Los Angeles SEO Consutants

We have been Los Angeles SEO consultants for quite some time - way before most people even knew what search engine optimization, or SEO, was all about. I remember starting about ten years ago writing forum posts for a client. Next I got involved doing articles, then ghostwriting blogs, and following that, reputation management for a fallen executive.

I met Mike Keesling about four years ago. His background is multi-dimensional, which is one of the reasons he is such a good marketer. He not only does SEO, but he helps our clients with their business strategies online so they can earn more revenues.

Mike produced the first Energizer website campaign for Chiat\Day advertising. After that, he started doing SEO, and one of his clients has maintained a top five ranking for their primary keyword phrase “oahu vacation rentals.” Just go to Google and type that phrase in. The results say it all.

One big lesson that he has taught me, is that because of Google, things are always changing and you must be patient. For instance, during what has come to be know as Google’s Florida Dance --which dropped 97 websites out of the top 100 in fifty different categories -- his client was dropped under their key word "oahu vacation rentals." Mike gave his best SEO advice ever, which was to do nothing. He recommended that they just wait and ride it out and he was proved correct about 23 days later.

MarCom used to be strictly a Los Angeles Public Relations firm. Then we realized, during the high tech and dot com era, that many of our clients actually needed it all - marketing, advertising and PR. Today, thanks to the emergence of the Internet, there's been a paradigm shift in marketing. Now I can't do PR without an SEO program in place. Why? Because the media are out there searching for stories online too! And if our clients are optimized with links on the Internet back to their website, they rank well in the search engines, and the press can validate the company.

One thing many people don't realize is that you not only need patience, but you also need an SEO and a social media marketing strategy. With more companies joining the marketing rush on the Internet, it is taking longer to rank on the first pages of Google.

As one example, I have been writing optimized press releases and articles for our client Peternity.com for about a year now. Her key word strategy was to optimized pet urn, and pet urns, then pet memorials. So every article or release that I write, links those key words back to her site. Her sales on pet urns have increased substantially. And now we are ready to choose a new key word to optimize. Again, patience is the key, and it is an ongoing marketing project.

The State of Internet Advertising

According to ZenithOptimedia research the Internet will account for 10.2 percent share of 2008 global ad spending. Television comes in at 37.6 percent and magazines at only 11.6 percent. It’s no wonder that all my magazines now fit in the mailbox – their pages keep getting thinner. But then we have known this for quite some time as more and more people adapt to getting their news from the Internet. In fact analysts have predicted that it will take another ten years before the medium is well established.

I still prefer reading the hard copy of the Wall Street Journal every morning. Speaking of which, today there was a long feature article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal regarding Google’s push to sell ads on You Tube, the place online where they claim people watch videos more than one billion times a day.

Historically, it was 2002 when Google revamped its sales model for search ads – when a Google user searches for something online, ads related to the search words pop up next to the results. Right now Google makes most of its money via the text ads that are part of online searches. That means if you are looking for the latest trends in education, these ads come up in the results page -- the ones in the middle are called “organic” listings, while those in the grey blue boxes along the top and the sides are Google text ads. But the company wants to expand its video ads and claim the other 89.8 percent of the global ad dollars that are not currently being spent on the Internet – meaning video and display advertising. After all that is why Google bought You Tube in 2006.

Just imagine – some day when you go online you’ll get all the same stuff we get today. Television commercials at the beginning, middle and end of people’s personal You Tube videos – maybe display ads on blog posts – and billboards will be everywhere along the Internet highway.Google refers to the video spots as "preroll" and "postroll" ads, which could run before and after video clips, and companies that post video clips would get the option to sell these ads, and share the revenue with Google. Advertisers consider them very effective.I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, because after all this is our business here at MarCom New Media.

But if you read the WSJ article, you’ll see how things have been slowed down much like the entertainment industry strikes – thanks to copyright litigation, which has made the YouTube advertising push more complex. This is great news for us because it gives us a chance to digest strategies for our clients for Internet advertising. I love all the food related projects code names the company came up with for all of their latest initiatives –“Project Spaghetti” which is designed to help untangle the challenges with its advertising operations, which was 98 percent of Google's Q1 revenue. As always, people in high tech are always thinking about food.

Google also recently acquired DoubleClick Inc., to ramp up their display ads revenue, but that has not done too well. The company is known for inserting ads onto Web sites in addition to offering a way for ad agencies to manage and track online ads. They say these display ads are only generating a few hundred million right now.

We have one client called The Entertainment Career Connection that provides educational apprentice programs for the film, radio, television and the music recording industries. EC has mentor programs in more than 100 U.S. cities in all fifty states. After Mike Keesling, our SEO expert did SEO for three of their websites, we are now focusing on branding, public relations and social media marketing, in addition to their PPC campaign, he began to manage their Pay per Click (PPC) campaign. It was at around $29k per month.In less than one year we reduced the Entertainment Career Connection’s PPC budget from $29k per month to $9k per month. After six months of a carefully planned and executed reduction of the PPC budget, PPC media was at $11k, and after the SEO campaigns kicked in, plus after re-skinning the websites, we reduced the PPC campaign to $9k in about a year, while increasing SEO and social media marketing campaigns. We like the SEO technology environment better than PPC because it costs less than the ads.

Here’s the kicker -- for one third the budget they are getting 170 percent of the business, as we have decreased Entertainment Connection’s original PPC budget by 67 percent of what it was, and increased the number of leads by 67 percent. Their websites is getting excellent rankings for the keywords including: The Recording Connection, The Film-Connection and Radio Connection.

In the end, it will be up to the consumers to drive successful advertising online. I got an email this morning on my blog from a guy who really liked one of my old blog posts, "Consumers Define Social Media Marketing." Check it out and let me know what you think.

MarCom's New Website - SEO Tips for Launching

Thanks to our strategic partner, Rigney Graphics, we just launched our new MarCom New Media website. The reason we changed our name from MarCom Broadband to MarCom New Media, is because today Internet marketing is all about the new media. The term has settled in, and we believe people understand what it means. But what many people still need guidance on, is what MarCom does - search engine optimization (SEO), online PR and social media marketing (SMM) strategies and tactics.

In designing a new website, there are a few rules we thought we'd share based on client experience, and our knowledge:

Be prepared. Have your navigation and content map ready before you meet with a web designer or web design firm. If you have tracking analytics on your old site, then take a look at where people come from and how they get around on your site. This is a good tool for what to do and what NOT to do on the new website.

Talk with an SEO expert early on. Many web designers don't know the details about SEO. They design, and you should not expect them to know what has taken us a decade to learn. So bring in an SEO expert team, like MarCom, to advise and work closely with your design team before it is too late. One client of ours decided to have a new firm redesign three of his sites into one master website. Despite having guidance from Mike Keesling, our resident SEO expert, they didn't listen. They used Flash, and they initially did not have the old websites redirect to the new one. This risked losing all the last year's SEO efforts. Now only time will tell what damage has been done.

Look for a good web design firm. Check their references, and look at sample sites. Do not expect miracles overnight. Our site took about 6 weeks. And any good site will take time. Rigney Graphics is one of our strategic partners, and they design excellent websites - including ours. Also make sure the copy you write and prepare for them is letter perfect before you have them add it to the design, or it will waste their time, and your money with revisions.

Tagging website Pages. This is the magic of what excellent SEO can do for your website so customers can find you. Typically you want your page content to each have focus for one keyword or key phrase in three places per page. Each page then gets meta tagged with that same keyword, so the engines will be able to find relevant content as people in Google look for what they want.

If you have a Flash website - note the search engines can't read it. But the good news is that Adobe Systems Incorporated just announced today that they have teamed up with search industry leaders to to improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs), which is currently undiscoverable by search engines. This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. It may take up to a year though, so keep an eye on the developments...

Embedded flash will work. Our client The Wiley Protocol uses this in their site with embedded Flash movies. The search engines read content, so the more content with your key words, the better your chances of being ranked on the first pages of the engines, so customers can find you. A trick is that you can post a blog on your home page as long as it is on your site and not on Blogger or WordPress. This will have an RSS function that can help Flash sites until later.

Make sure you have a tracking analytics program. There are free programs like Google Analytics, but others like HitsLink are better at tracking your website traffic. This will allow your SEO team to tweak key words, site content and link building strategies so your optimization will improve month to month.

You need a keyword analysis. Do you know what words your customers use to find you? For MarCom New Media as an example, people may search using Los Angeles Internet marketing firm, or search engine optimization firm in Los Angeles. Note how I have linked to this key word, and it goes to our website page about search engine optimization. That is called a link back to our site. You want many legitimate links to your new site.

Put up a Press Room and post articles and a newsletter. We find that Press-feed offers the best tool for a press room, that includes an excellent RSS feed built right in. Plus it is easy to post releases, newsletter or articles, that are then stored so people can review them later, and that offer excellent content with your relevant key words, which the search engines like. Check out our MarCom Press-feed.

Include an interactive function to get people's names. For future marketing, the best way to build your own opt in list is to have options for people to safely fill out a marketing survey, like we have on our MarCom home page, or an interactive newsletter sign up.

Re-skinning your website. This is a term for re-designing your site without disrupting its SEO. One of our other current clients is about ready to re-skin their three websites - so by the end of July, check back and you can see the before and after: http://www.film-connection.com/; http://www.recordingconnection.com/ and http://www.radioconnection.com/.

Ghostwriting Blogs for Clients for Link Building and Social Media

I have been writing blogs for quite some time. Blogs are a great link building tool, and they are also great for customer relationship building, reputation management, and a good survey tool to get a feel for what people think about new products and services. In order for a blog to be a good search engine optimization (SEO) link building tool, however, one must use linking strategies that are acceptable and effective with the engines like Google and Yahoo. Right now, one of my blogs is for our client Entertainment Career Connection.

Blogs are great for customer relations if done properly. And remember that anything you post on the Internet can come back and bite you later on. It will stay up for a long time. So be very careful what you say. Authenticity is very important, and starting conversations with your readers is what works today, and in fact, it is the shift in marketing all together.

I have a blog for one of our clients and as part of his campaign for reputation management we do an educational blog that talks about his activities on the Boards of two charities, and also serves as a research and information tool for trends in education, and enables link backs to his website. I use every single blog topic that I write to also revise it into a longer article for submission to article websites. But you cannot submit duplicate copy or the search engines will not count it.

There's one aspect of blog writing that people often do not understand - and that is the search engine optimization and PR value. Take for instance, Rocco's blog above. I post one to two times per week in his blog. Basically you can type in Rocco Basile on Google, and note that many of the items in the ranking list are now positive posts, and include both his official website as well as blog posts, some PR Web listings, and articles. Inside his blog posts I always provide links back to his website. And the linking strategy can be to specific pages in his website that are related about my topic - not just to the home page. There are times when we have seen blog posts get picked up by other bloggers, who link to the blog.

Blogging requires a goal, and they are a lot of work. But the beauty of blogging is that it provides a marketing vehicle that does NOT rely on a third party, such as an editor writing an article about you. Corporate blogs provide you with an opportunity to tell your company's story. Various executives in your company, large or small, can post to a corporate blog, so you can create a strategy ahead of time, then assign folks to write.

Blogs are a great "Crisis Management" tool. Just look at how popular Martha Stuart's blog was during her court battle. And blogs are a great way to build a database of interested people, users, etc. Just shoot folks over to a sign up form from your blog, and you are certain to get some opt ins.

And as for the return on investment for blog writing, it costs very little - you can set up a blog at blogger.com, for free. So it costs you in time - your time, the time of your employees, or the writing fees to hire someone like MarCom to ghostwrite your blogs. You can check to see if your blog is building website traffic, because of course, the better your blog's linking strategies are, the more folks will visit your website. Once a visitor comes in to your website from your blog, what path do they go down? do they ultimately get funneled to a sale? These things must be tracked on your website by programs like Google Analytics, which is free, or HitsLink, which is the one we like. And of course, you need the experience to be able to read and analyze the reports once they are generated on HitsLink, to track successes over a period of time.


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Social Media and Blog Marketing Strategies and Measurement

We recently had an inquiry from a new business client about doing blogger relations, and or blog marketing. As MarCom has been doing search engine marketing and blogs since the beginning, we have some sweet case histories, or success stories, if you will, but what came up is that it is often hard to write a case history when you don't even know how many bloggers have picked up your story without tracking them on Google. This era of new media marketing is still processing some of the measurement techniques - and the reality is - these results can take more than just a few months to track.

So as an exercise to do a "Client Successes" document for blogger relations, we used our client The Wiley Protocol, and believe it or not, even just in this year of 2008, I tracked back on Google - at least ten pages - and found that we have logged about 50 plus blog mentions since January. Some of these hits were picked up from our SEO press releases and articles. That said, blogger marketing actually goes hand in hand with SEO. And, that said, it should be part of, not separate from, your SEO and Social Media Marketing strategy. Figure out your objectives first - such as reaching brand advocates, or reaching consumers versus young medical doctors online. Or it could be getting more media, or promoting a special offer for a specific product or service.

As for how we can measure our successes? My associate Mike Keesling suggested that some measurement can be quantitative (such as the number of mentions on blogs below) and also qualitative. For example, you can measure traffic stats on your website and track (using HitsLink or Google Analytics tracking) how many people come to your website because of a blog post. Did traffic increase? You can also measure key words used on the blogs, and the SEO results. Again a strategy is required. And the results must be reviewed over a couple of months. It all takes time.

Another one of our clients - Peternity.com - has been optimizing mostly for the key word pet urns, or pet urn, dog urn, cat urn. Of course we also optimize for the words "pet memorials." It is working. She is finally getting customers buying more urns when their pets die. She writers her own blog, but if she didn't, MarCom would ghostwrite it for her, and the bottom line is that we are all on the same page with the SEO and social media marketing strategy. I write optimized press releases and SEO articles as well for this client. Check it out. Also note how I am linking in this blog (see links) for MarCom as well as our clients.

Our excellent results are below for The Wiley Protocol (www.thewileyprotocol.com). We started working with her on SEO about a year and a half ago. Now, our key word strategy has paid off, because she is in the top pages of Google for most of her most important key words. This client now has tens of thousands of consumer customers. The list of close to 50 blog mentions is below – mostly since Jan 08. And this may be only part of them.
http://www.bobyoungmd.com/wiley.htm
http://www.womensvoicesforchange.org/2007/01/ask_dr_pat_bioi.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/94472.php
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Wiley_T._522431849.aspx
http://www.therealcougarwoman.com/2006/11/wiley_protocol_.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fashion/15suzanne.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=health&pagewanted=all
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Wiley_T._522431849.aspx
http://health.propeller.com/story/2008/06/01/ts-wiley-showcases-the-wiley-protocol-bio-mimedic-bio-identical-hormone-restoration-thera
http://www.riverwalkma.com/womenhealth.htm
http://www.topix.com/health/womens-health/2008/01/t-s-wiley-showcases-the-wiley-protocol-bio-mimedic
http://www.thespiritedwoman.com/newsletter/2005/10/august_2004.html
http://www.blogtoplist.com/rss/wiley.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0049567.html
http://www.onlypunjab.com/fitness/fullstory-insight-fitness+healthcare-newsID-247310.html
http://www.exploringcollege.com/article.cfm/id/179879
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/bioidentical_hormones_-_the_wiley_protocol
http://www.nature.com/ijir/journal/v20/n1/full/3901622a.html
http://online-pharm-review.blogspot.com/2008/01/ts-wiley-showcases-wiley-protocol-bio_18.html
http://www.griffinmedical.com/thewileyprotocol.htm
http://www.health78.com/health-news/TS-Wiley-Showcases-The-Wiley-Protocol-Bio-Mimedic-Bio-Identical-Hormone-Restoration-Therapy-BHRT-At-The-Integrative-Healthcare-Symposium-IHS/83796/
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/bioidentical_hormones_-_the_wiley_protocol?printable=1
http://www.westmoreland-pharmacy.com/retailer/store_templates/ret_custom_page2.asp?storeID=EE488B11DB25472285D10D6CC02CA42A
http://spa-namaste.com/article.cfm/id/252071
http://www.tummytucksurgery.co.uk/news/article_t_s_wiley_offers_physicians_039_two_days_back_on.php
http://www.myhormonereplacement.info/article.cfm/id/207103
http://www.myhormonereplacement.info/article.cfm/id/181820
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/tags/bioidentical+hormones
http://www.escapecollege.com/article.cfm/id/179879
http://www.bobyoungmd.com/documents/OHN10-FemaleHormoneReplacementTherapy.htm
http://www.bio2000.com/article.cfm/id/252870
http://www.searchdisease.com/article.cfm/id/252870
http://personallifemedia.com/guests/740-ts-wiley
http://digg.com/podcasts/Beauty_Now_The_Intersection_of_Cosmetic_Surgery_Longevity_Bio_Medical_Innovation/318151
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/2006/11/weird_and_wiley_science.php
http://www.mjmls.com/viewtopic.php?t=86004
http://www.blogcatalog.com/posts/replacement%20protocol
http://www.heartlandhealing.com/pages/News/flier_OHE.pdf
http://www.bionity.com/lexikon/e/?ps=T.+S.+Wiley&didsearch=1&defop=and&wild=yes&d=none&dienst=lexikon

Oh and just FYI there are also blog posting services for $20 to $75 per blog where you are guaranteed blog posts. So just like anything else in life, you can buy your way onto a blog, and it would be a legitimate link (back to your site) which is great for your SEO results. But that requires a strategy and money. You can get a couple of hundred blogs with a good budget, or you can hire MarCom for blogger relations for much less per month.

Website Optimization and other Search Engine Tactics

The last year has been particularly interesting. Having been in this space now being called social media marketing, since before it even started, means that we have been able to test many of the practices that PR professionals are just now learning to use as mainstream. In fact, my associate Mike Keesling was doing Search Engine Optimization in Los Angeles for Pacific Island Reservations, a Hawaii Vacation Rentals site, back in 1996, when they only had one website. Today they have 12 websites, and for more than a decade he has helped them maintain a top ten ranking in Google, MSN and Yahoo. In fact - check it out if you are looking for a place to stay in Hawaii for vacation this summer! It'll save you money.

Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) defines your website and targets your visitors. Whether you are a small business or a corporation you need an Internet marketing strategy that includes a website with interactive content that to attract your customers who are online using the search engines to find what they want. Then when your potential customers type in the keywords associated with your products and services, your website will come up within the first page of the search engines.

We call this Website Optimization – and just FYI, most web designers (no offense) do not install Meta, Title or Alt tags properly, and in fact they can cause more damage than good. For example, Flash websites cannot be SEOd, and this is critical to the search engines and your customers finding your website.

Another tip - with the right keywords we will make sure every page on your website is optimized properly with those words. More subject-specific content means better qualified traffic. This text is optimized if the search engines can find it via keyword-density. And your site should also be a good read.

Sitemaps are another thing you should consider. There are two types of sitemaps: 1) An HTML page listing the pages on your site by section so users can find the information they seek. 2) XML sitemaps, a way for Google to find all the pages on your site, and that includes URLs that may not be discoverable by their standard Web crawling processes.

Website Analytics –This tells us the behavior of your website visitors, allowing us to use data collected to determine which aspects of the website are working, such as which landing pages encourage people to take an action. We can use it to track visitors, sales or measure month-to-month SEO results and tweak online strategies.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) content syndication feeds are also a social media and Internet marketing must these days for better search engine visibility and better qualified traffic to your site.

And my favorite, being a PR professional, electronic press rooms and optimized releases are a must. Our eco-friendly electronic press kits are also optimized for the search engines making it easier for the media and your customers to find you. Here is another one of our client's online press kits that has been getting alot of attention lately. A company with a Los Angeles recording school, plus film schools and a radio DJ school known as the Entertainment Career Connection.

The Social Media Marketing Press Release and Wire Services

MarCom has been using various forms of the new social media marketing press release for our clients for the last few years. In fact a press release just went out yesterday for our client Acutrack, Inc. regarding their new eco-friendly consultation services to help other businesses learn how they can leave behind a smaller carbon footprint while remaining profitable. Acutrack has been helping ease the burdens their clients are placing on the world a number of ways, including environmentally friendly CD and DVD manufacturing. We distributed this release via PR Web, for several reasons. It was a longer than normal release because we added some of the customer testimonials, and PR Web's costs for distribution can often be more modest than MarketWire. Although we use both company's wire services. Each has various methods and distribution cost rates -- PR Web's premium one is $360. The release cannot be more than 800 words basically.

Acutrack's release was already picked up by a couple of newswires -- Acutrack, Inc. Announces Eco-Friendly CD and DVD Manufacturing and Packaging Solutions. There is also PR Newswire, which I have used for years for traditional press release dissemination to the media. Most all of the wires today are doing search engine optimization -- so, right now, I believe it is a matter of client budgets and experimentation for preference as to who gets you the best results.

Oh and BTW I just noticed this MarketWire press release regarding the fact that the inventor of the new social media press release format (now on version 1.5) PR agency Shift Communications, just won the Holmes Report "New Media Agency of the Year." Well done.

SEO RAP -- No Nos from Los Angeles SEO Firm

We are all used to the tips for how to do search engine optimization (SEO) but what about the no nos that you never knew about? We'd like to offer some help by offering you ten steps for what not do do on your website if you want to attract customers.

1. Throw Flash and Splash screens in the trash. Do not use Flash and expect to get good SEO results. You know the websites were you see a pretty picture or animation on the home page and have to click enter her to go beyond? No text on your home page means the search engines won't read it. Good SEO is all about content... content... content.
2. Don't forget to add Title and Description tags on pages. You may have seen some websites where it says "new page" in the browser? That is probably because the website designer did not put a title tag on the page. It is really important to the search engines.A site without a Description tag is meaningless. 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 they see your site's listing.
3. Don't use repeat Title and Description tags. Your website pages should each be unique and contain a theme for key words or phrases for each page, so make your Title and Description tags match the content for one of the keywords per page of the same topic. You can't optimize one single page for many key words.
4. Don't 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. Search engines cannot find any searchable text, so you get no SEO results. Also don't make any headlines into gif images, because they should be text with a key word in it.
5. Local Business do not need national SEO. It won't do a cigar store in Pasadena any good to optimize for the national or global marketplace, because their customers can't come in and buy a cigar unless they live near Pasadena. 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.
6. Redesign your site with caution. Don't lose optimized URLs. Once a website's pages have been indexed by the search engines and people are finding you, you do not want to lose the SEO traffic you have already established, and the search engines will be sending your potential customers to pages, or URLs that no longer exist. To redesign your site you need to have your web master use a similar structure of the old site had and retain the same URL addresses for the new pages.

And for those of you who need some more help with your search engine optimization feel free to check out our website at www.marcombroadband.com

Tough Times Require SEO and Social Media Marketing

Most of us over 40 years of age have all been though tough economic times in our careers, and having just done my taxes, and reading the Wall Street Journal every day, plus watching the news ... I can now admit, times are getting a bit tough. It's an election year.

Many folks have been talking to MarCom about doing search engine optimization and social media marketing -- and my associate Mike and I agree on this one -- the worse thing companies can do is stop marketing altogether. This is a huge mistake, because while you stop marketing, your worse nightmare of a competitor is ramping things up.

The reality these days is that in order to keep your small to medium sized business afloat - you need to do a minimum of a limited amount of marketing and advertising. But then what does that mean today? Many folks are just realizing that SEO and social media are party of the marketing mix, therefore they had just started to get serious about hiring experts like us to help them.

The bottom line? Do it. Here's why. If you have a company with products and services, and you rely on website traffic for sales, if you don't appear on the Page One of Google and other search engines, chances are people will not find you. And many folks are already optimized. We have a dentist client - as an example - Wilshire Dental Care. Just as fast as our client's website increases in its ranking with Google, his competition is working just as hard or harder and paying their SEO specialists allot to keep them on top! So our client really should increase our SEO and social media marketing efforts so that he stays on top and ahead of his competition. The bad news is IF he were to stop, his rankings will diminish, and six months from now? His competitors will be on page one of Google, and he will not.

Also the crazy thing is that right now, many SEO specialists are charging more than we do. I just did an analysis of Los Angeles SEO experts -- and we came across others who do what we do but who charge triple what we charge.

Here are some pointers you may want to keep in mind when considering SEO and social media marketing.
• There should be a compelling reason for you to look at it, read it, listen to it, watch it, like it, interact with it, and ultimately buy it!
•Today, people use search engines, like Google, to get what they want, how they want it - fast.
•The biggest challenge now is how to communicate your story over multiple channels, including the Internet.
•Becoming an “Authority Website” is the gold rush of the Internet.
•Authority = Attention
•Attention = Money

Ten Steps: Defining Social Media Marketing

The Internet is not just a different advertising channel, but an entirely new and unique culture with a multitude of online communities. Although there are many folks that think social media marketing is just the latest fad, it is not. The reality is, it is changing how we do business.

Although traditional marketing and new media strategies continue to morph, the Internet has emerged into a tremendous platform for direct and open communications among the media, businesses, and individuals worldwide.

Many of our new clients need some basic education on what we recommend, why and how we do what we do. We have been using these ten steps in most of our proposals for quite some time now.

Search engine optimization, social media marketing and online PR tactics include:
1) Fully analyze your situation, including competition, market, etc.
2) Conduct keyword research to determine the keywords associated with your name most likely to achieve high search-engine rankings and create a keyword strategy to map the keywords to specific website pages.
3) Optimize the pages of the website, www.meridianlasercare.com.
4) Create a blog and ghostwrite apx. -1 to 2 posts per week recommended.
5) Social Media Marketing: Create additional site content through writing and publishing articles to disseminate over the Internet
6.) Post and distribute electronic press releases (Using wires such as MarketWire or PRWeb)
7.) Create bookmarked posts to social media sites. (DIGG, Del.ic.ious, Stumble Upon, etc.)
8.) Optimize existing and new content over the next three months and execute the social media PR plan.
9.) Acquire reciprocal links and incoming links via article submissions, electronic press releases and a blog.
10.) Purchase directory listings for your new website to provide additional, high page rank links. Directories include Yahoo! Directory, Superpages as well as any industry specific directories with high page rank. (Yahoo is $299/Year Superpages runs $22/month)

The real truth is that although these basic steps are usually recommended, there is no single template for every client, because every client's situation, website, and place among thier competition is unique. MarCom's Social Media Marketing proposals are customized for each new client, and then throughout the yearly campaign tweak their strategies based on results we are seeing from the tracking results.

Internet Growth Projections: 6.6%

I was doing research for our client the Entertainment Connection and found a Hollywood Reporter article written by Georg Szalai siting an annual study from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in June of 2006 predicting that a surge in growth in the online sector, global entertainment and media will expand into a $1.83 trillion industry in 2010, up from an estimated $1.33 trillion in 2005.

The report also indicated that the biggest global industry engines during that time frame will be Internet advertising and access spending, for which PwC projects a compound annual growth rate of 12.9 percent. The Internet sector, the report said, would be set for a five-year compound boost of 8.4 percent -- driven by online ads, radio/out-of-home media.

The article also said, "Internet advertising will see the largest five-year surge -- at an 18.1% compound rate -- from an estimated $22.45 billion last year to $51.6 billion in 2010... TV network ad revenue will increase to $51.95 billion in 2010, and online ads to $25.5 billion."

These figures are interesting, especially when we note other research that talks about declines in other media. In our MarCom social media marketing powerpoint presentation I have mentioned the following stats:

Decline in traditional media
–Box office is down 7%
–Newspaper circulation peaked in ‘87
–Down another 2.6% in 2006
–Radio was down 4% in 2006
–TV viewership is rising; audience is fragmenting and show ratings are declining
–Magazine ad revenues are up a bit; number of ad pages is flat; women’s magazine circulation is down
–Celebrity magazines continue to grow …

Ask any student where they hear the news -- as did at Cal State Northridge where I lectured a couple of weeks ago -- and they will tell you, "on the Internet."

The bottom line here is that marketers are realizing that the budgets they set for the future must include good white hat search engine optimization and social media strategies.

Social Media Marketing and Revising Websites

Given the fact that folks are beginning to notice some changes in business and the economy, MarCom Broadband is getting lots of new business referrals. I think it is because we have little experienced competition out there. Few companies have been doing search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing as long as we have, which is basically since it all started.

I got a call today from a prospect who is planning on revising his website. This often happens. We even had one client who refused to listen to us a couple of years ago, and they redid their website, ditched half the content and lost traction with their rankings on Google, even though we warned them!

Point is that you do not want to change the name of your url if you don't have to, but if you do, then certain SEO tactics must be put in place. My associate Mike Keesling often works very closely with website design firms, like Rigney Graphics, right from the start of a client's redesign on their site to make sure their site SEO is done right. Their newsletter, called LunchMeat" is pretty fun BTW.

As an example, MarCom is about to change our company name from MarCom Broadband to MarCom New Media -- and we have a new url, so we will be redesigning our own website. The only way we can salvage our current ranking with Google is to point the old site to the new site. And we need to salvage much of the old site content and rework it with our key words on the new website.

Also what many people do not understand is that the Meta tags on each website page must correspond to content and keywords inside that particular page. There are many other little intricate tactics that we have learned to use to improve client rankings.

Pitching New Business: An Integrative Approach with Social Media Marketing

Once again it's that time of year when my associate Jeff asks me and my colleagues to do a guest lecture at his class of PR and communications students at Cal State Northridge. Our MarCom Broadband creative director, Brad Stone, is heading there today. And I will talk on Friday.

When I was chatting with Brad this morning about his presentation, it came up that now, with the press and the Internet, media don't need PR folks as much because they can research whatever they need online. And to get the media to respond to a pitch is becoming more and more difficult. Nowadays we wrap video right along with website links inside email pitches.

Having been in marketing and advertising for several decades, it's easier to see trends, and as the saying goes what comes around goes around, because patterns tend to duplicate. What I mean is that many years ago when we pitched new business, we gave a killer presentation, provided our creative ideas and often won the account (whether advertising or PR) based on the creative ideas within. We had to start getting the potential clients to sign and promise not to steal our ideas and use them without hiring us. Then along came technology and the dot com world, where that went out the window. We never gave any creative ideas away UNTIL we were hired. Our proposals where based on case histories and results for prior clients.

Today we are back in the place where with social media marketing and search engine optimization being wrapped into our presentation, and with competition out there, we are doing more presentations with creative ideas inside. Now back to a place where we need client signatures again.

Social media marketing is becoming a part of all of MarCom's new business pitches -- even though many clients still request just one thing - like PR. We must incorporate it into all of our marketing, advertising, PR and social media marketing strategies these days.

Is Social Media Marketing Revolutionary?

I read another blog post today that said that social media marketing is the biggest shift that has taken place in marketing since television. That's a pretty big claim. Hat Tip to Karl Long and FutureLab. His blog references the same study I referenced in my last blog on Feb. 28. about the TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony study that polled more than 60 marketers and discovered that social network marketing is still a puzzle, and agencies don't seem equipped to help clients "get it."

There was and always will be shifts in marketing. That's why the term "new media" was coined. It wraps all the new marketing strategies and tactics into one term. And again, it is why we will soon be changing the name of our company from MarCom Broadband to MarCom New Media. (Our new website will be up soon.) Our business has shifted entirely in the last two years from marketing and PR, to marketing, branding SEO and social media marketing. We started out with the concept of helping companies go to market faster in today's world, i.e. the Internet, which has the potential to reach millions of people in quantum time. Ergo the broadband in MarCom Broadband. But people understand new media more than broadband.

There is still much confusion about new Internet driven marketing strategies. The Web has changed everything, yet it in reality is merely another channel in which to market through -- a channel with worldwide reach. The television, as Karl said, changed everything. And I do believe he is right about the revolutionaries, who are "participating in the conversation" and building deeper relationships with their customers, versus those who are "waiting to see."

We hear questions like this all the time. What's the best way to design a website? Is Flash in or out? I know I need Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but just exactly what does that mean? How is Search Engine Marketing different from SEO? If I invest in doing business over the Internet, what marketing strategies will guarantee sales results? My company works with consultants who are in some cases virtual, so what's the best way to manage them? I see other companies getting excellent PR stories, so why can't I? Do people really read email or pay per click ads? Do web banners work? What is social media?

The bottom line is that the most important thing we can understand as marketers is our need to first "get inside the client's challenge." Once the challenges are identified, we can put a strategic plan together that will allow our clients to "go to market" and get measurable results with a return on their investment. The thing is - it's hard to measure television commercials. SEO measurement is easy.

Skills + knowledge + thought + creativity + channels = positive energy and results.

Adweek Survey on Social Media Marketing

Brian Morrissey reports on social media marketing in Adweek (Feb. 28, 2008) about a TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony study that polled more than 60 marketers and discovered that social network marketing is still a puzzle, and agencies don't seem equipped to help clients "get it."

With more and more clients starting to place emphasis on trying to master social media marketing, they seem to find that their agencies are not equipped to help them succeed in that space. More than 60 marketers in North America, France and the U.K. were polled to see how they are doing in figuring out the world of social media. They were asked for feedback on their agencies' abilities to help with social media.

According to TNS "Agencies don't get it." Clients complained that their agencies -- creative, media, public relations, design and others -- typically treat social channels like blogs as traditional media.

In other cases, their ideas are not backed up by practical skills in the area. What's more, one client pointed out that his agencies have little of their own experience using social networks or video-sharing sites for themselves.

The perceived, and real lack of social media competence at agencies will present opportunities for new providers. That means firms like MarCom Broadband will be getting the business because we have been deep into social media marketing for the last five years, and well into search engine marketing for over ten years. Following are just a couple of our customer case histories.

Client: Entertainment Connection (http://www.film-connection.com/, http://www.radioconnection.com/, http://www.recordingconnection.com/) SEO and online PR
Result: In less than one year, in addition to expanding the websites tremendously, we have decreased Entertainment Connection’s original PPC budget by 67 percent of what it was, and increased the number of leads by 67 percent. For one third the budget they are getting 170 percent of the business. We are currently drafting press documents for launching the company’s corporate press room, and will soon write articles for submission – all in the new social media format. Future plans including a Spanish version of each site. Each website is getting excellent rankings

Client: The Wiley Protocol (http://www.thewileyprotocol.com/) SEO, PR and Social Media Marketing
Result: After a year of SEO and social media marketing, the Wiley website is ranking well in search engines. With Joomla as their content management system there are limitations, however as one example, a year ago the company was ranked 35 on Google under the key word phrase “bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. It is now number five on page one of Google. PR and social media efforts continue.

Client: Wilshire Dental Clinic (http://www.oralimplant.com/) SEO and Social Media Marketing
Result: In a year this client is ranking on the first page of all the major search engines for most all of the key words for the website www.oralimplants.com. Social media marketing continues, and we will begin ghostwriting a blog for Dr. Afar in February, 2008. These bi-weekly postings will further improve and maintain rankings of each website.
CyberDefender.com (www.cyberdefender.com)

Client: CyberDefender, Inc. (http://www.cyberdefender.com/) Reputation Management, SEO and PR
Result: Negative listings for the company’s CEO and the prior company were pushed back off of Google’s first page within six months. Within three months there were increased product sales and revenues and after six months the company’s ranking by the search engines showed a significant increase in organic listings based on the key words, while increased product sales and revenues amplified.

Search Engine Statistics in SEO

I was doing some research and found that 75 to 80 percent of traffic comes through the search engines. Most people do not look beyond the first two pages of search results. And even less click on Pay per Click (PPC) ads. So if your website does not rank in the first two pages of engines like Google or Yahoo! it is probably only getting about 20 to 30 percent of traffic, and even less for your revenues. The bottom linbe is that you need to rank high on the search engines with those "key" words that your customers will use to find you on the Internet. It is all about relevance.

At MarCom we have noticed that many of our new business clients worry about how much traffic they are getting on their websites, but few really notice or know how many of these convert to sales, or even where they came from. Recently we had one client -- www.peternity.com -- mention that since we have been working on a keyword and social media marketing strategy of pet urns/dog urns/cremaiton urns and her ranking on these words has improved, she for the first month she actually had orders for these urn products It's nice when we can take credit for revenues for our clients.
Another client that we have been working with for reputation management - RoccoBasile.org - has improved in just a week and gone from ten to eight in the first page rankings on Google.

Another thing we recently put together because of all the confusion about social media marketing services, is a standard rate sheet. Our services are actually very cost efficient. We typically charge a one time fee for keyword analysis of $650. Online website optimization depends on each client's current ranking, number of web pages and their situation.

Using Linked In for Social Media Marketing

I was invited to a colleague's BNI networking group this morning, and they had recently implemented a group instruction to network each other via Linked in. I have been on the service for years. And I am guilty of not always using it correctly, as I suspect is an issue with many business people, even though I know the value of social media networking sites like this. We instruct our MarCom Broadband clients about the value of social sites like this.

Because LinkedIn is an online network of millions of professionals from around the world, it will help to improve your Google Page Rank, or Google PR. You can post your personal profile and make the information available for the search engines to index. LinkedIn gets high PR in Google, so it is another way of influencing your ranking so people will find you on the Internet. It is pretty simple: just create your public profile and choose the option called “Full View.” You may also want to have your profile’s URL be your actual name, or the name of your company. Then link this page from your blog, or website or from press articles online.

Also LinkedIn is a great place where you can list your website with a link, and or your blog link. All links back to your blog or website create "activity" on these sites which Google likes, and which will go as credits towards your , or PR, on those sites. Be sure if you link to your blog that you include your name or keyword phrase in the link, which will provide search-engine optimization for your blog site.

Linking in press releases and wire services

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was submitting my client Peternity.com's press release, when I called tech support at the wire service that I use and was told that I could add my key words - and that I was allowed one key word per 100 words. The release was 800 words long, meaning I could add eight keywords. I did this but, to be honest, it really looked stupid. So I contacted my colleague, and social media marketing mentor Sally from Expansion Plus, who said that three links per article "work best." We changed the release.

We've been practicing social media marketing at MarCom Broadband for quite some time, and every day I learn something new. For article submissions, I have only been using three links per article. And the same rule applies for articles as for releases. It is best to link to a key word phrase in the first paragraph, and at the end -- because, as I have been told, the search engines read from the bottom up, and top down, and pick up words most used on the beginning and end of sentences.

One more issue. When in the article submission sites, they do not allow linking in the main text of your article. However they will allow a maximum of two URLs in what is known as the RESOURCE BOX. You are allowed to use HTML code to make the link work. If you don't link up your URL they will automatically assume that you only wanted it displayed, but not linked. Oh, and they also do not allow these links in the resource box to contain a downloaded file of any kind. Plus they won't accept articles that have the same link in the box more than one time.

And as always -- stick to white hat, not black hat SEO practices, or they may reject your articles.

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.