You can spend as little or as much as you want on a campaign, but without the proper techniques, you will quickly burn through your budget and your investment will be wasted on a low conversion rate.  Here are some tips for making the most of an AdWords campaign:

1. Don’t Go Global

Focusing on local markets will reduce competition for ad space and bring you customers that are nearby and more likely to select your business.  Localization saves a ton of money, and if you are a sole proprietor, small or medium sized business or non-profit, or a company with only a few locations, it simply makes more sense to localize your ads.

2. Set a Reasonable Budget

Try things out.  I have never started a client with a budget of more than $150 per month.  Once you see how effective the ads are at marketing your product, make the decision to expand or retract your advertising budget.  The point is to have a great ROI and bring in lots of new clients.  Most of this time, things work great!  Sometimes however, a product is too unique or is tailored to a market where online advertising isn’t the right match.  That is why testing the waters is usually a good choice before settling on a budget.

3. Create an Enthralling Landing Page

Sending people to the front page of your website is usually not the best way to get what you want from them.  Have us create a special landing page for your advertising campaign that showcases a special offer and pulls in the prospective client’s contact information for later use!

4. Leave it to The Pros

AdWords is a competitive environment and without the proper keyword net and ad specs, it is easy to burn through your budget with a low conversion rate.  Let us help you set up and monitor your campaign to make sure you are making the most effective and efficient use of your budget.

Contact us today to get started with your AdWords campaign!

6.  The Best Deal Around

A website is an unbelievably good deal.  For the price, it is exponentially better than traditional forms of advertising such as print and radio.  Plus, once it’s built it’s online forever (assuming you pay your hosting fees of about four dollars a month).  And what is best about a website is flexibility.  There are infinite possibilities, and if you treat it right, (see my beloved client donnawolfe.net) it will bring you business for years to come.

5. Market Expansion

You are no longer limited to your three block radius of clientele.  Simply put, a website makes you accessible worldwide.

4. 24/7/365

Your website never sleeps.  It is the employee you always wished for; it is getting your name out there day and night, all year round.

3. It is Convenient For (And Expected By) Your Potential Customers

It is far more convenient for a person to research a product on the internet than it is to get in a car, drive somewhere and look for or ask someone for information on a product. The potential customer can visit your website whenever they like in their own privacy and comfort, without the stresses and distractions that exist in the  real world.

2. Add Value and Satisfaction

By offering convenience, a point of reference, and that touch of individualized customer service, you ultimately add value to your offering and your customers experience a higher level of satisfaction.

Your website can add value in other ways too, by featuring tips, advice and general interest content you can  entertain  your customers.  This will also help customers remember you better.  One of my clients, spinolaw.com, has done a great job of this by offering legal information online.

1. It Improves Your Credibility

A website gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers what you are about and why you deserve their trust and confidence.  In fact, many people use the internet for pre-purchase research so that they can determine for themselves whether a particular business is worthy of their patronage.

The Internet also allows for marketing opportunities where your website visitors spread positive word-of-mouth about your business.  Having your customers do your marketing for you can be quite nice!

There Are Many Benefits Beyond These Too!

Having a website is having a powerful tool for your business.  Contact us today to get started on one of the most important (and least expensive) investments your business will ever make!

This article is an edited work, compiled from information on WebWorld.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a necessary evil in bringing more traffic (and therefore more potential clients) to your website.  Here are five keys to success:

Site Content – Content is the key to success.  The more relevant content you have, the more likely potential clients are to find your site.  Write lots of keyword rich content, and keep it coming week in and week out.  Nothing improves search engine rankings like lots of fresh, relevant content.

Link Construction – It is important to have relevant links available on your website.  This provides a route for web crawlers to find their way around the web, and the more links, the more that they will see your site.  For optimal results, it is also important to have other websites linked back to you.

Internal Link Structure – Having a link structure that describes the actual content of your pages will greatly improve search engine rankings.  An up-to-date XML Map doesn’t hurt either.

Directory Submission – It is always good to submit your site to search engines, but it can be even more useful to list your site in online directories like dmoz.org.   Having your site listed under the proper categories can greatly improve your search engine rankings, Google loves to pull data from dmoz.

Meta Tags - Meta tag description is key.  Meta tags tell search engines all that they need to know about your site, and if they are not properly written, it will be difficult to find a desirable listing.

Contact us today and we will help you optimize your site for the best possible search engine rankings.

Email – alex@psod.net
Mobile – 617-894-5868

Choosing a WordPress theme that is right for you can prove to be a difficult decision to make.  Here is a list of 11 factors to consider before making your selection.  As always, you can ask us for help too!

1. Budget

WordPress themes and Blogger templates are either free, premium or custom. Free themes cost nothing and are available for anyone to use, anywhere and at anytime. That means many people could use the exact same theme. Premium themes typically have a price tag around $70. Anyone can buy them and use them on their blogs. Custom themes are created by a blog designer for a specific blog. They can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and are completely unique to the blog they are created for. The first factor you need to consider is how much money you’re willing to spend in order to get a unique look and increased functionality for your blog. It’s not a certainty that free themes offer the least functionality, but it’s usually true.

Social networking is in it for the long fight.  With the increased use of smartphones and the ever growing popularity of websites like facebook, twitter, and linkedin, it is a good idea to get in on the action.  So what good can you make of this tsunami of tweets?

Perhaps the most important aspect is to have people following your online activity.  Offering specials at your restaurant or posting up the new fax number for your business will do you no good unless people are seeing your updates.

We can (and will!) help you get started with a network of hundreds – or even thousands – of professionals ready to read your updates.  We can set you up with a targeted group of between 20 and 20,000 followers on both facebook and twitter, but to bring new business, it is important to keep your “status” fresh!  Frequent updates about things that your potential client base might find interesting can bring you a surprising amount of new business!

We can integrate your website with a virtually limitless number of social networks, so that you only need to make your updates at one location… and they will be distributed universally.  This is a great tool for keeping people involved and interested, and it is coming to the point that small businesses are expected to be available through social networking.  Please, get in touch with us today for a free consultation about how social networking can work for you!

Last summer I offered to do some web work for a local business in downtown Lowell.  I hadn’t heard back from the client, so I checked online only to find that his site had been built by a Russian web design firm for about $50 less than my quoted price.  The site looked terrible and was crawling with broken links and messy coding; but these were the least of his worries.  Here are three of the top reasons why you should always choose a local designer like the Paragon Studio of Design:

1. Outsourcing is cheap in the short run, expensive down the line.

If you are serious about your website, it is going to take time to get it looking the way you want.  Generally, web design goes through several phases.  While doing it overseas usually offers you a one-shot run, we will stick around as long as you need us; don’t start from square one every time you need an update to your site – pick someone local that you can count on.

2. We will bring you business like any other referral partner.

Web design is a great hub to use as a networking tool.  We have clients in all different areas of business, and many of our clients now do business together because of their shared experience with the Paragon Studio of Design.  Beyond referring good contacts, we make sure that you are available across the web through social networks like LinkedIn and business listings like Manta, as well as local and related directories that will bring you new business, guaranteed.  An outsourced site will be hosted overseas, making search engine optimization much more difficult and making networking virtually impossible.

3. A personal relationship makes a big difference.

We will meet with you at your convenience, speak with you on the phone, answer your e-mails, or communicate with you through whatever means you prefer – free of charge until you are completely satisfied.  A local web designer can offer you the face to face time needed to truly understand your vision, an outsourced service cannot.

This article comes to you from the Paragon Studio of Design.  Please feel free to contact us any time with your web design needs.

There are lots of graphic designers and photographers that don’t mind sharing their work for free.  Sometimes you need to bust out your wallet for a big project, but not always.

1. stock.xchng – http://www.sxc.hu/

This website is the holy grail of royalty-free photos.  They carry nearly four hundred thousand images, all eager to become a part of your online project.

2. Stock Vault – http://www.stockvault.net/

Stock Vault has a decent selection and a layout that is easy on the eyes if you have a lot of browsing to do.

3. Open Photo – http://www.openphoto.net/

Open Photo is a great resource for an eclectic set of photos that you’ll have trouble finding anywhere else on the web.  Most of the images are share-alike and it is assumed that you will credit the authors somewhere on your site.

4. Free Range – http://freerangestock.com/

Free Range is the sustainable choice for a free stock photo website.  The site shares ad-revenues with its publishers, and all of the photos are free to use for personal and commercial projects.

5. Morgue File – http://www.morguefile.com/

Don’t let the name fool you, this website is quite alive.  Morgue File is a great site all around, it has a huge collection of beautiful images.

I often use these resources for my clients.  It is a great way to save money without sacrificing much at all in the way of quality.  And remember, don’t be a freeloader!  These sites all like contributions (of photos and money)!  The service they provide is a great one to keep in mind for your next online project.

This article comes to you from the Paragon Studio of Design.  Please feel free to contact us any time with your web design needs.

If you are trying to decide on a content management system to give your website a new edge – look no further.  WordPress is what you need!

1. It’s free in more way than one.

WordPress costs nothing.  If that isn’t enough to convince you, you should know that it is developed as open source software.  WordPress is licensed under a GNU General Public License.  That means that you can see the code, mess with the code, and use the code for whatever you want and never pay a dime for it.  The software is constructed by a massive community of kind-hearted web developers and it continues to grow better and better with each new release.

2. Plugins galore!

There are currently more than 10,000 plugins available for you to add to your site.  “What are plugins?” you may ask yourself… allow me to answer!  Plugins can be almost anything; that’s what is so great about them.  Do you want to take the time to code a contact form for your website?  Of course not… luckily, there is a plugin for that.  That and thousands of other things.  Fusioncharts, calculators, weather forecasts, SEO packs, anti-spam filters… you name it.  And guess what?  Plugins are totally free too.

3. Free (or inexpensive) themes.

You can save a ton of money by allowing your web designer to work in WordPress.  It is very likely that the template your web designer will use for your site already exists, and that means less work, which means a smaller cost to you.  There are more than 1,200 free themes, and hundreds of inexpensive themes beyond that.  Themes are still editable so that you can get the feel you want for your site, but they get the project off to a great start every time.

4. You can update your site.

In my humble opinion, WordPress has, by far, the most intuitive control panel of any content management system out there.  Drupal and Joomla are each great in their own rights but WordPress is king.  Even the computer illiterate will find that they are able to add posts and update content on their sites with ease.  Total win.

5. Easy install.

Most web hosts (even the evil giants like Network Solutions and 1 & 1) allow you to install WordPress with the click of a button.  What is better than that?  If you are using a smaller host that utilizes cPanel, access your account and check in Fantastico or Softaculous.  One of the greatest things about WordPress is that after you have it installed, updates are a breeze too.  The click of a button will update any plugin and even the entire CMS.

6. SEO friendly link structure.

WordPress allows you to do pretty much whatever you want with your link structure, and it can change your entire sitemap with a few simple modifications.  One of the most essential parts of search engine optimization is having a crawler-friendly link structure.  Google, Yahoo, and Bing love websites that are straightforward about the content of their pages in linkage.  With WordPress, it is easy to make your page and post titles become the base for your link text.  And if you want to go crazy with the SEO, install a few plugins!

7. W3C compliance like no other.

Not going to bring up Internet Explorer 6 here.  WordPress is W3C compliant, the way the web is meant to (and, with luck, will eventually) be.  Throw your website pretty much anywhere, and it is going to look great.

8. Superb integration.

Isn’t this what the world wide web is all about?  WordPress has so many extensions you can blast just about anything out of it and absorb just about anything in.  Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Google Buzz… you name it, it is easy to do in WordPress.

9. It is growing.

It’s not the blob, but it is definitely getting bigger.  WordPress was once just for bloggers – but that era is long since past.  More and more industries are turning to WordPress to build their online presence, and with a great number of very diverse users, comes a great heaping helping of number 10!

10.  The best online community around.

Do you have a question about your WordPress site?  Google it.  Chances are, whatever is going on has probably been encountered (and documented) before.  With millions of users dedicated to making WordPress a better experience for everyone, there are answers to just about everything.  If it isn’t on the WordPress Forums, it is probably somewhere (maybe here!) and just like that, your problem shall be solved!