SEO, Google Descriptions and Growing Clicks

I searched Google today, and you probably did too. Have you ever wondered why you choose and click a specific link and not others? One reason for click through is probably because of the description, or a short bit of text that sits right below a link. When the descriptions are done right, the number of people clicking your link goes up, and when done wrong, your result link becomes meaningless to users. The competition may get your business.

One of our associate companies, Enthusiast, Inc., is sponsoring a webinar on the topic of how to use Google descriptions to grow your website click though. When you have an e-commerce site on the Internet, your competition is vast compared to typical retail locations at the local mall or on Main Street. So that means your really need to make sure that you are practicing the right search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to get folks to your website in the first place.

MarCom Broadband's Mike Keesling will be talking about this topic tomorrow Wednesday, February 13, 2008 12:30 PM - 1:00 PM PST Using Google Descriptions to Boost Traffic

Join web veteran Jon Cline from Enthusiast Web Solutions and search marketing expert Mike Keesling as they take a closer look at the vital result page description.

You will learn how to:

• Improve specific entry pages for more site traffic
• Make your result link look more relevant
• Avoid getting your cut off descriptions

And you can ask our experts SEO questions. Join us!

The Economics of New Media, or Social Media, Marketing

As of this week, MarCom Broadband is transitioning into a new website that will be known as MarCom New Media. And I also have another blog that I have started to mirror the new MarCom corporate identity, called MarCom New Media. For awhile I will post on both my blogs. And as always, we try to instruct as we do, so just a hint here ... the content needs to be 30 percent or more different if you post the same topic in more than one place on the Internet. Otherwise only one gets the "credit" with the search engines.

There are several names in marketing for basically the same thing these days. We happen to prefer the term new media, as opposed to social media. During a recession, people in business often pull in their horns on advertising dollars, especially for branding and awarenhess campaigns. In fact, one of my new associates has been calling people who have big ads in the pages of local newspapers, educating them on how they COULD be spending their money on online tactics , which are measurable and bring better results.

New media, or social media marketing is more about people sharing information than awareness. And because of that, interactive new media marketing is here to stay. We believe it is almost recession proof. One reason is the cost factor. Social and new media applications include blogs, social media platforms like FaceBook or MySpace, article submissions, etc. which cost next to nothing except the professional's time to post. Even PRWeb releases, are only max. $360 per post as opposed to more costly wires. I also like using ProfNet -- a great way to find editor's who are writing about a specific topic. It saves in PR media pitching time. I have a ProfNet account under the health category for my client T.S. Wiley and The Wiley Protocol.

Furthermore, social media is also measurable, generating leads, at which point the conversion ratios can be measured. If 3000 people come to your website, and only 200 purchase a product, with the right social media tactics, you might be able to increase that number so that more peopole convert from lokkie lous to customers.

Search advertising, pop-up ads and email marketing might also be recession-proof, as would integrated direct mail programs that direct folks to a special website (which will measure who shows up). Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising even has its place until your SEO has time to take over, at which time you can reduce your PPC budget, and insome cases for our clients, we have illiminated PPC from the marketing mix. One client recently cut his PPC from more than $18k per mo to $0. And even more leads are coming in thanks to our excellent SEO efforts.

But, none of these new media tactics will work without the right search engine optimization (SEO). With Flash websites and content management software (CMS) -- they are often not SEO-able. My associate Mike Keesling says, embedded flash works, and some CMS programs are much better than others. But the bottom line, if you don't have an expert to do the keyword analysis, and recommend what keywords should be used to Meta and Title-tag your website, people who search for your product or service using search engines like Yahoo or Google, may not find your website. You want to be ranked withing the first page of the engines listings.

New media and social media marketing is about helping provide links from six ways to Sunday on the Internet, so people will find your website, and interact.

2008 Trends in SEO and Social Media Business Models

Now that the new year is well under way, we have been getting questions from current and potentially new small to medium sized clients regarding business models and the online arena.

In fact, MarCom is also currently undergoing a new website development strategy for our own website MarCom Broadband. Although we liked the original design two years ago, we want a more corporate content driven site today, so we've decided that the black background needs to be switched out. Plus our website in need of upgrading to a more SEO and social media friendly design. We will be having our web designer add this blog, and make it easier to switch out content on the pages of the site. Websites with lots of dynamic changing content rich with your key words get the attenditon of the search engines, which will mean better rankings.

That brings me to the fact that I noticed a great article on Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion blog this week which talked about some of the new online business models. There is of course, "advertiser-supported advertising" in which some of the big brands are partnering with online media properties. Then there are"advertiser-subsidized devices, " where incentives play a big part. However, the model that fascinated me is is known as "just-in-time," which is digital advertising planned, placed, measured and evaluated, so that people can decide if the program should be tweaked or tossed. According to the report, new technology allows marketers to create "just-in-time" campaigns that adapt to conditions, so creative campaigns will adapt and change based on specific triggers -- such as sales/ERP data, blog chatter/consumer feedback, or other external conditions.

Yes this works for those who are online. But what about people who still are not online all the time, like pharmacists or doctors. I believe that no matter what the business model, the reality here is that consumers are still interacting in a variety of mediums with the exception of email spam now which typically goes in the trash. Direct mail for example can still work in conjunction with postcard campaigns that drive folks to a website where they can accept a special offer by filling out a survey, and instigate a lead gen call from a sales rep. This works really well for some businesses.

Our new client, Peternity.com, for example, is a small business that currently relies on online lead generation, based on people who are searching for pet urns, pet memorial markers or information about pet burials. A targeted direct mail postcard campaign to vets, or pet stores, could lead to new business tie-ins and direct customer referrals.

Blog ?s from our Search Engine Optimization Clients

We always get quesitons from our clients about how they can improve their skills on tactics that they are doing. Yesterday for example, I had a quesiton from my client at Peternity.com
a place where people honor their pets for eternity by offering pet memorial products like pet urns, garden statue pet memorials, and other pet memorials.

Colleen asked, "Do you think it's okay for me to do my blog posting thanking another blog for featuring me on their blog. It would give me an opportunity to put in links to product pages on my site through my blog."

We get this and other questions often. Basically the answer is yes, however it's common courtesy to actually link to the other person's blog. Here are the rules about blogging ethics… Another thing you may want to do is blogroll folks that have other blogs that you want to promote. In your blog that means you list other blogs that you recommend.

And of course, MarCom Broadband is all about search engine optimization and it's critical that if you want folks to even FIND your blog, your keywords need to be in it. Make wure that you list them in headlines, close to the beginning of the sentence in para one and close to the beginning middle and end of the blog in general.

Social Media Marketing Versus Public Relations

I was reading Paul Gillin's newsletter this morning (which if you don't get, you absolutely MUST) and something he said in a prelude to a podcast he did with David Strom (in St. Lewis) triggered this thought. What skills can PR pros still use in the new world of social media marketing? This is actually something that I initially was concerned about some three or four years ago as I became familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). I called it search engine marketing (SEM) back then, and now it's known as social media marketing.

Check out Tech PR War Stories. Their podcast was prompted by Tamar Weinberg's list of the best Internet marketing blog posts of 2007 .

Paul encourages PR folks NOT to focus too much on all the new SEO tech tricks and services, stating, "With so much focus on search engine performance and user recommendations these days, PR pros may be tempted to spend all their time learning how to game the various traffic drivers that are sprouting up all over the Internet. Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort."

They talk about what IS important which includes the fundamental skills of PR, mainly creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering a message which are all still really important on the Internet. In the podcast David and Paul try to put the recommendation engine craze in perspective.

This is why MarCom Broadband has continued to focus on an integrated approach, and why we named the firm MarCom in the first place -- as in marketing communications -- which encompasses almost every aspect including advertising copy and design, marketing, journalism or content building, public relations, and now, Internet tactics. The Broadband part of our name just addresses the quantum speed at which the Internet allows us to do it all now. The short of it is that your 2008 Internet marketing strategy should include all of these points.

Strom commented about how new technology changes things all the time, to the point where it can be overwhelming ... because it's not enough to continue to just do the same thing year after year. Download their podcast here. (http://www.gillin.com/Podcasts/tprws-41.mp3)

Gillin also believes headlines that are search engine friendly are very important. We agree, that's one tip that I have used that really works, as evidenced just yesterday when my associate Mike Keesling did a quick review of one of our clients.

One year ago, we started working with T.S. Wiley, who developed a new protocol for bio identical hormone therapy (BHRT) protocol, known as The Wiley Protocol. When we searched for bioidentical hormones a year ago, she and her website came up as number 35. Today it shows up in Google as number five. I have been writing many articles for Wiley, posting them on the article submission sites throughout the Web -- therefore we have many Google Alerts that show up with headlines including her key words which Mike did in his keyword analysis last year - such as hormones, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and bioidentical, etc. We have been doing PR Web releases, and some newsletters. This year we are ramping up with a blog.

So it IS important to take a look at using the keywords in headlines, in a company's website, including all the tags such as meta and alt tags on each page (stuff Mike does for our clients). And also keywords can go in photo caption tags and videos for You Tube

It all comes down to content which will serve you best. As David and Paul said, "Content is the king."

Blogging is a Top New Year SEO Trend

The world of the blogosphere has grown, matured and diversified as a business communication medium and a tool used by search engine optimization and social media marketing experts like those of us at MarCom Broadband.

Just like websites, blogs are just another way to provide information -- but the difference is that a blog is more dynamic, contentwise. Many websites, even our own at MarCom, are more like portfolios. Although the trends are to have a more dynamic website, many folks still have static information or web copy on websites.

There are several different types of blogs for companys. An executive blog can profile comments and/or blog content from it's management team, or the executives of the company. But it is important that these executives take the time to write -- at least two to three times a week, otherwise you should ghostwrite for them.

Currently I am helping one client with his blog at http://www.roccobasile.blogspot.com/ so you can check out how we talk about his charity work.

You may need to coach your clients and help them with editing their blogs. And they need to learn how to make sure their key words are inserted into the blogs properly, or it won't do any good for their SEO.

There's also another type of blog, which has been tagged by the experts as an "advice" blog. That's what this blog of mine is. I give advice on social media marketing. Sometimes I go off topic, which is fine, and actually encouraged. These kind of blogs do really well in the search engines.

Whatever you blog about, the key thing is that you are consistant, with two to three posts a week. Keep it of interest, keep it real, and add your keywords.

As for how to set up your blog, I like the templates in Blogger.com, but there's also Wordpress, and other blog formats that are free and very easy to set up and use.

Happy blogging in the New Year!

News from a Social Media Survey

Tanya Irwin at www.mediapost.com mentioned a recent survey indicating that nearly one third of Web marketers plan to increase spending significantly on social media, including blogs and discussion boards. This survey was conducted in September by Prospero Technologies, LLC (www.prospero.com).

According to their 2007 Social Media Survey, 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives, boosting future spending expectations--with 31 percent planning to spend significantly more on social media applications in 2008.

The survey also mentioned that current challenges include integrating community-generated content with the rest of the Web site and understanding best practices for new and evolving technologies as well as keeping up with new social media technology advances.

This is the area that MarCom Broadband is getting alot of new business. Writing content, adding key words properly, and nd making sure the meta and alt tags have been done properly.

Regarding the types of social media applications currently in use, respondents said blogs and discussion boards topped the list. And for 2008, they say that discussion boards and blogs still top the list for Web and brand marketers followed closely by ratings and reviews and then social networking applications.

That's why we ghostwrite for our cients blogs, such as Rocco Basile's new blog on his charity work with Children of the City in Brooklyn.

Happy New Year!