SEO Review

There are many different methods of marketing your business website, on-line shop or e-commerce website, but for many business owners there seems to be a bit of confusion between what is considered generic back link building and what is a true social marketing campaign, and more to the point what is the aim of each marketing strategy?

Different SEO and web marketing companies will of course employ different methodologies to promote a site and more often than not you get what you pay for so to speak. Equally there is bound to be a crossover in campaign strategies the debate of which could go on for months, but the purpose of this article is to highlight the key differences and aims of each type of campaign not what any single campaign should contain.

Generic Search Engine Marketing

Typically the aim of a generic search engine marketing campaign (SEM) is to develop relevant and targeted anchor text back links to specific pages on your website to increase your site’s link profile and authority in the eyes of the search engines.

This of course is all aimed at improving your website ranking and to ensure your website becomes “known” in the search engines for the particular key phrases you are most interested in ranking for.

Low level or cheap link building services often include article marketing, content distribution and directory submissions, although most professional SEO practioners will probably dismiss directory submissions as the quality of these links is generally very poor at best and sometimes dubious also.

Low level or cheap link building services can also take advantage of what have become known as social websites; typically these are in the form of blogs and other Web 2.0 properties and even low level social bookmarking sites. Forum posting just for the sake of links would also fall under this category.

The quality of budget link building services can vary wildly but they are not to be sneezed at though, as in many cases especially in less competitive or tight niches, they can prove to be very effective indeed and are often all that is needed to rank a site well.

Social Marketing Campaigns

Social marketing campaigns are quite different to generic search engine marketing campaigns although there can be a degree of crossover in many cases. A true social marketing campaign is much more focussed to generating leads and brand awareness as well as meeting the targeted marketplace in its own backyard.

A social marketing campaign however is also generally considered to be much further up the evolutionary tree of link building so to speak and while it will still develop and reward you with good quality back links to your site, social marketing campaigns are generally of much higher quality in both their make up and also can require a significant amount of planning and preparation.

Typically social marketing campaigns will take advantage of prime and highly focussed Web 2.0 properties and business networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ecademy and so on, as well as other complementary web sites and social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us to name but a few.

The aim of a good social marketing campaign is not to specifically develop back links per se (although this is bound to happen) but to develop either brand or business awareness in a defined market place where the products or services you or your company supply will or could be in demand.

It is also to establish you or your company as an industry authority, go to person or trusted advisor, or even a business that can help other people solve their own problems or critical business issues by the provision of quality goods and services.

The Downside of Social Marketing Campaigns

While the advantages of a social marketing campaign are undeniable, there are a number of downsides which it pays to be acutely aware of.

The main downside of social marketing campaigns is the sheer amount of time and work that needs to be maintained to develop a business’s authority or profile across many sites.

These types of campaigns are very hands-on and involve ongoing social networking and subtle promotion of a business or brand as well as the generation of useful/helpful relevant content either for general publication or for posting on your own site as quality information pages or blog posts, or as donated content for other complementary sites that are not in direct competition to your own.

It may be for example that you want to develop a profile on forums relevant to the markets you are trying to penetrate by posting quality useful help and advice (not just a link post), but if not kept up-to-date or live these profiles can quickly lose ground and your on-line identity will fade.

Most businesses pursuing social marketing campaigns as an ongoing strategy will be spending at least 10-20 hours plus a week in one form or another and although this can be outsourced (often at considerable cost), typically this is done in-house by either the business owner or the marketing person, primarily because the business has the internal product or service expertise to maintain a long term focus and generate quality content.

What Is Right For Your Business?

The correct or most successful strategy required for each business will vary tremendously which is why most SEO professionals will not even conduct a web marketing campaign without some form of initial consultancy or competitive market assessment.If time is not one of your assets or your budget is tight, then a generic link building campaign may be all that is affordable to you, but if you are in a competitive market and serious about your on-line business then it simply does not make good business sense to second guess your requirements.

Bite the bullet and employ the services of an SEO consultant even if only for initial consultancy as the advice you receive more often than not will be highly beneficial to the success of your on-line venture.

Author: Dave Talbot: Search engine marketing and website promotion is an essential ingredient for any on-line business. For affordable SEO marketing and link building services visit  http://www.advancedwebmarketing.co.uk

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

If you have a blog, you have an updates feed, most likely in the flavor of RSS feed, but quite possible in Atom feed. This is the file that’s linked to the weird-looking orange button you see on many frequently updated websites, such as blogs. These tips apply to both types of feeds.

Your feed’s job is to talk to other machines about your site on your behalf. Those bot to bot conversations increase your traffic and help more people see your site, either directly through feed reader subscriptions and listings, or indirectly by helping your search rankings. Do at least these basics to take care of your feed.

1. No one loves RSS, okay? I never actually liked it much, but I always understood that it was necessary to grow my site. Stop trying to hug it, and start having a basic understanding of how it helps your business.
2. If you don’t have a site newsletter, you can use RSS to make your blog posts into email newsletters, then put the email subscription box at the top right of your site, or otherwise unobtrusively remind people to subscribe. Aweber will create both the newsletter and the web form for you automatically.
3. About once a week, make sure your feed is validating. Sometimes all it takes is a rarely used character in the title to break your feed. FeedValidator.org will help you with that for free.
4. Submit your feed to the top RSS search engines and directories. There aren’t hundreds of them as there once were, but for the good ones remaining, like Syndic8, the links can’t hurt you.
5. RSS is what helps your site speak to social media sites automatically, but what if you aren’t sure what is helping and how often? Try FeedBurner. It’s my opinion that the service has been on the decline since Google took it over a year ago, but before you judge by that, take into account the height it was at when the fall began.
   It’s still does a pretty decent job of tracking your traffic, and there’s no need to direct ALL your traffic through FeedBurner if you don’t want to, just use it to track sites that you give permission to repurpose your feed, like Twitter and Facebook.
6. Google Reader. Yes, that’s the whole tip. Of the minority of people who use a Feed Reader to follow blogs rather than email, Google Reader is the top choice. Stick the button on your site, glance over your headlines in Google Reader now and again. Wouldn’t hurt you to share some items over there too.
7. Should you use full-feeds or partial-feeds? It’s a controversial issue. I won’t go into as much detail about how my private findings differ wildly from conventional wisdom, just suffice it to say this. My solution with new sites is to offer both, and let readers choose when they come to your site, and allow the short feed to be syndicated by anyone, with a link at the bottom of each short feed post letting readers know you offer full text as well.

Learning about RSS may not be as big a deal as it once was, but don’t forget that your site’s feed is instrumental in helping your site grow.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley… but you’re having real trouble getting out of the harbor and you can’t figure out why!

You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough to sink you on their own, so there’s no obvious immediate crisis – just a constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.

I’ve been reviewing Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies very well to almost all business websites. Very few sites are so terrible or have something so wrong with them that they’re clearly a disaster. Yet just about every site has some area where it’s quietly losing traffic, losing potential business or the chance to create relationships – or failing to attract visitors in the first place.

If you’re not regularly reviewing your traffic analysis, you can’t know for sure if your site is leak proof. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the most common areas where you can look for – and fix – those silent leaks.

1. Leaks in your Brand & Positioning

The excellent folks at MarketingExperiments online research laboratories have shown that clearly articulated and differentiating value propositions have a critical effect on Website conversion rates.

(The conversion rate is the measurement of visitors fulfilling your desired outcomes – which might include calling you, buying a product at your site, signing up for your newsletter or blog feed, etc.)

Your value proposition should be front and center on your home page. It should answer the classic question: “Why should we do business with you instead of your competition? ”

Although this question isn’t a Web strategy issue in itself, it is one that many people struggle to answer. But the lack of a compelling opening message can be a major impediment to your online success.

How to check for this leak: Even if they don’t enter your site at the home page, most visitors who don’t know you will go there as the second page they look at to find out more about you and your business.

If visitors are taking a quick look at your home page and then immediately leaving, something is wrong. Your copy is failing to pique their curiosity or to answer their questions: “Can this company meet my needs?” and “Should I explore further?” You have a leak!

2. Leaks in Visitor Engagement

Popular theory says that you have 10 seconds to engage a visitor – i.e. convince them to stay on your site before they click away in search of something more interesting.

While I don’t believe that it’s quite that simple, there are some definite ways to get rid of visitors fast before they’ve had a chance to really check you out.

The best of these is probably the infamous splash page – the entry page to your site that your Web designer persuaded you to have because it “does cool stuff”. Hopefully there’s a “Skip Intro” button somewhere on the page!

In all my reviews of traffic reports I’ve seen a consistent leak of up to 30% of visitors leaving from this page alone – before they’ve ever seen who you are or what you provide.

How to check for this leak: Easy – look for the splash page in your traffic reports and see how many visitors exit at that point. If it’s more than a small percentage, you have a leak – take the page out today!

The other major area where you should watch for leaks in visitor engagement is in what are called “landing pages”. These are inside pages of your Website which turn out to be the first page that a visitor sees, usually because you have some well-indexed content that they’ve found in a search engine.

Here it’s absolutely critical to understand the visitor’s mindset. Each visitor is at your site looking for something specific, they may well have found you by accident, so they may have no idea who you are – and worse, no interest in you.

The first page that they see on your Website must engage them immediately in accordance with their needs, and it must have enough context to draw them into other areas, and to want to find out more about you. It’s not enough to give great information on this page – they’ll soak that up, and then leave.

How to check for this leak: Hopefully your traffic reports are sophisticated enough to show you which keywords bring visitors to each specific page of your site. This shows you each visitor’s “mindset”.

If visitors are leaving a page very quickly, then it probably isn’t satisfying their informational needs, so you should review the content.

If visitors are reading the page (your traffic reports should show the time spent at each page) and then leaving, you’ve given them what they wanted but failed to draw them into the rest of your site. This can be fixed with more compelling navigation and calls to action.

Either way, you have a leak!

3. Leaks in Directions & Outcomes

I’m constantly amazed by the number of Web pages that give great information and content – and then just end abruptly – perhaps with some navigation tabs if you’re lucky!

Steve Krug in his excellent book “Don’t Make Me Think!” describes how crucial it is to direct visitors to the next step that you want them to take. If you don’t do this, and rely on your visitors to figure this out for themselves, there’s a strong chance that they’ll make a different choice than the one you want – or they’ll leave your site altogether, creating leaks in your potential revenue stream.

Every page of your site needs strong calls to action that stand out visually and clíck directly to where the visitor can fulfill the outcome that you want (e.g. “buy now!”, “sign up for our newsletter / RSS feed”.) Pages can have more than one call to action, and there’s nothing wrong with repeating them on longer pages so that they’re always within eyeshot.

About The Author

Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites. Would you like your “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit websitesthatwin.com/leaky-boat-report.html for more information.

(c) Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Search engine marketing (SEM) has evolved to become the most reliable strategy for reaching your target audience and driving conversions on the internet. It compels your market to visit your website; it boosts your company’s exposure within your space; it positions your product as the solution to their problems. As a result, your sales go up. Your revenue and profit swell. Your ROI rises. And your business enjoys stronger branding and customer loyalty in the process.

Many of your competitors are already using SEM in an attempt to capture a larger portion of your market. There hasn’t ever been a better time to protect and expand your territory. This article will explain why search engine marketing should be a critical piece of your online marketing strategy. You’ll discover the value of hiring an SEM expert versus forging a path yourself. We’ll also describe how SEM PR and SEM social media tactics converge with SEO and PPC to produce a groundswell of momentum.

Why Search Engine Marketing Is Critical

Search engine marketing blends SEO, pay-per-click advertising, and social media strategies to give your company a higher level of visibility within the search engines’ listings. However, visibility without sales defeats the purpose. And therein lies the true value of SEM.

Your marketing efforts must generate conversions in order to justify the investment. Conversions might include a prospect buying your product, signing up for your newsletter, or becoming your affiliate. It might include subscribing to a continuity program that generates monthly revenue. Search engine marketing not only allows your company to approach your audience, but it engages the conversation that is already occurring in their mind. It compels action, which lifts your conversion rate.

Is Hiring A Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Expert Necessary?

Every tactic that is leveraged within a comprehensive search engine marketing deployment can be learned. The problem is, doing so is incredibly time-consuming. The algorithms that govern the search engine’s organic rankings change constantly. The major PPC platforms endure a seemingly endless string of upheavals. Social media sites are still in their infancy; as they mature, so too, will the tactics required to leverage them. Developing proficiency in each area of search engine marketing takes an enormous amount of time.

An SEM expert will design a search engine optimization campaign that pushes your website to the top rankings for your chosen keywords. They can also launch a pay-per-click, PPC, advertising campaign that further improves your exposure. Social media marketing tactics can be integrated to dovetail with the rest of your search engine marketing deployment. Even though you could launch these strategies yourself, do you have the time to learn and apply them?

SEM PR: Melding Search Engine Marketing With Public Relations

SEM PR has its roots in search engine optimization. Years ago, online public relations was managed largely through the creation and distribution of online press releases. This is still effective today. These press releases gain traction in the search engines’ organic listings. That builds your company’s brand while helping to push negative publicity off the first page of results.

Today, online public relations has been incorporated within a broader search engine marketing context that includes PPC, SEO and online reputation management (ORM). For example, a press release can be distributed online in order to gain traction within the natural listings. Then, a PPC campaign can be launched to direct your audience to the press release on your website. Links can be placed throughout the page to other positive coverage. The more points of exposure, the less likely negative press will penetrate the top rankings in the search engines. This is a core element of ORM and by extension, search engine marketing.

Leveraging SEM Social Media Optimization For A Competitive Edge

Social media sites began to enjoy ranking authority in the major search engines a few years ago. That authority has only increased over time, making social media an important cog in search engine marketing. This is the reason SEM social media optimization has become critical for companies that need to reach niche markets.

By establishing a presence on the top social media sites, a search engine marketing agency can develop multiple entry points in the organic listings. That increases your audience’s exposure. It also prevents bad press from infiltrating the top listings for your keywords. These advantages converge to deliver a competitive edge for your company.

The Value Of Hiring A Professional SEO Marketing Consultant

Time is the most valuable commodity of all. Once it expires, it cannot be retrieved. This is why a growing number of companies – including your competitors – are opting to hire a professional SEO marketing consultant. They realize that search engine marketing strategies are complex. The learning curve is steep. What’s more, deploying PPC, SMO and SEO tactics poorly can do more harm than good. Precision in execution is critical.

If you have already mastered each of the strategies that make up search engine marketing, and have a refined the systems through which to deploy them, you may not need an SEM expert. Otherwise, you might be fighting an uphill struggle. Consider contacting a search engine marketing specialist today.

About The Author

With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Reagor Smith has refined the SEM SEO Expert Formula. Hundreds of internet marketing case studies have combined to build the formula that drives search engine ranking through Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Social Marketing and web 2.0 communities and resources. www.rostinreagorsmith.com