• 80% of people find a website by typing keywords into the query box of a search engine
• 42% click on the website in the #1 organic search position
• 90% click on a website on the 1st page (Source: SEO Book)

These facts show, for any company doing business on the internet, search engine optimization (SEO) is a requirement.

But search engines don’t buy, don’t download and don’t fill out requests for more information. People do. That’s why, although search rank is important, a top rank is only as good as the content on the website at getting visitors to take the action you want.

How do you accomplish both? Here are 12 tips on how to write for your audience and search engines.

KEYWORDS

• DO KEYWORD RESEARCH: Keywords are the currency of the internet. They establish relevance to both your audience and the search engines. So look for the words consumers use to express their unmet need; how many express it and how often. Two tools that are a valuable guide in this discovery are Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
• CREATE SITE ARCHITECTURE: When search engines crawl your site, they are trying to give your audience the best match for the words that express their unmet need. So give both your audience and the search engines something to work with and make it easy on them. Organize your keywords and content to create a more complete picture.

• DIFFERENTIATE BY BEING SPECIFIC: The people who are most ready to take action are most likely going to be more specifics about what they need and less willing to wade through a lot of information. So help them on their journey with content that includes “long-tail” phrases, not just “short tail” keywords. If you were in the market for a digital camera and ready to buy, wouldn’t you be looking for the brand and model, not just the category?

LINKS

• IDENTIFY AUTHORITIES: “It”s not what you know, it’s who you know.” This truth applies to life and doing business on the internet. That’s why hyperlinks (the blue text that goes to other websites) play a pivotal role. They connect you with authorities on your topic. If  the search engines determine, through links, you are connected to authorities, they raise your rank. There are many link tracking services. Options range from free to subscription services. A few to consider are: Alexa, ClixTrack and Linktrack and Linktrackr and options from free to subscription.
• WRITE HYPERLINKS INTO SITE CONTENT: The search engine are cracking down on websites that load backlinks into the back end of their websites but they are rewarding websites that do it, authentically, by featuring relevant links in content like suggested above. Also, consider social network pages as links and build your “social authority.” This is increasing greatly in importance.
• USE INTERNAL LINKS THROUGHOUT YOUR SITE:  Hyperlinks are also good for connecting pages within your site. This give both your audience and the search engine the opportunity to spend more time with your business and get to know you better. And that’s always a good thing.
• CHECK FOR BROKEN LINKS: Make sure everything is working as it should. A website analytics tool, like Google Analytics  is your GPS system. Google offers Google Webmaster Tools for spotting any critical issues.

WRITING CONTENT

• TITLE YOUR KEYWORDS IN THE URL, TITLES AND HEADERS: The reason for being for each page is a key consideration for you, for your audience and the search engines. Put your keywords in url’s, and titles. Here is where you need to include them.

• WRITE MORE THAN 200 WORDS ON EVERY PAGE: Your audience and the search engines want to get to know you. Although there are  a number of opinions, at least 200 words per page is a good rule of thumb.
• WRITE FOR 3 TYPES OF VISITORS: Regardless of the website, there will always be 3 types of visitors. “Researchers,” who expect to be educated and want lots of information. Reviews and testimonials are important. “Shoppers” look for comparisons. They want to know the facts, but they want the Cliff Notes version. “Buyers” are ready to take action but they want the specifics, as clearly called out as possible. All are important. They also are not mutually exclusive either. One can move  from one stage to another.

TRACKING

• KEYWORDS: Now that you have your plan in place, track your progress is raising your rank every month. A good tool to track your progress is SEO Book Rank Checker (Firefox Extension).  
• INDEXING: The more search pages your are on, the better so know how many search pages you are “indexed” and work to increase the number. Marketing Grader from HubSpot lets you see how your doing.

To write for your audience is as important, if not more, as writing for the search engines. Do these 12 tips help teach you how to do it?

Social media promotions are events like sweepstakes, contests and coupons that take place on a brand’s social network sites, especially Facebook.  They center on attracting attention, engagement and sharing. They drive traffic to a brand’s website and create greater brand involvement.

Since social media promotions require participants to give an email address and often physical address. They are excellent events for building email lists and databases. Many generate significant sales.

Any business with a social presence can do one because costs begin as low as $9.99 a month; To run one, an app is installed on a Brand’s Facebook page or a widget on a website.

If this sounds like it might be of interest for your brand, the first step is to choose the right app for the task. Here are the 4 better mouse traps to build social media promotions (with pros and cons):

1. OFFERPOP: Scalable to serve any organizations, offerpop bases its pricing around the size of your Facebook Fan base. It goes from $10/month for businesses with 100-500 “Likes” to $675/month for brands with 25,000-50,000. Offerpop offers:

• Campaign Builder that includes instant landing pages and built-in reports along with a growing number of social marketing apps.
• Marketing integration where companies can socially-enable their email marketing campaigns, website or advertising programs; and track all results in real time.
• “Fan Gating” (optional) which means consumer have to “Like” your Facebook page before they can proceed to the offer
• Advanced social analytics where two new tools are a Facebook post database, which shows what kinds of content is driving engagement, virality, and clicks, and a fan database, which helps you build rich profiles of your Facebook fans and enriches them over time.The tools not only tell you that the post last week about Brad Pitt’s graying hair resonated well, but also that all your posts that reference aging movie stars generally go viral. And with about three clicks, you can generate a list of your fans — and non-fans — who are responsive to similar messages.

SocialTimes says: The ideal Offerpop customer is an internet or multi-channel retailer, such as Kobo, PokerStars and The Body Shop, looking to add fans and followers, build brand engagement and grow sales using Twitter and Facebook. They are often doing email marketing and online ad buys and looking to boost campaign performance by adding a social component. And they generally like to experiment and run frequent campaigns and create programs that look good and are brand friendly.

IS OFFERPOP FOR YOU? If pay-as-you-scale is attractive and you want to integrate other channels, offerpop is great choice. Plus, offerpop has the most sophisticated social analytics. One disadvantage is offerpop is the only company that doesn’t offer call-in customer support.

2. STRUTTA: A platform that is DIY-oriented and good for the non-technical, Strutta’s Contest Builder can create and manage a contest campaign as a sweepstakes or user generated content promotion without development resources. Strutta offer monthly subscription packages from $99 to $199. Multiple brand promotions can be created or tested within the month as long as they occur from the same social network pages and website. For enterprise clients and agencies, there is Pro Package for $12,000/year with advanced features and mandatory “Likes.” It offer a “Complete Social Suite.” Strutta advantages are:

• Dashboard allows the contest organizer to manage all contest activity and communication.
• Users are able to make photo contest submissions from their existing Facebook photo albums, their hard drive or their mobile device; in a video contest, users are able to submit videos from their YouTube account, their hard drive or their mobile.
• Google Analytics code can be added to the platform, even a conversion tracker to measures ROI on top of existing engagement metrics. Brands can define conversion goals, such a contestant hitting the check out page, and map contest activity (visits, entries, votes, comments) against those goals.

IS STRUTTA FOR YOU? The DIYer advantage is great for first timers and businesses with limited resources. The mobile advantages and Google Analytics integration are big benefits.

WOOBOX: Has 1,000,000+ brands that use its apps on Facebook such as Starbucks, Sam’s Club, Nordstrom, Warner Bros., Wendy’s, A&P, Quiznos, Jiffy Lube, Cold Stone Creamery, and many others, including small, mom-and-pop businesses. The Woobox app is Free to install and can be used to direct fans to your website if a goal to drive involvement, sales or let consumers know about deals. To create sweepstakes, contests and coupons and to participate in “Fan Gating” where consumers must “Like” your brand on Facebook to participate, Woobox offers plans from $1/month for 100 “Fan Gating” to $249/month for >100,000 Fans. Woobox offers coupon apps, sweepstakes apps, static HTML tab apps for Facebook and Pinterest apps (including a new “Pin to Win” app). Woobox has unique social sharing advantages. For example, for coupon sharing, it

• Allows you to limit your coupons to your Facebook and Twitter followers
• Offers ”Group Deals” where a minimum amount of people must complete the offer before the offer is valid for the group
• Requires sharing with Facebook or Twitter friends to get the coupon
• Set limits to how many coupons you want to offer

Based in Portland, Woobox is a bootstrapped, profitable team of four, and is not interested in outside funding at this time.

IS WOOBOX FOR YOU? The free installation of the Woobox app is an easy way to find out. If social media promotion are going to be a mainstay of your social media arsenal and growing “Likes” is important, Woobox is the most sophisticated number of choices.

WILDFIRE: is the company that started the social media promotion craze. Wildfire, too, was once a bootstrapped start-up, until acquired by Google in July 2012 for $250,000,000 to substantiate social media promotions are here to stay. Wildfire charges on a per campaign basis, and offers a “self-serve” Promotion Builder that include a set-up charge and per day rate with different graphic capabilities. The packages are:

• Standard: $25 Set Up plus $2.99/day 
• Premium: $250 Set Up plus $4.99/day

Wildfire’s “White Label” product provide access to the developers and strategists that take your promotion to a superior level of customization and execution and pricing that goes upward from $3,500+. Google announced they are going to “sunset” or discontinue their Promotion Builder as of June 30, 2013 and move to White Label services with a strategist. This program begins at $2,500/month.

IS WILDFIRE FOR YOU? Wildfire, under Google, is moving to an enterprise solution. If your business fits in this category, Wildfire is a tried-and-true solution.

BarnRaisers has used Wildfire for years. We’re sorry to see them discontinue their Promotion Builder but wish them the best. They are a great company to do business with.

We also like North Social and Heyo and will cover them in a future blog post because, as Google has demonstrated, social media promotions are here to stay.

Which of these better mouse traps might be best for your business? Are there any others that should be included? Do you think social media promotions could boost your business?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) focuses on purchasing ads that appear on the result pages of search engine above or to the right of the content on the search results

Unlike other media channels, ads are bought on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis. PPC is an attractive model for advertisers because they only pay for actual traffic generated by their ads. PPC involves a bidding system to get to a top position. Measurements of the actions a consumer takes as a result of SEM are the most surgically precise in all of marketing, especially for e-commerce businesses.

But just because someone clicks on your ads doesn’t mean they take action you want. Understanding the SEM relationship of “clicks” to “conversions” to the desired action is hard work. Doing this well is a very valuable skill. It’s an area where little tweaks make big differences.

How big? Here are 7 case studies where tweaks in SEM delivered big benefits in ROI (Return on Investment).

1. BABYEARTH (PLA’s – PRODUCT LISTING ADS): Paid search is an important part of the marketing mix to this baby products retailer with an e-commerce website. A key part of their paid search campaign is  PLA’s – Product Listing Ads. BabyEarth increased them from 100 to 10,000. They: 1) Focused on bidding and optimizing product images, 2) expanded product target, 3) performed keyword research and expanded search queries and 4) worked to optimize this process. BabyEarth saw monthly revenue increase +129%.
2. BEAMAX (A/B TEST OF LINKS):  A Belgium based company, manufactures and distributes projection screens for home cinemas and meeting rooms world-wide. They did an A/B Test to determine the value of a red link to their website versus the traditional blue link in ads and found that red outperformed blue by +53%.
3. BRITISH COLUMBIA TOURISM (LANDING PAGE): The official travel planning site for British Columbia, providing detailed visitor information for over 130 communities as well as 3,000 approved accommodations, Tourism BC relied on Google Website Optimizer test and develop the optimum Landing Page for a $1.5 million television ad campaign aimed at the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets to attract more visitors to British Columbia.  By designing the landing page to showcase the talent in the commercial and  iMac prize, Tourism BC realized a 52%  form completion conversion rate. The math is impressive: of 100 customers who request information from Tourism BC, 30 percent of them will ultimately visit British Columbia, spending, on average, $2,200 per visitor party, per trip.
4. MOTOROLA (SCORING SYSTEM): Launched a big new model, its new SLVR wireless phone, with a significant search marketing campaign to support the effort. They set up a scoring system to dump under-performing keywords, change focus as the campaign continued and provide learning Motorola could take action on. They lesson learned were: 1) Engagement doesn’t always translate into sales, 2) Brand name search terms don’t always translate into sales, 3) You never can guess what keywords consumers will click on and 4) The social networking aspect of the Web has changed launch campaigns. From their watchfulness and taking action as they learned, Motorola saw an astounding 30% conversion rate for e-commerce sales of the SLVR.
5. NATURE BRIDGES (ADD PHONE NUMBER): A leading bridge company that specializes in timber bridges and pedestrian boardwalks for environmentally sensitive areas, merely added a phone number in the paid search ads to give people another way to do business. The company set up phone call tracking in addition to search tracking and a conversion rate and ROI that was 3X higher by phone than the web from the paid search ads.
6. SCOOP (EVENTS):  The iconic New York City boutique for men and women,  set up various tracking goals to measure events other than purchases such as add to carts, email sign ups, add to wish lists, store location findings, and new registrations. The new data immediately influenced our bid models and paid search strategies. While keeping costs consistent, Scoop’s e-commerce paid search revenue increased by 765% in the first 60 days.
7. SLIDE SHOP (A/B TEST SPLIT): An e-commerce site that sells power-point templates for business, did an A/B test  where, in one test, SlideShop eliminated the eliminated the calculator in the shopping cart to determine if it was helping people who have made a decision to buy. The company found out the it was not and the cart without the calculator had a +15% higher conversion rate.

Although these are tweaks, they demonstrate the attention to detail and rigorous analysis that goes into small changes that make a big difference. Do these case studies prove how small tweaks in SEM deliver big benefits and ROI to you?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of pursuing a top rank for a website around specific keywords  in a search engine’s unpaid or “organic” search results. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) focuses on purchasing ads that rank high and appear above or to the right.

The point with both is to get to a top rank. That’s what this 30-second video shows. It’s called a “Heat Map.” It’s is a controlled experiment that shows how we search for what we need.

When most of us search, we chose a website in a top position of the unpaid or SEO portion. However, as the video also shows, we are more likely to go to a website in a top position of the paid or SEM portion before we venture further down the page on the SEO portion.

SEO and SEM experts says, with confidence, both are proven performers that get results. Getting the experts to agree on when it produces results and how much it costs, that’s another story.

Here are 21 experts that take a position on SEO vs. SEM.

SEO

1. SEO takes a lot of time and tweaking to get it right. Positive ROI generally doesn’t yield for at least 6 months. – Jayson DeMers, Business 2 Community
   
2. 86% of web searchers trust organic SEO listings more than sponsored/paid PPC listing. – Oli Gartner, Unbounce
3. SEO is more authorative in the end-user’s eyes and the clicks are “free.” – Geoff Grigsby, Maine Today Digital
4. In SEO, your goal should be to understand the keyword landscape of a topic. What keywords do people search for, and what does this tell us about their intent? What can we learn from looking at keywords in a broader context? – Jenny Halasz, Search Engine Land
5. Typically with organic SEO the work will continue to increase rankings for months or even years after the campaign is ended. Meaning you will have a long term ROI. – Chris Hornak, Eye Flow
6. 80% of the traffic that can be generated for any website will come from the search engines. – Larry Kim, Wordstream
7. If you’re operating on a shoestring budget, it may make more sense to invest time in chasing high search rankings through SEO. – AJ Kumar, Entrepreneur
   
8. SEO takes longer (usually up to 3 months before you’ll see a result) yet these listings are more permanent. – Online Specialists
9. SEO  is a longer term approach. Good original content, well implemented on page optimization and a solid link building campaign is usually more than sufficient for SEO – Tetsu Liew, Visualscope.
10.  According to the Search Engine Journal compilation, 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and focus on organic search results. Leads that come from organic SEO have a 14.6% conversion rate. – Clayton Wood, seoreseller.com
11. SEO can be a part of SEM but, unto itself, is more of an art. This involves crafting a web page to try and attract as many search engine hits as possible, addressing such elements as content, keywords, and other factors to boost your site’s ranking in search engine results. You don’t buy anything as you do with SEM, but the results can be more dicey – YP – Advertising Solutions

SEM

1. The time frame can be tailored right down to the day and time of day in which ads are displayed. This kind of control is invaluable for any business. – James Broadfoot, Rank High Media
2. SEM uses paid tools like Google ADWords and Pay-Per-Click advertising. For companies looking to use part of their marketing budget online, it is a great opportunity to gain traffic to websites including social media or e-commerce sites. – Davanti Digital
3. SEM requires sustained amounts of money, and traffic stops when the money does - Brandon Dennis, Buuteq
4. 50% of people arriving at a retailers site from paid ads are more likely to buy than those who came from an organic link. – Oli Gartner, Unbounce
5. SEM practices offer the advantage of immediacy. If you need to increase your traffic and your visibility right away, and you don’t have a problem with spending a lot of money, this may be the way to go. – Bob Gladstein, Raise My Rank
6. You should focus on keywords that suggest a purchase (or goal completion), that represent a category area that is profitable for you, and that you can’t easily get ranked for in organic (most of the time – there are exceptions to this). - Jenny Halasz, Search Engine Land
7. According to WordStream, if an advertiser buys ads for keywords they currently rank organically for, 89% of the traffic from paid ads will be new traffic. – Jeff Kershner, Dealer Refresh
8.  PPC marketing will allow you to narrow down your prospects based on their demographic data. Many PPC platforms, like social media sites, allow you to promote to the age range, gender, income bracket, education level, and even marital status of the people who will be able to view your ad. – Larry Kim, Wordstream
9. SEM usually places you in a top position instantly (based on your budget limitations). can be targeted to specific geographic areas ranging from Suburbs, Cities, States, National or Worldwide, whereas SEO covers a specific country or state – Online Specialist
10. Paid ads are gaining traction, and more often not, getting more clicks than organic listing. Not all keywords are created equal and PPC can’t replace SEO – Jessica Ruth, Brand Manager in automotive business

Did these positions teach you something new about SEO and SEM? How you would use them for your business? Do you have a position on SEO vs. SEM?

Social networks exhibited mixed results last year after years of significant growth. It was bound to happen.

Maybe, if you’re in social media, this is a concern but here are 10 signs social media peaked. 9 reasons to be glad the “Hype Cycle” has passed.

10 SIGNS SOCIAL MEDIA PEAKED

• SOCIAL NETWORK USAGE: 24% say they use their favorite social media site less than when they first signed up (Source: Gartner)
• FACEBOOK: Visits were +10% in the 12 months ending in October versus +56% a year earlier (source: The New York Times)
• FACEBOOK AND TWITTER: In another study, Facebook and Twitter grew only +2%; there was no growth in corporate blogs (source: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
• YOU TUBE: Usage by companies has fallen, from 45% in 2011, to 30% in 2012 (Source: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
• PINTEREST: Only 18% of 2012 Inc. 500 companies use Pinterest (Source: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
• DIGITAL SPEND: 60% of marketers expect to increase their digital spend this year by 40% or more; only 10% of that digital spend will go to social media (source: Technorati)
• SOCIAL MEDIA JOBS: Have declined from about 1.3% of all jobs to 0.7% (Indeed.com)

• MEASUREMENT: Only 40% of marketers have confidence in their ability to measure social media campaigns. (source: eMarketer)
• TRUST: 56% of consumers trust retail web site with their purchasing decisions; 34% trust brand web sites; only 31% trust blogs (source: Technorati)
• FATIGUE: Gartner reports consumer fatigue from the social media Hype Cycle.

9 REASONS TO BE GLAD THE “HYPE CYCLE” IS PASSED

• GETTING PAST “HYPE CYCLE” MEANS SOCIAL MEDIA IS HERE TO STAY: The “Hype Cycle’ (below) occurs because of “inflated expectations.” Although after that, there is the stage of “disillusionment.” Then, it goes to “enlightenment,” and “productivity.”

• ROI: #1 question 4,000 marketers ask every year is “How to measure Social Media ROI.” Now, we can get down to business (source: Social Media Examiner).
• LISTEN RATHER THAN “‘LIKE’ US ON FACEBOOK”: With social network growth plateauing, there’s more opportunity in listening to fans and followers than spending all that time saying “‘Like’ Us on Facebook.”
• ENGAGE MORE OFTEN: If growth is slowing, this frees up time to engage. It will probably produce bigger benefits.
• MAKE RELATIONSHIPS MATTER: There’ll be more advantages than ever to having conversations, not monologues, with consumers, and building stronger relationships.
• PRACTICE MARKETING INTEGRATION: Instead of looking at social media as a singular solution, now we  can practice putting social media into the integrated marketing mix. Social media, mobile and traditional media work better when they work together. Here are some case studies to prove it.
• CREATE RICHER CONSUMER EXPERIENCES: Marketers can spend more time learning about the new technologies in video, mobile, apps and promotions, as well as regular updates and improvements from the social networks themselves, to give consumers a richer social brand experience.
• STILL GROWING: Although growth appears to be slowing, it’s still growing and faster than many traditional media channels (which are declining).
• COMING OF AGE: Similar channels like email marketing and digital marketing have gone through the “Hype Cycle” as well and proven their longevity. I expect the same to occur for social media. How about you?

I’m glad we’re through the “Hype Cycle” of social media and ready to focus on benefits like ROI, better engagement, stronger relationships and marketing integration. For a FREE eBook that shows Social Media ROI is not that daunting of a task, download 166 Case Studies Prove Social Media Marketing ROI.

Do these signs prove social media has peaked to you? Is it a relief? Would you like to tell me why?