If you haven’t yet listed your site with all the search engines, you could be missing key placement in the local search results. An easy way to find out if your site is listed in the major search engines is to use the Get Listed tool and type in your business name and zip code. The tool will come up with a score and let you know which search engines you have listed in. Here are the major players and where you should get listed:
Recently, I set up a Facebook page for a client of mine who owns a consignment shop called Fabulous Findz. We have been doing a ton of online marketing including pay per click advertising on Facebook, Bing, Google and using various other tools that have increased traffic to both the website and the store’s Facebook page. When I went into the Facebook page today to see if there had been any more traffic, I noticed that a competitor became a “fan” of the page. At first I thought it quite neighborly that a competing store owner should join our fan page and make a contribution to our site. But then a few minutes later, I had a friend request in my own inbox from that very same competitor. Apparently, this competitor (and I won’t mention who) sent friend requests to all our fans.
Now, I’m a marketer and I know the only way to survive these days is to get creative and push the envelope, so I do applaud this competitor’s creativity and determination. However, I wasn’t very happy with them trying to poach our fans. So I deleted the competitor from our page, banned them from ever returning and asked our fans to ignore the friend request (unless of course they knew this person).
I guess the moral of the story is twofold, make sure that you are really friends with someone before you accept a friend request and, most importantly, be kind to your neighbors.
Social Networking
In past posts I have discussed ways to apply social media to gain visibility online, connect with consumers and build customer relationships. Recently, I came across someone who is utilizing this space for a very different reason; to help others.
Joe Mescher, is a social media enthusiast in the Burlington, Vermont area. If you haven’t read Joe’s blog, responded to his tweets or viewed his videos, then you’re just not in the know. Trust me when I say this, this guy lives, eats and breaths, social media. Recently, Joe decided to take his passion for this space to help unemployed Vermonters find work.
The project is called the Vermont Video Resume Project and offers free video resumes to those searching for a job. The concept is to utilize new media technology to let job seekers show a little bit of who they are to potential employers. Employers can then view the resume as a real person instead of some words on a page. It’s a great way to utilize web 2.0 to connect businesses to potential employees and to help the unemployed land a job.
After coming up with the idea, Joe got the word out through Twitter which has sparked a flurry of attention. Seven Days, an independent weekly, is partnering with the project and offered blog space enabling job seekers to post their video resumes and allowing local businesses and human resources departments to view them.
If you are interested in helping connect job seekers to those looking for quality employees, here are some ways you can help:
If you’re a job seeker and looking to take advantage of this opportunity visit VideoResumeVT.com and fill out the form.
There are many ways to utilize social media but I haven’t found one yet that beats helping other people.
It was a packed house in Alumni Auditorium at Champlain College on Monday when various social media guru’s spoke on the importance of integrating social media into a marketing plan at Burlington’s Social Media Breakfast. Basically the message was; stop focusing on the tools and start engaging in the conversation.
It was a sold out show which leads me to believe that people are actually beginning to catch on that social media is an integral part in building a brand. But with the plethora of tools out there where does one start? Here are some of the take away points from yesterday’s presentation:
Make a plan – What are your goals with this space and how will you measure success? Think about where your audience is and “fish where the fish are.”
Don’t push, gather - New media is about building a relationship and listening to your customers. “Its not push, its gather,” said C.C. Chapman, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Advance Guard. Old media talks at you, new media talks with you.
Start with a good brand – Offer a quality product and give them something to talk about. You can’t control your message online. People are already talking about your product, embrace it. And most importantly, listen to your customers.
Be found – It’s all about findability said Todd Defren, principal at Shift Communications. “Our job is to make sure we are found,” he said, “through content- blogs, SEO, Flikr, YouTube, etc. If social media is a pot luck, content is what you’re bringing to the party.”
Act on user feedback – Social media is digital word of mouth, its your online reputation. Create compelling content and act on user feedback. Give the people what they want.
The most important thing to remember about social media, is that it is all about building relationships with your customers. Be a part of the conversation people are having about your brand. Listen to your customers and give them what they want. This takes time, so be patient and remember to have fun.
Note: the above photo came from the Library of Congress. You can find many other these photos at www.flikr.com/commons.
I recently had a client who decided to add pages to their web site to achieve higher organic rankings in the search engines. Although this can sometimes be a useful strategy, it is not always the best approach.
This particular client was trying to rank for a certain geographic keyword and created a page targeting a specific area. The problem was, the page was designed to attract the search engines and not the visitor. The page was filled with links and the information was already stated throughout their website and offered no unique content or new information for the visitor. This is what you call doorway pages, pages whose only goal is to lead the visitor to another page. They are not very relevant and are not very useful. These doorway pages (sometimes considered Black Hat SEO) can actually hurt your rankings.
So how do you increase your rankings then?
Google measures over 200 signals on your website to determine where your site belongs in the search engines. So it’s not surprising that it can be a difficult task to rank high. Especially if you’re trying to rank for a popular keyword. Unless you are an SEO expert and live, eat, and breath this stuff I suggest you just remember the following rule: The content on your website should first and foremost appeal to your audience.
A good foundation for any SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy begins with website content. You must remember that your content must appeal to your audience first, as this is the best SEO tool you have. You want them to visit often, stay for a while, link to your site and share it friends. The search engines will do the rest.
Here is basic outline of what your SEO strategy should look like long before you start creating extra pages:
Though these strategies take time and effort, if done correctly, they can significantly increase your organic rankings, your website traffic, your leads and your conversions. Which is really why your here right?
So the next time you’re struggling because your site isn’t placing on the first page of Google. Go back to this list and figure out if you can tweek anything. And remember it takes time. No one knows when the search engines will index your site so be patient.
Good luck!
I recently received an email on my Facebook account asking me to wire $1,000 to my friend, his wife and two kids who were stuck in Europe. According to the email they had been robbed of all their money, passport and belongings and were trying to get home. The email sounded completely realistic and I was close to actually sending them the money until something stopped me. You see my friends wouldn’t ask for a specific amount of money. They might say something like “can you send me some money” or ” can you help me out” but I doubt they would be so specific as to ask for $1,000. It turns out it was a fraud. Someone had hacked into his account and sent that email to all his friends. Luckily no one took the bait.
In these economic times, it is said that crime increases both on and off line. People get desperate and anyone can be a victim. There are ways, however, to protect yourself online.
Most of the time being safe is just a matter of using some good old common sense. So don’t get paranoid and stop using Facebook, just be smart about what you post, who you let in and what information you offer.
Be well, be safe.
Trends are showing that businesses are cutting back on their marketing budgets this year. This of course comes as no surprise given the state of the economy. But it has left some small business owners in the dark when it comes to where to put their marketing dollars and how best to spend their budgets. Let’s face it there are an endless supply of online marketing tools out there. The question is, which one’s should you choose and where do you start?
While searching online for a visual to show to one of my clients, I came across the following SEO Pyramid and I thought it was a great visual to help pave the way to greater online visibility.
Basically, to more efficiently market your business online, the following rules should be in place (and they are in order of importance):
Compelling web content – First and foremost, your site must have compelling and relevant content; useful content that will attract and retain visitors and offer them something they can link to. You want your visitors to buy your product or service and come back for more. So give them something to come back to.
Optimize your content and page elements – Your web content should be keyword rich. Establish a list of keywords that people search on to find your product or service and include these in your content. They must be relevant to each page so don’t go overboard. These keywords should be weaved into not only your web content but all your page elements (i.e. title tags, meta tags, H1 tags, etc.) as well.
Linking campaign in place – Spend some time finding relevant sites to link to and from. The more relevant sites that are linking to you the more likely the search engines are going to find you.
Social media plan- Once everything else is in place, build your business page or group in a social network that speaks directly to your audience. Start a conversation and start networking. Also, don’t underestimate the value of a blog. Yes, it takes time to upkeep but it’s well worth it in the end. Not only does it give your business a personality, it augments your SEO strategy. Get out there, get networking. It’s free!
And finally, BE PATIENT! Gaining visibility online takes time. Keep at it and be patient. And remember you get out of it what you put in.
Good luck!
Just when you thought you had it down, Google goes and changes their algorithm. If you haven’t yet heard (and I hope you have since this is my second posting on the subject), Google has been behind the scenes modifying their search algorithm to incorporate user behavior. Which means users results will be measured by the users behavior, location and past searches. This is smart from so many angles yet it changes the game significantly for marketers.
I can’t stress enough that first and foremost content is king. I’m not just saying that because I happen to be a content writer. I’m saying it because now more than ever, big brother Google is watching and counting every time someone clicks through to your site from a served up query. So not only must you have great content on your website, but you must also have good content in your page elements. These are what will entice visitors to click through when your site shows up in their search query.
A higher click through rate (CTR) shows Google your site has relevancy. What does this mean for a marketer? That your description tags (the content that shows up in the tid-bit of info in a search query) and title tags should be enticing and relevant to that particular search term so that people actually click through to your site from their search query.
Once they have clicked through, you’ll want them to stay (obviously). It is important to monitor your bounce rate and how much time people spend on your site, as the amount of time a visitor stays on your site is becoming more and more important. Here’s an example. Say a visitor uses the search term “snowboarding in Vermont.” The search engine offers up a particular mountain resort that offers snowboarding and happens to be in Vermont. The user clicks on the link and spends 3-5 minutes on the mountain’s site. This will tell Google that the site is relevant and is more likely to show up again when someone with the same “behavior” clicks on the same search term.
As the search engines keep refining their algorithms they offer a more targeted result to users search queries. This gives us marketers an opportunity to really hone in on our target market and create web content and advertising copy that speaks directly to them. If we do this well, the web crawlers will crawl and visitors will visit and hopefully we all prosper and succeed.
Smart marketers are spending more and more time in the social media space. It is inexpensive, highly targeted and gives businesses the chance to build a personal relationship with their consumers like no other medium offers. Social media allows businesses to interact with their audience in a two-way conversation that builds brand affinity, and most importantly, trust. People will buy from people they trust.
At this stage of the game, it is not enough to just have a presence in the social networks, you must facilitate that conversation by encouraging your audience to participate in the discussion through blogs, discussion boards, Tweets, groups, etc. Get involved with your consumer and find out what they think about your industry, your product and your competition. Let’s face it, before you even sat down at that desk to write your marketing plan, people were talking about your product or industry. Why not get involved in the conversation?
Recently I pitched a potential client and offered them my services in social media. Aside from maintaining their Facebook page with fresh content, I proposed that I would monitor the web and find out what people are saying about their product, make comments, add to discussions and report back. This can be time-consuming (which is why I pitched this client – to take the burden off their plate), but can be well worth the trouble.
First and foremost, if you haven’t yet enabled Google Alerts, please do so immediately. Just type in your keywords and email address and Google will send you updates when those keywords are picked up by the search engines. This is a quick and easy way to find out what is being said about your product online.
Other ways to monitor what is being talked about online is to spend some time in discussion areas, groups, pages and user rating and review sites such as Trip Advisor, Angie’s List and Yelp, to name a few. This is a one stop shop in finding out what people are saying about your product. It’s like surveying your audience without actually surveying them.
Finding out what your customers are saying is only half the battle. Taking that information and using it to make your business stronger is the other half. For example, if you’re a restaurant and you notice on Trip Advisor that people are complaining about your service. You can address it accordingly.
There are many other tools and sites to help you monitor and get involved in the conversation. Find which ones work best for your business. The point is, to get out there, embrace user-generated-content and use it to make your business more successful.
Building your brand through social media does take time and energy and sometimes hours online, but as with anything, you get out of it what you put in.
