The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

The first step in any Internet marketing campaign is picking the right keywords. Many businesses and law firms make the mistake of choosing keywords to target based on their opinion of what keywords potential customers would use to search for them, rather than basing that decision on research. Don't do that.

The other big mistake I see some companies make is picking a huge basket of keywords for which to promote their web site. Don't do that, either. Think small in number and highly specific.

So just what do you do? Let research guide your decisions, and pick keywords that meet three specific criteria.

Here are the three major criteria to consider for any potential keyword:

1. Degree of relevance. You want a strong sense of congruity between a keyword and a particular web page. It doesn't have to be relevant to your home page, but it needs to be relevant to SOME page on your web site.

For example, a good keyword for the home page of a Ford auto dealership in Memphis might be "Memphis Ford dealer." A good keyword for a page about Ford Mustangs on this same dealer's site might be "Memphis Ford Mustang dealer." These are completely hypothetical examples.

2. Search engine traffic. The more search traffic there is for a particular keyword, the more potential traffic the keyword could drive to your web site.

3. Competition. The fewer competing web sites there are for a keyword, the more attractive that keyword is for the subject web site.

So the three major criteria for any keyword you are considering targeting is relevance, traffic and competition. The relevance criterion is judgment-based. It is common sense. For the traffic criterion, the best tool to use to generate that data is the external Adwords research tool, located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. For the competition criterion, I suggest basing it on Google "allintitle:" searches, because this will return the number of web pages that are closest to being specifically optimized for that keyword.

Compile a list of potential keywords using Google's external keyword, eliminate the less relevant ones, then rank them by the number of searches Google claims for each one. Then look for ones that are in a favorable competitive situation. Your highlighted keywords at this point are your best bet for generating targeted organic search engine traffic in a reasonable amount of time. Your chance of ranking for those keywords, and thus generating visits to your web site, is excellent.

Call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some assistance orchestrating an organized SEO campaign for your business web site.

Labels: keyword research, keywords, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

I really want Microsoft to be successful in the paid search business. I think it would be wonderful for all of us involved in the search engine marketing game if Google had some viable competition for search engine ads. Unfortunately, Microsoft continues to shoot themselves in the foot.

For example...

We have a new client for whom we are running paid search ads on Microsoft's adCenter platform. But Microsoft insists on billing for paid search in $50 increments. As a result, our client has his credit card revoked by his credit card company because they thought it was suspicious that his card kept getting charged $50 at a time.

This is the SECOND client for whom we have had this same problem! Why does Microsoft insist on billing this way? They are the largest software company in the world...and they can't figure out how to charge someone's credit card for more than $50?

It makes my company look bad when this happens because we have to explain the whole problem to our client, tell them why Microsoft sucks so bad, have them go and get another credit card, etc.

Come on, Microsoft...

You've been promoting the hell out of Bing, spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to boost your search engine business...

Fix your billing!

Labels: Bing, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, paid search, pay per click

I am reading an outstanding book right now, Jay Abraham's The Sticking Point Solution. I cannot recommend it enough. If you don't know who Jay Abraham is, he is possibly the world's top marketing expert. To hire Abraham for personal consulting for your business will likely cost you tens of thousands of dollars (for just a few hours of his time). But his book brilliantly distills his formulas and strategies into a blueprint that any business can follow to achieve stratospheric results.

One thing I really like about Abraham's writing style is that he deals with specifics, rather than vague generalities. His book is filled with all kinds of examples highlighting the strategies he talks about, taken from his personal experience working with clients in hundreds of industries.

Abraham is big on the use of leverage. I use the word leverage a lot in talking about what I do. Write something once and then use it hundreds of different times. That's leverage in the context of online marketing. Abraham talks about leverage in terms of utilizing the resources of others. For example, finding a possible joint venture partner who has access to companies you would like to sell your services to.

Work Media is going through a transitional phase, and this book is the perfect material for what we are going through. My mind has been racing with ideas since I started reading the book. I'm not even done with it yet, but I like it so much I just had to go ahead and write a bit about it. I rarely endorse particular books or products, but The Sticking Point Solution by Jay Abraham comes highly, highly recommended.

The book is out now and can be found on Amazon.com or just about anywhere else, I would imagine.

Also, have you checked out my Twitter blog? It is our newest blog devoted exclusively to Twitter strategies.

Labels: book review, Jay Abraham, twitter

Okay, check out http://twitterforbusiness.blogspot.com/. I've been deeply involved lately in researching various Twitter management tools. You know how we are...always trying to do more with less. This new blog is the start of our attempt to document what we learn in the process of trying different tools and strategies for using Twitter for business promotion. We hope you'll hang out.

Now, as to blogging in general...

Be better than me.

Jerry Work here. I do most of the blogging for Work Media. And I haven't blogged here in over a week. I have been very busy and have actually done a lot of blogging, but for other projects.

So be better than me. Don't forget about your main blog. Take the time every week to type out original thoughts about your business or industry.

You're situation is probably a little different than mine. I do a lot of content distribution and blogging type stuff for my clients in all different industries. Honestly...sometimes I just don't feel like typing out any more blog posts. I really shouldn't use that as an excuse. But I will any way.

You probably have the luxury of only talking about things related to your business. So take the time to type out your thoughts. It will be well worth it.

Labels: blogging, microblogging, twitter

I LOVE Tweet Later. I started using the free version several weeks ago to help build up my Twitter follower list by setting the program to automatically follow back anyone who follows me, and to send a personal message to anyone who follows me. Just doing those two things has helped tremendously in launching my Twitter account.

I just started using the paid version, and if you are serious about using Twitter as a marketing tool, then it is well worth the money. With the professional version of Tweet Later, you can pre-configure a bunch of spinnable tweets to be posted at regular intervals. If you set it up right, this can save you a TON of time managing your account.

This strategy is most useful if you already have a lot of content to link to in your tweets. For instance, if you have been publishing a blog for a while, then you can set up a bunch of tweets that link to various blog posts you have written. Similarly, if you have a web site that offers a lot of products, then you can set up a bunch of tweets that link to different product pages.

If you don't have any existing material to set up lots of tweets for, you can still make good use of Tweet Later. It just might take more work to come up with material for all of your pre-configured tweets.

I do VERY little affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, to a large extent, is offensive to me because it involves people pushing products that are basically garbage. But I am impressed enough by this product that I am officially promoting it to my readers. I officially recommend the professional version of Tweet Later. To learn more, visit this link:

http://www.tweetlater.com/86969.html

By the way, there is a one week free trial (no credit card required!) for the professional version, so I definitely recommend you try it out with all of its features.

Labels: blogging, internet marketing, micro-blogging, tweet later, twitter

First off, let me say that I LOVE the concept behind this product. The idea is that you can load up a text article into the system and it will automatically create a video, with a robotic voice that reads certain parts of the article. The web site claims that you can do the whole thing – create a video from an article – in three minutes. You can then distribute it to a bunch of video directories right from the same interface.

Great idea…very poor execution.

This software might be adequate if you make your living from affiliate sales and just want to create dozens of junk videos to distribute to try and generate search engine visibility for long-tail keywords. Personally, I am against the creation of junk content just to try to sell something. I am NOT against the creation of large amounts of content, but I think that content needs to be legitimate and of a reasonably high quality.

If your image is important to your business' success, then you should probably not use this software. The videos basically consist of an audio voiceover combined with somewhat animated still images. There is nothing wrong with the idea of creating videos this way (we do it all the time), but transitions should be smooth, and the voiceover should sound somewhat professional. We were spending so much time trying to tweak on our videos using Article Video Robot, it became apparent after a few tries that it would be much quicker to just create our videos manually using video editing software (even if all you have is Windows Movie Maker).

One of the main problems is that the computerized voice readings of article text tend to need a LOT of tweaking to sound reasonably human. The software gives you the option of recording your own voice for each “frame” (which corresponds to a paragraph of the text article) of the video. But again, by the time we do all that, it would have been just as fast to manually record an audio track and mix it with some still shots using video editing software. As for the creation of videos in three minutes…only if you want your videos to look and sound like garbage.

The Article Video Robot web site claims that the company offers a risk free trial. This is not true. After requesting a refund, having used the product for less than two weeks (well within the trial period), we were denied a refund because we had done four video submissions (which was actually two videos, due to two failed attempts at using the system). What I wonder is how we were supposed to thoroughly try the system out without actually creating and submitting videos.

Trust me, I wish I had the time back that I spent trying to use this junk software.

Article Video Robot is definitely not recommended.

Labels: article marketing, article post robot, article writing, internet marketing, online video, video distribution

I am a big fan of marketing integration. Your offline marketing makes reference to your online marketing, your online marketing ties together with real world promotion, and everything links to everything else. This includes your social networking. One of my favorite techniques for combining blog content and static web page content is to stream the blog to the static pages via RSS. Sometimes it can be tricky to work out the code to make it happen, but it's a beautiful effect when your entire web site gets updated every time you make a new blog post.

In keeping with that tradition, I am now exploring the idea of streaming your Twitter content to your web pages. Fortunately, there is really no code to figure out, although you may have to do some in-line styling to get it to look right. To use it, first log into your Twitter account, then visit the following URL:

http://twitter.com/downloads

You can also get there by clicking the "Apps" link at the bottom of the page. To stream your Twitter posts, click the Widgets link. Then select the type appropriate for your site. You can create a Flash-based widget, or one that is HTML-based. I suggest going with straight up HTML because, for search engine purposes, you really want to have the actual words from your Twitter posts on your web pages, rather than a Flash movie.

Then just copy and paste the supplied code into your web pages. At this point, it is also VERY helpful if your site makes use of include files. For example, our law firm Internet marketing site, www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net, uses an include file for the left side of the pages, which looks like this:

#include virtual="leftside.asp"

So when I want to update the left-hand side of the web pages on the site, all I have to do is change this one file, rather than manually updating every single web page.

Initially, the design of the widget did not look right on my pages, so I used some in-line styling, as shown:

ul id="twitter_update_list" style="list-style-type: none;"

I did not like the way the bullet points looked, so I inserted the style code to tell viewers' browsers not to display bullet points by telling it the list style type is "none."

New widgets are coming out all the time, and we will discuss some more, but if I were you, the first one I would look into using is the Twitter widget that lets you stream your Twitter posts onto your web site.

Need some help using social networking to promote your web site? Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, social media, social networking, twitter, twitter widget, widget