The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

If you publish a regular blog, you should take the steps to make sure that those searching for blog posts in sites like technorati.com can find your blog. So you want to do three things:

1. Use keywords that someone might use to search for your site in the title and body of the blog post.
2. Tag your posts with the same keywords.
3. Ping the blog directories and sites like technorati.com.
   

Some people will search for your blog post by doing a keyword search. So here you need to thing along the same lines of web page optimization. We don't believe you necessarily have to worry too much about things like keyword density, but you should try to use as many different variations of your keywords as you can.

Some people will search for your blog post based on a tag. For instance, you could search for blogs tagged "internet marketing" to view all blogs that had been specifically tagged that way, even if the words "internet marketing" were not used in the blog.

Most blogging applications should be able to tag your posts automatically (you will have to specify the tags). For instance, in Blogger.com, the application we use, we can enter "labels" (the same thing as tags), and Blogger will automatically create a web page for each tag which contains all of our posts with that same tag. It will then add hyperlinks at the bottom of the post which link to those pages.

After you post your blog, you can use a service like http://pingomatic to ping a number of blog directories at once, so they know that your blog has been updated.

So if you tag your posts with keywords and use the keywords in the blog title and content, your blog will be better optimized to appear in social bookmarking / blogging applications, which should earn you some nice links back to your site if you regularly post and ping the blog directories.

If you need help with your Internet marketing campaign, contact Work Media at workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, internet marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, web marketing

If you are engaged in an SEO campaign, you may have constructed landing or gateway pages optimized for very specific search phrases. If that is the case, it may be tempting to engage in separate linking campaigns for the optimized pages. In some instances, that might be the right approach, but for maximizing the amount of Google Page Rank that gets distributed around your web site, you should have all incoming links pointing to one page, usually your home page.

Page Rank gets passed around from web page to web page. When one page links to another, it is like a "vote" for that page, so some Page Rank gets passed from the linking page to the linked to page. The fewer outgoing links there are on a web page, the more Page Rank gets passed to each link recipient. Each time a new link is added to a web page, the less Page Rank is passed to each linked to page.

And the more Page Rank that gets accumulated to a single page, the more total Page Rank there is to distribute throughout the site.

So having one web page with a Page Rank of 5 is better than having two web pages with Page Ranks of 3 and 2. I won't go into (and don't know if I could anyway) the math of how this actually works, but the page with the Page Rank of 5 has more total Page Rank to distribute than the other two pages. This is why you should concentrate your linking campaign on generating links to a single web page.

And a link from a web page with only two links is twice as good as one with four links.

If you want to really know how this works, check out this web page:

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

For help linking up your web site to achieve maximum Google Page Rank distribution, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net.

Labels: google, google page rank, internet marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web marketing

I just got an email from Yahoo! explaining a change in the Manage Bids page of the Yahoo! Search Marketing control panel. According to this email, the "Top 5 Max Bids", "Position", and "Your Cost" columns are being replaced with "Estimated Average Position" and "Bid Range for Top Positions".

You are no longer going to see the bids of others. Internet marketers in Yahoo! will now rely on less information.

Apparently, the new Sponsored Search interface does not provide exact bids. Yahoo! is releasing the new interface to its customers in stages. To make it fair for everyone, they are removing the bid information from customers still using the old system.

I would be willing to bet that the companies getting the new interface the earliest are the biggest spenders on sponsored search ads.

So the big spenders get the benefits of the new system such as split testing, while the smaller spenders are stuck in the old system and having information removed.

Does that seem fair?

It's going to be even more important for advertisers to try to track ROI on a keyword basis. Contact Work Media for help managing your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign.

Labels: blog marketing, internet marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Have a conversation with your audience. That's really what you want your blog to be. I'll admit, I (Jerry) have always been bad about trying to make every blog a post a full-blown tutorial on how to do something. It doesn't have to be. As you discover little snippets of useful information, share it with your audience in your blog. If you read something interesting and have an interesting comment about it, post it in your blog.

Your blog is both a digital diary and a public dialogue. Record your thoughts, be honest, do a little editing, and then publish it to the world.

I'm patting myself on the back right now for publishing such a short blog post.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, business, internet marketing, search engine marketing

I will be speaking at the Nashville Technology Council's Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Roundtable, sponsored by Sitening, on Thursday, January 4th.

Here is the link for more information: http://www.technologycouncil.com/news.php?viewStory=1040

This roundtable event will focus on tips and strategies for increasing traffic from search engines.
We'll discuss proven marketing and optimization techniques that will increase the number of visitors you get and bring more exposure to your website.

The SEO panelists include:

Stasia Holdren
Sitening, *Moderator*


Jon Henshaw, Sitening

Hannah Paramore
Paramore / Redd Online Marketing


And Work Media's Jerry Work.


If you live in Nashville, you should definitely check this event out!

Contact Work Media for help implementing your Internet marketing campaign.



Tags: internet marketing search engine optimization

Labels: internet marketing, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing

If your web site is intended for business purposes, then you really need it to meet the needs of two distinct groups: human beings and search engines.

People need to be led. Determine from the start exactly what action it is you want a visitor to your site to take, and lead them to that path. And think from the visitor’s point of view. What is she really looking for? Probably the most important thing you need to do is get the visitor’s contact information. Give the person a reason to leave his contact information and you can contact him again in the future, even if he chooses not to do business with you immediately.

Write with short sentences and use short paragraphs. Write in a snappy, conversational tone. Use bullet points to break up your text. Bullets, bold text, italic text and the like help make the text more visually interesting and easier to read.

At the same time, you need to write for the search engines. You need to give the search engines what they want to rank your site highly for phrases that relate to your product or service. After determining the major keywords or phrases you want to target, you need to make heavy use of those words on your web pages. You need to use them in headers and in image alt tags. They should be in the title and in the meta tags.

If you use a content management system, make sure it gives you the ability to change page titles and meta tags. It would also make a lot of sense to hire an experienced web site developer to look at the code generated by your content management system to make sure it is clean and not filled with junk.

Writing for people comes first, but you have to remember the machines as well.

Contact Work Media for help writing content for your web site.

The secrets angle is one that might work well for a professional services business. There are things you know how to do, or information you have, that most people don't know. Or that most people don't know that they know. If you don't know something that others don't, find something. Or merge pieces of information together into something new. It might take some work, but it's worth it. An ad with a title like "5 Secrets of Millionaire Real Estate Investors" compels people interested in real estate to read more. Combine that kind of compelling marketing hook with aggressive search engine optimization, and you've got a sure-fire targeted traffic generator.

Just as important as having a strong marketing hook is creating the impression that you are the absolute authority in your area of expertise. Write articles. Write books. Publish a blog. Get your name out there. If you use the secrets angle discussed above, back it up. Do your research.

Here is a real good formula for online marketing success:

Strong Marketing Hook + Authoritative Impression + Search Engine Optimization = Targeted Natural Traffic

Pick one of the six buttons of buzz discussed in my previous post and use it as the foundation for an attention-getting marketing angle. You don't have to create something completely new. You just have to repackage it in a new way. Following are examples of ways to present information in a more exciting way:

1. 5 Secrets of...
2. 10 Things You're Not Supposed to Know About...
3. We Will Tripple Your Money Back If You Don't...If We Don't...
4. Introducing the Biggest News in [Some Industry] in 15 Years...
5. The Shocking Results of 2 Years of Research Into [Something Related to Your Industry]...

Come up with something attention-getting (but real), combine it with a content creation program and SEO, and you've got a winner.

Contact Work Media for help implementing your Internet marketing campaign.

Tags: Internet marketing Search engine marketing

Search engine optimization techniques can be applied systematically and scientifically. There is a specific set of activites you can perform that will almost guarantee that you can at least achieve some visibility - that people will see your web site in the search engines. But to take things to the next level, you should couple your SEO campaign with the element of BUZZ.

Buzz means that your story is so interesting to people in your market niche that they can't stop talking about you. In his book BuzzMarketing, Mark Hughes discusses six buttons of buzz - six things that push people's buttons - around which you can build a marketing concept of buzz. They are:

The taboo
The unusual
The outrageous
The hilarious
The remarkable
The secrets

These are basically hooks to use as marketing concepts. An example of outrageous buzz marketing is Robert Allan's old stunt of being dropped in the middle of a city with only a few hundred bucks in his pocket yet end the weekend owning hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate. I can't speak for the long-term value of the investments he made, but it was a brilliant marketing move because it got people talking. Allan proved that it was possible to purchase a large amount of real estate with almost no money down, and has sold many millions of dollars worth of books and training courses as a result.

After Thanksgiving, I'll go into more detail about using the above marketing hooks for your online marketing. I recommend you pick up Hughes' book. It will kickstart your thinking about buzz marketing concepts you can apply to your business.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I'm gonna try and pick up the pace.

Have a great Thanksgiving!