SEO is the Tortoise that beats the Hare in a race of Endurance

In Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare the fast paced rabbit is in a hurry to reach the finish line and prove to the world that he is the best athlete. Meanwhile the tortoise slowly moves along and eventually overtakes the cocky hare that stops to rest and falls asleep from exhaustion. Optimization is similar to the tortoise in that it takes a long time to see the results of building links, adding articles to online publications and requires a great deal of patience before a website begins to show the result of making it to the front of the pack at the top of a results page.

Through concerted efforts that demand the attention of a website owner and their SEO specialist the goal of landing on the first page of the directory results can be accomplished. Typically taking anywhere from six months to a year to achieve the slow process of gaining a natural ranking in the search engines can be accomplished by those that are consistent in their efforts and who do not stop to rest when things start to appear to be working.

This week I met with a client who was so concerned about reaching the top spot in his profession that he did not want to take a methodical and somewhat slow approach to his online marketing. Frustrated by the competition he wanted to produce a large quantity of articles in a short three month time period and measure the success of his Internet marketing campaign based on what the search engines would perceive after cranking out as much work as possible before stopping to rest and examining the distance that the massive amount of work would be covering.

Not realizing his mistake that the search engines do see links, but take their time to index the information that is submitted to the various online publishing sites this client (whom I refer to as the hare in our story) became agitated by the fact that I was unwilling to deliver what he wanted knowing full well that his effort would have very little impact on his goal. Requesting that I deliver the hare's pace for a meager fraction of what the work would normally take to be affective [in the long term connections and relevancy that makes up his page ranking (PR) and affects the overall quality score] I had to refuse to work with the man because of his improbable request.

Although I had planned on performing some PPC work to augment the SEO content and directory submissions to help expedite the success of a well planned marketing media strategy I was fully aware that in a three month period of time there would no significant changes to his current page ranking and I would be exhausted by the effort that would have ended in the termination of my services out of sheer frustration on the part of the client.

The expectations of many people is to gain a fast result when it comes to their online marketing work, but the reality is that the search engines are designed to move slowly and increase a website ranking over the long haul. If it were simple to gain a coveted position in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) there would be a constant turnover of businesses that are holding onto the top spots of the search engine results. But in order to be fair and avoid the unlawful "Black Hat" practices that speed results, the major search directories are designed to follow the methodology of the tortoise in slowing the pace and bringing a website into the winning position on a page after many months of steady work. That is not to say that a concentrated effort of producing a large volume of articles and blogs as well as adding links to other directories cannot be sustained for a full year, but the efforts require a solid commitment on the part of the SEO provider and the client to manage the workload and stick with the marketing media strategy that has been developed to reach the goal of any Internet marketing campaign.

As I realized before signing up the business as a client and committing myself to an impossible agreement, the prospect of adding a client is often more exciting than working for someone that does not appreciate your contribution. Like the tortoise that maintained the same pace and speed throughout the race, SEO delivers the intended result when it is carefully initiated and kept moving forward at a steady rate over a minimum of six months and is best when planned for over an entire year of continuing work.

Optimize search results with Geo Targeting

I was speaking to friend about his website marketing and in particular what he is doing to attract new business when I was surprised to hear that he is not doing anything to develop an ongoing SEO platform. When I asked why he had not been using search engine optimization to gain a natural foothold in the searchable web directories I was told that he had looked into it, but in the past no one had been able to help him narrow the field of competition from a national search inquiry to a local one. Naturally, I was concerned that this man's law practice is suffering because he has no idea how to generate business from the web. So I introduced him to the very specific keyword searches that narrow down the region, the city(s) and even the neighborhoods that he wants to reach through the most effective and inexpensive marketing media strategy available.

Referred to as Geo Targeting the search engines can be allocated to return results to a browser that are intended for a specific audience. Through keyword selection that identifies the city and even the zip code that a business is located in it is possible to build organic results that will lead local consumers to the door of a very specialized individual and their business. Because my friend practices law he is only interested in meeting with clients that he can represent within the same state, county and cities that are close to his office. Concerned about his license to practice this individual has put off establishing any real Internet marketing plan because he was unaware that the search parameters can be set to target the neighborhoods and zip codes that he is interested in serving.

Going beyond the natural results of the search engines that are determined by optimization efforts, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising in the search engines or the ads that appear on social media sites can be highly effective in geo targeting the ideal customer or client. Because unique IP addresses contain a set of numbers that are used to identify a city or even a neighborhood it is possible to set up paid advertising that responds only to the homes and businesses whose Internet connected IP address corresponds to the results of a web search that is targeted by the keywords a person browsing the web is looking for.

The combination of very specific keywords and the selected geo target of an exact location have made online marketing much easier for business owners to use. On a modest budget PPC advertising can produce results for a business that is only paying for the clicks that move a person from the search engine to their website. If the keywords target the business products and services within an identified community only the people with corresponding demographic data will see the PPC ads in the returned search results, thereby eliminating anyone browsing outside of the target audience.

Organic searches can also provide the information that delivers local customers to businesses that are using geographic terms to set up their keyword phrases and meta tag descriptions on their website. By coding a URL with the <meta name="keywords" content="sample city keyword"> and <meta name="description" content="sample city or state content description"> companies that are using a local marketing media strategy can attract people that are in the same location as their business' physical presence without generalizing their online marketing for the entire Internet.

Working with geo targeted keywords, IP addresses and zip codes for paid ad placement or organic search results is an ideal way to reach a specific audience and attract consumers living or working in a small area that is limited to city, county or state boundaries.

For help setting up keyword specific geo targeted marketing email me: info@MarketingMediaStrategy.com

How Landing Pages relate to SEO Links

After building a website it is vital to the marketing that links be set up which connect the site to any electronically published articles and posts. Most people understand the importance of linking their site, but the key point to remember is that content written about in the online marketing must be directly linked to the corresponding page on the website. If you are targeting a keyword for a specific product that you are selling then you want to link the article to the page that displays the item in question. As the search engines look for direct connections and relevancy in the written materials that appear online and how those links relate to the website you do not want to set up the link to bring your site visitors to the home page if you are talking about a product that is featured on a product page. 

If you make the reader work to reach the pages that they want to see, you will lose them before they reach the page that highlights the product your keywords are written about. Using ease of navigation to bring a reader from the blog posting or online article to your site you can directly link a webpage to the subject matter of the article.

For example, today I was working on an article for an SEO client that had an enormous page address connecting the target link. It was filled with back slashes and .aspx?= coding directions that lead to a very specific page on a huge website. With a large inventory to cover, the article singled out one product from among hundreds of others; so the link from that article had to be directed to the exact item that I was writing for. Without the proper link for the target URL a reader would have to search the entire site for the product. Taking a great deal of time and effort that would most likely confuse and frustrate anyone that was interested in the product being promoted, the business would lose the customer and the article would lose credibility with search engines and the intended target audience.

Although linking the appropriate landing page with the corresponding keyword(s) sounds trivial the reality is that the search engines do recognize the relevant link which can increase the quality score of the site. Search engine optimization therefore must always have a purpose to it. With keywords carrying the weight of the marketing strategy, stressing the importance of linking articles and blogs to the exact page of the site (that is being referenced the search engines) will make the right connection and have a positive impact on the marketing efforts of the site.

Something else that I run across in my work which troubles me as an SEO professional is when a client changes their website and deletes their old links as they update the content on their site. This is frustrating because all the materials that have been previously published and linked to the missing pages have nowhere to go. In other words the links that have been established go nowhere and the articles that once had meaning to the Internet marketing strategy are lost. Although I agree that updating the site allows a fresh look at the pages by the search robots, I personally prefer to maintain each page's HTML address; so that all of the work that has been created for the optimization of the site remains intact and searchable from the links that are already established.

 

With landing pages that no longer exist the work of online marketing is stifled and the site which may be gaining ground in the search results will lose credibility. If you are going to update a page (and I do recommend doing that from time to time), please remember to keep the same page address names in the URL so that the search engines can maintain the previously connected links and support the ongoing work of optimization which after all is the goal of any online marketing media strategy.

Does your Social Media Marketing have a goal?

Almost everyone is into social media these days, but without a goal in mind of what you want to accomplish for your business or personal objectives you are just posting information that has little if any meaning. Consider building a reputation management campaign that has a specific goal that you want to reach. It is important to realize that unless you have something that is relevant to your end goal to say in your posts it is not worth saying anything. 

The trouble that most people run into is that they are too busy dumping as much information about their business or them self onto the internet that they do not realize the potential damage they are doing to their own reputation.

With the search engine algorithms recognizing quality in the wording of every scrap of information that is being blogged, tweeted about and posted on the social networks most people do not know that when they are chatting about their cat or how their weekend was with their friends they are effectively reducing their credibility as an expert within their chosen field of business. Not that your hobbies and interests are unimportant, but they carry no weight for anyone that is in business with you.

To circumvent the common mistakes that individuals make in regard to their personal socializing it is best to create two different and accounts for your social standing. If you do want to keep everyone on your friends list informed about what you ate for lunch and what you thought about the last film you watched you can do that, but keep in mind that your clients, vendors and coworkers are more interested in what you can deliver by way of productivity and increased revenue. With separate networking media accounts you can be social with friends and family members while maintaining a professional image for all of your business contacts.

Going back to what I stated before, the best way to plan out a social media strategy is to have an end goal in mind. What are you attempting to do? What is the goal of your work? If you don't have one you will never know if you have reached it. All too often business owners say that they want to increase sales--which is why they are on the web. But that broad statement does not identify their purpose or the function of their social media campaign.

Just as any marketing effort is targeted to an audience and directed at gaining a specified result the work of any and all social media posts, blogs and commentaries has to be aligned with the overall goal of your campaign. So what you say through any social channel should to be relevant to your business, your website and the readers who will be reviewing your dialog.

Before sending out any message it should be filter through your strategy statement and measured to make sure that it is aligned with the goal of your media campaign. Basically a strategy statement is like your mission statement--it is the foundation of what you do, the essence of your business and relates to everything that you are presenting to an audience through your online marketing. A friend of mine and marketing expert, Brian Pope came up with what he calls a Unique Marketing Positioning Statement. Essentially this is what I am calling a strategy Statement. Identifying what you do and why you do it helps to create the vision of your company and is a test for each post and blog you put into cyberspace. If a posting is not in alignment with what you are offering to clients, it does not belong in your social media campaign.

However, if you are posting a blog and then telling others about your work, you can promote a relevant message that you will be happy to link back to your website. The acid test comes down to asking yourself this question. Is the post I am about to send something that I would put on my website to attract new consumers? If the answer is yes then move forward, if it is no then rethink your position and only post what will build you up as an expert in your area of business.

The goal of every marketing media strategy is crucial to the success of your ongoing public relations effort which is building your reputation. Keeping specific goals in mind each time you are tempted to post anything online will help you to decide what to post for the business public and what to send to your network of friends. With a targeted message you can do a greater good for your business than if you just sat down commenting on the things that no one really cares about. 

As you write your posts, ask yourself so what? What do others take away from this message? Is there a call to action if so is it relevant to your work? What is the reader going to do next? If they like the article, blog or post ask them to indicate it by taking action.

So what are you waiting for, click the like button, re-tweet this message to the people that can benefit from it and start following my blog! After all that's one of my social media goals. What are yours?

Changing trends in Online Marketing

As online marketing continues to shift and reshape the Internet a new series of strategies has emerged that is making the work of SEO even more effective. Using social media networks to affect the decision making process, businesses are now recognizing the need to build up a reputation through the links and posts on the densely populated social media sites. Creating campaigns that attract attention of an audience and redirect potential customers to their website, businesses of every shape and size are finding out that in order to be competitive they need to do more than just optimize their website. While link building and page ranks remain the goal of a successful SEO campaign there is a growing emphasis on how organizations use social media to guide the laser targeted of search engine optimization.

Because traditional offline commercial advertising campaigns are losing their momentum, the online world is continuing to bring newer and more effective marketing practices to the attention of business owners and advertising professionals. Mastering the tools and techniques for guiding millions of Internet users to the products and services of their clients, online marketing managers are achieving success that reaches beyond the accepted practices of SEO. With the technology driven short attention spans of younger consumers social media marketing offers a growing number of strategies that have and will continue to act as a laser for targeting unique groups of consumers that are constantly online with money to spend.

Of course the use of social media does not negate the need for a well planned SEO strategy. Adding to the success of a continual link building campaign the work of online social interactions by business professionals is an important element of Internet marketing that cannot nor should be overlooked. Selecting keywords and writing content that is sprinkled with a fair amount of keywords continues to be a vital component of success. Optimizing a website with Meta tags and content rich relevant wording still relies on the links that are generated through related article submissions, blogs and industry directories. Building an online reputation that supports the work of an optimized website requires continued posts to the social networking sites that are frequented daily by millions of people. Aiding in the effort of an effective strategically thought out SEO campaign the addition of social media makes internet marketing all the more successful. With the help of professionals that are versed in the uses of social media and who can create a customized campaign to promote any organization. Being ranked higher in the search engines is the result of all of the online marketing efforts of SEO, link building and social media posts.

How the Internet influences Marketing paradigms

Marketing has changed dramatically over the past 15 years. With people using the Internet for all sorts of searches the need to conduct proper SEO campaigns has shifted the focus of marketing and advertising professionals to the more precise efforts and effects of online marketing. Where a business owner was once required to take out ads in the local phone directory to help drum up customers, the Internet has made the phone book obsolete. Sure there are some very rare occasions when reaching for the yellow pages might be an option, but for the most part everyone that owns a computer is looking up the information that they want in one of the online search directories. With an estimated 31 billion web searches taking place each month on Goggle alone, the revolution in how people are using technology has led to a revamping of the entire marketing industry. 

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the standard approach to advertising was the mass media broadcast and print productions that send out commercial messages to tens of thousands, even millions of people at a time. Similar to firing a shotgun and hoping that the spread of buckshot would hit something the mass media approach was effective to a very limited extent. By reaching a large audience the advertisers would expect to make a handful of sales for whatever product they were promoting. With returns of 4% or less the shotgun approach to advertising to a mass population was (and continues to be) a high cost, low return investment for any business that could afford to shell out tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the production and airing of their commercial messages. Television, radio and magazine ads have lost their mass audience appeal and as the telephone book is all but extinct the more traditional forms of broadcast and print media are rapidly losing ground with younger consumers.

Thanks to the invention and innovation of technology satellite broadcasting, commercial free cable programming, and downloadable TV shows and music choices that can circumvent the broadcasts of commercial ads allows users and subscribers to avoid or skip the traditional advertising campaigns, leaving many advertisers looking for a better way to reach their ideal consumer. Turning to the Internet for help the solution that has become the norm for every company of every size in every country throughout the world is search engine optimization for their website. About a decade ago it became apparent that the world of marketing and advertising needed an overhaul. Recognizing a shift was taking place in how people used technology the online search directories stated listing businesses and website information. As the trends in marketing continued to change a number of marketing professionals saw the need to change their approach to advertising or be swept away into history.

With the changes that continue to be made to improve the placement of a website in the SERPS (search engine results pages) consumers have adopted Internet marketing strategies to help them increase their online sales. Noticing that they could select a series of keywords that coincided to the parameters of an online search, the targeting of specific buyers has become the new model for advertising agents to follow. A directly opposite approach to the broad reaching shotgun method of mass marketing, keyword optimized website marketing works like a laser beam to pinpoint the ideal consumer and target the advertising messages of SEO work directly. Identifying individuals that are ready, willing and able to make a purchase; at the exact moment that they find a product or service that they want keyword targeted marketing strategies have improved the sales revenue of many online organizations.

This laser beam approach to marketing identifies a specific group of people by honing in on their interests instead of generalizing an online campaign. By focusing on the ideal consumer profile instead of blasting a large audience with commercial messages, businesses that are laser guiding their marketing efforts are seeing an increase in their sales from a smaller marketing budget. Returning hundreds of times more revenue than the investment costs an advertiser the Internet has become the place for businesses to position their brand and market their merchandise with laser fine accuracy and some amazing results.

SEO 101: The basics of Website Design

When designing a new website it is important to include the components that will allow the site to gain momentum within the search engines once it has been indexed by the spiders and robots. (Keep in mind that spider or robots refer to the search engine programs that crawl through a website and mark the content that can be extracted and read by the search engine). 

One buzz word that is thrown around by designers and programmers is "site architecture." Basically site architecture is the layout of the pages of a website and should be in a format that is easy to read and follow. Using logical pages that guide a visitor from the home page to other pages on the site, the architectural elements of the code should be easy to navigate. (This means that page frames are out.) Including a site map in the design of the pages allows the spiders to quickly index the entire site and draw out the relevant content that will be on file with the search directories.  No matter how many pages are being added to the site the map page is one of the most important elements of internet marketing and is very often overlooked by people that feel it is not necessary to break down their site. However this is a mistake that can cost the website brownie points when it's time to go live with the launch of the new site.

Within the source code of the HTML are Meta Tags that allow the programmer to add a series of keywords invisibly to the site. Although the search engines allow programmers to include keywords in the code the rule of thumb is to limit the keywords to no more than 20. Stuffing the site with keywords will only get the site into trouble and may get it banned from the more popular search engines. Along with the tagging of keywords Meta tags also allow for unique page titles to added to the site. About 10 years ago the pioneers of SEO realized that instead of marking their pages "home," "about," and "contact" they could actually say something that distinguished a website from every other page on the web. Using the Meta tags to create a unique title for each page and add a description allows the site owner to put up a sentence or just a few words that can be indexed and remembered by the search engines. Keeping in mind that the wording of the Meta tags should reflect the keywords that are used in the written portion (the content) of the website, programmers that are building a website can ensure that the relevance of the content is aligned with the offerings of the company. This brings me to the next point I want to make.

Because the search engines look for content that is the same as what a person making an inquiry is asking for, it is important to keep everything on the site relevant to the work that is being promoted by the keywords. Choosing the right words to say makes an impact on what the search engines will naturally link back to the website and return in the results of a search. With the philosophy that more is better some people overload their site with text that rambles on and goes nowhere. Keeping the content of the site to no more than 500 words per page will help to narrow the results and make the site easier to find. Using between 300 and 400 written words is the optimal amount that can help the spiders to index a site, but again the relevant content that relates to the offering of services, products or information is the most important thing to consider when writing for the web. Using the keywords naturally within the page content is also considered vital to the success of a website. However keywords must be limited to only a two or three uses per page. Any more than three uses of the keywords and the search engines might think that the site is being stuffed and drop the site down in the rankings instead of moving it up.

Finally, I want to address photos, pictures and Flash animation. If used in moderation each of these can aid in the promotion of the website to the search directories, but to make them stand out they must have a written description in the coding of the site. As the spider and robot programs are reading text only they do not see pictures and only note an image file is in use. Without a description that can be indexed pictures have no meaning in optimization and are lost. Likewise animation that is attractive and clever is not marked and sites that built entirely in Flash can only be tagged on their homepage. Therefore animation is not a preferred source for building a website. If you are looking for an animation it is best to embed it into an HTML coded site and tag the file so that it can be indexed for search optimization.

With these basic tips for building a website that is optimized for the web you can start making an impression on the search engines, but there is a whole lot more that still needs to be done in the way of online marketing before any website will reach the top page of a search result.

Until next time,