Cerca Marketing Inc. Internet Marketing Partnership with Distinctive Bathrooms & Kitchens

Ottawa, Canada – November 10, 2009

Cerca Marketing Inc. today announced it has entered into a long term internet marketing partnership with Distinctive Bathroom & Kitchens, an Orleans-based home speciality center with one of the largest showrooms in the Ottawa area. Distinctive Bathrooms recently launched its new website and eagerly anticipates taking further advantage of Cerca Marketing’s extensive experience in full internet marketing services, site design, development, and search engine optimization services.

“We offer our customers superior service, unique designs and unparalleled craftsmanship,” said Francois Lanthier, Store Manager for Distinctive Bathrooms, “and we chose Cerca Marketing as our web marketing partner because they display a similar pride in their dealings with customers. Their talented team created an online destination for our customers that accurately matched our vision, and their expertise in web development and full service internet marketing has helped us expand our reach into our community.” “Distinctive Bathrooms & Kitchens offers a one-stop shopping experience, and we’re pleased that our full service internet marketing programs have enabled them to showcase their wonderful products and services,” said Sylvain Charron, president of Cerca Marketing. “Our experienced team of web designers, web developers and internet marketers is looking forward to a creative and collaborative relationship.” As the importance of the internet and social media continues to expand, both Cerca Marketing Inc. and Distinctive Bathrooms will continue to work together to identify new opportunities.

About Cerca
Cerca Marketing Inc. is a Ottawa full service internet marketing firm offering to public and private sectors innovative web-driven internet marketing solutions: web site design, web site development, dynamic CMS content management system solution implementations, social media interactivity programs, internet search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web site analytics, and Google paid search advertising campaign services that guarantees results. For more information about Cerca's Search Engine Marketing and Optimization offerings, please visit www.cercamarketing.com.

About Distinctive Bathrooms & Kitchens
From humble beginnings atop a local decorator store, Distinctive Bathrooms & Kitchens has grown in both size and prominence, and now has one of the largest showrooms in Ottawa. With an extensive selection of fine tile, fixtures, cabinetry and accessories, Distinctive Bathrooms offers its customers the convenience of one-stop shopping and prides itself on its excellent service. For more information about Distinctive Bathrooms & Kitchens visit their website at www.dbkottawa.com.

PR contact:
Sylvain Charron Cerca Marketing Inc.
613-446-0056
sales@cercamarketing.com
www.cercamarketing.com

Top 10 SEO Tips

Tip 1 - Domain Name Selection for SEO
Selecting the right domain name can be very important. You'll want your domain to reflect what your business does, and if at all possible include one or more of your targeted keywords. For example, if you sell hand-crafted ontario, www.hand-craft-ontario.com would be an excellent choice since you are trying to attact people who are looking for your product. Conversely, www.handcraftontario.com would be okay, but less desirable, since most people who search for hand crafte ontario will put spaces in between the words that are the target of their search. However, including hyphens in your domain name seems to be of diminishing importance as search engine technology evolves, so your primary consideration should be to use a domain name that is easy for your customers to remember that matches your branding.

Tip 2 - Select the Right Keywords for Your Site
Before you can attempt to try to optimize your website for search engines, you need to find the right keywords to target for your site. It is absolutely critical that you not skip this step because the rest of your SEO efforts depend on it. There are a number of very good free keyword research tools available to help you with this part of your SEO efforts. You can also quickly compare the popularity of up to 5 keywords at once using Google Trends. The crux of keyword research and selecting the right keywords for your website is not based on search engine volume alone. Search volume must be weighed carefully against the competitiveness of your keywords - the number of sites already ranking for those terms. The balance between high volume and low competition is the ideal selection.

Tip 3 - Use Keywords in Your META Description
Make keywords part of a compelling description - Within the HTML code of your web page you want to include a Description tag. A description tag looks like this: <META Name="Description" Content="Hand craft 0ntario you'll love at discounted prices. Hand crafted Creations features a fabulous collection of hand crafted sculptures, including dishes, tea cups, mugs and much, much more."> The content of a Description META tag is used by some, but not all, search engines in the search engine results page to describe the content of your page. If the search engine your website visitor uses to find sites that use your keywords displays the contents of your Description tag, you want the searcher to be compelled to click the link to your site. Ranking number one doesn't mean your link will get clicked.

Tip 4 - Use your keywords in your page titles
What you place between <title> and </title> in the HTML for your web page is critical. Use your keywords, avoid prepositions and conjunctions where possible (the, and, for, with, etc.) and watch your punctuation within the title. Using only dashes between phrases in a title seems to help. For example, Hand Craft Ontario - Mugs - Sculptures. It is not necessary and usually not advisable to waste space in your page's title tag with your company's name. If you do, put it at the end of the title - you want your keywords up front.


Tip 5 - Create useful keyword content - often
The saying "content is king" is true. The actual content on your site has everything to do with your search rankings. New content should focus on your targeted keywords whenever possible. Repeat your keywords and related words in your text, but don't overdo it to the extent where your content looks like spam, is grammatically incorrect or doesn't serve its purpose. The more often you update your content, the more the search engines will spider your site - walk through your content to see what it contains. The more content you create, the more likely you are to get noticed and opportunities to cross link to other keyword focused content are also increased, which helps improve the rankings for the content you're linking to.

Tip 6 - Use keyword text, not images for your site's navigation
This SEO technique gets your primary keywords on every page of your web site. The link leads to the page you are targeting for that keyword or phrase. In the old days it was common to use image maps with hyperlinked hot spots for website navigation. Image maps are counterproductive when it comes to search engine optimization. It is still common to use images, such as buttons for website navigation. This too, is counterproductive because it doesn't allow you to take best advantage of your keywords. While you can insert your keywords into the image's ALT tag, linked text carries greater weight in the algorithms search engines use for rankings.

Tip 7 - Use keywords in file names and folders
When you save a file to be posted on your website, use your keywords in the file names. For example, hand-craft-ontario.html would be a great filename for a business that hand crafts in Ontario. Because you are not prohibited from using the same filename as your competitors, as you would be with your domain name, and because you can do this regardless of whether you use a WYSIWYG editor like Front Page or Dreamweaver without knowing much HTML, this technique is quite easy to implement and make a regular practice. Don’t leave blank spaces in your filenames. Use an underscore character ( _ ) or hyphen ( - ) instead. I find both equally useful.

Tip 8 - Create a site map
A site map is a separate HTML page that acts as a directory of the pages on your website. Each page listed in the site map is hyperlinked. Use keywords in the link anchor text and consider synonyms that might be commonly used in place of your keywords, such as plates for dishes. Also, since search engines seem to place more weight on text contained in a bulleted or numbered list, put your links in lists. A site map is not only good for getting search engine spiders to follow your page links and easily crawl your entire site, it's a useful tool for your visitors because it helps them find the content page they're looking for. It may also help them click into pages they might have otherwise overlooked.

Tip 9 - Use Keyword Text to Anchor Your Hyperlinks
Use keyword text in your links - The text used to anchor a link is important and needs to be keyword related whenever possible. For example, link the text hand painted china to your hand-painted china page, do not use click here. No one searching for hand-painted china is likely to search for "click here".

Tip 10 - Get High Quality Incoming Links to Your Website
Secure incoming links - Most website owners engage in reciprocal linking strategies - agreeing to exchange links with other sites. While this is helpful if you reciprocate with related, high-value websites, it is not nearly as effective as securing one-way links coming in to your site. Getting a listing in a legitimate and frequently consulted web directory is valuable, even if you have to pay for the listing. The most trusted free directory on the web is DMOZ. The downside to DMOZ is that getting a listing will take some time - even 18 months or so in some cases. Additionally, you need to be careful to request the listing for the correct category for your website. If you don't, you won't get your listing.

Top 5 Landing Page Mistakes

1. Not Showing What Your Site Offers to Users
Many sites are horrible at showing exactly what they offer and how their services or products are different from those of their key competitors. Instead, they hide this informationin industry jargon that may be lost on users. Keep in mind that users will only spend a few seconds to scan your site for what they need.

2. Using Gratuitous Animation and Graphics on your Site
People clicking on a PPC campaign link typically aren't the most sophisticated internet users. So running a landing page which requires a plug-in is a surefire way to dramatically lose people from your site.A dirty secret among Web designers is that they love to see cool animation and graphics, even if these don't contain relative content or information. Using generic stock photos that have nothingto do with your content can distract users from the main oal on your page - taking action.

3. Too Much Introductory Text on Your Landing Page
The Worst kind of filler copy usually starts with, "Welcome to our site, click on the bla bla bla link to get info on bla bla...". Telling people what to do on your site is useless. The user will go where he or she feels like. Peoplegenerally read very little on a website. Instead users scan the page, picking out words that are relevant to them.

4. Slow-Loading Landing Pages
According to the latest studies, 70 percent of North-Americans now have high-speed connections. But can you really afford to turn away customers that are using dialup lines with a bandwidth-sucking splash screen? Flash-driven screens are great for branding, but before you go overboard, ask yourself whether you can achieve the same objectives without alienating 30 percent of your other possible prospects.

5. Outdated Landing Pages
This error is common in the personal services sector. If I'm searching for a real estate agent, and I see that his landing page was updated more than a year ago, I'd wonder about how much attention he'd give me in order to sell my house. A lawyer whose landing page has a "Copyright 2004" notice will create similar doubts about his ability to stay current on current case law. The fact that these obvious errors persist for years creates a dark cloud in the prospect's mind about the quality of the promised personal service, and should be avoided, especially because this error is so easy to correct.

Optimize your Web Presence

Organic results. Organic results are what made Google famous. Organic results are the "best" pages found for the words the searcher entered. When people refer to search engine optimization (SEO), they are talking about how you get your site's pages to be shown in organic search results. Organic search is what most people think of when they talk about Web search, and searchers click organic results 60% of the time. Searchers trust organic results, and therefore organic search must be part of your search marketing program. It can take time to succeed at SEO, but your time investment will pay off in the long run.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing process of multiple steps which must be revisited often - a fact overlooked by many and where many fail.

Choose the right keywords. You must figure out what words searchers are typing in. You need to understand that different searchers use different queries to find the same thing, and that they use different approaches and different search engines. The keywords that you choose for your site should be directly related to the content on your site and to your target customers – failing to ‘connect’ these two will cost you leads and affect your search engine quality ranking score.

Optimize your content. Content is what search engines want. But what kind of content and how do you develop "quality" content? Like many things, there is no single best answer. Fortunately, what the SEO industry has learned of the years is that relevant content seems to work best. Relevancy is in the eye of the search engine, but increasingly with end-users. and as users start to take ownership of the Web, they increasingly influence relevance - through word of mouth and mouse.

Too impatient to wait for natural traffic? You're not alone. Many Web professionals start their promotion campaigns with pay-per-click campaigns to generate some initial traffic. Consider setting aside a portion of your budget for paid search during the time SEO efforts slowly bring organic traffic.