If there is one thing nearly every eKzact client would wish for, it’s more marketing exposure. After all, isn’t that what search engine optimization, social media marketing, and even web design itself are really all about?

And yet, the majority of businesses and professionals miss out on one of the spots where they could put a welcome tagline for their business and have it seen by thousands of people every year: their e-mail signature.

Think that it’s not a powerful place to include an offer or reminder? Think again. Not only is it one spot where you probably have repeated access to customers and potential customers, but it’s also something that’s seen when your e-mail is printed or passed on to another person.

Here are four ways you can use the valuable space at the bottom of your next e-mail to help your company market itself better:

Promote a product or special. If you have something your customers might be excited about, like a new product or discount pricing, that they might’ve missed elsewhere, this could be the perfect place to give them a reminder.

Include links to social media profiles. If you’ve read this blog at all over the past few months, you already know how important social media is to your overall marketing plan. Encourage people to join or follow you online by including links with each e-mail.

Highlight a piece of recent news. Did you win an award, snag a major contract, or otherwise do something professionally that you’d want customers to know about? If so, include a quick headline and a place for them to click through.

Offer a special report or white paper. Downloadable information pieces work well because they let people know you’re an expert on your subject. If you have one, your e-mail signature can help more people find it.

Need new online marketing ideas for your company? Get in touch with eKzact, Calgary’s premier web design and Internet marketing partner.

Among online marketers, few things are as misunderstood as search engine optimization. The premise is simple enough: get your site to one of the top rankings for important keywords on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, and new customers will flood in through the virtual front door. The reality, however, is that it’s usually a whole lot harder than that.

Here are three reasons your search engine optimization plans might not be working out the way they were supposed to:

You aren’t being patient enough. There’s no way around this one – SEO takes some time. It’s usually 3 to 6 months before most marketers will even see their site show up in the first couple of pages of search results, and depending on how competitive your industry is, it could be twice as long before you make it to one of the top spots. Just because you aren’t getting a lot of hits yet doesn’t mean your search engine plan isn’t working; be patient, do the right things, and it will.

You are emphasizing the wrong keywords or phrases. One of the great ironies of SEO is that the money isn’t always where we think it is. In other words, even though we think a certain word or phrase is going to be profitable, it might turn out that the best customers are searching for different variations – or something completely different. All you can do, as a marketer, is make an informed guess and then keep adjusting your campaigns as you go along. Eventually, you’ll find the most profitable terms to target.

Your landing pages aren’t doing the trick. Hits mean nothing if they aren’t turning into sales. As important as your search engine optimization content is, it’s just as critical that you have strong sales elements on your landing pages. Make sure to tweak and test different versions so that your buying ratios are improving over time. After all, the real goal of SEO is never to gather traffic, but to increase sales.

If you are interested in working with a professional Calgary SEO Firm, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Search engine optimization is kind of an interesting field sometimes. Although it started out with some pretty simple principles — like the right way is to title your pages, the importance of gathering some inbound links, and even working with those pesky meta- tags everyone got to be so familiar with — a large SEO project today resembles something like a space shuttle launch, complete with spreadsheets, timetables, and endless reports and graphs.

But for all the so-called science behind searches, there’s still a lot of room for hard work and common sense. In fact, if there’s one mistake we see over and over, it isn’t a lack of knowledge or technical ability… it’s starting with the wrong assumptions.

Let me explain: most of us would agree that getting to one of the top spots on Google would be a great thing. It might take more than a year and a (hefty financial investment) to accomplish, but who wouldn’t love to have hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of potential customers swinging by your homepage every day?

For any of that to be profitable, though, you have to begin with the right keywords and phrases in mind — not necessarily the ones that are going to bring you the most traffic, but the ones that will lead to the greatest number of sales.

A surprising number of businesses and marketers never make that strategic leap. They always assume that more traffic is going to equal higher revenue, when a better, less competitive keyword sits unnoticed. That’s a pretty big tactical mistake, based on a poor assumption, and one that is surprisingly easy to make. So, as you begin refine your next SEO campaign, stop and ask yourself: are we doing a lot of work to achieve the wrong thing?

If your Calgary search engine optimization campaign could benefit from some stronger focus, or execution, contact us at eKzact Solutions, of Calgary, Alberta today. We’ve got the skills and experience to help you reach the top spots on all the major search engines.

Regards - David A. West