by Miriam Ellis

Muckraking isn't the prettiest word in the English language, but the work of its best-known proponents has led to some of America's most important political, social and legal reforms. Gritty individuals like Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Upton Sinclair put their reputations, even their lives, on the line to shed light on scenarios of corruption, abuse and inequality.

Isn't it interesting to consider what these individuals might have done had they lived in the days of the hyperlocal blog? In the past, muckrakers frequently had to hammer their stories through the tough and narrow mediums of the mainstream press or publishing houses. Today, someone like you can tell the truth that you know, with the click of a button. The hyperlocal blog presents a unique opportunity to highlight serious local concerns, but what place does muckraking have in this new world? Is it a good idea or not?

On his own hyperlocal blog, Matt McGee has just published a series of smart tips he gave to one of the people whose work I respect most in the small business world: Anita Campbell of SmallBizTrends.com, for a webinar. Matt and Anita suggest that hyperlocal blogs which have been created to increase customer loyalty should avoid controversy:

All this talk about being a community resource is fine and good, but it's still a business blog that you're running. You don't have to blog about everything going on in town and risk alienating potential customers. I'd avoid politics on a hyperlocal business blog. I'd avoid being too critical of local groups, organizations, other businesses, and really just about anyone. You don't have to be the town's cheerleader who presents everything as Super-Duper Awesome, but you should skip the controversial stuff if you're trying to build loyal local customers.

I'm pretty much of the same mind with Matt and Anita on this (in fact, I gave similar advice in a series of posts I wrote on Hyperlocal Blogging back in 2008). If your hyperlocal blog is part of your presence as the local barber, restaurant owner or psychotherapist, it probably won't be 'good for business' to use this vehicle as your opportunity to call out the mayor for shoplifting at the local liquor store, right? The potential outcomes of doing so demand that I quote Mark Twain:

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Yes, using your hyperlocal business blog might create a hot time in the old town tonight for awhile, generating buzz and links, but when the people you might expose come back with blistering accusations about you and your activities, you might just wind up out of business

by Manoj Jasra

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages' load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We've also blogged about site performance.
• Pingdom Tools: Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.
• Webpage Analyzer: Their script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component
  

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Moran

The very name "Search Engine Optimization" would seem to answer the question of who marketers are optimizing their site for. All the great advice you get about getting your pages indexed and finding which keywords are used in the search engines and optimizing your content to be found by the search engines--it's all search engines all the time. Or is it? At some point, you need to ask yourself why you are doing all of this.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with all the advice about how to make your site appeal to search engines--I have written about it for years in blogs and books and magazine articles and anywhere else someone will read what I have to say. So, I'm not telling you to forget all that advice. I'm telling you that there is more that you need to do.

Image by Danard Vincente via Flickr

But that's not all there is. Perhaps the most important part of search marketing is understanding the content that your customers really are looking for and providing it. It's very likely that your customers are looking for information that isn't on your site at all--optimized or not.

Think about your own business. How many customers out there have no idea what you do? Or why they'd ever need you? Suppose you are an estate planner. Do you think that your customers know when they need an estate planner? You might say yes, with your evidence being that the searchers who find your Web site consistently enter "estate planner long island" or "estate planner nassau county"--but what were they looking for before they knew to type those words? How many of your potential customers were looking for words like "elder care trust" or "medicaid asset protection"? Probably a lot of them.

Every one of your competitors is fighting over "estate planner long island" and you should continue to wage the good fight, too. But if you branch out a bit, and try for "new york elder care trust" by providing strong information to help with that specific problem, you might capture a searcher before they start searching for "long island estate planner."

Most businesses can benefit from similar advice. Don't be satisfied with doing what all your competitors do. Optimizing your site for the same words that everyone else does can't possibly work for everyone. Differentiate yourself from the pack by thinking more broadly about what your customers need.

When you stop merely optimizing the content you have for search engines, and you start optimizing your content and messaging to what your customers really need, you'll see a big increase in what you are really looking for: your bottom line.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Jennifer Laycock

The last year or so has seen a mad rush of marketers heading into the world of social media to set up Twitter accounts, gather Facebook fans, produce YouTube content and drive people to offer reviews on sites like Yelp and FourSquare. Unfortunately, that mad rush has also caused a lot of companies to neglect or even abandon their blogs. This is a big mistake. In the world of marketing, blogs are an absolutely integral part of any company's online marketing.

Earlier this week, I posted about the six reasons SEOs love blogs. That post addressed some of the search related reasons a blog can help boost your business. Today, I want to look at things from more of a marketing perspective and explore the top reasons your marketing team has for wanting to see you properly utilize your blog.

Once again, I'm going to call on some supportive data from HubSpot, who has been cranking out some great posts on the ultimate impact of blogging on search, traffic and leads. There are hard hitting, easy to understand numbers like:

Sites with blogs generate an average of 67% more leads

And there are slightly more complicated, but still important important stats like the increase in leads seen by blogs that have at least 25 posts. Better still, blogs with more than 52 posts see another large jump in the number of leads they generate, presumably because all that extra content leads to more (and higher) search engine rankings).

But just what is it about blogs that make marketers love them so much? Let's take a look at six key factors that help blogs outperform your average business site when it comes to attracting potential buyers and winning them over.

Reason #1: Focused on Education and Awareness

While it's true a good corporate web site integrates education into the mix as a way to build credibility and move people through the sales process, there's still a limit to how far toward the educational side most business sites can go when it comes to focus. Ultimately, your site's primary goal is (and should be) to convince visitors to buy your products or services. The content on the site must reflect that goal.

Blogs, on the other hand, offer nearly unlimited opportunities to analyze, educate, question and converse with your target audience. Your blog gives your marketing team a unique chance to test different approaches to presenting your information and to do it without always being concerned about pushing people to the next step.

Reasons #2: Editorial Freedom

Because business sites need to focus on moving someone through a goal oriented process, the content created for the site needs to do the same. That leaves writers with very little freedom in terms of how they present their information. Everything needs to be goal oriented.

Blogs offer far more editorial freedom to the skilled writer, giving them space to explore related and complimentary topics that may catch the eye and interest of the reader but that do not directly relate to the goals of the site. For hard working writers, this small bit of freedom can make an enormous difference in terms of ability to continue cranking out quality content.

Reasons #3: Finesse them with a Softer Sell

There's a certain level of hard sell that has to be implemented on a standard business web site. You've got to focus heavily on benefits, unique value propositions and getting the conversion. It's a fine art to get those points across without pushing too hard.

Since there's less of a focus on an immediate push to conversion on a blog, there's more chance to master the art of the soft sell. Bloggers can offer content designed to answer questions, reassure the customer, or simply build up a level of trust and rapport over time. These soft selling techniques tend to work on a completely different set of people than the hard sale, allowing you to use your blog in tandem with your business site to target a wider range of potential buyers.

Reason #4: Chance to Define the Personality of the Company

The larger the business, the better the chance its customers view it as simply another nameless, faceless, profit driven company. The smaller the business, the better the chance it's customers will feel it lacks credibility, capability and accountability. These are the challenges that can be difficult to address when your site's focus is on getting the conversion.

Incorporating a blog into your marketing mix allows large companies to seem a little smaller by adding some faces and personalities to the mix. At the same time, blogs allow smaller companies to look more personable, which can also enable them to build credibility and the type of one-on-one connection that creates a sense of loyalty and trust in the consumer.

Reason #5: Content Spreads More Easily

Another problem with corporate sites is there's very little reason to return to them once you've done the requisite looking around. Unless you are coming back to check prices or make an additional order, most people won't visit a corporate site over and over again. Even if you wanted to return to read updates or new information, there's no way to know what changes have been made. Companies can blast updates to email subscribers, but many consumers are reluctant to give their email addresses up to businesses.

The great thing about blogs is they are updated frequently and visitors know they are updated frequently. A visitor who likes your content is far more likely to subscribe to receive post updates via RSS or email than they are to subscribe to a marketing message. Additionally, content spreads quickly and easily via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social sharing options. This makes it far more likely that someone will learn of, and return to read, your new blog content.

Reason #6: A Chance for Conversation

While there's always space to invite feedback on a standard company blog, they don't lend themselves while to true conversation. People simply don't feel prompted to engage with web sites the same way they do with blogs. That's why one of the biggest advantages of a blog is the ability to inspire back and forth conversation with potential customers.

Since a blogger can ask a direct question of a reader and then engage in conversation via the comments, there's greater opportunity to gather the type of feedback you can use to edit your offerings, your services or even just your marketing approach.

Boost Your Marketing by Getting Back to Your Blog

If you haven't gotten around to launching a blog yet, or you've let your efforts slide, you may want to rethink your strategy. There's no replacement for a corporate web site when it comes to selling products, accepting leads or showcasing your company, but there's great value using a blog to reach out to consumers in ways that cannot be easily done via a standard business web site.

If you haven't been paying as much attention to your blog as you could, stop and rethink your strategy. The blog gives you a unique opportunity to reach your audience at a period when they might not otherwise wish to engage with your brand. Make use of it. Your sales team will thank you for it.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Jennifer Laycock

With so much social media focus on sites like Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook these days, it's easy for companies to neglect one of the single most powerful social media tools available: their blog. In fact, for companies who are looking to increase their search engine optimization efforts, a well-crafted blog can make a dramatic difference.

In fact, HubSpot released a study last summer showing some dramatic search related differences for companies including blogs as part of their content strategy. Their data shows small businesses who blog have an average of 97% more inbound links, 434% more indexed pages and 55% more visitors.

Those numbers all tie together pretty easily to make good sense. SEO 101 makes it clear inbound links are a crucial part of building up search engine rankings. Those links, combined with a flush of freshly indexed pages leads to higher rankings for more terms which, in turn, leads to higher visitors levels.

But just what is it about blogs that make SEOs love them so much? Let's take a look at six key factors that help blogs outperform your average business site when it comes to delivering organic search traffic.

Reason #1: Speed of Link Building

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of blogs when it comes to search engine optimization is the speed with which you can build inbound links. This is because blogs are populated with the type of content people are willing to link to. Whether it's passing a resource post to contacts on Linked In, retweeting a great how-to guide or linking with added commentary from another blog, well written blogs rarely lack for inbound links.

Business sites, on the other hand, have a far more difficult time attracting inbound links. Once the requisite directories have been exhausted, acquiring links can become hard work.

Reasons #2: Depth of Links

Another strong benefit to blogs is the distribution of links to different pages on the site. When it comes to business web sites, the greatest majority of links tend to point to the primary URL. With blogs, most of the links point directly to the post being mentioned or shared. This distributes links deeply and widely across the site, lending more credibility to each page and making it easier for individual pages to rank.

Reasons #3: Outbound Links

When it comes to establishing a site as a resource (and therefore a value) in the eyes of a search engine and visitors, outbound links can play an important role. Blogs tend to link freely to additional resources, information and sites. Business web sites tend to restrict their outbound links due to the understandable concerns about distracting people from the sales and conversion process.

This ability to link freely to other sites is key in establishing the blog as a true resource and generating additional inbound links down the road.

Reason #4: Keyword Potential

There's a limit to how many pages of content you can add to a corporate site before you begin to overwhelm the visitor and detract from the conversion process. For some sites, this also means limiting the number of keywords and phrases you can properly target.

Blogs offer far more freedom in terms of ability to add new content with a slight variation in focus in order to target more keywords. Blogs can also provide opportunity to target potential customers throughout the keyword research cycle by offering the ideal place to educate, guide and answer questions.

Reason #5: Freshness of Content

One of the biggest differences between blogs and standard web sites in the eyes of a search engine is the freshness of the content. While blogs tend to be updated weekly (or even daily), corporate sites tend to be fairly stagnant. Most changes come about only when there are new products, specials or information about the business to present.

Since frequent content additions leads to frequent visits by search engines and a deeper crawl, blogs are deemed quite attractive in the eyes of a search engine spider. Integrating your blog into your primary domain can help increase the frequency and depth of spidering of the corporate side of your site as well.

Reason #6: Credibility

One of the keys to understanding the search buying cycle is realizing that early in the cycle people are looking for information instead of a sales message. Since corporate sites tend to be very conversion driven, there's a limit to how comfortable a consumer feels learning about their potential purchase in that type of environment.

This is one of the things that makes blogs so powerful in terms of search traffic. Blogs allow you to gain rankings for a wide range of phrases found early in the buying cycle and offers multiple opportunities to connect with and build credibility with your target audience. This increases the chances they'll either link over to your product site, bookmark you for future purchases or simply recall your brand when they move further through the buying cycle.

Boost Your SEO by Getting Back to Your Blog

If you've been neglecting your blog in favor of faster and simpler social media outlets like Twitter, you may want to rethink your strategy. Talk to your SEO and find out what types of search terms and phrases you need to be targeting to expand your listings in the search engines. Work with them to put together some content plans for your blog and then get back out to those social sites like Twitter, Facebook and social bookmarking to help generate links and traffic to those posts. Your rankings will thank you for it.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

I generally implement my optimization campaigns in two phases. The first phase is a quick run through to get as many of the site pages "search engine friendly" as possible. The second is a much more thorough process that provides a complete optimization for each page.

Quick process can often be done in a matter of hours for the entire site, while the best process can take days, months, or even years to get through it.

Do SEO Fast

You can't start the SEO process until you know what keywords you are going to target. Fortunately, you don't have to complete the entire keyword research process to get through this fast stage.

Once you know what your core terms are, and what page should be optimized for each core term, you're ready to get started.

There are four things you want to work your core term into:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description Tag
• H1 Tag
• First paragraph of text

The goal isn't to optimize each of these perfectly; they will be revisited in more detail later. But you do want to make sure that you are working in your core term into these areas while also keeping the readability intact.

The process for each page should take no more than 10-15 minutes, but can often be done in five.

The goal here is to get as many pages optimized for their core terms as quickly as possible. The search engines will begin to pick up these keywords and you'll see some slight improvement in the rankings. Once you start the more detailed optimization process those efforts will help improve the overall performance of the site. Having the pages optimized--even on this most basic level--should help get you more exposure and better rankings overall.

Before you move into the more detailed optimization process (or at least while you are doing that) you don't want to neglect some of the site architectural issues. A lot of times the architectural problems should be addressed before you begin any SEO, but some of these elements can be done as the SEO progresses.

Do SEO Best

Once your site has been made "search engine friendly" you can start diving into the more detailed optimization process. I suggest taking a single page at a time. Doing it this way allows you to perform your keyword research on a page by page basis instead of trying to do it all at once.

In this phase you'll revisit all the things you did in the fast optimization but on a more granular level. This isn't just about working in some keywords into the content. You want to take a more measured approach to not only work in keywords but to focus on the content and marketing abilities of every area of the page.

Here are a few things you want to consider:

Title tag: You've already worked in your core term. See if you can adjust the tag to add the more important qualifiers that might also entice additional click through.

Description tag: Same as the title. You can generally work in a lot more qualifiers here than you can in the title. Be descriptive and compelling.

Headings: Ensure proper hx use throughout the page using proper hierarchy. Don't do a lot of keyword stuffing in your headings, but use them as it makes sense.

Content: Look for opportunities to write or rewrite the content to work in keywords, explain your features and benefits and keep visitors engaged in your site. Make sure you use a consistent voice from page to page and include active words with regular calls to actions. Keep your content scannable with good paragraph heading, bold, and bullet point usage.

Review the page from a customer standpoint and look for anything that breaks the intended conversion process. This includes finding poorly worded sentences, titles or headings that may fail at their jobs, and ensuring that the reader absolutely knows what they are expected to do next and/or drives them to the information they came for in the first place.

Make sure the page is able to convey its purpose visually, both with images, formatting, etc. We'll add or change things as necessary to ensure the page provides the reader with the best possible visual representation.

Internal linking: Don't miss an opportunity to link to other areas of your site from within your content. Link keywords relevant to other content, informational and product pages.

Images: Use the ALT attribute for your images and describe each image properly. Use keywords when it fits.

Code: Streamline your code. Reduce the amount of code on the page by eliminating unnecessary tables, JavaScripts, CSS and whatever else that might help you increase your page's download speed. Ensure there is no bad coding or malformed HTML issues that might prevent the search engines from properly indexing your content.

There is nothing quick about this process. The goal is to get everything done in the most perfect way possible before the page goes live. Go through as many edits as you need to ensure that all the elements are in their place and will do the job intended.

It's unlikely that this version will be the most perfect version either. It may take further adjustments to get better rankings or improve click through and conversion rates. You can always find ways to improve.

If you've performed the quick optimization process first, you don't have to worry about getting every page fully optimized immediately. You'll get benefit from the fast optimization which will then be expanded upon as you continue to optimize each page on a much more thorough level as time permits.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

They say it can't be done.

I'm told it's impossible.

Ridiculous!

Scandalous!

In SEO school* we are taught that you can't optimize a single web page for more than two or maybe three keywords at a time. Many say you can't truly be effective optimizing for more than one. It just doesn't work!

But what if there was a way that it could work? What if you could successfully optimize a single web page for 15 or more keyword phrases at a time and get rankings for all of them? What would that kind of information be worth to you?

Send your paypal donation to ppw@polepositionweb.com and I'll share this secret. :)

(That was a joke.)

Every Page Has a Core Keyword

Each page of your site should have a very particular focus. In most cases that can be summarized in two or three words. These would be your core terms.

What's your page about?

The start of the keyword research process is uncovering all the core terms that fit your site and your audience, then mapping each core term to a specific page of your site.

For the one-keyword-only enthusiasts

by Miriam Ellis

Is there a table, a shelf, a corner of your house that starts out bare and clean, but over time, you begin setting this and that on it without much thought? Some mail, old newspapers, a rain hat, a screwdriver, a bracelet, a dog toy

by Dave Cosper

by Stone Reuning

Today's websites are more complex than ever before. Many contain a wealth of information visitors can use to answer their questions and learn what they need to know before contacting a company or making a purchase online.

But with all the information and features packed into many of today's websites, it can also be more difficult for site visitors to first of all determine whether or not a website will contain the information they need and then find it on the website. Installing a site search box can offer several advantages to help your site visitors--and also benefit your marketing function in the process.

Site search satisfies the customer's "I want it now" attitude

Installing an internal site search box can help visitors find what they need more quickly. With web users still looking to find what they need as fast as possible, confusing navigation and cluttered design are more likely than ever to prompt an "on-to-the-next-site" response.

Site search is undoubtedly the quickest way for someone to find what they're looking for on a large and complex site. An internal site search helps visitors get around navigational structures that may be confusing to them. This is especially important for sites that are constantly adding new content. As the site continues to grow, many users will find the site search function to be a valuable tool in helping them find what they need.

Site search makes a website more customer centric

Installing an internal site search also means you can transform your website from a static "one size fits all" style to a more "customer-centric" approach. More and more, websites need to simultaneously cater to different types of website users - knowledge seekers, prospects, buyers and long-term customers. Internal site search helps you do this, as it helps those seeking knowledge find and assess your resources more easily.

Site search appeals to the "searcher" type of site visitor

Different people prefer different types of navigation tools. For example, if someone uses a search engine like Google to arrive at your website, they are more likely to prefer the same search method for finding information within your website. It's not uncommon for site visitors to look immediately for the site search box when they arrive at a website.

Site search arms marketers with data

Marketers can benefit tremendously from installing an internal site search function. With the right analytic tool, internal site search can provide a wealth of information about who visits your site and how they navigate around it.

Site search data can provide insight into customer desires, intent, and behavior. While a customer might tell a different story if asked for feedback in a focus group or online survey, for example, site search data can reveal exactly which pages they looked for and found, which searches intrigued them to continue reading as well as those that prompted them to leave the site. This will contribute to the conversation when analyzing conversion rate performance across content and site sections.

Site search provides insight into personas and usability issues

Site search can provide usability data without the expense of setting up testing facilities. When the usage data and click path from real users is saved and available for viewing and analysis anytime, a marketer can see where searchers encountered difficulty. Looking at this data across multiple users can give clues to areas of the site that require updating and expansion, for example.

Adding typical searched on phrases to flesh out descriptions of the various personas using your site can also help enrich the entire web team's understanding of the types of people using the site. This information will be particularly helpful to any copywriters who are preparing content for selling pages and product descriptions, etc.

Site search brings ideas for new products

Users' searches can even inspire new product offerings. If you see that many visitors are searching your site for a particular type of product or service that you don't yet offer, it may be time to consider developing an offering to fit that underserved need. Especially if your site is already bringing traffic for those particular searches, your company may do well to act on this informal market research.

Site search reveals new keywords

You may end up finding new keywords you were never aware of, allowing you the opportunity to tweak your content so more users will find the information they need on your site. Perhaps some of your pages that you feel are relevant to a specific topic are missing a few of the terms people are actually searching on. In that case, you'll have the opportunity to add them as appropriate and further refine your content, making it even more targeted to your users.

In addition, those keywords can be added to your search marketing campaigns, perhaps offering a chance to reach a wider audience on the Internet than originally anticipated.

In summary, for your company to remain competitive online, you need to be open to the new ways people are finding and disseminating information. Site search is an exciting utility for websites looking to evolve their websites according to user demands. We recommend beginning with an offering such as Google custom search, which can be readily adapted to your needs.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Miriam Ellis

Tale of the Very Bad Advice being given to Chiropractors

Just when you thought reciprocal linking schemes were in their final death throes, a shortsighted marketer has erected a gleaming new structure that may serve to plague both unwitting small business owners and Google for years to come: reciprocal reviewing!

Ben Cummings of Practice Building Center has launched a campaign which urges chiropractors to leave Google Maps reviews for one another to boost each other's rankings. This is no April Fool's joke: watch the video.

Mike Blumenthal wrote an expose piece on this this week and the ensuing discussion is pretty much what you'd expect; people demanding to know where business ethics have gone and predicting dire pollution of the Local SERPs as a result of this.

People say I haven't a mean bone in my body, and I don't know Ben Cummings in any way and mean no disrespect to him as a fellow human being, but how could anyone give this kind of terrible advice to a whole sector of small business owners? My hopes are faint that the chiropractors who come across this 'marketing' idea will know anything about the reciprocal linking debacle in the real estate industry of some 3 years ago and how Google came down like the Assyrian on the fold, penalizing realtors right and left for this type of you-scratch-my-back behavior.

The possible outcomes of such a scheme are none of them pretty. I would expect Google to act about this (when they figure out what is going on) just as they did about the real estate disaster, doling out penalties. Better yet, how about getting your chiropractic practice banned from Maps so that you have no way of competing at all in the 7 pack? Google has absolutely banned businesses from the LBC and I think this type of spammy behavior merits aggressive punishment. Let's see..in addition to this, the content in Maps will be polluted with phony praise of chiropractors in the form of reviews being given by other chiropractors, whom they may never have even met, instead of patients so that people in pain will be mislead into thinking a chiropractor is great when he isn't. Not a nice thing to do. Overall, this will make reviews of the whole industry about as trustworthy as the mess that is the locksmith industry, making reading reviews pointless. Swell.

Finally, and I think this really needs to be pointed out - the chiropractors who join in this will not only be out their $1 participation fee, but they may do permanent damage to their professional reputations as ethical service providers. Olympic skier Dale Begg-Smith won a silver medal in Vancouver this year, and all NBC could talk about was his reputation as a spam king. His ability to soar to the heights of athletic accomplishment was almost forgotten in media efforts to point out his Internet-related flaws. How would you like to be the chiropractor who loses all credibility, no matter how good your healing skills, because you are engaging in 'marketing' behavior that will doubtless be viewed as unethical by most potential customers and by Google itself?

Bad marketing ideas are nothing new, but to me, seeing this one roll out is like watching a train wreck happening before my eyes in slow motion. I sincerely hope that any chiropractors who encounter this offer will think twice about its potential outcomes, and I want to urge Practice Building Center to rethink the wisdom of promoting a practice which, while it could certainly have short term benefits, holds such inherent risks for participants and unquestionably makes the world of reviews less useful and trustworthy for all of us.

Tale of the Yelp BBQ

Talk had died down for a bit there, but yet again cries of extortion are being upraised in connection with user review powerhouse, Yelp. I believe it was back in August of 2008 that I first heard claims that Yelp was using some aggressive and misleading tactics in their telemarketing campaigns. I tuned into the news about this and sort of set it aside, though it left me with a vague question mark in my mind about Yelp's ethics.

Yelp co-founder, Jeremy Stoppelman, has had his hands full the past few weeks, patently denying that Yelp employees would use any of the highly-criticized tactics small business owners are claiming they do. Is Yelp offering to remove negative reviews, threatening to add negative reviews, demanding payments for various services? I have absolutely no idea, but like everyone else, I'm seeing the smoke. Sometimes, all it takes is for the public to see the smoke to decide there's a fire, and the damage being done to Yelp's reputation right now, simply by virtue of their name being connected with such unsavory talk, is quite real.

I think Yelp has a great product. In fact, I think they are probably presenting the most professionally-laid-out, snazzy, thorough product of anyone in the review game. It's terrible to think that they could ruin what they've built by resorting to low business tactics. Frankly, it's hard to believe they could be so short-sighted about their own future success. The jury is still out on this one, I think, but public sentiment about Yelp looks pretty bad at present

The Tale Of Two Series

There are two very excellent article series underway right now in the Local sphere which I think you may derive real benefit from reading if you're excited about all things Local. Mike Blumenthal has been doing a series that encompasses so many of the important aspects of user reviews. How to get them, where to get them, what not to do

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Building Links

There are a lot of different approaches to building links. The different types of links discussed in the previous post in this series can gain you links in various degrees of goodness. But like most things, quick-fix solutions rarely ever provide excellent long-term value. That's not to say quick fix solutions aren't sometimes needed or warranted, but they rarely make a good long-term investment.

A link only has a certain amount of value, much like the value of a casual acquaintance. But like a true friendship, a link relationship goes much further and has a lot more potential.

The concept of building links is best when it's focused on building relationships. You've heard it said, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." In the same way, build a link and you get a link. Build a relationship and you get a lifetime of links.

There are a lot of ways to build relationships online that will translate into links. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others allow you to connect with people who have many of the same interests as you do.

Seek these people out and engage with them in conversation on the topic that you know and they love. Don't try to sell them. Don't ask for anything, just talk to them. It won't be long before business comes up. And if it doesn't, they'll likely research you and find out what it is you do. By not asking for anything, or even guiding the conversation in that direction, you find yourself with a convert and possibly even an evangelist.

The great thing about these forums is that you can build relationships with multiple people at once. But you have to take the time to also engage with people on an individual level as well.

The more relationships you build, the more people you will ultimately reach. The more people you reach the greater your ability to connect with them on a professional level. A friend is far more apt to drop a link for you than someone you just met. A friend--yes, even an online friend--is more likely to help promote you than someone you sent an email to out of the blue.

Leveraging these social media platforms wisely can bring you a lot of connections that you wouldn't be able to get with other forms of marketing.

Where to Find Links

Social media spaces are not the only place to go to build linking relationships. A little leg work may be in order. There are a few places you can perform research that give you a goldmine of information and sites to connect with that could become good link partners.

Directories

Web directories such as Yahoo, Best of the Web, Business.com and others are a great place to start. Directories provide lists of websites in similar and related categories to what you offer. Look through these categories to find websites that might benefit to providing a link to your site.

Typically, you'll want to avoid the sites in the same category as your own as they'll likely be competitors. Instead, find those that compliment your offerings and who's audiences will be benefited by such a link.

Blogs

It's relatively easy to find blogs that write content on your subject. These blogs offer a great way to build relationships and get some links. Start by commenting on blog posts, adding your own insight and commentary. Don't drop links in your comments. Return and comment frequently, getting to know the poster and the other commenters.

As you continue to provide good feedback those reading the comments will begin to recognize your name and follow the link in your name back to your website. This might follow with a "natural" link to you.

You can also seek out guest-posting opportunities, once you have established yourself as being knowledgeable on the topic. These blog posts generally come with a bio that you can use to link back to your site or blog.

Log Files

Looking through your server logs can give you a wealth of information on the people who come and visit you. One of things you can look for is what websites people used to find you. Use this to find the websites that drive the most traffic and pursue similar websites for linking opportunities.

Search Engines

And finally, the most obvious way to find links, search engines. Use the engines to perform keyword searches using words that indicate willingness to link out. Words like directory, submit link, add link, and others help you quickly find sites looking to add your site to their list of important resources.

You can also uses search engines simply to find sites in related industries, much like you found sites in the directories. These results will provide additional sites not previously found that may make good opportunities to build relationships.

Links are one of the most crucial aspects to successful SEO but there isn't one-way to do it right. There are a lot of avenues that can be explored and a lot of linking opportunities waiting to be discovered.

Putting it all together

SEO isn't especially difficult to do, but it does take time and enough knowledge to help you get started down the path to learn as you go. Many small businesses will try to save money by doing SEO on their own and they can be successful to a point, so long as they have the time needed to not only gain the knowledge but to implement it as well.

This series covered only the most basic aspects of SEO but should be enough to give you a good shove in the right direction.

Missed a part of this series?
Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO
Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords
Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms
Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers
Part 11: Everything You Need To Know About SEO Copywriting
Part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content
Part 13: Everything You Need To Know About Links
Part 14: Everything You Need To Know About Link Anatomy
Part 15: Everything You Need To Know About Linking

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Sage Lewis

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Jennifer Laycock

If you're looking to further your education in online marketing or know of a non-profit that could use an educational boost of their own, you're going to be interested in hearing about MarketMotive's spring scholarship contest. The team at MarketMotive is generously allowing each faculty member to award a scholarship to one of their readers.

The contest is simple

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Links come in all different shapes and sizes. Some good, some bad, some are just there. In part 14 of this series we looked at the anatomy of a link, analyzing the different elements that make a link what it is. There are a lot of things to consider when looking at the value of the link, many of which lie in the the value of the page or website doing the liking. But here we'll look at a slightly different value of link, in how it's linked between the two sites.

There are three basic ways of linking between sites, One-way, reciprocal and multi-way. We'll take a look at these, their values and whether its a type of linking you should be engaged in.

Reciprocal Links

A reciprocal link, in simplest terms, is a link from Site A to site B and a link back from Site B to Site A. Many have written reciprocal links off as being completely irrelevant but that's far too simplistic. There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links in an of themselves. Its all in the execution.

Low-Quality Reciprocal Links

The lowest quality reciprocal links are those found on pages specifically designed to house reciprocal links. What you get from these "resource" pages is a bunch of barely related links from Site A to one or more dozens of other websites. All of these build their own "resource" pages that do you the favor of linking back to you and one or more dozens of other sites.

These pages are usually easy to spot because they generally provide little value to the visitors of the site, other than for a good laugh. If you find yourself linking to a site that links back this way it would probably be of benefit to you to stop linking to them. The link pointed to you likely has no value, however by associating yourself with them (via your link) you can be sending the search engines a signal that you don't care much about the quality of sites you link out to.

High-Quality Reciprocal Links

Despite the belief of some, there are reciprocal links that can pass a lot of value to you. Low-quality reciprocal links are there simply for the quid pro quo of the link. High quality reciprocal linking has nothing to do with doing someone a favor in order to get something in return. These are two links that are made independently of each other simply because you, and the "reciprocating" site find each other's content valuable.

It's entirely possible that one of the linking parties has no idea the other site is linking to them because each link was given entirely on the basis of the value of the content being linked to. It wasn't pre-arranged or purposeful in any way.

That doesn't mean you can't pre-arrange a reciprocal link and still make it valuable. You can, you just need to make sure it looks as natural and non-pre-arranged as possible. Linking and receiving a link in the midst of quality content in primary site pages can do the trick. Just be careful about how many of these reciprocal links show up at the same time.

Multi-Way Links

This is where some of the link schemes get clever. Reciprocal links, we are told have no value so you have to have three or more site's linking together so there is no direct reciprocating link at all.

Three-way link schemes aren't all that difficult for search engines to sniff out so these multi-link programs have gotten more complex. The latest version is link wheels. This is where networks of sites link to a second level of sites which then link to you. You get dozens or hundreds of "one-way" links to your site through these link wheel networks.

Like most linking schemes these link wheels will probably have limited value over the short-term without any real long-term benefits.

One-Way Links

On a pure value standpoint, one way links (sans any linking schemes) are the most valuable links you can get. This is, in most circumstances, a link to your site from someone that finds your content valuable, doesn't ask for a link back, you don't link back to them on your own.

If you have good content, this type of link isn't all that rare. The best link marketing is creating a valuable website that is informative, helpful and educational. Of course this isn't proactive marketing, which is why you see a lot of options to purchase one-way links.

Without a doubt, search engines frown on purchased links that are not clearly defined as such both visually and/or using the nofollow attribute. Purchase links at your own risk. If you are using a broker that claims to keep their purchased links hidden from the search engines, keep in mind that the search engines can easily spend money building sites and purchasing links from these same networks. The hidden network is no longer hidden from the search engines and they might not even be aware of it.

Not all purchases links have no value, but only so long as the link flies under the search engine radar. This can rarely be done by purchasing links from a broker, but can be done on a one-on-one situation.

Links are an important part of your optimization campaign, but not every link will provide you the same value. Aside from worrying about reciprocal links, link wheels or even purchasing one-way links, go outside of the box of "get me a link" and think about providing value to your visitors that is worth linking to. Once you have that, then consider ways to get the word of your content out to those that are most likely to link, become customers, and spread the word.

Missed a part of this series?
Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO
Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords
Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms
Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers
Part 11: Everything You Need To Know About SEO Copywriting
Part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content
Part 13: Everything You Need To Know About Links
Part 14: Everything You Need To Know About Link Anatomy
Part 15: Everything You Need To Know About Linking

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Charles Lumpkin

Check out our small business news site.

by Jeff Howard

Dear Santa, I've worked hard this year, I served my clients with dedication, and provided value to every organization I've touched. However, I still need better tools to help justify SEO practices. Please have your best elf programmer develop this hack so the value behind SEO becomes more transparent in 2010.

All this year I've been striving for better rankings, as my rankings climb I see more visitors, and it's rewarding. But, I want to know my keyword performance for each organic position. For example, when xxx keyword was at position xxx how many times did someone land on my website.

I've seen others try to develop a hack that helps with this, but it doesn't do the job well.

Build me a tool that helps fill this chart.

Check out our small business news site.

by Manoj Jasra

Last week I caught up with Stephen Woessner, the author of The Small Business Owner's Handbook to Search Engine Optimization.  In his book, Stephen outlines a 15-step process to help improve the performance of your website in organic search.  In our chat, Stephen gave me some insight into his latest SEO book.

[Manoj]: Your book is targeted at Small Businesses, talk to us about the importance of small businesses understanding the foundations of SEO in order to really kickstart their website(s)?
 
[Stephen Woessner]: A small business owner needs to take advantage of every possible competitive advantage, especially during this challenging economy -- and having an effective Web presence is one of the best strategies to increase sales. SEO is a proven, low-cost strategy for increasing Web site traffic, and a business owner does not need technical skills to get substantial results. By following the 15-step process in The Small Business Owner's Handbook to SEO, business owners will see a dramatic increase in rankings within 30 days or less and a doubling of Web site traffic in 90 days or less. SEO provides any business owner with measurable results and proven performance.
 
[Manoj]: If small businesses could focus on just 2 or 3 main strategies in your 15 step process what would you want those to be?
 
[Stephen Woessner]: Great question! My advice would be to focus on Steps 3-6 initially. Step 3 teaches business owners how to select keywords that are proven performers so no time is wasted on words that don't matter. Step 4-6 teaches business owners about the three most valuable pieces of real estate on any content page: 1) Page title, 2) META keywords, and 3) META description and how to optimize these fields using the keywords selected during Step 3. However, the power of my 15-step SEO process is using all the steps in unison, but if a business owner did nothing else, they should absolutely take advantage of Steps 3-6.
 
[Manoj]: This book has a lot of great information and can be digested in very little time - is this what you envisioned before you started writing?
 
[Stephen Woessner]: I am glad you think so and absolutely! My goal in writing The Small Business Owner's Handbook to SEO was to make it very practical and tactical. I wanted to include a specific step-by-step process that any business owner could sit down, read, and begin using right away. I wanted to take a no-nonsense approach and provide a handbook that delivered efficient and effective results.
 
[Manoj]: Do you think SEO still provides one of the best ROIs compared to other online strategies?
 
[Stephen Woessner]: Definitely! I cannot think of another online promotional strategy that is as effective as SEO with a little to no-cost investment. SEO should be the promotional foundation to any Web site.
 
[Manoj]: You mention article submissions in your link building chapter, how effective is this strategy?
 
[Stephen Woessner]: Writing and submitting articles to the free distribution sites that I highlight in my book is the single most effective strategy for building high-quality, in-bound links to a Web site. The articles also demonstrate a business owner's expertise in their given industry. The link building strategy I explain in detail within Step 15 will generate hundreds of new, high-quality, in-bound links within 90 days or less. The additional links will also increase a Web site's site popularity within Google, and as a result, the site's rankings will go even higher.

Check out our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Ever see one of those movies where some secret government agency has a super high-tech office in an old, dilapidated building in some rundown part of town? The camera starts on the outside, looking over a ghetto as it moves down the street. It zeros in on a rundown building that a squatter would be embarrassed to live in. Then, as the camera moves inside we are shown a state-of-the art facility worthy of a Manhattan high-rise office in the 22nd century.

Sometimes SEO is just like that, but the opposite. A lot of time and energy is spent on the "exterior" (search engine rankings) while ignoring the interior (building a great website.)

Imagine yourself driving through a newly renovated area of town. The asphalt is freshly laid with bright yellow lines down the middle. Young, budding plants have been planted along the sidewalks between the street and newly stuccoed office buildings that look to be full of leather bound books smelling of rich mahogany. Now imagine walking into one of those buildings to find torn up carpet, water-stained ceilings, crumbling sheet rock on the walls, and someone doing their business off in the corner.

Imagine the change of emotions you'd feel. Stepping up to the door you feel confident that you're walking into a place that's going to meet your needs. But as soon as you open the door, you're hit with a stench that is the forebear of whats to come.

Focusing on search engine rankings while ignoring the quality and usability of your website may be a great way to get visitors in the door, but what will they find once they get there?

Putting your money where it counts.

When you're on a budget, as many businesses are today, you really want to spend your money where you're likely to get the greatest benefit. Unfortunately, money isn't always spent on what is actually the most beneficial, but rather what is perceived to be. While SEO can help you gain exposure and drive traffic to the front door of your website, if what's behind those doors isn't up to expectations, all the money getting them there is simply a waste.

A couple years ago I had my wisdom teeth removed, had a root canal and then a cap put on one of my teeth all in a couple of months time. I had to see several different dentists, each a specialist in a different area, so I got to see quite a few dentists offices, noticing a stark contrast between them.

Most of the offices were roomy and full of nice furniture, but one stood out as a genuinely scary experience, especially for someone who suffers from mild claustrophobia. The receptionist's desk was two and a half feet wide and piled high with about a years worth of "stuff that can wait."

I was placed in one of the procedure "rooms" looking right at someone else being examined by one of the nurses. As I laid back in the chair to get some X-rays, the nurse had to duck repeatedly around overhanging equipment while stepping over a small office trash can to get out to the hallway. It was like trying to perform an operation in a closet.

This is what many business websites are like when they focus on SEO and ignore their website design. There is nothing wrong with investing in SEO to drive traffic, but SEO is not the end of the story.

Conversions matter

A while back we had a long-time client undergo a major site redesign. They had held their rankings pretty solidly over the years but the site was design was getting stale. We had also been prodding over the previous months to address their site's many inefficiencies. Because their business had been growing significantly since we started working on their SEO campaign, they were never in a real hurry to make any changes. But finally they made the move.

The client invested in a major redevelopment of the site and rolled it out to the public. Almost immediately something amazing happened. Their conversion rates jumped by 30%!

This jump wasn't the result of new keywords optimized, or previously optimized keywords suddenly moving up in the rankings. The increase in conversions was directly tied to making their site more appealing and user-friendly.

The new site design cost them about what a years worth of SEO cost them. With a much more user and search engine friendly site, the efforts we were able to shift the efforts of the SEO campaign from creating band-aid solutions to being able to invest in a far more focused keyword targeting campaign.

With the additional revenue the client began talking about expanding the online marketing efforts; and why not? With a newly polished, high-tech interior, why not do all that you can to drive even more traffic to the higher-converting site?

No one can deny the value of getting first page placement for relevant keyword phrases. But many small businesses still need to be convinced that there is more to marketing than rankings and traffic. Bringing traffic into the slums isn't all that difficult to do. Getting someone to buy from you while they're there is. Lucky for you, it's not too great of a distance from Harlem to Manhattan. Conversions do matter. And in the end, conversions are what matter most.

Check out our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Ever see one of those movies where some secret government agency has a super high-tech office in an old, dilapidated building in some rundown part of town? The camera starts on the outside, looking over a ghetto as it moves down the street. It zeros in on a rundown building that a squatter would be embarrassed to live in. Then, as the camera moves inside we are shown a state-of-the art facility worthy of a Manhattan high-rise office in the 22nd century.

Sometimes SEO is just like that, but the opposite. A lot of time and energy is spent on the "exterior" (search engine rankings) while ignoring the interior (building a great website.)

Imagine yourself driving through a newly renovated area of town. The asphalt is freshly laid with bright yellow lines down the middle. Young, budding plants have been planted along the sidewalks between the street and newly stuccoed office buildings that look to be full of leather bound books smelling of rich mahogany. Now imagine walking into one of those buildings to find torn up carpet, water-stained ceilings, crumbling sheet rock on the walls, and someone doing their business off in the corner.

Imagine the change of emotions you'd feel. Stepping up to the door you feel confident that you're walking into a place that's going to meet your needs. But as soon as you open the door, you're hit with a stench that is the forebear of whats to come.

Focusing on search engine rankings while ignoring the quality and usability of your website may be a great way to get visitors in the door, but what will they find once they get there?

Putting your money where it counts.

When you're on a budget, as many businesses are today, you really want to spend your money where you're likely to get the greatest benefit. Unfortunately, money isn't always spent on what is actually the most beneficial, but rather what is perceived to be. While SEO can help you gain exposure and drive traffic to the front door of your website, if what's behind those doors isn't up to expectations, all the money getting them there is simply a waste.

A couple years ago I had my wisdom teeth removed, had a root canal and then a cap put on one of my teeth all in a couple of months time. I had to see several different dentists, each a specialist in a different area, so I got to see quite a few dentists offices, noticing a stark contrast between them.

Most of the offices were roomy and full of nice furniture, but one stood out as a genuinely scary experience, especially for someone who suffers from mild claustrophobia. The receptionist's desk was two and a half feet wide and piled high with about a years worth of "stuff that can wait."

I was placed in one of the procedure "rooms" looking right at someone else being examined by one of the nurses. As I laid back in the chair to get some X-rays, the nurse had to duck repeatedly around overhanging equipment while stepping over a small office trash can to get out to the hallway. It was like trying to perform an operation in a closet.

This is what many business websites are like when they focus on SEO and ignore their website design. There is nothing wrong with investing in SEO to drive traffic, but SEO is not the end of the story.

Conversions matter

A while back we had a long-time client undergo a major site redesign. They had held their rankings pretty solidly over the years but the site was design was getting stale. We had also been prodding over the previous months to address their site's many inefficiencies. Because their business had been growing significantly since we started working on their SEO campaign, they were never in a real hurry to make any changes. But finally they made the move.

The client invested in a major redevelopment of the site and rolled it out to the public. Almost immediately something amazing happened. Their conversion rates jumped by 30%!

This jump wasn't the result of new keywords optimized, or previously optimized keywords suddenly moving up in the rankings. The increase in conversions was directly tied to making their site more appealing and user-friendly.

The new site design cost them about what a years worth of SEO cost them. With a much more user and search engine friendly site, the efforts we were able to shift the efforts of the SEO campaign from creating band-aid solutions to being able to invest in a far more focused keyword targeting campaign.

With the additional revenue the client began talking about expanding the online marketing efforts; and why not? With a newly polished, high-tech interior, why not do all that you can to drive even more traffic to the higher-converting site?

No one can deny the value of getting first page placement for relevant keyword phrases. But many small businesses still need to be convinced that there is more to marketing than rankings and traffic. Bringing traffic into the slums isn't all that difficult to do. Getting someone to buy from you while they're there is. Lucky for you, it's not too great of a distance to go from trash to cash. Conversions do matter. And in the end, conversions are what matter most.

Check out our small business news site.

by Charles Lumpkin

Check out our small business news site.

by Jennifer Laycock

Earlier this week I made a post about why companies need to add a social media strategy budget to their 2010 marketing plans. The first reason on my list was the ability social media gives a company to listen to their customers.

Listening to the unfiltered thoughts, complaints and praises of customers via social media carries a huge benefit for the companies who know how to leverage it. That said, it's also one of the most terrifying aspects of social media for many brands. Fear of what will be said is still one of the biggest reasons companies are afraid to dip their toes into the social media waters.

Last week Zane Safrit pointed to an interesting article over at Business Week that examines corporate fear of social media negativity.

Zane hit the nail on the head when he titled his response "Shooting the Social Media Messenger" He wrote:

The most interesting part of the paragraph warning readers of the perils in that bottle of elixir titled social media was its encouragement to shoot the social media messenger. Don't like the message being shared about your brand on twitter, facebook, blogs, etal? Shoot 'em. Shoot the social media tools.

Zane offers some great insight (so make sure you go read his post) and it got me to thinking a little more deeply about the root of corporate social media fear.

On some level, companies seem to have this idea that if they keep their heads low and stay quiet, they can pass, unnoticed through the era of social media and go about their business. Unfortunately, the likelihood of ignoring social media and staying a successful company is becoming about as likely as ignoring the Internet and staying a successful company. It can be done, but it's unlikely. There's a mistaken idea that the collective voice of social media and NOT the company itself will be the source of negative commentary.

From Business Week:

by Mike Moran

I realize that to some, this is a dumb question. I mean, if you have a Web site, why would you NOT optimize it for search? Organic search is the cheapest way to bring people to your site and paid search is the easiest, so it's a no-brainer for you to recommend that every blessed Web site on the Internet dive right into search marketing, right? Wrong.

So, as you stare into the distance, wondering how to figure out if you are ready for search, what you really want to know is if your site is ready for customers.

Suppose you are opening a small shop on a busy street in town. What's the first thing that you'd do? You'd order the best merchandise you could find. You'd make sure it was attractively laid out. You'd be positive that you had helpful employees to answer questions and to run the cash registers. In fact, you'd do absolutely every one of those things before taking out a big ad in the local paper, right? You'd never take the ad out if your store wasn't ready.

Image by LaPetiteTwinkie via Flickr

But too often, that is what I see on the Web. Folks approach me every day asking for help with search marketing when the simple truth is that their Web sites aren't ready for customers. The sites might be hard to use. Or have little information. Or have no way for customers to actually buy anything--no online buying and no easy way to move offline.

But still, they want search marketing. They are convinced that the problem isn't that their Web site stinks on ice, but rather that not enough people are visiting. Trust me folks, if your Web site is awful, you want as few people to see it as possible. Not only won't they buy from you, but they won't come back. They might even tell other people how bad it is. That's not the kind of word of mouth you are looking for.

No, don't let this advice paralyze you. Some of us are our toughest critics. We see all the blemishes on our sites without noticing what's positive. Your site doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be good. If your Web site is no good, then sending more people to it won't be the answer.

So, take a hard look at your Web site. If you can honestly say to yourself that folks arriving at your site can find what they need and figure out how to buy what you are selling (online or offline), and you have the sales to prove it, then you are ready. For you, search marketing really is a no-brainer.

But if your Web site causes customers to faint dead away, or call you on the phone to complain how they can never find anything, you have a bigger problem than search marketing that you need to solve first. Once you do solve it, then search marketing will bring you far more impact than you'd ever dreamed.

Check out our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Over the past few months I've been working on a personal hobby site. I have to say, it's been a lot of work. It's been a while since I've built a new site, I've spent most of my time over the years working on my main business site and already-built client sites. Even when we are brought in for consulting in new site planning, it's someone else that does the work, not me.

After spending dozens of my free-time hours just getting this new site set-up, I can totally see why people would just rather pay someone else to do it for them.

Starting from scratch

I went the easy route and I found a $25 Wordpress theme that gave me most of the functionality I wanted with some extra cool features I liked. I spent the first week customizing it; adding plugins and tweaking the code. I don't know a whole lot of code outside of HTML but I can sort my way through it. I found some widgets to add and removed some that I didn't like.

Every now and then I came across an issue that I couldn't fix. A email to the theme developer and almost all my problems were quickly solved. I spent some time fiddling with a logo until I got it just how I wanted it.

Next I had to start building the site structure. How were my pages going to be categorized with both blog posts and the directory I was building? I did some tinkering along the way and I keep making improvements as I go, but finally got the basic structure in place.

Perfection never comes, so roll it out now

What I found most interesting during this process was the SEO elements. This took me far longer and was much more work (and a work in progress) than I anticipated

by Jennifer Laycock

As a small business social media strategist, I'm very happy to see so many companies finally beginning to recognize the need to invest some of the marketing dollars into social media. I'm ever more happy to see how many of them are willing and able to dedicate some internal staff to the matter. On the other hand, I'm finding that many of these companies have absolutely no idea WHY they need a social media strategy. They just feel the pressure to get involved and hope something will come from it.

Unfortunately, that's no way to build a strategy. What good does it do to invest time and money into a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other number of social media outlets if you have no goals, no measurement and quite frankly, no idea why you're there.

What companies need to do is embrace the benefits of social media while very carefully thinking through the goals of their outreach efforts. Different goals will require different strategies. Taking a shotgun approach of simply trying to "get out there" will rarely result in a solid payoff. It's far better to sit down and carefully consider what your company's goals are and to build backward to create a strategy that's most likely to meet those goals.

2009 is coming to a close and most companies are already deep in planning with their 2010 marketing budgets. With that in mind, here are four key reasons why your company needs to consider planning and launching a social media campaign next year.

Reason #1: Social Media Gives You Unprecedented Ability to Listen to Your Customers

For companies that don't already have some type of social media strategy in place, this is usually the best place to start. While it takes a little bit of common sense and guidance to create an active and vocal outreach plan that will deliver results, pretty much anyone is capable of listening to the existing conversation.

The goal here is threefold.

1. Find out where your customers are: The first thing you'll need to do is find out where your customers and potential customers are spending their time. You can run a search for groups or fan pages on Facebook, search for keywords related to your business on Twitter Search, set up Technorati and Google Alerts or using a free service like Social Mention. You can (and should) also check your log files to see what types of social sites (blogs, forums, Twitter, etc

by Sage Lewis

Check out our small business news site.

by Eric Brown

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it's a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn't pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.

A brand used to be something else. It used to be a logo or a design or a wrapper. Today, that's a shadow of the brand, something that might mark the brand's existence. But just as it takes more than a hat to be a cowboy, it takes more than a designer prattling on about texture to make a brand. If you've never heard of it, if you wouldn't choose it, if you don't recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.

Bills secret to creating an army of crazy-passionate fans:

1. Authenticity. Bill is Bill. When he emails the ambassadors to meet him for a drink you know he'll be at the bar waiting to meet you. And he'll love talking with you and he loves his bourbon.

2. Great Stuff. Maker's is great. It's been great for a long, long time -- the distillery is a National Historic Landmark. You can't motivate fans for an average product. For a great product, you don't need to. They'll come to you

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by Charles Lumpkin

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by Sage Lewis

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by Miriam Ellis

Talk about Happy Holidays and the spirit of giving! Mike Blumenthal has just published the very first Complete Google LBC Category List we've ever seen. This is the gift Local SEOs and local-focused business owners have been waiting for and it vastly simplifies the process of picking the right categories for a given business - something you can't afford to make a mistake about!

Choose 5 And Choose Well

When adding your business listing to Google's Local Business Center, you are prompted to choose 5 categories that best describe the nature of your entity. Just like those old Yellow Pages categories, LBC categories are critical to helping users navigate their way to your business and choosing the right categories can mean the difference between traffic coming to you from Local Search or not.

Some businesses offer many more than 5 different areas of specialization, but the point here is to use the LBC as Google dictates and pick the 5 main categories that best describe what your business offers. With Blumenthal's new list, considering your options just got so much easier.

In the past, when picking categories for my Local SEM clients, I had to do a lot of experimenting to find good choices, typing in various keywords, looking at the competition, etc. Now, all I have to do is refer to this list to quickly understand all of the possibilities and this not only saves time on my part, but it reduces the chances that I might overlook a category that could potentially be of high importance to a client. All of the categories are laid out in plain view, accompanied by a very interesting list of synonyms that apparently cause these categories to be called up.

There is much discussion going on about the synonyms. No one is quite sure how Google arrived at this list. Mike Blumenthal says he senses these are likely drawn from general organic searcher behavior, rather than LBC user behavior, so the synonym list should be taken note of by anyone doing any type of SEO. You may be able to identify some interesting patterns from the keywords associated with each main category.

Don't Get Too Fancy, Pal

I want to share an anecdotal tip here that I feel is important to consider while we're on the subject of choosing categories. Steve Hatcher of Axe Media relates the following:

I had a rash of business owners contacting me over past month or two because their maps rankings plummeted. Most of them had been stuffing extra keywords into the categories, including city names.

Again, the point here is to use the LBC as Google intends it to be used. As a Local SEO, my life is made so much tougher by people trying to get fancy and outwit the bots. They stuff, they spam, they ruin the quality of the results by trying to get ahead fast instead of planning to stick with it for the long haul. Granted, with bugs, glitches and a chronic lack of oversight on Google's part, the temptation to fool around is pretty strong, but it's totally antisocial to do so.

The whole point of Local is to create indexes that yield pertinent, real and helpful information for communities that improve the quality of life for local people. Sets of results that list the same business 7 times in a row with variously over-optimized titles do not deliver a quality user experience. It's my belief that participation in Local carries with it a responsibility to understand Google's rules about their own product and to play by those rules to the best of your ability. It's a smart plan for your business in the long run and a decent way to treat your neighbors.

Stay tuned on this subject of LBC categories. Blumenthal has revealed that he is currently working on a database version of this list that will make finding the right categories for your business even easier than scanning the whole long list. Now there's something to make visions of local sugarplums dance in your head!

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by Christian Arno

The case for SEO is quite a simple one really. If a business ranks highly on Google for its industry's most popular key search terms, then they are far more likely to succeed than if they have a poor ranking. This is reflected in research conducted by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) which found that two-thirds of marketers planned to increase their SEO resources in 2009.

But we don't want to preach to the converted here. Most of you will already be aware of the power that SEO holds in terms of targeting domestic markets, which is why you're here reading this.

However, many small businesses could be missing a trick by limiting their SEO scope to domestic shores - the world is a big place and 75% of the earth's population speaks no English at all. Furthermore, whilst English may well be the most widely spoken 'second language' across the globe, people simply prefer to do business in their own tongue.

In Europe, there are over 200 indigenous languages, 23 of which are spoken in the 27 European Union (EU) member states (some of the languages are spoken in more than one country, hence the disparity).

Figure 2: Top five European Languages

English is spoken to some degree by over half the population of the European Union. But from a native-speaking point of view, German has plurality with almost 20% of the EU population speaking it as a mother tongue, followed by English and Italian each with 13% and French with 12%.

Which languages you work in naturally depends on which markets you intend to target, a decision based on the nature of your business and where you feel there is a gap in the market which your business can exploit. But consider that if your business was targeting a sector in the South American market, having your website available in Spanish opens your business up to a potential 350 million native speakers around the world; expanding further into the burgeoning Brazilian economy and a Portuguese website opens up an extra 200 million speakers.

Of course, it also pays to be wary of the linguistic differences that exist between, say, the Spanish in Spain and the Spanish in many Latin American countries. For example, the word carro in Spain is a cart that you push or pull to transport things, whereas in Latin America it is an actual car that you can drive around in. A car in Spain is a coche, whereas a coche in Latin America is a baby stroller.

Similarly, dejeuner is 'lunch' in France, but 'breakfast' in French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium. And whilst France often import Anglicisms directly into their language, French-speaking Canada tend to translate the English terms directly: e.g. 'Weekend' is le weekend in France, but fin de semaine in Canada (literally: 'end of the week).

There are many dialectal differences within languages that help to highlight the importance of adopting a fully localized marketing strategy. And the only way of ensuring your message is properly localized, is to use a professionally qualified translator who is native to the target country. Furthermore, the linguist should ideally live in the country too, as language is constantly evolving and they must be up-to-date on the latest local lingo.

So how does all this fit in with SEO, the issue you're all here to read about? Well, keywords are the cornerstone of any SEO campaign

by Mike Moran

Image via Wikipedia

Trust me. I know the right way to do organic search marketing. I know that you start with metrics. I know that you must measure the traffic that comes to the site and see how many people convert. I've even written a couple of books that have a strong metrics focus to Internet marketing, organic search marketing in particular. But when I talk to small businesses, I am more and more wondering if search metrics are optional, at least at first.

Yeah, I know that this is crazy talk. Blasphemy against everything I stand for. I know.

But I've found myself chatting with several small business owners recently who have no idea how to do search marketing and I found myself reluctant to make metrics the first step for search marketing, as I always do for a larger firm.

I spoke with one small business owner that asked, "What should I do first for organic search marketing?" And I knew that he has very little money to spend on consultants or fancy tools. And he has less time than money. So, could I, with a straight face, tell him to figure out his conversions and implement Google Analytics? He has no chance of being able to do that on his own and no money to pay someone to do it. So, is that really the first step?

I'm forcing myself to say, "No." We need to tell people how to do something tangible that might cause money to roll in.

So, I found myself asking him what keywords he thinks his customers use. (No, I didn't suggest keyword research, because he doesn't know how and can't afford someone who does.) And I found myself suggesting that he change the titles to emphasize those keywords. And just putting a new phone number on the Web site so that anyone who called it he would know is from the Web.

These are things he could do. And some money would start to appear in the cash register. I know that my advice was "wrong" but I hope it was wrong in the sense of "do it wrong quickly." Let's get started doing it wrong to drive some value and then later we can come back and invest more to really do it right.

So, if the boss is already convinced search is a good idea, do you need to start with numbers that prove it? Or can you start by doing some of it and only later coming back and investing in measurement (and keyword research and all the other important stuff we do)? Or is that new phone number enough of a measurement that we can live off that for a while? I don't swear I know the answers, but I continue to realize that if the advice given doesn't reflect the real client needs, it doesn't matter how many best practices you know. The ultimate best practice is to give clients something that they can do.

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