Thousands of free online marketíng tools clamor for attention, with new ones popping up every week it seems. You know you should be doing more to reach out to your customers, but just researching which tools to use can be a vast time investment, even if they don’t require a big financial outlay.

Below is a compiled líst of the most popular (or most useful) low-cost or free small business marketing tools. You might be using some of them already, but you’re sure to find a couple that will round out your small business marketing toolkit nicely. And, if you’re just starting out marketing a new busíness online, this líst may help point you in the right direction.

Directories

The Open Directory – A staple of the SEO crowd, this directory can be tricky to get into but well worth it for the link juice it passes along to your site.

Yahoo! Directory – It’s not free – this directory will set you back a couple hundred bucks a year – but it’s well worth it for inclusion.

Best of the Web Directory – This directory has been around a while and can pass along some good PageRank to your site.

Niche Directories

Find the directories in your industry that pass along good link building opportunities. Some examples to get you started: SBDGraphics.com for ad agencies, web developers, printers and other graphics professionals; sbdpro.com for small businesses and businesses that serve them; Cpapro.com for the accounting industry; SEOAlpaca.org for alpaca breeders, and so on.

Press Release Distribution Services

Marketwire – The most bang for your buck from an actual wire service, Marketwire’s prices are lower than PR Newswire and Businesswire. This newer service is built for powerful online exposure, and you’ll enjoy the full online distribution with any geographical AP wire distribution. (Sometimes you can get statewide wire distribution for nearly the same cost as only your local metropolitan area.) It’s great for building inbound links – just choose the SEO Enhanced option.

PRLog – A good-performing free press release distribution outlet, PRLog press releases rank really well and for a really long time if they are written with SEO copywriting best practices. Press releases include three links, though they are URL based (starting with http) rather than text anchor. PRLog also lets you create your newsroom where all your press releases reside, as well as an “about us” page and product showcase area.

PitchEngine – A relatively new PR-for-social-media site that promises to let you create and share press releases easily and for free and syndicate content to Google News. Lets you include HTML in your press release, so you can use keyword text anchor links. The site is marketing itself quite aggressively and will likely build a big presence quickly. The only catch is your release will disappear off the site after 30 days if you aren’t a paid member ($50/month for your press room).

Emaíl Marketing

AWeber – AWeber makes it easy to start building your emaíl marketing líst, if you haven’t already. For less than $20/month, you can build unlímited newsletter lists, send unlímited email blasts, and email unlímited autorespond messages to up to 500 subscribers/líst. (Then it’s $29/month up to 2500 subscribers.) Also offers a recurring 30% commission – a pretty good affiliate program for a service you’ll appreciate enough to recommend to others. (Disclosure note: the link above is our affiliate link. We’ve been using the service for 3 years now, after trying out Constant Contact and researching about 20 other providers! Most either do autoresponders or email blasts/newsletters – not both.)

Content Sharing Websites

Squidoo – Create a lens around your business area. A good one with lots of information will even rank in the search engines and can bring traffic to your web site.

Scribd – Share your expert content like white papers and articles. You can make them available for free or sell them. You can submit documents in PowerPoint, Word, PDF and many other file formats.

SlideShare – Post your presentations and documents online for others to view and share. This is a great way to get exponential exposure for your sales or marketing materials – or share documents privately. See some tips for getting more visibility with SlideShare: http://bit.ly/aNXmS2

Flikr – Does your product or service translate well visually? Use this popular photo sharing site to get more eyeballs.

Blip.tv – A video-sharing alternative to YouTube, blip.tv lets you embed links in your descriptions and create a TV station showing all your videos in one spot.

Social Networks

Facebook – Create a page for your business. Feed your blog in. Start a group. Get fans. Advertise to targeted users if your products appeal to the Facebook crowd (which is basically everybody nowadays). See using the new Facebook business page layout to learn more. Stop by our page and become a fan, too!

MySpace – Take a second look at this medium for social networking. According to MarketingProfs, more than half of MySpace.com users are 35 or older. Explore using MySpace for your business.

LinkedIn – Like a virtual Rolodex. Build your professional profile, link up with other professionals, join groups or even start a group. Participating in Q&A’s related to your profession is a great way to build credibility and visibility.

Ning – Build your social network around your business. You may even get your network into the search engine results pages. Learn more about using Ning for business. (http://bit.ly/amLKcE)

Read “Utlize Social Media to Gain Additional Exposure for Your Site” (http://bit.ly/bcoWEQ) for more information about social networks and how they can drive targeted traffíc to your site.

Social Bookmarking

Digg – Getting your content on the home page of Digg is one way to bump up your web site’s traffic by thousands within minutes. This can result in valuable links to your site. Start with this beginner’s guide to Digg.

StumbleUpon – Build friends and send them your articles to rate. More thumbs up will get your article shown to more people outside your network and can result in thousands of visitors every day. Tips for using StumbleUpon.

Reddit – Even if your content gets buried on Digg, it can flourish on Reddit – which can be a catalyst for jumping to the home page of other social bookmarking sites. Learn more about the types of topics that do well on Reddit.

Web video is a communication technique that provides a viewer-experience that delivers several big advantages over broadcast: first, the length of your presentation is for the most part a non issue other than the degree to which your content and delivery holds your audience’s attention; second, the cost to produce and present professional online video is far more affordable than broadcast; and third, Web video provides the chance to intellectually and emotionally engage your audience with a memorable viewing experience, and involve them physically by prompting direct-response action. On the other hand, broadcast does provide a mass audience, but not necessarily an attentive one like your website.

As we have seen in previous installments of Killer Campaigns, the commercial broadcast industry, despite its economic and time constraints, has plenty of good examples of techniques that can be used effectively in Web video campaigns, if you understand how certain elements affect an audience.

It’s easy to misread a commercial’s true marketing effectiveness and assume the big flashy special effects and grandiose production stunts are what makes a commercial work, but in fact those kinds of things generally only make a commercial more expensive. True the big-deal aspects of a production may attract attention, but it’s the small things that are the most important, the most effective and the most affordable. It’s the things you hardly notice like writing, casting, music, performance, and campaign consistency that have the most impact on a presentation’s ability to communicate, influence and persuade. It’s the production techniques to which the audience pays little attention that maximizes sale-conversions and increases the bottom-line. Take nuts for example.

Color Me Nuts

Nuts, the edible kind, not the irritating relative kind, are about as generic as you can get. So how do you go about creating a marketing campaign for something as mundane as nuts?

The Wonderful Pistachio “Get Crackin” video campaign and micro site got a lot of things right. This series of videos use the same format, style, message, and color in order to turn a nondescript, seemingly unbrandable generic product into a hip, sexy brand. Each element of the presentation re-enforces the other leaving a lasting brand impression without blowing anything up, or spending a fortune creating animated baby skateboarders.

One element that turns this campaign into a great campaign rather than just a very good one is its use of color. What could be simpler?
Watch the: Pistachios Newly Weds Do It Video

The campaign’s consistent use of a signature color palette, green and black, combined with a great tagline and a series of clever sketches deliver the kind of memorable impression that prompts instant recognition and impulse-purchasing when seen on store shelves.

Watch the: Pistachios Dominatrix Do It Video

One video is not a campaign, so Paramount Farms had seven different videos created, all following the same formula so the audience’s recognition and retention was enhanced and re-enforced every time they watched a new video segment.

Watch the: Pistachios Mobsters Do It Video

This technique is not new; in particular Danone uses color co-ordination effectively in their television commercials to distinguish their various brands of yogurt: Activa uses a green color palette, DanActive uses yellow, and Silhouette uses purple. The Danone commercials don’t have the edginess of the pistachio campaign but their use of color is well thought-out and effective even though the messaging is pretty standard.

The edgy style, consistent format, and color branding definitely qualifies the “Get Crackin” videos as a Killer Campaign.

The Color of Money

Another campaign that makes an impression by means of its clever use of color is the Edward Jones “Join Us” campaign. If you’re not familiar with the commercials they are available on YouTube but unfortunately the embed option for them has been disabled.

These commercials were shot on a white background in black-and-white, a technique that draws special visual attention to the yellow-and-black Edward Jones logo. The whole package is very clever from the way the videos are shot, to the dialog, the music, and of course the clever use of color, or lack-there-of.

The same visual style was repurposed for a companion print ad campaign further establishing and enhancing the brand image in the minds of the audience.

Edward Jones Companion Print Ads

The Audacity to Believe

Is on Board With the Crazy Idea

Signature Color Branding

Colorcom is a color consultancy located in Hawaii and New York. According to their website, color branding increases recognition by up to eighty percent; it aids memory processing and storage; and it attracts attention, increases comprehension and mentally engages the viewer. That’s pretty powerful stuff, and you don’t have to be a mega corporation with deep pockets to implement color effectively.

Color Affects, a London-based color consultancy, explains how color affects perception on a physiological level through the electrical impulses that pass from the retina to the hypothalamus area of the brain that controls our hormones and endocrine system. The hypothalamus controls behavior patterns, sex and reproductive functions, metabolism and appetite among others.

Color By Association

Color by itself is not enough to get the job done. The pistachio campaign added the format, style, messaging and performance elements in a consistent campaign that re-enforced the message and the brand.

In the end, Web videos are not as much about making a sale as they are about making contact: contact in the sense of connecting to an audience on an intellectual and emotional level. Web videos designed merely to flog some product or service have built-in limitations, and an abbreviated shelf-life, whereas video presentations designed to engage can become eternal

Search Engine Marketing: A Perfect Blend Of Social Media, SEO and SEM PR

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.

Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search: What Should Your Philosophy Be?

As a search engine marketing company, we are often asked by clients and prospects if there’s a basic philosophy when it comes to organic search engine optimization and paid search advertising.

“Is one tactic more favorable than another? How do I know which channel to pursue? Should I do both?”

Without a hard look at your company’s goals and unique situation, there really isn’t a concrete answer to these questions. The true test of pursuing either an SEO campaign or PPC advertising (or both) is knowing that it all boils down to your company philosophy, ROI objectives, budget, and countless other monetary and marketing factors. To determine which, or what combination of both, might provide the most bang for your buck, let’s examine five types of “models” that my search engine marketing company often deals with.

1. SEO Only.

Some clients are strictly interested in kicking off an SEO campaign, usually for a few basic reasons. They often have tried pay-per-click and decided it didn’t work, so they aren’t interested in trying it again in the foreseeable future (whether the initial campaign was set up effectively and the channel should be revisited is a subject for future discussion). They also often feel that since they themselves ignore PPC ads on the right hand side of the page, everybody else must do the same.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing search engine optimization exclusively, it can take awhile to achieve rankings for competitive, profitable keyphrases, and there’s simply no way for your search engine marketing company to accurately predict (as they probably can with some degree of accuracy with PPC advertising) exactly what the initial results will be, and precisely when they will appear. However, for companies which do not have an immediate sense of urgency in their marketing initiatives and who for whatever reason do not want to pursue PPC, organic SEO still offers a great, albeit slightly delayed, return on investment.

2. PPC Only.

Alternatively, a search engine marketing company may encounter the clients who are primarily interested in PPC… and nothing else. Even with a limited spend, clients can turn their campaigns on and off as needed, making market segments easier to control than with an SEO campaign. Pay-per-click also allows clients to achieve a somewhat predictable ROI if the campaign is managed effectively: “If I spend X, I’ll get back Y.”

The clients that fall within the ‘PPC advertising only’ category may have worked with a search engine marketing company before, pursuing SEO exclusively, and achieved less than stellar results. Despite all the positive press hyping up what search engine optimization can do for website visibility in recent years, it still tends to be viewed as more voodoo than science by most companies pursuing online marketíng for the first time. With such companies, organic SEO is usually a topic we broach after achieving success with PPC.

3. SEO with PPC Stopgap.

The first and most common question a search engine marketing company may hear concerning an SEO campaign is how long it will take to achieve results. Naturally, clients want to be able to see the investment almost immediately.

This is where the PPC stopgap approach comes in. Though a client’s budget is usually fixed, they are often willing to spend a little more on the front end to see immediate results. Once positive results are evident, PPC spending is scaled back as SEO takes hold. An advantage of this approach to clients with limited budgets is that it can be managed on a very granular level. When top organic results are achieved for a given keyphrase, PPC bidding for that term can cease. Over time, PPC expenditures can theoretically be eliminated entirely. This model appeals to those who want a wide range of coverage and immediate results but have a fixed monthly budget that they do not control.

4. Hybrid Model.

A hybrid model is similar to a stopgap model, except that the client has no intention of eventually leaving the PPC arena entirely. Rather, the client has their search engine marketing company do a full on optimization AND paid search campaign at the outset, with the expectation that PPC costs will be reduced but not eliminated as the organic campaign takes hold.

In this model, a client recognizes that in an organic SEO campaign, they will be limited in the number of keyphrases that they can target by the amount of real estate on their website. With a PPC campaign, however, there is no downside to targeting thousands upon thousands of relevant “long tail” keyphrases, that is, search terms that are comprised of longer strings of words. Using the hybrid model, a company removes keyphrases from the PPC campaign on a granular level as they achieve top organic results for those phrases, but continue to bid on keyphrases that the site does not currently target.

5. Full Out SEM.

This approach calls for both SEO and PPC initiatives running at full speed. These types of clients are generally those that consider these two efforts as separate ‘beasts’ and frankly believe that showing up highly in both channels is a good thing … as long as the return justifies the spend.

These clients are happy to spend as much as possible with their search engine marketing company and do not usually have a set marketing budget – just strict ROI objectives. As long as each channel is performing within acceptable ranges, they are happy to reap the benefits. Generally, they treat the two disciplines as unique channels and monitor the results independently.

Choosing the Right Model

Which approach is right? It depends (you weren’t expecting a definitive answer, right?). The decision between SEO efforts vs. PPC advertising depends on means, goals, budget, comfort level, corporate restrictions, and many other elements. Keep in mind that these are only five possible models that we often encounter. Many clients do not fit neatly into any of these scenarios. Some clients may start out with one option and evolve into another. Some switch back and forth depending on their own ever-changing situation. The most important thing is to be aware of your options and pursue a path that fits your current goals.

Video SEO – A Neglected Path To Higher Search Rankings

Video SEO is an underutilized search engine marketing
strategy. Even as videos continue to gain significant
traction in the search engines’ natural listings, most
companies either ignore them, or remain completely unaware
of their potency. That oversight represents a valuable edge
your company can use to leapfrog your competitors in the
organic rankings.

The strategy blends traditional search optimization tactics
with a relatively new platform. With the rise of YouTube,
Revver, Blip, and similar video sites, consumption patterns
have driven the search engines to provide these sites with
greater ranking authority. As long as your primary
objective is clearly established, a video SEO campaign can
have a dramatic effect on your exposure in Google, Yahoo,
and Bing.

In this article, we’ll explain why you should integrate
video SEO into your current search marketing strategy. We
will also provide a few ingredients that will help you
avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Last, you will
learn what to look out for when choosing a video SEO
company that can drive traffic and conversions.

How Video SEO Improves Your Search Exposure

Before Google released their Universal Search platform in
May 2007, their natural listings were dominated by
text-based pages. Videos were rare in the top spots.
Universal Search changed the way Google displayed their
primary index. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now include entries
from their respective video search platforms. What’s more,
popular video-sharing sites have been given higher ranking
authority and increased link weight (we’ll describe this
latter point in a moment).

Video SEO gives you greater exposure in the search engines
through two levers. First, it caters to the algorithm used
for Universal Search. By allowing syndication of your
videos to authoritative video-sharing sites, you will enjoy
more exposure through their increased ranking authority. In
effect, those sites will rank higher, drawing more people
to your videos.

Second, videos that are placed on your site (as opposed to
syndicating them) attract links – both directly and
indirectly. As your videos gain popularity, direct links
will naturally build, pointing to the pages on your site
that host the videos. Indirect links will point from other
sites whose owners have embedded your videos. As a result,
your inbound link profile will continue to grow and
strengthen, lifting your site higher within the search
engines’ organic listings.

3 SEO Video Tips To Capture Higher Search Positions

Your video SEO campaign can only be effective if you
recognize the limitations of the search engines. First,
their algorithms cannot read lips. In order to rank for
your target keywords, they must be available to the search
engines’ spiders in text form. If you’re placing videos on
your site, optimize your titles and surrounding text, and
include an edited transcript of the video. If you’re
syndicating them, optimize your external titles and tags.

Second, focus on inbound links. An effective video SEO
campaign relies on contextually related links pointing from
a wide breadth of sites. Videos that spark a groundswell of
attention – whether through entertainment, information, or
controversy – can achieve this easily.

Third, integrate a social media sharing component. You want
viewers to share your videos with their friends on
Facebook. You want them to “Tweet” about your videos on
Twitter. You want them to bookmark your videos on
StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. These social media sites
can form the backbone of your video SEO campaign, driving
waves of inbound links to your site.

Key Factors In Choosing A Video SEO Company

Traditional search optimization is a mature strategy. SEO
specialists have honed their craft for more than a decade.
By contrast, video SEO is still an evolving science. Even
though it leverages the core tenets of a traditional SEO
campaign, the rise of social media and video-sharing sites
have infused video SEO with enormous complexity. Hiring a
video SEO company removes the need to keep up with the
roiling landscape. The key is using the right criteria to
identify a proficient firm.

A professional video SEO company should have an established
track record that shows a keen grasp of the search engines’
organic algorithms. That track record should also
demonstrate an ability to evolve as the algorithms change.
Many search optimization experts were completely unprepared
for the debut of Universal Search. By extension, so too,
were their clients.

Leveraging Video SEO For More Traffic And Higher Conversions

A carefully executed video SEO campaign can sharply
increase your exposure within the search engine’s natural
listings. When implemented as a component of a
multi-pronged search engine marketing campaign, it can
drive more targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic
translates into higher conversions. If you are not yet
utilizing video SEO for your site, your current organic
rankings may be more vulnerable than you realize.

How To Control Your Listing Text in Google’s Search Results
By John Metzler (c) 2009

A Google Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlJiLDn9-38) released on Nov.
10, 2009 got me thinking how the listing text in Google’s search
results can easily be overlooked by some webmasters in their SEO
efforts.

SEO is all about extending the reach of your web site content to
your target market using online search platforms. You can tell
when this has been achieved, and to what degree, by using web
analytics software to monitor referral and visitor data. But
what that data won’t tell you is how your site appears to users
in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Sure, you’re getting
traffic but perhaps you’re missing out on a lot more because
your listing text is weak. You wouldn’t take out a newspaper
advertisement without looking at the final proof first. So don’t
be in the dark over how your site appears to people who use
Google.

Poor page titles, visible copy, and description meta data can
result in a weak listing. Webmasters have a lot of control over
what text is displayed in a SERP, but in the end, Google
reserves the right to modify result snippets if it feels the
original isn’t up to par.

It’s important to remember that this decision by Google is based
on a highly refined algorithm and is ultimately for the benefit
of people searching for your content. That said, I’m willing to
bet most webmasters still prefer to retain control over how
their web site is shown in Google.

By ensuring your on-page content is the best it can be, you’re
greatly increasing the chances Google doesn’t step in and tweak
your listing.

Let’s look at the different elements of an organic Google search
result and how we can control what is shown.

Page Title

The large blue link at the top of the snippet. As Matt points
out in his video, most people know Google can modify the
description snippet in the listings but not everyone is aware
that Google may also change the title. In this case, it is
usually due to a shortcoming with your web page’s title
attribute. If the title is missing, too long or irrelevant,
Google may show something more on-topic to the search query
made.

Here are some tips to ensure Google displays the best possible
title text to a user:

* Always ensure that page titles are unique and not just
copied page to page across the site

* The page title isn’t something you stuff with keywords.
Yes, always include your most important key phrases but
don’t offer a long list of everything your web site is
about. It should be a concise headline that describes the
content on the specific page – personally, I try to use no
more than three different keywords or phrases.

* Page titles over 60 characters in length are likely to get
cut down and manipulated by Google. If the search term(s)
appears in a lengthy title tag, it’s likely that a snippet
of it will be used where the term appears.

Listing Description

Using the same logic as for the title, the description displayed
in a SERP comes from the most relevant area of your web page.
IE. – The area of your text containing the word(s) used in the
Google search query.

The listing snippet is typically generated from your visible
copy on the page or the description meta tag. This is a good
reason to optimize the description meta tag as part of your SEO
campaign. While Google’s algorithm ignores it for purposes of
determining rankings, it can still pull the tag’s content and
display it to its users. A good description meta tag uses proper
grammar and explains the page content in under two or three
sentences. Remember, don’t stuff the description tag with a list
of keywords. That isn’t helpful for users or the search
engines.

If you write focused, quality on-page content for your target
audience and create a helpful description tag, you should have
your Google listing snippet covered.

Cache Version of the Page

Next to the green URL in your Google listing is usually a
“Cached” link. Clicking this will display the version of your
web page that was indexed by the Googlebot when it last crawled
your site. Also included is the crawl date.

Why is this important? Well, if you’ve recently updated your
page title or visible copy and the changes are not reflected in
Google results, it probably means Google hasn’t returned to
check your site’s content for updates.

Common reasons for this include few inbound links or existing
inbound links of poor quality. If Google doesn’t crawl the pages
that link to your site, it stands to reason they won’t visit
your site frequently.

If you find your site isn’t getting crawled enough by Googlebot
or other search engine robots, consider submitting your site to
local business directories or swapping links with other good
quality, relevant web sites. The benefits of inbound links also
go much farther than just increasing crawl frequency – they will
also play a significant part in how well your site ranks.

Now that we know the elements of a typical Google listing and
the factors that determine what is shown, all that’s left is for
you to monitor your site listing for various keyword searches
and make changes when necessary.

Remember: a top Google ranking doesn’t mean anything unless
people actually click on it. Have a look at your competitors’
listings in Google and see how yours compares – which one would
you click on if you did a search for that topic? In my
experience, there is often room for improvement when it comes to
copy writing and content relevancy. In the end, your users and
the search engines will like you more for it.

Google Caffeine And The New Ranking Factors
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s “Next Generation”
search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages
on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications,
this is not just another one of Google’s infamous Updates, but a
major “Overhaul” of its index and algorithm – the complex formula
and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including
yours.

If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts
(Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google
Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the
holidays. The reasoning behind this – Google doesn’t want to
upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday
buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come
around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update”
which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to
webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how
it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even
given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released
last summer (’09) where webmasters could check to see how well
their keywords and site would fare in this new search index.
This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down
by Google.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I
was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google’s new
search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have
observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw
conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of
results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly,
especially when you consider Google is probably still making
adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the
results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is
telling us about, mainly “Site Speed” or how fast your site
loads will play a part in how its ranked. We have also heard a
lot about “Broken Links” and if your page or site has them, then
it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to “Bad
Neighborhoods” will probably still not be a good practice, if you
want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that “Over-All Page
Quality” will play a greater role in how well your page ranks.
Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a
product, if that product doesn’t have a high standard of
quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google’s
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the key to all their
online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep
that product fast, relevant, current and above all high quality.

Therefore, expect “OnPage Factors” to play a much greater role
in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good
navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt
tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on
page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased
role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded
page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt
tags, on the page… will probably get you ranked higher in
Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas
Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is “Social
BookMarking”, that is the number of social bookmarks a page
receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe
one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more
important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google’s index is not in question, but any
savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with
deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top
spot. Despite Google’s attempt to stop it, link buying and
keyword positioning, is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly
or wrongly, money and unlimited resources will get you or your
company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search
engine you’re targeting.

All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or
online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one
side and these major multinational competitors on the other.
Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!

What New Rules Will This Sheriff Bring?

The major question here is this: has the importance of
backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the
keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there
been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than
relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even
from important related themed sites? The major problem and
question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you
keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the
original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they
started Google in 1998.

One Possible Solution is Social Bookmarking.

Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and
links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but
getting 1000 or 10,000 “re-tweets” is a little more difficult.
Similarly, getting two or three thousand “diggs” may be a little
harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Facebook fans… well you get the picture. Will Google’s use of
these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more
current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy
back into their index?

Of course, nothing in Google’s new index will be that cut and
dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of
site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority
branding… will all play a role in whether your site gets
listed on that all important first page. However, on page
factors may play a greater role – title, meta tags, description,
keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent
on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an
increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how
fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced
webmasters/marketers already know, Google’s SERPs are not a
one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword
phrases, Google’s results are broken up into Five categories…
Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings
and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the
fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its
SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google
Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on
“Keyworded Domains”, domain names which have your keyword or
keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher?
Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we
should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in
them. Just common sense really, someone searching for “brown
widgets” will more likely than not find that item at a domain
called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major
SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your
searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the
rankings.

Against this whole backdrop, everyone has to realize the web
itself is evolving, new sites like Twitter, FaceBook… have
changed the whole cyber landscape. Likewise, the web user is
also changing and becoming more web savvy in how they use the
web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role
in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into
the web user’s psyche, will these users go directly to these
sites, by-passing the search engines altogether?

As the web evolves, keyworded domains will become more valuable
and this value will be reflected in the quality of the site. If
you’re making thousands or even millions from your keyworded
domain, you can afford to invest in quality content and design.
Cream rises to the top. Gradually, as these domains become more
valuable, they will probably be snapped up by marketers and
companies who know just how to exploit them. Thousands upon
thousands of keyworded domains will probably be bought up by
multi-billion dollar corporations who finally realize what the
web has to offer. This new evolved web will probably be much
more narrower in scope and very topic specific.

In the “Next Generation” Web the Re-Direct Shall Be King!

Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or
Bing/Yahoo, become less and less important, as savvy web
searchers go directly to a site by typing in the keyworded
domain to find what they’re looking for on the web? Cutting out
the middleman may just become a world wide passion as big
multinational and fully funded corporations snap up all these
valuable and lucrative keyworded domains. Will we see these
domains grow in importance and the search engines take more of a
back-up role? Human nature dictates we always take the fastest
route to our destination and the web will be no exception to
this rule.

Have all the smart people at Google figured this out already,
and designed the new Google Caffeine to reflect the growing
importance of the keyworded domain? Of course, we can only
speculate when it comes to just what Google is planning and
doing with its next generation search engine, but will onsite
factors and your domain name play a greater role in their
organic SERPs?

Regardless of what the new sheriff actually does, when the dust
finally settles on all these latest developments, the keyworded
domain will probably be standing tall, watching the sun rise on
a brand new day.

Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
By Duncan Wierman (c) 2009

Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of
marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must
plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your
target market in order to develop your message conveying
exactly the kind of high value business proposition which
your niche will respond to.

The first steps are to:

1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting
and work with the demographics from there.

2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target
market and decide how you’ll foster this perception.

3) Identify and refine your value proposition.

Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and
distribute your value proposition, making sure that your
value proposition is perceived by your target market
exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer
perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s
everything.

You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived
in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain,
develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem
necessary.

The real challenge is putting these principles into action:

Driving Traffic

There are some important principles of traffic generation
you need to understand in order to be successful at
bringing visitors into your website.

There are both principles and rules of traffic generation;
principles have to do with your approach to the task and
the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving
traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger
picture before you can successfully put the practical
techniques into action.

What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone.
While this is still valuable information, you probably
won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in
the underlying principles of traffic generation.

These are the most important principles of traffic
generation:

* Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something
which largely relies on common sense and methods which
can be replicated with consistent results.

* The reason people usually fail in their traffic
generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to
making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated
part of their business strategy.

* You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of
it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not
carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to
reflect your real life experience and results.

* Continually test and track the results of your traffic
generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.

* Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the
bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single
objective.

* Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results
immediately.

* Remember that driving traffic begins with building your
site – Why is this? Because your site should be built
from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other
sites in your industry to gain an understanding of
patterns of visitor behavior.

See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to
take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see
something which is working for them.

This is where things can become challenging; it’s something
like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a
megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd.
The goal here is to get the attention of your target
market and get them to come to your site.

All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is
cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of
higher value – buy low, sell high.

For example, SEO and other free traffic generation
strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is
of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly
in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as
signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of
driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what
you deem to be a small amount for something else which you
see as more valuable.

If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have
noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by
the search engines; that’s because this falls under the
heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic
generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this
isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which
will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using
other strategies.

Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will
come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is
indexed, it’s no guarantee that visitors will follow.
Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for
the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of
using other traffic generation methods. What you should be
focused on is getting targeted traffic to your site. For
instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even
a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine
crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other
site and voila! Your site will be indexed.

What you need to do is to let the web know that your site
is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffic. The
best way to do so is to create links to your site from
other sites; not only do these result in your site being
indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they
can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks.

Here are a few things you can do to start driving traffic
almost immediately:

* Whenever you add new content to your site or blog,
submit this content to the social bookmarking sites
(Digg, Technorati, etc.). Make an effort to give your
posts attention-getting titles so that people will be
interested in reading your content.

* Post comments on blogs which have a similar audience to
the one you’re trying to reach. Don’t post comment spam;
write real, thoughtful comments and include a link back
to your own site.

* Start contributing to forums and message boards relevant
to your industry.

* Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and submit this
feed to directories.

* Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to
article directories.

* Join link exchanges

* Build a linkwheel; create blogs and pages on platforms
like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook, etc. and link them to
each other in a web ring-style structure. This helps
the search engines identify the topic of your site and
will improve your page rank as well.

These techniques can start driving traffic to your site
very quickly; if you implement all of these methods and
follow the basic principles of traffic generation, you
really can’t fail at bringing in targeted traffic.

So why do so many people fail at traffic generation?
Because they don’t stick with it and follow through; far
too many website owners give up after a few days or a few
weeks, saying that it’s just too much work for too little
result – instead of analyzing their efforts and figuring
out what is and isn’t working for them.

So how about search engine optimization (SEO)? Here’s what
you really need to know about:

1) Focusing on search engines rather than your potential
customers is always a losing bet. If you’re putting all of
your energy towards keeping up with the search engines and
their constantly evolving algorithms, you’re losing sight
of your visitors.

2) Optimizing your site for very competitive (i.e. popular)
keywords means fighting an uphill battle with no guarantee
of success.

3) Generally speaking, you’ll do best with long tail
keywords; these require far less work in terms of
optimizing your content. Long tail keywords are also very
effective at attracting targeted traffic. The effort you
put into optimizing your content for long tail keywords
will bring you much better results than the same amount of
time and effort spent optimizing your site for popular
keywords.

4) Offsite optimization is just as important (if not more
so) than on site SEO. Back links can do wonders for your
traffic; but remember to keep all of your efforts focused
on visitors, not search engines whether you’re working on
on-site or offsite SEO.

5) Base your traffic generation strategy on visitors and
the search engines will follow.

6) As you develop and implement SEO techniques, always keep
in mind how people actually look for information online -
that’s why long tail keywords are so important. It’s a lot
easier to rank high in the search results for long tail
keywords. Being in the top 10 on Google for several long
tail keywords will bring you a lot more traffic than being
on the 10th page of results for a highly competitive
keyword (which is where you’ll start out if you’re very
lucky if you choose to go this route).

Remember that it’s a long way to the top; be patient and
enjoy the view on your way up. Stick with it and you’ll
eventually have more traffic than you know what to do with!

20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing
By Merle (c) 2010 MerlesWorld
(http://MerlesWorld.com)

Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy
for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and
thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this
and are using the power of social media to connect and inform
their customers, and potential customers. Referred to as “Social
Media Marketing”, it’s a smart way to open the lines of
communication between you and your prospects.

Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro
blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities
such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites,
discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many
different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to
keep track of all your efforts.

Participating in social media doesn’t take a lot of money, but
it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all
of this investment in time is paying off. Before launching a
campaign, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you’re
trying to accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting
more ezine subscribers? Having more people download your free
ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want to work on your
company’s brand image. Whatever it is, you need to have a plan.
As the old saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going,
you’ll never get there”. Have your game plan intact before
getting started in marketing yourself, or your company with
social media.

There are many different forms of social media, so it’s
impossible to use them all. Pick three or four, and funnel the
majority of your efforts there. Even if you won’t be working
them all, at the very least you should claim your name or
company name on as many social services as possible. You don’t
want to find out later that someone has the user name that you
want. If you need to see if your chosen user name is available
try http://Namechk.com which checks dozens of social media
networking and bookmarking sites all at once to see if it’s
available. Claim your name now so you won’t end up being sorry
later.

So how do you monitor all the buzz? How do you monitor your
brand and protect your hard earned reputation? I thought you’d
never ask. There isn’t one fool-proof method but there are many
services and tools out there that will make it easy to see who’s
talking about you online. Some are free and others will make you
pull out your wallet.

These “online reputation management” tools, as they’re often
referred to, will help you to define keywords or phrases you
wish to track and then watch for any mention of your company
name, products, or services. It’s important to defend and monitor
your online reputation. Similar to High School reputations,
protecting your image online is the name of the game, and just
as in real life, everyone has one to maintain.

Let’s take a look at some of the measuring and tracking tools at
your disposal:

1) http://BackTweets.com : A search engine for Twitter. See
who’s tweeting your links and more. Can also sign up for email
alerts of new findings.

2) http://Addictomatic.com : A little different than the others,
you type in a keyword, topic or phrase and out it goes searching
the top blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask, YouTube,
Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You’ll be given a personalized
results page to bookmark with everything it finds related to
your topic.

3) http://Buzzoo.net : All about Internet buzz, it tracks
several different websites to bring you what’s “hot” right now.

4) http://Surchur.com : Search for the latest and greatest on
topics that are popular right now. Type in a keyphrase and it
searches blogs, social news sites, photo and video sites for
your chosen topic.

5) http://Commentful.Blogflux.com : This service watches for
comments on blog posts, Digg, Flickr, and others and notifies
you of any findings.

6) http://AlertRank.com : A better way to organize and sort
Google alerts. Get a daily report emailed to you in a
spreadsheet format of what it finds.

7) http://BoardTracker.com : A search engine for forums only.
Monitor discussion boards and be notified by email when a thread
matching your search terms is discovered. Free to use.

http://www.google.com/alerts : I’ve been using this “secret
weapon” for years. Simply type in your name or company name and
receive daily emails of results found. They do the work, you
receive the links. Free and nice.

9) http://BrandsEye.com : An online reputation management tool
with a real-time, concise overview of your online reputation.
Multiple levels of services and pricing available. Starting at
$1.00.

10) http://Twazzup.com : Another Twitter only search engine.

11) http://SiteMention.com : Type in your url and find out
what’s being said about you. The results returned are gathered
from Google Blog Search, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, MySpace,
Digg, Delicious and many more.

12) http://Brandwatch.net: This service tracks your brands,
companies, even the competition. Sign up for free weekly updates
on any brand. Their detailed reports break down what sites like
you, your most talked about features, weekly summary of all
blogs and forum activity. Very similar to the old “press
clipping” service.

13) http://Trackur.com : A tool that scans many websites,
including blogs, news, image and video sites, forums and
notifies you of any mention of your brand, products/services.
Easy to use and affordable. Prices vary depending on need, a
personal account is only $18.00 a month, corporate account
$88.00 a month with other options also available. Try a
“personal” account free for 14 days.

14) http://FiltrBox.com : This one searches online news sources,
Twitter and others to find out what’s being said about you or
your company. Pricing is based on the number of users, but there
is a free version that provides “5 filters” and 15 days of what
they call “article history”.

15) http://SocialMention.com/alerts : Just like Google Alerts
but for social media. Enter your keyword phrase and email address
to be notified of any new findings. Searches blogs, microblogs
like Twitter, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos
and more.

16) http://BlogPulse.com : A search engine that searches only
for data posted to blogs. Enter your keyword, hit submit and
off it goes to gather results.

17) http://BackType.com : Billing itself as a “conversational
search engine” they index millions of conversations from social
networks, blogs and other social media.

18) http://sm2.techrigy.com : Industry insiders claim this to be
the leading social media monitoring solution online. Choice of
free or paid version. Free is limited to five searches and 1,000
results. There are three paid professional levels: Gold, Diamond,
or Platinum.

19) http://ReputationDefender.com : This paid service finds out
everything there is to know about you online, and if negative
information is found they try to have it removed. Different
types of plans are available such as “My Reputation”, “My
Privacy”, starting at only $14.95 a month.

20) http://Topsy.com : Topsy will track your tweets that have
been retweeted so you can find out who’s been sending you all
that “link love”. Type in your Twitter user name and you’ll be
amazed at what you find.

If you’d like to track incoming traffic from your various social
media profiles, an easy way to do it using Google Analytics can
be found here http://Tinyurl.com/kuc9rL

Just as there are many ways to market your company using social
media, as you can see, there’s a multitude of tools and services
at your disposal to track and see if all of that hard work is
paying off. Smart companies realize the importance of social
media in their marketing efforts and are utilizing it on some
level. How smart are you?

HyperRealism as a Motivating Factor in Web Video
By Jerry Bader (c) 2010

If there is one thing every Web business executive can agree on,
it’s that websites need to motivate people to act. That action
can be to place an order, send an email, pick-up the phone, or
maybe just join a mailing list, but whatever the intended
response, your website must cause a reaction. It’s a case of
simple cause and effect.

The issue is one of successful communication. What you say and
how you say it are what motivates people to connect with your
company, the solution provider. Websites, blogs, social
networking, and mobile sites are merely venues for
communication. All the Facebook friends, Linkedin contacts, and
search engine traffic in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you
have nothing interesting, memorable, and persuasive to say to
them.

In our view, Web Video is the most powerful communication tool
available to businesses today, but if you don’t use it properly
it isn’t going to help, and the same thing applies to copy,
graphics, photos, and blog posts. What you say and how you say
it are the critical elements of whether or not, people respond
to your website presentation.

What Needs To Be Said

Marketing consultants have for years suggested the use of
Mission Statements as one way to get companies to focus their
thinking and communication efforts into something meaningful.
They are intended to be a kind of ‘Rosetta Stone’ for
corporate communication, but instead, they have become a
graveyard for innocuous platitudes and inane statements of
self-congratulation. It’s too bad because the idea of a core
guiding statement that defines purpose and personality is
central to developing a framework for marketing communication
content and delivery.

If websites are about motivating action, what do we need to
communicate to our audience to achieve that objective? If
Mission Statements aren’t the solution, what is? The answer is
not a price proposition or a feature proposition but rather a
presentation of emotional value because it is the most
persuasive motivating factor you can offer. It is something that
your competitors can’t copy, undercut, or even compete with.

Your Emotional Value Proposition Is Your Brand

If you ever thought branding didn’t apply to your company, well
now you know better, because branding is nothing more than the
implementation and communication of your company’s emotional
value statement: the core guiding principle used to formulate
all marketing communication efforts, including website video
presentations.

In Lee Eisenberg’s book, ‘Shoptimism’ he outlines four
reasons people buy things: to make themselves happy, to
transform themselves, to express themselves, and to achieve a
sense of permanence. Each of these reasons is based on an
emotional value, which is why all the features and price-cutting
in the world can’t compete with a well-established emotional
return.

Presenting Value in Marketing Communication

Eisenberg’s four reasons to buy are really a variation on
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that form a pyramid of need, want,
and desire: the basis for everything we require and everything
we crave, starting with survival and ending with
self-fulfillment. Most of us have moved up the pyramid from
basic survival and procreation needs to more sophisticated
desires based on belonging, identity, and self-actualization,
the elements that form an Emotional Value Marketing
Proposition.

Most sophisticated marketers understand the power and importance
of self-actualization as an emotional trigger upon which a brand
identity can be established and promoted; however a distinction
must be made between the audience’s desire for individual
fulfillment and a company’s objective of meeting its marketing
goals.

In a Web-based business environment populated with newly minted
entrepreneurs who do not distinguish themselves from their
businesses, it is easy to understand why this confusion exists.

A business is a living breathing entity unto itself and should
not be confused with it’s owners, managers, and employees. It
may be trendy to think you are your brand, but unless you’re
Tony Robbins, with his personality, performance skills,
resources and ‘shtick,’ it’s best to implement a less
egocentric strategy.

Where self-actualization in marketing plays out is as a basis
for presenting the emotional value you offer your audience: a
desirable value that motivates that audience to act, and thereby
fulfill your corporate marketing goals.

An ego-based misreading of self-actualization has led to a
plethora of self-promotion and do-it-yourselfism that works
against business success. It’s the fulfillment of your
audiences desires that management needs to be concerned with,
not their own.

Perception, Reality, and Communication

Once you’ve figured out what your Emotional Value Proposition
is, the next thing is to figure out how to present it, which
brings us to the idea of hyperrealism, a term we use for
developing effective Web-based video presentations.

Marketing communication is essentially a storytelling discipline
that relies on shorthand reference and pattern recognition
wrapped in the context of an idealized reality, what we call
hyperrealism. In art, hyperrealism is intended to convey
something deeper and more significant than what mere reality can
convey, and the same principle holds true for marketing
communication. Reality is messy, complex, and confused, while
hyperrealism is simplified and focused, a prime directive in any
effective marketing, branding, and advertising strategy. You
need to simplify in order to clarify, in order to persuade.

HyperRealism As A Concept Development Principle

Every sane human being understands gangsters and serial killers
are bad, yet television audiences flock to consume episodes of
the ‘Sopranos’ and ‘Dexter.’ In the same way most of us know
the images presented by Victoria’s Secret bear little relation
to reality. These examples may be obvious, but all effective
commercial presentation is stylized, not because it’s an effort
to mislead, but rather because it needs to focus and clarify a
message aimed at engaging and connecting to an audience on an
emotional level.

In order to connect to your audience your marketing presentation
must communicate something more than the lowest price, or the
latest feature, it must show the way to that idealized version
that viewers have of themselves that only exists in their minds.
Once you come to grips with that reality, you’re on your way to
developing a successful marketing communication strategy.

10 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Online Video
By Diana D’Itri (c) 2010

Lacking any information to the contrary, many businesses still
think that all they need to do to get new clients is to put
their name and face in the Yellow Pages or online social
directories, get some professional looking business cards, a
website and Voila! It’s the old adage “build it and they will
come”.

Trouble is, that’s what their competitors are doing also and in
this day and age, it’s just not enough.

Does Your Business Stand Out Online?

Most advertising on the Web follows a time-honored format,
although some might call it a time-worn format as it does little
to differentiate itself. You can bet that a high percentage of
this advertising will be ignored and the money spent on it will
be wasted.

So how does a company stand out from the crowd online?

Thanks to an oversupply of similar text, claims, and
presentation – coupled with a short 21st century attention span
- your website has less than ten seconds to move a visitor to
action. If it doesn’t, that visitor will click away to another
site, and then another. Therefore, it’s critical that you find a
way to break through the noise your competitors are making. But
even that’s not enough.

Statistics show that even the best-looking websites generate
conversion rates of under one percent, so for every 100 visitors
you do manage to get, less than one will call or email you.
Sound bleak? Thinking of redirecting more of your advertising
budget back to the Yellow Pages? Don’t. You’re on the right
track – you just haven’t leveraged all the power available to
you online.

One-to-Many Communication. On-on-One Feel.

Most websites are little more than electronic versions of Yellow
Page advertising. For the most part, they don’t encourage
interaction beyond the obligatory “Contact me for more
information” plea. These sites don’t encourage trust any more
than their print counterparts. They don’t give visitors the
warm-and-fuzzy feeling that a face-to-face meeting would.
But they can.

Searching for a local service provider online can be a daunting
prospect, but even more daunting than the search is deciding
which provider to use once you get to the page, especially since
most websites promise the standard good service, competitive
pricing and high quality.

So how does a business differentiate itself from the sea of
competition? Web video makes this possible on a grand scale.
Thanks to rapidly improving technology, it’s easier than ever to
add that warm-and-fuzzy, face-to-face element to your site,
replicate an in-person interview, and offer your visitors an
opportunity to check you out before picking up the phone. With
Web video, you can present an interview that addresses all the
questions and concerns of potential clients. You can keep them
on your site longer and give them insight into the “business
behind the business.” In a way that wasn’t possible even a few
years ago, business owners can now speak directly to their
audiences and showcase their personalities and areas of
expertise. This is especially helpful if you are a professional
service provider.

Any business that relies on conveying trust-ability will benefit
from this type of web marketing. Really, it’s one-to-many
communication with a one-on-one feel. It’s the perfect ice
breaker and an efficient means of generating the interest and
trust needed to compel potential clients to make an appointment
and do business.

A high-quality Web interview placed strategically on your site
is a huge timesaver for you and prospective clients because you
reach a wide audience in minimal time. Potential clients get the
information they need to pre-qualify – and pre-sell – themselves
before they call.

Online video delivers some of the best ROI of any advertising
medium today and if set up properly, actually ranks higher
than text now by the major search engines like Google. Short of
spending valuable face time with a potential client (often times
a poorly qualified potential client) there is simply no better
way to forge a personal connection with them. With that in mind,
here are 10 tips to help you get the most of your online video
marketing efforts.

10 Tips for Making the Most of Online Video

1. Make Sure Your Video is Professionally Done.
This is an absolute must. The whole point here is to establish
credibility and trust, but you’ll do the opposite with a poorly
executed and produced video. Yes, many of the videos you find on
sharing sites are mediocre at best, but that is changing rapidly
as companies begin to see the value of promoting themselves in
this manner. In fact, a recent Permission TV survey found that
67% of 400 hundred top executives intended to focus their online
marketing efforts on video in 2009. The rush is coming – find a
personable, engaging interviewer and a top notch production crew
to really stand out.

2. Submit Your Video to as Many Outlets as Possible.
While YouTube is the clear leader here, there are many other
video sharing sites worthy of consideration. Here are some
others you won’t want to pass up:

� Google Video: http://video.google.com
� Yahoo! Video: http://video.yahoo.com
� Daily Motion: http://www.dailymotion.com
� MySpaceTV: http://vids.myspace.com
� MetaCafe: http://www.metacafe.com
� Revver: http://www.revver.com
� Veoh: http://www.veoh.com
� Blinkx: http://www.blinkx.com
� Break: http://www.break.com

3. Embed Your Video on the Front Page of Your Site.
Don’t hide what’s going to become one of your most effective
selling tools on a dusty inside page. Get it out front.
Customers and search engines will love you for it.

4. Find Out What Search Terms Your Potential Clients are Using
and Put Them in Your Video’s Title.
If you don’t know what words clients in need of your services
are typing into Google and other search engines, get
professional help or use some of the resources featured on this
page. Once you’ve identified these terms, use the most popular
in your video’s title.

5. Make Your Tags and Descriptions SEO-friendly, too.
Most video sharing sites let you tag videos with keywords and
post a short description, so get the most out of these by
sprinkling in the search terms you’ve identified.

6. Don’t Forget Your Thumbnail.
A thumbnail is a still shot from your video that appears along
with search results. Don’t waste this opportunity to present
yourself in the best light possible – choose a key moment from
your video, preferably one where you’re smiling as you speak
with your interviewer.

7. Link Back to Your Site.
Put your URL near the top of your video’s description. You’ll
get a higher search ranking and potential clients will quickly
learn where to go for more information.

8. Interact With Your Viewers.
Most video sharing sites allow viewer comments. Use this
opportunity to answer questions, respond to comments, and
further promote your business.

9. Consider a Pay-Per-Click Campaign.
Natural search engine optimization, while effective, takes time
to bear fruit. In the meantime, you might want to jump start the
process with a pay-per-click campaign that gives you a sponsored
search listing. You can learn more about PPC advertising at:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads,

http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing, and

http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising

10. Add New Content Often.
Search engines look for it and so do potential clients. Keep
your content fresh and up-to-date and keep visitors coming back
for more.

With an ever-increasing stream of competition, it’s more
important than ever to stand out from the crowd. These days
standing out means maximizing your online presence and
leveraging the technology to present the unique advantages of
you and your firm. There’s no better way for a growth-oriented
business to build a solid and secure future than by using
effective and affordable online video.

Use these free resources to get a handle on the terms that
potential clients are using to search for you right now.
Wordtracker: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Google AdWords: http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Keyword Discovery: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
KwMap: http://www.kwmap.net
Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends

It’s ok to say “no” to Twitter if that’s your thing. There’s a chance that it just doesn’t fit into your strategy or help you achieve your goals. That’s cool. However, if it is your thing, you may be interested in how Google ranks tweets. That is if search marketing is your thing.

Do you see Twitter as important to an effective search marketing campaign? Share your thoughts here.

Google and Microsoft almost simultaneously announced deals with Twitter a few months back, that would give the companies access to tweets in real-time to fuel their respective search engines’ real-time results. Microsoft immediately launched their version, but it was separate from the regular Bing search engine. Google waited a while, but eventually started incorporating real-time results right into regular Google SERPs (including not only tweets, but various other sources).

After the Twitter deals were announced, Bing came out and said, “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.”

Amit Singhal Google was not as vocal about how it would rank tweets and other real-time results, but the company has now shed a bit of light on that via an interview with MIT’s Technology Review. David Talbot interviewed Google “Fellow” Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at the company. According to him, Google also ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it’s not just about how many followers you get. It’s about how reputable those followers are.

Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that some kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google’s real-time search.

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

But that’s only one factor.

Do you commonly use hashtags in your tweets? If your goal is to rank in Google’s real-time search index, you may want to cut down on that practice, because according to Singhal, that is a big red flag for a lower quality tweet. This seems to be part of Google’s spam control strategy.

Another noteworthy excerpt from the interview:

Another problem: how, if someone is searching for “Obama,” to sift through White House press tweets and thousands of others to find the most timely and topical information. Google scans tweets to find the “signal in the noise,” he says. Such a “signal” might include a new onslaught of tweets and other blogs that mention “Cambridge police” or “Harry Reid” near mentions of “Obama.” By looking out for such signals, Google is able to furnish real-time hits that contain the freshest subject matter even for very common search terms.

Well, we certainly know more about Google’s strategy for tweet ranking now, but there are still plenty of questions about it. What is Google’s stance is on Ghost Tweeting? Are Google’s ranking factors a good reason to create and follow more Twitter lists in hopes for gaining more reputable industry followers?

The factors mentioned aren’t the only ones Google employs. It’s not like Google is going to tell us everything. It also helps to keep in mind that real-time search spans far beyond just tweets. Still, Twitter is clearly a big part of it, and even the significance of tweets themselves will evolve in time.

Google says it hopes to factor in geo-location data (with regards to tweets) into the real-time search results at some point. Google and Twitter engineers frequently collaborate on real-time search, which Google itself says is evolving.

By the way, it stands to reason that Google’s strategy for ranking tweets probably shares similarities for how it ranks content from other sources drawn from for real-time search.

Below are a few directories that are not being penalized by Google and still pass on PageRank.

Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc

Link-Building (Backlink) Strategies

Welcome to the Link-Building portion of Web University.  Link-Building is an extremely important, fast paced, quickly changing approach to raising your websites reputation and of course ranking on all major search engines.  Although some strategies such as ‘Press Releases’, ‘Anchor Text’ and ‘Directory Submissions’ don’t carry the same weight (power) they once used to, all major search engines still use the number of Backlinks to your site as a sign of how popular your website is on the Internet.  You’ll find this to be very similar to a High School popularity contest, the more friends you have, the more popular you become.

General Directories:

Directories give a website their first ‘authority’ links and they are also the second fastest way for search engines to find and index your website’s pages.  The following directories are the major players you want to submit to:

·         DMOZ (Open Directory Project) www.dmoz.org = Free

·         Yahoo! Directory www.yahoo.com = $299.00/year

·         Best of the Web = $99.95/year

·         Business www.business.com = $299.00/year

·         GoGuides = $69.95

·         JoeAnt = $39.99

If your competitors are in these directories, you should be too; if they are not, this will help you rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).

Niche Directories:

Niche directories are directories that specialize on a specific industry.  Search the web for directories in your particular industry and submit each of your pages to them; this type of directories may yield more valuable links than general directories.  Niche directories will typically allow you to submit “Text Anchor Hyperlinks” which are much more powerful than their image counterparts.  This is a fantastic way to outperform your competitors as they may not have taken the time to research and submit their web pages to them.

Social Media Profiles:

Social media is one of the most powerful methods to quickly get your link onto the screen of hundreds if not thousands of users.  Creating a Social Media profile is easy and LinkWebServices.com will provide you with an advanced template containing all of the most popular questions they will ask you so when you start creating your profile all you have to do is copy and paste from your template.

http://www.linkwebservices.com/downloads/Link_Web_Services_Social_Network_Integration_Profile_Template.pdf

Secret Strategy: create three profiles: 1. Company Name, 2. Your Brand, 3. Your Individual (Personal) Profile. This will triple the number of people you can reach and multiply the number of backlinks to your website.

Most media sites DO NOT pass on Google Page Rank, but some of them do (i.e. Meetup.com); always keep an eye open for a stronger backlink opportunity with a site that allows anchor text and passes Google PageRank to your links.

SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) Link Building:

How do I get ahead of my competition? Easy! Do a Google Search for the top keywords you want your web page to be found by, take a look at the top ranking sites, find out who is linking to them and get them to link to you.  Also, see if the top ranking sites for your keywords would be willing to include a link to your site on their high ranking pages.  Take a look at their websites and find out if they have a “links” or “resources” page you can add your link to or just give them a call and ask them.  Remember, always create value for the other person before you ask for something (Anthony Robbins); brainstorm some ideas of things you could contribute to their site, a blog post, an article, a reciprocal link.

Blogging:

Blogging is powerful, efficient and fast! Once your blog is created and a few posts have been added, search the web for “Blog Directories” (another good place to search is Website Magazine) and submit your blog to them.  You MUST make absolutely sure you add your domain or sub-domain link to the post or your efforts will be for nothing; when the blog directories include your blog, that hyperlink becomes a powerful Backlink to your site. To maximize the blog’s potential, make sure your blog provides an RSS feed people can subscribe to.  If you don’t have the time to blog, consider a Ghost Writer or Freelance writer to take care of your posts for you; a great place to find them is at Elance.com.  Make sure you promote every single post through your Social Media Profiles and you’ll see people start to follow you on Twitter, Facebook and all other major Social Media Networks available.

Articles Targeting Social Media:

Articles are a fantastic way to create backlinks while it has the wonderful side-effect of advertising you as the expert in your field.  Articles can be time consuming and some people may consider them hard work, to whom I would recommend hiring a Ghost Writer or Freelancer to write your articles.  For this particular portion of Link-Building, it is best to already have your Social Media Profiles created and an active Friend/Follower network already in place. The idea here is to create content that is appealing to the people in the social media networks, thus, your topic has to be social media related.  Not all articles will return great results, but once one does, not only will it make up for the others, but it will give you a better idea of what people are interested in.

Link Farms:

Avoid them at all cost.

Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc

Any type of online business can grow through some basic solid SEO techniques. Here are some straight-forward answers to the most common SEO questions.

1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Bing). There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they’re looking for, in the places they are looking, they’ll find you and place you in their search engine results page.

The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.

2. How important is SEO?
Let’s just put it this way. What’s better? a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase? With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.

3. What are text links?
Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you’re looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, eBook, or web copy to your website.

An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you’re encouraging links to your website.

4. What are link farms and link exchanges?
Search engines don’t accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don’t want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they’ll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.

5. What is duplicate content?
The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don’t publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.

6. How do I find the right keywords?
There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products and services. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords. The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.

7. How do I optimize my web pages?
Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph. Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.

Title Tag: Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about. If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>. Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.

Meta Tags: it is helpful to place your keywords in your Meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META NAME=”description”

8. Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?
Need? No, Should? Yes!. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those.  You can be reactive, but you should certainly be thinking with a more proactive approach; If you tell them (the search engines) what your links are, your links will be submitted a lot faster and no pages will be missed.

9. What are spiders?
Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They’re basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking the pages found.

10. How does content help my SEO?
Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you’re offering quality content and you’re updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:

·          Blogs

·          Forums and chat rooms

·          Articles

·          Reviews

·          Case studies

·          Reports

·          How to guides

·          Tutorials

·          E-books

·          And much more

Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc  

On the Google Search Bar, enter one of the Google Commands below and replace www.LinkWebServices.com with your website information.

·          Cache:

o    Description: Displays cached version of the site

o    Example: cache:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          Cache + Keyword:

o    Description: Displays cached version of the site and highlight the specified keywords

o    Example: site: www.LinkWebServices.com Keyword Here

·          Link:

o    Description: Displays the number of links back to the specified page (backlinks)

o    Example: link:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          Related:

o    Description: Displays all web pages that are “similar” to the specified web page

o    Example: related:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          Info:

o    Description: Displays all web page information for the specified page

o    Example: info:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          Site:

o    Description: Displays all pages of the specified site that are indexed on Google

o    Example: site:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          All In Title:

o    Description: Displays all pages that contain all the specified keywords in the title

o    Example: allintitle:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          In Title:

o    Description: Displays all pages that contain any of the specified keywords in the title

o    Example: intitle:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          All In URL:

o    Description: Displays all pages with the specified URL

o    Example: allinurl:www.LinkWebServices.com

·          In URL:

o    Description: Displays all pages with the specified URL anywhere in the address

o    Example: inurl:www.LinkWebServices.com

Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc

Top 50 Video Sharing Sites

Top 50 Video Sharing Sites

Link Web Services: http://www.LinkWebServices.com
Web University: http://WebUniversity.LinkWebServices.com
The Web Store: http://www.LinkWebServices.com/mm5/merchant.mvc