Below are some pieces of advice for cross-department collaboration.

Tip 1: Communicate Campaign Details

Always notify your sales department about the specifics of the campaign you are running. Both departments should follow one roadmap in order for them to operate in the same direction. All the details of the campaign need to be discussed with the sales team. Otherwise, both teams will be out of sync thus making it difficult for companies to run a successful campaign.

Tip 2: Educate Your Sales Team

Your marketing department should make an effort to educate your sales department. Since your marketing department usually develops the campaign offer, they should make it a point to provide tips on how your sales department can further promote your products and services. Keep in mind that the marketing department provides the artilleries and the  sales department fight the war. If your marketing department does not educate your sales department, how do you expect to win the war?

Tip 3: Share and Discuss Campaign Results

For collaboration between your marketing department and sales department to work, a shift in mindset needs to take place. Both your marketing and sales group need to start trusting each other and start discussing campaign results together. It is not good to assume that your sales department does not care about the efforts of your marketing group, it will be a good idea for each department to discuss what worked and what didn’t in your campaign. By doing so, you share insights that can help improve both sales and marketing plans.

Tip 4: Evaluate Leads

Aside from just sharing and discussing campaign results, another tip would be for your marketing team to score the leads so your sales team focus on the hottest ones. Your sales department are always under pressure, by categorising your leads from the hottest to the ones that need to be nurtured, you help your sales department to bring in a good number of sales in a given time.

Tip 5: Ask for Feedback

Your marketing department will without a doubt do better if it asks feedback from your sales team. Asking for feedback will help your marketing group understand the kind of leads being generated. By asking your sales department as to the result of their first wave of calls, you can anticipate where your campaign may be heading since the first wave of calls can serve as early signs or indications whether or not your campaign will be successful.

In summary

To win business, both your marketing and sales team need to work together and clearly define what their roles are. Once this happens both your sales and marketing team can freely define marketing plans and participate in joint revenue planning sessions to improve the performance of your business.

No matter what your business is, dealing and organising a support desk can be a bit stressful and be hard for both the company and customer. The support system that we use that makes the support desk a joy to usel is Zendesk, a web 2.0 application that specialises in efficient ticketing system and customer support. Simplified and very easy to use Zendesk helps small businesses and enterprises manage customers’ requests easily and orderly.

Ticketing System

Help Desk tickets are very essential since it is where you can assure your customers their requests will be fulfilled in a timely manner once they seek your help. When a customer submits a help desk ticket, Zendesk allows you to prioritise and monitor submitted requests to ensure customers are assisted in a timely manner. Whether your customers submit a ticket via phone call, email, or a Facebook update, Zendesk will be able to retrieve and prioritise them according to your specifications.

Custom Branding

Customisation of a support portal enables a company to incorporate its brand so that the portal will look like it’s part of a company’s website. You can control Zendesk pages by editing its Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to tailor the color, font, and menu according to the look of your website. Your company logo can also be added and by allowing the use of HTML templates and the use of customised email addresses and domain names, subscribers of Enterprise plan can manage multiple brands on a single Zendesk account.

Macros

Part of Zendesk’s efficient ticketing system is its Macros. Zendesk’s Macros allow agents to set up canned answers to customers’ common requests. Macros are easy to set up and saves a lot of time during the day.

Triggers

Triggers are another outstanding feature of Zendesk. Simply put, Triggers are rules which you can iimplement to efficiently manage incoming tickets or requests. For instance, when a ticket is submitted you can create triggers or set up rules to make sure some tickets are prioritised right away and sent directly to the appropriate agent.

Mobile Device Support

Another feature Zendesk provides, which other ticketing systems don’t, is Mobile Device Support. Wherever you are, you can easily access Zendesk through your, iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry. Just download Zendesk for free and you should be able to respond and monitor customers’ requests wherever and whenever you are!

In Summary

Whether you have a small business or an enterprise, Zendesk is a complete help desk solution for all businesses. More than 11,000 businesses are currently using Zendesk to handle their customers’ requests and resolve issues quickly. You can try Zendesk for free and if you like its features purchase any of its affordable monthly plans ranging from $9 to $99 per agent. Impeccable help desk ticket management, custom branding, macros, triggers, and  mobile phone support put Zendesk ahead of its competitors in help-desk ticket solutions.

Be warned if you are delving into the dark art of Black Hat SEO as it will eventually come back and bite you in the you know what!

The worst thing you can do as an Internet marketer is to play dirty Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tricks, AKA Black Hat techniques. If you are being compelled to do Black Hat SEO, below are some of the reasons why you should take the higher road and refrain from doing it.

Everyone is doing it

It does not mean that just because it may be a common practice for some, you will have to follow suit and jump on the bandwagon. Google will impose penalty on your site once it finds out you are engaging on shady strategies. In general, the best links are those that are natural or organically generated. It does not really matter how many people are practising unethical SEO techniques, what really matters is how you sincerely interact with your community via social networking sites to bring in clean links to your site.

We will not get caught

Black hat SEO makes use of sneaky strategies such as hiding and blending links with the page background to make it seem like they are texts. If you think you can get away with your sneaky techniques and trick Google, you are mistaken. Google and other major search engines are aware of Black hat SEO methods and spend a lot of time working on how to stop it. If you think about it, the search engines don’t won’t irrelevant sites ranking as this would mean people would not use there search engines. If you get the famous Google slap (your site will be removed from the Google Index) you will find it very difficult to get your site back in the index and your rankings of course will suffer. If you value the credibility and reputation of your company, you will distance your business from unscrupulous Black hat SEO techniques.

We will only do it once

Unethical SEO practices can be compared to drugs. Once you’ve tried doing it, you will have a hard time giving it up especially if you are already dazzled by its short-term gains. If you value your website and do not want it to suffer the repercussions of doing Black hat SEO such as drops in rankings or being completely de-indexed from Google, then you will say NO to Black hat SEO techniques.

In Summary

To sum it up, Black Hat SEO strategies are tempting but are definitely not worth the risk. Google and other search engines strive to be of service to people by generating the most relevant results based on their search terms. By trying to fool Google and by trying to thwart its goals, you will get your site banned. Instead of wasting your time on unethical SEO practices, it is best to use ethical SEO strategies to boost your site’s rankings and focus on generating high quality web content to maintain the integrity of your website.

It Is Not All About Your Company

Try to notice that the type of posts you are writing and see if you have been writing incessantly about your company and the products and services you are offering. Though there is completely nothing wrong with letting people know how great your products and services are, people may hate hearing about them all the time. What people love to read are blog posts that are interesting and can be of good use to them. Instead of posting me-centric contents, post informative contents that can spark the interest of your customers.

Your Posts Lack Call to Action

Too often many companies get frustrated when they spend so much time designing their blogs and paying people to write professional content but still their blogs aren’t generating any leads. Sometimes you actually need to encourage your readers to take action. This does not mean that you will make your blogposts sales-y, what you want to do is incorporate certain phrases or words that will prompt your readers to do something.

For instance, try instructing your readers to fill out your web form or call your toll-free number for a quote or sign up for your email newsletter and see how many leads your blog can bring in a month’s time.

Your Blog Cannot Be Found On Search Engines

Because your blog cannot be found in the search engines, no one knows it exists. Though creating content and making sure each of your post has a call to action are both important, those efforts may be rendered useless if you do not optimise your blog. Optimising your blog is easy. Start with keyword research then optimise your business blog around search terms that are profitable. In addition to targeting keywords that have a good amount of search volume and acceptable level of competition, you may also want to broadcast each post you create to different social bookmarking and networking sites. Doing so, you inform the search engines and people that hey, my blog exists and it has great quality content!

If you want your blog to generate leads, you need to realise that there’s quite a lot of work involved in attracting readers and generating engaging contents. If you are suffering from a useful business blog, we hope that the information we shared above can resurrect your blog and turn it into a profitable sales funnel.

Businesses that do not have a Google Places profile may be missing on targeted traffic and qualified leads. If you haven’t created a Google Places page for your business yet, below are some useful pieces of information to get you started.

Claim or Create A Places Page

Simply search for your business name in Google to see if it already has an existing places page. If your business has an existing places page, click on that page and claim it by clicking on the business owner link. After claiming your places page, the next step is all about verifying that you really own the business you are claiming.

Google does not trust businesses with unverified listings and as a result will not appear on search results. Though it takes quite a while, Google Places verification is easy. Just click on the verification link on your places account and wait for a postcard in your mail within two weeks after clicking the verification link.

If after searching for your business name, you weren’t successful in finding any dedicated places page for your company, you can create a new one by going to google.com/places.

Optimising Your Places Page

After verifying your Places page, the next step is to optimise it to ensure prospective clients can find you. When optimising your places page, keep in the mind the following:

• Optimise the title of your business
• Insert keywords in the description of your places page
• Make sure your business belongs in the right category
• Complete your places page and if possible include photos, videos, as well as links to your social media accounts

Though link building still plays a huge role on Google places, some think that reviews and simple mentions of your brand name across the web are far more significant. Google monitors conversations around local businesses and it will be a wise move if you start generating “buzz” around your business by building citations on directories,  review sites, as well as on events pages.

In addition to building citations via directories and review sites, a well optimised website is the ideal citation you need for your Google Places page. Ensure that your local phone number and local address are in plain text on your homepage so customers can easily reach your company during business hours.

What do you use to monitor your rankings in the search engines? We have been using AWR seo software (AWR) and we use it on a daily basis to track our clients and also our own keyword rankings.

The program is really easy for all or our team to use which is a key factor to using any software long term.

So what exactly does Advanced Web Ranking do?

To give a bit of a background, AWR is an excellent web ranking software created by Caphyon Ltd. who specialise in creating tools for efficient Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The software is used and recommended by many SEO professionals.

AWR’s Best Features

• Integrated link building and management elements
• Competitor keyword analysis
• Keyword research and analysis

• Performance reports including automated reporting (we love this feature)

Effectively Manage Your Link Building Campaign

Link building is paramount to any SEO campaign. Relevant link backs are an important consideration if you want your websites to have good search traffic volume. Keep in mind that the more relevant sites that link to yours will be seen as higher value by the search engines and will help improve your overall rankings.

Over the last 12 months we have also trialled a couple of other tools however they just didn’t stack up to AWR.

AWR not only helps us determine who links to our site, but also helps us spy on the keywords of our clients competitors. If you want to start exploring the link networks of your competitors, going to AWR’s graphic reports is a great feature.

Competition Benchmarking

Using AWR’s Competitor Analysis Feature, we can analyse the website of competitors, their present rankings, and the keywords they are using.

Comparing your website to that of your competitors’ and understanding the SEO strategies they employ will help you develop strategies to out rank them.

Keyword Research and Analysis

AWR’s keyword research tool integrates with other top keyword analysis tools such as Wordtracker, Google Keyword Tool, and Yahoo! Search Marketing. The said tools will be able to give you a full picture regarding the real statistics of searches performed for a certain keyword.

Indeed, this feature is also important since it not only offers keyword suggestions, but also keyword density analysis, unlimited URLs, unlimited keywords, Google AdWords features and local search tags.

Thorough Performance Reporting

AWR’s Performance Reporting feature gives its users a graphic representation of a website’s link popularity so one can see how effective their SEO efforts are. AWR’s graphs and charts can be used to visually inspect rankings shifts for your chosen keywords.

AWR reports important site metrics using charts and graphs. Included in its performance reporting feature are performance trends, index checker, report expert, alert reporting, as well as automated reporting.

Summary of ALM

AWR has impressed and is continuously impressing us. Aside from their outstanding features, which other web ranking softwares do not have, it is the AWR’s sincere aftersales support that truly impressed us. The Caphyon team responded quickly and completely to some of our previous questions regarding their product clearly demonstrating that they take pride in the performance and usefulness of their SEO product.

Advanced Link Manager Review

Aside from AWR, Caphyon Team is also proud of another SEO tool for link building they have created–the Advanced Link Manager (ALM).

Essentially, ALM can act as your hub for all things related to link building. You can even consider it as your link manager. No less powerful than AWR, you can build links and create relationships with other websites using ALM.

ALM’s Best Features

• Backlinks evolution
• Link Text
• Competitor Analysis
• Finding Link Partners
• Contact Information

Backlinks Evolution

Do you want to see how your link building efforts have paid off over the last six months or study how your link popularity has grown? Backlinks Evolution will show you the amount of backlinks your site has mapped over time. Depending on your preference, you can opt to view the links of your entire site or just a single page. You can even graph several pages at once and compare. With ALM you will also notice that the links are categorised into several groups such as Important Links, Paid Links, Blog Links, and so on.

Link Text

With this feature, you will be able to view how many links you have for each keyword or anchor text. This feature is helpful if you want to know which keywords need your attention in the future. Also, by choosing a certain keyword you can see all the websites linking to your site with that anchor text.

Competitor Analysis

In addition to Backlinks Evolution and Link Text,, another valuable feature of ALM is its ability to analyse your competitors’ sites and determine the SEO strategies your competitors are employing. ALM can gather the necessary data needed so you can work out how to out rank your competitors.

Finding Link Partners

One of ALM’s main purpose is to help you find links partners to which you can build a relationship with. With ALM’s Find Link Partner wizard, you can find sites to link from according to your chosen keywords. From the several results ALM can turn in, you can quickly filter them by Page Rank (PR), outbound links, and so on.

Contact Information

For each site that ALM gathers, you can quickly get the contact information of the webmaster. The only task left for you to do is email webmasters and start building a link relationship. ALM also tracks your emails and where you are when it comes to attaining a link so there’s really no need to worry as ALM can get the job done for you.

In Closing

Both AWR and ALM are fantastic software packages that our company uses on a daily basis. We have tested other similar software but nothing comes close to the functionality, features and most importantly the ease of use that both AWR and ALM provide.

Content Farms Removed

This specific Google Panda update is a move to make sure the search engine only returns relevant search results. By removing content farms that have dominated the top listings, despite containing low quality and superficial pieces of information, Google aims to improve the user’s browsing experience and make it more efficient.

Keep Your Visitors on Your Site Longer

It seems that Google now gives more importance to the length of time users spend looking at a website. The rationale behind this is pretty simple. The users will not spend as much time on a website if the content is not relevant to what they are searching for.

Site owners or webmasters will have to adapt to these updates and make the necessary changes to keep their sites visible. The update, in addition to removing useless content farms, also monitors the kind of traffic websites get thus SEO content and increasing the number of your links to your website are still important.

However, aside from getting the users to visit your sites, you also need to create SEO strategies on how you can keep your visitors on your site. This can be done by creating more high quality relevant content and by designing your site in such a way that your site visitors will stay longer on your site pages.

Not The End of SEO

So we think that the recent Panda update will actually increase the demand for talented writers and creative web designers.

Overall, Google’s Panda update did not stop SEO, it just changed the rules of the game and if you follow good solid SEO stragegies you should be fine.

If you want to stay in the game, you will be wise to comply.

 Though links, title tags, and meta descriptions are still important, you may need to think more about the user and less about the search engines this year. Keep in mind that Google always wants to please its users so do not take too much time chasing and monitoring their algorithms. Instead, create great content that is focused on your audience.

All veteran Internet marketers know that no singular strategy can boost one’s online rankings. An effective SEO campaign is all about the fusion of several disciplines into one cohesive strategy. If you want to succeed with your SEO campaign this year, you need to think diversely, pay attention to the smallest details of your campaign, and follow all the tips we will be sharing below.

1. Search Friendly URLs

Though probably a small part of Google’s algorithm, search engine friendly URLs should still be included in your overall strategy. Aside from the apparent search advantage one gets from having keywords in the URL, it also helps in providing instant anchor text when people make use of the URL to link to a certain page. Search friendly URLs, no matter how small its role is in Google’s algorithm, is still highly encouraged as it gives searchers an idea if whether or not they are on the right page.

2. Heading Tags

Heading tags usage started several years ago and since then have been an essential part of any on page SEO strategy. Though some evidence suggests that the correlation between rankings and heading tags is only minimal, it is not an excuse to ignore them. Heading tags are still useful in the sense that it help users determine if they are on the right page for their search query. As a smart Internet marketer, you need to ignore what others have been saying and start focusing on strategies that will further improve the user experience in your site.

3. Optimised Copy

One should not ignore the advantage of having an optimised web content. As Google becomes more sophisticated with its algorithms, you must avoid any kind of conspicuous optimisation and stop doing the tricks of the past. To further improve your web content copy, make sure to use Google itself in finding synonyms. Furthermore, when it comes to keyword research, a little creativity and a little thinking out of the box will make you go far in terms of finding good keywords that have high search volume and low competing pages.

4. Images

Though it may not seem important to SEO, there are some strong pieces of evidence that suggest that the images associated with Alt Text contributes in the ranking of a web page. If you are going to include images in your web page, make sure they are relevant and that they have the appropriate Alt Text thereby contributing effectively to the ranking of your site.

5. Steer Clear From Old Keyword Strategies

Instead of writing with keyword density, proximity, and prominence in mind, you need to write for your readers. Though proper SEO writing is still paramount, Google encourages that this year we write what feels right to us and by always considering the kind of content that will capture the interest of our readers.

6. Keep Your Content Relevant and Interesting

Be certain that you know who your target customers are and the kind of information they need and want. Most sites attract different kinds of visitors so be sure that your site content is addressing all types of visitors. Remember that your website is a very valuable marketing tool so make sure that it is receiving the kind of attention it deserves and that it has the ability to address the needs of your site visitors.

7. The Importance of Videos

Many businesses still fail to see the benefits of video marketing. By including videos on your web pages, you provide your customers another communication channel and do not bore them with a purely text-based site. Videos can also be included in the universal search so it will be wise to diversify your search visibility by optimising the videos you will be posting on your site.

8. Go The Extra Mile

Google and other search engines love results that are relevant and useful to their users. If you are doing the extra steps to please and delight your visitors, Google will eventually notice it and will give your site the visibility it deserves thereby outranking your competitors. Try looking at your site and its sub-pages and then think if you can consider it as one of the best websites in your niche. If you think it is one of the best, then you must be ranking well in the search results. If not, then you definitely need to take the extra mile and maybe start considering the tips we have shared above.

On Page SEO this year is all about creating contents that are useful, sharable, rich web pages that deserve rankings according to their quality. If you want your website to maintain its good ranking position, you will combine old school optimisation with usability, marketing and psychology to write and design site pages that will do well this year.

How are you currently storing your important documents?

Do you share documents with other team members or people outside of your business?

Do you have a secure backup service off-site?

Are you currently using any of the following to store and share your data:

• USB Sticks
• Hard Drives
• On Site Network Storage
• CD-R’s

The problem with all of these solutions is that if anything were to happen at your office, a break in, fire etc. then all your data could be lost.

Online Cloud Based Solution

If you answered yes to any of the above, then it might be time to consider an alternate online, cloud based solution.

An alternative solution is to consider using an online storage service which enables people and small businesses to store their files on the Internet and easily share it with others. Online Storage Solutions or Cloud Based Technologies are increasingly becoming popular since internet speeds get faster and bandwidth prices are decreasing each year. By doing a back up of all your important data online, you can have peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and can be accessed wherever you are.

The benefit of using online cloud based storage is that it is ideal since it is inexpensive and easily expandable.

Introducing Dropbox

Synonymous with free online storage, is Dropbox. The base account offered by Dropbox enables you to store up to 2GB for free. For most people, this will be more than enough for your personal usage, however if you do require more space, the service is easily expandable and very inexpensive.

Dropbox has become so popular right now that many individuals and businesses are using it. With Dropbox, you can easily store your multimedia files online and share it with another user. Dropbox will give you a desktop alert when a file has been added to the folder you are sharing or when something has changed in your shared folder.

It goes without saying that all businesses dream of growth. However, expanding a business can be really expensive because of the extra space, equipment, network capacity, software licenses etc., needed. By using Cloud Storage, small businesses can easily expand without pouring cash into unnecessary physical storage devices. Just recently, Dropbox has been voted for Best Overall Startup and Best Cloud Service.

I have now been using Dropbox for over a year and I couldn’t run my business without it. I am still using the free account, however they recently launched a team version which I am considering using.

Benefits of Dropbox

• Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website.
• 2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions available up to 100GB.
• Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
• Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
• Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection.
• Dropbox transfers just the parts of a file that change (not the whole thing).
• Manually set bandwidth limits — Dropbox won’t hog your connection.

Dropbox will also keep a one-month history of your work giving you even more peace of mind.

How to get Dropbox

We’ve got an arrangement with Dropbox that enables us to provide you with an extra 250mb of free storage giving you a total of 2.25gb when signing up for the first time to Dropbox. Sorry this is not available to existing Dropbox users.

In order to get this extra free storage, simply sign up using the link below.

Conversion Rate Dropbox Sign Up Link

Summary

With the speed at which technology moves, it’s likely that physical storage devices will become obsolete. More and more businesses and individuals will start realising the benefits of saving data in the “cloud”. If you are a business owner and would like to reduce the cost of your storage needs as well as streamline all your data, looking into Cloud Services like that of Dropbox will be hugely beneficial to your company.

Don’t forget if you’d like to get an extra 250mb of data for free click the sign up link below

Conversion Rate Dropbox Sign Up Link

I couldn’t believe my eyes and I couldn’t believe I have only discovered this now.

So what does a text expanding tool do?

They allow you to define text substitution hotstrings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day.

There are a number of programs available both paid and free that will do this job, but the one that I’ve found and am now using is a free program called Texter.

Unlike software-specific text replacement features, Texter runs in the Windows system tray and works in any application you’re typing in. Texter can also set return-to markers for your cursor and insert clipboard contents into your replacement text, in addition to more advanced keyboard macros.

The most common place I am currently using it is in my emails for commonly entered text.

Give it a go and let me know what you think.

Here is a link to the texter download page.