As a Los Angeles social media marketing consultant, it has been interesting to experiment around with all of the new social media marketing mediums -- the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web. I do SMM every day for our MarCom New Media clients, including ghostwriting blogs like this one on invoice factoring for Interface Financial, writing articles and syndicated them over the Internet, writing optimized releases and pitch letters, bookmarking content in DIGG and distributing content over RSS feeds. When I pitch the media via email I use pitch letters with embedded videos.
Social Media Marketing for B2B has gotten a bad rap. But I make sure we use podcasts embedded, plus images of their latest products and services. Once our social media press releases are posted on the Internet, via Marketwire, they quickly show up in Yahoo and Google News,l SMM requires every bit as much of a professional to manage, as marketing, PR or corporate communications has always required.
Today, only about 10 to 15 percent of marketers nationwide are doing SMM, according to guru Paul Gillin who wrote a book called The New Influencers. The purpose of SMM is to engage with enthusiasts and existing customers in interactive communities in order to drive more traffic and sales.
If you have not already, start experimenting with blogs, online video, podcasts, corporate communities and public networks. In fact, social networks were only beginning to gain traction in the spring of 2007. Memberships are in the hundreds of millions.
Getting on the first page of the Google listings takes a searc engine optimization (SEO) company like MarCom, who spends months getting our clients ranked on the top of the search engines. Check out our Los Angeles SEO Successes
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Onsite Search Optimization Tips
Here are some tips for what NOT to do on your website if you want to attract customers. Never use Flash splash screens. Google and the search engines cannot read it, so Flash is not good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results. Embedded Flash is OK to use, but if your home page is a Flash splash screen with no text, the search engines simply won't see it.
As a Los Angeles search engine optimization consultants, we see everything, and mostly we see that website designers do more harm than good when they say they know how to SEO a website. Usually this is just not the case. Good SEO is also all about content... content... content. Make sure there is plenty of content on your website. Nice designs, photos and no content will not help your SEO results, period.
Meta, Title and Description tags are very important. You may have seen some websites where it says "new page" in the browser? That is because the website designer did not put a title tag on the page. A short message with a key word that describes your site in the Description tag is essential so your customers will click through to your site when potential customers see your site's listing.
Never use repeat Title and Description tags. Website pages should each be unique with a theme for key words or phrases for each page. Make your Title and Description tags match the content for one of the keywords per page. You can't optimize one single page for many different key words.
Do not use text as an image. Some sites have text and images combined into a jpg or gif image, so you can't select the text with your cursor. If a search engine can't find any searchable text, you will not get SEO results. Also don't make any headlines into gif images, because they should be text with a key word in it.
Local businesses don't need national SEO. A cigar store in Pasadena does not need to optimize for the national or global market. Customers must live nearby. MarCom had a client like this, so we optimized them for Pasadena Cigar stores. It worked. Now it would have been different if they had an online cigar store.
For those of you who need some more help with your search engine optimization visit our website at http://www.marcomnewmedia.com/
As a Los Angeles search engine optimization consultants, we see everything, and mostly we see that website designers do more harm than good when they say they know how to SEO a website. Usually this is just not the case. Good SEO is also all about content... content... content. Make sure there is plenty of content on your website. Nice designs, photos and no content will not help your SEO results, period.
Meta, Title and Description tags are very important. You may have seen some websites where it says "new page" in the browser? That is because the website designer did not put a title tag on the page. A short message with a key word that describes your site in the Description tag is essential so your customers will click through to your site when potential customers see your site's listing.
Never use repeat Title and Description tags. Website pages should each be unique with a theme for key words or phrases for each page. Make your Title and Description tags match the content for one of the keywords per page. You can't optimize one single page for many different key words.
Do not use text as an image. Some sites have text and images combined into a jpg or gif image, so you can't select the text with your cursor. If a search engine can't find any searchable text, you will not get SEO results. Also don't make any headlines into gif images, because they should be text with a key word in it.
Local businesses don't need national SEO. A cigar store in Pasadena does not need to optimize for the national or global market. Customers must live nearby. MarCom had a client like this, so we optimized them for Pasadena Cigar stores. It worked. Now it would have been different if they had an online cigar store.
For those of you who need some more help with your search engine optimization visit our website at http://www.marcomnewmedia.com/
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Google Bans Duplicate Tags and Content
MarCom’s search engine optimization (SEO) expert Mike Keesling has been telling us for some time that there would be a shakeup about duplicate content on the Internet, and as usual, he was right, because Google is not standing for duplicate content anymore. This includes the Internet, but more importantly, it means no more duplicate META, ALT or description tags on websites.
Recently MarCom New Media looked at a B2B company’s website and noticed that they had their name in all their title tags, which dilutes the effectiveness of the title tag. Google will not give full value to your pages, unless each page has a different title tag. ALL website pages need their own unique description tag. Tags should be keyword rich.
What is a title tag? Interestingly, there are no definitions in the online dictionaries for “title tag.” Not in Webster’s or Wikipedia. However, you will find many other descriptions if you type those words in Google. A title tag is a piece of HTML code that describes a specific web page of content. Title tags guide the search engines in determining what is in the content of specific web pages. TIP: Creating a relevant title tag is one of the most important variables in achieving high search engine positioning.
One of the most common mistakes that we see on 80 percent of our new clients' sites is that they put their company name as the first thing on the title tag for each page. Once we fix that, search ranking results begin to inprove. Most often the url for the site already includes the company name, so wasting valuable characters on constantly repeating the name of the company doesn't accomplish anything in terms of search engine optimization. It also usually ends up making at least 50 percent of each title tag identical which is NOT a good thing.
The other new Google slap is that Social Media Marketing (SMM) content must also be unique. This means that Google's cracking down on social media, just like it did last year with link building farms and bots. The rap is that content in social media sites needs to be original. You need to do the work. Or hire experts like us to do the work. Google will not accept it if you use a service that posts 100 Stumble Upon items that are all the same, from the same IP address or are posting hundreds of other tags, for other clients at the same time they do yours.
Content posted online must be: Unique and from different IP addresses; posted by unique people. That’s true social media...and if this all sounds like Greek to you, then please give MarCom a call at 323.650.2838 and we'll translate it for you.
PS Google LOVES articles these days. Here's just one example of a search optimized article for one of MarCom's clients - The Interface Financial Group. Credit Repair Tips for Small Businesses. But make SURE none of your articles are duplicates. Each article must be a specific percent different than the next.
As the recession forces many consumers to buy less—search engine marketing is key.
Recently MarCom New Media looked at a B2B company’s website and noticed that they had their name in all their title tags, which dilutes the effectiveness of the title tag. Google will not give full value to your pages, unless each page has a different title tag. ALL website pages need their own unique description tag. Tags should be keyword rich.
What is a title tag? Interestingly, there are no definitions in the online dictionaries for “title tag.” Not in Webster’s or Wikipedia. However, you will find many other descriptions if you type those words in Google. A title tag is a piece of HTML code that describes a specific web page of content. Title tags guide the search engines in determining what is in the content of specific web pages. TIP: Creating a relevant title tag is one of the most important variables in achieving high search engine positioning.
One of the most common mistakes that we see on 80 percent of our new clients' sites is that they put their company name as the first thing on the title tag for each page. Once we fix that, search ranking results begin to inprove. Most often the url for the site already includes the company name, so wasting valuable characters on constantly repeating the name of the company doesn't accomplish anything in terms of search engine optimization. It also usually ends up making at least 50 percent of each title tag identical which is NOT a good thing.
The other new Google slap is that Social Media Marketing (SMM) content must also be unique. This means that Google's cracking down on social media, just like it did last year with link building farms and bots. The rap is that content in social media sites needs to be original. You need to do the work. Or hire experts like us to do the work. Google will not accept it if you use a service that posts 100 Stumble Upon items that are all the same, from the same IP address or are posting hundreds of other tags, for other clients at the same time they do yours.
Content posted online must be: Unique and from different IP addresses; posted by unique people. That’s true social media...and if this all sounds like Greek to you, then please give MarCom a call at 323.650.2838 and we'll translate it for you.
PS Google LOVES articles these days. Here's just one example of a search optimized article for one of MarCom's clients - The Interface Financial Group. Credit Repair Tips for Small Businesses. But make SURE none of your articles are duplicates. Each article must be a specific percent different than the next.
As the recession forces many consumers to buy less—search engine marketing is key.
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