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Internet Marketing is a general term that includes many activities, such as: Search Engine Optimization – Getting high rankings on Google for the right keyword phrases so prospects come to your website. Social Media Marketing – Providing value to prospects, contributing to groups, and getting people to come to your website. Local Search – for Read More…

The most important difference is that Internet Marketing is still new, so in almost all cases your competition is not doing it very well.  This means if you do it well you’ll have a distinct advantage. Other differences are also important: Traditional Marketing tries to reach your prospects by broadcasting your message to the masses, Read More…

The internet is still a young medium.  Certainly it’s got more competitive in the last few years but it’s still very young when you think of the bell curve of the effective life of an advertising and marketing medium.  Yellow Pages are at the bottom of the right downward curve.  Newspapers are almost at the Read More…

Standard Marketing is a skilled and capable marketing agency.  In the 12 years we’ve been in business we’ve worked with a wide variety of industries and the process to a successful outcome is always the same.  Namely: 1. Learn about the client’s business, what makes them special or different, and their goals. 2. Learn about Read More…

At Standard Marketing we are very good at working with clients who are developing their first website.  We explain the process, what we’re doing and why, in layman’s terms every step of the way. This is the process of website construction and design: 1.    First we talk with you to learn about your business and Read More…

Many of the concepts here are the same for both internet and print. Websites have the added advantage of being instantly changeable. Also, websites at their best engage your customers in your message. Customers cannot be engaged if your website is not interesting to look at, if they don’t understand the message, or if they Read More…

Internet Marketing is much more effective than newspaper or yellow pages advertising, or radio or TV or direct mail.  I know because I worked in those other media for 20 years before the internet was in existence.  I switched to Internet Marketing because it’s so much more powerful.  For the same money as you would Read More…

This is an email our President, Ken Lapp, wrote to a prospective client recently about Yellow Pages online. Actually, John, I know something about this issue.  I was in advertising and marketing for 20 years before the Internet started, including managing an in-house advertising agency for a large local retailer. After that, I moved into Read More…

A week ago, I was in the market for a new cell phone plan. The first and only words I told the salesman were: “I need a data plan as unlimited as possible with a couple of minutes included” and “I love my iPhone, so don’t offer me any other phone. Seriously.” I won’t go Read More…

Small Business Series: Facebook Marketing Before you invest time in creating a Facebook company presence answer these questions: Are your Customers on Facebook? (if your potential customers are there then do it asap) Who will manage the page? Employee or Contractor. (if you have a designated personable employee that  can manage the page then this Read More…

We are happy to announce Walter Matyas has come back to us in the role of Head Designer with Standard Marketing’s growing team of professionals. He comes from a designer’s world with over 10 years in web and graphic design, and the same again in traditional design. He has been freelancing since his departure from us Read More…

Handy links to Free Services on Google for search engine optimization and internet marketing: Google Trends Labs – Free keyword research tools. Google Insights for Search – Free keyword research tools. Google Analytics sign-in – Free website statistics. Google Alerts – Google will search the web and send you an email every time they find Read More…

Before working on the content for your new homepage, the number one message to deliver is TRUST.  People will do business with you if you have a unique selling position and they believe it will work.  There are secondary reasons which support building trust with users, so they feel like giving you their hard earned Read More…

Facebook has announced the debut of a new feature called Places. Facebook Places is a location based tool, where you can check in and be visible to friends (or everyone) at a bar, restaurant or other venue. As stated on Facebook the ” Who.What. When. And now Where“.  Tap the “Places” icon and check-in! Check Read More…

Finally merchants who have a local business listing on Google, also known as Google Places, can respond to reviews. Google Places has become the must have placement for business getting local traffic. I’ve included instructions on how to respond to a review on Google Places. Login to your Google account with the email address you Read More…

Recently, we blogged about deleting duplicate listings from Google Local Places which sparked off a frenzy of emails from small business owners asking how to create a listing in Google Local Places if their business was not featured in it already. So here is a very quick and easy guide to help small businesses to Read More…

A while back the Yellow Pages were delivered to my apartment. After a couple of weeks I decided that I was never going to use them, so I took it downstairs to the recycling bin only to find it overflowing with yellow directories. While businesses continue to spend big money on Yellow Pages, consumers are Read More…

In terms of drama, the Vancouver Olympics had it all. There were early concerns about lack of snow, millions of people from all over the world visiting Vancouver, the tragic death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and the elation at the Canadian hockey gold medal triumph over USA. Not surprisingly every twist and turn was Read More…

We’ve been busy at Standard Marketing for a little while now. We’re not complaining – we have more clients than ever before and the majority of them are on the first page of Google – but our blog has suffered as a result.

Last month we moved into a new office in Kerrisdale, we have taken on new staff and we will be making more time to blog regularly.

2009 was certainly a big year for Social Media but like any new technology there is a lot of confusion about how it should be used. With this new Marketing tool on the rise many businesses start to lose control over their brand. In the “old” days a company would hire an external agency to Read More…

Did you know that there is Social Media content management tools out there that can save you a lot of time by using them to integrate your Blog with your Facebook and Twitter account? This information could be useful for beginning or intermediate level bloggers and social media enthusiasts. If you have Twitter followers who Read More…

On December 9th we had the pleasure of attending our 3rd IIMA event. The topic was, what everybody is talking about these days, Social Media. It’s a very hot topic for many people involved in big and small businesses alike, non-profit organization, political organizations, marketers, you name it. Of course, there are always the sceptics Read More…

The Search Engine Optimization business is much more complicated than it was even just a few years ago, and it is continuing along that trend. Google has recently come out with a new version of their ranking algorithm, called Caffeine. Although they still aren’t telling the whole story, they have been a little more open Read More…

We’re proud to present the launch of a new website www.provincialmoving.com built by our team and already receiving traffic. The company it represents, Provincial Moving, is one of the top movers in Edmonton and Northern Alberta serving the area for 19 years. If you live in Edmonton or around Northern Alberta and are in need Read More…

We’ve already briefly talked about some ways to get your website noticed on the internet. In this post we’d like to get a little deeper into the matter. 1.First of all, no matter how well your website is designed and up to current standards, if you don’t have the content to attract visitors then your Read More…

Lets face it, one of the biggest problems that web developers face is trying to make their product visible in the same way on each major browser out there. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are the ones most mentioned but the biggest trouble-maker is IE, short for Internet Explorer. Yes, it’s true that Read More…

I am amazed by how different the Local Business Results SEO is than the organic SEO. For organic SEO, link building is all about anchor text.  You put your keywords into the anchor text of your link and it’ll do magic for your organic search rank. On the other hand, Local Business Results SEO needs Read More…

Here’s some video that is made by Google to help you understand how to use Google Webmaster Tool, how Google crawl and index, how Google discover your site.

When you are browsing some good websites that have had some good SEO work done, you can “View Source” and see a meta tag like: <meta name=”verify-v1″ content=”avKx26lvoxogR445X+5jGy8tpro3FZy1OXOXOXOXvnSI=” /> This is the verification code that you need to insert into your website when you use  Google Webmaster Tools.  After verification, you can now see 3 Read More…

Today we would like to mention the beginning of our company’s presence in social media websites. It is important to us that people keep up with new and exciting updates our company is going through at any given time. These communication media will not only bring us closer to our clients but will also help Read More…

There are much confusion about the definitions of terms used in Google Analytics regarding traffic sources/medium. Here’s some tips: (direct) / (none) The visitor hasn’t been referred from another website and either used a bookmark or typed the website directly into the browser.  It should be categorized as just a visitor who did not visit Read More…

Most people who have created a website cannot find their own site on Google. Here’s a small tip that you can use to find out if Google has indexed your page. Go to www.google.com.  Type in the following text in the search field “yoursite.com”.  “Yoursite” is the name of your actual website.  You don’t have Read More…

Even though Web 2.0 has been around for a while we thought it was worthy of mentioning it on our brand new blog for several reasons.  For those of you who have joined the “Facebook Generation” this post might seem a bit outdated but for many surfers who still use Internet Explorer 6.0 (released in Read More…

You know that you need to put keywords into your title tag, you need to put keywords into your content, but sometimes it just doesn’t work so well. Search engines love keywords which are relevant to the content, but if you try to stuff the same keyword too many times, it becomes spam. So how Read More…

The creation of this blog is an exciting new addition to Standard Marketing and Graphics. As Web 2.0 solidifies its presence on the web we are on the cutting edge of technology that helps your business get traffic and high rankings in the vast jungle of the internet.  Blogs nowadays are important on many different Read More…

Flash Your E-mail Bloggers Note: This article is of historical value because it was the first article published on the subject of inserting Flash Animations so they would play in the body of emails. It was the Feature Article on the WebReference.com newsletter on February 22, 2001. It was written by Ken Lapp, CEO of Read More…