NOTE: If you noticed that I’ve been slightly lax on writing for the blog, don’t worry – I noticed too. But with photo shoots, the 2010 NFL season coming up and actually taking some time off, it’s been a busy schedule. And right now I’m in Las Vegas for the Photoshop convention. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of everything. Speaking of keeping track, here’s a post on that topic…

Using Google Alerts for you and your business

It doesn’t matter how famous you are (or aren’t) – it’s always good to see your name mentioned online. And when you’re in business, it’s not just good, it’s important – no matter what people are saying about you.

But with all the newspapers, websites, blogs, forums, tweets and more out here, how do you effectively monitor the web for your name or your business name during the course of your Internet marketing?

One of the best ways is to use Google Alerts.

As usual, Google offers an easy way to monitor your brand and your name online. Google gives you plenty of options by letting you select:

The type of results you’re looking for in your Google Alerts:

- News
- Blogs
- Updates
- Video
- Discussion

How often you receive Google Alerts for the terms you select:

- As-it-happens
- Daily
- Once a week

How many results you’d like at a time:

- Up to 20 results per email
- Up to 50 results per email

Where you want to receive your Google Alerts:

- Email
- Feed

Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways Google Alerts can help you monitor mentions of your name, your business name and more online:

Your Name
You need to know when and where people are talking about you online. Google Alerts make it easy to know who these people are and the places these conversations are taking place.

Example: Someone mentions your name on a forum and, even though they were well intentioned, the person said something that was inaccurate about you. If you hadn’t received a Google Alert with a link to the page, you might not otherwise have a chance to address the inaccuracy and give more information to the forum.

Brand Monitoring
It’s impossible to have a brand that everyone loves. It’s also impossible to keep people from saying bad things about you – regardless of whether or not they’re true. Google Alerts makes it easy to see what people are saying about you, and address any negativity with a measured response.

Example: Someone write a negative blog about your company and the poor service they received. Google Alerts lets you know when and where the content was placed so you can respond accordingly.

Content Ideas
Set up Google Alerts with keywords for your business and see what kind of content is being created to match. Get creative content ideas from the alerts you get.

Example: An industry blog writes a post with an opinion that you don’t exactly agree with. Write content of your own (blog post, article, press release) with your opinion and leave a comment on the industry blog with a link to your opinion and see what kind of traction you get. It’s ok to respectfully disagree or disagree on certain points.

Conversation Starters
Google Alerts for your keywords are also a great way to start conversations with customers, potential customers and even the media who cover your industry.

Example: An industry publication writes an article about something relevant to your industry. You receive the alert with a link to the article and take the opportunity to introduce yourself to the publication and offer your personal point of view through your subject matter expertise. If the publication sees you as a subject-matter expert, you may be called upon for informed comment on upcoming stories.

Competitive Data
Create Google Alerts for your competitors – business names and names of executives – and see what they’re up to. Maybe they’ve found a media outlet that you haven’t yet or are marketing their product in a way that’s taking away from your customer base.

Example: A competitor begins marketing heavily on their product’s specifications, while you’re concentrating on price. You realize that specifications AND price are both important in your customers’ buying decision so you work with your marketing team to create a strategy that incorporates price and specs to gain more customers.

Need more ideas about how using Google Alerts for your business can help you compete more effectively for customers, media attention and more? You know where to find me.

Using Google Alerts for Brand Monitoring, Content ideas and More is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Content is still King

Quick intro: If you’ve been reading Tony’s blog, you’re already getting a ton of great SEO information from a guy who knows his stuff. My goal is to contribute where I can on the topic of content as it relates to your online marketing and SEO efforts. If there’s a specific content topic you want to me to write about, leave a comment or contact me directly.

I consider myself a strong advocate for creating useful and relevant content to support online marketing goals.  And I should be an advocate because useful and relevant content is one of the most important tools for anyone who wants to be successful online, including me. But I realize that content is just one piece of the online success ‘formula.’

In contrast, I’ve met people who spend time in other parts of the SEO realm and are fixated on a certain aspect of optimization that they think is the Holy Grail of online success.

Often, in my experience, that fixation is on PageRank.

Recently, I had a heated discussion online with someone over the topic of content and its value – or lack thereof – based on PageRank.

Their opinion: Without a high PageRank, useful and relevant content is worthless.

Here are two of the “supporting” arguments I’ve heard for this position:

Links (specifically those with high PageRank) are more important than good content if you’re looking for higher ranking in the search engine results. So, a direct link to your site from a high PR site like CNN.com is priceless because you can’t buy those kinds of inbound, high-PageRank links.

The ‘juice’ and traffic those high PR links bring in outweigh any flaws in your content anyway, so that’s where your focus should be in your SEO efforts – on PageRank and not content.

Not very strong arguments in my opinion, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

My opinion: Good content is always valuable regardless of PageRank.

Pages with a low PageRank can have the same (or greater) potential to convert visitors as pages with a high PageRank IF the right content is placed in front of the right visitors.

Technologies like RSS feeds, social media, email newsletters and mobile apps are driving more and more qualified traffic to website content, and using these technologies to support your organic SEO efforts will only boost your online success rate.

PageRank is simply one of many metrics – and it certainly doesn’t guarantee you qualified traffic. It just doesn’t work that way. Fixating on it will only cause you to see a small part of SEO and cause you to miss valuable conversion opportunities.

PageRank is not the only measure of importance.

These days, useful and relevant content is given a measure of importance and trust through Tweets, re-Tweets, pings, posts, statuses and more. This means that people are playing a larger role in determining online authority and trust. And remember what Tony says about trust – very important stuff.

If you create content in a way that builds trust and people believe your content is important, then traffic, links and (eventually) PageRank will fall into place. Create content that builds trust AND drives sales, and you’re on your way to online success.

Just to be clear – relevant, useful content and high PageRank are not mutually exclusive.  But, I firmly believe that great content must come before you climb the PageRank scale if you want to be successful online.

Even Matt Cutts of Google agreed when he said “…great content has to be the foundation of a good site.”

I couldn’t agree more. What do you think?

Good Content is Always Valuable Regardless of PageRank is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

I know I promised you the third installment of SEO management. If you need a refresher, you can head back to Part I and Part II.

It’s been a busy week – right up until my time on RSS Ray’s radio show on Wednesday to talk about email marketing.

So finally, here it is, the one thing you absolutely must manage when it comes to SEO…and that is – trust.

Now, maybe you’re out there saying, “Tony, people trust me. They like me and they visit my site, and buy from me. Why should I be so concerned with trust?”

With those people, you’ve already built trust. You job with them is to maintain it. Much of what we’ll go over covers both building and maintaining that trust. So keep reading.

The trust I’m mainly talking about is the kind that you need from first-time and new-er visitors as well as from the search engines that can hold the key to your success (and failure) online. We’ll deal with one a time.

Trust and first-time/new users

Trust can be built, or lost, even before visitors come to your site. The good news is that you do have some control over it.

For example, when a page from your website is returned as a search result, people make an initial judgment about that result. They read the title, the meta description and look at the URL.

With those three small pieces of info, users decide that they either trust you enough to click through and see what happens, or that they can’t trust you enough and go searching for a result that meets their requirements.

Some keys to offering trust (or avoiding distrust) with first-time and new users is to:

• Have well-written page titles that accurately describe what a visitor will find on each page. Try to keep them within readable character counts, and if you must go over a character count, have the most important information at the beginning of the title.
• Write meta descriptions that support your page titles. Again, stay within character counts and use the space to build rapport, describe in further detail what your page is about and add a call-to-action if needed.
• If possible, keep your URLs as simple as possible (while being mindful of your SEO efforts) and use the URLs to describe their pages. With e-commerce sites, this isn’t always easy, but if you can keep a URL short and descriptive, it can add a little more trust – or at least not create any distrust with your users.
• Once users have clicked through to your site, they must be met with the information you promised in the three items above. If not, you will lose trust and your visitor will make the move for their back button in search of a different result – one they can trust.

About external content: It’s also important to remember that first-time visitors won’t just find content from your domain on search engines, If you’ve got press releases, articles, white papers, contributed blog posts or some other external content indexed, visitors can come from there, too. It’s important to do as much as you reasonably can with that kind of content to maintain congruency with your messages. This means having a well-written author bio, about paragraphs, etc.

Trust and search engines

With search engines, trust is built by offering useful content in a way that’s not seen as spammy.

It’s a broad statement and sounds simple on the surface, but without knowing the ins-and-outs of each search engine’s algorithm, trust is quite simply a game of best practices. Of course, there are nearly as many interpretations of ‘SEO best practices’ as there are SEO consultants.

Some keys to offering trust (or avoiding distrust) with search engines is to:

Now, I know you might be thinking about other trust factors like backlinks, but not all backlinks are created equal. Chances are that a quality backlink comes from a quality site that (you guessed it) offers quality content in a way that’s not seen as spammy. I can only wonder where backlinks come from SEOs promise you 4,000 of them.

However, some things that are seen as spammy by search engines include:

• Hiding text – white text on your white background is a no-no. Even today, I see SEO ‘experts’ trying this and it simply isn’t worth the risk for anybody.
• Associating with ‘bad’ websites – A link to a site that’s spammy is not quite as bad as doing the spammy stuff on your site, but it’s still something you want to avoid.
• Tricking visitors – Optimizing a page for one term but having it re-direct to a different, unrelated page is spammy and outright dishonest.

It’s pretty simple – do anything that can be perceived as tricky by humans and you’ll see much more success online.

Trust must be an integral part of your SEO strategy. And trust with search engines it really, in one way or another, boils down to content – which is the majority of what search engine spiders see when they visit your site anyway. Create useful content, link it to friendly places, don’t try to trick the search engines, and you’ll see your level of trust rise along with traffic and organic ranking.

Until next time…

SEO Management for Small Business – Part III is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

In our last post about SEO management for business, we talked about learning the language of SEO and setting goals.

Today, we’re going to talk about something that goes along with goals, and that topic is determining your SEO budget.

Now, this topic can get complicated depending on whether you’re outsourcing or keeping everything in-house. As with most things involving SEO strategy, you need to start out by asking some questions before deciding on a dollar amount or sending out an SEO request for proposal (RFP) for your project.

Who built your website? This is important, because there are many ways to design a site and not all of them are search-engine-friendly. DIY folks who create their sites using their host’s software could be at a disadvantage when it comes to SEO because of the way their site is constructed.  Additional find could be needed to either update the site or re-build it altogether.

How is your website performing? You should be armed with information such as popular keywords for visitors who find you thorough search engines. This is basic analytical information that every web host makes readily available through their control panel. If for some reason this info isn’t available to you, consider a new host or looking into Google Analytics or some comparable tool. The good news is, you don’t have to pay for analytics software – and the information they can give you is valuable. Take time to gather the right data and use that to gauge your performance.

What is your competition doing? If your competition isn’t doing much in terms of optimization, then maybe you don’t have to work quite as hard to reach your goals. You’ll still have to work, obviously, but there may be low-impact SEO activities that you can cut back on while you focus on core SEO best practices.

Who are your customers? Not all customers are created equal when it comes to using search engines to find products. You may have only a small number of customers who are using search engines to find you. Throwing disproportionate amounts of money toward a small group might not make economical sense in your budget.

What do you expect from your SEO efforts? I know this question can be a tough one – especially when you are new to SEO and are wary of SEO consultants’ promises of #1 ranking, unlimited traffic and other snake-oil promises.  Start answering these questions with the questions we talked about in part I, and see if you can’t narrow them down to be even more specific. The more precise you are with your expectations, the more precise you can be in your SEO budget.

The video above is classic SHADY SEO

Now, you can find the answers to these questions on your own with a little homework and some serious thought, but at this point, it might also be wise to work with a consultant. Not somebody to necessarily DO The work, but someone who can talk through a few things with you – to help you come up with the ideas that you have in your head but can’t readily get onto paper. (Trust me when I say this happens a lot – people know what they want from SEO, but they have trouble communicating it in a way that an SEO expert can act upon).

SEO budgeting is different for every company. I wish I could give you a checklist with some SEO tactics and some pricing and call it a day, but that wouldn’t do anybody justice. Every website and company has different needs, and every SEO consultant has different views about how to meet your goals.

In part III, I’ll talk a little more about SEO strategies and tactics and what they all serve to support – trust.

SEO Management for Small Business – Part II is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Choosing an SEO Consultant you can Trust

SEO Management is such a large topic that I decided to break it up into smaller chunks for you over the course of a few posts. Books could be written on the subject, so don’t take this to be an exhaustive analysis. My goal is to give you an overview that will help you make sound SEO decisions for your particular business or situation.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into part one – Learning to speak SEO and setting goals for your SEO efforts.

The term SEO management can be scary for a lot of small business owners and/or do-it-yourselfers who want as much control as possible over their site’s search engine performance. But it can be done – and effectively – if you’re willing to make the necessary investments of time – and possibly money – to make it work.

Step one – Learn the language of SEO

One of the first things you’ll need is someone to manage your SEO strategy and tactics. This person may be in-house, or you could rely on outsourced SEO consultants to get the job done (see my note on SEO consultants below for more details). Regardless of which way you go, the first thing you’ll want to do is get to know the language of SEO.

Knowing the terms used in SEO circles will make it far easier to have conversations and read articles on the topic of SEO. In fact, knowing as much of the language as possible could keep you from getting ripped off my less-than-honest people who claim to be SEO experts. There are several places online to learn the lingo. one of the best I’ve found is SEOmoz’s glossary of essential SEO jargon. From there, you may want to spend some time in Google’s webmaster forum (specifically, the crawling, indexing and ranking forum) to see how the terms are used.

Step two – Set realistic goals

After that, one of your next steps should be to determine some realistic goals and objectives. These should be fairly specific targets such as:

• To increase new visitor numbers by about X%
• To increase your conversion rate by about X%

I use the word ‘about’ above because I don’t want you to think you’ve failed miserably if you haven’t met a particular goal. SEO is not just relevant to what you do with your site. Other sites are constantly competing with you, and without knowing exactly what they’re doing; you’ll be competing against some uncertainty.

Even if you incorporate all the SEO best practices out there, you still face unknowns from your competition. So be realistic with your goals, but flexible with your results.

Now for my note about SEO consultants – One of the ways less-talented SEO consultants will try to impress an uneducated prospect is to make promises they can’t keep and use words the prospect has probably heard, but doesn’t know the full meaning of.

This unfortunately results far too often in someone getting ripped off. The way to avoid getting ripped off is to learn the language of SEO as I mentioned above and work with SEO consultants who have been suggested to you by a trusted individual or work with a consultant who can verify and prove their results with references to back up any claims.

In the next post about SEO management, I’ll talk about how to communicate your goals with your team and how to measure some of your efforts.

Of course, if you need any clarification on any SEO management topics, please reach out to me.

SEO Management for Small Business – Part I is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Twitter Marketing

Despite the naysayers, there is tremendous value in using Twitter.

For businesses, Twitter marketing is a chance to connect with prospects and current customers in a unique way – and in a way that these important audiences are used to communicating.

Whether you use Twitter for business or not, there are some basic Twitter tips that can make your social media presence more relevant and successful:

What Does Your Twitter Profile Look Like?

Your profile is your first key to legitimacy – Using your company logo, company colors, linking to your company site and just having a completed (and branded) Twitter profile can go a long way toward verifying your legitimacy.

Put a name to your Twitter face – Companies don’t Tweet, but people do. Your followers (who are also your customers and potential customers) deserve to know the name behind your Twitter marketing. It adds credibility and personality to your presence.

Make Twitter a true piece of your business – If you use Twitter for business, then make it feel like a part of your businesses. Link to your Twitter business account from logical pages on your corporate website (news page, contact page, etc.).

Humans Tweet, so be human– I cringe when I see corporate Twitter accounts with nothing but news releases, re-tweets and links to company web pages. Humans engage in conversations, and this carried over to Twitter, as well. Come to Twitter with a sense of humor, or at the very least, understanding the “social” part of social media. Your experience (and that of your followers) will be better for it.

Iron Man 2 Twitter Account

I think we’re past the conversation where we talk about Twitter “possibly” being good for business. There are enough examples of large and small companies with a Twitter business account making a huge impact to make that conversation a waste of time.

The real conversation should be about your business – and Twitter for businesses in general. Will you use Twitter marketing to enhance your business presence, your customer service and your brand?  My Twitter tips above are just the start to a positive Twitter presence.

Do you have a Twitter business account already? Are you seeing success by using it? If you need any further insight on the topic, you know where to find me.

Twitter for Businesses – Best Practices for a Positive Corporate Presence is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Best Landing Page Practices

The best landing pages are exactly that – landing pages.

Not your home page, not your contact page, but a customized page that makes the same offer you’ve made in your AdWords campaign.

Think about it like this: If someone sees an ad for Product A in your AdWords campaign and the ad sends them to your home page, which sells Product A through Z, how likely are they to still buy Product A?

Not very likely.

So, your AdWords landing page must first meet the initial expectation of prospects – that it make the same offer as the ad they clicked on – and no other offers.

Some other things that will contribute to better conversion rates include:

How clear you make the value of your offer. Don’t leave it up to your prospect to determine if your offer is of value to them. Tell them the value in a way that is clear, concise and reasonable.

How easy you make it for your prospects to take action. For example, don’t create a form that asks for information you don’t really need. If you’re offering an e-book, you don’t need a physical address, so don’t ask for it.

How you make prospects feel at ease over giving you their personal information. Tell people their information is safe with you. It only takes a sentence, but can make a huge difference. Don’t overlook this factor.

I see people make a lot of the same mistakes over-and-over when it comes to landing pages. Here are a few of the common ones that you should look out for:

Not Using a Landing Page at All
This one may seem obvious to some, but I still see it far too often. In the vast majority of cases cases, you can’t realistically carry an offer from AdWords to your home page. There are too many competing offers, links and other things to distract your visitor from your original offer.

Making Too Many Offers
I’ve seen people try to use the same landing page for multiple offers in the name of saving money. Unfortunately, the opposite is true – they lose money. They lose money on the designer they hired to create the page and they lose money on clicks they’ve paid for in AdWords.

Landing Page Design That Confuses Prospects
When you pay a professional to design an AdWords landing page, it can be easy for that designer to get too creative and over-design your page.

I can’t tell you how important it is to have a proper landing page for visitors who come to your site from Google. Landing pages that are well-designed and have appropriate offers and calls to action will always have better results.

If you have any questions, I’m here to help. Whether you have a landing page you want reviewed, or you just need some help figuring out the best way to design your AdWords landing page, I can guide you through the process and get you from click to conversion in no time.

Below is a 60 minute presentation by the great people at Marketing Experiments about landing pages and how clarity trumps persuasion.  Mandarich.com is a certified landing page company by marketing experiments.  I highly recommend their scientific approach to online marketing.

From AdWords to Landing Page – Get The Click, Get The Conversion is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

I was reading some interesting facts the other day about spending habits of companies when it comes to PPC management spending versus organic SEO spending.

To sum it up, SEO accounts for 75% of all search traffic, but only accounts for roughly 15% of search engine marketing (SEM) budgets.

On the other hand, PPC campaigns and PPC management accounts for 80% of SEM budgets, but produces less than 25% of search traffic.

So, why the disparity between the two SEM efforts?

If you ask me, the popularity of PPC advertising over organic SEO is a carry-over from the belief that if you pay for advertising, people will look at it and buy from you. I also believe that people are drawn to the immediate results of PPC advertising and are turned off by the long-term commitment that comes with organic search marketing.

To me, both of these beliefs can cause a company to miss out on the real value and ROI that comes with organic search marketing.

Once you look deeper in to the benefits of organic search marketing and compare them to PPC advertising, I think you’ll realize that both should have a place in your SEM budget. The budget numbers, however, should reflect the ROI (or potential ROI) that each tactic can bring.

I’m obviously not telling you to cancel your PPC campaign. What I’m saying is that too many companies are focusing budget dollars on pay-per-click efforts when they should be prioritizing long-term organic search goals.

There’s enough proof out there to show us that while PPC marketing is effective, it’s not as effective as organic SEO efforts.

How is your SEM budget divided? What’s your rationale for it?

If you’re looking for advice on PPC management or other SEO efforts, you know where to find me.
If you enjoyed this post and found it valuable please Tweet it above.

PPC Management vs. SEO Management – The Budget Numbers Don’t Lie is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

It’s no big secret that video promotion is huge these days. Some videos on YouTube have been viewed millions of times by people around the globe.  Some videos are purely personal and aren’t part of an online video strategy, while others are part of a company’s online video marketing agenda – as can be the case with video such as Superbowl commercials.

The bottom line is that online video advertising works. And it works very well when you’re video is compelling and engaging.

So how can video promotion benefit you or your business? Easy. Get video in front of your prospects! Here’s a brief overview of the strategy and process:

Online Video Strategy Step 1 – Decide where you’ll host your video
The first thing you need to do before you even point your camera is decide where your videos will be hosted.

Now, unless you have some technical know-how when it comes to hosting and serving video, 3rd party video hosting (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) is likely your best option. For the sake of this post, I’m going to assume this is the way you’ll go.

Online Video Strategy Step 2 – Create your presence
One step many marketers miss is completing their entire YouTube profile. This means branding your channel as much as you can to match your brand. You want as much congruency as possible for people who may see your videos on the 3rd party’s site. YouTube makes it easy to change color scheme of your channel to match your online presence.

Also, when you create your account and begin uploading videos, complete all the information fields so search engines and visitors have as much information about your videos as possible. Ideally your videos will come up as search results in Google (for YouTube videos, at least).

Online Video Strategy Step 3 – Upload your videos

Video hosting sites like YouTube make it easy to upload video, but they also make it easy to control how and where that video content is delivered. For example, you might want to restrict people from viewing a particular video on YouTube.com, but allow them to view an embedded version on your site. You can make a video private, but still embed it in your website, making your site the only place that video can be seen. This is important for tracking and conversion purposes.

Follow-up video promotion tip:

Surround your video with meaningful content.
This means writing complete descriptions for the video so that search engines have something to ‘see’ when they index your videos when they’re on YouTube. The same goes for embedding video on your site – be sure the page with the embedded video has a descriptive title and enough copy for search engines to figure out what the page is about – and index it accordingly.

With the right strategy and the right video, you can create a content-rich experience for visitors that engages them and guides them toward buying your products or services.

As always, I’m here to help with any online video marketing advice you need.  If you liked this post please ReTweet it up above!

Online Video Marketing for Your Business is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

If you’ve ever done a local business search on Google, you know the great opportunity that can be found at the top of the search results when business listings come up.

People looking for local businesses are typically drawn to the local results because they aren’t necessarily looking for a website, a blog or an article – they’re simply looking for information about a business: phone number, address, hours, parking info and maybe a few other details to help them make a decision of some sort. From the local search results, they can choose to click through to a company’s website.

So if the opportunity is great for searchers, you know the opportunity is even greater when YOUR business listing comes up.

But, what about those businesses that aren’t on Google Local Search? Are they missing out on qualified local customers who are searching based on keywords and geography?

They are. Businesses that aren’t part of Google’s local business search results are missing out on a huge (and mostly free) search marketing opportunity.  Sometimes companies don’t know the service exists, sometimes they do know, but they aren’t sure how getting into the business results works.

So how does a company position itself to be part of these high-power Google results?

First of all, Google Local Search has recently changed its name to Google Places, and if it’s not part of your local search optimization efforts, it needs to be.

If you’re already familiar with Google’s local search capabilities, then you probably understand its importance and may even be part of their local business search services. Recently, Google has added some new features to the Google Places service. Here are a couple:

Service Areas – Got a business on wheels with no home base? Google allows this type of business to display the geographic area the business serves.

Ad Tags – Tag your local listing using ad tags to promotes coupons, and provide other beneficial information. (This is why I said “mostly free” above.)

Google has also taken the proactive step of letting you in on some traffic stats for your listing, including number of views, referring pages and keywords used to find your business.

If you’re uncertain about how to get yourself onto Google Places, there are businesses out there, like mine, who do this kind of thing for a living.  Being on Google Places is a ‘must’ for your local search optimization efforts, so if you have any questions about it, you know where to find me.

Local Search Optimization for Your Business is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

SEO and Branding: A Primer

Obviously one of the goals for your SEO is to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) for decent phrases – and as many times as possible. But beyond that, you need to be thinking about WHAT appears when you appear. What messages your results are sending, what offers are being seen my searchers and what image you’re conveying.

In other words: Branding.

Overall Branding for SEO

One of the best ways to get your brand in front of searchers more often is to have lots of content. But, not just any content – you need quality content that lands you as close to the top of the SERPs as possible AND accomplishes your marketing goals.

In other words, that content needs to promote your brand AND be functional enough to serve as an entry point to convert your visitors – or at least get them on the path to conversion.

This can be tough for small companies who don’t have the resources to pump out daily, or even weekly, content. It can still be done, but it takes a long-term outlook and a tool such as a blog or forum to start generating (and keep generating) that quality content.

Optimizing Branded Searches

When people search for your brand, ideally you should own most (if not all) of the real estate on page one of the search results pages. This is the place to grab attention with offers for potential customers and open the door to your conversion path.

If you are a local business, your business listing should be coming up as the first result – if not, you need to figure out why. Get on Google and Yahoo and make sure your businesses have been submitted.

High-value Generic Searches

This is one area that takes a lot of work, but when it pays off, it pays off big time. With the right mix of branding, SEO, content and linking a generic search could bring up your domain in the #1 spot in the SERPs. What this means is that Google places so much value and trust in your site that it equates YOU with that generic search term or phrase.

If you’ve reached this point, you’ve come a long way. From here you can begin some other branding strategies that involve search engines to get your message out to your customers and potential customers.

In future posts, we’ll get into detail about things like personal branding, using social media to enhance and promote your brand as well as ways to protect your brand – like brand guidelines and monitoring tools.

Branding and SEO is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Landing Page Best Practices

Some of the best landing page practices can sway a user to purchase your product or click away from your page entirely. If it is not attractive AND functional than you lose another potential conversion. You need to have an inviting, effective and relevant landing page. You need to portray an image that allows users to take action, check out your product and/or company without being overwhelmed with a busy looking page. The images positioned on the page need to evoke relatable images, thoughts, and relationships between the user and the products/services on your page. A landing page is vital to conversion optimization. And here are a few basic rules to follow about how to produce a successful landing page.

A Landing Page is Where Function and Design Integrate

A successful landing page cannot attain conversions without the symbiosis of function and design. If you have a functioning site without visually enticing elements, then you risk the chance of a conversion loss. You need to have both to work effectively. But how do you attain this goal while maintaining a clean, professional, modern and effective page? The key is to choose images and design that are relatable to your potential or repeat customer.

For instance, if you create a landing page for an odor eliminator product, such as What-Odor?, brainstorm about what images users would like to see. One image could be an embedded video of a person struggling with household odors and failed odor eliminator products then the video changes to show what occurs when the same person switches to What-Odor? Furthermore, on the landing page include the product, product price, and ways to use the product.

How to Find the Best Landing Page Images

First rule of thumb, do not take pictures to post on your landing page with your camera phone. Use a high quality image to post on your site. You may search the internet for images, but instead of wasting your time go directly to fotolia.com and istockphoto.com. These two sites have everything from objects, people, nature, signs, and animals. Every industry is represented on these sites. Scope the sites out for the landing page images. Just remember to keep your customer, product and services in mind when choosing pictures.

Positioning of the Images

The positioning of images on your landing page does make a difference in the results you attain. How the image is integrated into the page, text layout, and overall look definitely enhance the odds of you earning another sale. Thus, recruit a target market group regarding what they think of the page. Ask for suggestions, likes and dislikes. Look at other successful landing pages. Talk to a designer about ideas on how to improve your page. The positioning, look, content, and feel the landing page emits will determine if your page achieves conversion rate goals.

Landing page best practices is the end objective. Thus, generate a landing page with all the essential elements elevating your business to the next level through conversion optimization efforts.

Landing Page Best Practices – An Inside Look is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Tony Mandarich is more than just a successful college and NFL football star, he’s also built a successful Internet Marketing business and is an expert in the field.  Over at Mandarich Media Group LLC he provides complete Internet solutions for his clients with search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click campaigns, videography, and more! At Mandarich Media Group LLC clients receive unique, memorable and effective products.

Tony has built his successful Internet Marketing firm with the help of his wife Char.  Over the past five years he and his wife have expanded their business from Mandarich Photography to a full service Internet Marketing firm with a location in North Scottsdale, AZ.  We’re pleased to have Tony join us in our video series, as his advice and predictions in the industry are well regarded.

In the video below Arnie asks Tony:

Tony Mandarich of Mandarich.com Makes Predictions for 2010 from Vertical Measures on Vimeo.

Mandarich.com 2010 Internet Marketing Outlook is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

If you are not using the social networking sites to promote your business, then you are losing out on a huge opportunity.

Social networking sites, if used properly, may be the greatest marketing tool available today.  You may engage in 2 way dialogue with customers, receive instant feedback, find out what people are interested in, and develop a bond with consumers.   The potential business relationships possible due to social networking sites are endless.

Social networking sites are the key to creating a successful online business, so do your research and discover the potential today.

Social Networking is a Key to Successful Online Business is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Twitter is a great way to increase and reach your target market and it is right at your fingertips making it more accessible than other means of old school marketing.

According to Compete.com, Twitter has over 23.5 million users. What other social network marketing tool would be able to directly reach these many people instantly without spending billions of dollars? It would be impossible. Twitter adds this type of marketing depth that no other avenue is able to produce. You are able to receive feedback, interact with customers, and attract new ones all at once. There is nothing currently available providing instant results via one avenue as Twitter. It is remarkable and when utilized correctly to the maximum effectiveness, you may achieve your highest marketing goals that otherwise are unreachable.

Amp up your Marketing with Twitter! is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Overview of Email Marketing is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

The domain of Internet marketing is no place for the dispassionate and the unoriginal. In a digital realm likely filled with many competitors, getting the upper hand and becoming successful is not an easy thing to do. Getting your business to where you want it to be with respect to the Internet can be an uphill climb. This is especially true if you are just getting started, because there may be many others out there who have been around for longer, and have accrued more resources and experience in the process. Further, Internet indexing is generally more favorable to content that has existed for a more extended period of time. But don’t be disheartened, because these are all the more reasons to be more motivated and committed. Below I offer some strategies that will hopefully help you along.

1. Take advantage of e-mail. E-mail marketing takes many forms, such as e-mail campaigns and e-mail blasts. A campaign is a series of e-mails, creating a stream of content that builds to a “call to action” for the reader. The benefit of a campaign is that it has a structure and “process.” The first e-mails help establish trust, and the messages that follow aim to build upon this burgeoning relationship. As a result, there is a greater chance that the reader will take active interest and participate in the marketer’s venture.  A blast is a one-time surge of e-mails. Because it lacks the process that characterizes the campaign, there is not a strong relationship-building element to this method. Consequently, the rate of user response may be lower. However, an e-mail blast is much less time consuming, and more appropriate for marketers facing a pressing time constraint.

2. Take advantage of web media. Perhaps the most popular content on the Internet today is multimedia. Web audio and video are dynamic, engaging, and wildly popular among Internet users – from streaming video on portals such as YouTube and Veoh, to audio podcasts that can be downloaded on iTunes and elsewhere. And, best of all, this type of content can be accessed in many areas for free. Thus, it is no surprise that many marketers have taken to video and audio as a means to spread their message and boost the exposure of their brand.

3. Take advantage of blogging. Blogging is widespread, from private users to large companies, niche-based communities to influential media outlets. The blogosphere also encompasses a very broad spectrum of interests. In fact, it seems that you can find a blog on just about any topic you can think of! There are many reasons why blogs have become so popular. Perhaps one of them is the personal dimension it adds to Internet content. Users that find a sense of common perspective or background with the information they encounter are more likely to take it seriously. Starting and maintaining a blog is extremely ease today, with the myriad free services available to do so – such as Blogger and WordPress.

4. Take advantage of social networking. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are sites that boost high-connectivity and ease of communication between millions of users worldwide. Thus, they offer ideal places for marketers to connect with other companies and potential clients to grow the profile of their business. These social networks also offer an abundance of services such as messaging, bulletin boards, and group initiation and participation that can prove highly beneficial in building connections.

5. Test and track the progress of your marketing. Maintaining a high degree of vigilance over how your marketing is fairing – whether it’s an e-mail campaign, pay-per-click, or blog – can be imperative to achieving long-term success. Knowing where you stand, and how well different components of your marketing are progressing, allows you to learn what works and what doesn’t. Then, you can streamline accordingly to help maximize the potential of your efforts. Some testing and tracking tools can be found free-of-charge on the Internet, such as those offered by Google Analytics.

5 Strategies for Internet Marketing is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Online Marketing: Advantages and Drawbacks is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Email Marketing and Spam is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

PPC, as Pay Per Click is more handily known, is a prominent method of Internet marketing.   Advantages of this model are its straightforwardness and ease of use.  With PPC, advertisers do not actually pay to have their ads featured.  Instead, their ad is displayed for free, but they must pay the host (such as Google, Yahoo!, or some advertising network) when it is clicked.  For search engines, advertisers usually bid for keywords (or phrases) in an auction-like mechanism.  Three of the largest PPC platforms – Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter – operate their model by means of bidding.

When a user conducts a search on Yahoo! or Google, the results feature a section of “sponsored ads” along with the organically-generated links.  The sponsored results generally span across the top, along the sides, and/or around the bottom of the page.  These advertisements are meant to match up with the term from the search.  For example, if you search for “desktop printer” on Google, the results may feature ads related to Xerox or Hewlett-Packard.  This means these two companies participated in bidding for the keyword/phrase “desktop printer.”

Various safeguards have emerged to help ensure good practice in PPC.  Particularly troublesome for this advertising model has been “click fraud” – a type of Internet fraud when a person, program, or automated script of some sort clicks advertisements with the intention of generating income without actual interest in the ad itself.  In many jurisdictions, this could be considered as a felony.  Some search engines such as Google have also made efforts with their own automated scripts to counteract this type of abuse.

What is Pay Per Click Anyway? is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Social media departs from more traditional forms of media in that it lacks many previous barriers of accessibility.  Through the advance of modern information technology, communication between people has never been more fluid.

One of the most indelible marks of the advancement of social media is the flurry of Internet programs and “networks” that have emerged.  Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow users to create and manage personalized spaces on the Web, and provide a forum for individuals to interact – regardless of geographic location.  YouTube and Flickr helped to usher in the era of video and photo sharing, and the expanding Blogosphere has unleashed the enormous potential of “personal publishing.”  The list goes on and on.

Social media can also have significant implications for doing business.  Internet marketing has emerged as an medium, with multi-billion dollar corporations and small businesses alike taking advantage of its opportunities.  Small businesses, for example, can launch relatively far-reaching advertising campaigns at very reasonable costs.  As more and more businesses devote resources to developing marketing for social media, those who do not may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

The Rise of Social Media is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

What Kind of eMail Marketing Should I do?

E-mail marketing has become a popular and efficient method to reach potential clients.  There are different methods to go about doing it, and understanding which is the best way to promote your message or product is essential to your marketing success.  The two primary methods are the e-mail campaign and the e-mail blast.

An e-mail campaign is a stream of e-mails sent to a list of recipients with the purpose of conveying information, promoting a product or service, and/or increasing brand exposure.  A campaign distributes your content to form a kind of  “narrative.”  Successive e-mails serve different purposes.  The first (or first few) messages are meant to develop a kind of familiarity and trust with the reader – getting your foot in the door, so to speak.  The middle e-mails are primarily about benefits and features – the “meat” of what you are trying to promote.  The concluding e-mail should be a “call to action” – encouragement to the reader to follow through (e.g., purchasing your product/service).

An email marketing blast is an “one-off” action as opposed to a chain of e-mails (hence “blast”).   A potential benefit of an email blast over a campaign is getting a more immediate result for your efforts.  Unlike a campaign, a blast provides all the necessary components in a single e-mail.  At the same time, there are certain drawbacks.  For one, it may be much more difficult to come off as sincere and gather interest from your readers, due to the fact that the trust/relationship-building process is not there.  Additionally, fitting all your relevant content in a comprehensible way in a single e-mail could present challenges.

Whichever method you choose, one important concept is necessary to keep in mind.  An e-mail marketer should recognize and adhere to a good sense of boundaries and ethics, and be vigilant not to cross the line.  Whether you are launching an e-mail campaign or an e-mail blast, spamming is irritating and even disrespectful to the reader, and can result in substandard results for your efforts.

Email Marketing: Campaign or Blast? is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

A well-written and distributed press release can do wonders for your business. Press releases are meant to provide information on an certain topic and/or promote an item of news. If it’s interesting enough, media outlets may latch onto the information and disseminate it for public consumption. For Internet marketing, the channels along which press releases are passed along are digital – search engines, for instance.

A primary objective of your press release is getting onto powerful search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. Having a press release with high ranking in search results can generate significant interest in what you are trying to promote. When creating your press release, here are a few things to consider:

1. Keywords are important! Great press releases are strewn with keywords and phrases relevant to the topic of interest.

2. Mind your backlinks! Create backlinks – links embedded into your press release that takes the reader to your website(s). By doing this, you can increase the traffic to your website(s), which can help raise their ranking as well.

3. Be informative! While you want to incorporate your top keywords in your content, you don’t want to make your press release too heavy with them – don’t overdo it! Streamline your press release so that it possess the essentials without being long-winded. Don’t make the reader comb through a bunch of not-so-relevant material before they find what they’re looking for.

Creating Press Releases for SEO is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.

Fishing for 200 Million Facebook Friends with Open Streaming is a post from: SEO Blog, specializing in website advertising and best internet marketing practices.