Three Part Advertising Success Strategy
A small business can dominate local, regional and national markets using a three pronged strategy:
1) Infomercial + TV Commercials
2) Website
3) Search Engine Optimization
Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category
Dominate Your Markets for $40 a Day
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010“Blogs are built for SEO,” Rebecca Lieb
Thursday, August 12th, 2010“Blogs are long form, mature. So why should we still use them in our organic search strategy or SEO?”
Tweets, YouTube, Facebook, and LindedIn. They seem so wonderfully short form and new. But, experience and research both prove out that blogs, as SEO expert Rebecca Lieb puts it, “are built for SEO …Their structure and architecture offer a baked-in SEO platform” [http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Search-Engine-Optimization/dp/0789738317].
Lieb is on the money. That’s because text, which dominates blogs, exerts a pull force on search engines. Great graphics might attract readers but not search engines which favor words. There’s more.
Done right, blogs attract inbound links and allow for plenty of outbound ones. Search engine algorithms are programmed to follow links [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization]. See, linking flags, in the spirit of the wisdom of crowds fashion, what’s popular. In addition, blogs can be updated often, which excites search engines the way blood does sharks.
A 2010 survey by Toprankblog.com of communications/marketing leaders in corporations and outside in agencies, and consulting firms found that 95% use blogs as part of the SEO strategy. Of those, almost 88% increased measurable SEO objectives through blogging. Here are details of that study [http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/01/survey-seo-blogging/].
But not all blogs are created equal. Here are the best practices to make blogs get attention from search engines and readers as well as influentials online and offline:
- Keywords. These are the words which search engines and readers look for. With SEO, words must have a topical tie-in [such as the mid-term elections] but relate to the subject matter [following them on Plasma TV] smoothly. For readers, they must be aligned with their thinking. For example, customers for fish oil have in mind curing their depression, not improving their nutrition. Front-load the words in the subject head and first few sentences of text. Review competitors’s sites for their keywords. This is must-have intelligence to achieve higher rankings on search engines.
- Unique Voice. Blogs as a medium are personal. That means they must have a strong voice. That becomes the blog’s brand identity. Test out a number of tones before going primetime.
- Unique Content. Blogs should provide information, perspective and/or entertainment not easily available elsewhere. That’s the value the site creates. Get lazy or stale and SEO results will plummet, immediately.
- Links to influential sites, topical material. What’s linked to provides a form of added value that search engines and readers notice. It also gets the blog on the radar of those linked to.
- Frequent postings. Search engines note this and return often to check out what’s new. Continual updates also provide incentives for readers to bookmark your site for easy access throughout the day.
- Course Correction. Decrease in the measurements important to blog authors is a red flag to analyze every aspect of daily operations, from topics to keywords to tone to content. Experiment with changing what might not be effective any longer. Failing fast is the new rite of passage in business [http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/]
Everything is in flux, including digital best practices. Stay up-to-date by keying in “SEO blogging tactics” on the web.
Frequently Asked Questions about Search Engine Optimization
Monday, July 12th, 2010
SEO is critical to your company's credibility.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a rather murky area of internet marketing for many business leaders. In that sense, it is not much different from the origins of other forms of marketing and advertising, all of which at some point suffered from being the new kid on the block. But understanding SEO, at least enough to take advantage of it, can be a boon for many businesses whose competitors are not doing so and is a necessity for those whose competitors are doing so. Here are the answers to some FAQs about SEO that will help you get in on the ground floor of this marketing opportunity.
Maximizing the Value of Google AdWords
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Google is the dominant search engine on the internet, and Google’s AdWords program is the number one pay-per-click (PPC) program. Unfortunately, though registration and set-up on AdWords is easy, seeing conversions (sales) from your PPC campaign may be more difficult.
If you’re new to AdWords or if you’ve been running an AdWords campaign for a while but just don’t see the value in it, keep in mind that it is not enough to have potential customers click through the ad to reach your website. Customers who were merely curious about your ad but who are not in buy-mode or who are turned off by your website will simply “bounce” back to their search results. Google AdWords will be satisfied with the transaction, since you paid for the click, but you will be frustrated, confused, and irritated with the advertising campaign for which you had such high hopes.
The complexity of Google AdWords is the reason that medium-to-large companies typically hire individuals who do nothing but deal with PPC marketing. Though this often isn’t an option for small-businesses and start-ups, which are usually operating at small margins, there is an alternative – an off-site PPC specialist.
What can a PPC specialist do that you can’t, or more to the point, that you don’t have time to accomplish?
- Ensure your website is “search-engine friendly,” meaning that it is integrated with search engine metrics, and optimized on an ongoing basis by an expert in search engine optimization (SEO)
§ Analyze HTML page design and structure
§ Create landing pages to maximize PPC campaign results
§ Insert tracking capability into major web pages to ensure proper analysis of Google AdWords campaign
§ Hand-submit website to major search engines
- Select the keywords and keyword phrases that are best-suited to your website (not necessarily those that are widely applicable to your industry, and not necessarily even those you would select, but the keywords and keyword phrases your customers use)
- Conduct detailed analyses of your online competition and apply the results of those analyses to your PPC campaign
- Apply an AdWords skillset to your PPC campaign on a daily basis to maintain your results; stay up-to-date with changes in AdWords
§ Create and implement text ads for PPC campaign
§ Generate and interpret Google AdWords reports
§ Monitor campaign daily and make adjustments when supported by analytics
Some business owners and decision-makers decide that AdWords and other PPC programs are too much trouble and decide to forego them entirely. This is shortsighted, because when a campaign is properly conducted, PPC brings new customers to you while you are occupied with other ways of generating revenue. Pay-per-click is a low-cost, high-volume lead- and revenue-generating machine capable of instant, exciting results when the campaign is managed by a professional.
Profits with AdWords?
Sunday, November 1st, 2009Recently my son Brian, an Internet marketing expert for I Village, and I were having a discussion about Google Ad Words. Brian said, “Dad, Google Ad Words is like the game of Chess. You learn the basics in an hour and then you spend the rest of your life learning how to play the game”. And he’s right!
Google is the dominant search engine on the Internet and their Ad Words program is the number one pay-per-click program. Unfortunately, there’s a potential problem with Ad Words should you decide to enroll in the program Following Google’s signup instructions, you’ll be online and setup in their Ad Words program in just a few minutes, and thinking “That was easy.” Ad Words and Google will be happy to welcome you as a new customer. But here’s where that potential problem may arise!
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