Search Marketing – What’s New?

Much has been happening in the world of Internet Marketing lately, so here is a brief synopsis of what’s new, and what it means for small businesses looking to market themselves on the web.

Growth of online advertising. Internet advertising will be 2^nd only to TV advertising in revenues by 2014 and will surpass newspaper ad revenues by 2013. While representing 14.4% of all advertising today, Internet advertising is projected to grow to 21% of all ad revenues by 2014, growing by roughly $10B a year for the next 3 years. Read more.

Google puts online ads everywhere. Online real estate is limited and growing more scarce. So, Google is trying to squeeze ad real estate out of every corner they can. Here are 6 new paid search products that Google has introduced to offer still more opportunities to advertise online. Read more.

Google deals. It appears that Google is planning to roll out a ‘check-in’ feature for its Google Place Pages so that companies can offer coupons & deals like they do with Groupon, Living Social and other deal competitors that are growing in popularity. Can Google really compete in this space, even after earlier failed attempts? Will sharing offers on Google+ make the difference for them? Read more.

Onsite Review Stations…go for it! We’ve advised many clients with walk-in businesses to put a computer in their lobby to encourage customers to post reviews, since it helps improve their local search ranking. Some industry pundits have written that Google would frown on this and find a way to penalize such behavior, but Mike Blumenthal reports that Google is now publicly encouraging the practice. If you’re not doing this already, why wait? Read more.

Negative reviews – keep your cool. While we’re talking about reviews, I always like to pass on good advice about how best to handle any negative online reviews posted about your business. It’s always a delicate situation, and one to be handled carefully. Here’s some good advice from industry veteran Andrew Shotland. Read more.

Location targeting for mobile is hot. Mobile internet use is exploding with the growth in smart phones, and Google last May announced that 40 percent of mobile searches are for local businesses. Advertisers are jumping on this trend by targeting their ads by location. BIA Kelsey blog estimates that 29 percent of mobile campaigns today are targeted locally, and that it’ll grow to 69 percent of mobile ad spending by 2015. Time for you to jump on the bandwagon? Read more.

PPC ads drive offline sales, big-time. New research shows that PPC ads drive 6 times more business in in-store sales than in ecommerce sales, with an average PPC click worth $15 in in-store sales. Unfortunately, this good news is often difficult to track, so it goes unnoticed and unreported. But retail marketing firm RevTrack has developed some clever methods for tracking and measuring offline results. Read more.

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Cool SEO Tool for Bloggers

October 25, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,SEO — Tags: blogging, SEO tools —

I just found a great tool I really like and thought I’d share it out.

If you’re a blogger, like me, you probably focus most of your blogging time on writing your posts, not worrying about how to optimize them for search. If you don’t already have a quick and easy process for optimizing your posts, consider a subscription to Scribe, a great tool that makes SEO easy and fun. It’s developed by Copyblogger, longtime blogging and copywriting experts. This is not going to achieve super SEO results for your entire website, but it will give you an easy SEO-as-you-go approach to blogging. Check it out:

How it Works. SEO typically has 3 major steps, and Scribe provides coaching and helpful suggestions for each, integrated with your blogging platform. Welcome to your online SEO coach!

Keyword research – find search terms that your target audience uses. Scribe has a click for that. Just type the word that summarizes your blog post topic and Scribe will do some quick, on-the-fly keyword research, then suggest the best terms (most popular in searches) to pepper throughout your post.

Content optimization – weave keywords into your post. Scribe will check the places where search engines look – Title tag, Meta Description tag, and page content – and give you a score for how well you’ve optimized these with your keywords. Then it’ll perform a contextual analysis of your page, showing the top keyword combinations found on your page – in other words, what will the search engines think your page is about? If that’s not your intent, Scribe will suggest how you can change things to more effectively optimize for your desired keywords.

Link Building – create links to your post. Since incoming links give your post (and your blog/website) more credibility, they count a lot in the search ranking algorithm. Scribe helps here by suggesting blog posts with related topics that you can approach to ask for a link – either by leaving a comment, contributing a guest post or establishing a direct relationship. It also gives you a list of influential people who talk about your topic on social media so you can hook up with them.

How to Get it. You can download Scribe easily by signing up for a subscription here (prices start at $17/month), and they’ll take your through the smooth 3 step process of downloading a zip file which you can then just one-click upload to WordPress or Joomla. One of the easiest online tools purchases I’ve made.

So, if you’re looking for some SEO help with your blog, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

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Content Marketing: What Should I Write About?

September 13, 2011 Filed under: Content Marketing,SEO — Tags: content marketing, content strategy, SEO —

If you are actively pursuing an SEO strategy for your website, you are most likely aware of the need to create unique, compelling, and original content on a regular basis. Any SEO practitioner will tell you how critical content publishing is if you want your website to get found by the search engines. Content is King has become the mantra of SEO.

You probably also know that you need to think like your target audience in order to be found by them. This means using words they’re likely to be searching for, and addressing needs they can relate to. Nothing new for anyone in sales or marketing, right?

Actually, it is new — especially for many small businesses. Compelling online content needs to go beyond traditional sales & marketing speak; it needs to provide standalone value, not just sell your products. It needs to speak like a journalist, not a sales person. It needs to be educational, not promotional. In short, it needs to be about your audience, not about you. Sounds simple, right?

Making the Content Leap Easier

Creating online content can be a tough leap into new territory, even for experienced marketers. Many business owners have plenty to say about their own products and plans, but are challenged when it comes to creating audience-focused topics. “What else can I talk about besides the subject I know best?” a small business owner asked me recently, meaning, of course, his own products. I asked him to think about what publications his customers read every week – and then become one of them. He gave me a blank stare.

If you’ve been in business a long time, it’s tough to step outside the traditional selling mindset and begin thinking like a publisher. But if you want to be found in organic search results, publishing – not selling – is the best approach. Here are some steps to make the transition easier:

Keyword research. Every business knows what its customers’ needs are in some form, since they’re in business to satisfy a need. But you might be surprised to find your customers don’t use the same words you do to talk about it. Google’s Keyword Research Tool will help you find words and phrases your target visitors actually search for, and how many other websites are competing for those terms. Use this tool to find the ‘sweet spot’ of popular phrases, relevant to your business, and least competed for as a starting point for your content topics.

Customer interviews. If you have trouble stepping out of your selling mentality, try interviewing a handful of your customers. Take the conversation away from your product area and find out more about their business, what challenges they face, their current frustrations and needs, their longer-term plans and dreams. This will help you think bigger-picture, write from a sympathetic perspective, and address topics they care about.

Freelance writers. If you’re too busy to struggle through writer’s block, or find you can’t step out of your own perspective, hiring a freelance writer may be the best way to produce content. If you’re selling to a consumer market, a freelance writer can master your content readily and bring some fresh creativity. If you’re a B2B company, you may need to train a writer on your industry specifics, but you’ll find that many freelancers are former (or current) journalists and will come up to speed quickly. If you’re busy running your business or writing fills you with dread, this is your best option.

Industry publications. Read your industry publications. Notice the trends, tips, and general topics they cover. This is probably your best research for what topics readers find interesting, since publishers are in the business of selling content to your target audience, and they know what sells. Follow their example and you’ll be off to a good start.

The new age of content marketing is just beginning and most marketers are trying to find their way with limited guideposts and no experience. Several websites – Hubspot and Copyblogger being my favorites — offer volumes of good advice on how to do it well. But if you don’t want a full course on the topic and just need some pointers on creating good online content, try these approaches and learn for yourself. Web analytics will give you real-time feedback on how well you’re doing and allow you to adjust as you go.

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What Does PR Even Mean Today?

August 9, 2011 Filed under: Blogging,Content Marketing,SEO,Social Media Marketing —

Public relations used to mean working with the media, feeding them story ideas, providing access to spokespeople, and putting the best spin on stories about your organization. I know – I did it for many years. The assumption was that journalists, with their high degree of credibility, could influence public opinion in your favor if you played your cards right. The PR skill was in finding and cultivating influential reporters, understanding their audience, and offering them unique, newsworthy story ideas to interest their readers. You could of course spin things in your favor, but most reporters have a keen ear for the truth and a credible reputation to uphold, so having high quality content and an interesting narrative would get you the farthest.

The model has changed, of course, as journalists are scarce and people currently rely on blogs, social media, online communities and other forms of crowd sourcing for their information. And yet, despite the changes, the basic ingredients for how to tell your story haven’t changed. Establishing credibility for your brand still requires compelling stories and influential relationships.

PR today has migrated from media relations and story ideas to encompass blogging, SEO, content strategy and social media. A PR professional who doesn’t embrace these other points on the Communications circle will likely be overrun by those who do.

Blogging – PR professionals understood early that many journalists were turning into bloggers. Today, finding the bloggers that influence your target audience can be more challenging as there are more of them and their needs are different. Many are open to more than story ideas and will welcome contributed articles and guest posts. Most welcome comments and opinions and can be a great opportunity for focused industry discussion. PR professionals need to come to the table with more than story ideas if they want to take full advantage of the blogging opportunity. Ideally, start your own company blog and use your great story ideas yourself. Or build relationships with other influential bloggers in your market and guest post there.

SEO – SEO aims to bring your target audience to your website. It starts with keywords, and uses those keywords to flavor your company’s website content so it can be found by searchers. It then uses links in offsite content – press releases, blog posts, articles, etc. — to bring new visitors to your website. Since PR professionals live by words, knowing which keywords to feature and which sites to target for links will make you a key contributor to SEO and online marketing efforts.

Content Strategy — PR is about communicating a company’s messages to its target audiences. You can’t do that without having interesting stories to tell and plenty of content to share. That’s true now more than ever. But with so many places to tell your story online, you’ll be running in circles unless you have a clear strategy for what you want to publish, to which audience segment, via which channel, and when. A content strategy will help you determine which audience segments to target with different messages, which channels (blogs, social media, etc.) to target for each audience, and how to ensure consistency across the board. An editorial calendar is an essential tool for this purpose.

Social Media – Everyone is chatting on social media. If you’re not there, listening to what opinion leaders and customers are saying, you’ll have a hard time influencing anyone in your company’s favor. Traditional PR media relations required you to connect with reporters who covered your business; social media relations requires you to connect with anyone talking about your business. The importance of relationship building has never been greater.

Are you a public relations professional? How has your job been transformed?

How the Evolution of PR Mingles With Content Marketing (hubspot.com)
How Public Relations Can Avoid Failing at SEO (toprankblog.com)
Traditional PR is dead! Elvis lives! And flying saucers are real! (dsprel.wordpress.com)

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Online Marketing – It All Starts With Keywords

June 15, 2011 Filed under: Content Marketing,SEO — Tags: keyword research, online marketing, SEO —

Words are the currency of the Web. With over 40 billion indexed pages, the web has more words than most people can fathom, and in fact, leaves most of us overwhelmed. With all the noise of people talking, bloggers publishing, forums commenting, social media sharing – how can you, one small business, reach out and connect with the people most likely to care about your product or service?

Pollinate your content with Keywords

It all starts with keywords. Keywords are your unique identifier, the beacon your website sends out to let your target audience know who you are and how to find you. As Shari Thurow writes on Search Engine Land blog, keywords help define the “aboutness” of your website in a way that’s visible to others – both humans and search engines. And social media, when used well, can amplify your beacon and confirm your “aboutness” in conversations by others. The trick is to pollinate content with your keywords and encourage it to take root broadly, building your brand where it will bear the most fruit.

Keywords – The Bridge Between Marketing and Publishing

You’ve probably heard by now that online marketing is all about content. Authoring a blog, creating a Facebook Page, chatting on Twitter, sharing your favorites on Digg or delicious – marketing today is about having something to say that engages your audience. But how can you make sure your ‘content’ is not just blowing in the wind? How can you make it purposeful and productive? How can you use it to draw people to your website so they can take the next step with you?

Keywords are the connection that ties interesting content to a purposeful marketing strategy. An online marketing campaign without keywords is like a political campaign without soundbytes. You may have something to say, but it doesn’t stick. Your keywords will only stick if they are the actual words or phrases your customers would naturally use to talk about and search for information or products in your niche. (See here for a great primer on how to perform keyword research).

Constructing A Keyword-Focused Digital Presence

Once you define your keywords, they should populate all the content you produce – not in an over-stuffed way, but woven naturally into your pages and posts, and featured in your titles and headings. It helps to create an editorial calendar, listing your most important keywords and mapping them to each piece of content that you or others in your company will author (blog posts, Facebook shares, tweets, etc.). This will turn your content publishing efforts into a deliberate piece-by-piece construction of the digital beacon that you want to shine brightly for you in the thick fog of the web.

: Keywords create a beacon for search engines & searchers

The more digital content you have pointing to your website with a consistent, keyword-identified theme, the more likely it is that:

Search engines will rank your site well for your target keyword phrases
Social media conversations on that topic will reference or link to you
Bloggers on that topic will link to and send traffic to your website
Your online reputation and thought-leadership will grow
More visitors will come to your site looking for exactly what you have to offer

For more on keywords and content marketing, see these posts:

Choosing the right keywords for content marketing

Don’t Damage Your Brand With the Wrong Keywords

Keywords, Aboutness and SEO

Will Content Strategy Save Marketing?

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How to Make Google Place Pages Work For You

March 3, 2011 Filed under: Local Search,SEO — Tags: Google 7 Pack, Google Place Page, Local Search —

Remember way back when your local printed Yellow Pages was the baseline listing for a local business? Yellow Pages was a free service from the phone company, with an option for a paid ad to appear near your listing. You can think of Google Place Pages in a similar way — a free listing of your business in Google Maps, with an option to supplement it with paid advertising. But unlike a Yellow Pages listing, you can “share” ownership of your Place Page with Google by claiming it (for free) and adding your customized information — business description, category, photos, videos, store hours, and other details. It’s essentially free advertising, a great opportunity to build out another mini-website for your business.

This free opportunity comes with a few strings attached, however. While you can customize and add data to your Place Page, it is still owned by Google, and they dictate the look & layout of the page. Google’s goal is to provide valuable information about your business to searchers, not necessarily to make your business look good. I’ve heard many small business owners express frustration about what Google has added to their Place Page — comments like “I can’t believe Google did that to my Place Page.” I remind them that it is Google’s Place Page, not theirs, and Google can do as Google wants with it. Always keep that in mind and you’ll avoid unrealistic expectations and see the Place Page for what it is — one more opportunity to shape your brand and online presence in Local Search.

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Online Marketing – A Fisherman’s View

February 8, 2011 Filed under: Internet Marketing,SEO — Tags: Internet Marketing, SEO —

Picture your Online Marketing campaign as a fisherman casting his net over the waters of the Internet, looking to attract and catch the most desirable fish — those visitors who will come to your site and take the actions you want them to take. Just as a real fisherman doesn’t want bottom feeders or ‘trash fish’, you don’t want unqualified or disinterested visitors coming to your site. In order to attract the right fish, you need the proper bait and a strong net. On your website, that bait takes the form of keyword phrases. Your fishing net is the content on your website that allows you to reel in your visitors and entice them to take the next step on your site.

courtesy of freefoto.com

The practice of SEO is all about using your bait (keywords) and fishing net (content) to attract and convert the right fish (qualified leads). So, how can you put this fish analogy to work and perfect the sport of SEO? Here are some useful tips:

Choose bait that’s recognizable, tasty, and unique. To attract qualified visitors, you need to include on your website the words and phrases your target visitors will be searching for. Use words your audience uses, not company jargon or technical terms. Make your content readable and enticing. If you go after terms used by lots of competitors, you’ll be like a single fisherman in an ocean of huge trawlers, and few fish will be swimming your way — so strive to stand out. Keyword research can help identify which phrases are most popular and how much competition they have. That’s the science of the sport.

Place your bait where it can be found. Unlike fishermen, you have an invisible helper in your fishing expeditions – the search engines. You can place your bait where they always look – in HTML tags, link text, bulleted content, your first sentence, etc. – and they’ll help it get found by the right fish. Search engines are like every fisherman’s dream — an invisible ally to lead the fish into your clutches. SEO lets you effectively enlist the help of that ally by understanding how the search engines work.

Make your bait easy to identify. Make every webpage about one clearly identifiable topic and introduce it in the first sentence (remember what your English teacher taught about a topic sentence?). Be sure to use your keyword phrases in that topic sentence — this is the artful side of the sport. Then don’t use those same keyword phrases on any other pages – otherwise you’ll compete with yourself and dilute the ranking strength of your page. And your visitors will be like fish fooled by false lures.

Attract the influentials. Fish swim in schools. While they may not have individual leaders, they do follow the school. In marketing yourself on the web, you’ll want to attract the schools, which means getting links from relevant and popular websites, blogs, and social media influencers who can bring schools of qualified visitors to your site, along with links that will enhance your search ranking.

Make sure your net is strong. Once you bring visitors to your website, don’t let them swim out through the holes. Have a clear call-to-action on every page. Link fluidly from one page to the next and encourage them to stay for a while. Don’t include lots of outgoing links, and don’t link to an email address, as they may never return (use a Contact Us form instead). Have a clear strategy for what you want them to do (download a tool or ebook, sign up for a free service, leave an email address, etc.) and know how that fits into your overall marketing strategy and sales funnel.

Learn from your mistakes. Every fisherman has a story about how the big one got away. Your online marketing efforts might have a similar story to tell. But you can use web analytics to make sure you don’t make that same mistake again. Track each element of your online marketing campaign — keyword effectiveness, incoming link quantity and quality, traffic statistics, performance of call-to-action buttons (and more) — and learn what works and what doesn’t work. Then use those metrics to fine-tune the effectiveness of your online marketing tactics.

I guess this is where the fishing analogy ends. I’m not going to suggest that you fry, saute, or otherwise cook your catch…nor does catch-and-release seem appropriate. I trust you know where to take your customers from here.

NOTE: This blog post does not reflect my true thoughts about the sport or politics of fishing.

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6 Metrics For Measuring SEO Success

November 18, 2010 Filed under: SEO,Social Media Marketing,Web Analytics — Tags: SEO metrics, web analytics —

Search Engine Optimization is a long-term investment. Unlike PPC advertising, which can produce results immediately and generate qualified leads within days, SEO often takes months before it moves your website into the desired top search rankings. So, how do you know if you’re on the right track in the meantime? What metrics can you use along the way to determine what’s working, to keep you moving in the right direction, and to course correct as needed? And how can you tie these into your bigger-picture online marketing analytics, to help you make better marketing and budgeting decisions?

Here are the 6 most important measures that will tell you how well you’re doing in the Organic Search Ranking game. These are the tools of the SEO trade, and any SEO consultant should have them at their fingertips. Before you embark on measuring, however, make sure you know what goals you’re trying to reach, and set yourself up to measure the things that will have the greatest impact on your long-term success.

Ranking Reports

Since the main objective of SEO is to improve your website’s search ranking for valuable keywords, the most obvious metric is your ranking. At the simplest level, you can easily track this by typing your keyword into Google each week and watching where your website appears in the list of results – if you’re doing the right things in SEO, you’ll see it inch up over time. If you’re tracking multiple keywords, Google Webmaster Tools allows you to track the top search queries people are using to find your site, and the average position each one achieves in rankings. If you’re looking for broader and deeper metrics, consider some of the more sophisticated ranking tools that measure your all keywords on all search engines, and track progress over time. We use and really like Advanced Web Ranking from Caphyon – it’s easy to set up, easy to use, and has a simple, intuitive interface that shows progress for all your keywords over any time segments – but there are many others as well. (more…)

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Online Marketing: How the Pieces Fit Together

November 10, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,PPC,SEO,Web Analytics —

How Web Design, Content, and Analytics Work Together to Generate Online Leads and Sales

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

Good online marketing is like a jigsaw puzzle.

Dump all the puzzle pieces on the table and you have a mass of colorful cardboard. The pieces are useless when separate. However, when everything fits together it’s a different story. Once the pieces are connected, you have a picturesque seaside complete with beach house, sand dunes, and seagulls floating in the wind. Your pile of disjointed sections becomes a beautiful picture.

Successful online marketing is much like that jigsaw puzzle. There are many pieces to a solid online business. A good business, a strong market, an engaging website, and other factors play a role in determining how well a company does online. But if you remove any of those key components, a business will falter online. It takes everything working together to maximize the online medium. (more…)

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