I have been doing article submissions for a couple of years now. It all started with writing them for an antivirus company who was looking to push some negative stuff that showed up in Google searches down and off of the first and second pages of searches in MSN, Yahoo or Google. I used our key words, wrote articles, and it worked.
Next I started writing articles for all of our MarCom Broadband clients. I always say that one good topic or article can be written "six ways to Sunday" when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing tactics. Here's an example of that:
1) Press release on PR Newswire - a traditional news release.
2) PR Web optimized press release on PR Web.
3) Articles on articles submission sites like http://www.articlesbase.com/
4) Forum posts in industry forums and chat rooms.
5) Social media site postings on sites like Wikipedia, My Space, etc.
6) Blog content - you really need a blog to regurgitate content.
Plus you have your website content.
You do need to be careful about how commerical articles are in the submission services. Most of them will not take promotional content. But you can add your company's name and website address in the resource box. You just need to be clever about how you talk about a company or client by name. I often mention several comapnies, or provide a quote.
Last, none of these SEO tactics would be of any value without adding your key words. The first thing we do is a key word analysis for clients. Then we all use these key words in every single thing we write up.
Results are fantastic. You usually see results for certain key words within a month or two. And again, it's all about content content content on the web. The more of it you have, the better your rankings in Google.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
The Value of Podcasting and Online Radio/TV
I mentioned these numbers in my last blog, but some info is worth repeating. According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this.Internet radio has been around for awhile. One of our clients, Big Media USA, Inc. , provides this service. It's not music, it's information.
Just think of them as the Time Warner of the Internet -- with a number of stations that have a number of channels on topics such as business, health, sports, spiritual, etc. In fact, very soon I am going to be hosting a new channel there on social media marketing.
The value here is that Big Media has been around awhile, so their site has allot of content on it, and Google spiders their site daily. This is great, because if you have a radio or podcast show on BMUSA, and your key words are in the copy of your show promo, or in a press release that BMUSA or you put out, you will be spidered too.Podcasts are easy for others to listen to or watch online 24/7.
Plus the content is great to have transcribed for use elsewhere via social media marketing -- in press releases, online articles, and even in forum posts -- all excellent ways to optimize your website for better rankings by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, etc. Then if someone is seeking information open something, they may come to your podcast. That's why it's important to keep them short, and get the key messages about you and your products or services into the first five minutes or less as you can.
Just think of them as the Time Warner of the Internet -- with a number of stations that have a number of channels on topics such as business, health, sports, spiritual, etc. In fact, very soon I am going to be hosting a new channel there on social media marketing.
The value here is that Big Media has been around awhile, so their site has allot of content on it, and Google spiders their site daily. This is great, because if you have a radio or podcast show on BMUSA, and your key words are in the copy of your show promo, or in a press release that BMUSA or you put out, you will be spidered too.Podcasts are easy for others to listen to or watch online 24/7.
Plus the content is great to have transcribed for use elsewhere via social media marketing -- in press releases, online articles, and even in forum posts -- all excellent ways to optimize your website for better rankings by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, etc. Then if someone is seeking information open something, they may come to your podcast. That's why it's important to keep them short, and get the key messages about you and your products or services into the first five minutes or less as you can.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Pay-per-Click versus SEO and Social Media Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) can be an excellent way to expand your search engine awareness about products or services in an early stage company and before the SEO and social media marketing tactical results kick in. But keep in mind, as the Internet has matured, so has the cost of pay-per-click advertising. The more viewers/listeners/readers, the more it costs to reach them, so it’s important to know when and when not to use pay per click ads.
PPC is good when you need to supplement key words that are harder to optimize. As an example, the word “antivirus,” which is a popular and hard to optimize key word, could be part of a PPC campaign. The goal however, in many cases, is to raise the bar on the traditional SEO results, and eventually reduce the amount of money spent on PPC. Because if you quit paying for PPC, the visibility goes away completely, whereas if you stop doing traditional SEO, it’ll take awhile for the page results -- where you are on the first pages of the search engines -- to diminish.
PPC is also good when doing targeted regional market rollouts. I recently did an online media plan for one of MarCom Broadband's clients known as Dogtor Paco, with new mortgage payment calculator technology. I like the fact that online newspaper classified advertising in large regional markets, such as the Los Angeles Times online real estate advertising, seems to be cost effective, but the one I really like is CitiSearch because it offers a no risk pay-per-performance (PPP) model - and the fact that it offers a national scope - with ads that run on its partner channels as well.
Companies definitely need a budget for PPC. It’s a day to day tracking experience requiring a lot of time, and in our experience, measurement for results is an essential key component. Often times campaigns require “tweaking” and adjustments before they work. Measurement for results is an essential key component.
On the other hand, an excellent way to expand awareness about your products and services, and to provide link backs to your website is via article submissions, PRWeb, PR Newswire, and a number of free online wire services.
According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV which has become very popular. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this. I recently did a podcast tour for my healthcare client and she’s already done three interviews. The beauty is that they provide links right back to the most popular pages on their website. In fact, check out our client http://www.bigmediausa.com/ provides this service.
In the end, the more content you have on the Internet with your key words, the better chance you will have to attract communities of people searching for your topic.
PPC is good when you need to supplement key words that are harder to optimize. As an example, the word “antivirus,” which is a popular and hard to optimize key word, could be part of a PPC campaign. The goal however, in many cases, is to raise the bar on the traditional SEO results, and eventually reduce the amount of money spent on PPC. Because if you quit paying for PPC, the visibility goes away completely, whereas if you stop doing traditional SEO, it’ll take awhile for the page results -- where you are on the first pages of the search engines -- to diminish.
PPC is also good when doing targeted regional market rollouts. I recently did an online media plan for one of MarCom Broadband's clients known as Dogtor Paco, with new mortgage payment calculator technology. I like the fact that online newspaper classified advertising in large regional markets, such as the Los Angeles Times online real estate advertising, seems to be cost effective, but the one I really like is CitiSearch because it offers a no risk pay-per-performance (PPP) model - and the fact that it offers a national scope - with ads that run on its partner channels as well.
Companies definitely need a budget for PPC. It’s a day to day tracking experience requiring a lot of time, and in our experience, measurement for results is an essential key component. Often times campaigns require “tweaking” and adjustments before they work. Measurement for results is an essential key component.
On the other hand, an excellent way to expand awareness about your products and services, and to provide link backs to your website is via article submissions, PRWeb, PR Newswire, and a number of free online wire services.
According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV which has become very popular. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this. I recently did a podcast tour for my healthcare client and she’s already done three interviews. The beauty is that they provide links right back to the most popular pages on their website. In fact, check out our client http://www.bigmediausa.com/ provides this service.
In the end, the more content you have on the Internet with your key words, the better chance you will have to attract communities of people searching for your topic.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Link Building and the Value of Global Social Networking Sites
We have two new student interns thanks to my lectures at Cal State Northridge. Sho is an exchange student from Japan, and Nora is a recent graduate who is helping me with social media marketing and PR for the hispanic community. We gave Sho a laundry list of websites to open accounts so that he can help us with social network link building. A few of them are Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Jaiku, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia. He can even go into some of his native social networking sites in Japan and build links for our clients.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media marketing include the dredges of link building -- something we all hate doing -- but fundamentally one of the most important account maintenance aspects. Link building could be compared to media relations.
My associate Mike Keesling calls honest link building, “White Hat” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) link building strategies, as this relates to rankings in the organic listings of Google. These kind of links are really, really important. As of late, the number and quality of inbound links to a website are what is under scrutiny by Google. Also known as link popularity, the search engines look at this as how other sites consider your site. Would it be important enough to link to?
The search engines don’t want useless artificially created links. There are "Black Hat" link building techniques such as link farms, or link exchanges, which could easily get your site bounced out of the search engines altogether. There are no easy ways to build link popularity these days because the search engines want to see links from authoritative websites that share the same focus as your site, or opinions and reviews – which can easily be done on social networking sites.
Link building will provide additional visibility for your website, so, when you start to work on building links, don't forget those two basic reasons for requesting links. There’s also an art to link building. The secret is to build one of your key words into the link. If I am writing about “social media marketing,” which is one of my key words – then that is also my link, which will be hyperlinked back to a matching phrase on my client’s website. Because of the way that search engines read dontent, you can use links well when they are in headlines, subheadlines, the first sentence and the middle and the last sentence of an article or release.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media marketing include the dredges of link building -- something we all hate doing -- but fundamentally one of the most important account maintenance aspects. Link building could be compared to media relations.
My associate Mike Keesling calls honest link building, “White Hat” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) link building strategies, as this relates to rankings in the organic listings of Google. These kind of links are really, really important. As of late, the number and quality of inbound links to a website are what is under scrutiny by Google. Also known as link popularity, the search engines look at this as how other sites consider your site. Would it be important enough to link to?
The search engines don’t want useless artificially created links. There are "Black Hat" link building techniques such as link farms, or link exchanges, which could easily get your site bounced out of the search engines altogether. There are no easy ways to build link popularity these days because the search engines want to see links from authoritative websites that share the same focus as your site, or opinions and reviews – which can easily be done on social networking sites.
Link building will provide additional visibility for your website, so, when you start to work on building links, don't forget those two basic reasons for requesting links. There’s also an art to link building. The secret is to build one of your key words into the link. If I am writing about “social media marketing,” which is one of my key words – then that is also my link, which will be hyperlinked back to a matching phrase on my client’s website. Because of the way that search engines read dontent, you can use links well when they are in headlines, subheadlines, the first sentence and the middle and the last sentence of an article or release.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Article Submissions for Social MEdia Marketing
Lately it seems pretty clear that the media don't really need PR folks pitching to them. We still do, however, most media are Internet savy enough to research their topics online and find articles about companies out there on the Web. And so that means that we, as marketers, need to make sure that our clients are also out there - accessable even by the media. What does this mean?
You start with a good press room on your website with press releases that include your key words embedded in each release. You add a press kit with documents that describe what your company is all about - that means press releases, company backgrounders or profiles, frequently asked questions (FAQ), product or services profiles, and customer testimonials, etc. Each of these documents too must be key worded.
Next you post your press releases by the wire service companies, and write articles and post them throughout the web in article submission sites. Its important that you not "copy" any documents that are posted. The rule of thumb is to change the content of each artcle on the web about 30 percent because Google will not "count" duplicates.
Just like in the old days, people said retail was all about location, location, location -- well, search engine optimization and social media marketing is all about content, content, content on the Internet.
You start with a good press room on your website with press releases that include your key words embedded in each release. You add a press kit with documents that describe what your company is all about - that means press releases, company backgrounders or profiles, frequently asked questions (FAQ), product or services profiles, and customer testimonials, etc. Each of these documents too must be key worded.
Next you post your press releases by the wire service companies, and write articles and post them throughout the web in article submission sites. Its important that you not "copy" any documents that are posted. The rule of thumb is to change the content of each artcle on the web about 30 percent because Google will not "count" duplicates.
Just like in the old days, people said retail was all about location, location, location -- well, search engine optimization and social media marketing is all about content, content, content on the Internet.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Optimizing Your Website for the Search Engines
Once you have chosen applicable keyword phrases (see previous blog item) that have a high search volume, but a corresponding low number in the "competition" column, the next important search engine optimization (SEO) tip is that you can now incorporate these key words and phrases to optimize your website. Website optimization is one of the most important things you can do to make your website more visible to the search engines.
When optimizing any website the goal should be to choose one or two of your top keyword phrases for each page in your website. You can make your choices by matching the subject matter of your web pages to the keyword phrases.
Then you can plug your keyword phrases into the appropriate place on each web page. The appropriate places are your title tag (approx 70 characters long), your meta description tag (approx 100 characters long), your headline or page title (preferably as an H2 tag), in the first sentence of your body copy, somewhere in the middle of your body copy, and in the last sentence of your body copy.
You can also use keyword phrases in the alt image tags -- and you get bonus points for using your keyword phrase as link text. Repeat this for each page on your website. Just remember not to duplicate tags, or exact content, because with anything you do on the Internet, the search engines will only count content one time, so you won’t get credit for duplications.
Applicable keyword phrases can also be used to guide your website content. This means you can use your keyword phrases to define what your website content should be about -- one web page per keyword phrase. So, while looking over your keyword phrases, figure out those that you already have content for, which ones you need to write content for, and then add content pages for those keyword phrases where you are lacking content.
Ultimately, good search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will gain better search engine visibility.
When optimizing any website the goal should be to choose one or two of your top keyword phrases for each page in your website. You can make your choices by matching the subject matter of your web pages to the keyword phrases.
Then you can plug your keyword phrases into the appropriate place on each web page. The appropriate places are your title tag (approx 70 characters long), your meta description tag (approx 100 characters long), your headline or page title (preferably as an H2 tag), in the first sentence of your body copy, somewhere in the middle of your body copy, and in the last sentence of your body copy.
You can also use keyword phrases in the alt image tags -- and you get bonus points for using your keyword phrase as link text. Repeat this for each page on your website. Just remember not to duplicate tags, or exact content, because with anything you do on the Internet, the search engines will only count content one time, so you won’t get credit for duplications.
Applicable keyword phrases can also be used to guide your website content. This means you can use your keyword phrases to define what your website content should be about -- one web page per keyword phrase. So, while looking over your keyword phrases, figure out those that you already have content for, which ones you need to write content for, and then add content pages for those keyword phrases where you are lacking content.
Ultimately, good search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will gain better search engine visibility.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
How do you do basic keyword analysis for SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starts with a keyword analysis that determines the key words and phrases that people use when they search for a product or service via Google, Yahoo or any other search engine on the Internet.
Search-engine professionals offer expanded products, services and there are a number of different tools out there to use. Following we have listed some basic steps for a keyword analysis that won’t cost anything - except your time, of course. Oh and by the way, most of these are free tools online.
For example, you could use Google Trends -- which allows you to challenge words against each other and to identify the words or phrases that are searched for more or less often in the Google Search Engine.
What are your key messages? Jot down a few of the words and phrases that stand out.
2) Go to http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php for a keyword toolset.
3) Enter your keywords and phrases. As the toolset generates data, you should copy the results for searches per month into a spreadsheet. One column is for the search term and the other column is for search volume. Create a third column called "competition."
4) Go to http://google.com and, one at a time, enter each keyword or phrase. As you enter each word or phrase, at the right side of the blue horizontal bar above the search results, Google reports "Results 1 - 10 of about x" -- where x is total number of search results found by Google.
5) For each keyword, enter the total number of search results into the third column of your spreadsheet, "competition." Repeat for all the keyword phrases you can think of.
6) You can sort your spreadsheet under the search volume column (the second column) in descending order.
6) Now look for applicable keyword phrases that have a high search volume but a corresponding low number in the "competition" column. These are the keyword phrases you will want to use -- the PRIME keyword phrases.
That's it. It does take constant time and tweaking. But it is the wave of the future. So stay tuned and we will cover how to use your new found keywords.
Search-engine professionals offer expanded products, services and there are a number of different tools out there to use. Following we have listed some basic steps for a keyword analysis that won’t cost anything - except your time, of course. Oh and by the way, most of these are free tools online.
For example, you could use Google Trends -- which allows you to challenge words against each other and to identify the words or phrases that are searched for more or less often in the Google Search Engine.
What are your key messages? Jot down a few of the words and phrases that stand out.
2) Go to http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php for a keyword toolset.
3) Enter your keywords and phrases. As the toolset generates data, you should copy the results for searches per month into a spreadsheet. One column is for the search term and the other column is for search volume. Create a third column called "competition."
4) Go to http://google.com and, one at a time, enter each keyword or phrase. As you enter each word or phrase, at the right side of the blue horizontal bar above the search results, Google reports "Results 1 - 10 of about x" -- where x is total number of search results found by Google.
5) For each keyword, enter the total number of search results into the third column of your spreadsheet, "competition." Repeat for all the keyword phrases you can think of.
6) You can sort your spreadsheet under the search volume column (the second column) in descending order.
6) Now look for applicable keyword phrases that have a high search volume but a corresponding low number in the "competition" column. These are the keyword phrases you will want to use -- the PRIME keyword phrases.
That's it. It does take constant time and tweaking. But it is the wave of the future. So stay tuned and we will cover how to use your new found keywords.
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