Social Media Marketing needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy and frankly it’s plan is different for every business. However, to ignore SMM would be a fool hardy decision. Most marketing plans today should include a well thought out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan, a very detailed keyword rich Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign married with a Social Media Marketing (SMM) initiative. If your business includes off-line strategies then they need to support and involve all these methods.
The following post is Mitch Joel, well I let it speak for itself….
In this interview, Mitch Joel shares some of the big ideas behind his new book, “Six Pixels of Separation”:
Digital channels shift the marketing focal point. Social media and other digital platforms now enable brands to focus on who, rather than how many people, they can put a message in front of.
Think “with” not “instead of.” Companies should not halt what they are currently doing and shift all attention to the digital world; it’s all about effectively integrating those social media channels with what you already have in place.
Don’t underestimate the “power of lazy.” We still live in a world where many people prefer to consume, rather than create, digital information.
As you probably know by now, real estate is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart — quite literally. My wife is a real estate agent. My sister is a real estate agent. My dad opened his own agency in the 1950s and still works from a home office today as he approaches a tender 80 years old. It’s not just personal, though; real estate is all about small business and I try to watch what’s happening in the industry as much as possible.
Lately, I’ve been watching Google take one baby step after another, pushing into real estate as quietly as Google can do anything. Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine. The creation of individual “place pages” for property listings is Google’s latest step toward building out what I believe will be a challenger to any web site, big or small, that offers property listings. The article has apparently earned a lot of buzz today around real estate circles, and I want to point out two posts that caught my eye:
Author Brian Boero says, rightly so if you ask me, “Sure, Trulia, Zillow and a hundred other online real estate sites do this. But this is Google, folks – a force so large that it can upend entire categories overnight.”
Despite the apparently contrary headline, I think author John Rowles and I are in agreement on what’s going on here. He makes the smart suggestion that Google could turn the Local Business Center into a Local Property Listings Center and allow the property owner and/or real estate professional to manage the listing the same way local businesses can manage their business information. Says John:
“Given that option, it’s easy to see how people, who are as distrustful of real estate agents as they have ever been in the wake of housing bubble, might migrate to a real estate information platform that is outside the industry’s control and has the added benefit of the familiar Google user experience.
When Google puts something like this out there, THEN its time to freak out if you are NAR, a local MLS, Move Inc, an IDX vendor, etc..
Until then, enjoy the borrowed time.”
Borrowed time. I think that’s a great way to put it right now.
Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part. We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week. The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!
Recently a major hole has been seen in Google’s technology, social media sites like Digg, Reddit and Twitter have seemed to patch; real time search. The design of Google’s index isn’t designed for immediate delivery of information when news breaks. The following article was an eye opener, from SEOmoz about the course of action on the web on one of the largest stories of the year:
Google didn’t index this for a whole 3 hrs and 17 minutes; this being after it was widely available to the web through social media. The effect was so dramatic that Google actually considered it to be spam upon first analysis.
The problem currently for Google is; it basically operates with 2 types of content it needs to display.
1. The slow web
The slow web is what populates most of what we see in Google and filters in information somewhat slowly. Most cases it is estimated that this index is refreshed at a slower rate and new content is added or subtracted based on the basis of importance and originality usually as assessed by incoming links. Don’t expect this to fulfill the needs of real time search addicts and the “instant gratification” seekers.
2. The fast web
Thefast web is more for things like blog search and is designed to handle much faster display of information and populates new information very rapidly. Look at your own search, try “Internet Marketing” and you can see how Google displays more recent information placed in its index.
Notice links coming up here from sites anywhere from 24 minutes to 1 day ago when selecting “recent results” in the search engine. Note that this is significantly different than the “regular results” for the term “Internet Marketing”.
So what does this mean for you and why do I now care about social media?
What this incident shows is that sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Reddit are not going anywhere but rather search engines will have to find methods to either replicate this type of service OR cater to them. In situations like this how will Google model this information and become the landing page for all things search. Will Twitter content be in Google? Will Digg stories populate Google News? Will Google crawl sites like Digg to find the hot content and then list that?
If controlling the Web for your brand or niche is important then you need stay ahead of the curve with things like social media. If you are the first in sites like Twitter for your niche you already have an advantage. You want to succeed in Twitter or sites like it you need to be in there and conversing with others. Build your network and others will follow you.
Google will no doubt evolve and evolve quickly, maybe it’ their Wave product, we’ll see! These “recent results” can handle suffice for the time being, however, a modification in usability needs to be considered to highlight “the fast web” results if Google wants to compete with sites like Twitter to provide this “instant gratification” need.
Google is not flawed as, Google is safe by design. Twitter is somewhat reckless with information that is not screened. If Google is using sites like this to find information you, as an Internet Marketer need to be there. Just like Digg I can imagine that Google will use Twitter popular terms to find directions to populate their results.
We live, we learn, we evolve. Stay ahead of the curve. Immediate Gratification will rule!
It’s great to have so many wonderful tools to build sturdy marketing campaigns and evaluate the results, but they should never detract our attention on our end-user, the customer. Here is a bit of advice that was common knowledge before the internet, but is often forgotten now: Know your target market.
It sounds like obvious advice, but many online marketers fail to grasp this principle. They’re too often consumed with mass amounts of data produced from keyword generators and analytics. Business owners often fail in getting down to the level of their customers. I’m talking about asking questions of your target market. (Selecting your target market is a huge task in itself. I’ll cover that in a later post).
A great place to learn about your target market is in your own immediate and extended family. Is any member of your family in your target market? Below is an interesting and fun test that you can do to improve your SEO and capture the interest in your target market. In effect it is a way to create a simple focus group from your family. Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide introduced the Mom Test to improve conversion and usability for website users. For help in explanation, I’ll pretend we’re running a website, selling shoes to women in the baby boomer generation. One obvious market audience member in my family would be mom. For this specific example, I’m naming my test after mom as well.
My “MOM” Search Test
First, I would sit Mom down at the computer and invite her to look for some shoes that she’d like to buy. Here is the key to the test: be quiet and watch closely to see what she does:
• What search engine does she use?
• What keywords does she use to search?
• How does she navigate the SERP (Search engine result page)? Does she simply choose the #1 result?
• How quickly does she bounce back to the SERP?
• What other searches does she perform?
• Does she click on any of the paid-search ads?
• I’d then ask her to check out her favorite social site for a few minutes (yes, mom does have a Facebook account). Does she click on any of the ads there? What groups is she apart of?
Of course, because this is only one person, you can’t generalize your entire marketing strategy from this test alone. However, the point of this test is to help you find some interesting information that you never realized about your target market. It may spark some ideas that you would want to further research. It can even confirm that you are on the right path.
For this example test, I’d personally, find a few more moms and repeat the test if possible. I’d then go to my keyword tools and analytics reports to make better SEO predictions.
So next time you start keyword research, first try a test like this. You will receive insights that will make your keyword research and other SEO efforts much more valuable and knowledge-based.
A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improving their performance. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so that it can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEO campaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or first results page of search engines.
Internet search engines, such as Google, maintain a very large database of Web pages and available files. To do this, they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. This software automatically and continuously surfs and hunts content in the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved and indexed according to text content, giving more weight to titles and paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the web from page to page, to index the relevant content of the Internet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers, some programs are able to identify default tags and keep a library of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.
When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which is automatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scans the saved index and creates a list of web pages that is most appropriate to what the user is searching for.
SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis, smart code, good content literature, link popularity study and website organization to place the subject web page as high as possible in the list of search results in search engines. Web pages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to get the most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings for web businesses and pages with sponsor links.
Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pages according to the number of Internet sites linked to them. Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links. Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators or agents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the main source of income of search engines. “Organic” search results are the lists of actual results from the engines index and are directly related to the keyword typed in the request.
One of the more effective techniques of SEO is the creation of a well-organized site map in a website. Since the site’s main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.
Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shown as tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.
A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.
Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.
In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.
There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.
In the present day world most businesses want to spread their business through out the world wide web and therefore it becomes essential to follow some SEO strategies. Most business concerns wanting to spread their business world wide are quite concerned about Search Engine Optimization. Most Internet traffic is gained through search engines therefore Search Engine Optimization is a must for all of the business concern. One who fails to do that and is unaware aware of the working methods of the search engines is going to loose business. Period. Let us think of a simple thing if we need to gather some knowledge of some product or some special subject, where shall we search for? It is obvious the search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN, or other such search engines. Whenever we supply our search criteria to these search engines we are provided a list of various websites, which provide the answer to our search query.
Therefore if we want to purchase some product online we also do the same thing by simply typing the need on the search engine. Therefore the business concerns it become essential to gain a good ranking or if possible the top ranking on the search engines so that as soon as the question is typed for searching their page appears on the very first row of the search engine results. And this is what Search Engine Optimization opt for, to gather the largest number of traffic to the targeted webpage or website.
Now the question is how is it possible to get the top ranking through the Search Engine Optimization? This is quite a tough question to be answered. The fact is that this is the very secret of search engine optimization. Moreover in a nutshell it can only be said that this is to examine and understand the working procedure of the search engines and to act accordingly. In fact there are a lot of SEO companies who are engaged in this very respect. And that is what they are paid for. They engage several SEO experts, SEO consultants, and SEO software to examine and judge the working procedure of the search engines so that they can provide their client the desired rank on the search engine pages. But along with that it is also to be said that practically no SEO Company can guarantee the top rank for any company.
Now let us see in brief a small glance of the working process of the search engines: It is that they keep a regular eye on your site and index new topics on your site. They also measure the quality and popularity of your site by the number and types of links on the site by other websites. There are also some other perimeters depending on the site topics, quality and popularity before allotting a rank for the particular site. Therefore it can easily be seen that you need to be up-to-date all the time along with providing all the criteria for the search engine to gain the top rank. And only then you shall be able to have the maximum number of Internet traffic on your site to get the maximum profit out of your business.
Link Popularity is one of key area to increase your site page ranking and search ranking. Incoming links are just like votes in election for your website however there is point as we have to emphases on quality links rather quantity. Valuable links are like 100 of poor links equals to 1 quality link. In this article, I would like to explain how differentiate quality links and how to get them which will effect and improve and strengthen your website ranking.
Mistakes in Link Building
It is never too late to focus on the right direction to get qualified incoming links. Here is few mistakes those may follow by SEOs, Link Builder or website owner and webmasters.
1- Focus on Quantity than Quality: It is the quality of incoming links that will bring your website at 1st page so always you should look for qualified incoming links rather quantity. 2- Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links: Link exchange or reciprocal links should be avoided. 3- Ignorance of Check and Balance for Links: If you don’t check and balance your listings periodically, you may lose your hard gain incoming links 4- Purchase Bulk Links: Search engines become very intelligent these days, you can’t make them fool by purchasing bulk links, because search engine check your incoming links frequency as well with time 5- Paid Links: Paid links can be very healthy but if they are used as a part of the strategy, if you have no idea of how many paid links you are going to have, that can upset your link building campaign.
Do You Have Categorized and Simplified Database?
In link building campaign, your database is your key to success; it is the backbone of your overall link building strategy. If you have a poor database, which is not categorized and simplified, you can’t be comfortable from your link building strategy.
Try to have categorized and simplified database, make a master database with following mentioned fields.
Important Fields for Master Database for any Link Building Campaign
1. URL
2. Direct Link (Direct Link of Submission or Registration)
3. Industry Type (Show Biz, Construction, Telecommunication…)
4. Link Type (One Way, Reciprocal, Paid)
5. Link Style (Anchor link, Title Hyper Link, URL Link, Vote Link)
6. Link Period (1 Year or Life time)
7. PageRank (1, 2, 3…10)
8. Title Limit (Characters Limit)
9. Description Limit (Characters Limit)
10. Keywords Limit (Characters Limit)
Insertion & Update Your Master Database!
Your master database (structure) is ready, now You need to make it valuable by inserting data to it, it requires an on-going updates. Don’t let anything go away as it can be used for your current asa for new projects
Ok, we all know backlinks are a huge part of determining your site worth to most search engines. Each backlink to your site is a vote for it. Backlinks are the building blocks of SEO itself. We’ll look into what should be on your mind as you are acquiring backlinks.
The first intuition is to see how many you can get. That’s just one piece of the whole backlink pie. Search engines like Google have been around some time and have a lot of brilliant minds working for them. A higher quality backlink is worth more towards higher search engine rankings.
Some things to consider about backlinks:
1. Age affects all backlinks. Google specifically weighs a backlink more with age. Backlinks gain in weight over time until after around 6 months they reach their full weight. Basically, it means that the effort you do building backlinks will be worth more and more.
2. Anchor text is hugely important. The words on the backlink itself from the other site also play into it appears the other site views your site. When the keywords you are optimizing for are used, the link gains a much higher quality. The thing to watch out for here is that the text is varying. Google picks up on when all of you backlinks have the same exact text.
3. Getting backlinks from sites with the same theme as yours will benefit you much more than non-relevant sites. This makes sense since a link to your health food site from a car site about old Mustangs isn’t going to do much for a visitor, so it won’t for Google either.
4. The better the reputation or Page Rank of a site that links to you, the higher quality it is. Fairly obvious. If CNN or Slashdot linked to you, that one backlink would likely outweigh all your other backlinks together.
5. The physical location of a backlink on the page can also be a noteable factor for search engines. Google in particular lends more weight to links the higher towards the top of the page. If there is surrounding content the links appear more natural so they are valued higher.
Reciprocal links are always the hot topic when talking SEO. The truth is, reciprocal links are still alive and going well. Reciprocal links between websites with similar themes is natural and expected. Though I have read many many times of claims that reciprocal linking is dead, rest assured that quality reciprocal links are not going away anytime soon. Google for instance has its sights set on backlinks that were bought, and from link farms where 5 minutes after paying some money you have thousands of sites pointing to yours.
While there are many other factors such as the age of your website and how much content is on your website, those will be left to another article.
Backlinks are indeed the cornerstone of getting a website established on the Internet. Without enough backlinks visitors won’t know your site exists, and search engines will put little weight to your website resulting in a further loss of potential traffic, which could make or break your site. The key is to go out knowing what backlinks you want and spend enough time to make your site known. Properly setup, your backlinks will keep your site popular with visitors for a long time to come.
There are many ways to market your business on the Internet, and using search engine optimized articles has to be one of the “keeper” strategies for getting pre-qualified ‘natural’ search engine traffic to your web site.
Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all this before, “people search the Internet looking to information (aka articles) on how to solve a particular problem”. People just don’t search the web to buy your ’stuff’!
If you truly understand this search “path” then you understand the meat and potatoes of how the web works, it’s an information resource for people.
To completely understand the above concept ‘follow the money’. Search engines need content to be able to rank web sites, so that they continually get searchers BACK to their engines. The more searchers they have searching for relevant content on a search engine means more revenue for that search engine (e.g. the success of Google adsense).
This is why blogs and RSS have become the “buzz”. Blogs and RSS make the content (copy, words) “fluid”… meaning that the content changes often. This means that the search engine bots love these technologies, visit more often, and then rank the content well (if the blog articles are keyword optimized).
To see how this works go to any news site. News sites have a volume of ever-changing content. For example CNN gets spidered (visited) by the Googlebot something like 28,0000 times a day.
Why? Because of CNN’s ever changing content, and I guess the ‘bots’ are ‘lazy’? They go to where the good, and changing content is more often.
The SEO aspect of article writing.
Think of SEO as “filing”. What I mean by this is that good search engine optimization strategies help the search engine to “file” your content appropriately. Good keyword analysis gives you the information to enable the search engine bot with the ‘right’ filing.
There are no smoke and mirror tactics here. Your Mother was right when she told you that ‘telling the truth is always better in the long run’. This principle especially applies to good SEO practice.
Now, how do we take this concept of “fluid”, search engine optimized content and turn it into a Links IN bonanza for your own web site (thus sending your rankings through the roof over time, so to speak)?
These are the core principles…
1. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page hosted on a unique IP address.
2. Ensure that the link for your article is on a web page that has a unique, wholly independent set of backlinks.
3. Ensure that the link is on a web page that is at least loosely relevant to the topic of your own web site.
You see, it’s not just a matter of having your articles on just any article directory. Your articles need to be in a category (and preferably a specialist directory) that is within “theme’. In other words you would never post your article on ‘looking after your cattle dog” on a directory that was focused on Financial Management.
In addition to placing your articles on article directories one can also run your articles on press release service sites, and of course there are RSS strategies (but that’s a whole other story, and another article).
About the Author
Kenneth Doyle Is A Writer And Internet Marketing Consultant,Find Out About His [Keyword Optimized] Article Writing And Submission Service Gets Thousands Of Prospects To Read YOUR Web Site Offers, Here…*Keyword Optimized Article Writing Submission Service*
The very meaning of the word “Entrepreneur” suggests that accidental doesn’t go well with it, an oxymoron of sorts. The adjectives mostly associated with entrepreneur could be; Great, Awesome, Extraordinary and the like, after all it does take an above average effort to succeed in any enterprise, more so in the context of this story, Affiliate Marketing, SEO/PPC, the new Social Media. Let me promise right now not to be a slave to this economy, however, what has risen up from the ashes is; more and more people are taken to their own businesses out of a shear lack of meaningful employment options. How this will flush out is still to be seen, whichever way it goes it’s always smart to aim your product and service at the masses before you can define a niche.
Entrepreneur
–noun
1.
a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
2.
an employer of productive labor; contractor.
There are some great entrepreneurs over the last ten years or so that just seemed destined for greatness and it looked like there was no other career choice that would fit, it simply seems natural that heading their own enterprise was the only course. Here are a few I know to a different degree; one personally, one casually and one I just admire from afar.
Scott Richter from Affiliate.com and Media Breakaway, it seems like Scott is a lucky guy, always right place right time kind of guy. I know Scott casually and know that he is one of the hardest working people I’ve seen in this business. As my Dad used to say, “Luck is something you make yourself available for”. That is how Scott occurs to me, try many things and see how they flush out and yes good luck seems to shine on him. With the great things he has accomplished so far I am certain Scott has a lot more ahead of him.
Let me give you a shining example of another leader in affiliate marketing. Kevin De Vincenzi from XY7.com and Rapid Response Marketing, The reason this is going to be such a glowing accolade is, Kevin and I don’t really get along, however, he is truly a born entrepreneur and a great businessman and one could learn a lot from him. Kevin constantly throws a lot of crap against the wall to see what sticks and is constantly looking for ways to monetize, always looking for the “outside the box” angles. I myself learned a great deal working for him and although I don’t have the dough he has to experiment, I do in fact try to see the angles. Kevin has achieved much with a limited education and limited resources, kudos to Kevin.
Here is a person I would like to know personally and know more about, Peter Bordes, Founder and CEO of MediaTrust as well as a slew of other great accomplishments. Peter seems to be a highly intelligent person with a high degree of integrity. Peter Founded the Advaliant CPA platform out of a need for honesty and integrity in April of 2004 and has become a leader in this space. The leadership Peter has assembled in MediaTrust alone is a reason to emulate.
The reason I bring up seemingly “born to be” an entrepreneurs in an article call “accidental….”, we all need to mirror someone especially given that these new accidental entrepreneurs do not have the needed skill set to succeed on their own, myself included. All 3 of these great entrepreneurs should be followed for the very same reason I do, they are all at the top of their game and are winners. If you are anything like me, an “accidental entrepreneur” as the tile suggests you do not have the same skill set as these guys and need mentoring in all aspects of your business.
Now don’t misread me here, all 3 of these guys are highly un-accessible, bottom-line not easy to get to talk to. Scott has sort of a fan club kind of base and is not easy to get to talk to unless you are in his inner circle. The few times I had the chance to hang with Scott at events like ad-tech and Affiliate Summit I enjoyed it and he really seems like a nice guy, although very private. Peter is highly visible in the Social Media space and can easily be found on twitter and others, although a real busy guy. Kevin, will talk to you if you have something of value, only money value. Can’t really be found much on the Social Media scene and like Scott has an inner circle and stays close to that.
In summary, the new economy has many of us “Team Players” and what I mean by that is guys/gals that prospered inside of larger companies and find themselves with no other options but to carve out a piece of the pie for themselves, yes entrepreneurship. Although still in my humble beginnings bulbwired.com was born. I would truly rather be a part of something bigger and exciting, however, the opportunities are slim and even slimmer in Portland, OR where I live. There has been interest and offers; all have me moving and with 3 kids a wife and a dog it’s not easy to do.I find myself inside the exciting world of going on my own and find strength in following these guys as well as others I know in other businesses beyond the Internet. The point ladies and gentleman don’t go it alone, find the people that can help you and ask for their help. Lastly, I want to thank an “Accidental Entrepreneur” Auggie over at auggie4000.com, Auggie has helped a lot and continues to be an inspiration.
Mitch Joel’s big ideas behind “Six Pixels of Separation”
Last night, I wrote about Google’s latest step on Search Engine Land: 
Social media until recently has been a non-tested market for the most part. We will probably look back in a few as 3-5 years and term this era as the “wild West” in Social Media Marketing (SEM). We are all working in uncharted waters where everything we read and hear about social media sites and their effectiveness changes week to week. The role most social media sites are taking as the web grows is a hold position for now in real time search and immediate access of information!
Link Popularity is one of key area to increase your site page ranking and search ranking. Incoming links are just like votes in election for your website however there is point as we have to emphases on quality links rather quantity. Valuable links are like 100 of poor links equals to 1 quality link. In this article, I would like to explain how differentiate quality links and how to get them which will effect and improve and strengthen your website ranking.
