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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
One of the follies of many small businesses is to assume that organic search engine traffic derived through a strong SEO program is all that is required to succeed. For some businesses, a combination of paid and organic search traffic does produce the best results. However, these are not the only channels to deliver potential customers. If you are highly visible to your target market across the Internet, then that visibility could deliver far more traffic than paid and organic search.
People are fairly predictable. They are also creatures of habit. In the online world, talk to half a dozen people, and they will each have favorite sites for different niches, and in many cases, those sites will be different. Whilst habit is one of the keys, this must be backed up by good products and a good service. Those online habits are formed, often by recommendation from a friend, through research, or because one particular brand stands out. When a brand stands out, you know that visibility is not a problem. So how visible are you?
Promoting your brand is only a part of the process. I come across so many websites each day that fail to promote themselves, on their own pages. As soon as you scroll below the fold, the business name and logo are gone from view – I could be on any website. A good web programer can now write a website in which the header floats. This keeps your header in front of the reader at all times.
Social media is another channel that can be utilized to increase your visibility. With the new Facebook Timeline, you can create your own Facebook header. Generally speaking, wherever you are on the Internet at any given time, you have the potential to market your business and your brand. If you can increase your brand/businesses visibility, the long term results will almost always be positive.
Tags: SEO, social marketing
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
Online marketing and SEO are really trying to achieve the same results – they just go about it differently. Some will argue that SEO is part of an online marketing strategy whilst others will argue the opposite, online marketing is part of an SEO strategy. It doesn’t matter which argument is right, what is important is to remember they do go hand-in-hand.
A good example is any advertising copy, press release, or social media marketing engagement. SEO is still important. When writing a press release, keywords and website links do matter. Keywords are also important when engaging socially, or writing advertising copy. If you engage in coupon marketing for example, coupons do appear in search results.
That then becomes an important issue. If anything you do online has the potential to appear in search results, it should be optimized for those search results. This includes using keywords effectively and promoting the right pages on your website. There are many small business owners who complain of failed marketing campaigns (and coupons are again a good example here). In reality, the campaign may have been well thought out in marketing terms, the failure coming from the lack of any SEO involvement.
There is a simple approach to take when it comes to online marketing and SEO. Marketing to helps to sell your business, your brand, and your products. SEO helps to sell your marketing strategy. Having the two working hand-in-hand often marks the difference between success and failure, more so for small businesses since they don’t have the leverage of big dollars and a much broader customer base.
When putting together an online marketing strategy, do you stop and consider how an effective SEO strategy can help you sell the campaign? Do you want components of your marketing strategy to appear in search results? Most business should be answering yes to both of those questions – and that’s where online marketing and SEO converge. They each rely on the other for success.
Tags: SEO, SEO for Small Business, social media marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 28 Comments »
Sunday, February 19th, 2012
There are tens of thousands of small business owners who are fantastic at what they do. The problem is, they are terrible when it comes to running a business. Take a tradesperson as a an example. They could be the very best in their trade, yet they go bankrupt everytime they try to work for themselves. Are they doomed to working for someone else for the rest of their life? Not necessarily, especially if they are willing to build partnerships.
The same problem existed before the Internet. Smart professionals quickly learned to build those partnerships. If we take the tradesperson as an example, they could buy into a franchise (which offered training and support for the ‘business’ side of their business), partnered with accountants and bookkeepers for financial advice, and perhaps even partnered with marketing professionals. In some cases, these partnerships were formalized – a tradesperson partnering with a business manager – there are several highly successful franchise chains that grew from such partnerships. Most partnerships were informal, however, they were very personal with players on first name terms, and contact made on an ad-hoc when required basis. If there were changes in the law, the accountant would call with advice, if there was a marketing opportunity, your marketing expert would call.
You can achieve the same with an online business. You don’t need to create a formal business partnership, however, your online strategy can (in some cases should) form informal partnerships with those in a position to help you build an online business. Website design, content production, SEO and online small business marketing are several areas where an informal partnership opportunity exists.
How do these partnerships work? Rather than just hiring a website designer (for example), you work with them making them a part of your team. They get an insight into your business and develop a rapport with both you and your business. They, in return, have a product they can happily display in their portfolio, and you are happy to have their logo and name prominently displayed on for the world to see. You get a great website, they get a great promotional tool. The same can be said for content, SEO and online marketing.
If you have a great business idea, but no idea how to start and run your business, that’s when you look for a formal partner. To be successful, you often need help from successful people – don’t be afraid to build partnerships, everyone benefits when you do.
Tags: online marketing, online partnerships, SEO, website development
Posted in Networking for Small Business | 8 Comments »
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Is it important to brand a small business? You bet it is, and it isn’t as hard as many people imagine. Wesley LeFebvre has an interesting article on Small Business UK that discusses why and how you should brand your business. Of particular interest is the how, and he talks about five cheap ways to brand your business. His suggestions include:
- Getting a branded logo,
- Customizing your subscribe box,
- Linking your social media profiles,
- Adding an “About Us” page, and
- Including a personal photo
I’d like to add one more – being seen with your brand or logo. This can be in blog comments, writing guest posts, being active on forums related to your niche, and the obvious social media realms such as Facebook and Twitter. With the latter, it’s important to be seen away from your own pages. This can include commenting on other people’s pages, retweeting tweets that are of interest, and being involved in conversations.
I titled this ‘quick and easy’ branding tips, and I know many would question the ‘quick’ component of being seen with your brand or logo. It can be quick – you don’t have to spend hours engaged in social commentary; you can achieve a lot in ten or fifteen minutes each day.
Wesley LeFebvre makes an important point about branding. While it is good for your business to have an image (brand) that is recognizable, it also makes good SEO sense in today’s environment. This is where linking social media profiles, for example, stands out as in important point. If you haven’t taken the time to brand your site, perhaps it’s time you did. Follow those points and you’ll have made a great start.
Tags: SEO, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 5 Comments »
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
The business world can be brutal, and the online business world is even more so. Name me a product and a price and I daresay I could find a handful of offers that beat yours either on price, service or reputation. That doesn’t mean the millions of shoppers who search online could, though a fair proportion of them will. Are you a small business owner who is trying to survive online by doing it all yourself? There is a good chance your business is going downhill, and possibly your health as well.
There is only so much a person can do. You have a choice, you can work on the periphery of your business, managing a website, keywords, content, marketing including a social media marketing campaign, and perhaps even a PPC campaign as well – and we haven’t touched on the business side of things, the stock control, money management and growth of a business. The alternative is to work longer building your business, increasing turnover and profitability. There are some small business owners who can manage this full time, however, their stress levels are high and their interaction with family and friends low.
The alternative is to engage professionals to work on specific areas of your business. Are they expensive? Despite popular opinion, generally not – although expensive depends on your own personal opinion. There are very competent web designers, content writers, marketing consultants and SEO professionals, just to name a few, who can help you build your business. The key to their success is your ability to let go.
We can often identify one common trait amongst those who insist on a DIY approach to an online presence – they really do go it alone. The best recommendation we can make is to stop – and network. You don’t have to give away business secrets, although you’ll be surprised with what you’ll learn once you start networking, and that includes reliable information on who best to engage to help with your online presence.
Small businesses with a DIY mindset often fail, or at best, remain static and fail to grow. The time will come when your business will need a professionally produced website, aggressive SEO, and perhaps a strong marketing (particularly social media marketing) campaign to survive in this brutal online world. Networking is one approach to breaking the DIY cycle, and to obtaining information that will help your business grow – are you networking? Are you doing it all yourself? It’s time you broke free and found professional help for your online business.
Tags: online professionals, SEO, social media marketing
Posted in Tools for Small Business | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
One of the platforms behind search engine optimization is content. “Publish useful keyword content regularly” has been the mantra for over a decade now, however, one wonders if that is all about to change and that content on websites could become defunct. I know that will raise eyebrows, but then, we do know that Google, the number one source of traffic for many websites, is trying to escape the inbound link component of their algorithm.
There’s an interesting article on TechCrunch which, while discussing privacy issues related to Google+ and Facebook, also had this to say:
Google’s PageRank algorithm is seriously out of date. It promotes pages based on the number of links to it. Today, pages are no longer the unit of publishing. Far smaller items than a page dominate our senses. And those smaller messages are produced in huge quantity and in real time.
Those smaller messages are references to Facebook, Twitter and many other social media sites, forums included. This raises the question of content on websites – will it become defunct and replaced by short messages? I for one hope it never comes to that. The content on Facebook and Twitter can never really adequately answer a question. Forums are a different story, questions are answered, often in depth, and with a lot of input from a range of users. You are more likely to find an answer in a forum than you will on Facebook or Twitter. Interestingly, most small messages on those two sites generally include links to more indepth answers often on blogs.
Logic would then suggest that the indepth answer is more relevant and more important than the smaller message on a social media website. Keith Teare, the article’s author, is right when it comes to the privacy issues facing social media. However, when it comes to content, I don’t think we’ll be losing that anytime soon. Yes, Google will find a way to reduce the effects of links in its search ranking algorithm, but that will be because they have found a better way to measure worth, and yes, social media mentions will most likely lead that change.
I wouldn’t be tearing down content or reducing the amount published in too much of hurry. Rather, I’d be concentrating on content that individuals find important enough to share with others. Blogging for small business is still one of the best ways to communicate with the rest of the world, and that won’t be changing anytime soon.
Tags: content, search engine optimization, SEO, social media marketing
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Google has become mean concerning web sites and display advertising. If the advertising on your web page pushes the content down below the fold, then your site may receive a ding in the search rankings.
Why do I say “mean?” One poorly designed page could affect your whole site, not just that one page. If you’ve recently suffered a serious drop in search rankings, check your pages for advertising, have you overdone it?
There is a logic to Google’s approach. Google wants to present searchers with the best content. If a web page has more ads than content, and if a user has to scroll down below the fold to find that content, then, in Google’s humble opinion, that page is not quality. Furthermore, if that page is not quality, then neither are any of the other pages on that site. What isn’t clear is whether or not your own display advertising has the same effect – logically, it would since the emphasis now is content and having it readily available to users.
If you do have a lot of advertising on your pages, there are a number of approaches you can take. These include:
- reducing the number of ads,
- redesigning your web page so that content appears above the fold,
- using sidebars for display advertising,
- ensuring ads are relevant to the pages’ content.
Google is not anti-advertising. In fact, Google does encourage website owners to include Adsense ad units on their sites although they do suggest you follow their guidelines when it comes to quantity and placement. The rules related to SEO are constantly changing and so it always pays to stay on top of the latest news.
Tags: advertising, content, Display Advertising, SEO
Posted in Display Advertising | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is often made out to be some strange and scary beast that only professionals dare go near. In reality, SEO is a tame beast. In fact, it’s a beast that you have a lot of control over. Sure, once you get past the basics, SEO can be time consuming, and perhaps even frustrating at times, but in reality, it’s still a simple concept.
For a web site to rank well, it’s necessary to understand what goes into the ranking process. SEO is the process of optimizing your pages (and web site) to gain the best position possible in search rankings. And that process is, as I have mentioned, fairly simple – there are only three steps:
- Discovery – search engines need to find your content, however, I wouldn’t leave it to their efforts alone. Search engines need help and that help comes initially in the form of sitemaps that are submitted. You can expedite this process by creating a Google Webmaster Tools account – there you can submit your sitemaps encouraging the search engine to visit and crawl through your website.
- Indexing – the second step in the SEO process is to have your pages indexed. You could submit a sitemap with 100 pages, and still find that a search engine has only indexed half the pages. External links to your pages can help as can social media mentions. It also helps if your web pages are easy to find, and easy to crawl. Pages that are deep within a website often fail to get indexed. Search engines will often only travel three or four links deep into a website. Your web pages should be easy for a search engine to read – that means ensuring your content is as close to the top as possible (of the root index file), and that Java and Flash are limited and SEO friendly as well.
- Ranking - the hardest step in the process is ranking. This is where a page is compared to other pages and ranked for search terms. You can increase a page’s ranking by building inbound links and by gaining social media mentions. This is one area where website owners make life harder for themselves. The real key to ranking well is to create content that others find useful, that others will reference on their sites (inbound) links, and that people will discuss on social media sites (social media mentions).
SEO is the sum of those three activities and you will never succeed if you skimp on one area. You can have the best content in the world, however, if a search engine can’t find it, or finds it impossible to read when it does find it, then it won’t rank. Likewise, poor content will not receive the external support that is so vital to rank a page highly.
In a nutshell, build your site, tell the search engines where your content is, and make sure it easy to find and easy to read and that the content is worthy of ranking. Get that right and you have created a great SEO platform to build on.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, sitemaps
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Have you taken a moment to check out Google’s latest offering to the general public? Is has the simple but apt title of “Good to Know” and has been well packaged with both text and graphics on the opening screen. It is, to a certain extent, a repackaging of content that Google has published over the years. It’s generally related to Internet and data security for users, and the tips are well worth reading. The whole concept is an excellent piece of public relations bordering on a public service announcement. I won’t go into the actual information published by Google, I’m sure there are many others who will – what interests me more is the concept, and whether or not it could be replicated on other websites – and I think it can.
Most websites, whether it’s parenting, photography or pets, for example, publish advice. The ‘Good to Know’ concept is a great way to bring all of that information together, and you don’t need just one ‘Good to Know’ article or page. Most websites could break their content into sections; for example, we could have a ‘Good to Know’ series that covered SEO, social media marketing, branding – I could go on, however, I think you get the idea.
By publishing pages that link to this information, you are helping your readers find information quickly and helping to link related content for SEO purposes. This kind of content, especially if you can utilize graphics in a similar way to Google, is also easy to promote through social media. It’s certainly a novel way to present content to your visitors and certainly worth considering for your own websites – it could also be a great PR tool for your business.
Tags: SEO, social media marketing
Posted in PR for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
There is an interesting infographic that Dan Zarrella has published that reveals the days that his content receives the most social interaction. What is interesting is that different social media react on different days – for example, Saturday and Sunday are more fruitful for Facebook whilst Friday is the best day for re-tweets. He concludes that, on some days, there is less clutter so his content has less to compete with. From a business perspective, he may be right. From a social perspective, Friday through Sunday are often the busiest days for socializing, and that includes online.
It does raise an important question. Do you know when you receive the most attention through social media, either on an hourly or daily basis? Some marketers insist on publishing at certain times of the day because they receive more attention then than at other times. It is well known that some days are quieter than others as well.
The next question relates to the value of this knowledge. Is it worth measuring? Two years ago I may have said maybe not; today, interaction with social media is becoming such an important SEO metric that website owners do need to grab every ‘plus 1′, ‘like’ or ‘retweet’ they can get their hands on. If publishing at certain times on certain days delivers more of these ‘votes’, then that knowledge could give you the edge you need over your competitors. It becomes even more useful if you can see that some days are less important than others. You can either not publish on those days, or publish content that, while useful for your customers, is designed more for SEO purposes.
Small business owners have a lot to do in today’s online world. Analytics can often be useful for measuring what is and isn’t working, even in social media marketing. This helps a business owner concentrate on what is working whilst dropping or rethinking what isn’t working. When it comes to social interaction, knowing when you receive the most attention can help you fine tune your own activities.
Tags: SEO, social media marketing
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 7 Comments »
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