SEO Guides

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don’t have to. From a great year end compliation of posts to simple reminders of the need to focus on the basics, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

• Beth Harte has put together a great list of things to look for in a social media marketing consultant. It was spawned by her earlier post on the Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger and does a great job of shining some light on what companies should look for when entering this brave new world of marketing.
• Karon Thackston has a post offering a great reminder of the need to look beyond your optimization and toward the conversion abilities of your site and your copy. Karon offers up an example site and shows how they’ve gone completely overboard in their use of keywords and destroyed the site’s ability to convert. She also points out the site’s complete lack of rankings for the phrases in question, making the sacrifice on the conversion potential side even more frustrating.
• One of the biggest challenge I have in dealing with small businesses and social media marketing is the journey to convince them of SMM’s value without letting them go overboard. Anyone who has spent time engaged with social media knows it can be addicting. I have to work to keep myself in check on getting too excited about things, so it comes as no surprise those new to it find it difficult to establish balance as well. David Armano had a great post over at Logic + Emotion on New Year’s Day that poignantly explains the process of companies coming into the social media space. Here’s hoping the new year will be rife with companies who quickly move from “new convent” to “evolving true believer.”
• If you’re a fan of year end “best of” style complications, you won’t want to miss Tamar Weinberg’s “Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008” list over at Techipedia. From search to social media to blogging to the major social media networks and platforms, Tamar segments out some of the most useful and insightful posts from last year. Even if you don’t plan on reading them all, this is a great one to bookmark
• Paid Search campaigns are one of the biggest offenders in online marketing in terms of wasted dollars rushing out the door. Common mistakes and misperceptions can cost a company tons of money and mismanaged campaigns often lead companies to pull the plug on what could have been an excellent profit center. Brian Carter tears down five common myths about Google AdWords in a post over at Search Engine Journal today. If you’re advertising via paid per click now or plan to in the future, it’s a must read.

Check out our small business news site.

admin SEO Guide

If you’re experimenting with article marketing, or even planning to dip your toe in the water for the very first time, there are a raft of excellent article marketing web sites to try. With different functionality and very different audiences, it’s worth experimenting and trying as many different sites as possible to find the ones that best compliment your own particular brand of search engine optimization. Depending on your goals, you’ll find the sites below to be excellent outlets for your article marketing efforts.

Read the rest of this entry

Advertisement: Yahoo! Search Marketing delivers customers right to your door. searchmarketing.yahoo.com

admin SEO Talk

by Paul Jahn

So, Twitter happens to be huge right now. There are a ton of articles,
Blog posts, and even PDF books on how to use it correctly for different
industries. I don’t think there’s one definitive answer on how to use
Twitter, although I can safely say it’s important to not forget about
other social media options. The whole mix is what can build consumer
relationships.

Around nine months ago, I started a Blog project at work that had me looking for different office supply manufacturers who utilize social media options such as Blogs, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

I wound up finding Kodak. Only a small part of their product lines involve office supplies, and that’s fine. I even wound up buying a Kodak camera because of it (more on that below).

They do have a few Twitter accounts, including one for Kodak’s Chief Blogger, Jenny Cisney at http://twitter.com/kodakCB. This is great, but they also utilize other forms of social media. They have their own YouTube channel which they consistently keep up to date. Their public Facebook page is equally as active. Since Kodak sells cameras, it also makes sense that they would have a Flickr photostream.

Jenny also runs a Kodak blog and I was in awe of a panoramic shot from a post at the Beijing Olympics. I commented, and she commented back mentioning that their M1063 has panoramic options. I thought that was cool and connected with her on Twitter and Flickr. Add their YouTube channel and Facebook page and these social media avenues combined helped me purchase the Kodak M1063. Other manufacturers had what I was looking for too, but the interactivity from Kodak gave me personal trust.

I’m only one person and the camera only cost $150, but it’s money I probably would have otherwise spent with either Nikon or Canon. It turns out that the purchased camera works great for my needs.

From a consumer point of view, this is a great example on how to utilize many social media opportunities. For SEO, all of the above social media options are crawled by Google. A lot of search engine real estate can be achieved here.

As a consumer, have you made buying decisions based on social media? We’d love to hear your story!

Check out our small business news site.

admin SEO Guide