Is an Executive Suite Right for Me?
What You may not Know About Executive Suites
An executive suite is a small leasable office that is a part of a community of other similar office suites, which are occupied by other tenants. The community of office suites is designed to function as a unit to equally maintain the costs for the common resources that are necessary for an office to operate. By combining resources, each tenant is able to obtain a fully functional office space at a fraction of the cost. These types of offices are common for small businesses and start-ups, and executive suites in Austin and other technology driven cities are very popular.
Who benefits from leasing an executive suite?
Typically, small office-based businesses benefit from leasing an executive suite. Executive suites are attractive for businesses that have limited capital but need office space and all the necessary features.
How can you benefit from leasing an executive suite?
First, leasing an executive suite can help you to minimize overhead costs by mitigating the expenses of full-time administrative and support staff, furnishings, and equipment. Secondly, since you can swiftly move into an executive suite; the office setup time is minimal. For conventional office space, it takes a considerable amount of time to plan the space design, acquire resources, furnish, hire, and train personnel.
Are there drawbacks to leasing executive suites?
There can be drawbacks, although not every tenant will experience them. Some problems can arise as a result of sharing resources with other tenants. Fair usage of resources, like personnel, can become debatable between tenants. Also, you do not have control over who moves in and out of neighboring suites. Occasionally, tenants run into these kinds of problems, however, they are problems that can be resolved through a collaborative effort.
Although there can be some drawbacks to leasing executive suites, they rarely outweigh the benefits. The ability to minimize overhead costs of personnel, furnishings, and equipment is what makes executive suites ideal for small businesses. They provide a cost-effective turnkey solution. This article was written by a professional who markets executive suites in Dallas.
Re: another article on the Google Algorithm
On Saturday, Feb. 27, 2011, My brother sent me a text message and said that, “Google changed it’s PageRank.” The following is my response via e-mail.
Okay, I have read about 7 articles on this. The change doesn’t affect “PageRank,” instead it penalizes plagiarism. SEOs and editors have become very advanced about scraping content, paraphrasing it, and publishing it so that it looks like original content.
Basically, the algo change is supposed to identify sources of plagiarism and prevent them from ranking well. Just so you know, PageRank is counter intuitive. It is not a Web page’s ranking position from the top, on the search engine results pages. It’s a score from n/a (less than zero) to 10, and it’s based on links that are qualified to pass PageRank value. It’s really fascinating, but complex to dissect. Here’s an article if you’re interested. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-pagerank-works-why-the-original-pr-formula-may-be-flawed
Our sites (at work and home) benefit from external tactics that pull in inbound links and drive up our PageRank, and we take it a step further so that the entire site is architecturally designed to sculpt the flow of PageRank to the most critical pages. Hence, those pages, our landing pages, tend to rank higher for our targeted keywords.
Google measures sites based on popularity, and PageRank is one factor that carries A LOT of weight in that measurement. Google is shifting weight from PageRank to social media metrics by measuring popularity more so with the number of tweets and the magnitude of reach that tweeters have. Also, the number of Facebook “Likes” are a big part of the popularity poll.
It’s smart because Google bases their search engine results pages based on human preference, so automated algorithms are phasing out a bit more…
From: Anonymous
To: Jared
Sent: Sat, February 26, 2011 9:07:02 PM
Subject: another article on the Google algorithm
Major Points of a PPC Campaign
In order to fully cover PPC campaign management, I would have to write an entire book. The summary level information is helpful not only for PPC campaign management, but it is also helpful for other digital marketing campaigns. The major points of a PPC campaign are simply summarized below. My intent is to provide you with a high-level outline so that you don’t leave out the most critical components.
- Organizational Goals – these goals should be defined in the overall business plan and business strategy
- Marketing strategy—this should be aligned with your organizational goals and business strategy
- Marketing Goals—Set goals, that once achieved, will translate into the successful implementation the marketing strategy. Make sure to include the marketing mix elements in your strategy and go
- Product Placement
- Pricing Strategy
- Promotion
- Distribution
- Set attainable objectives, which are measurable definitions of success— This includes metrics, such as CTR, ROI, Revenue, CPC, Bounce Rates, Conversion Rates, Average Order Size, etc. The objectives will be attained by the employment of tactics.
- Identify the necessary tactics that must be employed in order to attain your goals.
+ PPC, SEO, E-mail, Social Media etc.
- Campaign organization
+ Determine the type and number of ad groups—ad groups could be product type, geographic targeting by region, segmentation, buying process phases, etc.
- Develop ad copy and keyword groups for each ad group
- Setup campaigns to run each ad group in both:
1. Search Network
2. Content Network
- Traffic Reception Management—this is how you’ll manage the traffic that is channeled through the campaigns
+ Build targeted landing pages—provide content that is relevant to the ad copy, triggering keywords, and the rest of your site or sales funnel
+ Identify methods to improve the quality score of each ad—this is where you’ll set bids, remove keywords, add negative keywords, and adjust match types
- Continuously analyze—manage your ads through your methods of improvement to help achieve your defined objectives (metrics of conversions, ROI, etc.)
Less Common On-Page White Hat SEO Techniques
There are the obvious on-page SEO techniques that are pretty routine for optimization of any page. These common techniques include the fundamentals of:
- Writing effective Title Tags
- Creating descriptive metatags
- Heading Tags
- providing keyword rich content
- enhancing keyword richness with synonymous terms
Of course these techniques are common and only bring you up to speed with the standard level of knowledge for SEO. Page optimization is usually the easiest and least costly way to improve your search engine position. Here are a couple of not so widely used techniques that help boost your rankings and if used well, your conversions too.
- Semantical Tags
Use the semantical tags <STRONG> and <EM> tags for targeted keywords, but use in moderation. Those tags are alternatives to the <B> and <I> tags. Since these are visual enhancements, they’re also good to highlight important information for your viewer. If it’s implemented in your strategy well, you can use visual highlighting to help convert or feed traffic into a predefined funnel.
TrustRank
This may come as a shock to you, but link to other sites. It actually helps your search engine position. Make sure the sites are good sites, which means they aren’t a part of bad neighborhoods. You’ve heard of PageRank and linking to others is contrary to the goal of hoarding and collecting PageRank value to increase search engine position.
Don’t be afraid to link to those credible, quality sources. After all, the same benefit of PageRank is provided through increased TrustRank. A key point to remember when linking to outside sources is that when in doubt about credibility of a site, use nofollow. This will prevent you from Google and other engines from associating you with their bad behavior.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising Tips
Yahoo paid and organic search results are now powered by Bing. That’s a good thing because it makes the PPC effort for Yahoo and Bing half the work. In early 2010, Bing and Yahoo held 10% and 14% of search market share, respectively, while Google held 70%.
There are only a few reasons people query a search engine. Two of these reasons are largely to seek information about something or to shop. In a PPC ad campaign you typically do not want to waste ad spend on those who are seeking information, rather you want to target those who are ready to buy or convert in some other profitable way.
When you set your campaign(s) up, you have the option of setting it to broad, exact, or phrase match. Broad match is too loose, because it will trigger your ads to display if any of the words that you specified are present in the query. Exact match is too tight and it only displays your ads if the exact phrase is searched. It’s often difficult to find the right combination keywords that will perform well in phrase match, however, those big money makers are out there. The problem with exact match is that it’s tough to include words that indicate user’s search intent. Phrase match pretty much presents the same problems.
You may be wondering what is left to do if all of those are too hard to deal with. A technique called boxing in allows you to set your campaign to broad match and add negative keywords. This helps you to effectively advertise to those querying with keywords of intent, while minimizing the waste for all the less than intent keywords. For example, a query for learn ppc advertising doesn’t seem to be as intent for purchase as the query for ppc advertising book.
After running a broad match ad campaign for a while, you’re able to analyze query strings of text that have triggered ads. You can find this information out by generating an AdWords report for search queries. This is helpful so that you can analyze the popular keywords for queries of higher intent and less than intent. Take the less than intent search keywords and add them to your negative keyword list for your campaign. A keyword like free is a good one, if you’re selling goods and services without free stuff as a tactic.
Next, those words that seem to indicate intent should remain in the keyword list that triggers ads. However, keywords that have variations (i.e. marketing, markets, advertising, advertised) should have a plus sign in front of them to tell AdWords to present ads when variations of that term are queried. This will broaden your broad match campaign in a controlled way that allows your ad to earn more impressions across higher intent queries. Ultimately, this should help your campaigns perform better.
Leveraging Social Media in your Online Marketing Efforts
Social Media has been a huge buzz in the online marketing world and it can be very helpful to a marketer. How you leverage it is important, otherwise it can easily be wasted time. You need to brainstorm about how it can be used to supplement your other strategic efforts.
The most success that I have had with Social Media is using it for the following:
-Marketing research
-Viral launch pad
Marketing Research
The marketing research aspect is invaluable, and you don’t need an account for the large social media Web sites. There are tools that I use, like Kurrently, which is a social media monitoring Web site that monitors in real-time feeds that are broadcasted from Twitter and Facebook. This is very helpful to learn the types of uses for keywords specific to a given vertical, how these words are interpreted and used by the marketplace, and learn about long-tail opportunities that aren’t so obvious with tools, like Google Keyword Tool. This type of monitoring can give you the edge on the latest breaking news topics that relate to your vertical, so you can be quick to publish content on the topic and drive traffic.
Viral Launch Pad
Social media channels can be used as a viral launch pad to quickly spread the word about something. Once you have built a base of relevant followers, with whom you have a good relationship with, you can easily announce your plan or launch of a contest, giveaway, or some other special event. Usually that type of announcement compels people to share the news to their followers, so you are the beneficiary of word-of-mouth advertising and personal endorsements. It doesn’t get any better than that, when it comes to advertising.
A general rule of thumb about persuading your followers to pass along a message usually stems from three types of power. Those with one or more of the following types of power have the most success compelling their followers to rebroadcast a message. The major types of power are as follow:
-Expert Power-one who is an expert in a field, like a doctor, a CEO, or a powerful lawyer
-Referent Power-one who is associated with a powerful person, like the first lady
-Charisma-one who is naturally liked and popular because of their personal qualities that are difficult to emulate, like TV stars (Stephanie Abrams).
If possible, you should create your profile so that you can utilize any of the above types of power. Many of us are not able to do that, so the next best thing is to establish and manage good relationships. This is done by actively engaging your followers, and communicating with them frequently. Try to provide content on your social media profiles that is entertaining, informative, and add a friendly, personal touch when you can. This type of activity is a catalyst for gaining positive sentiment from your followers.
Once you have a positive sentiment, your followers are much more likely to endorse your broadcasts and pass them along as recommendations to their personal network. Try not to broadcast advertisements too often. There is much more to say about social media and how to utilize it effectively, so stay tuned.
Google Instant
Several of you have inquired about Google Instant and what changes it brings. Google Instant is the most recent major change to Google search. It has affected both natural search and paid search. Although it’s a paradigm shift in search usability, it’s not all that tough for search professionals to readjust to.
The frequency of long-tail keyword or lengthy phrases has shortened significantly, at this point in time. Users are typing in fewer words and monitoring the instant change as each word is added in the search query. Consequently, the users who were normally inclined to type in longer sets of words as a search query are now stopping short of that. Thus, short-tail keywords and phrases are attributing more traffic than before.
The powerful tool that many of us use on a regular basis is the Google Keyword Tool, which summarizes search volume for keywords and phrases. The search volume data that the tool reported on is going to become over stated to a minor degree. After the searcher stops or pauses typing for a period of three seconds, Google accounts for a search for those existing words that were left in the search box. This affects PPC ads because the ads are shown more, and the quality score is affected because of the increased number of impressions.