Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.
When you do what I do for a living, it's a constant battle to remind yourself that not everyone lives and breathes online marketing. The true challenge of small business education isn't really in teaching people what they need to know...it's in convincing them they need to know it. That's why I couldn't resist writing a rebuttal to an article over at Anita Campbell's Small Business Trends site by John Mariotti called "Ten Reasons I Won't Use Social Media Sites."
If you've been reading about search engine marketing for more than, oh...about five minutes, you know you need to pick and target keywords and phrases as part of your campaign. You might even be familiar with some of the popular keyword tools and know about concepts like the keyword long tail. Heck, you might have already picked your phrases, optimized your site and moved along to other projects. No matter what point you're at, you need to read Christine Churchill's latest article over at Search Engine Land about selecting your keywords.
It's no secret consumer generated content is hot. Both McDonald's an Apple have bought the rights to content found on YouTube and turned them into commercials in recent months. Consumer generated content has a "real" feeling to it and can often be purchased for far less than the cost of custom created ads. So I'm wondering, why haven't more small businesses thought of exploring this option?
If you are a Google AdWords advertiser and rely on Google's conversion feature to help you figure out your campaign budgets, you'll be interested to learn more about some conversion tracking features they put into place last month. John over at PPC Hero has a nice write up on the features and how you can apply them.
As a hobby blogger in the "mom" realm, I often get swamped at conferences by companies looking to market their products to women. These companies have figured out that women are online en masse and they're communicating their likes, dislikes and daily lives with friends and strangers. I applaud their initiative in trying to reach out to women on the web, but sometimes I wish they'd take a step back and think a little harder about how they approach these women.
With so much focus on social media and fostering conversation these days, companies both big and small are trying to figure out the best way to grow communities. Looking around at the number of blogs dedicated to the topic, you'd think there was some complex formula you needed to follow to get one going. Of course George Oates from Flickr would tell you you're wrong.
Two weeks ago, I came home from Small Business Marketing Unleashed to find a note on my laptop. It said "Hey Jen! We need more content! The masses are circling and you're not giving them enough to read!!" Now as someone who used to regularly churn out 6000 words of content a day, I found I could do nothing more than hang my head in shame. After all, what good is Search Engine Guide if we aren't feeding our readers a steady diet of small business marketing articles to keep them happy?
If you've been wanting to get to a Search Engine Strategies event, but haven't been able to escape from your office, you'll be glad to hear that Search Engine Strategies has teamed up with MarketMotive to offer in-depth online training seminars featuring members of the Market Motive staff and popular SES speakers. The sessions are designed to marketers a chance to receive high level training at a lower price and with a small time commitment than attending an entire show.
Ben McConnell has a short little post over at Church of the Customer this week that serves as a perfect example of why keyword research is so essential. McConnell is talking about companies that rely too heavily on jargon in their marketing materials. In the world of search engine optimization, we call that "PR speak."
As personalized search and universal search continue shaking up an industry that used to be dominated by "top ten results," more and more small businesses are learning the value of focusing on the keyword long tail. While there's no doubting the value of bringing in highly targeted traffic, many companies still don't quite get how to target the long tail in their copy. They also don't know that long tail friendly copy is also user friendly copy.
With all the talk about blogging and social media lately, you'd think there was nothing left to do in the world of search engine optimization. I'm guilty of tunnel vision myself. After all, social media is far more fun to talk about than title tags, keyword selection and canonical issues. That said, sometimes the best way to give your site a boost is to go back to basics. Whether it's a refresher or your first shot at optimizing your site, here's a trip down content revitalization lane.
If you've been looking for a way to improve your paid search campaigns, it might not be a bad idea to check out the upcoming PPC Summit events in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In fact, if you're willing to submit your favorite SEO tip by May 8th, you'll have a shot at winning a free pass to one of the shows.
If you're new around here, you've probably never heard of Robert Clough. If you've been around here for years, you've probably decided Robert Clough is my imaginary friend...someone I made up to pin the blame on when things go south. The truth is he's a real person. The folks who attended SBM Unleashed last week know this and thanks to Anita Campbell, the whole world now knows it.
The first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference has come and gone and I've had a full week to unwind and decompress. When we first announced our conference last fall, I had more than one person drop me an email asking if I knew what I was getting us into. I didn't, but I'm glad. If I had, we never would have done it. For those who joined us in Houston, thank you! It was a true pleasure getting to know you last week. For those who didn't make it, read on for a recap of the show.
Last week at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference, small business owners (and a handful of marketers) came from around the world (literally) to learn more about marketing themselves online. We decided to open the show with a tag-team panel approach aimed at helping attendees go into the show sessions with the right perspective. Search engine marketing, blogging and social media are wonderful; but if you're a small business doing it all yourself, you need to approach things from a unique angle.
There's just a handful of days left before the Search Engine Guide team takes to the stage in Houston, Texas for our first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference. Our staff and speakers have been busy finishing up last minute details, putting the finishing touches on presentations and getting ready to load tons of great worksheets and guides onto the flash drives we'll be sending attendees home with. If you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late.
I (along with the rest of the marketing world) have been writing more and more about Twitter in the last few months. How to use it, how to leverage it, and why you need to be part of the conversation. While there are now plenty of examples of why Twitter is valuable in terms of networking and driving traffic, David Armano has a great post this week exploring how two companies are using Twitter to interact with customers and to build their brand.
If so, Adam Audette has you covered. He has put together an exceptional (and incredibly comprehensive) post called "The Fundamentals of Link Building" over at his blog. The post is about a month old, but if you haven't already spotted it, it's well worth a read. Adam breaks link building down by topic and includes dozens of links to tools and resources aimed at helping you through the process.
Yes, you read that right. Seventy-five years ago a team of brilliant marketing professionals offered up the type of advice you can use to get more out of your paid search campaigns. They may not have known sites like Google and Yahoo would pop up decades later, but the concepts and techniques they used and taught are timeless. Alan Rimm-Kaufman takes a look at this advice and how you can apply it in his Paid Search column at Search Engine Land today.
Over the past few weeks, I've seen multiple instances of companies using spite and or attacks to try and push themselves ahead of their competitors. I imagine in their minds, painting the competition in a poor light makes their own products and services look that much better. Unfortunately for them, they've missed a key lesson in both life and marketing. If you have to make someone else look bad in order to make yourself look or feel good, you've got a long way to go.
If you're using the free Google Analytics as your stats solution, you probably already know that AdWords integrates into Google Analytics pretty seamlessly. If you're running campaigns on Yahoo or MSN, it takes a little more effort. Lucky for you, the folks at The Adventures of PPC Hero have created handy primers on how to get things rolling.
I've been using Twitter for roughly five months now and I'm finding more and more reasons to include it on my must-use list of social media sites. I go to thinking about my little love affair this week when Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends asked fifteen small business owners what their favorite social media site was and why. I was interviewed for the piece, as were Unleashed speakers Matt McGee and Wendy Piersall. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Twitter just might be the best all-around social network for small business owners.
On the heels of this morning's article about the need to inject a little humanity into your small business marketing, I ran across a great post by Mike Moran over at Biznology that asks if you can handle a little professional embarrassment. After all, if you're going to inject humanity via social media experimentation, there's a good chance you're going to make a fool of yourself.
One of the biggest challenges facing small businesses on the web is how to differentiate themselves from the competition. Yes, a unique domain name or site design can help. Great products and good prices makes a difference as well. But sometimes, it really is the little things that can push you over the top. In fact, for just sixty cents (give or take a nickel), one small business in DeKalb, Illinois cemented it's brand in my "gift shopping" bookmarks and sparked a post on this blog that will reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers.
If someone told you only there was a place where people might talk about your product and 23 percent of the people who saw that conversation would be more likely to buy your product...would you think that was a good thing? I would. In fact, I'd very much want to find a way to get in front of that audience. That's why, I'm a little confused to hear some people claiming the 23% number isn't significant.
If you run an ecommerce site selling products that can also be found elsewhere, putting your price in your paid search ad could go a long way toward improving your conversion rates. That's the point Jennifer Slegg makes in a post on pay per click conversion rates and ROI at her blog today. Jennifer reminds readers that while many companies spend their time focusing on driving clicks, they would be better served looking at ROI and considering how the information in their ad impacts both click through rates and conversion rates.
While search engines are pretty good at finding web sites and getting their content indexed, many site owners have no idea their web sites can be created in a way that looks good to people, but can't be read by search engines. If your site is built entirely in Flash, relies too heavily on Javascript or uses drop down boxes and forms to let people find your content, the search engines may be missing out on your content.
Sean D'Souza at Copyblogger calls them "a few measly words." I like to refer to it as "Thesaurus surfing." Either way, Sean offers up a couple of fantastic examples of how adding a target and some adjectives to your article titles can go a long way toward tightening up your content and enticing readers to click through and follow you along for the literary ride.
Earlier this week I wrote a post reminding small businesses why it's so important to consider launching a blog to go with their web site. At the time, I pointed out the benefit of ever-changing content. Today, i ran across a great post over at ProBlogger exploring nearly two dozen types of static pages you should consider building into your blog. While the idea of creating static pages on a blog may sound counterintuitive, it's actually an important part of blog creation many people miss.
If you're a marketer and you put content online...you want data. Data is what tells us our ideas our working. Data is also what tells us our ideas are falling short. It's what tells us who came, where they came from, how long they hung around and if they actually did anything during their visit. The problem data loving marketers are facing these days is how to reconcile new sources of traffic and exposure with an extreme lack of insight into how people are interacting with our content.
While catching up on my RSS feeds today, I came across a post at Matt McGee's Small Business SEM that's a few days old, but well worth mentioning. The post dives into the issue of Alexa rankings and explains why they should not be used as a gauge of how successful a web site is.
No doubt some of you looked at your calendars last week and realized you'd missed the $850 early bird price for our upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston. Don't sweat it, we've got you covered. We've spent the last six months building the perfect conference for you. We know how busy you are. Do you think we'd let you miss out on this great show just because you forget to set an alert on your calendar?
While social media is still the topic du jour at major search conferences, I'm still hearing a lot of buzz about blogs. While Technorati is tracking more than 121 million blogs these days, we're still no where near the saturation point. The issue now is convincing small businesses of the need to consider launching a blog. That's what Grant Griffiths is aiming to do over at Home Office Warrior with his great list of 12 Ways a Blog Can Benefit Your Business.
If you've been looking for more control over who sees the ads you run via Google AdWords, here's your chance. Google began beta testing demographic bidding back in January and opened the program up to all AdWords advertisers last Friday. Granted, when they say all AdWords advertisers, they mean all the ones utilizing the content network, but this new feature still gives small business owners far more control than they've ever had over who sees their AdWords ads.
If you read technology and marketing blogs or follow Twitter, chances are good you've heard some of the fuss about Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at yesterday's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin. I spent the afternoon watching Twitter users unleash an absolute tirade against Lacy during the interview, which left me wondering what was going on. After having read numerous blog posts, news stories and watching several video clips, I realized what the fuss was all about. As always, there's something to be learned from failure.
Quite a bit! After a trek across the pond and some time spent in a pub in Northeastern England, Site Logic Marketing's Matt Bailey offers up an excellent article this week that draws a poignant analogy between social media marketing and the traditional English Pub.
We've always been pretty open here at Search Engine Guide about how we do things. Partly because that's just who we are, but mostly because we like the challenge of doing things on a budget (like our readers) and ending up with examples that can help inspire them in their own marketing goals.
If you haven't heard, the teams from Best of the Web and the Internet Marketers of New York are throwing their third charity party later this month during Search Engine Strategies New York. This time around, they've decided to let the Internet marketing community decide which charity the event should benefit. They asked four industry folks to back a charity and they're asking YOU to cast your vote. I'm one of the four and as you can imagine, I'm pushing for the event to benefit the HMBANA Milk Banks.
I remember when there was this nice lull between December and April where I didn't have to book flights, write presentations or find someone to watch my kids. These days, it feels like one conference blends into the next. On the plus side, that means you have tons of options to choose from if you're looking to attend a search marketing or online marketing conference.
Up until now, the series has mostly focused on how you can use Twitter to directly communicate with other members. I've shared insight into how you can expand your networking skills, use Twitter to meet up with people in person and set links on the viral path with "retweets." While each and every one of those uses adds value to the Twitter service, it was the use of Twitter as a news source for that first caught my interest.
By now I'm hoping you've either signed up for Twitter and started playing around to see what you can learn or are at least giving it some thought. Of course if you already have enough friends or never leave your house, I probably haven't convinced you to give it a go yet. I'll aim to change that today by convincing you of the power of Twitter in terms of driving traffic and launching viral buzz.
To some, it sounds incredibly simple. To others, it's somewhat mind boggling. Search marketers toss around lingo like "keywords" and "keyword phrases" as if they're part of everyone's vocabulary. While it's true the words are nothing special, the concept can be foreign to someone new to the industry. This article offers up a quick and simple primer on the concept of keywords and keyword phrases in regards to organic search engine optimization.
Matt McGee offers up a post over at Small Business SEM that makes it pretty clear Google Maps is on the way up in terms of usage. Despite my love of Yelp for local reviews, I find myself turning to Google Maps more and more often for brick and mortar business info. It's the integrated option on my iPhone and the simple navigation on the web version of the site let's me find specific types of stores near certain locations.
Listen to any commercial from a warehouse style store and they'll tell you all about how you have to "cut out the middleman." The middleman is bad, bad, bad. He mucks things up, he makes them more expensive and he keeps you from getting the absolute best deal on your appliances, mattresses and even your insurance. In the world of social media marketing however, the middleman is your friend. In fact, he or she could become one of your most valuable assets.
Ok, so chances are good quite a few of you have Twitter accounts already. At some point, you wondered what the hype was all about, went and signed up and followed a few people. Then you got bored, asked yourself why you were wasting your time on this "crazy Twitter stuff" and left your account for greener pastures. For some of you, it was a good choice. After all, you DO have a business to run. For others...well, maybe you just need a little perspective on when and how Twitter comes in handy.
There's no denying that opening up a Twitter account is easy stuff. Five minutes out of your day and you're ready to be up and running. There's also no denying that Twitter is a lonely, lonely place if you don't have any friends. Today, we'll dive into the Twitter "followers/following" system and learn how you can really use Twitter to communicate with people.
SEO contests are nothing new. Every few months someone pops up with some randomly generated phrase and a pile of prizes so aspiring search engine optimizers can go head to head in a race for top rankings. But when Donna Fontenot (DazzlinDonna) approached me about her latest idea for an SEO contest, I couldn't resist. This time around, Donna has recruited about a dozen search marketers to go head to head in a two-month, live blogged weight loss competition a la' "The Biggest Loser." The cool part? It's all about raising money for charities.
I've spent the last month playing around with Twitter. Now that I've had time to really dive into the service, experiement with it and learn some of the finer details, I figured it's about time I wrote a Seach Engine Guide style guide to the service. This multi-part series will cover everything from how to get an account and get people following you to the finer points of twitter marketing and networking. It's not a service that will be worth the time to everyone, but it's certainly proven itself to have practical application for me.
How does a big stodgy business with a fairly boring product leverage social media? Easy. They create a new and growing social community of entrepreneurs. Ideablob is that community. Launched byAdvanta, one of the largest providers of business credit cards to small businesses, Ideablob is a great example of how B2B companies are leveraging social media to build a vibrant community of followers all while boosting the Advanta brands to their target audience.
Word is out that 30 second spots during this year's SuperBowl are going for a cool $3 million. That's unattainable cash for most small businesses. Even still, I have to wonder if it's a worthwhile investment for the companies that CAN afford it. Surely there's a better way to leverage $3 million to deliver a solid return and ongoing return.
I've spent years working with small businesses to help them improve their online marketing efforts. In that time, I've seeing companies falling into one of two traps. They either begin to obsessively focus on the latest and greatest or they go into panic mode and avoid trying anything new for fear of making a mistake. That's a point Mike Moran addresses beautifully in his latest post over at Biznology.
The folks over at PPC Hero are doing a new series this week on paid search advertising called "Learn to Think and Search Like Your Customers." Their goal is to break down the different areas of paid search campaigns and to help you learn how taking the time to really consider your customer can help you position your product to be THE answer to their search.
You would think that in 2008, it would be hard for a mainstream retail outlet to ignore the potential impact of blogs. You would think that, but you would be wrong. I caught Jim Tobin's tweet about Target's decision not to interact with "non-traditional media" and found myself just shaking my head at the news.
Maki thinks so. He's put together a great post sharing seventeen different uses he's found for Twitter. It's a good post for those of you who have looked at Twitter with (justifiable) skepticism and wondered what it had to offer you. Some of you will find your skepticism confirmed, but others will spot some practical application that makes a little experimenting with Twitter worthwhile. Thus far, I fall into the latter group.
Every now and then you have to get back to the basics. You may be learning the ropes and turning in some pretty good results with your search engine marketing efforts. You might be seeing higher rankings, more traffic and tons of links. Of course you might not be seeing an increase in sales. If that's the case, there's a good chance you've made one of three common mistakes with your search marketing campaign.
If you've spent any time reading online marketing blogs or sites like this one, you're probably either blogging or thinking about blogging. Of course you also might be wondering about more traditional online marketing options like the ever popular email newsletter. But if your time is limited, which one should you get your focus? That's the question being answered by Rich Brooks at the Flyte Blog today.
With all the talk about link these days, it's no wonder folks get confused about what types of links they should go after. From reciprocal links to directories to the Google nofollow controversy, it's getting tough for the average web site owners to know what makes up a solid link building plan. With that in mind, Debra Mastaler offers up a great post at Search Engine Land called "There's No Such Thing as a Worthless Link."
If the writer's strike has left you feeling like you're missing the best of awards season, Matt McGee is here to rescue you. He's announced the launch of the SEMMYs, a new award that aims to honor the best online marketing posts of the year in more than a dozen categories. The initial list of nominees was compiled by Matt, but more than two dozen industry types (myself included) will be working to narrow the field before Matt opens it up to votes.
I've written quite a few articles about companies who have trouble dealing with the way social media has changed conversation. Big, old school companies and organizations who are used to "controlling the message" tend to have a hard time letting go of that control. Unfortunately for them, social media is pushing the conversation forward whether they want it to or not. That's why I was surprised, but really not surprised at the NCAA's new blogging policies.
Wendy Piersall offers up an excellent post about blog ad networks this week over at eMoms at Home. Whether you're looking for a network to join or one to buy ads through, this post is a worthwhile read.
Last year brought about quite shake-up to the way many sites were used to building links. Google's decision to take on link buyers left quite a few folks feeling a little paranoid about both seeking links and linking out. With that in mind, Justilien Gaspard tackles the Top 5 SEO and Link Building Challenges for 2008 in a column at Search Engine Watch today.
Robots.txt files are often mentioned as being an important foundation of a search friendly web site. To site owners and small businesses who are new to search marketing, the robots.txt file can sound daunting. In reality, it's one of the fastest, simplest ways to make your site just a little more search engine friendly.
Everyone knows that if you want to build something big, you have to have a strong foundation. That holds true whether you're putting up a skyscraper or creating an online marketing plan. While you may think it's all about links and keywords, solid search and online marketing encompasses so much more. That's why anyone looking to start marketing their business online should print out and study Matt McGee's new SEO Success Pyramid.
It's the new year and registrations are starting to roll in for Search Engine Guide's upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed event. If you've been thinking about joining us in Houston this April, you may want to think about reserving your spot son. Registration is limited and there aren't many on site rooms left.
On the heels of my own post about the social media time sink, I ran across one by Chris Winfield over at Search Engine Land offering up some advice on the best use of your time when it comes to social media.
Here's the problem with social media: it takes a lot of time. There are only so many hours in the day and if you're a small business owner, you need to spend most of them working. The challenge for any small business owner when it comes to social media is figuring out how to leverage it without letting it destroy your productivity. That's why it's essential to stop worrying so much about missing something and start focusing more on using what works for you.
Every now and then, your company makes a decision that has a pretty big impact on your customers. Sometimes that impact is positive, sometimes it does a pretty good job of ticking those customers off. How that decision is received can make a big difference in the ongoing success of your business. If you aren't watching the Internet to gauge the reaction to these decisions, you're making a big mistake.
Search Engine Guide blogger Manoj Jasra just dropped me a note to let me know about the launch of a new "global marketing" blog that aims to offer up some specific advice for marketers reaching out in ten different countries. Knowing we have quite a few non-U.S. readers, I thought this was something worth passing along.
We've seen a couple of posts popping up in our Small Business Ideas forums asking if links from a specific site are being nofollowed or not. With that in mind, I thought a quick tutorial on how to find out if a link is nofollowed might be handy for some of our readers.
As we head into the new year, small businesses across the web will be looking to boost their presence by sparking conversation, attracting links and driving new sales. If you're looking for to walk the path to viral success, consider two statements made by popular marketing bloggers this week.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for many small business sites (well, any site, really) when it comes to search engine optimization is the lack of text on their web sites. After all, it's well known among SEO's that search engines cannot read the text in an image. Or can they? Bill Slawski walks us through a few new Google patent filings today that may point to a change in this long standing rule of SEO.
While many small business owners are flocking to social media and social networking sites, others are scratching their heads and wondering why they should waste their time. Those head scratchers might want to take a look at an article out today over at eWeek that explores the trend of small businesses using social networks as sounding boards and referral services.
If you've been wondering about adding AdSense to your blog or web site to boost your revenue, but haven't been quite sure how to get started, you might want to check out "Newbie Central." Designed to help site owners get a better understanding of how the AdSense publishing system works, Newbie Central was introduced yesterday on the Inside AdSense blog.
Last fall, the paid links debate was raging across the Internet as nearly every industry blog and forum focused in on what Google was demanding and how it would impact everyone's bottom line. I wrote a five part series on the nofollow controversy to bring small business owners up to speed. There's been even more news since then, so you may want to check out an excellent recap by Vanessa Fox over at Search Engine Land.
It's been well over a year since I first wrote about how the social networking frenzy is impacting the personal and professional reputations of Internet users. Since then, we've continued to see stories about how many companies are now running Google searches before hiring applicants. In fact, it's becoming more and more common for companies to decide not to hire someone based on what they've found in a potential hire's online profile.
Back before the holidays I made two posts about how a church and a bank put a new spin on an old idea and created something with great viral potential. Today, I want offer up another example of how a company that creates a pretty boring product (a blender) put a David Letterman style thinking cap and created a viral video sensation.
If you read part one of this post, you've already caught a great example of a church getting a little creative with their welcome message and ending up with a great viral video. In part two, we're going to take a look at how a company in Fargo, South Dakota put a twist on the typical "donate a bunch of money at the end of the year" idea to score a viral hit of their own.
Earlier this week, Debra had a great post about creating viral videos as a way to drive links to your site. Now there's no doubting the power of video (just ask the founders of YouTube) for driving traffic and sparking interest, but I do still hear quite a bit of chatter about how hard it is to create a good viral video. Then I ran across a video this morning that reminded me you just need a sense of humor and a slightly varied take on something you're doing anyway.
With social media sites coming online at a rate of eleventy billion a minute, it's only a matter of time before we start to see some...well, interesting communities popping up. So what would happen if you not only got a bunch of senior citizens together (and I don't mean the "just turned 60 club," I mean the 80+ club) and built a Facebook type social networking site? And what if those seniors had a great sense of humor?
It's hard to believe it's been two years since Boris Mordkovich and his team launched the print Search Marketing Standard magazine to help educate folks about the search marketing industry. I remember back when I first posted about the magazine's launch. At the time, I was pretty skeptical. After all, the industry moves at a blogger's pace, not a publisher's pace. It just didn't seem like a print magazine had a chance. I'm happy to say I was wrong.
I've spent the better part of my adult life (I know, I know, that still isn't that many years) working with small businesses to help them leverage the Internet in creative ways so they could compete with much larger competitors. One of the points I try to pound home again and again is you don't need more money, you just need to do it better. While it isn't an Internet marketing story per say, John Jantsch has an excellent post today that shares the story of a little company outlasting a global brand most small businesses would run in fear from.
Earlier this week I summarized my Hide and Speak article series with a wrap-up post outlining four key lessons on social media marketing. The post tried to get companies to realize social media marketing was an ongoing process that requires time, committment and a passion for your product. What I should have included was the need to see social media marketing as a way to tear down the walls that separate your business from your customers. That wall called "marketing." Thankfully Mack Collier steps up to the plate today with an excellent post on this very topic.
Barry over at Search Engine Land reports Flickr has launched stats for Flickr Pro account holders. As a Flickr lover, I was pretty pumped to read this news. One of the most frustrating things about using Flickr for someone who lives and breathes marketing was the lack of access to traffic stats. I must not have been the only person who felt this way because Flickr has finally delivered a fairly nice statistics report to their users.
I've had a few conversations in the last few weeks from folks who want to build more incoming links but seem to be having trouble getting a positive response to link requests. While I'm a big fan of linking out and encourage site owners to link out generously to relevant resources, it's important to understand few sites will link simply because you ask them to. Wiep Knol calls this type of link building "push link marketing" and offers up a very simple piece of advice on how to turn those requests into links.
There's no doubt 2007 will be remembered as the year social media exploded. Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Flickr and quite a few other social media sites entered the mainstream as companies scrambled to figure out how to approach this new form of marketing. There's no doubt 2008 will see continued growth of social media, but you have to wonder what the "big" explosion for 2008 will be. Logic + Emotion's David Armano thinks 2008 may be the year of mobile media.
It's no secret bloggers are the hot new target of new media savvy public relations professionals. Everyone wants to get coverage on the hot blog in their industry. What may be overlooked, however, is the continued power of newspapers when it comes to sparking a trickle-down conversation through the most popular blogs. Joe Mandese at MediaPost shares data on a new Millward Brown study showing that individuals who read online newspapers are more likely to be top "influencers" in the blogosphere than non-newspaper readers.
Had an email this week from Kalena Jordan asking me for an update on the Bento Yum "blocking Google" series I started earlier this year. I'd launched the project back in May as a new series about a building a business without the benefit of search traffic. The goal of the series was to rely on word of mouth, blogging and social media to build a successful web site. While the project had serious potential, I only managed to get five or six articles out of it before I had to call it quits. That doesn't mean there weren't valuable lessons learned though.
Last week at Search Engine Strategies I finally had the pleasure of meeting up with Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home. Wendy and I have been emailing since last April when she first contacted me to interview me for a feature she was running on her site. As we sat and chatted about some of the things we've worked on together and some things that are coming up, it reminded me of just how important it is to take the time to reply to your emails.
Around this time of year millions of children around the world start behaving just a little bit better. Why? Because they have parents who remind them on a regular basis that "Santa Claus is watching..." The not-so-subtle threat is to behave, or risk not getting any Christmas presents. Drew McClellan points out the same holds true for business owners. He uses an example of his own trip to a local Jiffy Lube to remind companies of the need to act as if someone is always watching.
If you are a small business owner, you may have spent a fair amount of time learning about the generally accepted ways to improve your search rankings. What you probably glossed over or skipped all together was reading about the tactics used to game or "cheat" your way up the search engines. You may be thinking "but I'm not planning to spam the search engines!" That's great, but are you absolutely positive the SEM firm you're thinking about hiring feels the same way? If you know nothing about those tactics, how can you be certain your company or your SEM firm aren't using them.
This past week I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of business professionals at Search Engine Strategies Chicago about Flickr and the ways it can be used to create, build and leverage brand evangelism. Based on conversations I had with audience members after the show, it seems quite a few companies are interested in learning more about how sites like Flickr fit into the conversation taking place online. That's why a post by John Moore of Brand Autopsy has me scratching my head at the short-sightedness displayed by one of the top niche food retailers in the country.
The year is coming to a close and it's time for "best of 2007" lists to start popping up in your feed reader. While there are some great ones out there, I wanted to make sure to draw your attention to Evan Carmichael's "Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year." Evan has put together one of the most comprehensive lists of great posts you'll see this year. In fact, he's done it without any writer overlap. That means he's offering up fifty articles from fifty different writers.
I'm just returning from a well-earned, extra-long holiday weekend away from the computer, so I managed to miss Google's sneaky little update to their webmaster guidelines late last week. Thankfully, Search Rank's David Wallace was on the ball as usual and got a great post up noting the change. While the new guidelines did include mention of the nofollow tag if you went hunting for it, the new ones do a pretty good job of explaining exactly what Google expects from site owners who buy or sell links.
I've seen quite a few posts this past week from popular marketing bloggers asking if blogging is finally losing steam. They note a number of popular bloggers have been taking long breaks and others are simply abandoning their blogs completely. With the growth of social networking sites like Facebook, marketers are asking if the day of the blog is coming to a close. I found myself asking the same question last week and I've realized blogging is only just getting started.
Debra Mastaler knows and she's more than happy to tell you. Her latest column on link building over at Search Engine Land is a gold mine of information for anyone having a hard time building links a really competitive niche. Always ahead of the curve, Debra looks beyond the standard link bait and aims to help site owners learn the value of using a public relations style campaign as a link driver.
I missed a great post last week by Matt McGee, so I'm blogging it now. Titled "Eight Things the Search Industry Can Teach Small Businesses," the post offers up several great examples of how to market yourself online from people in the industry who were simply going about their business. From networking to staying visible to finding your niche, it's a great little set of tips and examples worth reading through.
If you've been thinking about attending one of the major search marketing conferences, you might want to check out the newly posted agenda for SMX West. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be offering up more than 50 sessions on February 26-28, 2008 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I won't be able to make it, as I'll be at another conference in London, but so far, it's shaping up to be a great looking show.
Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about online marketing knows traffic is worthless if you can't deliver compelling copy. Good copy earns search rankings. Good copy earns links. Good copy convinces visitors to stop shopping and start buying. Unfortunately, good copy isn't easy to write. That's why the Eisenberg brothers have put together a fantastic list of more than one hundred copywriting articles divided by topic and spread out over two lengthy posts.
The great thing about the Internet in 2007 is the ability to integrate several different types of media into your site. Faster internet connections, cheap bandwidth and free third party multimedia hosting services have made it easy for even the smallest of small businesses to work multi-media into their sites. Since it's well known that different people absorb information in different ways, smart small businesses are looking at the best ways to leverage social media and Web 2.0 technologies to better serve their customers.
Social media is about the hottest topic there is right now in the online marketing world. Search marketers and traditional marketers are both obsessed with finding ways to drive interest and traffic using this new medium. But how many of them are actually investing in social media marketing and how many are simply offering up half hearted efforts? And how many of them have any idea how to justify their investments?
In the last five years, I've attended dozens of marketing conferences, events and seminars. During each of those shows, I've spent time talking to the small business owners who've come to try and learn a little more about how to market their business online. Time and time again, the message I hear is the same. "The information is incredible, but I have no idea where to start!" It was that line that caused Robert and I to sit down several months ago and brainstorm all the things we'd do if we were planning a marketing conference for small business owners. It was Stoney deGeyter who said "so why don't you do it?"
There's a conversation going on in our Small Business Ideas forum about domain registration and the impact it has on search engine rankings. Generally, when I hear small business owners ask about this, they want to know if the age of a domain has any impact on their rankings. In the case of this thread, the original poster is asking if the length of domain registration has anything to do with rankings. I've heard this question pop up more often in the last few months, so I thought it might be worth throwing down a few thoughts on the issue.
If you've done any reading about paid search campaigns at all, you know good landing pages are essential to conversions. Of course you may be asking yourself what actually makes a "good" landing page. You're not alone. That's why the team at Marketing Experiments offers up two great case studies this week.
According to new data released by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews, nearly two-thirds of online shoppers now spend a significant amount of time reading consumer reviews before making a purchase. Dubbed "social researchers," these shoppers rely on advice and feedback from others to help them decide which products or services to buy. 86% claim these reviews are "extremely important" to their buying decisions.
As businesses get more and more obsessed with building community and leveraging Web 2.0 techniques, a lot of small businesses are finding themselves wondering if they can afford to get into the game. What these small businesses often miss is the fact that they don't need to invest a ton of time and money into fancy new technologies. Sometimes, it's about finding what already exists and leveraging it for your brand. That's something I've noticed more and more companies doing with Flickr, my favorite social media site.
While learning how to effectively manage a paid search advertising campaign can take quite a bit of time, there are plenty of quick and easy ways to increase your chances at success. This article aims to outline five common mistakes that end up keeping small businesses and in-house marketers from maximizing the potential of their pay per click campaigns.
One of the most common complaints I hear from small businesses who have launched blogs is how difficult it can be to get on the radar. After all, it doesn't matter how great your content is if no one can find it. One of the best ways to build up your reputation in this situation is to leave quality comments on other blogs. Caroline Middlebrook offers up another fantastic post this week discussing this very topic.
It's no secret that blogs and social media sites are a great way to get coverage of your web site or your products and services. In fact, teaching small businesses how to approach and pitch bloggers is one of the things I most enjoy writing about. The archives here are full of suggestions and blog posts pointing out the right way to approach people and the wrong way to approach people. That's why I thought it was worth mentioning Wired Editor Chris Anderson's controversial post outing bad PR pitchers.
If you've been thinking about giving the Google Content Network another try, you aren't alone. John Ellis is testing things as well and offers up some helpful tips on maximizing your ad spend on the content network.
The shift from static web site content to sites powered by blogs has been a blessing and a curse to many businesses. All that fresh content does wonderful things for rankings, repeat traffic and link generation. On the other hand, giving people who aren't trained writers access to post on your company blog can spell disaster in terms of punctuation and grammatical errors. It's with this problem in mind that Daniel Scocco writes an excellent post outlining bloggers' most common punctuation errors.
Something I hear now and then from small business owners and small business in-house marketers is that they aren't afraid of marketing. They're just afraid of internet marketing. After all, most people have a general understanding of how things like the yellow pages and newspap