October 18, 2009
Many big companies today are jumping right into social media marketing successfully use sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Though it appears that small businesses are lagging behind the social marketing trend, even though it is a very low cost marketing channel that almost any small business can afford.
Twitter makes them seem hard to use. It’s also possible they’re concerned about negative comments showing up on social media web sites, or worried about employees using these tools appropriately for business. Whatever the reasons, social media marketing is here to stay, and small businesses are going to have to face their fears if they hope to leverage its value as a marketing tool and stay relevant with their customers today.
If you are one of the millions of small businesses afraid of jumping in to social marketing, here are five good reasons you should overcome your fears:
1. Your customers already expect it – More than 86% of consumers recently surveyed by marketing agency Prodo said that they believe companies should incorporate social marketing into their regular marketing activities. Add that to the fact that Facebook now has more than 300 million users, Twitter has experienced quadruple-digit growth this year alone, and more than 50% of online Americans use social networking sites on a daily basis, and you can clearly see where your customers are spending their time. Put simply: you need to be there, too.
2. Social marketing has become mainstream – Think back a few years to when many small businesses didn’t have web sites yet. They thought “sure, it would be nice to have a web site, but it’s not really necessary for my business.” Now, of course, most small businesses have at least a basic web presence, and web sites are considered a standard part of doing business. The same is happening today with social marketing, and it won’t be long until it is considered just as standard as having a web site.
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May 31, 2009
One of the most important aspects of any web marketing strategy is how do I come through in the search engines. How do I get my site to rank better in Google?
One of the most principal facets in doing winning in the search engines (knowing the fundamental principle like excellent content are taken care of) is earning links to your business. You can achieve this a number of ways, some considered positively by the engines and some not so favorably.
One of the reliable methods, that the serps think is very well is link building with articles.
Essentially this involves writing a good article, preferably about something from your niche, and then submitting it to a free article directory.
You really shouldn’t undervalue the importance of link building. If there is one signal that means the most to the search engines, in general, it is links. Fine, there are rafts of other signals, for example the domain name, but you are misguided if you reckon you are going to be listed well, and easily discovered, if you do not pull in any links.
Building links with articles is easy. It is something the search engines say is okay. And, it adds value to the web, by providing valuable content that might be interesting or useful to users. The real question is what are you waiting for?
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January 23, 2009
When Yahoo went live in 1994 it was purely a directory of websites. Until the late 1990s Yahoo’s directory was still the most popular way to find information on the web however with the massive amount of new pages being added daily it was becoming extremely inadequate.
Then along came Google which indexed the massive amounts of new pages being added to the internet. So now instead of praying that Yahoo will include your site in their directory the focus has now shifted to search engine optimization – the art of enhancing your website to increase your listing on search engines for various keywords.
To get a greater feel for how Google and Yahoo index the internet I’ve included a few simple tips on how to optimize your site for maximum traffic in an effort to understand how information is indexed.
Check your Title Tags and your Description Tags
For search engine optimization your website’s title and description tags are essential for free traffic.
The Title tags should be short, to the point and different for each page on your site. Creating unique titles for each of your pages will enable the search engines to direct traffic to not only your main page but also to these back pages. Allowing searches to be directed to these pages will result in visitors finding exactly what their looking for without getting lost via your homepage. The fewer clicks a visitor has to perform to get the information they need the more satisfied they’ll be with your site.
Please Note: Resist the urge to create long winded Title tags. Numerous keywords or phrases will dilute their effectiveness and quality.
The description tag should be more descriptive and also repeat the main phrase of your Title tag – in this case “market research.” It is also very important for this term to appear in the body of your website for that particular page.
Both the Title tags and the Description tags appear in search results for Google (and other search engines) and have become far more important these days than the tag. Do not limit your title tag to just your firm’s name since chances are it’s not one of the more popular search terms on the internet. However for branding purposes it’s a good idea to start your Title tag with your firm/site name.
Keyword Ranking Tool
To view the popularity of any word on the internet I recommend using Overture’s (Yahoo) Keyword Selector Tool at http://inventory.overture.com.
Please Note: The most popular terms will not always send the most amount of free traffic since they are highly competitive terms.
Include Keywords in the Body of your Website
Search engines such as Google index every word (and link) on your site so it’s very important to include descriptive keywords and phrases in the body of your site. In the case above the phrase “market research” from the Title and Description tag should also be listed in the body of your page. Unique descriptions, words or phrases are especially important to include on your site since they are less competitive and will drive a targeted audience to your site – however they’ll probably send less traffic.
Add a Site Map
Search engines index the web by moving from link to link and therefore giving them a map to your site is extremely important. A site map should contain the Title of every page on your site and links to those pages. This will ensure that every page on your site has been indexed.
To view an example of a site map please visit Research Connect’s at:
http://www.researchconnect.com/site_map.asp
Please Note: Don’t forget to create a link to your site map from the main page of your website. The search engines need to be able to find the map before they can follow it.
Submit your Site to Google
Once your Meta Tags have been updated, your keywords have been added and your site map has been created it’s a very good idea to submit your site to Google. You can do this by visiting http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
It may take a few weeks to a month for the Googlebot to visit your site but please remain patient and don’t submit your site again for a number of months. The Googlebot will eventually get to your site. Pages that have a page rank of 5 or greater automatically get updated on a more frequent basis.
Please Note: Don’t over submit your site to Google and only submit the main URL. Over submitting will not expedite your listing and could potentially be harmful.
There are other search engines (Yahoo, MSN, AOL) that you can submit your site to but Google is king. For example, on any given day ResearchConnect.com receives approximately 700 visitors from Google whereas the other search engines send under 10 each.
Increase your Google Page Rank
Google ranks every page on a scale from 0 to 10. To view the page rank for any site on the internet download Google’s toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/.
One way this PR is determined is by the quality and quantity of websites that link to your site. If your site has a PR of 1 and a similar site with a PR of 7 links to your site then that increases the quality of your site in Google’s eyes. The higher your PR the better your placement will be on their site and thus the more traffic you’ll receive.
To increase your PR scour the internet for websites and search engines that will link to your site all while paying attention to their PR. I would stay clear of sites and search engines that require you to pay for that link. The only site that you might want to consider paying for is Yahoo but please note that none of these links will send you a lot of direct traffic. What they’ll do for you is increase your site’s quality in the eyes of Google and thus lead to more traffic via their search engine.
Please Note: Google consistently keeps people on their toes and no one is truly able to figure out how they rank websites. These suggestions will definitely help over time but are not the only criteria Google uses for ranking websites.
** O’Keefe works with new and established websites to maximize the amount of free traffic they receive from search engines such as Google.
For an evaluation of your site please contact O’Keefe at 617-947-8071 or via tom[at]tomokeefe.com.
Tom O’Keefe is an internet business consultant and the founder of Research Connect, Inc., a market research database. O’Keefe works with small businesses and start-ups to help develop an affordable and effective online strategy to maximize traffic and exposure via search engine optimization, internet marketing and web development.
For a website evaluation of your site please contact O’Keefe at 617-947-8071 or via tom[at]tomokeefe.com.
Research Connect is an integrated market research database and research service which connects leading researchers and consultants with the corporate and investment community.
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October 11, 2008
Back in 1994 after you created a website for your business, marketing was fairly simple. Generally you would make changes to your HTML code for search engine optimization and for the most part promoted your website through offline methods. These may have included business cards, letterhead, print advertising and other such methods. Whether or not your site was listed on the only search engine, Yahoo, at the time was purely based on how well you optimized our web pages. If you did a good job then multiple pages of your site would be listed consecutively for a search.
Twelve years later in 2006 the entire perspective of marketing your site on the web has become a science requiring a degree. Although, we are all eager to market our website on the web we are somewhat unclear how to accomplish this task through a maze of policies set by the Big 3 search engines – Google, MSN and Yahoo. Most businesses would first seek out professional advice. In the process of seeking professional Internet Marketing advice, your story may look something like this.
“By now I had heard about pay-per-click, something called Ad Sense, link exchanges, banner advertising and it all sounds quite confusing. After all as a business owner, my forte is to run my company, not try and figure out how to market a website on the Internet. As I seek out professional advice I get quite a variety of different stories. One person calls themselves Internet marketer and the only thing they provide is Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns. The next person I speak to also consider their business to be in Internet Marketing, yet the only service provided is Search Engine Optimization. Even that term was somewhat vaguely defined to me. I continue to hear about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but it seems to vary from changes to our website to advertising on the web. I am most definitely puzzled at this point. Can anyone describe what Internet Marketing is actually about?”
Advertising and Marketing has always been handled by professional firms that have college educated individuals and understand the difference between Advertising and Marketing. In case you are wondering, here are the definitions of Advertising and Marketing.
- Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.
- Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.
One of the primary issues of advertising and marketing on the Internet is that you may not necessarily reach someone educated in the field of advertising and marketing. Instead it is someone that has educated themselves about a particular area of Internet Marketing. For instance they may have specialized in Affiliate Marketing or Pay-Per-Click campaigns while another individual may know more about making changes to your website for search engine optimization. Currently these types of services are fragmented and they do require someone with the appropriate skills to manage an entire Internet marketing campaign.
If we take a look at all the different areas of Internet marketing you will find the following in your list:
Research, Analysis, Planning and Strategy We need to research key phrases and look at the data to determine our title and description.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I believe it is safe to say that SEO is not advertising on the web. SEO is strictly modifications to your HTML code and website. Making sure your website is HTML validated, density checks, the keywords, phrases, content, alt descriptions, anchor titles and so on are in place for the entire website.
Internet Marketing This is the actual process of promotion as the definition of marketing was described earlier. Some would call this Natural Propagation Marketing, others will call it Organic marketing. With this form of marketing you can rest assured the shelf life of the efforts put forth can be measured in years.
Internet Advertising Although, the shelf life of Internet advertising can be measured in seconds and can hemorrhage a business financially, there are three areas of Internet advertising. The first would be to utilize an Internet Advertising Network (IAN) to submit a variety of banners through out a variety of websites in order to narrow your advertising to an area with the most response. Another area is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns such as Google Ad Sense or Yahoo Search Marketing. Lastly, you may consider direct advertising on websites that you have found to be of value to your business with high page ranking.
Management & Reporting It is necessary to monitor all the various activities you are pursuing on the web. Internet marketing gives us the ability to measure almost all aspects of our advertising and marketing campaigns with the push of a button. You will want to keep an eye on your website statistics, check your Google page rank, your Alexa traffic ranking, and your link popularity overall to name a few.
If we consider all the various parts that are required for proper business Internet marketing, you will find the industry moving towards consolidation in the future. Equally, we will find that advertising and marketing on the web will eventually fall back to educated professionals who not only understand advertising and marketing, but will now include their education in Internet marketing as well.
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October 9, 2008
Getting SEO right is an art and it’s based on theory and best practice. The search engines don’t publish their algorithms so getting it right is like finding the exact formula for Coca Cola.
SEO is about getting free TARGETED traffic. That is folks who are looking for what you’ve got and finding your site (or eBay store) high in the SE listings, ideally in the top 10.
Here are some basic principles that apply today (they might not apply tomorrow because the SE’s don’t announce what algorithm they are currently using).
TARGET
Choose it wisely. Think this through before doing anything else. There are 4.7 million results delivered by Google for the word “scrapbook” but only 1.7 million for “scrapbooking” so the latter term has less competition. It’s tempting to try to optimise for the big one, “scrapbook” but there are two good reasons not to. Firstly, if you do work hard on that word against fierce competition for some years you might get to the top (might). But how many customers do you want? You might create a monster that you can’t handle. Secondly all those currently targeting that word haven’t done their homework. “Scrapbooking” has fewer results (less competition) but is searched on more than “scrapbook”. The smart operators are targeting “scrapbooking”.
That’s just an example. Consider too that many people search with phrases, not just single words, so you might target “scrapbooking tutorials”. You might get into the top 10 for such a phrase and get solid, targeted traffic that wants what you’ve got. How about getting to the top for the term “post extenders” or “Sue Dreamer”? Your traffic will be buyers and you want sales, not just traffic for the sake of traffic.
So where to get the best keyword data. Thankfully there is one simple answer, www.wordtracker.com. Best in the world and a must when choosing keywords.
PAGES NOT SITES
Search engines index web pages, not web sites. You might like to think that your visitors will all come through your home page. This is not the case. Every single page of your site is an SEO opportunity. You can, and should, therefore have a different title, description, keywords and target content for every page to maximise your traffic. Optimise every page of your site where possible. Some dynamic sites make it impossible so if this is the case add standard pages that you can optimise.
SEARCH ENGINE SPAMMING
Don’t. You can get penalised or banned by the SE’s. Things like keyword stuffing, white on white text, doorway pages etc., otherwise known as “Black Hat” techniques are for the highly skilled and dodgy operators only. Some make it work short term and usually have multiple sites so when one gets dropped they have others. Unless you want to build and run 10 or 20 sites and work 25 hours a day on them stay away from black hat techniques.
All the search engines want to do is deliver the best and most relevant sites to their users. Be the best and most relevant and you’ll crack it.
META TAGS
If you don’t know what meta tags are click view >> source on any site and you’ll see the meta tags near the top of the site code.
TITLE
The most important thing you do is the page title. Similar principle to titles when selling on eBay, your title is critical to your search relevance. It must also be attractive to your audience. It should be between 6 and 12 words. Don’t simply repeat your keyword 12 times, it doesn’t work and can get you penalised.
DESCRIPTION
I believe this is almost as important as you title. Google uses it. It must contain your keyword(s) or phrases and it must read well and be attractive to users. Optimum length is between 12 and 24 words. It should contain the keyword or phrase that you have targeted in the title.
KEYWORDS
Of little use these days but do it anyway. There should be 7 to 48 words and again included the keyword(s) or phrases that you have in title and description.
HEADER TAGS
In page content coding tags are used to create larger, bolder headings. These are in the form
<![CDATA[<H1>Header Text</H1>]]> They are numbered 1 to 4 usually and H1 tags carry the most weight. These tags help the SE spiders to further determine relevance so should include your target keyword(s) or phrases for that page corresponding to title, description, keyword meta tags above. Bold text also carries weight but don’t overdo it. Your site still has to attractive to visitors.
CONTENT
This should be good, honest, relevant content, well written. There are many theories about keyword density percentages etc. but the fact is if you write good relevant content about say, post extenders then you will be using those words and phrases and if you are writing well for the human user that will be good enough. Make sure that there is plenty of it too. For content pages around 500 to 600 words is good. If you have more than that break it down into more pages and more SE opportunities.
VALID CODE
Search engines like well built sites that are easy to navigate. The SE spiders will be using your internal links to get around your site so simple and easy navigation is important. Also check your code is good by going here http://validator.w3.org/ and here http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
BACKLINKS
I wish this wasn’t important but it is. I’ve seen some very poor sites do very, very well by virtue of the number of backlinks that they have. So, what is a backlink, what makes a good one and how do you get them?
A backlink is when another site links to you. Google sees this as a “vote” for your site, it counts these votes and this figure forms an important part of your search engine ranking.
A link for the sake of a link is of little value. A link from a relevant and highly ranked site however is gold dust. A link from www.ampalian.com to a scrapbooking site is of little value but a link from www.scrapbookstashers.com to a scrapbooking site is fantastic. A good reason to be a sponsor on such a site!
Getting links from relevant sites is often a case of just asking nicely. If you’re serious about seo you need to be asking 5 or 10 relevant sites per day to link to you. They’ll no doubt want a link from you in return, that’s OK. I can’t emphasise too much how important this is. Backlinks are a must.
In addition you need to be listed in as many directories as you can find. Then you must submit your site to the open directory project. Follow the instructions to the letter, submit and forget it. It can take many months to get approved and listed. http://dmoz.org/
There are lots of other directories to submit your site to. Here’s another:
http://www.greatstuff.co.uk
Submit articles and tutorials etc. containing your web address to sites that will take them. Lots of content hungry sites will. Start off with these:
http://ezinearticles.com/
http://www.buzzle.com/
And remember. Ask other relevant sites to exchange links with you. IT’S CRITICAL.
If you don’t already use the Google Toolbar you should. This will tell you how many backlinks Google sees to you. There may well be more than it says at any given time because it only updates every six weeks or so but it is an essential guide to how you are doing with your linking campaign. Click the “I” button on the toolbar. Make sure the page rank indicator is enabled too. This will give you some idea who you want to get links from, the longer the green bar shows on relevant sites the better. It’s not perfect and it’s always way out of date so just use as an indication.
http://toolbar.google.com/
DOMAIN
When choosing a domain it’s worth trying to get your main keyword in it. It’s not the be all and end all but it helps a little so you may as well if you can.
For domain purchase I strongly recommend
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/affiliate.cgi?id=AF109422
If you have an eBay shop you can buy a nice and simple domain name here and direct it to your eBay store. This will make link building and directory submission easier as well as passing the name around verbally and in advertising and on stationery.
Don’t submit your site to the search engines, it’s a pointless waste of time. If you do everything else here they’ll all find you very quickly anyway.
Do however use Google Site Maps here https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
and do use Froogle:
https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/uk/
PATIENCE
Keep doing all of the above. It’s a continuous process. Then apply the one element of SEO that can’t be influenced. PATIENCE. It will all take time and it will take longer than you want it to but it will work. Just keep at it.
TOOLS
http://www.instantposition.com/seodoctor/home.cfm
http://sitereportcard.com/
I hope this all help and wish you success.
Malcolm Cooper is a UK web designer based in Gloucestershire. Malcolm also owns and operates one of the largest online jewellry stores in the UK and applies that knowledge and experience in providing web services to other small and medium sized businesses.
malcolmcooper.com
ampalian.com
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