The Best Online Directories for You Las Vegas Website

It is a well known fact in the internet world that the DMOZ directory is the best online directory to submit your Las Vegas website to. DMOZ, The Open Directory Project (ODP), is a huge categorized directory of web sites and pages which is staffed by volunteer editors. Each and every website page added to the DMOZ directory is manually reviewed before it is added to their directory and it can sometimes be a challenge to get added as DMOZ editors are backed up with inquiries for additions… it can take month or years to be added. Being listed in their directory is free.

Alternatives and Supplements to Submitting to DMOZ

In addition to submitting your website to DMOZ, you can also submit it to hundreds of free online directories . Submitting site to online free web directories can quickly increase your google page rank and rankings on the google search engine. PageRank is an major part of google’s website ranking algorithm, and the higher the PageRank of your website, the higher your organic listing can appear on a google search. The PageRank within your Las Vegas website is increased by pages from other websites linking to it, and the higher the PageRank of the websites that link to it, the better it is for the your web site. 

When submitting your website to free online web directories, be sure to take time to find just the right category for add it to Don’t be tempted to submit your website to a category that is higher up the tree structure than it should be, because it probably won’t be accepted and will increase the chance of delays in getting your website added.

For a list of major search engines and directories visit searchenginewatch.com.

One of the main goals of having your Las Vegas website out on the internet is to provide helpful and interesting information to your website visitor. This key face with help drive satisfaction for your customers and potential customers and if you have satisfied website visitors and customers, they will quickly become return customers who will stay loyal! They will even recommend your Las Vegas website to others.

Of course, the more traffic you have to your website from your satisfied customers, you can begin to collect their email address for email marketing purposes. An email newsletter is an excellent way to capitalize on your email list and communicate with your clients. With an email newsletter, you can send out relevant articles, tips, tricks and special offers that will help drive business.

Email newsletter marketing is a very inexpensive and effective way to help market your website, your company and its products and services. You can sign up with an email marketing company like constantcontact.com at a very reasonable cost. In your account you can choose from a wide variety of templates, upload an excel spreadsheet of your contacts, compose your newsletter, and click send. Make sure to include links back to your website! 

You want to make sure that all of the contacts you are adding to your email contact database are opt-in, which means they give their consent to receive email from you. If you collect email addresses with a consent check box, you are most likely covered. With an opt-in subscriber list, you are can be fairly sure that the email newsletters you’re send out are received, viewed and read your subscribers and not simply being deleted. 

The other side of the coin is that if you are sending out email newsletters to help promote your Las Vegas website and business and if you aren’t delivering relevant information or the information that your customers are expecting, you run the risk of having subcribers unsubscribe. 

Here are some tips for relevant and engaging email newsletter content:

• Make your newsletters fun and creative while still maintaining professionalism
• Add photos and links to your website
• Research what information your customers are most interested in and information that will help them solve business problems
• Write articles that are informational and engaging, but keep them short and sweet
• Keep the content varied and diverse, don’t over write about one topic or subject
• Put coupons and special offers in your newsletters

If your email newsletters subscribers can benefits from your well written newsletters, they will actually look forward to receiving them! Just don’t email them too often, you don’t want to annoy them!

Happy New Year to all Las Vegas businesses and here’s to your continued success in 2010!

A new year is also a great time to step back from your Las Vegas business and assess all of your current online and offline marketing materials. Have you added products and services? Is it time to refresh your brochure, business cards or logos? Is your website up to date?

This is a great time to readjust things that might not have worked for your business in 2009. Consider polishing your corporate identity and developing new marketing materials. Consider advertising online to promote your website. Consider building partnerships with companies that offer complimentary products and services.

This is a good time to commit yourself to getting out into the Las Vegas community and meeting other business professionals in Las Vegas. You’ll have the time to hear about other companies and businesses and perhaps learn from what they are doing and what has worked for them. It’s also an opportunity to promote your own businesses products and services.

Any way you look at it, you should take the time this week to write down 10 new marketing and business goals and execute one each month of the new year! 2010 should become your year to grow!

With the widespread rise of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, rating websites for every business sector out there, and popular blogs which show up on search engines, it can be difficult to manage your brand’s online footprint. If one popular voice says something negative about your business or product, or even you yourself, it can easily snowball into a public relations catastrophe of epic proportions. The good news about the Internet is that folks are easily distracted - the next big thing will likely take their minds off whatever bothered them. However, all that bad press sticks in Google’s memory like a terrible song, and if anyone searches for your name or your business, guess which sites will be at the top of the list?

There are a number of steps you can take to combat negative press, otherwise known as Online Reputation Management. Depending on the severity of the situation and how popular the negative press is, these can require some public displays of humility, professional assistance, or a full-blown social media campaign.

First off, it’s important to keep tabs on your name’s and business’s presence online. Remember in this digital age, anyone can say anything about your brand and be heard. You have to hear it all. Type your brand into Google every few days or so to stay abreast of any developments.

If you catch a blog post that could potentially be damaging, the best bet is to email the rating service, blogger, or social media user directly. Most people don’t expect to get a message from the person they’re maligning, and many times some frank discussion or incentives will be enough to get them to remove the post. If they don’t, make sure to respond to the complaint in the comments below, and make it appear that the blogger’s dissatisfaction is a freak occurence. Honesty, sincerity, positivity and humanity are the most important tones to take in responding.

If someone is actively trying to discredit your name on search engines, you can fight back by launching a SEO campaign stronger than the one they’re using to put out positive reviews. Every company should do this anyway, in order to build a strong reputaton online that’s less assailable by disgruntled reviewers.

Finally, if government, top-tier news, or wikipedia sites say bad things about your company, you won’t be able to push their negative content top rungs of the search ladder. The best way to combat them is to write a sincere apology and launch a SEO campaign to put it all over the net. Searchers may act like numbers, but they are still people, and will still be swayed by your humanity. Despite it being the 21st century, reputation management is as much about being a sincere human being as it is about SEO.

When starting a new business in Las Vegas, after your business plan, the most important plan you should create is your company’s marketing plan. You can hire a company or marketing professional to help write your marketing plan, however, if budget is an issue for you, there are many free online resources to help assist you in writing a solid marketing plan for your new Las Vegas business.

Let’s start with an overview of why a marketing plan is important (some online resources for your review):

• Why you need a marketing plan to achieve ultimate success
• Yes, you REALLY need a marketing plan
• Do you really need a marketing plan?
• Why do we need a marketing plan anyways?

When looking for a free web host for your Las Vegas website, it may be difficult to find a good web host although they do exist out there. But through all the hosts which are listed in the search engine it can be difficult to sort the good services from the bad services unless you can find sources which have used most of the services in the past and can inform you where to avoid and where to look. That is what this blog post is here to help you with.

What is free web hosting?

Free web hosting is typically provided by companies as a sample to their services, or a reward to loyal customers who purchase domain names, or transfer domain names to their plans from another service provider. Free hosting does not give full control of servers or the page layout (ususally the hosting company will show their ads on your free website hosted page or website). Typically a free host will provide space on a shared server of between 100 mega bytes to 1,500 mega bytes on average. The actual bandwidth for visitors is often between 500 to 5,000 mega bytes. You can either purchase or use your own domain name on a free plan, or use a provided sub domain if the option is available.

Where can I find free web hosting and what kinds are available?

Free web hosting is available all over the internet in different forms. The most common form of web hosting is a shared host with advertisements. Although there are free hosts which do not force ads onto the free websites but the service is less reliable, and the providers may be at risk of disappearing or going out of business from loss of profits to afford to keep the service running.

Some free services also provide ad free services on a post to host basis, and provide the option to upgrade to a paid service once your website reaches the limitations of space and bandwidth. One example of this service is meek host. Meek host provides 1,500 megabytes of space along with 1,500 megabytes of bandwidth if you successfully manage to continually post 15 posts in their host forum every month before the date limit. Once the date limit is exceeded they will suspend your account and allow you approximately 1 month to redeem your posts to get your services back, or delete your entire account.

Some companies that offer free website hosting in one form or another:

• 000webhost.com - Free Web Hosting with PHP, MySQL and cPanel, No Ads
• Bravenet - Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting and Web Tools
• Free Web Hosting from Doteasy.com
• 110mb.com - Free Website Hosting Provider

What are the downsides of free hosting?

With free hosting you should never launch a website that is entirely important to keep live with NO downtime. Free hosts come and go often due to lack of supporting funds costing the users of the free hosting their websites. Also free hosts tend to have more limitations and also much more downtime than a paid hosting plan.

Professional Hosting Options for your Las Vegas Website

If you aren’t interested in launching a website on a free hosting plan and require the most professional solution from the start (and if you have the modest budget), you should consider a professional Las Vegas website hosting company like www.lasvegaswebhostingonline.com. They are backed by professional performance and excellent customer service.

If you have any further questions about hosting your Las Vegas website, feel free to contact me at michael@marketinginlasvegas.com or call me at 702.341.0085, I’d be happy to help!