Archive for September 2009
The Many Faces of Google: How To Leverage Universal Search In Your Online Search Engine Marketing Campaigns
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Some years ago, Google revamped its search engine to include more than just webpages. Google Universal Search now includes results from things like Google owned YouTube, Google images, Google maps, etc.
Although it makes search engine marketing slightly more involved, this also means there are more areas that will allow you to don your SEO thinking cap in order to boost your Google rankings.
Images: Google images, to be exact. The images on your website can affect your Google rank. While you don’t have to name every picture the same thing, instead of something arbitrary, try to use some keywords in title tags and alt text.
In addition to the existing images on your website, you can create images with the purpose of spreading them around the internet. Of course, this depends on your industry, and whether or not it is appropriate for your company, but if it is, why not create some entertaining pictures that people will want to link to others? It doesn’t have to be the next great LOLcat, but if your customers link it to others, and it is linking to certain pages on your website, then it will help your ranking and possibly create some backlinks for you.
Video SEO: This isn’t the first time this blog has mentioned YouTube in regards to SEO, and with good reason. Haven’t you heard? YouTube is the SECOND MOST USED SEARCH ENGINE. If you’re not exposing your business on YouTube, you’re doing a disservice to your online marketing campaign.
YouTube tends to carry a certain stigma with it because its content is usually catered towards entertainment, but you don’t need to participate in this. A couple of easy ways to get exposure on YouTube are by creating instructional videos that are relevant to your industry, or even just a video portfolio or some of your products and services. You can link your website from individual videos and your YouTube profile, which will increase the number of inbound links to your website. (Plus, if people like your videos, they can easily embed them in their blog posts, Tweets, or web pages).
Google Maps: That’s right! If you make an entry into Google Maps for your business, your customers will have another way to find your business. You can fill your profile with relevant keywords and phrases, which helps all sorts of SEO campaigns, but most particularly local campaigns. It also ensures that if someone searches for your business name specifically, they will be provided with quick, relevant results. You’d be surprised at how many businesses don’t show up as the top result when someone searches for their website specifically.
The inclusion of other services into Google’s Universal search shows that search engines are moving beyond just web page indexes. Search engines want to provide users with all sorts of helpful information regarding their searches, and if your business isn’t making itself visible in as many relevant aspects of search engines as possible, then you’re already behind the search engine marketing curve.
What’s in a Name? Online Marketing Acronyms De-Mystified
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Far be it from us to call this a “Dummies” guide, but if you’ve ever found yourself confused by any acronyms surrounding the small business online marketing community, you’ll find some of the following definitions helpful.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. When you’re starting an online marketing campaign, this is the first step in the process of getting your web presence noticed by Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. In this process, the website is stripped of all code that hinders web crawlers from finding essential website information, and enhanced with search engine positive elements, like site maps, META data, and blogs. The “optimization” in search engine optimization comes from striking a balance between a seamless user experience and a website structure as accessible to search engines as possible.
SEM – Search Engine Marketing. Many people confuse this with SEO, but these terms refer to two distinct aspects of online marketing. The SEO is performed based on the planning of the SEM. Think of SEO as the tune-up, and SEM as the road trip. SEM encompasses the online marketing strategy specifically dealing with search engines. This stage deals with researching and selecting keywords or keyphrases that your website will be optimized for, building quality incoming links to your website, blog posts, and other methods that strengthen your website’s online visibility for the keywords and phrases for which it is optimized.
ROI – Return on Investment (or Rate of Return). The ROI is the ratio of money gained or lost (whether realized or unrealized) on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. Why is ROI so important for you? Because, it is a metric of what works and what doesn’t. If your ROI is poor for a certain online marketing campaign, then you need to re-evaluate your strategy. Carefully and constantly analyzing the performance of your keywords and key phrases will allow you to adjust your strategy as necessary to ensure that you’re investing your marketing capital in the avenues with the greatest ROI.
CMS – Content Management System. Content Management Systems are programs that make managing a website easier. A web developer can create a website with a CMS so that if a business owner needs to add content later on, they can do so through an intuitive administrative interface. It eliminates the need for knowing how to code websites, and puts the control back in the website owner’s hands. Website owners can use this to tweak their content as they see fit. Many popular CMS programs come with SEO minded plug-ins that turn simple websites into true online marketing hubs.
All of these aspects of small business online marketing have spectacular synergy. Business owners and online marketing specialists collaborate to research an effective search engine marketing campaign. The web developers create a website within a content management system that is dynamic enough to react to adjustments within the search engine marketing campaign, but also search engine optimized for maximum online visibility.
Still confused? That’s okay, because we’re not. Even the most minute details are noticed by search engines that crawl the web 24/7, and we know how to leverage online marketing strategies to their maximum potential potential.
Newer Isn’t Always Better: What Apple’s iPod Nano teaches us about Small Business Marketing
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The newest Apple iPod Nano is a heck of a gadget. In addition to an MP3 player and FM tuner, it now boasts the ability to take pictures and video, whereas the older iPod touch cannot.
Initially I was a little annoyed at my iPod touch’s lack of picture/video ability, but after thinking about it, I realized that I never even take pictures or video. In fact, I have a digital camera laying around somewhere right alongside my impressive collection of dust.
Sometimes, in the presence of shiny new things, our desires overshadow what we actually need. Small business marketing is no exception. Business owners are always quick to jump onto the newest marketing fads, like social media and all its hip looking web 2.0 social media campaigns. The guerrilla marketing bug has definitely made the rounds many times over, but the big question that everyone needs to keep in mind is: “Is it working for my business?”.
Just because it exists, doesn’t mean that you need it. I could have easily caved in and purchased an iPod Nano, but it would have been unnecessary. After critically analyzing the situation, I remembered that I hate taking pictures and video.
How about some critical thinking for new ventures in your business’s marketing strategy?
Are you leveraging social media? Guerilla marketing? Mass mailouts? Do you really need a youTube, Twitter, or Facebook account? Is your target demographic utilizing these tools as well, or are you simply wasting your budget and time?
Let’s say you own a restuarant that makes deliciously greasy and unhealthy food. Following the recent “health” trend might not be a great direction for your marketing campaign. You’d probably do better by continuing to seek out and target the demographic that eats at your restaurant because they love unhealthy, but delicious food.
Then again, hot marketing trends may work in your favor. If “green energy” and environmentally minded companies are all the rage, and you’re a re-bath company, you might do well by focusing a little marketing capital towards attracting that demographic.
You simply need to keep track of what is working and what is not. If you try a social media campaign and it yields poor results, then you’ll be better off sticking with your current campaign. If it flies, then you’ve found a marketing winner.
Not every marketing fad will work for your business, and in our technological age it is easy to blindly feed resources into novel methods of generating business. However, if you keep careful track of your endeavors, and can figure out which marketing methods are yielding the best ROI, then you’ll be able to fine tune your marketing capital expenditures adjust your campaign accordingly.
Web Design and SEO, a Match made in Heaven
Thursday, September 3, 2009
She was a taller dame, stumbling through my doorway a mess. No stranger to the situation, I tossed her a fresh box of tissues from my desk drawer. “So whats eatin’ you sweetheart?”
“Google. I think he’s..” But that was all I needed to hear. Google, Bing, Yahoo!, they were all the same, honestly. Mascara running, red eyed, and wondering where their Search Engine ranking had gone. I’d grown rather tired of chasing Google around with a camera hanging off my neck, but the only thing emptier than my stomach was my bank account and my bottle. In my mind I’d already decided to take on the case, and I had an idea of a good starting place…
“Did you have any websites that you last saw Google with, maybe a competitor’s website?”
Yes, you too can become a detective. A Search Engine Optimization detective. What does this mean? It means scoping out your competition’s Search Engine Marketing campaign in order to see what Keywords and Key Phrases that they’re optimizing for.
It’s simple, just brainstorm about what search terms are performing well for your desired traffic niche. Do some research using
Google’s Keyword Search Tool and find out which websites are gaining the best search engine results for those keywords or key phrases. Once you have your terms sighted, check out their website with an SEO addon for your web browser. It should list all their META data, number of outbound/inbound links, page rank, etc. It basically gives you a full report on their SEO information.
How can this help? Let’s say you are in the Re-Bath industry in Texas, and you want to tailor a local Online Marketing campaign for some terms that generate significant and relevant traffic for your business. Visit your favorite search engine keyword research tool, and search for some good terms. If you find something like “texas rebath” or “texas bathroom remodeling”, perform a search on these terms and see which websites pop up on the first pages. You should be able to find out how many outbound/inbound links they have, what is in their META data, the keyword density of the website copy, and many other aspects of their website’s SEO. Don’t forget to investigate their website’s navigational structure and social media campaign as well.
Is this cheating? Not at all. A search engine’s primary function is to put relevant information in searchers’ hands. This means that all SEO and Search Engine Marketing revolves around data transparency. After all, search engines find their information just like users do, by crawling the web, they just do it amazingly fast with their automated web crawlers. This means that you can find the same information as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
This means that you can investigate what your higher ranked competing websites are doing correctly and adjust your search engine marketing campaign accordingly. This does NOT mean you should throw your campaign out the door and copy someone else’s, but it does mean that you have the power to adjust your plan according to the techniques that prove themselves to be successful.
While legal repercussions should keep you from staking out your competitor’s house in the wee hours of the morning, you can still grab a cool looking fedora hat, put on your best Dick Tracy imitation, and start looking into what the top ranked websites are doing to get the attention of the big search engines. Then just apply as needed to your own campaign, and see your website rise in the search engine rankings.