategy? The answer is: of course!

Don’t be intimidated. Understanding and implementing these initiatives is very important to your online success. The new year is a great time for you and your business to generate more leads and set yourself up for long-term growth. Why not give it a try? We would love to help. If you have questions or need a hand in developing your online strategy, don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Posted in Mobile Optimized Web, Search Engine Marketing, Search Trends, Social Media Marketing | Comments Off

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