Typically, our staff uses our blog to analyze the latest internet marketing strategies and explain how these tactics can improve online ROI for businesses of all sizes.
On some occasions, we take a step back from providing analysis and spend some time educating our readers on the latest innovations in the ever-changing world of SEO and internet marketing.
Below you can find some of the more educationally focused posts from out blog… think of the blog posts below as a crash course - SEO Education 101.
I have been using Craigslist.org for many years to sell and buy many things (I never use Ebay or StubHub aymore). I have been successful in finding new employees for my companies and tenants for my rental properties. Needless to say I am a HUGE fan!
My admiration for CL grew even greater, a few weeks back when I was in a crunch. My family and another family were traveling to the Boston area to spend the weekend at the Life Is Good Festival (great time BTW) and around 9pm the night before we were informed that the third family that was suppose to join us had a family emergency and would not be able to go….immediately I thought how can I get these sold and not lose money before tomorrow at 11am since they were still selling tickets at the event. Fortunately the CL microchip that has been implanted in my brain (years ago) kicked in and said “Post them on Craigslist”…..so by 11pm that evening sitting in our hotel room on my iPad I had the tickets posted slightly under the sales price.
By 8am the next morning my phone and my wife’s phone began to ring with calls and text messages of people wanting the tickets and even through Sunday people were still wanting to see if we had them available. We ended up selling them to the first person that called us.
I did not make money selling the tickets however, our losses were less by putting a simple free ad on Craigslist.org.
So before you do anything…..try Craigslist first, you might be surprised.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to reach out to you today, I know that you are busy…..so I will try and keep this brief.
Your web presence is poor, non-existent, incognito, losing you money and quite honestly….sucks! It lacks the true meaning behind having a website and that is to increase your profits, yes that is correct….increase your profits! Now you are asking how do I know this?? Well, it is quite simple…..your potential buyers (prospects) cannot find you, which means you do not exist in their eyes, which means they will never have the opportunity to buy from you, which means you are losing money. Feel free to continue to spend your hundreds of thousands of dollars on trade shows, trade journals, print advertising, TV commercials, Radio Spots, direct mail and the many other traditional forms of marketing available. Meanwhile, realize that 90% of all buying research and decisions takes place through the internet.
I know what you are saying, we are doing SEO, SEM, Social Media and some other forms of Internet Marketing Services and I have to stand right up and tell you…..you are not! You might be dabbling in it, playing around with it, testing things, increasing traffic and perhaps feel that your outsource firm or internal efforts are maximizing your potential, when the truth is due to their uneducated, lack of knowledge….you are losing money. Your Internet Marketing campaign must be conversion and profit focused and most external and internal teams do not have the experience or knowledge to make that happen……so you keep losing money.
You see I have been through this with your marketing department, sales manager, IT department and various other executives within your company and they seem to have this fear that you will deny this need even though it is a MUST HAVE. I have strongly demanded that I cannot believe you would take this approach since this is such a missing link to your overall marketing strategy and one that cannot be ignored any longer. Perhaps, you should re-engage your marketing department and various other execs showing them your support of such an initiative.
See my job is to take your online presence to a whole new level that you cannot even comprehend and I know that sometimes there is not even a budget established. Not having a budget is truly not a good enough reason to lose an enormous amount of potential income especially for a strategy that is so precisely trackable. Go find out how many people viewed that TV Commercial you ran or saw the full page magazine ad you placed in that trade journal…..not gonna happen, is it?
Well I have taken up enough of your time today and I will follow this letter up with repeated phone calls and contact points until you see the error of your ways and want to start making a difference and increase your companies profits. After all, you would not want me to start reaching out to the owner and/or board of directors…now would you?
As promised, here’s Part 2 of my SEO Content Writing series…check out part one here: SEO Content Writing Part 1.
SEO Content Is Under Appreciated…
Typically, most clients don’t understand just how much SEO content can help their rankings. It’s really all about the terms you want to rank for. SEO’d content helps you rank for more long tail terms. And typically, long tail keywords send more relevant traffic to your website. By relevant I mean people who need what you offer and are more likely to convert to leads, sales, etc.
We’ve seen time and time again how many long tail keywords a site can rank well for just by having the right keywords sprinkled throughout their content.
Of course, I’m in NO way saying that SEO’d content is all you need to rank. There are tons of other factors that go into getting your site ranked for various keywords…SEO content writing is just one aspect of it, but an important one when it comes to long tail rankings.
A Few More Tips For SEO Content
I did promise a few additional tips, didn’t I? To get the first few, go back and read my other post (it’s fairly quick and painless, I promise.)
A few other things to keep in mind when writing content for SEO:
Use your main keywords in your <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags…and even <h4> if you got ‘em. Google sees this as a headings, and will usually see them first - they hold a bit more emphasis then body text.
Bold the use of your keywords once or twice through out your copy.
Include keywords in the file names and alt tags of any images.
ABOVE ALL: make sure your content is genuinely useful and relevant information - that’s really what Google is looking for!
Cool SEO Content Tools & Resources
When I first started writing optimized content for clients, I used a very cool tool from SEOmoz called Term Target, that would basically give you a letter grade on how well you optimized your content for a chosen keyword. You basically put in the url of your content, enter the keyword you were targeting, and hit the button to run.
Within seconds you get a “grade” and suggestions on how to improve your grade. Once you’ve run this enough times, you basically memorize what your pages should include to get a good grade, but it’s an awesome tool if your still learning the ropes.
As a newbie in the world of web copy (for both SEO and sales/marketing stuff) I lived and breathed CopyBlogger.com. They’ve got a couple great posts about SEO copywriting that really helped me grasp the concept to begin with. While there are other blogs that may have more comprehensive info on the subject, CopyBlogger will always be near and dear to my heart!
Every now and then I’ll get myself into a new situation. Occasionally in new situations, the way things turn out line up pretty well with what you expected. More often than not, there are - shall we say - some minor differences between what I imagined and what is reality. Sometimes that’s positive, sometimes not.
Marriage, fatherhood, and moving overseas are three great examples of huge differences between expectations and reality. I’m about to add another item to my list:
Internet Marketing.
Being a member of the ProspectMX team is my first jaunt into the internet marketing world. I come from a consulting / coaching / training background with a healthy dose of retail. Now that I’ve been in the internet marketing world for a few months, I have developed some keen observations on what internet marketing actually entails vs. what I originally assumed it would be.
Seeing as how many of our clients are sticking their feet into the waters of internet marketing for the first time, I believe my observations can be very beneficial for anyone questioning what this industry is all about and how it fits into their marketing objectives.
I was looking for a quickly changing, fast moving environment when my job hunt led me to ProspectMX. Slow growth and stability? Bah! Not for me. Well, I certainly found what I was looking for. It seems that things are changing all the time in this industry. Even aside from all the other issues that are part of the changing landscape in this industry, working with Google (and their game playing) keeps things interesting.
Naturally I expected a bit of a techie flavor when I started. This is internet marketing, after all. But I certainly underestimated the amount of geekiness required to excel in this field. There really is a high amount of technical expertise required to do internet marketing well.
I underestimated the level to which you are able to track the results of your marketing efforts. Many have heard the famous quote that is attributed to a variety of people:
“Half of my marketing works. I just don’t know which half.”
One of the beauties of internet marketing is the ability to easily track results. In fact, there is the danger of having too much data. The biggest challenge for tracking results with internet marketing is not the lack of data readily available… it’s paring down the massive amounts of data and identifying the key pieces that are relevant for a business.
This item is not specific to internet marketing, but it’s an important part of what I’ve noticed moving into this new company and industry. I was (and still am!) surprised by the skill and knowledge level of my teammates in their specific areas of expertise. It’s enjoyable to learn new things from people who are intelligent and competent.
One of the things that attracted me to marketing, in general, is the opportunity to be creative and forward looking. But I assumed that creativity would be less important in internet marketing. After all, how much original thinking is required to help a client’s website rank higher in the search engine results?
As it turns out, a lot. We’re always kicking around ideas for doing different things or doing things in a different way.
Lastly, I underestimated how much I would enjoy not having to dress up each day.
I have had several conversations with clients and most recently a very good friend of mine about why they are not using Google Mail for everything. My good friend still has an AOL account that he has had since the time it took 7 days to connect….crazy! I have explained to him and have shown him the greatness of emailing, archiving, SPAM ELIMINATING, scheduling, chatting, document and spreadsheet creating/sharing, customizing and organizing found when you have a Gmail account. He/They simply say I have had my email address for years and I tell them there are tons of ways around that after a few weeks with Gmail, you will kick yourself for not making the switch sooner.
Now this is not a “Plug” for Google or maybe it is…..however, I would love to hear more excuses of why you would use a very limited system for email when there is such an amazing product available. Please tell me what you are thinking?!
I can see if you are concerned about Google going out of business before your existing provider
I know that it’s been in the blogosphere often during the past few months that Google was displaying sponsored results among SELECT google image searches while users were logged into their google accounts, but now it appears to be mainstream.
I was actually just doing a search for our new Universal Search Optimization Chart to see if it was showing in google images and noticed the sponsored ads appearing.
The kicker is that I wasn’t even signed into google, which means that these results may now show all the time. What does this mean for the industries that internet marketing focus on? What about artists and others who want to sell their “prints” and things? Will Google offer to sell them for you? Does this ruin the algorithmic benefit to Google image search in any way?
Click The Chart Below To View or Download A High Resolution PDF Below
Why We Created The Chart
As has been said by many in the industry, universal search is changing the way that internet marketers go about their campaigns. Part of the struggle that we have internally is explaining this concept to executives. Usually, we are in about 5 - 7 meetings a week discussing strategies for companies. As the topic of universal search comes up, their eyes begin to glaze and a state of confusion ensues.
This used to happen with us when we talked about link building as well. Then we introduced our Link Building Chart and began using it. Since we put that out last March, we have heard it has helped many SEOs the same way it helped us.
So, to fix this communication hole regarding universal search, we compiled a group of the smartest people in the industry on the topic of universal search. We asked them to share their expertise and quotes, and then we put it all together in an easy to read, fun PDF - a universal search chart.
Thank You!
I want to thank all of those who contributed for their participation. It was great fun chatting with you guys via email and on the phone while we were putting it all together. Oh… and thanks for not being too picky about the “cartoon drawings.”
What are your thoughts?
Is there anything we missed? Are there any tips you’d like to add? Drop them in below.
Also, I want to make sure that my team get some props as well… Ashley Lichty wrote the content and Adam Perry designed the whole thing (including the cartoons). Thanks so much guys - you rock!
It’s been a while since my last post and I’ve started gathering a ton of information about Twitter. Call this a case study if you will.
I love trying to figure out how people are going to react / respond to certain ideas.So far 1,350+ tweeps have watched the video I made last month to say “Hi, and thanks for following me.” I knew it would work beautifully because the idea was just so simple… I think the results speak for themselves – here’s the video (if you haven’t seen it yet).
Here’s what some of my Tweeps had to say about the video…
Unexpected Effects Of Being A Twitter Rockstar
Another interesting thing happened when I took 15 minutes to create & upload the video to YouTube. YouTube (owned by Google) is a social video network, you’ve probably already heard of it. Did you know that people can subscribe to your channel? It’s kind of like adding a tweep… except on YouTube!
While my plan was to welcome and engage new followers on Twitter… I ended up with this AWESOME FREE BONUS! I’ve had 30+ new people subscribe to my YouTube channel.
That’s pretty cool, but I’ve also had well over 100+ new friends added to my Facebook / LinkedIn / MySpace / Digg / Pownce & other social networking sites thanks to FriendFeed. If you haven’t done it, go and grab yourself a FriendFeed account and add your other social networking accounts TODAY! Put it on your blog… or maybe right next to your Twitter welcome video?! This is just a suggestion, but after all, social networking sites and social media is there for us to be social, right? It only makes sense to let your twitter friends know where to find you on the other sites.
Why Should You Follow Me?
Twitter is emerging more into the main stream day by day. People online are now wondering who they should follow. Since Twitter is the answer to “What are you doing right now?” I’ve created a little site called Tw33t.me to answer the question “Why should you follow me?”
The idea for Tw33t.me is simple. Much like FriendFeed, Tw33t.me users will be able to add all of their other social networking sites & a Twitter welcome video to their profile page by using their Twitter username and password. The idea is to create a sort of “Online Social Resume.” The site is in Alpha – almost in Beta - and I’ll be updating everyone via Twitter when we “officially” launch.
Pre-Tweet. Auto Tweet. Tweet Later.
I get this question all the time as a result of my Twitter exploits - “How do you auto-reply to new followers?”
Glad you asked. The answer is a handy little site called TweetLater that allows you to pre-post, auto respond, and even auto-follow new tweeps. TweetLater is a little techy, so I decided I’d drop in this short “How To” video so you can set it up to work for your Tweeps! I did this with Gmail because I figure that most readers have a Gmail account. Take a look. Re-watch it if you need to! *If you use Outlook @Wordpresswizard already made a How To video over here
Tweet Responsibly
Now, I would be delinquent in my duties as a social media evangelist if I didn’t mention being Socially Responsible. It’s great to have thousands of followers and friends on Twitter and other social sites… but we have to remember it’s not just about numbers! These are real people your talking to, they want to be engaged in your conversation… otherwise they wouldn’t have followed you. I know that some people are just going to use the scripts to gain as many followers as they can – so that they can push whatever affiliate program or junk they’re selling on ebay… We can’t stop that. But we can make a difference by using social media for good!
When you see an injustice or something that others should be made aware of… broadcast it! I’m infatuated with “Green Living.” If I see or hear anything that I think would help… you’d better believe it’s going out on my twitter stream! Some folks are going to use my tutorials for spamming purposes. It sucks, I know! I still believe that there’s more genuinely good people out there than there are shysters.
For any of you that have ever read anything like “How to Become a Digg Power User,” etc., you probably already know that in order to get followers or have people Digg / Sphinn / Buzz Up! your topics, they have to be great topics.Guy Kawasaki had written a few weeks back about an AllTop page built to do just that – it’s called GoodTweet. If you’re looking for something to post to your tweeps and you can’t seem to find anything you consider overly exciting, dig through GoodTweet and post it up. This will make your followers think that you have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on. And hence… want to follow you and more importantly retweet ya too!
We will come back and update this post when we find something that will allow the tweeps to use something similar to the GreaseMonkey script from the first article… until then - one at a time and happy tweeting!
Target
In the meantime… be sure to tune your ears into 
