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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Getting Started with Spanish SEO

The market for your products or services among those who speak Spanish is potentially massive. And chances are very good that you are completely missing out on that market. This is somewhat of a complex subject, but I am going to give you a bare-bones strategy for promoting your business to the Hispanic market.

1. It goes without saying, but if you are going to promote your business in Spanish, you need to be prepared to speak to someone in that language. So you are going to need someone on your staff who can do that.

2. Use Google's external keyword research tool to perform keyword research, but set the language preference to Spanish. The seed keywords should also be in Spanish:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3. Create content for your web site, or create a new web site altogether, written in Spanish and optimized for the keywords from step 2. However, you should avoid any kind of automated translation software or web site. You need to hire a real human being to do the translation work. If you're going to do it, do it right.

4. Generate keyword links to your Spanish language pages just like you would your English pages.

That's it! Easy, right?...

Well, not really. English language SEO is time consuming and has many moving parts. But doing it in a language that you are not familiar with adds a whole 'nother level of difficulty. If you are already fluent in Spanish, then you've got a big advantage over the rest of us.

Another consideration is whether you are promoting to a broad, global Spanish-speaking market or to markets in particular countries or to specific groups of people. There are many variations of the Spanish language, and what works and is acceptable language to one group may not be understood or considered rude by another group. In general, the best strategy is probably to take a high level, global perspective and try to avoid using language that is specific to any particular group.

So preparing yourself to do business with Spanish-speaking people will require some effort and resources, but it will open you up to a whole new market.

Labels: internet marketing, ppc search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, spanish, spanish seo

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Google Search Options You Should Try Out

There are many things about Google that I dislike. I dislike many of the things about the Google AdWords program, such as the change recently preventing advertisers from split-testing different domain names in their ads within an ad group. I dislike the way Google constantly throws out new technology, and then provides little in the way of support for it (for example, sometimes Blogger will publish to an external web server, and sometimes it won't, yet Google has shown very little interest in dealing with the problem or providing any guidance).

But the fact is, despite the many things I dislike about Google, I pound on the Google search ,engine non-stop. It is a fantastic research tool. There are a couple of Google search options that I recently started using that aid in the research process. If you write articles or use Google as a marketing tool (and you probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't), then you should try these out.

To start, do any search in Google. The search I am using as an example while I type this out is "law firm internet marketing." Hey, there's my law firm internet marketing site at number six, and the Amazon.com page for our book on the subject at number nine. Neat. Anyway, now click the Show options link next to the plus sign at the top left above where the search results start.

Now you should see lots of links along the left-hand side of the screen. Some of them let you focus in on specific types of search results, such as images or blogs or whatever. But the two that I want to discuss here are Related searches and Wonder wheel.

Clicking the Related searches link shows a number of other searches that are, obviously, related to your first search. I think it is safe to assume that these are search queries that people have actually used because some of them are way too specific to just be synonyms or whatever. Clicking on one of those related search query links brings up a new page of search results, just as if you had types that keyword into the search box. Doing this process repeatedly will expose you to all kinds of search terms that you may not have thought of that might be applicable to your business. If you are purely engaging in the process for research purposes, it may lead you to some web sites or resources you would not have found by using your own search terms.

The Wonder wheel option is similar to related terms but more dynamic. Clicking that option displays a circle (or "wheel") with your keyword in the middle and spokes coming out that point at related search terms. Clicking on one of the outside search terms draws another wheel with the second search term with a long spoke that connects to the first wheel, as well as its own set of spokes pointing to a new set of keywords. Really, this tool does the same thing that the Related searches link does, but it presents the information in a "mind mapping" kind of way and lets you see the path you followed to arrive at a search term.

Gain an edge on your competition by putting these tools to use today in your research and online marketing activities.

Labels: google, internet marketing, keyword research, research, search, search engine optimization

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Blog Comment Linking: Good or Bad?

Recently, in its Google Webmaster blog (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com), Google posted about spam links in blog comments, and how using these links will damage your positioning. This is a strategy that Work Media sometimes employs, so we wanted to address this subject.

First off, you have to take these things with a grain of salt. Google likes to keep things secretive, and we believe it often does and says things just to create confusion about how its algorithm works. And the Web is built on links. Google uses links to find web sites and as a measure of a site's worth in assigning it a ranking. So, in general, you still have to get links to your site if you want high search engine rankings.

For another thing, we don't think it really makes sense to PUNISH sites for having links to it. That's not to say Google doesn't do it, and it seems to have done it in the past, but think about this: if Google is going to punish a web site for having links to it contained in blog comments, why wouldn't I use this against my competitors? What is to stop me from going around to blogs and submitting spammy comments with links to my competitors' web sites?

Google says this: "...it's useless to think of harming your competitor's ranking by spamming comments with their name, since it usually won't affect their ranking if their sites are complying with Google Webmaster Guidelines."

Ah, there's the rub. If you do things the right way, you will be fine. Here is our approach to blog commenting:

1. Use a keyword for the name field.
2. Type a URL in the appropriate field.
3. Type out a well-written, well-thought-out comment that relates directly to the content of the blog post.

The difference between this approach and what Google is talking about is that we are making legitimate comments, while also taking advantage of the opportunity to get the link.

Here's another thing: don't rely solely on this or any other SEO strategy to get links. Mix it up. And be credible.

Here's another thing that we find odd: one of Google's suggestions is that a way to prevent this is to set comment links in your blog to no follow. However, it was recently revealed that doing that reduces the value of your own internal-pointing or other do follow links. The reason is that PageRank leaks out of your page from the no follow links, even though the pages the links point to do not get credited with the PageRank. So setting your links to no follow is now damaging to your own SEO efforts.

So what should you do? Don't worry about it. Do your blog commenting like we suggest above and you will be fine.

Labels: blog, blog management, blogging, internet marketing, link building, linking, search engine optimization, seo

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Google Shakeup: Just Stick to the Basics

Google has been doing some things lately with its index that have caused quite a bit of shuffling of rankings. However, what we are finding is that, in general, in a few days things get restored to something like what they were before. So if you have high rankings that have suddenly disappeared, chances are pretty good you will get them back in a few days. The main thing is: stay calm!

We have been checking a lot of our clients' rankings in the beta version of the new Google algorithm which is to be released in the near future. We are actually seeing improvements for many of our rankings with the new release. This validates our theory that, if you stick to the basics and work it, you will be fine.

So...what does that mean exactly?

First off, make sure the copy of your web site (including page titles and headers) is optimized for specific keywords, and not all on the same page. Spread your keywords out!

Make sure you have a keyword-rich internal linking structure. For example, if you are a law firm and your number one keyword is "Huntsville injury lawyer," then you should have lots of links throughout your site pointing back to your home page that incorporate that keyword.

Next, make sure you systematically build up a heavy catalog of external links to your site. And spread it out. If you do reciprocal linking, that is fine, but that should not be your only linking strategy. Submit articles to article directories. Add your site to general directories. Look for lots of places for your links, and add new links regularly.

Also, we have seen some evidence that Google may now be giving preference to sites that have been updated recently. So if you don't do a blog, set one up! Stream or publish it to your blog and update it regularly. Pepper your blog with keywords, links to your own content, as well as useful content from other web sites.

In other words...if you want to maintain or improve your search engine rankings, stick to the basics! It would also be an excellent idea to mix in some social media marketing, but that is another discussion.

Labels: google, internet marketing, keywords, linking, linking campaign, ppc search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Don't Be Fooled by this Old SEO Trick

Here is a trick of the SEO trade:

To demonstrate your skill in SEO by achieving a very high search engine ranking for a very low competition keyword.

Look, if your site ranks well for a keyword that noone ever uses, have you really accomplished anything? No! My partner relays an interesting story from his days at CJ Marketing about an SEO "expert" coming in and demonstrating how she could take a particular keyword and very quickly get it ranked number one on Google. Fantastic! Only...the web page she optimized was the ONLY result brought back by Google for that keyword. In other words, there was not a single other web page competing against her page for that keyword.

It is easy to be number one when you have ZERO competition!

So don't be fooled by this trick. SEO is not easy. It's not quick. And it's not cheap. If you want your web site to rank for keywords with no competition and no traffic, you don't need an SEO firm. You can easily make that happen yourself. But if you want to rank highly for competitive keywords that may actually drive targeted traffic to your web site, then you need to be prepared for war.

Labels: internet marketing, keywords, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

New Direction for Work Media

Work media is enjoying our new office located in downtown Dickson. Our productivity is up and our travel time is way down. We can all get to the office in 15 minutes or less, which uses more time to spend researching Internet Marketing strategies and applying them to our clients accounts. If any of you ever find yourself in Dickson (about 1/2 hour drive west of Nashville), we invite you to stop by for a visit. We are in the old Ragan arcade on main street.

We've been getting really heavy into social media and video. We have begun recording a lot of video footage, including short 12 second video four 12 seconds/twitter. Of loading videos to 12 seconds has a definite SEO advantage, in that it can result in the creation of a lot of web pages with a keyword links pointing to your main site. This is somewhat of an advanced strategy that could have a powerful long-term impact on a search engine optimization campaign.

Combining video, social media, and content distribution is definitely the state of the art in search engine marketing. We invite you to contact us today to talk about creating and implementing this type of marketing campaign for your business.

By the way, if you're into Twitter, you should check out our Twitter blog, http://twitterforbusiness.blogspot.com.

By the way one more time, I invite you to check out our 12seconds page, http://12seconds.tv/channel/lawfirmseo. As the name implies, this particular channel is intended to discuss law firm marketing, but it pretty much all applies to any type of business.

Labels: internet marketing, ppc search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media, social networking, video, video distribution

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Three Critical Criteria for Judging SEO Keywords

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

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Getting Organized with Your Social Networking

I have spent a good bit of time the last week using Excel to sketch out a social networking management system. The resulting spreadsheet will be a tool that we will give away for free for use of our readers. And the concept will then be carried forward into an online database-driven application that will be used for our own purposes and our clients'. But the exercise has been very helpful at helping me think through the process of how a social networking campaign should be organized.

First off, I consider content distribution to be a major part of online social networking. If you leave this part out, and just concentrate on meeting people online, then you are not taking advantage of the Web's ability to spread your name and marketing message. So writing blogs and articles and distributing that content should be an integrated part of what you do. The system I am setting up makes the assumption that you will be doing this.

Social networking is one of those things that tends to happen haphazardly, as time permits, whenever you think about it. It can be done much more effectively if you create a monthly social networking/content distribution schedule that tells you exactly when you should be doing things and what you should be doing.

To begin with, I suggest you create a simple calendar of when blog posts should be posted and articles written. Aim for eight blog posts per month and three articles. If you can do more than eight blogs, that's fantastic, but a minimum of eight is sufficient. In a year's time that is nearly a hundred blog posts, which is a lot of content. Three articles in a month may be aggressive, but try.

When you lay out your blogging and article writing schedule, go ahead and write out an idea for each blog post in advance, and create groupings of two or three blog posts in a row that elaborate on the same general topic. Then for each of those topic groupings of blog posts, specify a date to write an article that combines the information from those blog posts. This way, rather than trying to always think of a topic for an article from scratch, you can just use the content you create in the process of blogging as the basis for those articles.

Just doing the above things will go a long way toward giving your content distribution efforts more focus, but we're not done. In my next blog post we will continue talking about scheduling and hit on some other functions that should be included in your calendar.

Work Media is here to help with your social networking, content distribution and search engine marketing. If it involves driving traffic to a web site, we're into it. Give us call at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo, social bookmarking, social media, social networking

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Free Web Sites that Make Video Distribution Easier

Wow, we are really doing a lousy job with this blog this month. For about the last week, a large chunk of any available time at my (Jerry) disposal has been consumed with this law firm linking system we've been developing. The code for such a thing is extremely complex, and it seems like I just keep tripping over myself. It would probably help if I were a professional programmer, and not an Internet marketer trying to hack code together on his lunch break or late at night when my eyeballs feel like they're going to melt from staring at a computer screen.

Hmmm...we're already pretty deep into this blog post and I haven't said a thing that is of any use to someone looking to learn about Internet marketing. Here's something:

I have found a couple of sites that you can use for free to do video distribution. Well, one is for distribution and the other is for something else. One problem I have had is cleanly downloading videos from YouTube. YouTube does not have any kind of its own functionality to let you download videos you like. But I found a site, www.savevid.com, that makes it extremely easy...and it works! The videos you download actually seem to be just as high in quality as the original video hosted on YouTube. So...if you have a video or know of a video on YouTube that you would like to do something with, just visit www.savevid.com, type in the URL to the video, tell it what kind of file you would like, and you're all done!

For distributing videos, I have been trying out www.tubemogul.com, and it seems to work very well. I have used a couple of other solutions (Traffic Geyser and Hey!Spread), but this one seems to be the most intensive in terms of providing in-depth analytics, and it is free! Definitely worth a try.

Okay. I feel better now. It has been two weeks since my last blog post, but at least I did give you a couple of sites to check out. Now go promote your web site!

Labels: internet marketing, online video, SaveVid, search engine optimization, seo, TubeMogul, video, video distribution, YouTube

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Better Linking by Going Deep

April 8th and my first blog of the month. Shameful. My excuse is that I have spent a lot more time lately updating my newer blogs, those of the legal marketing variety on a couple of other sites. But really, there should be no excuses. I should just get it done. You need to have the same attitude yourself. You must blog!

Okay, now onto the actual subject of this blog.

When link building, the temptation is to always focus on your home page. Obviously, you would prefer that that be the page most people see and arrive at. It's sort-of like the cover of a book. It creates interest and gives the reader a little idea of what it is about.

So people love to link to their home page. However, the problem with this approach is that it does not account for two things:

1. You need to strive for a connection between the keyword in the link (if there is one) and keywords on the page that it links to; and

2. A single web page can only be optimized for a VERY small set of keywords (technically, it can only TRULY be optimized for one keyword).

So you want keyword-specific links pointing to keyword-specific pages. If you always link to your home page, you are not doing this. Instead, you need to practice something called "deep linking." Deep linking is the act of linking not to the home page but to a more specific sub-page. For example, if you have a web site that sells shoes, and there is a sub-page on the site devoted to Nike shoes, then a keyword link like "Nike shoes" would be more effective if it linked to the Nike page rather than your home page.

For help with your company's Internet marketing, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net, info@workmedia.net, or 888-299-4837.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, linking, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Getting Down and Dirty with Link Swapping

Don't tell me about search engine marketing. I have been doing this for years. I have hundreds of articles and blog posts all over the Web. I have two books in print. I have many satisfied clients. I know SEO.

So I feel qualified to tell you that, without a doubt, link swapping still works. My firm will continue engaging in link swapping on behalf of our clients until we see that it no longer works.

Yet this continues to be a practice that we are questioned about over and over. Look, the purpose of link swapping is not to provide your visitors with other web sites they might want to visit. Not at all. It is only for the purpose of improving search engine rankings.

I'm not at all implying that you should rely on link swapping is your only strategy for getting links. You need lots of links from lots of different places. One way links are preferable to swapped links, and you should take steps to get those kinds of links as well. But link swapping is one important component of your overall online marketing campaign.

If you're going to use this strategy, do it right. To begin with, have mo more than 50 links on a link swap page. So you will probably need to have multiple pages. You also need to supply your link partners with very specific verbiage and HTML to use for their links to you. And remember, this does not have to be a page that is featured prominently on your site. You just need a small text link somewhere on your home page for search engine spiders to follow. That will be good enough for search engines to find.

This is a great way to begin the process of building a catalog of links to your site if you are just getting started.

So don't be a snob. Set up a link swaps page or directory on your site and begin the process of swapping links with other relevant web sites. Over time, it will improve your search engine rankings.

By the way, if you promote a law firm, you have to check out the Law Firm Internet Marketing site.

Labels: link building, link campaign, link swapping, linking, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, March 05, 2009

An Example of a Cleanly Coded Site

We just finished work on a small web site for a local client, Property Solutions of Tennessee, which provides janitorial cleaning services for businesses in Nashville. Here is the URL:

http://www.propertysolutionstn.com

I advise you to check out the HTML on this site for an example of what a cleanly (and thus, more search engine friendly) site looks like. The main thing to take note of is how little code there is that formats the page. The sections of the page are separated by div tags that describe their appearance. There is some in-line styling used in a couple of places that would be better moved to an external file. But all in all, the code is minimal, which makes it much easier for search engine spiders to find what they are looking for.

Also take note of the keyword-rich title which is not overly bloated. The title is exactly ten words (although the word "of" in the title really doesn't count), and almost every words in the title is a keyword related to the company's business. The page also has meta tags that contain roughly the same keywords used in the title and in the page copy.

The other pages of the site all have a keyword link at the bottom that points to the home page. This establishes a theme for the site and boosts the home page relevance for those keywords.

This site has an excellent chance at ranking well. It is cleanly coded and optimized for specific keywords we uncovered in our research that we think our client has an excellent chance at ranking for. The only thing lacking now is some external keyword links (or any links in the case of a new site like this one) linking to the site.

If you operate on a local level and are careful with your keyword research, you can build a site that has a high change at ranking well, if you code the site well and use your target keywords throughout.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo

Friday, February 27, 2009

Get Those Social Networking Profiles Set Up!

Take the time to set up your profiles on social networking sites. I know, I know, it takes forever...but it must be done. And it is my suggestion that you have lots of such accounts. It is not sufficient just to have a LinkedIn profile. You should create accounts at Squidoo and LinkedIn and set up good profiles there. You also need accounts at the major article directories like EzineArticles.

To create all these accounts and set up profiles, you will need to devote at least a half day to it, if not the whold day.

This is the kind of work that would be good to hire someone else to do. I suggest you create a document that has your bio, contact information, links, and any other information you may want shown on your profiles, and then find an intelligent young person to do the work for you. Paying a kid $10 per hour to do it is a bargain compared to using your own time, which you probably value a lot more than that.

Do people really look at other people's profiles on social networking sites? Absolutely. So don't blow an opportunity to brand and market yourself to people who are potential sources of business or leads.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, social media, social networking

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Article Post Robot: Recommended Article Distribution Software

I have been trying out an article distribution software package called Article Post Robot, and so far I am impressed. Unlike many other things I have tried, this may actually be worth the money. Article Post Robot has some features that I really like. For one thing, it submits to all of the major article directories, and not just directories that are based on a particular kind of script. It also gives you the ability to add your own article directories that you want to submit to.

And it also does article spinning. It uses the traditional article spinning syntax (only it uses "{{{" rather than just "{") and even has the ability to pull paragraphs from different articles located in a directory on your hard drive to create new articles on the fly. So it offers a lot of flexibility and actually seems to work pretty well.

It may be a little soon, because I really like to hammer on any software I use before recommending it, but I feel pretty confident about this one. So here it is: I officially recommend Article Post Robot.

Here is a link if you'd like to check it out for yourself:

ArticlePostRobot.com

Labels: article distribution, article marketing, article spinning, article writing, articles, internet marketing, link campaign, linking, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Return to Squidoo

I logged into Squidoo yesterday to build a new lens ("lens" being Squidoospeak for a web page) for a client. It had been a while since I had logged in, which isn't good but isn't necessarily bad either. One of the great things about Squidoo is all of the modules it provides for building your lenses that update themselves automatically. So you can build a lens that will continue to show new content every day even if you don’t do anything to it for months or years.

Anyway…I logged in to build a new lens and noticed some major changes to the Squidoo interface that make it much quicker to add modules and align modules on your page. Last year, I spent a couple of weeks setting up Squidoo lenses and it was very slow process because of what was required to add and re-order modules. Now that that process is much quicker, Squidoo is much better.

So why should you set up pages in Squidoo? It's been a while since we've talked about it, so here is a super quick refresher. Squidoo is a social networking site founded by Seth Godin that Google really loves. Often, a page on Squidoo that pertains to your subject area will rank quicker and higher than your own web site. So links from Squidoo carry a lot of weight.

You should incorporate Squidoo as part of your social networking/content distribution campaign. If you publish a blog, you should use the RSS module to stream your blog posts to your Squidoo lenses. And use some of the news publishing modules to automatically keep them updated with news about your industry.

The Squidoo teams seems to be trying to make the site easier to use, so if you haven't checked it out yet, now is a great time.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo, social networking, squidoo

Monday, January 26, 2009

SEO Software Review: Neurolinker

Today we're going to do a quick product review. For a couple of weeks now we have been using a product called Neurolinker, which is an online service that facilitates link sharing among its members. There are other similar services but we were attracted to this one because of the positive comments we read regarding the developer's support and its price, which is very reasonable at less than $30 per month.

To use Neurolinker, you place a snippet of code (in either PHP or .NET) on the page on your web site that you want to contain your outbound links to other Neurolinker members. Basically, you are setting up a link swap page, only rather than manually set up reciprocal links, the script does it for you. In a day or two after installing the script, you will see quite a few links pointing to other web sites. The beauty of the system is that other members running the script on their web sites will also be linking back to you.

You can configure the links to be highly related to your web site or light on relevance. To start out, I used the more loose configuration. You have access to reports that show exactly what sites are linking to you, which is a very nice feature. I found that there were quite a few sites linking to our sites that were highly relevant, but also quite a few that were highly unrelated. We are now testing the system with the tighter configuration.

The system also has a social bookmarking feature. This is a really cool feature…IF people are doing it. It relies on the honor system, so it does not provide the kind of visibility you get with the swapped links. Basically, you bookmark the web sites of other members, earning “brownie points” as you do. The more points you accumulate, the higher your sites will appear on the list of sites to bookmark for other members. So the more you bookmark others' sites, the more your site will be bookmarked.

We will have a much better idea if Neurolinker is worth using in a few more weeks, but so far it looks very promising.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, neurolinker, search engine optimization, seo

Monday, December 08, 2008

Building Out Your Information Hub with RSS

In a recent post, we talked about building your own information hub for search engine marketing purposes. This provides two major benefits: first, sites that are very heavy in content that changes often tend to rank highly; and second, an information hub provides you with a way to guide search engine spiders to web pages you want them to find, which will generally link back to your main site.

But who has time to build and maintain TWO web sites?

There is a technology that can make maintaining an information hub much easier: RSS. RSS, which is generally understood to mean "Real Simple Syndication," is an XML file that contains information about web pages that can be streamed to your web site. Any web site can publish an RSS file, and most sites that feature articles or blog posts do so. So this means you can "borrow" material from other web sites to feature on your web site. That is how you can build an information hub without actually creating all the content yourself.

So how do you use RSS? You are going to have to write some code for your web pages that can retrieve an RSS file and then get the information out of the file for use on your site. There are a lot of different ways to do this, partly depending on what server runs your site.

Following is some code that you can plug into an ASP site (which will generally run on a Windows/IIS server):

Set xmlHttp = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0")xmlHttp.Open "Get", WebSiteURL, falsexmlHttp.Send()
RSSXML = xmlHttp.ResponseText

'The above code retrieves an RSS file from the supplied URL ("WebSiteIRL") into an XML object.

Set xmlDOM = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DomDocument.3.0")xmlDOM.async = falsexmlDOM.LoadXml(RSSXML)

'The above code loads the XML data into a DomDocument object.

Set xmlHttp = Nothing
' clear HTTP object
Set RSSItems = xmlDOM.getElementsByTagName("entry")
' collect all "items" from downloaded RSS
Set xmlDOM = Nothing ' clear XMLRSSItemsCount = RSSItems.Length-1

'The above code gets the "entry" elements in the XML file into an array of items.

For i = 0 to RSSItemsCount
For each child in RSSItem.childNodes

'Do something with each child node
'For example, if there are nodes called "title", you might have a line like:

if lcase(child.nodeName) = "title" then response.write (child.text)end if
Next

The above code loops through the items in the array and does something with each piece of data. This is where you display the information on your screen.

I cannot take credit for writing the above code. I found it online somewhere a long time ago and have used it on many web sites. It works great. If you don't understand this, any decent web developer should be able to implement something like this for you.

Labels: information hub, internet marketing, link building, link campaign, linking campaign, RSS, scientific search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, December 04, 2008

New Law Firm Internet Marketing Book

We just finished our latest book, The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book, and have created a new page to buy the book on our law firm Internet marketing web site:

http://law-firm-internet-marketing.net/the-law-firm-internet-marketing-book.asp

This book is highly targeted toward the legal industry. If you are responsible for the promotion of a law firm web site, you should definitely check this book out. Currently, it is only for sale via digital download in PDF format, but in a couple of weeks it will be for sale on Amazon.com for those of you who prefer a hard copy.

Some of the topics covered by the book include:

Keyword research to identify the keywords that people are using to search for the legal services you offer.

On-page optimization to rank highly for your target keywords.

How to use blogs and the SEO content cycle to create huge amounts of content to link to your site.

Using social networking sites like Squidoo and StumbleUpon to promote your web site.

Using social bookmarking sites to improve search rankings.

Creating your own informational site to guide the search engines to links you want them to find.

How to create XML sitemaps to make sure the search engines find all of your web pages.

How to perform keyword research specifically for pay per click.

How to manage your pay per click accounts to generate the maximum number of leads for your marketing dollars.

How to write pay per click ads and landing pages that get results.

Specific pay per click strategies for Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.

How all the pieces of search engine marketing fit together.

This is a book based on real-world strategies that Work Media uses to promote our clients.

Labels: internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer website marketing, legal marketing, mobile pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Guide the Search Engine Spiders with Your Own Information Hub

You should consider building a new web site separate from your main site that functions as an information hub for your industry. You can use RSS feeds to dynamically create much of the content for the site, which will save you the effort of trying to manually updating it with new links or articles. So why would you want to take the time to do such a thing?

There are a few good reasons, but the one we are most interested in is this: to have a means to guide search engine spiders to other web sites that rank to your main site, without linking directly to them from your main site.

The reason you would want to guide search engine spiders in this way is so that you do not end up with nothing but two-way links, but you also want to make sure that other web pages that contain links to your site are found. There is certainly a good chance that Google (or whoever) will find all those links on its own, but why not make it easy and point right to them?

To really take this strategy to the next level, you should give your new site, the information hub, its own IP address so that there is nothing tying the sites together. But even if you don't do that, it is still a good strategy because it eliminates cross-linking between other sites and your site.

Another big advantage is that the information hub gives you another opportunity to get your marketing message across. But avoid the temptation to make it just an extension of your web site for purposes of selling your services. It needs to stand on its own as a valuable source of impartial information.

Here are a couple of links with more link building strategies:

http://link-building-strategies.tumblr.com/post/56579067/link-building-strategies-that-really-work

http://www.zimbio.com/link-building-strategies/articles/2/Link+Building+Strategies+Work

Labels: internet marketing, link building, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Legal Web Site Marketing Resources

We've been writing a lot lately about law firm Internet marketing. Here are some interesting articles on that subject:

http://www.zimbio.com/website-marketing-for-lawyers/articles/2/Lawyer+Website+Marketing+Strategies
.
http://targeting-search-marketing-attorney.wetpaint.com/

We'll post more links in subsequent posts.

Sorry for the lack of blog updates lately. We are violating one of our own major principles, which is to publish content in the form of a blog on a regular basis. We've been doing lots of social networking type of stuff, but neglecting our core audience. We'll try to do better.

We are finishing up our newest book, Law Firm Internet Marketing. Like the last book, it will be for sale on Amazon.com. Expect to see it for sale in December.

Labels: internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, lawyer website marketing, legal marketing, scientific search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Announcing Launch of New Web Site Devoted to Law Firms

We have been working on a new web site, www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net, that is a site devoted to information about using Internet marketing to promote law firm web sites. Law firms spend an incredible amount of money on advertising, including outdated vehicles like large Yellow Pages ads. It is our mission to inform the legal community about ways to better spend their marketing dollars - about how to use the Internet to generate more clients at a lower cost.

The site still needs a few tweaks, but it is there for the most part. It includes an articles page that will grow over time as we write new material. And the site will eventually be heavily optimized in conjunction with an off-site linking/content campaign to build a link catalog. If we can't actively demonstrate what we do by causing our own sites to rank well, then what good are we?

We love working with law firms. Our co-founder Chris Work has an extensive background working specifically with law firms, having optimized and promoted dozens of law firm web sites. And we are sickened by the scam that is pulled every day in the industry of promoting legal web sites...and that is when a firm gets conned into signing up with a company to promote its site, while that company is also simultaneously promoting web sites for dozens of firms IN THE SAME CITY! We're not going to name names, but if you know anything about this industry, you know who we're talking about.

So we are taking a more proactive stance to get into this market and take market share away from the scammers.

If you are responsible for marketing and promotion at a law firm, please call us today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We can save you a ton of money over your traditional media, and we will ONLY work for you to reach the top of the search rankings in your city.

Labels: internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Is Google Saying Links Are Not Important?

Do links still work? Google publishes a Webmaster Guidelines document intended to give web site owners clues as to what they should do to rank well in its search engine. There has been some commotion in the online marketing industry about the removal of some copy that suggested submitting your web site to directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ. So...is this a sign that
links are no longer important?

Absolutely not. I think it is more a continuation of Google's attempt to eliminate paid links as a way of improving rankings.

For instance, Google is fully aware that Yahoo! charges a fee for inclusion in its directory. So how is this different from buying a link on any other web site?

What this means for you is that you just need to continue seeking links from lots of different locations. Add your web pages to social bookmarking sites. Set up pages on social networking sites. Post responses on blogs (preferably blogs that allow "dofollow" links. Keep writing and distributing articles. These are all still effective techniques for generating lots of links that do not fall into the category of paid links.

As for straight-up paid links, I still think the technique is valid, but it should be used in moderation. If you are going to buy links, buy a small package of links from very high quality sites. Avoid the temptation to buy thousands of low cost links on low quality sites.

Today's Squidoo lens is about running ads on MSN. MSN definitely has its own quirks, so this Squidoo lens discusses some of the things you need to watch out for, and features a number of videos on the subject of pay per click marketing.

Labels: google, internet marketing, link campaign, linking, paid links, scientific search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Search engine reputation management

We've been thinking quite a bit lately about search engine reputation management. This is an emerging trend in the online promotion industry that is going to take on more and more importance in the years to come. Search engine reputation management could be defined as a sub-set of reputation management, the practice of taking steps to insure that your reputation is not tarnished by disgruntled customers or clients. Search engine reputation management is the process of reducing the visibility of search engine results that portray a business negatively.

This is accomplished by purposely positioning other content above the negative content in search engine rankings. Now...this is easier said than done, because as you know, ultimately you have no control over where search engines rank web pages. However, an experienced search engine optimization firm will understand the way pages are ranked well enough to create content that has an excellent chance at ranking highly.

Search engine reputation management can save your business' reputation and keep the cash register ringing. If somebody is spreading false rumors about you online, you should seriously looking into a search engine reputation management campaign to minimize the damage. Work Media can help you make it happen. Just call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: reputation management, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine reputation management, seo

Monday, September 29, 2008

Article Spinning Software: The Value in Spinning Content

Today's featured Squidoo lens is on the subject of banner ads. There are times when advertising on search engine results pages for your industry is just too expensive, in which case you may want to turn to content network advertising. You can run text ads on content networks, but sometimes you get better results with graphical banner ads. So obviously, banner ad creation is an important part of that process. Now on today's main topic...

Article Spinning Software: Should You Use It?

Content "spinning", or article spinning, is the act of taking seed content (such as an article) and creating different versions of it by changing words, passages, and paragraphs. It is somewhat of a controversial practice because, depending on how it is used, it can result in spam. For example, if I create an article and then use article spinning software to create a thousand slightly different versions of the article for blasting around to various web sites...that would probably be considered a spamming, or "black hat", technique.

That is not the way my firm practices spinning. I believe if you create spun content that has a large degree of variation that is optimized in such a way to be easily found with different keywords, then the technique is legitimate. So content that we spin has a large amount of variation between versions. It is a time consuming process, but still faster than maintaining a one-to-one ratio between original content and content locations. It gives us leverage on our time, but does not bombard the Web with content that is essentially the same.

This concept is similar to one we have discussed many times before, which is re-purposing content. For example, taking two blog posts that are about the same subject and combining them into an article, and then distributing the article directories. Like content spinning, it gives you great leverage on your time.

Certainly, publishing a blog is a fantastic start to a content campaign. But you need to go far beyond simply publishing your blog. You need to make maximum use of every word you type, and content spinning is one technique to make that happen.

To answer the question of this post: should you use article spinning software?, the answer is "yes." But do it in an ethical manner. If you don't have serious time to put into writing your articles so that each version will be very unique, then don't do it.

For help in making the absolute best use of your writing for purposes of improving your search engine rankings, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, article spinning, content, content creation, content distribution, content spinning, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Five Squidoo Lens Tips

Today's Squidoo lens is about what to look for in an internet advertising agency.

For a couple of weeks now, we've been building Squidoo lenses on a variety of topics. We hope to achieve "Giant Squid" status because that will give us better leverage of Squidoo for marketing purposes. To achieve that, you have to have 50 active lenses that people actually visit. So we're building lenses on all kinds of topics, not just Internet marketing. Anyway, following are some tips for making the most of your Squidoo lenses that we have gleaned from our own experiences so far and advice we have read from others.

1. Use your keywords in links to your main web site. This is the most basic SEO use of your Squidoo lenses. If you build a good lens, it only makes sense to place a prominent keyword link on the page that links to your site for the SEO boost.

2. Link your Squidoo lenses to each other. Help visitors find their way to your various Squidoo lenses by placing a list of links to those lenses in each one.

3. Spend some time on your lenses. This one seems obvious, but you may be tempted to throw up a bunch of half-constructed lenses. For a Squidoo strategy to work, your lenses really do need to be high quality. Fortunately, using the Squidoo modules, it is very easy to build a lens that updates itself. You just have to take the time to set up the modules properly.

4. Help search engines find your lenses. Link to your lenses in your blog posts or your main web site.

5. Tag your lenses. Do your keyword research (we suggest using Google's external keyword tool) and use a combination of high traffic and long-tail keywords for your Squidoo lens tags.

Follow these tips and you will be on your way to building a series of strong Squidoo lenses that will help your search engine marketing campaign. If you could use some help with these types of advanced link building strategies, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, squidoo

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Guiding the Search Engines

Today's Squidoo lens is about advertising copywriting. Strong copywriting can make a profound impact on your business performance. The advertising / copywriting Squidoo lens reveals the top five copywriters whose work you should study to learn how to write powerful advertising copy.

We recently published a new article on our site about a concept called "PageRank reflection," which, in a nutshell, is the process of linking to high PageRank sites that have links back to your site in order to help search engine spiders find the link back to your site. It is similar in concept to link swapping, only rather than having a link placed on the other site via a link swap, you take advantage of social networking or bookmarking sites that let you have control over the link placement. The example we hit on in the article was using Squidoo. To read more about the details of using Squidoo to accomodate PageRank reflection, read the article (no reason to re-write it here).

The general idea is to guide search engine spiders to pages you want them to find so that they will find the links back to your site. This concept applies to any web site where you have a link back to your site. It applies not only to social networking type sites but directories, blogs, and any other kind of web site. If there are blog posts where you have a link
(via a comment or whatever), you should link to the blog in order to let search engine spiders find that link back to your site.

One strategy you might consider is creating a web page specifically for the purpose of displaying links back to your site. There should naturally be some kind of common theme to those links (for example, most links to our site are located on other web sites that deal with Internet marketing), so it will resemble sort-of a mini-directory, which is a perfectly legitimate purpose for a web site. If you create such a site, register a new domain name for it and link to it from your main site. This will allow search engine spiders to easily find your links directory and begin following those links. Those links will all link to pages that link back to your main site. It's all just one big circle.

This process does take some time, but it is time well spent. Eventually, the search engines will probably find most of your links anyway, but the faster and easier you make it, the quicker you will climb the search engine rankings.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net for help with your link building campaign. We can take over the burden of building a broad, well-constructed catalog of links to your site, so you can focus on managing the leads that come through.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, link campaign, linking, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Link Building

Squidoo lens of the day: http://www.squidoo.com/linkbuildingseo

We are playing around with some software that may be of use to anyone looking to build their inbound link catalog. It's called Fast Blog Finder, and it's purpose is to locate blogs about particular subjects that allow "dofollow" links in their comments. Dofollow links are links that search engine spiders can follow. So these are the kinds of links that help to improve search engine rankings. All links, by default, are dofollow links. The Web exists today as we know it because of the ability of search engine spiders to follow links and build indexes of web sites.

The problem is that any time there is free and open ability to post material with dofollow links, there are some who try to exploit the situation. In my opinion, for ethical, legitimate Internet marketers, it is okay to post comments on others' blogs, with links back to your site, if they are posting something legitimate that relates to the subject of the blog post. But there are those who would post thousands of blatantly commercial messages on blog posts simply to get the links back to their site. And so most blogs today do not allow dofollow links in their comments. The few have ruined it for the many.

However, there are still blogs that allow dofollow links. Generally comments on these blogs are monitored closely, so that even if a blatantly non-relevant commercial message is posted it will not stay on the blog for long. So it is still necessary to make legitimate comments based on the subject of the blog post.

Fast Blog Finder looks for blog posts based on a seed keyword, and it examines the comments on the blog posts to see if they allow dofollow links. It then reports the results back to you and highlights the blogs that do allow the correct type of link. You can save blogs you like in particular into a favorites list. This is useful because there is a good chance that if there is one post in a blog relevant to your business, there are more. So if you have the blog saved, you can return to it in the future and make more comments on other posts in the blog.

If there are no existing comments, the software is unable to determine if the blog allows dofollow links. That is the major weakness of the software, because we have found that a very large percentage (probably around 40%) of the blog results brought back do not report the link type allowed. Despite this weakness, the software still saves you a ton of time, and at a cost of about $50, it's still a bargain.

Regardless of how you go about it, making periodic comments on blog posts that allow dofollow links back to your site is a very good technique to combine with your other link building strategies. You want to have links from as many different types of sites as possible, and one way links from relevant blogs can be quite valuable.

If you could use some help managing a linking building campaign for your site, call Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link building, linking campaign, paid links, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Work Media Update

No blog posts for weeks...that's not good. But honestly, we have had so many projects in the works that blogging has just fallen down the list of priorities. But I know, I know...I have made the point before that if you publish a blog, you should find a way to make 2 or 3 blog posts a week no matter what. And I have broken that rule. So let's start over.

Here are some of the things going on at Work Media. First off, our first retail book is now for sale at Amazon.com, Scientific Search Engine Marketing: Maximizing Your Pay per Click Return on Investment. You can also buy a digital download version on the Work Media web site. The book will absolutely improve your pay per click management skills. No questions. Go buy it now.

We have been begun releasing videos with search engine marketing advice. Because of a bug in the Blogger platform, our videos no longer get automatically added as blog posts, so we will have to begin adding them here manually.

We have also gotten heavy into using Squidoo. Squidoo, if you don't know, is a site created by Seth "Permission Marketing" Godin that is sort-of a combination of a wiki-style site and a social networking site. Here are a couple of the Squidoo lenses we have set up so far so you can see what we're talking about.

http://www.squidoo.com/searchenginemarketingservice

http://www.squidoo.com/ppc-campaign

We're going to have a lot of these before it's over with, so we'll post the URLs here as they go live. The cool thing about Squidoo is the way the pages are put together. You create pages (which are called "lenses" in Squidoo language) using a combination of modules, which are page elements that can be configured to automatically pull content from various sources. It lets you easily create an informative, dynamic page that updates itself. Squidoo also offers some advantages for SEO, which we will discuss in future blog posts and videos.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some help and guidance promoting your web site via search engine marketing.

Labels: search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, squidoo, video

Friday, July 18, 2008

Web Site Design...Hire an SEO Expert FIRST!

We get lots of calls from businesses wanting us to optimize and promote their new web sites after their construction...people, people, when are you going to learn that you need to hire your search engine optimization expert BEFORE building your site?

We are working with an ecommerce site that was built in a platform that does not allow the product category links (which are text links) to have titles. This is a definite weakness and one that we would have suggested the company fix before launching the site. And this is just one example of numerous flaws that should be fixed. To fix these items now, our client will have to pay its developer to implement the changes. The Company would probably have saved money overall if it had hired us to begin with so that the site could be constructed properly to start with. But now that the site has already launched, extra charges are required to implement our suggested changes.

I wish I could get into the head of every person currently in charge of having a web site built for his business and say these words:

Hire a search engine optimization professional to consult on your web site development!
If you will do this the next time your business begins the process of launching a new site, you will end up with a site already optimized to rank well for specific keywords. You will also save yourself a lot of redevelopment time and expense because the site will already be done right the first time.

If your company is in the process of building a new web site, PLEASE CALL US! If you don't call us, call somebody! Call somebody who is experienced in search engine optimization. Get it done right the first time, and save yourself a lot of frustration down the road. You can contact us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

By the way, did you get a chance to check out our video from Wednesday? There will be many more to come and we have already begun working on videos for our clients as well. The first one is a little crude, but we're still getting our techniques down.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Time to Break Out the Flash? Hell No!

Some news came out recently that Google and Adobe are working together to make Flash-based web sites indexable. So...it's safe to start building sites in Flash now, since Google will be able to index and rank them, right?

Forget about it. Unless you already have high name recognition and receive heavy direct traffic that does not originate from search engines, then you need to stick with the basics.

Google has been able to read the text portion of Flash files for a good while. After reading about the new initiative, nothing really jumped out at me as being any different from what Google already does. They are studying Flash in-depth to better understand how it works and how to index Flash content.

Studying?...

To me, "studying" doesn't mean much. It could still be years before Google can interpret a Flash file the way it can a standard HTML file. Do not rely on advances within Google to raise your search engine rankings. Be proactive, work hard, and stick to the fundamentals.

If you don't know what the fundamentals are, you need to call us. Or spend some time reading through our old blog posts, or any of the free guides on our Resources page. Those are the fundamentals. Content, optimized HTML, and links. Stick with those, and avoid Flash, unless search engine rankings are not important to your business.

If you need some help optimizing your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Flash, google, internet marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web site marketing

Monday, June 30, 2008

Just Say No to Paid Links

In the past, we have recommended using paid links (not paid search ads, but paid links) to boost a web site's external link count and improve its search engine rankings. Although much has been made the last couple of year's about Google's battle against paid search marketers who use paid links, the technique continued to work.

But that trend may have changed.

We recently noticed that a site for which we had been using paid links received a beatdown at the hands of Google in terms of its rankings. They plummeted. Around that same time, we noticed that Google had launched a new form where anyone can report a web site for using paid links. Then I guess the Google decency patrol will investigate and punish the site accordingly.

So...when it comes to something so important, so precious, as your search engine rankings, you can't take any chances. We think the environment for using paid links may have gotten too dangerous, now that Google has made it so easy and encourages narcing on other sites for using paid links.

If you are paying for links, our advice is to reallocate that money toward press release distribution. You will accomplish the result of generating new links, and you will be safe from punishment at the hands of Google. So protect your rankings and play it safe.

Stay away from paid links.

Call Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some help with your search engine marketing.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, online press releases, paid links, pr, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing

Friday, June 27, 2008

A More Accurate Way to Estimate Keyword Traffic

The very best source of keyword data for your search engine optimization campaign may be your own paid search campaign. We use keyword research tools such as NicheBot.com a lot, especially early in the life of an SEO campaign. The problem is the data generated by such tools is only an estimate, and sometimes those estimates are highly inaccurate.

If you want concrete proof about the potential traffic for various keywords, take a look at the search queries people are using that have triggered your ads. In Google, you can run a search query performance which will show you most of the actual search terms that were used when your ads were displayed. One column of data in the report is impression share. If you run a report for a month, then divide the number of queries for any particular keyword by the impression share for that month, you will have a pretty accurate total for the number of times that keyword was used in that month. If you then divide that by 30, you will have an estimate for the number of times that search term is used on a daily basis.

The formulas are as follows:

Monthly Searches = Number of Impressions / Impression Share

Daily Searches = (Number of Impressions / Impression Share) / 30

You can then plug these search queries into NicheBot or another tool to get an idea of how many directly competing sites there are for the keyword. Or you can type the search query into Google surrounded by quotes to get an estimate of the competition.

The final data set created by doing this will give you a more accurate picture of actual search traffic and competition than simply relying on the information provided by keyword research tools. You can't go wrong with hard data.

If you need some help conducting keyword research for your search engine optimization or pay per click marketing campaigns, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, paid search, pay per click, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Don't be Discouraged by the Google Dance

Man, achieving a very high ranking in Google for desirable keywords can be tough. We have been heavily promoting our site for a few select keywords and are right on the cusp of positioning ourselves the way we want, but Google keeps bouncing us around. Now, I will say that these are very competitive keywords, and we're competing against lots of other companies that all know about search engine optimization...a pretty tough situation.

We actually rocketed up the rankings fairly quickly, then Google started moving us down, down, down. But we just kept working, and eventually we started rising again. The lesson here for you is that if you want high search engine rankings, you just to be patient and keep working. Never stop promoting. Never stop distributing content, writing your blog, seeking links partners, and all the other things you do to promote your web site.

Like we've said before: You can't outspend your competition, but you can outwork them. If you are intelligent in the way you go about your SEO campaign, eventually you will see results.

If you could use some professional help with your own search engine optimization campaign, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Lessons from the Presidential Primaries

There are some important lessons to be learned from the presidential primaries that relate directly to search engine marketing:

1. Successful search engine marketing requires diligence.
2. You must make the most of the visits to your web site.

For example, in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama ran an ongoing paid search campaign so that his marketing message was constantly seen. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, ran ads sporadically. Obama consistently collected names, email addresses, and donations for months on end, building a huge database of voters and bankrolling his campaign with millions in small donations.

And now we know the outcome.

Obama has won the Democratic nomination and will be running for President against John McCain. McCain himself has done a good job of consistently using paid search ads to build mailing lists and collect donations. Even though he had no competition late for the Republican nomination, McCain wisely continued promoting and building momentum. Chances are excellent that both candidates will continue to use search engine marketing all the way up to the election.

How can you use search engine marketing to gain an advantage over your competitors?

Let us know if you need some help with SEO or pay per click management for your business.

Labels: internet marketing, mobile pay per click, paid search, ppc, presidential primaries, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Seven Questions to Ask Your Potential SEO Firm

SEO is a confusing service to purchase. Talk to ten different companies and you'll hear much of the same thing, yet get ten wildly different prices.
So here is a list of seven questions that will help you make the determination of what firm to hire.

1. How many hours per month will you be devoting to promoting my site? If you have received a quote that is very low, it may be because you're really not getting very much time for your money.

2. Who will actually be doing the work? Is it done in-house or farmed out to off-shore contractors?

3. What is your hourly rate? If a firm's rate is too low, is it a real business or some guy doing it from his house on the side? You should know this.

4. Can you give some examples of rankings earned for clients? This one is obvious.

5. What are your methods? Here is where it helps to have done some homework and know a thing or two about search engine optimization. Avoid any company that immediately starts talking about meta tags.

6. How do you decide on keywords? Your SEO firm should offer guidance to help you choose keywords that generate a reasonable amount of traffic with as little competition as possible.

7. Do you have referrals? Even if you never follow up with the referrals, you'd like to see that the firm is confident enough to provide them.

So there you have it. Ask these seven questions and you will have a much better understanding of what any particular SEO firm offers and what the true cost is.

If you need any help with your SEO or PPC management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Thursday, May 29, 2008

The Two Heads of RSS

RSS, or "Real Simple Syndication," is a file format that allows for the streaming of text Web content. It has two primary uses in the field of marketing, and you should probably make use of both. The two uses are to stream content from other Web publishers onto your web site, and to stream your Web content onto other publishers' web sites.

The benefit of streaming others' content onto your web site is that it will keep your web site updated with new content. Search engines love new content, as do people. The way this process works is quite simple, although some programming may be necessary to implement the technique on your web site.

The benefit of having your content streamed to other web sites is that it results in links back to content on your site. If you have streamed content that other web sites find valuable, then it is like casting hooks into a pond. The more hooks you have out there (the more web sites there are that use your streamed content), the more likely you are to get traffic to your web site, either in the form of direct click-throughs or improved search engine rankings.

The easiest way to create streamed content is to publish a blog with a blogging platform that creates automatic RSS feeds of your blog posts. An example is Blogger, which automatically creates a URL to an Atom file, which is just a different name for an RSS file.

However you go about creating your content and RSS file, it is helpful to publish your RSS URL to RSS directories. If you publish your content in blog format, I suggest you use a web site called Pingomatic.com. It will automatically ping a number of popular blog and RSS directories about your updated blog. It is also free. There are more advanced paid options available as well.

If you could use some help implementing RSS into your search engine marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837. We're here to help.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, real simple syndication, RSS, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Social Marketing - Keep it Interesting

I (Jerry) have been heavy, heavy into article marketing this year. It has become my personal favorite way of increasing link count. However, I am beginning to experience what I believe may be some resistance on the part of Google to rank sites with a large number of links primarily from article-related sites.

You gotta mix it up. In an attempt to do just that, I have also been doing some social bookmarking. But I have to admit, the social bookmarking component has not worked quite as well. The problem there is that for social bookmarking to be really effective, you need lots of other people to bookmark your site BECAUSE THEY REALLY LIKE IT and think others would enjoy it as well. So ultimately, it's out of your hands.

What can you do about this? It's simple, really, although also quite complex. You have to create content that is REALLY interesting. Just being a source of useful information is not enough. You need a gimmick. A hook. Something that makes people laugh, or gasp, or something...you need a reaction!

Simply bookmarking your own home page will not do it. Your site needs to be loaded with interesting content. You may not even want the content on your front page if it detracts from your core marketing message. This is only something you'll use as a hook so that people want to bookmark your site.

I'm not at all slowing down on article marketing. We have seen fantastic results, and it has benefits beyond search rankings, such as direct-click-throughs and credibility. But if you engage in article marketing, you should supplement it with other link building strategies.

If you need some help coming up with interesting ways to build a catalog of links to your site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo, social bookmarking, social media

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Beware of False Promises

If you are thinking of working with a search engine optimization company and they tell you they can have your site ranked on the first page of Google within a week...you need to step back and ask yourself what you are really getting. Yes, it is probably possible to have a site highly ranked in Google within one week...

...for a keyword that no one is using!

Here's the deal. It does not matter if your site is number one on Google, if that number one ranking is for a keyword that no one is using to search for your type of business. The point of a search engine marketing campaign is not to achieve rankings...it's to drive traffic. That is the reason we really don't have any kind of package deals right now where we promise X number of rankings for Y keywords. Every web site is different. Every situation is different.

We may end up marketing our services via such packages before it's over with (if that's what we have to do to stay in business), but we definitely prefer to take it on a case-by-case basis. It may be the case that for your web site, for your industry, you only need to be ranked for one keyword to generate a ton of traffic. If that is true, then we focus our efforts on that one keyword. Or there may be five different keyword that, collectively, would drive a ton of the traffic you need. In that case, we will focus on those five keywords.

So don't be fooled by the claims of some SEO firms. Sure...they can probably have you ranked on the first page of Google within a week...but they won't put any money in your bank account.

Please contact Work Media is you need any help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management. We won't make any grand promises, but we will give it to you straight. And we will work our butts off to get you ranked for the keywords that will actually result in customers for your business.

Labels: keywords, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

Monday, April 21, 2008

Lose the Ego - It's About the Keywords, Not Your Name

Get used to being known as a keyword rather than a name. If you're trying to generate search engine rankings, at least. For example, which of the following would make a better signature for an article or blog post response?

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

or

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

Intuitively, you might think the first one is better, since your business name is hyper-linked. However, the second link will help boost your ranking for the specific keyword "pool table". Assuming that that keyword accurately reflects the products you sell (and that you have done some keyword research to make sure the keyword generates traffic), then the second one is much better for your business.

If your goal is to achieve search engine rankings, then you need to put your ego aside, and do everything you can to seed the Web with links to your site that contain your main keywords. Article writing is a great way to do this. Personally, I'm not convinced that making forum posts with links is still a valid method. I feel like the search engines probably discounted the value of those links a long time ago. But there are plenty of other techniques.

If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, internet marketing, keyword research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, April 17, 2008

How to Promote a Web Site on $100 and 2 Hours per Week

Recently, I responded to a question on LinkedIn (or it could have been Yahoo!) where someone had asked the best way to promote a web site if all you had was $100 per month and a few hours of time. I thought it was an interesting question, but one that I felt I had a good answer for.

Based on our experience, here is what I would do with $100 and 2 hours per week:

With the money, purchase some links from a link broker. You should be able to get quite a few links in the area of PR3, which will help your link count.

With the time, I would suggest writing articles. 2 hours per week is enough time to write and distribute at least one article. Over time, links from those articles will really build up. However, to get the greatest distribution possible, I would also highly advise that you use an article distribution service. I suggest articlemarketer.com. However, you will probably need to subtract $10 or $20 from your $100 monthly budget to pay for that.

To make this work, you need to have one or at most two specific keywords in mind for which you want your site to rank. That keyword then needs to be used in your paid links and in at least one link in the article (or the article author box).

There are other factors that affect your rankings, of course - the age of the domain name, the competitiveness of the industry, how well-optimized your site content and code is - but a strategy as described above will make a significant difference, all else being equal.

If you need some help with search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, article writing, articles, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Keyword Relative Value: a Simplified Way of Measuring Search Engine Visibility

This week we published an article on our web site discussing a concept we have developed called Keyword Relative Value. The article can be accessed via the link below:

http://workmedia.net/articles/Keyword-Relative-Value.asp

To quote from the article:

We developed a formula intended to attach a numerical value to a web site's search engine ranking for a specific keyword. The resulting number, called the Keyword Relative Value (or “KRV”), places a value on a keyword for a particular web site based on two parameters: the amount of expected traffic for the keyword and a site's ranking in a particular search engine for the keyword.

Here is the KRV formula:

KRV = ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2)

where T = the expected traffic for a keyword and R = a web site's ranking for the keyword in a particular search engine.

The above formula derives the value for one particular keyword. A much more instructive exercise is to calculate the KRV's for a group of keywords. We call this the Aggregate Keyword Relative Value ("AKRV"). The formula for AKRV is as follows:

AKRV = X(ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2))

where X is the number of keywords that have search engine rankings.

The point of these formulas is to boil your web site's search engine visibility for a common set of keywords down to a single number. You can then track this number over time and compare it to your competitors to gauge your visibility against your competitors. We believe this concept is a powerful new tool to give web site owners a stronger sense of how well they rank in the search engines, in an easy-to-understand format: a single number.

To learn more about KRV, please read the article linked above.

If you could use some help improving and understanding your search engine visibility, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword relative value, keyword research, keywords, KRV, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

Friday, March 07, 2008

Monday, March 03, 2008

SEO Linking: How to Find the Links that Matter the Most

An excellent source of links to your web site are the sites that already link to your highest-ranked competitors. Do you want to really get in-depth in researching what web sites link to your competitors? Then follow these steps:

1. If you don't have the Firefox browser installed, go download it: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

2. Install the SEOQuake plugin. You can download it here: http://ff.seoquake.com/

3. Go to http://search.yahoo.com and search for the links Yahoo! has recorded for your competitor's web site. The search query will be in this form:linkdomain:websiteaddress.com -site:websiteaddress.com -site:www.websiteaddress.com

You will be returned a list of web sites that point to your competitor's site, excluding links from the same site.

4. Turn on SEOQuake if it is not already. This is done by clicking the small SEOQuake icon on address bar on the right-hand side of your browser screen.

5. Sort the links by PR or by age by clicking on the down arrow next to "PR" or "Age" on the line that starts "Sort:" directly above the first search engine result.

Now you will have a list of sites, sorted by age or importance, that link to your competitor. These may be excellent candidates for linking to your site as well. Certainly target the sites that appear to be involved in link swapping, because you can get a link from these sites very easily by just providing a link on your site back. Then go after the ones that may be more picky.

Building up links to a web site can be very frustrating and time consuming. If you could use some help with anything related to SEO or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web site marketing, Yahoo Search

Friday, February 22, 2008

Our 200th blog post: Our Very Best Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

Well, well...here we are...200 blog posts. Please excuse us while we give ourselves a pat on the back...[pat, pat, pat]...

We thought we would use this occasion to give some of our very best tips for promoting your web site:

Pick one keyword for which to optimize the front page of your site. Make that keyword the first words in your title. Use it twice in the copy, once in a header, and once in bold. Use it in the alt attribute of the first image on the page. Use it in the text of every link throughout your site that links to your home page. And, if possible, use it in the text of links on other web sites that point to your site. Speaking of links...
Get lots of external links pointing to your home page. I don't care what some "experts" say - we have seen time and time again that linking still works as an SEO technique.
Write articles. This may be the single best way to acquire one-way, keyword-rich links to your site. Do it often. If you do one a week, in a year's time you will have a TON of links. If you can't write, there are companies you can hire to do it for you. Or hire a smart local high school kid to do it.
Publish a blog. Search engines love content that changes often. That's exactly what a blog is - content that you update often. But you need to post at least twice per week.
Use paid search. Sure, it delivers targeted traffic to your web site. But possibly even more importantly, it generates mission critical data. It will tell you things like what keywords generate the most traffic, what keywords generate customers, what web page copy converts at the best rate, etc.
Use your analytics. You need to have a strong understanding of what is going on on your web site. For example, are your visitors using a particular screen resolution that doesn't work well with your site? Is there a particular location where a lot of your visitors come from? Is there a particular page on your site where most visitors leave? Google Analytics can answer all these questions for you, and it's free.
Never stop trying to do better. Using the data from paid search and your analytics, you should constantly be looking for clues as to what changes to make to improve the performance of your site.

If you do these things, you will be successful. But is it work? Of course. That's why we're able to be in business. Because it takes time to implement a search marketing campaign and get a feel for what the data means. So if you could use some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, call us today at 888-299-4837 or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

See ya in blog post number 201!

Labels: article marketing, blog, internet marketing, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Friday, February 08, 2008

Do Not Fear the Missing Google Rankings

We have recently begun being more aggressive promoting our own web site. We have very strong rankings for search engine marketing related keywords that contain the word "Nashville", which is generally where we advise businesses with a brick-and-mortar location to begin. It is often very difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for broad, non-geographically targeted keywords. So generating rankings for keywords specific to your home market is a great way to begin driving traffic to your site that consists of very strong prospects for your service. It has definitely been beneficial to Work Media to be near the top of the rankings in Google for search terms like "Nashville search engine marketing firm". In fact, just out of curiosity, I just typed exactly that search term into Google and we have the top-ranked natural listing and the number one paid search listing. Now that's good shelfspace.

Anyway, we've decided it's time to start promoting our site for more broad terms, not specifically related to Nashville. We have a ton of content on our site and the site is reasonably well optimized, so the main thing we're concentrating on is off-site optimization (i.e., getting links pointing to our site). We've been working on it for a few weeks and have already begun seeing results. But one odd thing happened which we have seen happen a lot. So we thought we would tell you about it so if it happens to you, you don't freak out.

There is one keyword in particular we are keen on ranking for, so it is the main one we have concentrated on in our linking campaign. When we started, we ranked a little past 100 for the keyword. A few weeks after beginning our new efforts to rank for this keyword, we disappeared altogether from the Google results. But we were not worried - we've seen this before.

Sure enough, after a few days, we were back in Google's results for the keyword, this time ranked in the 60's. Nowhere near where we hope to be, but a real nice jump from where we started.

When a web page suddendly begins to have lots of new links pointing to it, that page tends to disappear from the rankings, only to reappear later, higher ranked. Our theory is that when Google picks up on a lot of new rankings for a page, it temporarily removes it from the rankings in order to do some additional analysis on the page. This analysis probably includes Google asking questions like: Are the links relevant to the site? Is the site strong in content? What do we know about the site?

Since our site is very strong in content, well-aged, and has been indexed for a long time, we think Google performed the analysis and made the determination that we were not trying to spam our way into its index. It then re-ranked our site accordingly, taking into account the new links we have.

This is all just a theory, really. But we've never been ones to stress out over trying to figure out exactly how Google's algorithm works. We just follow the basics...and it works every time. So if you undertake a linking campaign and find your site suddenly disappearing from the rankings, don't worry about it. Unless your site is junk, in which case it may not make it out of limbo. So make sure your site is strong on content.

If you need some help with your own site's search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Shopper Frustration: Local Businesses Losing Sales by not Using the Web

Local businesses are losing sales by not taking advantage of the Web as a sales tool. No, this is not based on any kind of poll or data analysis. It's based purely on my own experiences. It is usually the case that for every one person who experiences a problem, or expresses dissatisfaction about a situation, there are many more people who feel the same way. So I am going to make the assumption that there are many people who have the same frustration I am about to discuss.

Businesses at the local level just don't seem to get it when it comes to online marketing. They will spend thousands of dollars on TV ads, print ads, radio ads, etc., but give no attention to their web sites. Here is a cold, hard fact: more and more people use the Web to do product research and find local businesses with whom to do business; and that trend is only going to continue. So why would ANY business not have a strong Web presence that shows what products or services it sells, and that makes it easy to do business with it?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I am researching gas and electric fireplaces for my house. One large retailer in Nashville who I thought sold fireplaces (since there is a fireplaces page on its site) has ZERO visibility and almost no information about its fireplaces. If I did not already know about the company, I would not have looked at their web site to start with since it is not possible to find it in the search engines. As it turns out, I found out that this business stopped selling fireplaces two years ago...despite the fact that they are still shown on its web site. I mean, come on...in TWO YEARS you couldn't update your web site?

So I continued my search. I only found a single local business online that had a reasonable number of the kind of product I was looking for. The business' web site was not very good. There is very little information about specific products. It is an ecommerce-enabled site, but there is so little information about the products that I don't think any user would feel very comfortable placing an order online.

I cannot find a single business in Nashville that sells fireplaces that has a well-crafted web site with adequate information about its products. And that can be found in the search engines. There is probably a retailer in Nashville with exactly what I want. But I can't find it. So I am reduced to physically visiting random stores in hopes of finding what I want. Wherever that perfect store is, it is probably going to lose a sale.

If you own a physical business that sells products locally, all you have to do to have a MAJOR advantage over your competition is put up a high quality web site where visitors can get lots of information about your products. If they can buy the products online, that's even better. And PLEASE have the web site built in a search engine-friendly manner so your site can be found. Ask your web site developer about this. If he is not experienced in SEO, either hire another designer or bring someone onboard who can work with your designer. Yes, it will cost some money, but it will be a very, very good thing for your business.

If you need help promoting your local business via search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 615-263-2811 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, local search marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Friday, January 18, 2008

Seach Engine Optimization: Get the Link Out

We have been thinking a lot about this whole linking thing that is causing such an uproar in the Internet marketing community. If you haven't heard, Google is supposedly cracking down on paid links and is de-emphasizing the importance of links to a site's rankings...supposedly. We haven't seen it.

We are doing a lot of work right now for a company that is in an industry in which the top competitors are very aggressive about using paid links. In order to compete, we had no choice but to emulate the strategy. There was just no way we were going to be able to catch up using a purely natural linking strategy. It would take years...and we don't have years. So we're paying for links.

Are we going to be punished for buying links? We think not. Another thing we have in common with the companies we are competing against is that we are all heavy spenders on paid search ads. Is Google going to punish some of its best customers...customers who are generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company...for being aggressive in promoting their web sites?

We understand that Google wants its search engine results to be as genuine as possible and does not want companies doing things to try to artificially influence those results. But as a multi-billion dollar company, we do not believe that Google is going to piss off some of its largest advertisers.

Maybe the situation in your industry is different. But how would Google apply different rules to different industries? We don't think it would do that.

Our point here is that you have nothing to fear by going out and pursuing links to your site. Use a number of different strategies - link swapping, directories, paying for them, whatever. Now...we're not saying you should add your site to FFA pages or other sources of junk links. It will be a waste of your time. But for higher quality sources of links - go for it. The best strategy of all is to create content that is so interesting that other sites are compelled to link to you. Natural, non-paid, one-way links are still king. But regardless of what linking strategy you pursue...do not be afraid.

If you need help with your search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Search Engine Optimization: Thoughts on Linking from Personal Observation

A lot has been made in the press and in the Internet marketing community lately about Google's attempts to de-emphasize the importance of links in its ranking algorithms. We've been asked a number of times by our clients if linking is still important. Based on what we have seen lately, the answer is a resounding...hell yes!

Google's anti-linking efforts are aimed at stopping web sites from purchasing links. Google feels this is a manipulation of its system. It wants only genuine, non-paid-for links. However, we are currently promoting a client in a very competitive category in which ALL of the top sites have used paid links to drive up their rankings. And they don't seem to be doing anywhere. In order to compete (and compete quickly) we basically had no choice but to adopt the same strategy. Otherwise, we would be too far behind the ball to catch up. We are not using paid links exclusively - it's just one part of a comprehensive strategy. So far the strategy is working, as our client is climbing the rankings.

Whether or not to use paid links should probably be determined by the competitiveness of the industry you are in. But regardless of your stance on paid links, you definitely need to keep getting links. Start with directories. List your site everywhere you can. Then start writing some articles and distribute them. A site we like for article distribution is http://isnare.com. If you are really dedicated, you can start going out and posting comments on other sites' blogs, with a link back to your site or blog (you do have a blog don't you? It's a powerful content creation strategy).

Then you can move into the realm of social bookmarking. This is where it gets really useful to have interesting original content on your site. If you have a really interesting web site with content that people want to link to, you will do well with social bookmarking. Once you introduce your web site via social bookmarks, hopefully other people will find it interesting or useful enough to add their own bookmarks. This can create a snowball effect where lots of people bookmark your site, thus creating lots of very high quality, one-way links to your site.

We are still using links as an SEO technique, and it continues to work for us. So don't worry about what the pundits say - keep working, keep linking, and keep aggressively promoting your web site. If your web site is high quality with strong content, then a linking strategy will work if you are diligent enough. If your site does not strong content, then you need to address that before you worry about linking. First things first.

If you need some help implementing a linking campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Monday, December 17, 2007

How Not to Promote Your Business Locally Online: Shopping for Car Stereos

An experience I had this weekend got me thinking about the importance of local Internet marketing.

Saturday, I wanted to take my car somewhere to have a new stereo put in. Work Media is based in Nashville, but I live in a little town called Dickson. There is no big chain store to have such a service performed. So I did an online search for a car stereo retailer/installer in Dickson. I found two results. According to information I found, one of the businesses had a web site and a MySpace page. The other dealer had nothing other than an address in Google Local. Intuitively, you might think that I would automatically gravitate toward the business with the web site. But that was not the case.

When I tried to visit the business' web site, it appeared that the domain name had expired and had been purchased by someone who put up a generic web page with car stereo-related links. When I went to the business' MySpace page, I found a couple of quotes that said something about wanting my money. There was little information about the business. I was very turned off by what I saw on the MySpace page. It made me think that the business was only out to get my money and didn't really care about taking care of its customers. I decided to visit the other business. Even though it didn't have any kind of Web presence, in my opinion, that was better than the other business which had a presence that I found very displeasing.

My point in relaying this story is that you can do more damage with bad online marketing than you can with no marketing at all. If you have a web site, you should inspect every word on every page to make sure you are getting the right message across. Does your marketing copy emphasize that you really care about your customers? Or does it relay the idea that you only care about extracting money from the pockets of your customers?

Now, in the name of open disclosure, I should point out that I actually ended up going to the business that I had decided not to. It seems the other business either was in business no longer or was in some location impossible to find. So I guess the point there is that it doesn't matter what kind of marketing you do if you're not open for business to start with. By the way, I found the business to be just fine, but their poor online marketing almost cost them a sale.

A well-orchestrated local search campaign can do wonders for your business...if you do it right. For help implementing a local search component to your online marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: copywriting, internet marketing, local search marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Powerful Search Engine Advice Straight from the Source

Matt Cutts is an engineer with Google who has become quite famous within the Internet marketing community for his blog posts that help online marketers better understand how Google works. A recent MediaPost article focusing on tips culled from various Cutts blog posts revealed the following strategy for optimizing a web page for a particular keyword:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the URL, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page.

Brilliant. The above sentence masterfully and simply summarizes how to optimize a web page, at least from a content perspective. Now, certainly there is more to on-page optimization. For example, the way a page is coded can have a significant impact on its ranking. But if you combine clean coding with the above copy writing strategy, your web pages should be very well optimized.

Possibly the hardest part of this strategy is getting the keyword in the URL. The ideal solution is to have a domain name that contains one or two critical keywords. This is often in conflict with a company's branding strategy, however. I mean, we (Work Media) might possibly generate more search engine rankings if we had the domain name "internet-marketing-search-engine-optimization.com", but it just doesn't flow as well as "workmedia.net". It would definitely be harder for people to remember.

Fortunately, blogging provides a way to generate web pages with keywords in the URL. We use Blogger, but most blogging platforms probably work in very similar ways, in that pages are automatically created based on the content of the blog posts. If you use important keywords early in your blog posts, and use keyword-rich tags to describe your posts, then your blogging platform should create archive pages that contain those keywords in the URL.

As for the other parts of the strategy, it's easy. Just figure out the best keywords for which to optimize your site (we've discussed keyword research in previous blog posts) and use those keywords often in your pages, spread out exactly as recommended above.

If you need some help implementing a search engine marketing strategy for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We're here to help!

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, content, content creation, google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Friday, November 09, 2007

Search Engine Marketing - You Get What You Pay For

Work Media is in business to provide top quality search engine marketing services - both organic and paid - for a fair rate. Unfortunately, our fair rate often seems very high to people we talk to who don't realize how much work is involved in the process. We often find ourselves bidding against competition that is much lower in price - ridiculously so. To those who are considering very low cost search engine marketing services, we just have to say - Be Careful!

There are a couple of ways SEO firms can offer super low prices. One is by just not doing very much work. SEO is a time intensive, manual process. There are some cursory things you can do related to SEO, but to get real results you have to put a lot of work in, and that work has to continue month after month. The second way to offer super low rates is to contract the work out to foreign companies. The problem there is that there always seem to be language issues. It does you no good to have your pages rank well if the language on those pages is not proper and convincing. Too much is at stake to leave your site to firms that don't take great care in crafting pages that both rank well and convince the reader to perform some action.

Another way to get really low cost SEO services may be to have it done by your son, daughter, kid down the street, etc. This is often the case when it comes to the initial design of a site. But here's the deal - there are a whole lot more people who can design a site than know how to promote one. Often, a design created by someone with no search engine marketing experience will look great but be lousy from a search engine perspective. In most cases, there is absolutely no correlation between knowing how to design a web site and knowing how to get search engine rankings.

Search engine marketing is serious business. That's why we do not try to compete on price. We compete by providing professional quality service and getting results. When comparing services between providers, we advise you not to look at it in terms of what each company costs, but rather in terms of what each company can provide. Are you wasting your money on something that won't give you results, or are you investing money in something that will increase your business?

If you could use some help with your search engine marketing, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Fight the Power - Dealing with the Search Engine Ranking Shakeup

Recent search engine updates are causing havoc. They are completely wrecking people's lives and causing babies to starve in third world countries. They are probably responsible for the draught in the Southeast U.S. as well as the California wildfires.

Okay, so we exaggerate. But a lot of people are doing a lot of hand wringing because of changes happening in the search engine indexes. In Google, for example, many sites have experienced a drop in their PageRank, which, as you know, is a measure of the value Google places on a web site. Work Media has experienced our own drop in PageRank. So if your PageRank has fallen does that mean you are going to lose your rankings?

Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, it is completely out of your hands. So don't worry about it. Rather than worrying, get aggressive with your promotion. One of the main reasons for Google's current update is to devalue sites that have a lot of purchased inbound links. Google does not want you buying links. It wants you to get them the old fashioned way - by having interesting content that people want to link to. So do it! Write articles. Do press releases. Add your site to directories. If you don't have time, hire someone to do it.

Another way to fight the effects of search ranking shuffling is to fill your site with new, constantly changing content. Search engines still love content. You can't have too much of it. A blog is an excellent vehicle for doing this. A technique we really like is to use our own blog RSS feed to place content on our site that changes every time we update our blog.

You may also have to be strategic with your optimization in terms of keywords. Don't automatically assumed that the keywords that are most used are the best. If you can uncover some keywords that people use that have little competition, then those may be better keywords to target.

If you keep on creating new content, are strategic with your keyword selection and optimization, and adding new non-purchased links to your site, you will be fine. Google won't be able to deny you.

If you have lost search engine rankings and need help getting them back, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, October 29, 2007

Picking Up Search Engine Traffic with Misspelled Keywords

My brother/partner and I had a good laugh the other day. We're based in Nashville, and let's face it - people around here have their own unique take on the English language. We are working on a new design for the Work Media web site, and Chris accidentally typed "Inernet marketing" at the top of our new home page - which is pretty well the way the word "internet" is pronounced by many people around here.

But that got me thinking - we would probably pick up a lot of traffic if we actually had a page that emphasized "inernet" rather than "internet". That technique has worked for us before accidentally. There have been times when, while looking at our site stats, I would notice we were getting traffic from what at first seemed like a fantastic keyword. Upon further inspection, we were getting the traffic because we had misspelled the word. But you know what? Web surfers misspelling the word the same way found our site because of it.

So purposely creating pages optimized for specific misspelled words is a strategy that can be quite effective. Now, you want to be careful with this strategy. You don't want to use it so much that it creates the impression that you just don't know how to spell. But if there are high traffic terms for which you would like to rank but just can't seem to because of excessive competition, ranking for a misspelled version of the search terms can be a very nice technique for picking up some of that traffic.

The misspelled keyword strategy can be used in your paid search campaigns as well to pick up high ad placement for much cheaper than properly spelled keywords.

If you could use some help developing a keyword strategy for your natural or paid search campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. Cawl us tooday!

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine optimization, search marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Friday, October 26, 2007

Find Ways to Get Content on Your Web Pages

We're still amazed at the number of times we get contacted about optimizing a BRAND NEW web site that is lousy from an optimization standpoint. Usually the problem is that the site is constructed in such a way that it is very difficult to get any optimized content on the site. For example, it may be an all-Flash site or a site where the text is contained in images.

Please remember this: you MUST have text on your web pages!

Find a way to get some text on your web pages. One technique which is cool is to place text in layers (using div tags) and either hide it off-screen or dynamically display it at certain times, such as when rolling over a link or other object. We have heard that Google may now be checking for this, so it may be a technique that stops becoming useful soon.

Regardless of whether you use layers to hide your text or whatever, you MUST get some text on your page. If nothing else, place it low on the page, below the main section, if your site is constructed in such a way as to not allow text in the main content area.

As smart as search engines have become, they are STILL looking for quality, indexable text. So get some text on your pages!

For help optimizing the content and code of your web site to rank better in the search engines, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: content, content creation, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Astounding Results with Social Bookmarking

For one of our clients we are currently promoting, we are doing a lot of linking - pretty standard stuff for a search engine optimization campaign. As part of this process, we are doing a fair amount of social bookmarking of our client's web pages. We started with del.icio.us, probably the top social bookmarking web site.

We bookmarked every page of the site and tagged each page with a static set of keywords plus keywords specific to that page. Within a couple of days, our main social bookmarks page about those topics was near the top of Google's rankings for some of the keywords - actually above the client we're promoting! So while that's not exactly what we're ultimately trying to achieve, it proves the point that search engines place a lot of stock in information that is categorized via social bookmarking. And in the long run it will help our client rise in the rankings. Although, if someone clicks our link, they will be presented with nothing but links to our client's site - a win, win situation.

Another point is that by bookmarking our client's site, we exposed it to lots of other people who use the same social bookmarking site. If some of them bookmark our client's pages as well, then that strengthens our client's position. And del.icio.us is only one of probably dozens of similar sites, all of which can be used to promote a web site about a particular subject.

So is you have not socially bookmarked your own site's web pages, we strongly recommend it. And have all of your employees sign up for their own accounts and do it as well.

If you need some help promoting your site in the social bookmarking sites (or anywhere else), contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, social bookmarking, social media, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Part 4

We're big on gaining as much Google "shelf space" as possible. In other words, for any particular keyword we are targeting, we want to have a paid search listing on the search results page as well as at least one natural search ranking. We think it greatly increases your chance of getting a click to your site, and it is a strong branding move. To make this happen, you need to create landing pages specific to certain keywords. This improves your chances of converting the visitor into a customer AND gives you the opportunity to heavily optimize a page for natural search listings.

Keeping all this in mind, we've decided we would like our AdWords management application to also be useful in optimizing landing pages for natural search rankings. The first part of this is providing the natural Google search rankings for each keyword. In other words, I don't want to just know what my ad position is for a keyword - I also want to know what my natural rank for that keyword is. This information will help me generate shelf space.

Unfortunately, as usual, Google makes things much more difficult than it should be. Google used to have a search API that would return search results and related information. But that API is no longer available. There is a new search API, but it is an AJAX JavaScript-based control, which really doesn't help us in our situation because we need that data on the server side, not the client side. We also need ranking data, which doesn't seem to be available in any fashion via any Google API.

But we've figured out a way to do it. It's much more processor intensive than if we could just request the information directly from Google, but that's alright. We're getting it done, even though it's a lot more work than it should be. Why Google is intent on making its vendors and customers jump through hoops is beyond me, but the situation is what it is. We'll deal with it. We can't wait for the day when Microsoft catches up with Google in terms of natural search traffic and keyword inventory, because we know Microsoft would make it easier to plug into their backend to get the data we need.

So we carry on, fighting one battle after another. When we're done, we will have an application that will make it much easier for us to manage our own clients' paid and natural search campaigns. The next step would be to open it up to others who might want to use it for their own campaigns.

If you could use some help managing your own search engine marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine optimization, search marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

150 Blog Posts and Going Strong

This marks Work Media's 150th blog post. Whoohoo! To those of you who have been along for the ride, we thank you. If you're new to Work Media, then welcome. If you don't know, Work Media is a small Internet marketing firm based in Nashville. The company consists of the Work brothers (Jerry - 34, Chris - 28, and Corey - 20), and their partner/sister company, Frank/Best International, which is a top-10 Nashville advertising agency with clients such as Honda and AKG.

We specialize in helping companies develop and implement aggressive, multi-pronged Internet marketing attacks using paid search, natural search, and content strategies to drive targeted traffic. We have many things in the works for the coming months, including the release of our own paid search bid management tool. That is a big step for us. We want to be the THE agency in the Southeast for cutting edge Web marketing that combines technology with results-oriented marketing strategies. We also have a new book about to come out which discusses using Google AdWords Editor for efficient AdWords campaign management. And soon we will be recording our first audio podcast.

We've got a long ways to go, but judging from how busy we are, we're headed in the right direction. If there is every anything we can do for you, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, search engine optimization, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Monday, August 13, 2007

Work Media's Business Expansion

Work Media has opened up shop at our new offices on 2nd Ave. in Nashville. We have a "sister company" now, in Frank/Best International ("FBI"), a successful advertising agency with some very large clients that include Honda Power Equipment and AKG Microphones. Our relationship with FBI allows us to offer a full array of services, including:

Search engine optimization

Paid search marketing

Public relations campaigns (both online and offline)

Online Video advertising

TV advertising

Print ad campaigns

In other words, we are now a full-service shop. We can accommodate all of your needs. We believe the next wave to hit the advertising industry will be integrated shops that can provide clients with both offline and online advertising services. Work Media is proud to be one of the first (if not THE first) companies in Nashville to be on the cutting edge of the advertising industry. We have access to not only the technology to create cross-media campaigns, but also to the brain power of advertising industry veterans with years of experience creating successful campaigns for some of the world's largest companies.

So what can we do for you? Call us today at 888-299-4837 or stop by our offices at 705 2nd Ave. S. in Nashville. The Work brothers (and our new partners) are ready to go to work for you.

Labels: advertising, internet marketing, marketing, Nashville, paid search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Scripting to Improve Conversions from Natural Search

One of the most important rules of paid search marketing is that there must be a strong connection between the search phrase used in the search engine and what is shown on the page when the visitor arrives. In other words, if a person clicks on your search engine ad after searching for "binoculars", then, if possible, he should arrive at a page that talks about binoculars. This will tend to greatly increase your conversion rates.

The same concept holds true for natural search rankings. If that same person searching for binoculars clicks on your organic search engine listing, then you have a better chance of doing business with the person if he arrives at a page about binoculars. The problem is that organic search engine rankings are much more mysterious and out of your control than paid listings. And generally, the page on your site that is listed in the search engine results will be your front page.

So how do you create this same kind of congruency between the search phrase and the web page content? The answer is to use scripting to detect the source search phrase, parse it out, and then display custom content based on that phrase. For example, keeping with the same example, if the search phrase was "bargain binoculars", then your web page script would parse out each word and compare it to some kind of database table of pre-populated words. So when the script makes a match with the word "binoculars", it would display whatever content is indicated in the database table.

The specifics of how to do this are beyond what we can go into in this article, but if you discuss this idea with a competent web programmer (not a "designer", but a real programmer), he should be able to figure out how to do it.

If you need help thinking up or implementing strategies to generate search engine rankings and improve conversions on your web site, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: conversion strategy, internet marketing, scripting, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Blogging for Search Engine Rankings - the Local Perspective

Work Media is finishing up our first month of providing blogging services for one of our clients. The experiment has gone well. We blog all the time for our own purposes (we're up to post number 115 - whoohoo!). But to blog for someone else in a completely different industry...well, it's a challenge. But we've pulled it off, and all honesty, it has gone very well.

The point is this - if we can author a regularly updated blog (three times per week) for someone else...in an industry we really don't know a whole lot about...YOU CAN DO IT FOR YOURSELF.

By the way, the posts we're doing are not random pieces of meaningless crap. We have spent a good bit of time doing online research for material to write about it. But there is a lot of material out there for us to learn from and borrow ideas from. The blog posts don't have to be brilliant. They just need to focus on some specific concept or piece of information related to your industry. And THEY NEED TO USE KEYWORDS RELATED TO YOUR INDUSTRY.

Now, if you are able to develop a loyal audience around your blog, then that is spectacular. It's also difficult to do. But if you just do the blog regularly (and the blog is indexed in the major search engines) you will generate search engine rankings for various odd phrases that happen to be in your blog. It makes sense then to use keywords for your industry so you generate rankings for searches related to your business.

This approach is particularly useful for generating geographically-related search rankings. For instance, if you are a law firm, it will be very difficult to generate high search engine rankings for terms like "personal injury attorney". But you just might be able to generate related searches that contain geographic modifiers - i.e., "Buffalo personal injury attorney".

If you just don't have time to publish your own blog, give us a call at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We'll do all the work for you.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

Friday, April 27, 2007

Designing for Search Engines - Simpler is Better

We have a client for whom we are managing a small pay-per-click campaign. We are trying to implement tracking, with a conversion being defined as the submission of a form on their site. We need to do this to determine what keywords or ad copy results in the best performance. But we have had a devil of a time getting the tracking to work because the site is built using .NET, so the page with the form submits to itself rather than to a separate confirmation page. And this got us thinking...

Why .NET? Now, we have nothing against .NET (Jerry was employed as a .NET programmer several years ago), but for a small site, we suggest avoiding this kind of technology if it is not necessary. For one thing, you run into problems like we are having now - doing something as basic as implementing a tracking script. It's unwieldy to work with a platform as complicated as .NET. For another thing, a .NET web page will often be returned from the server with a large amount of junk data called "View State". We don't know if the occasion would arise when a query from a search engine robot would return View State, but if it did, it would greatly weaken the on-page optimization of the site.

If you have a small site that you will be updating manually, stick with the basics - preferably good ol' fashion HTML. If you need to use a scripting environment, use something like PHP or ASP, which is much easier to deal with than a compiled environment like .NET that requires a degree in programming to understand.

If you're a Web geek or programmer reading this, you can probably tell us all kinds of reasons why a site built on .NET is desirable. We have no doubt there are many occasions when this is true. But coming strictly from a search engine marketing/optimization perspective, simpler is better. So stick with the basics.

If you need help optimizing your web site for better search engine results, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: conversion strategy, HTML, internet marketing, scripting, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, tracking, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Search Engine Marketing: The Hottest Industry Around

A recent article in MediaPost.com titled "Hiring Line: Keep Your People Happy Before Someone Else Does" touched on the fact the new media advertising industry (such as paid search) has zero unemployment and workers are very hard to find and difficult to keep. There are just not very many people with any kind of experience in this industry.

So if you are reading this and are looking for a direction for your career, we encourage you to consider search engine marketing. There are basically two paths you can take: natural search engine optimization (SEO) or paid search marketing (pay-per-click, or PPC).

SEO is the process of optimizing web pages to achieve high natural search engine rankings. There is some talk about the diminishing importance of SEO given the rise of social search (sites like technorati.com and del.icio.us), but we think it will be a while before you can disregard natural search. Look at it this way: as long as people continue continue to use computer-based search engines like Google and Yahoo, and as long as your competitors are ranked in those search engines, then you need to be an aggressive competitor and get your site to the top of the rankings.

PPC is the process of running paid search ads alongside natural search results in the search engines. As search engines continue to make it more difficult to generate natural rankings, paid search has become more and more important. It is the single most targeted form of advertising there is. You place your advertising message in front of people are looking for exactly what you have to offer. PPC now includes image ads, video ads, and various other formats. But in its most basic form, it is still the use of words to compel the reader to take some action. It's an advertisement.

SEO and PPC involve two different skill sets. Although there is an element of copywriting in both, SEO involves coding, knowing how to write clean HTML and use stylesheets for formatting, as well as a lot of manual labor in the form of generating links to a web site. PPC is more like a traditional advertising medium, although you have to be skilled at managing bids, which involves some math.

If you seriously want to get in the search engine marketing industry, we advise you to become skilled at both SEO and PPC. You will become a highly desired employee and will have no trouble finding employement (well, that partly depends on where you are - search engine jobs are not found here in the South yet like they are in other areas).

To learn SEO and PPC, you are largely on your own. There are few training courses on the subjects. The best way is to learn it is to set up a web site for yourself, get your hands on as many books on the subjects as you can, and just start experimenting.

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

Monday, March 05, 2007

Web Site Marketing: Choose Your Content Management System Vendor Carefully

I have had a fair amount of experience working on optimizing web sites that were built on top of some kind of sophisticated content management systems (CMS), and my first thought is almost always the same: man, I wish they had contacted me before BEFORE building the site. The very nature of a CMS works against what you want to accomplish with your site from a search engine marketing perspective. I've said it a number of times, but it bears repeating: you want to maximize content and minimize code. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with a system that has to flexible enough to accomodate all kinds of different content of different lengths, widths, and attributes, the code to make that happen is often very poorly optimized.

But if you follow our suggestions, you will be more likely to hire a company (and a CMS) that will allow you to effectively manage your content and also rank well in the search engines:

Look at examples of code generated by the CMS for other web sites. If you don't have a strong grasp on what well-optimized code should look like, hire a search engine professional to do this for you. It will be money well-spent. If the CMS provider can't provide samples of cleanly coded web pages, move on to another company.

Ask for a list of other companies who have used the CMS. Then search for their web sites in the search engines (by industry, not by company name) to see if you can find them. If they don't appear in the search engine rankings, then that is a clue that the CMS provider creates web sites that are not search engine-friendly.

Ask the CMS vendor about search engine optimization. They will probably say things like you can insert keywords, meta descriptions, etc. That's not what you're interested in. You want to know if they really know anything about search engine optimization - listen for terms such as "keyword density", "CSS", "layers", and "optimization." Again, it may be very helpful to hire a search engine expert to take part in this conversation.

Call companies who have used the vendor's CMS and ask about their satisfaction and if they are getting much natural traffic from search engines.

If after doing the above things you don't feel very confident that the CMS will work well AND will help you establish high search engine rankings, then look elsewhere.

If you need help choosing a content management system for your web site (this needs to be done BEFORE you build your site!), call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: CMS, content, content creation, content management system, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Myriad Search: Another Tool for the Internet Marketer's Toolbox

Myriad Search (myriadsearch.com) is an interesting search engine research tool created by the guy who runs seobook.com. It lets you run a search query and generate a list of results that are a combination of rankings in four major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. So the tool has several uses:

Competitive research. Who are your competitors that rank highly across the board for desireable search phrases?
Link partner research. Sites that come up highly in the composite rankings for keywords related to your industry may be very valuable sources of links.
To find out your own standing. If you rank highly here, then you likely have strong visibility in the search engines.
General research. A site that ranks highly in the composite rankings is likely a strong source of information related to your search query.

One unique aspect of the tool is that it allows you emphasize or de-emphasize search engines (using a control called "bias"), and results can be weighted based on total number of results. For instance, if you specify to run the query based on 50 results, then a number one ranking has less weight than a query based on 10 results. These different ways of running queries allow you to take into consideration factors such as:

Particular search engines being more relevant than others for some searches.
Some searches being less sensitive to having a top-10 or top-20 ranking than others.
Some search engines allowing duplicate results, which would tend to skew results.

The tool also allows you to download a .CSV file of your research data.

Myriad Search is a very interesting tool that gives you a unique perspective on search data related to your business. We recommend you give it a try.

For help conducting search engine research for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Winning the Search Marketing Wars with Branding

We are currently managing a pay-per-click campaign for a client that is going well in terms of driving traffic to his site, but poorly in terms of conversions. The problem is that our client's web site does not look as professional as his competitors. This got me thinking about how a search marketing campaign, whether natural search or paid search, has a branding component that needs to be considered.

It is very often the case that an individual will not do business with a company upon the first visit to its web site. Comparison shopping is easy on-line, and not just for products, but for services as well. Someone looking for a particular service that you offer is probably going to visit your web site and the sites of your competitors. If you don't measure up, you're not going to get the sale.

What this means for you is that you need to have a clean, well-designed, professional looking web site. If you don't, no matter how much traffic you drive to it, you are going to have few conversions. Quality web site design is not the place to skimp. You have to have your presentation polished and ready to go before people arrive at your site. In the real world, you probably wouldn't show up to a sales meeting wearing a stained t-shirt and shorts (at least in most industries you wouldn't). It works the same way on-line - your web site is your salesman. If it looks professional and provides the visitor with the information he needs to do business with you, then you have a good chance at getting the business. If it is poorly designed and is not pursuasive, then you won't get the business. Plain and simple.

One caveat is that if you hire a web site designer, he or she needs to be aware of search engine optimization principles. The designer needs to design the site in such a way that code is minimized and content is maximized. How can you know if a designer is knowledgable about SEO? Just ask. You should be able to tell if the person knows what he is talking about. If you're still unsure, it is HIGHLY recommended that you consult with someone with an Internet marketing background to take a look at some code samples from the designer and talk with the designer.

So remember...a search marketing campaign is not simply about driving traffic to your web site in hopes of making an immediate sale. You need to prepare for sales that take more than one visit - sales where your prospects are comparing you to your competitors - by making sure your web site is polished and professional.

If you need some help implementing an aggressive Internet marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: brand, branding, internet marketing, online branding, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo

Monday, January 15, 2007

Internet Marketing: Eye Tracking Research Reveals the Most Valuable Search Engine Real Estate

A San Fransisco-based company called Eyetools has just released a new report based on eye tracking research involving people performing searches on Google. The URL to read about the research is:

http://www.eyetools.com/inpage/research_google_eyetracking_heatmap.htm

The research reveals that searchers' eyes scan the search results page in an a triangle pattern beginning in the upper left-hand corner, with another hot, smaller triangle of eye activity in the right-hand side.

The report's results are not really surprising, as it verifies what earlier similar research had indicated, as well as what you would expect based on an American's reading pattern of left-to-right. It supports the idea that you will receive the most search engine traffic if you have your site listed as near the top as possible. However, the report does not take into consideration economic factors such as return on investment and search inventory. Search inventory means the total number of searches performed for a particular search phrase. For most search phrases, there is plenty of search inventory to generate traffic without being at the top of the page, and you can generate clicks for a much lower rate than clicks at the top of the page will likely cost.

You should try to get as close to the top as possible while keeping pay-per-click bids as low as possible. Obviously, for natural search results, you just want to get as close to the top as possible.

For help maximizing your Pay-Per-Click or natural search marketing campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

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

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Internet Marketing Weapons: A Look at MSN Labs Tools - Part 3

We've spent the last couple of blog posts discussing the MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools and how you might use them for marketing purposes. Today we are going to finalize that discussion by looking at one more of the tools, the Online Commercial Intention Director. This tool gives a value for a search query or a web site from 0 to 1 that is an indication of the degree of the visitor's intention to purchase products or acquire information. For queries, it returns a single value. For URL's, it returns three values for three different OCI (Online Commercial Intent) types: NonCommercial, Commercial-Informational, and Commercial-Transactional.

There is little information about how this tool works, but it's an interesting idea that could be a valuable research tool. For instance, you could type in different search terms and use the result (the Probability for Commercial Query) to get an indication of how strong each search term is in terms of intent to make a purchase.

For example, let's say you sell wool clothing on your web site, such as sweaters. Typing in "wool" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .65227. Buy typing in "wool sweaters" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .79378. So the wool sweaters search indicates a greater chance that the person performing the search will engage in a transaction.

In testing the tool for URL's, I tried my own web site: http://workmedia.net, and got the following results:

Probabilities for Each OCI Type:
NonCommercial: 0.82111
Commercial-Informational: 0.1572
Commercial-Transactional: 2.1683e-002

Our site is a commercial site since we use it to represent our business and services, but it is also very information-heavy, which perhaps is why it ranks so high for "NonCommercial". When I ran the test with the URL "walmart.com", it still only showed a Commercial-Transactional value of 0.32238. So the tool doesn't seem to be all that accurate yet at guaging the commercial intent of web sites, as opposed to search queries.

For help implementing a state-of-the-art search engine marketing campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, sponsored search

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Internet Marketing Weapons: A Look at MSN Labs Tools - Part 2

Yesterday we began our discussion of MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools for Internet marketing purposes. Today we continue that discussion by looking at a couple more of the tools, the Keyword Forecast tool and Demographics Prediction tool.

Here is the URL: http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The Keyword Forecast tool is interesting because it shows the past traffic for a particular keyword as well as expected traffic for the next couple of months (although, the forecast time period is actually in the last couple of months, which I assume is related to the age of the data). You can also chart more than one keyword at a time and view them on the same chart. In addition to past and forecast traffic, the tools shows age and gender distribution for each search term.

For instance, I ran a chart using the terms "internet marketing", "search engine marketing", and "search marketing". Based on the chart created by the Keyword Forecast tool, the term "internet marketing" is used far more often than the other two terms and is expected to continue rising in popularity. Traffic for the term "search marketing" is flat and not expected to see any significant increase.

Looking at the demographics, all of the search terms are used heaviest by people over the age of 50. In addition, the term "search engine marketing" is used much more often by men than women. And in general, it looks like men perform about 50% more Internet marketing-related searches than women. One thing you have to keep in mind, however, is that the data is likely skewed based on the particular demographics of MSN.com.

The Demographics Prediction tool predicts your customer's age, gender, and other demographic information based on a URL of keyword. For example, I ran the tool with the search term "internet marketing", and it returned the following information:

Male: 63%
Female: 37%
Age: 25 - 34

Interestingly, the Keyword Forecast tool indicated that the greatest number of people using this search term were over 50, but the Demographics Prediction tool indicates they are between the ages of 25 and 34. So you will definitely need to use some judgement when trying to use these tools to determine demographic data for your prospective customers.

If you would like some help implementing your own Internet marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Internet Marketing Weapons: A Look at MSN Labs Tools - Part 1

As an aggressive Internet marketer, you need to use every tool at your disposal that might give you an edge on your competition. One such set of tools that my brother and I (this is Jerry) have been looking into is Microsoft AdCenter Labs. Here is the URL:

http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The tools are divided into four categories:

Paid Search
Contextual Advertising
Behavioral Targeting
Emerging Markets

We're going to start by looking at the Paid Search tools. Some of the tools are fairly conventional in nature, such as the Keyword Group Detection tool, which is basically just a keyword tool (although a good one), and the Keyword Mutation Detection tool, which helps you discover alternate or misspellings of keywords from search logs.

But one tool that's really interesting is the Search Funnel tool, which helps you visualize and analyze search behaviors. You type in a search phrase related to your product or service, and the tool will show you a funnell representing either the search phrases that had been used before arriving at your search phrase, or search phrases that were used after using your search phrase.

For example, I typed in the search phrase"Gibson Guitars", and it showed me a funnel with the following 5 search phrases (because I had set it to a filter of only showing the top 5):

guitars
www.gibsonguitars.com
ebay
fender guitars
gibson

So those are the top 5 search phrases that were used before conducting a search for "Gibson Guitars" (based on the data that MSN has compiled - I would assume based on on MSN.com searches). You can do the same thing to find searches conducted after our test phrase. That results in the following list:

fender guitars
ebay
martin guitars
epiphone guitars
guitars

This is very interesting data. If you have a really good idea of the searches people are conducting to arrive at your or your competitors' web sites, then that should give you all kinds of ideas for search phrases to target for SEO, PPC, articles to write, etc. etc. etc. Think about it.

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

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, January 08, 2007

Thoughts from the Nashville Technology Council Search Engine Marketing Roundtable

Last Thursday I (Jerry) participated in the Nashville Technology Council's Search Engine Marketing Roundtable. Along with two other Nashville Internet marketing professionals, I answered a number of questions posed by a moderator as well as from the crowd. Word was we had broken a record for pre-registration for an NTC event, and the room was packed, so I take this as a strong sign that there is growing interest in search engine marketing.

At the end of the event, we looked at a couple of web sites of people in the audience. Based on what I saw from those sites, as well as the questions asked by many members of the audience, it is my opinion that people in general really don't understand a very primary rule of search engine marketing:

Your web site should have lots of well-written, keyword-rich content, and that content should be packaged in web pages with as little else as possible.

Two sites we looked at represented opposite ends of the spectrum of web site design, and they both missed the mark from an optimization perspective. The first site was a very slick, dynamic site developed in Flash. The problem with the design, as good as it looked, is that it had little text content for search engines to spider. My advice regarding the site, beyond redesign (and the company had just launched the new design, so that was not a good option) was to make sure that titles and any available HTML elements were optimized, and to engage in an aggressive link swapping campaign. The way to overcome weak on-site optimization is with lots and lots of relevant linking.

The second site was much more bare bones and had much more content, but it was constructed from a clunky, table-heavy design. My advice to this site owner would be to have the site redesigned using div layers to minimize the amount of HTML and maximize the content. Do that, and pay close attention to the page titles and optimization of other HTML elements, and the site would have a good chance of success, especially if done while engaging in a linking campaign.

So remember: it's all about content and clean design (from an HTML perspective). Concentrate on those two things and you can have a very nicely optimized web site.

For help engaging in your own search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net

Labels: internet marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Internet Marketing: Using Link Bait to Generate Traffic

Link Bait is content on your web site so interesting and compelling that others want to link to it and discuss it. Examples of different kinds of link bait include free books, free tools or downloads, and contests. To give you a better idea of what link bait looks like, I thought I would highlight a couple of examples that I like:

http://tools.seobook.com This site is intended to market a book about search engine optimization. But what's great about the site is that it provides a ton of free information about SEO as well as providing free access to a very useful set of SEO tools. The design is very clean and easy to navigate, so this is a good site to study all around.

http://www.deanguitars.com This is a very dynamic, exciting site that caters to a very specific market - primarily young men who like to rock out. The site has lots of original content about music artists, new models of guitars, contests, sexy women - everything boys like.

http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop Another site with free SEO tools. This particular one, the Link Popularity Checker, lets you check the number of links for the major search engines pointing back to your site all at once.

Now think about your business. What tool or content could you give away for free that would be of great value to your prospective customers? If you can think of the idea, you can probably get the item created for cheap by posting the project on elance.com. Or if it's a book and you have some writing skill, you can easily do it yourself.

However, just creating the item or content is not enough. You have to tell the world about it. Make sure you ping the blog directories with your blog update about it. Contact web site owners or bloggers who might be interested in it. Do an online press release. These things will get the word out and hopefully cause an avalanche of exposure and new links pointing to your site.

For help creating link bait for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, link bait, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

SEO versus SEM: What to Do, and When to Do It

For our first post of 2007, we thought we would step back for a moment and talk about the differences between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, and which is best to concentrate on.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your web pages/site to increase search engine visibility. This includes things like web page title optimization, keyword density analysis, stragic use of headers and bold text, etc.

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, can be defined in two ways. Often, it refers to general marketing methods of increasing search engine visibility, increasing traffic, sales, etc. This may include pay-per-click, blogging, newsletters, message boards, and other techniques. The term "Search Engine Marketing" can also apply specifically to marketing via sponsored search results.

For purposes of our discussion, we are going to go with the more narrow definition of SEM to apply specifically to pay-per-click, or sponsored search, marketing.

So the question then really becomes: which is better, and which should you concentrate on: natural search or sponsored search.

All else being equal, a natural search result is probably better than a sponsored search result. However, it could take you a long time to generate that natural search result, and you have no control over how your site listing will appear. Hopefully your web page result has a strong title which will be displayed on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), but you are at the mercy of the search engine. With SEM, you have control over where your ad will appear in the results, when it will appear, and what information will be displayed.

Sponsored search results cost money. Natural search results are free. But to get that natural search result, you are either going to have to put a lot of time into optimizing and promoting your web site or hire an outside firm to do it. So although the actual listing is free, the amount of effort required to get there is not.

So which is better, and which should you concentrate your efforts on? Both.

You can use sponsored search ads to generate immediate traffic to your site, which will generate not only traffic, but information that can be used for purposes of natural optimization. For instance, you can analyze the data from your sponsored search campaign to know what search phrases convert the best. You can then optimize some of your web pages specifically for those phrases. Long-term, if you can achieve high natural search rankings and then combine that with sponsored search listings, you will own more "shelf space" for relevant search queries. The term shelf space refers to the amount of space on a SERP occupied by your business. If you have two natural search listings and a sponsored search listing on a SERP, then you have a lot of visibility on that page and a good chance of getting someone to click through to your web site.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net if you need some help implementing your own Internet marketing plan.

Labels: google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Research Proves That Information-Seeking Consumers Online Are Big Spenders: How to Take Advantage of It

Scarborough Research has released a new research report about the buying habits of online newspaper readers based on data from newspapers in five markets: Sacramento, Houston, Providence, Orlando, and Kansas City. The data proved that online newspaper readers tend to be avid online purchasers. This supports our belief that people who are going to do business online tend to do other activities online, such as reading their newspaper.

If they are already reading a newspaper online and buying online, chances are very good that they are also reading blogs and other content-oriented web sites. So if you engage in a targeted blogging campaign, combined with periodic targeted online press releases, you will have a very good chance of getting your message directly in front of the people who are seeking information about you.

The interesting thing is that online blogging + PR works irrespective of how well optimized your web site is, and the traffic is free (except for the cost of distributing your press releases).

However, even if your web site is not optimized, your blog should be, and your press releases can be (sorry). You still need to do your keyword research. You need to target a very specific set of keywords, and you won't really know what those keywords are if you don't look at the traffic numbers behind them. You also need to keep in mind SEO principles such as keyword density.

And while you're at it, you might as well optimize your web page because you are going to be sending traffic to your web site. Remember from an earlier blog that you want all of your links pointing to your home page to maximize your buildup of Google Page Rank. As you distribute press releases, you are going to have the opportunity to create lots of new keyword-rich links pointing back to your site.

The single most important thing, however, is to be consistent. Blog 3 - 4 times per week, if not more, and ping various blog directories every time. And do an online press release every 2 - 3 weeks.

You will absolutely drive a lot of targeted traffic to your site. And as the Scarborough report proves, this traffic will spend money.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, online pr, online press releases, online publicity, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Search Engine Marketing - Using Pay Per Click as a Keyword Research Tool

The keyword research process typically begins by generating as many keywords as possible from several different sources, such as the tools at Nichebot.com or the keyword research tool in your SEO software. Once you have a long list of possible keywords, you look at the numbers behind the keywords - the number of searches each keyword or phrase receives, the amount of competition for each, the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index), and whatever other measure the researcher thinks is important.

You will be tempted to automatically select the keywords that generate the most traffic with the least competition. And this makes perfect sense, and is a good starting point for keywords to target for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

But it's not the ending point.

Even if you know what keywords you have the best chance of dominating while still generating a reasonable amount of search traffic, you still don't know what search phrases will bring traffic that will most likely convert into customers. That's where your Pay-Per-Click campaign comes in. By running PPC ads for your keywords, you can generate data that will tell you which keywords convert at the highest rate. If you then focus your Search Engine Optimization campaign around those keywords, you will generate the most profitable traffic possible.

So the formula is basically a funnel that starts with every possible keyword that relates to your business and ends with keywords that generate a reasonable amount of traffic, have little competition, and that convert at a high rate.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, sponsored search

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Eyeballing Your Web Site for Search Engine Optimization

Even if you don't know a thing about HTML, you can at least partially optimize the pages of your Web site by "eyeballing" them and passing the suggestions along to your web designer (or doing them yourself if you have that ability). Here are some tips to get you started (these tips assume you already have some idea of keywords you need to target):

Does the web page have a keyword-loaded title?
Does the keyword have a keyword-loaded header? A lot of un-optimized web sites have a header that says something like "Welcome to my web site!". Scrap that and replace it with a header that instead uses your keywords.
Does your web page copy use your keywords and are the keywords used near the top of the page?
Is the web site copy easy on the eyes? Copy on a web page is much more difficult to read than words on paper, so you should break the copy up into short paragraphs and use lots of bullet points, along with occasional bold text, italics, etc. And use dark text on a light background.
Does your front page have some kind of call to action? You should try to get the Web reader to read more, sign up for your newsletter, read your blog, or whatever would further your objective.
Is the web design clean and uncluttered? Is the site easy to navigate?
Think from your customers' perspective. Are you giving them what they need? If you don't know what they need, you should find out by asking or doing surveys.

These suggestions have nothing to do with keyword density or anything like that. They simply relate to making sure your web site is easy to read, easy to use, and tries to get your visitors to perform some specific action.

For help optimizing your web site, contact Work Media at info@workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: content, content creation, copywriting, internet marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Monday, December 11, 2006

Internet Marketing Podcasts - Here's What I've Been Listening to Lately

I' ve been listening to a lot of Internet marketing podcasts lately. The people who are creating all those marketing information products (many of whom are the ones doing the podcasting) have some good ideas. And they're a lot more on the cutting edge than mainstream marketers. The major thing that they do differently than most marketers is that they take a direct marketing approach. They're aggressive and persistent.

But I digress. My point was to recommend a couple of podcasts that I've been listening to lately. Listen to these and you will definitely expand your knowledge of Internet marketing.

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/entrepreneurs-journey-podcasts/
At times a bit rambling, but this guy does some really good interviews.

http://www.internetmarketingvoodoo.com/
If you're just starting in Internet marketing, then this might not be the best for you to listen to. But if you already know something about it, this podcast really digs in deep on some fairly specific issues.

http://www.internet-based-business-mastery.com/
Young, successful Internet entrepreneurs sharing their wisdom.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net for help with your Internet marketing campaign.

Labels: internet marketing, internet marketing podcast, podcast, podcasting, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Internet Marketing Advice: Quick and Easy Keyword Research

When deciding on keywords for which your web site should be promoted, you should think in terms of what keywords are most likely to be used by people who are most likely to purchase your product or service and, preferably, are close to being ready to make a purchase.

The best way to find these keywords is to run pay-per-click ads with all of your possible keywords. Those keywords that convert the best (all other things being the same), are the best ones for which to optimize your site.

You should collect data for several weeks before you make your judgement about which keywords are generating the hightest return on investment.

Quick and Easy.

Contact Work Media for help with your search engine optimization campaign at workmedia.net or 888-299-4837.

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

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Google PageRank Distribution - A Quick and Dirty Internet Marketing Lesson

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

Monday, November 27, 2006

SEO & Marketing Roundtable (Jan. 4th, Nashville, TN)

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

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