Difference between Subdomain and Subfolder

Subdomains and subfolders have a huge role to play in a website. Knowing and understanding these two help in structuring your web page. However, not all people are familiar with these two terminologies. What is a subdomain and a subfolder? Are there any differences between the two?

Subdomain

Every website in the World Wide Web has a subdomain. In the URL www.facebook.com, “www” is the subdomain. Subdomains can be customized depending on one’s goal: creating different categories for an existing website or creating a new website which is different from an existing main website. Different businessmen have taken advantage of subdomains. Here are some reasons why subdomains are good for a website. 

• When a business plans to be on different locations or regions, using a subdomain is recommended. Say for an example, you are a salon opening on different cities in your country, using the name of the city where these branches are located makes it easier for your business to be found online. http://www.hairwonderfulhaven.com stands as your main website while http://newyork.hairwonderfulhaven.com can be a possible subdomain site.

• Introducing your products and services online is possible with the use of subdomains. When search engines crawl on the web, finding your website is much quicker since the product or service has been made as its subdomain. For instance, a company who is selling shoes for women can use boots.steponus.com, flats.steponus.com or loafer.steponus.com as subdomains to lead customers directly to the shoes that they want.

• There are some websites that caters to different nationalities. The use of subdomains depending on which language the users choose is a good advantage to gain more customers to the website.

Subfolder

Also called as subdirectory, a subfolder is an extension of the main domain. Basically, it is a folder added to the domain or subdomain name. A subdirectory can be of use as one can put images and information on different pages separately. Why do some websites have subdirectories? 

• Having a subdirectory frees your main page from any advertisements. The main page will solely be a welcoming page to the customer on what products or services you have. Putting a subdirectory for the selling of goods organizes the look of your main page.

• A subdirectory’s inbound links can provide more ranking value. With this, the page gets more authority and link juice that also fuels the main domain. 

• It is easier to organize. The content can be placed on different subdirectories; thus, managing the content of the website is less challenging.

What is the difference between these two?

 • Subfolders are generally linked to your main domain. However, subdirectories are independent.

• Subfolders are great to use when separating content in the website. Subdomains are best for businesses that are from different locations as they can easily be indexed on search engines with their cities used as the subdomain.

 • Subdomains can be used to record traffic from PPC ads and the like. Subfolders do not have this advantage.

In optimizing a website, using both can be of great advantage. Subdomains put a step forward in mapping while subfolders on separating content. Whether using subdomain or subdirectory, the important is monitoring the traffic the website gets to increase its ranking on search engines.

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Learning Resources for PPC Beginners

Since PPC puts a website or an ad way ahead of the organic search results, learning a thing or two on how to do it is a great addition to one’s knowledge. For beginners, PPC or pay-per- click is an online marketing strategy where advertisers get to pay their publishers for every time an ad is clicked online. This may sound simple yet there is still a lot to know about PPC.

To have a winning online campaign, one must do intensive research to select the right and most powerful keywords. Keywords are the core of your campaign. If you do not use keywords that are commonly used by online users, then do not expect increase traffic with your campaign. These keywords are then organized into campaigns or ad groups. Some of these are setup at PPC landing pages which are optimized to ensure conversions. Keyword research can be time-consuming. However, it is to be emphasized that powerful keywords means stronger PPC campaigns. Keywords should always be relevant, thorough, and could cover wide areas where online users commonly use.

What Google does is charge less to those ads and landing pages that have been very useful to online users. With this, you can earn promising profits for your business. This is the exact reason why you must understand how to use PPC.

To help you learn and build knowledge in using PPC, here are some free online resources about PPC advertising.

• Wordstream’s PPC University

PPC advertising is explained well and even those who do not have technical knowledge on terms used online can fully understand it. It has a general-specific discussion approach that makes it easier for any individual to have a full grasp on what is being discussed. You start off with the very basic down to the more complicated concepts and techniques. It is highly recommended not to finish all courses in a day. Give time for your brain to absorb everything before moving on the next lesson.Visit them at http://www.wordstream.com/learn#.

• Google AdWords Help Center

This is not an option on the list. One should really understand and read more about Google AdWords. If you are one working your ads with Google, you have to understand the structure of its PPC advertising. There are a number of relevant topics that discuss basic information about PPC to the more complicated ones. However, be reminded that you are reading about Google. Some information found here cannot be used to other search engines like Yahoo and Bing. Learning from Google AdWords prepares your ads to have good foundation using PPC advertising concepts. Follow this link for more information https://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en&page=examstudy.cs&ctx=go#topic=3119071.

 • HubSpot’s PPC-related Blogs

Blogs are powerful and very informative. This blog centers on PPC advertising information that is practical and filled with helpful tips for your campaign. It gives emphasis on its infographics that are of big help to marketing professionals. The blog is also very easy to understand that you will end up persuaded that PPC is the best marketing strategy for your business. Check them out at http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/topic/ppc

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Most Important Principles in SEO That Can Help Increase Website Traffic

Businesses understand how important online presence is for their brand names. Since most consumers use the Internet to find new items and services, the use of digital marketing has been the most convenient way to reach target customers. Websites and online campaigns rely on traffic. Without this, no one will absolutely know about the brand name.

Search engine optimization (SEO) applies different strategies to make every website and online campaign visible online. Every SEO specialist is an expert in using the most important principles to boost traffic. To get to top search pages, here is what an SEO specialist need to consider.

• Meta description

To attract people to check your website, an SEO specialist creates a sentence that tells what users can get from your page. This is the meta description. Meta descriptions are written in a manner using call-to-action words to interest people in visiting a webpage. People should understand why they should trust your website with the information they are looking for. Meta descriptions are expected to be truthful as this is the start of building trust between your website and the online user. On the technical side, meta description provides data to the search engines about the content of a certain page.

• Keywords

Content is what users look for, so SEO specialists think of words that these people use when searching for a particular information. Websites and online marketing campaigns have to use the best keywords for them to be easily searched and ranked by search engines. SEO specialists analyze and choose keywords that they consider to be very useful.  No matter how powerful keywords are SEO specialists have to remember not to overuse such keywords or what they call keyword stuffing. It is considered bad SEO technique and might compromise the campaign.

• Backlinks

Your website must have a good reputation. When you gain trust and have proven that your brand is truthful and legit, people and even other websites will build links at you. Your website will expand its network as it is connected to other websites. SEO specialists bring value to your website resulting to link building with others. Also, blogs are very useful as they can showcase write-ups that can put your website on a good light. People would like to know what is good about your brand and blogs are the best links to be associated with.

• Image tags

There are millions of photos or images uploaded on the web daily. In your website, uploading pictures make it more interesting for consumers to learn more about your products and services. The problem with uploading photos to your page is tagging the images. Some uploaded images are not tagged; hence, it cannot be searched by search engines. What SEO specialists do is tag these images for search engines to identify them. This is extremely necessary so that photos will be ranked as well by the search engine.

Users online are smart when it comes to checking products and services online. They push to learn more about them before purchasing them. With the right SEO practices, your website and online marketing campaign will get the boost in traffic in no time.

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Why Businesses Should Consider Social Media Marketing?

Recognition from consumers drives businesses to put an extra effort in marketing their brand. Social media marketing has become a trend since most consumers nowadays are glued on their smartphones and tablets. It could be a fad; however, the tremendous effect it gives to one’s traffic is totally overwhelming. In a post in Hubspot, marketers saw a great opportunity in social media marketing in 2014. 92% of marketers took advantage of social media and a whopping 80% of them claiming to have brought increase traffic in their websites.

With this percentage of success, it is not surprising that many marketers today look more into strategies for their social media campaigns. A huge increase in sales is possible with the right strategy implemented on campaign. While some businesses opt to use traditional marketing, here are a few good reasons why business should reconsider doing social media campaigns.

• Businesses get increased brand recognition through social media campaigns. Social media sites represent the company’s brand. Hence, it is important to create high quality content for your visibility. With social media campaigns, your brand becomes accessible and easily recognized by customers. 

• The more connection these campaigns make, the higher the loyalty they get from customers. Social media campaigns take advantage of the network it can establish from customers. These connections directly influence the customers. As a result, customers follow the brand and the business gets increased traffic. 

• Online users are open-minded. The posts business make on Twitter and Facebook are seen not as marketing strategies but just a plain post. They do not see these as an advertising campaign but more of a statement that they most likely want to read and comment on. 

• Increased sales are possible through social media marketing. Once you have a strong customer base, they always hunger for new things from your brand. As a result, they are the people who are more likely to buy new items from your brand. As potential buyers, giving them incentives will be a nice gesture of appreciation. 

• Social media campaigns promote brand authority. This happens when there is an interaction between you and your customers. When a customer purchases something nice, he or she posts something about it on social media for everyone in the world to know. When your brand name is posted, others will get interested and follow your brand. More and more people will talk about your brand. Talking to them by appreciating your posts will build a good relationship between you and your customers. 

• Issues can be easily solved and contained through social media. When there is a problem with a product or service, the social media becomes the voice of customers. With this, you will be the first to know and can easily act upon it. People will have an impression that you mean business as you their problems get addressed quickly. 

• Social media campaigns are cost efficient. Marketers have observed a decrease in marketing costs when advertising and marketing are brought online. The only important thing to invest on is creating valuable, relevant and high quality content. 

• These campaigns result in better search engine rankings. Strong brands always use social media. The active campaigns you have online make your brand legitimate and trustworthy. With rich content, finding you on search engines will be very possible. 

• Social media campaigns make businesses understand their strengths and weaknesses. This is through the data acquired from consumers’ comments. With this, businesses can do necessary adjustments to their brand to please more customers. 

• Social media marketing campaigns give a fair competition among businesses. All the marketers have to do is come up with strategies and content that can make them stand-out among their competitors.
   

Taking advantage of social media networks results a positive impact to businesses. With the right strategy, content, and people working for the campaigns, increase in web traffic is easily gained with social media marketing.

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What Consists of the Most Economical Web Design Service? (5 factors to consider)

Digital marketing has made a very influential and powerful turn in the world of business. Recently, companies turn their investments on digital marketing as it is accessible to almost all people in this generation. In this digital age, customers are always online checking on what’s new and fresh. Since digital marketing is the easiest and fastest way to reach possible clients, launching a good website is a good start to build a company’s name in the market.

Understanding the basic steps in creating a website is good knowledge to any business. In creating a website, entrepreneurs must understand that choosing a design that will fit best with their brand name is crucial in helping customers remember your name among your competition. Most businesses hire web designers to come up with good ideas for the website’s design. However, web design services can be pretty costly if there is not enough money for it. Finding an economical web design service is the most practical way in this situation.

Though there are web design services that are very reasonably priced, business have to bear in mind not to compromise the outcome of their service. Here are some factors to consider in finding the most economical web design for your website.

• Price. “You get what you pay for.” Though you are looking for the cheapest services possible, make sure that they can give you a quality web design. Some web design services are oddly cheap, but give out incredibly great results. Do not settle with one immediately. Visit a few more web design services and settle for one that suits your style and budget.

• Client feedback. Most web design services post testimonials of their past clients who are satisfied with their work. Browse through this websites and check the quality of their work. You can even contact the owners of these websites to personally ask how professional these people are in handling their projects.

• Expertise. Not because they are cheap, they give poor services. Web design services which are cheap can surprise you with their fast and professional work. Since they bank more on their cheap rates, they make sure to exceed their clients’ expectations with the result of their project. Setup a meeting with a web design company of your choice and ask questions on how they will create a plan for your website.

• Extended services. They not only provide web design services but continue to update your website. Web design services can include customer service that will surely make clients happy as they are valued and prioritized by the company.

• Good communication. Work with people that you can be comfortable with. Though cheaply priced, these people can still work with a smile. They would listen to your ideas and make you a part of the project. Building good working relationship is essential to a project’s success.

In finding web design services, quality should always come in first. However, it is also important to take into consideration finding the best deals that can save money but getting the same quality result.

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