Why use Google Local?

Local SEO with Google Maps enables easy location of your local business online and offline. Jason Broadwater of RevenFlo discusses the importance of using Google Local for Business Indexing. Internet marketing should absolutely include a business listing at Google local, especially small businesses because it is free!

The RevenFlo Web Team works with small to mid-market businesses to increase their internet presence using a variety of off site marketing tools. With increasing ease of google searches such as with use of cell phones, having your business in Google local is the first step to increasing Web Presence through Internet Marketing. Click on video to learn more!

About Custom Paper Tube

Custom Paper Tube (CPT) has nearly six decades of combined experience in every aspect of the paper tube industry.  They began production in 1990 in a small rented building in York SC, with a single spiral paper tube winder and one piece of converting equipment.  Within four years, they moved into their our own building in 1994 and, after several expansions, proudly serve the Southeast US from a 75,000 square foot manufacturing facility.  The South Carolina plant manufactures a complete line of paper tubes and ships regionally to the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, Mississippi and Florida.

More recently, Custom Paper Tube expanded its operations to Arlington TX.  Custom Paper Tube Southwest, Inc. consists of a 50,000 square foot plant in the heart of the Dallas Fort-Worth metroplex. This location offers the complete line of paper tube products and ships regionally to Custom Paper Tube has made a rock-solid commitment to superior service at every step of your customer experience.  From ordering to delivery, they will not be beat on service!

Nature of the Situation

Custom Paper Tube had the industry expertise and the customer base but were lacking a web presence.  They came to RevenFlo as a referral and wanted to build a site that highlighted their customer service as well as their varied product range.  In addition to a site that spoke to their experience, they wanted to achieve a few other things:

• Perform well in search engines
• Equipped to work with the new web (rss, social media plugins, etc)
• A presence that adds equity to the brand through clear and compelling messaging
• online platform to assist in converting prospects into clients
• Offers a fresh Web 2.0 feel

Nature of the Solution

RevenFlo approached this web build as an operational solution.  CPT will be using the site to generate activity and communicate with prospects.  With that being said, we wanted to build a site that offered the ability to leverage SEO, social media, content updates and allowed administrative control for content marketing and communications.  We also needed to build a site that offered the ability to engage with prospects.

Web Strategy and Planning

RevenFlo offered a strategy to build a site in WordPress that would offer the functionality as well as the SEO optimization that Custom Paper Tube desired.  We developed a strategy document that encompassed how we would gather information, design a site that offered the aesthetics and functionality that CPT was seeking as well as allow them to showcase their products and communicate effectively with prospects and clients.

Web Design and Development

We designed an easily navigable site that web savvy users have come to expect.  The site educates consumers on the products and services that CPT provides.  It offers the ability to integrate promotional marketing and update content and .  The site speaks to the variety of services they offer as well as the regions that CPT is able to service.  We worked to ensure intuitive navigation for first time and returning visitors.   Go to the site and check out the results!

Web Marketing Management

We look forward to working with CPT on their additional site as well as their selected social media outlets.  As we move forward and the objective is to consistently grow CPT’s online presence and their organic search engine rankings.

Web Maintenance and Training

We provide maintenance work for Custom Paper Tube on an as needed basis.  We are able to assist them with any update or changes they would like made to the site per their request.  In addition to maintenance we provided training to staff on how to utilize the open source technology and how to yield the greatest results from an SEO and web marketing standpoint.

Summary

CPT now has another means of attracting prospects, promoting their brand and communicating with clients.  The WordPress site allows for administrative abilities to update content and industry information as needed.  The social media, SEO, and SEM possibilities are only limited by CPT’s imagination.  We look forward to the completion of their second site as well as a long working relationship with them.

If anyone is interested in learning more about our practices and methodologies feel free to email us at info@revenflo.com or call 803.328.6033.

So let me ask, who hasn’t been frustrated by their browser locking up or shutting down with that same error message over and over again. I have literally felt like throwing my laptop through the window. With the other browsers there have been issues with load time, which means that it takes forever to pull up web pages. There have also been security concerns with the Microsoft product IE, like all Microsoft products it is continually being hacked by legions of people that severely dislike Microsoft. The Safari browser has been decent. I have to say that it’s never crashed on me. It is a very basic product that offers a decent experience. But….

But the switch to Firefox goes so much further than the basic stability and usability issues. Firefox is built on an open source code platform, that’s a fancy way of saying the way it runs is not closed up and it isn’t a proprietary system so any other developer can create what they call add-ons that allow you to PIMP YOUR BROWSER! This is so great because you get the best and brightest in the web industry inventing new ways to enhance your experience. They address our need for ease-of-use, provide solutions and new technology so fast it makes my head spin.

Firefox has add-ons for everything you could imagine to help you customize your experience and get this, IT’S ALL FREE! During the next few weeks I will be writing about a few of my favorite add-ons. Today I’d like to profile the one that is helping me the most, it’s cool useful and very social.

Let me start by telling you that I’m a recent convert to “social media”, which include websites like the phenomenon Facebook, others like digg, twitter, stumbleupon, Flickr, and Youtube are all different types of new social media. Many of you use one or more of these web services to stay in contact with friends, family and even customers. With all of these different ways to stay connected a problem has crept up on us all. How do you take the limited amount of daily free time (or boss time, LOL) you have and split it up so you can stay in the loop? Wouldn’t it be great to have all this info on one page or aggregated on one application?? YEZ! Enter one of the coolest apps I have found that adds onto Firefox, Yoono. It feeds all of your info into one place where it becomes manageable again. This little add-on installs on the side of your browser and can be turned on or off with one button. All of your feeds, walls posts, and twits come directly into one place, thats great but it also allows you to type into one box to update multiple websites. It saves an incredible amount of time and effort.

So next week we will explore further, during the meantime download yourself a version of Firefox and start PIMPING YOUR BROWSER with me.

Is your website lonely? When is the last time you listened to what your website had to say? Did you talk to your website this month? You should be ashamed! JK. Most people haven’t gotten to this point yet. Asking your website questions will provide great insight about your web presence and help determine the value of your communication. Let’s take a look at how this conversation may play out.

Your website may say “people have been visiting me but they just don’t hang around for very long”. This may mean one of a few things, your website may be located in search results that don’t pertain to your business, your website may have navigation issues ( i.e. broken links, unintuitive page locations), or your content may not be “web ready” ( i.e. too much information, fonts that are too small for your customers).

Your site may also say “people really love gadget #1 and if you move this gadget to a more prominent place or promote this product in search that we can increase sales”. This may mean that you need to address keyword search terms, or write some blog posts describing the benefits of the widget or use SEO and PPC techniques to advertise on the web.

You can listen to your website through installing analytics on your site. This is a fairly easy solution that can be installed on the backend of your current site. You could run reports each week that give you traffic results. These reports can then lead you in making decisions about how you respond back to your site.

Let’s look at how you could talk to your website.

You could say, “Lets tell our customers that we are having a sale” or “I want to share information about the latest trade show I attended and show pictures of the new gadgets coming out” or “I want to add a new ‘widget’ to help my customers learn about my business”. Your website will then talk to your customers about this conversation. This added information will help your search rankings and add to the experience your customers have when they go to your site.

Here you may need help with simple maintenance on your site from a web team or some sites may have backend applications that allow you to make the changes yourself. Adding pages is not that expensive or complicated.

Without open dialog with your site the content becomes stale and you have no idea how your customers use your site. Today there are a great number of solutions to help small business in listening to what their website is saying. Analysis today provides vast amounts of data that can save you time and money while promoting your site. On the web today you also have many more options to help you talk to and through your website that allow your content to be up-to-date and relevant. With the advent of social and business