Like so many others, many of my great ideas are not in fact mine, but are the brain child of another brilliant internet marketing expert. I just read an excellent post over at SEOmoz.org about Conversion Rate Optimization and how people can get off track by focusing on the trivial facts like button color. The post goes on to speak about how website owners should be going after the big wins and then test the little things later on.  The article was posted by Stephen over at Conversion Factory which from what I can tell are at the top of their game when it comes to increasing conversion. With any luck this post will persuade Stephen to jump on for guest post sometime on conversion optimization for small business.

To read this full article check it out here. Conversion Rate Optimization Guide

From a business standpoint social media is, at its best, an exciting and often entertaining development in the world of business.  At its worst, social networking is a necessary evil.  Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you have to do it to succeed.  When we say do it, we don’t mean slap together a LinkedIn profile, tweet a couple of bland blurbs, then forget about the whole social media craze altogether.  Like with most things in life, if you are going to do it, then you want to do it right and do it big, or not at all.

However, there is a tipping point when your involvement begins to outweigh any benefit you receive from it.  That is to say, with so many outlets out there, if you try to utilize every single resource you’ll end up spending all of your time on maintaining your accounts and have no time left over for your businesses.  Every person, every business has a different tipping point, but it’s always there.  The fact is this:  the internet is way bigger than you or your business.

So what do you do?  You either end up scaling back, or you end up setting up a social media department.  You don’t want to scale back your efforts, since social networking et. al is some of the most effective and least expensive (more often than not, free) marketing out there.  You don’t want to be forced into taking on additional hands, because, again, that eats into any benefits you might glean from utilizing social media in your business.  Let’s face it, help isn’t cheap these days.  Whether you hire on a team of fresh, young, tech-savvy go-getters, or pay your unemployed brother-in-law to run your social networking accounts from his tricked-out computer in your in-laws’ basement, it’s going to cost you one way or another.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that none of those options really strike you as ideal (unless you’ve been sleeping on the couch and need a way to get back on the wife’s good side, in which case go with the brother-in-law thing).  This is where social aggregators can save your bacon.  They allow you to consolidate social accounts, shotgun update and maximize your use of time and energy.

Chances are, if your business is succeeding, then you are already pretty confident in your multi-tasking capabilities.  If so, then social aggregation isn’t going to be a stretch for you.  It is exactly what it sounds like: a means of bringing your various accounts together so that instead of post the same thing manually to two dozen different sites, you can post it once and BAM there it is for all of your connections to see across the board.

Of course, there are dozens and dozens of aggregation tools out there.  I personally like Profilactic.  Not just because the name makes me cackle like I’m 15 again, either.  It seems to be one of the easiest to use and supports the most networking sites.  Explode.us is also great if you are doing market research.  This one isn’t for posting, but rather for perusing – allowing you to simultaneously search all the major sites from Twitter to LiveJournal.

There are plenty of other powerful aggregation tools out there, but seeing as this post is intended mainly to introduce those who were unaware of social aggregation to the concept, we’ll leave the in-depth analyses and recommendations for another time.  The bottom line is, if you are looking for a way to save time in managing your social media accounts without giving any up and losing your edge, then this is absolutely the way to go.  And let’s face it, if you have time to handle it all without streamlining, then your business is in serious trouble.

We talked a little bit about UserVoice before, a great tool that allows you to set up discussion forums on your site, track and manage feedback and allow users to not just submit suggestions but to vote on the suggestions left by other too.  All-in-all the tool is truly exceptional for small businesses.  Now let’s look at another customer service based social media tool, Get Satisfaction.

Though somewhat similar to other feedback tools, Get Satisfaction does offer some unique capabilities that make it suitable for small businesses and big businesses alike.  Even those small businesses who took our advise and incorporated UserVoice into their websites might do well to utilized some of the features of Get Satisfaction, as well.

Get Satisfaction is awesome because it automatically compiles users questions and your responses to them to form an only FAQ page.  Future customers can then visit your site and perform a simple search for the answers to their common questions without having to submit a customer service request.  This saves you a lot of time and it allows users to get the information they need right away without having to wait for a response.

There isn’t really any need to go into how much money this can save your business on customer service staff (or time if you do it all yourself).  Get Satisfaction is one of the few tools out there that seems to be as popular with users as it is with site managers and business owners.   It’s not really much wonder though.

When it comes right down to it, if a person is given a choice between calling a toll free number and doing a quick internet search, the vast majority are going to go for the simple, straight forward method of finding what they need.  If nothing else, Get Satisfaction provides you and your customers a means of interacting without any of the awkwardness that so often is associated with making tedious customer support calls.

Since every submitted issue is recorded, your database of answers is continuously growing along with your business.  This eliminates the need to revise FAQ pages or even to update them.  It is all done automatically and organically.

Similar to UserVoice, Get Satisfaction works by means of a simple widget copied and pasted into your page code.  Anything submitted can then be accessed by you through the Get Satisfaction site.  Membership is insanely reasonable.  Last time I checked it was around $20/month.  That’s like an hour, hour and a half of pay for a paid customer service employee, and maybe a little more if you use a call center service.   Obviously, it is a pretty smart investment, especially if you find (like most of us) that 95% of the customer service calls you get are the same handful of questions.

Much like UserVoice, Get Satisfaction provides your users with a forum for touching base with your business and with other customers.  There isn’t anything that tells your customers that they are important more than soliciting their thoughts and opinions.

For a small business, one of the biggest challenges can be providing adequate customer support with a limited staff.  You want to be able to focus on growing your business, but you cannot leave your current customers behind along the way.  You need to be able to efficiently handle customer questions, address issues and monitor feedback efficiently.

UserVoice is the perfect tool for doing just that.  It allows you to keep tabs on and organize feedback from your customers, which is important enough, but it provides even more than that.  It allows your customers a chance to vote on the suggestions made by other visitors.  That way you can get a better idea of what your overall customer base would like to see from your business.  This takes a lot of guesswork out of trying to determine what new ideas would have the broadest appeal for your customers.

How UserVoice works is pretty simple, too.  It doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part, which again makes it ideal for small businesses.  UserVoice works as a widget inserted into your website code.  Once in place it captures feedback from your site and provides you with an easy to navigate display.  UserVoice does seem to meld pretty seamlessly into general website formats so it doesn’t impact the user experience of your site.

You can set up your own voting system to allow your customers to voice their opinions on feedback left by others.  The highest ranked ideas are grouped together at the top of the results so that you easily see what your customers want most from you and your business.  Again, everything about UserVoice is pretty streamlined and user-friendly, which is part of what makes it such a great social media tool.

You may be asking how a feedback page constitutes social media.  Surely voting on feedback is only social in the broadest sense.  And that would be true if it stopped there, but it doesn’t.  UserVoice allows you to actually set up discussion forums from your feedback page.

You can use the forums you  establish to engage your customers one-on-one.  You can directly respond to your customers concerns, desires and ideas or you can let you customers interact and see what ideas they can brainstorm on their own.  Users will also get weekly email updates on threads they have participated in on your site.  This keeps them engaged and keeps your business foremost in their minds.

That is probably the best part about using UserVoice.  You really do get a chance to make an impression on your customers by giving them, as the name implies, a voice.  Nothing says, “I care,” quite like listening.  This tool allows you to send the message that you are willing to go above and beyond to meet the needs of your customers while really making the customer service end of your website (and business) much easier.

Twitter is a truly awesome social networking and micro-blogging tool.  If you aren’t using Twitter to promote your business then you are really missing out on a powerful marketing tool.  As far as social media goes, it just doesn’t get much easier or more convenient than Twitter.

Twitter is so great in fact that today, just 4 short years since its inception, almost everyone and their dog “tweets”.  No, seriously, people tweet for their pets.  It’s terrifying.  Unfortunately, hooking up with valuable new connections or finding out who’s talking about you (or your competitors) can be challenging when you have to wade through a sea of mind-numbing tweets about Little Johnny getting an A+ on his spelling test or the news that Muffy has worms.

Enter Monitter.

Monitter is a powerful, easy to use tracking tool that allows you to monitor, in real time, multiple keywords on Twitter.   It has a pretty simple interface.  You simply enter your keyword(s) and Monitter presents you with a columnar presentation.  The side-by-side columnar setup allows you to track each of your independent keywords on a single page, with no need to shuffle between tabs or windows.

Monitter has a number of practical uses, ranging from satisfying simple curiosity to being a valuable research tool.  On the most obvious level, Monitter allows you to track mentions of your name, your business name, employees, etc. quickly and easily.  This gives you instant access to the word-of-mouth that can make or break your business.  In a world where rapid info sharing can break a business faster than you can say “reputation management”, forewarned really is forewarned.

Of course, hopefully it isn’t all bad.  Ideally all of your mentions are glowing endorsements, in which case you can easily see what you are doing right, so that you can duplicate it in the future.

Monitter can also be used to help you expand your social network  by interest in specific keywords.  Let’s say you want to find Twitter users interested in yellow fluffy bunny slippers so you can promote your new line of ultra-leisure wear (hello casual Friday!).  Key it in and you have a instant access to a perpetually updating list of any tweets (and more importantly, tweeters) who mention said slippers.

The only drawback is that if you use a very popular search term you’ll end up with a column scrolling past faster than you can read (I don’t recommend following the word “Twitter” if you are prone to seizures).  Even this drawback has it’s upside as you can use this to evaluate the strength of keywords for your Search Engine Optimization efforts.  It may take some trial and error and a healthy dose of specializing keywords to hit on the right combination for tracking and finding users for network building purposes, though.

Monitter has a number of features to help you modify and specify your tracking.  You can Monitter by specific location or language, to eliminate superfluous tweets, and can add addition keywords or perform and advanced search to help narrow down your results.  Monitter also allows you to view your results via RSS feed.  One of Monitter’s coolest features, though, is that it provides you website widgets that allow you to add a real-time keyworded tweet feed directly to your website so you can show visitors what others are saying about your business, product or other keyword of interest.

As the old saying goes, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  This has long been held as one of the greatest maxims of success.  This understanding formed the basis of the cocktail parties and three-martini lunches of yesteryear and it is the driving concept behind online networking today.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are or how solid your business is, there is only so far that your own ingenuity, inventiveness, and innovativeness can take you on your own.  For your business to realize its full potential, you have to be able to reach and influence your customers and, even more importantly, you have to be able to connect to people who can open the right door and provide you with the right opportunities to really make a name for yourself and your business.  Online social networking sites makes this possible like never before.

Thanks to the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, LindedIn and Twitter, it is possible to expand your social network, not just across your industry but across the globe.   These sites allow you to stay connected to the people who already influence your success while simultaneously giving you access to their social networks as well.  Unlike the days of old, you can expand your social network rapidly and almost indefinitely without forking over membership fees to a country club or damaging your liver.

There are several ways that you can achieve this kind of rapid network growth.  There are paid services (and even some inferior free ones) that can generate thousands of followers per month for your Twitter account.  Then there is the shotgun approach of simply adding everyone you come across in the hopes that they will follow decorum and follow you back.   There are even a number of tools designed to assist in collecting active users on many of the most popular social networks.

There certainly is something to be said for being able to quickly expand your social network online by mass adding new contacts.  You get your name out there and, if nothing else, having a thousand people following your Twitter account just looks impressive.  But is this kind of social network growth the best use of social networking?

On a superficial level, there is a large degree of social proof that goes along with having a massive network.  Think of it like the being the popular kid at school.  People are more inclined to take you a little more seriously for no other reason than herd mentality.  However, to really benefit from social networking you need quality connections, not cattle.

Since we have focused mostly on Twitter so far, let’s continue on that same line of thinking.  Using directory services you can connect to “twibes” (Twitter interest groups).  Listing your handle on directories helps users that are actually interested in your business, or at least your general field, find you.  You can also access tweets in real-time that concern specific topics relevant to your business using the list feature and add users through these tweets (tweeters and followers).

However, just as with your website, there is simply no substitute for quality.  If you want quality contacts then give them quality content.  Fresh, original, relevant content not only grabs attention from the users you want to reach, but it is the type of content that gets retweeted to a wider audience of important contacts.  It goes without saying that this is vastly preferable to reaching thousands of users who really don’t care about you, your business and what you have to say.

It is a well known principle in marketing that if you want to market your product or service to people, then you have to reach them where they live, work and play.  In the modern computer age, the internet is increasingly becoming that place.  The average person spends 13 hours a week on the internet.  The average teenager spends a staggering 31 hours each week surfing the web.  The vast majority of this time, for both adults and teens, is spent on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

So how can you make social networking work for your business?  There are two ways.  The first way is to buy advertising space, which can be rather expensive and isn’t always effective.  The second way, viral marketing, requires a little more work but a lot less investment.

Obviously, buying space is the quickest and easiest way to market through social networking sites.  Most of the social networks offer advertising on a pay-per-click basis, just like Google and other sites, in addition to flat rate advertising.  The advantage there is that you only have to pay for advertising that actually draws users too your site.  The downside being that just because a user visits your site, it doesn’t mean that they are going to become a customer.

If you have a really strong site that offers a really great product or service, then you may have luck with pay-per-click marketing through social networks.  Pay-per-click marketing has received a boost lately on some social networks like Facebook that now allow users to select their marketing preference.  This means that your adds reach only the users who are most likely to want your product or service… providing they took the time to set their marketing preferences (for the record, most users don’t).

If you’ve ever used pay-per-click advertising, then you already know that it is a pretty big gamble.  In many, if not most, cases it is a losing bet.  The truth is, click-through advertising doesn’t work in a social networking model because users aren’t their looking to consume, they are there to socialize and interact with other users.  Most businesses – there is research out of Harvard Business School that backs up this assertion – benefit more from viral marketing than from paid advertising.

Viral marketing is free (other than time), reaches more users, and influences users to be more interested in what your business offers.  Sounds pretty great doesn’t it?  There is one huge catch, though:  you have to understand your intended customers.  Shocking right?

All joking aside, there really are some intricacies that have to be understood about consumer habits and demographics.  Not all groups are influenced the same way by viral marketing.  Furthermore, within some online communities a lot of a viral marketing campaign’s success lies in just who it is that is endorsing the business.

The fact that people are influenced by the purchases of their peers isn’t new news by any means.  However, social networking has taken “keeping up with the Joneses” out of the old neighborhood and expanded it to a global level.  Viral marketing through social network sites is just one of the ways that social media has changed the landscape of marketing.

Social bookmarking is arguably the most beneficial aspects of social media for business.  Social bookmarking offers several benefits, allowing you to promote your website while creating important links that help boost your relevancy on search engines.  If your business isn’t using social bookmarking as part of its SEO/SEM campaign, then you are missing out on a golden opportunity for some free promotions.

How does social bookmarking work?   Social bookmarking utilizes free, public websites to save bookmark links and share them with other users.  The principle behind this is that if other users like your bookmarks they will a) visit your site and b) share your bookmark with others.   This presents a invaluable opportunity for savvy businesses to do some gorilla marketing.

The process of social bookmarking is fairly simple and straightforward.  However, it can be a little bit time consuming, especially at first.  Still, when it’s all said and done it is well worth the time spent to set up and maintain your presence on social bookmarking sites.

Start out by setting up accounts on as many social bookmarking sites as possible:  www.del.icio.us.com, www. stumbleupon.com, www.digg.com, www.reddit.com and www.diigo.com are good ones to get you started.  For more, just Google “social bookmarking sites” and you will get enough to keep your marketing department busy for days just setting up accounts.

When setting up your accounts try to make your site description as alluring as possible.  You want people to actually visit your site, so don’t just put “we are x and we do y”, jazz it up and make it appealing.  If you can’t hook them with pizzazz, then at least try to peak their curiosity enough to pay you a visit.

Almost all social bookmarking sites allow you to associate certain keywords with your account.  You want to compile a list of your strongest keywords and submit them.  Don’t skimp on long tail keywords.  This isn’t like optimizing your site.  You don’t have to reign in your keyword use.  Go nuts with it.

This most important thing is that you keep up with your accounts.  Social bookmarking isn’t a one-time operation.  It is perpetual.  Your bookmarks will go stale pretty quick, so you need to be updating constantly and consistently.  Bookmark every blog, article, press release, etc.

That doesn’t mean that you should bookmark every single page of your site.  Nobody cares about your contact page before they visit your site.  Only link to quality content.  If you are doing a good job with you SEO then you should have plenty to link to and plenty of new stuff to keep your social bookmarks fresh.

If you links are to compelling, quality content pages on your site then you will likely be very impressed by the amount of traffic your social bookmarking brings.  Again, the key is to consistently and continually update your links.  If you only link once then let your account slide you will notice a definite drop off in traffic generated from your lonely only bookmark.  Keep it fresh and up-to-date with worthwhile links and your traffic will grow and grow.

Over the last decade, social media has boomed to massive proportions, becoming a major force on the internet.  It has reshaped the concept of networking and has provided an entirely new arena for marketing.  Just what is social media and what does it mean for your business?

In simplest terms, just like the name implies, social media is social tool for the exchange and broadcast of information.  Unlike other forms of mass media, where access is restricted and communication is all one-way, social media is available to anyone with internet access and allows two-way interaction (hence the social aspect).  The realm of social media includes everything from social networking sites to tool like Wikipedia (and other wikis).

There are 5 predominant types of social media on the web.  As stated above, the term “social media” encapsulates social networking and wikis, but also photo and video sharing, social news, and social bookmarking.  Each of this have their own implications for business and marketing.

Social networking includes sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter (and dozens of others).  Social networking is exactly what it sounds like.  It is the cocktail party taken to the next level.  It allows people from around the world to connect and interact.  People can expand their networks by adding friends online and participating in discussion in online groups.  They can also interact one-one one through profile comments and on-site chat platforms.

Wikis focus more on the exchange and dissemination of information.  The most well-known wiki is, of course, Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is essentially an online, organic encyclopedia.  Other specialized wikis exist for specific groups, activities, etc.  Wikis are always expanding and changing.  This is possible because wikis allow any user to add articles or edit existing ones, which qualifies them as social media.

Photo and video sharing sites, like YouTube and Flickr, allow people to exchange multimedia information.  Users can upload their photos or videos to the site and can download those posted by other users.  YouTube is one of the biggest players in viral video market, which we will discuss elsewhere.

Social news sites include sites like Digg and Reddit, which allow users to rank articles and engage in discussions about content via comment threads.  Almost all of the major mass media news organizations have online social media presences as well.  Interactive news has made such huge strides that traditional newspapers have had to struggle to keep up.

The fifth type, social bookmarking, in one of the more intricate aspects of social media.  These sites  (like Del.icio.us and Simpy) allow users to tag and recommend other websites, or to search through websites that have been bookmarked by other people.  These types of sites are important online marketing tools.  They can (and should) play a role in successful SEO and web promotion strategies.

Previously we talked about some of the basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization.  As we saw, SEO really is not as complicated as it seems.  Mostly it is a matter of understanding how search engines work and understanding how search engine users think.

We also touch briefly on the fact that search engines use bots called spiders to scour the internet day and night to index and rank websites.  So, obviously, it is pretty important that your website is set up to a) be easy for a spider to “read” and b) tell spiders that your website is important for users to see.  How do we do that?

Spiders essentially “read” a website the same way that you or I would.  They start at the top and read left to right, line by line down the page.  Whenever the spider comes across a link it triggers another spider being sent to assess the website that is linked to.  This process is continued throughout the site.  Everything that the spiders encounter is recorded.

Basically, your goal is to make your site as easy for the spider to navigate as possible.  One of the most important ways of doing this is making sure that you include text links to important pages in your site.  You can do this in the body, but you should definitely include this links at the bottom of every page whether you link in the body text or not (you’ve probably noticed that most sites have a kind of directory at the bottom of pages – this is why).  One of the most important links to include here is the link to your sitemap.

However, not all information on your website is going to help you.  In fact, you will probably have pages that you don’t want spiders to include at all, like your contact page.  For this reason you will want to set up a robots.txt file to tell spiders which pages should be skipped.

Once you have your site set up for easy navigation by spiders it is time to address relevancy – telling search engines that your site is important.  After all, search engines are evaluating millions of sites and billions of pages.  Basically, in determining the importance of a site, a search engine evaluates several aspects of a page in the following order:  the URL, the site’s title, the Description Meta tag, the content of the site, and any anchor text used for in-site links.

The title and Description Meta tag are both part of the <head> tag.  When titling a page you want to select a couple of strong keywords or phrases that are relevant to what the page is about.  You don’t want to overdo it on keywords because that will trigger red flags that your page may be spammy.  Just use two or three words that say what the page is about.  Keep in mind that this is what internet users will see as the reference link in the search engine results, so it needs to be intelligible.

If you’ve used search engines at all, you are probably familiar with the little blurb about the site that appears under the reference link.  This is the Description Meta tag.  It is just a short synopsis that tells spiders and users what the reference link actually links to.  Use a couple of readable sentences that use your strongest keywords/phrases.

Now you want to address content.  Your content should be informative, keyword rich, and, most importantly, original.  We won’t rehash creating content as we have covered that aspect elsewhere, just keep in mind that this is your chance to draw in internet users that might not actually be looking for your product or service, but are only searching for information.  Once you draw them to your site,  you have a chance at turning a browser into a buyer.

The last component is the anchor text that you use in links.  This aspect is really basic.  If you link to another page on your site, use one or two keywords that relate to what that page is about as the text for the link.  In other words, use link text that makes it clear what is being linked to.

This aspects of your website are the baseline of what determines whether or not your site is deemed important by a search engine.  So, the more care you put into your title, Description Meta tag, content, and anchor text, the better you will rank.  You don’t have to be a pro to make a quality site.  Of course, it is always better to get help if you are struggling.  A bad site will cost you a lot more than an SEO consultant will.

There is a lot of information out there about Search Engine Optimization.  Professionals toss around a lot of technical jargon that only makes sense to other pros.  For the non-professional hoping to modify a business website to increase traffic, it can all seem very confusing.  It really isn’t though.  When you strip away the technical talk, SEO is really all about common sense.  Really, optimizing your website is a lot easier than you might think.

Of course, the easiest way to optimize your sight is to use the services of a competent and reputable Search Engine Marketing consultant.  Going pro will save you a lot of time and frustration.  For a large business this is definitely the way to go.

However, don’t be discourage from trying your hand at SEO.  Tinker around with your company’s site.  If traffic doesn’t increase and you aren’t happy with the results, you can always hire on a professional later.

When we say SEO is really a lot simpler than you might think, we mean it.  You don’t have to be a brilliant programmer (though that helps).  You don’t even have to completely grasp the intricate algorithms that search engines use to sort and rank websites (though, again, that can be helpful).  You only need a basic understanding of how search engines work and how your customers think.

So, let’s start with discussing how search engines do what they do, namely providing us with lists of websites that are relevant to our interests, presented in order of relevancy.  If you are already breaking into a nervous sweat, don’t.  This isn’t quantum physics, it’s just good sense.  Really, there are only two basic concepts you really need to understand: how spiders crawl the web and how search engines match keywords/phrases to specific pages on a website.

When we talk about search engine spiders we aren’t talking about tiny little eight-legged creepy-crawlies skittering through cyberspace (though, admittedly, that would be pretty cool).  Search engine spiders are simply scripts, also referred to as “bots”, that are built to follow links from one to the next throughout a website and the entirety of the internet.  These scripts are running around the clock, scouring the web to create a virtual roadmap that search engines can use to decide not just what sites are relevant to users searching for specific words and phrases, but also which ones are most relevant.

Obviously, spiders are a pretty important concept to understand (so important that we will devote the entire next installment to the subject).  Ultimately, you are trying to make your site as easy for search engine spiders to crawl.  That isn’t enough though, if the information gathered by the spider doesn’t tell the search engine that your site is important.

What makes a site important?  Keep in mind that search engines thrive on presenting users with successfully presenting users with the information they want quickly and easily.  Search engines are built with the user in mind, so you should build your site the same way.  It’s all about relevancy.  Make your site relevant to the interests of the consumers you are trying to reach!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the only way to succeed with an online business.  That is just a simple statement of fact.  It is so axiomatic that even businessmen with absolutely NO understanding of the internet or computers bandy about the term SEO.  It is fundamental.  Obviously you understand the importance of the principle, if not the particulars.  That is why you are here reading this blog.

But what exactly is SEO?  The short answer is that Search Engine Optimization is simply making your business’s website as relevant as possible to internet users searching for your product or service on the internet.  SEO is about getting your website as close as possible to the top of relevant search engine results so that your website is seen and, hopefully, visited.

At the very heart of SEO are keywords.  These are the words and phrases that you weave throughout the fabric of your site to help convince search engine spiders that your site is the most relevant to a user’s interest.

The more general your keywords the more competition you’ll face.  Just like in medicine, it pays to specialize.  For instance, let’s say you sell jellybeans.  Now if you focus on “jellybeans” as a keyword, then you are going to get lumped in with all of the other results for “jellybeans”.  Now, unless your jellybeans are pretty famous, you won’t be showing up on those first few pages, thus your site won’t get visited.

However, let’s say you focus on “black jellybeans”.  Now you’ve got less competition.  The competition for that more specific phrase is much less steep.  Now you stand a chance of nabbing the bulk of internet users searching for “black jellybeans” vs. probably getting no users at all for searches for “jellybeans”.

They key here is to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience.  What would your average customer probably search for.  Let’s say that you own an athletic shoe store.  You may be tempted to go with the obvious choice of “athletic shoes” and that is probably what many users would search for first too.  However, the second they saw the 200,000 results returned they’d probably realize they needed to be more specific.  They’d narrow their search down to what they are looking for specifically and so should you.  Select keywords that your customers will be searching for, like “Nike cross trainers”.

Don’t fail to take into account that your customers are human.  They may make mistakes and misspell words in their searches.  Included common misspellings of keywords too.  If your store specializes in custom calendars then don’t just use “custom calendars”.  You should also include “custom calandars”, “custom calenders”, etc.

Finally, localize whenever possible.  This is mostly important for businesses that offer site-specific products or services, such as restaurants.  Customers will be searching for a restaurant close to where they are located, so your keywords should reflect that.  Instead of “restaurant”, try “Chicago Italian restaurant”.  You’ve narrowed down your keyword to location and specific type.  That is much closer to how the customer would search.  Again, putting yourself in the mind frame of a typical internet user is the most helpful tool for coming up with keywords.

Internet sales have become a mainstay of modern business.  Whether you are a major retailer or a small business owner, chances are you have a website that you use to promote your business and sell your products or services.  If your business is not online, you just cannot stay competitive.

However, it isn’t enough to just be online.  After all, site building programs have made it so that even those with remedial computer skills can throw together a website.  Of course, if that is too much to handle then there are thousands of consulting firms and independent contractors eager to build a top-notch site for you.

All of that doesn’t mean much.  Being online isn’t enough.  Having a quality site isn’t enough.

Let me rephrase that.  Having a solid website is extremely important.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how grand your website is, how many bells and whistles you’ve included, how much money you spent having it designed; none of that matters if nobody visits your site.

That is what makes SEO marketing so critical to online success.  You have to market you website just as aggressively as you market  your products and services.  If you don’t… well, if you are lucky your site will fail.  If you are unlucky your whole business will fail.  Does SEO marketing sound important?  You betcha.

The sudden understanding that your entire business might well hinge on whether or not your website is optimized for search engines can be scary.  Don’t panic.  Follow the 10 simple steps below and you’ll be well on your way to SEO Success.

Visibility is the name of the game.  People have to know about your site before they can visit it.  The most common way that a customer encounters a website is through a search engine search.  However, most internet users will not look further than the first 2 or 3 pages.  So, if you want to be seen and visited then you need to be on those pages.  How do you do that?

First off, claim your niche.  Pick strong, unique keywords.  The more specific the better, but try to keep it just 2 to 3 word phrases.

How do you pick those keywords though?  You research your little heart out.  Research and marketing have always gone hand-in-hand.  The internet is no different.  Research what words users are searching for and research your competition.

Once you have your site set up with keyword rich, unique content, it’s time to get your site out there on the web.  First, get a handful of quality sites to share links with your site.  This will tell search engine bots (called spiders) that your site is important.

Now you can have your site indexed by all the major search engines.  This will make it easier for search engine spiders to crawl your site.  You are now well on your way to having a strong SEO marketing plan in place for you business.

You already know how very vital search engine optimization is to getting your site to rank well in the search engines and how important it is to make sure that your site has all it needs; from great content, to powerful meta tags- all of this has been pretty common knowledge for some time now and you know that all of these things come together to boost your search engine rankings and get your site, therefor your business, noticed faster. However, there is another tool that many don’t use, perhaps they are unaware of how powerful it can really be, or they just aren’t well versed in web marketing- it’s not an unknown secret, though- it’s Google Places, formerly known as Google Local Business. This powerful tool can get your site noticed before your competitors for one reason that can make all the difference- location, location, location. Rather than using other means of ranking, Google Places uses your place on the map- and think about it, if you were looking for your product or service- and say you lived in Saint Louis. Would you really want to go all the way to Memphis?

Now this is not to say you still don’t need to use search engine optimization, you do- this is simply a good thing to include in your over all internet marketing plans. Creating good content on your site- that is still going to be one of the things that sets you apart from others like you, locally, who have decided to use this powerful tool and more. There are a wealth of reasons you would not want to discontinue your other search engine efforts- and also some pretty amazing ways you can use Google Places to enhance those as well. Keeping abreast of these changes that have been made can help- all the time, Google is making improvements to their local programs and definitely they mean to help customers keep it local- which has been the trend and shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. Google Places has a variety of different tools you can use to help and when used in tandem with your existing search engine optimization program becomes unstoppable in making sure that your business gets noticed above the competition. The end goal of any search engine optimization plan is ultimately getting your site noticed- now, if a customer is on their mobile phone, seeking out services they need, Google Places puts those businesses that are the closest to them right there at the top of the search page. You can see why that would be a handy thing for the customer, right in that. However, when you work this into your search engine plan as opposed to trying to use it alone- when the customer gets a list of those places at the top of the page, your site is what keeps them.

Set up is a breeze- this is one of the most user friendly aspects of Google initially and getting started is simple.

•Go to Google Places homepage at

http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?service=lbc&utm_source=/places&utm_medium=van&utm_campaign=en&gl=US&hl=en-US

• Sign into your google account- if you don’t have one, that’s okay, go ahead and set one up now, and begin using all the cool offerings Google has simply by having it.

•Click on that “Add new business” option

•Key in all of your information, then next

•If your business is already listed, go ahead and claim it now- if not, it’s easy to add it.

•Then, beef up your listing by bringing on photos, videos, payment options- anything you feel the customers need to know.

•Then, verify your business by phone. When you set up on the last step, make sure you entered a number you can be reached at immediately- all Google will then do is give you a call to let you know a PIN number. Once you have verified your business using the PIN- that’s it. You’re all set up.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but there was no denying the “Google Local Business Center” was a bit sterile for such an exciting business resource.  Of course, uptight doesn’t really mesh with Google’s casual Friday image.  I think many of us gave a sigh of relief along with Google in April when the company loosened its collective tie and changed the name of their business listings service to Google Places.  You’d think that a major search engine provider who has put out extensive tutorials and tip sheets about selecting strong keywords would have been able to come up with something more compelling than Google Local Business Center the first time, but hey, they can’t all be winners.

Actually the name change had a lot more to do with restructuring the Business Center to fit seamlessly with Google’s Place Pages, the business listing service that Google unveiled in 2009.  The Place Pages really upped the ante for online business promotion and for search engines.

In case you have been living in a cave for the last 8 months and have somehow managed to completely miss Place Pages, the service provides Google users with pages of info on local businesses the turn up in response to their queries for local products and services.  The Place Pages provide images, hours of operation, customer reviews, etc.  Definitely a step up from just the simple name/address/phone number listings of the past.

For business owners, Google local Business Center/Google Places lets you reach your customers with relevant details about your business right from the word “go”.  You have a chance to make a first impression directly from their initial search results page.  Of course, that only works if you actually list your business through Google Places.

None of that is really news, though.  Google Local Business Center provided the same resources to business owners, including handy organizational tools and other resources.  When Google transformed Google Local Business Center into Google Places, they did a good bit more than just slap a new label on an old product.

Google kept all of the great business tools of the Local Business Center with a few significant additions.  First, Google Places now allows your business to list your service area.  What is more, if you don’t actually operate a brick and mortar facility, Google Places allows you to set your business address to “private”, a feature that was sadly lacking in the old Local Business Center incarnation.

Besides providing customers with more info about your business, Places also provides you with more info about your customers.  You can access information about who has been searching you, where they are searching from and other details that are invaluable for search engine marketing strategies.

If you have jumped onboard the QP code train (or would like to), then Places has an outstanding tool that allows you to generate a customized QR code directly from the dashboard.  Print it on your business cards and promotional material.  When scanned, the QR code will direct the customer directly to your Place Page.

Earlier we mentioned the images available to customers.  You can upload pictures of your facilities via the Place Page to give customers an enticing peek at what you have to offer.  If you are fortunate enough to live in one of the test cities, you can even get Google to come out and take the pictures for you.  The rest of us, however, have to tough it out and do it ourselves until that option if officially released.

Speaking of test cities:  On the advertising end of things, Google provides Tags that highlight business listings on Google Maps at a reasonable $25 per month.  You can highlight important features of your business, promotions, coupons, etc..  Expect to see a lot more about this as it becomes widely available to the business community.

Not too long ago, Google Local Business center changed and became Google Places.”Google has decided to change the name of what was called the “Google Local Business Center” to “Google Places.” The rationale, according to the press release, is to better connect Google Place Pages with the place where local business information is claimed, entered and enhanced:

Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages – the way that businesses are being found today – with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google.”

Some are saying this was just a name change, but I do not think that was the case at all- this already powerful tool for local marketing has become even better with the addition of a couple of tweaks that really bring every thing together.

Check out the video:

It seems to me as though Google is really honing in on the local aspects of their game, and this is a good thing. It has never been a better time to work on your marketing plan involving Google Places, formerly known as Google Local Business. Even the name breathes confidence in local business- and in recent times, doing business locally has become more and more important. With more people patronizing locally rather than going outward for their products and services, having a good marketing plan involving this sort of thing is vital to the survival of your business. So, whether it is Google Local Business or Google Places- having this on your side and in your marketing arsenal is going to be even more important as time goes on.

How this works, is it all ties in with mobile marketing- more and more use their mobile devices to seek out those things they want and need. So, being as Google is the powerhouse of searches and continues to make more strides towards getting even better- you find that the offerings for local become even broader spectrum. Currently there is even a test going on to showcase the insides of businesses via the search engine giant and their Google Places offering. These test cities are Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder, San Francisco  but they are currently only testing the feature in San Jose and Houston. This used to be known as Enhanced Listing but is now “getting a tag for”.

Also in the press release was some important information about the statistics of Google currently.

Almost 2 million listings have been claimed in the United States, there are currently fifty million Google Places pages already in use, approximately twenty percent of all searches run on the engine are related to location, and the Google Places pages are viewed millions of times a day- just to name a few. As the search giant continues to grow and focus on local business you can bet there has never been a better time to get your local on and market to those who looking for products and services…where you are.

So, you have a really great story about your company- perhaps you have a great new product that is going to change the way that people do something. You have a CEO who is attending several charity functions, or you have something about your company that you want to get noticed. You know already by now how to get your press released noticed, but if you want the vast visibility that an online press release can bring- you’re going to need to optimize it properly.

The first thing is the keywords- this is the most important aspect of any optimization task- putting them in the title, summary and somewhere towards the end of the body is good, but you have to make sure that they are natural and flow with the rest of the release. Random keywords out of nowhere are spammy and well, let’s face it that does not make any sense. I’m writing a blog about press releases and if I suddenly throw in a word about catfood, it’s going to be obvious. When I say that though, notice, in the context of this sentence, putting the word there was appropriate- what I mean, and I think we have all seen it- are the random keywords just thrown in here and there that are completely out of context.

So you have the keywords, now you have to work with your anchor text links- that is, if the site you’re distributing from allows them. Ideally, they do- but not all sites are going to give you this so be sure that you have various press releases written, tailored to the sites you are using. You have been through the keywords- and you have those three important ones in the body- so now what? You take them, and use them to link to the target web page using the keywords.

Now I have mentioned the tailor made press releases for the various places you distribute them- but what if you submit the wrong release to the wrong site? No one will ever see it, it likely won’t make it through. You really have to pay careful attention to the sites that you are using for distribution. Editors will want releases that are not only relevant, but present them with the least amount of work for their time. Format correctly, and this should be a given- but run your spell check on it, correct any grammar errors, and be sure that all of your links are appropriate and not broken.

When shopping around for distribution or submission sites, make sure that they are indexed by Google news, and that the sites themselves are already very search engine friendly. If they turn the title of your press release into the URL- and your summary becomes a Meta description, this will work out much better. As I mentioned above- if you want to have more impact, be sure that you are submitting to sites that allow for the anchor text links. You can still submit to the sites that don’t, but this will take your releases and improve your visibility.

Ever wonder how Justia and Lexblog market attorney websites and get their clients high Google Rankings? Why is it worth it to pay $1,000 or more a month to have them do your law firms internet marketing? This article will give you a quick explanation of the process, its benefits, and its limits.

Both Justia and LexBlog has a very extensive network of legal practices that have created blogs to market their practices. The power of these to networks comes from the fact the single most important factor in how Google and other search engines rank websites is the number quality websites that link to your website. Since Justia and LexBlog both have large networks of quality websites as their clients, they link them together using a blog-roll (This is list of related blogs) and this builds back links to your legal website.

The benefit of using these systems is many of the links that are obtained would be very difficult to achieve without the system. We are advocates of lawyers using systems like Justia because it can give them a great jumpstart in getting quality links to their websites. Here is where the benefits start to get outweighed by the negatives.

Unfortunately the blog roll rarely changes. That means you are getting links back to your website (the most important factor in ranking well) each month on all the pages being published by the other Justia clients with your website on their blog-roll, but you are not getting any new websites that are linking to you. Many studies have been done by respectable members of the SEO community to show that the value of getting additional links on a website that already links to you is much lower than getting additional sites to that do not link to you to do so. This means that most value you are going to get out of using Justia for your legal marketing is really almost right out of the gate.

The second main issue with these companies as your sole internet marketing solution is that they market numerous law firms in the same city for the same services. Do you expect Justia to allow you to outrank their own client that has been paying the same monthly fee as you for over 3 or 4 years? You shouldn’t because it isn’t going to happen.   This is where a firm like InBusiness Internet Marketing can help your firm get over the hump and get those additional needed links to dominate your market.

We go outside of the networks that justia and lexblog create to get as many quality legal websites as possible to link to you. This can provide a huge advantage over other Justia and LexBlog clients, and give you the edge you need to take the top spot in your field. Want proof? Contact us today and we can explain the processes we will use to help your business steal the digital spotlight.

Over the past few months I have had over a dozen  small and medium size businesses contact me that were curious about other options they may have than Reach Local to reach local customers online. Like your company, they had been using Reach local and were relatively unimpressed with the results. The marketing materials their sales rep showed looked amazing, they had a slick interface, and tons of bells and whistles like call tracking and recording. They signed the three month contract and  waited to see the results. Unfortunately the results they received left them unsatisfied, and wanting more.

What Is The Problem?

The problem stems from how reach local operates. Its entire business model focuses on high commission sales that mean most of the money you spending never actually goes towards your marketing. Most people don’t realize that Reach Local is effectively a middleman between Google Adwords and your business.

About 90% of business a company would generate from using reach local comes from google Adwords and other Pay Per Click Marketing  Reach Local buys. That would not be a bad thing if you couldn’t get access to Google Adwords directly for free.  So where is the benefit in using a company like reach local?

The benefit should be in how knowledgeable they are about marketing your business using the Google Adwords system. That way they could achieve a better return using Google Adwords than if you used it yourself. Unfortunately that is not usually the case. This is the main reason why Google Adwords is not mentioned in the reach local sales pitch. Neither are the words Pay Per Click. In fact, because Reach Local has so many clients (Over 10,000) they use an algorithm that determines how a campaign should be run.

A Better Mouse Trap For Small Business Paid Advertising?

So is there a better solution for getting great results using paid advertising on Google than Reach Local? A solution where you don’t have to be an expert to get results? Absolutely! Google Adwords, like most things in life is a tool that can be used effectively, and ineffectively. The key is getting an extremely knowledgeable Internet Marketing Consultant that manages you campaigns directly from the Google Adwords interface.

At InBusiness, Inc. we don’t stand in between the client and Google Adwords, we stand to the side and let our clients see everything. We pull the curtain back and show you exactly what we see. No smoke and mirrors. See if your Reach Local rep will allow you to see the keyword click reports directly from Google on your advertising campaign. They won’t because you would be very upset.

We are not here to say the Reach Local is a bad company, just that there are better alternatives for companies who have the budget that they are spending with reach local. InBusiness offers a free trial period to current reach local clients so that they can compare the results and see for themselves. We don’t make anything until after you are convinced that we would be a better solution. To give an offer like, you better believe that if could not get results, we would be out of business. Are you ready to get 50% to 400% more leads from the same marketing budget you are currently using with reach local? Contact us today and we will explain why there is such a big difference. Reference will also be provided from previous reach local clients on the impact the change has had on their business.

Regardless of your profession you can find yourself the subject of bad publicity.  This is especially true if you conduct business online.  The internet makes giving feedback on your real life experiences such a simple task that if one person is unhappy in their dealings with you they can easily do major damage to your reputation by broadcasting online.  Sadly, more people feel the need to vent their frustrations than to sing praises for a job well done, so it is likely that you may encounter this situation at some time in your online business dealings.

If you find yourself on the receiving end of less than stellar feedback or bad publicity you will have to choose whether to simply ignore it or act upon it.  That decision will depend upon where the negative feedback has been left and how accessible that information is to the general public, as well as the source.

The best practice in dealing with negativity online is to avoid it.  That can be accomplished by having a Online Reputation Management, or ORM, in place before it happens.  The negative comments may not even be your own fault.  Consider a bidding war between you and a competitor.  You both make bids on a project and you are awarded the job.  The losing party goes online, poses as a customer, and bad mouths your business.  It can, and does, happen.  What’s worse is that without a solid ORM in place, it could be weeks or longer before you are even aware that the negative publicity exists, and there is no way to measure how much business you lost as a result.

There are several services that you can sign up for that will do the leg work for you and keep you from having to spend countless hours monitoring online social networks for bad news.  Blog monitoring is available through BackType Blog Comments Monitoring, Blog Pulse, Technorati, and Google Blog Search.  These services will allow you to track key words (such as your name or business name) and will alert you anytime someone mentions those terms.

Twitter is a popular social media service that allows people around the world to instantly update what they are doing in real-time.  Monitter, Tweet Later, Tweet Beep, and Twitter Search are services much like the blog alert services.  They allow you to quickly and easily see who is talking about you online.

Generally speaking, anytime someone airs negative commentary about you or your business, they will include a link to your website so that others can beware.  Link monitoring is available through several service providers including BackTweets and WhoLinkstoMe.  You can also use services like Google Alerts, Board Tracker, MonitorThis, Naymz, Purewire Trust, and Yasni to keep up to date and be alerted when someone uses your name, links, or business name online.

While it may take a little extra time to set up these services, once the sign up process is complete you will have little to worry about.  Updates will be emailed to you and a quick glance through the emails will provide the insurance that you need to protect your reputation online.