As the year comes to an end, plenty of SEO and digital marketing experts have published a New Year blog post regarding what is to come in 2013. Fiscal Cliff aside, there are going to be plenty of changes over the internet in the months ahead. Typical shake ups  by Google will occur, social media ups and downs will happen, and I’m looking forward to the next explosive start up and acquisition to make news headlines.

I’ve gathered together some predictions made by SEO experts and digital marketing geniuses for what’s to come in 2013.

The Ultimate SEO/Digital Marketing Guide in 2013

 Today, I want to focus on an aspect of AuthorRank which (incomprehensibly) does not receive much attention: the rel=”publisher” mark up. It is rel=”publisher” that connects a site (the publisher) with the authors. Even when those same authors abandon the publisher to start working with another site, their AuthorRank will continue to influence the “PublisherRank,” which makes it even stronger.  - Gianluca Fiorelli The Cassandra Memorandum: Google in 2013

In 2012 most retailers have accepted the benefits of product videos to provide customers with more information prior to making their purchase. However, relatively few are getting into other types of video content around the rest of the sales cycle. Examples include customer support videos, product tutorial videos, branded content, product placement and more.

In 2013 I think we will see these areas grow a lot more as e-commerce retailers get more and more comfortable with the video space and see the benefits of other types of content. - CJ Bruce Predictions for Video Commerce in 2013

Watch for Facebook to become a much more useful paid ad platform for business…I’d expect to see more executive talent acquired from the likes of Google. Twitter will be acquired by Apple..or some yet unforeseen suitor. Pay attention to the size and quality if your Twitter network as it will become more important post-acquisition. Lean hard toward whatever platform acquires them. SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) comes of age and Google will dominate, largely because of market share of Android devices and Google evolving as a “mobile first” minded company. Watch for and form relationships with review site “influencers”, as these people will drive the proper content/context that will become more necessary in 2013 and mobile use comes of age. Relationships with these content creators will be equally as important as original content that is created by any given business. Search engine algorithms get smarter and become harbingers of doom in that penalties will be instantaneous.” James Ball NotEasyToForget.com

What to Expect for Internet Marketing in 2013

It’s fair enough to say that most marketers are expecting a much stronger relationship between social and SEO in 2013. Before you rush into buying Circles, Followers, Likes, etc, don’t forget what most of the experts are saying about social connections; it’s about quality, not quantity.

Focusing on quality over quantity isn’t a new idea, but it seems to be one that is quickly forgotten when small businesses are trying to build their networks. Who can blame them (small business owners)? Everywhere SMO’s go, they are being hit by canned emails, spam on their Twitter accounts, and snail-mail marketing that pulls them into buying followers on the fraction of a penny. If you’re a small business trying to build your web presence, run far and fast from anyone who says they will buy you links or followers.

Remember to diversify your social/SEO tactics. One of the best ways to do that is to not be bashful (online and away from the screen.) From what you have read in the tips above, you’re going to want to have a solid mix of interacting with content/content creators, and creating quality content of your own (especially on your own website.)

In 2013, the internet should become a better place. The fakers and the lazy will be weeded out. How do you plan on making your small business make the cut?

Update: Make That 6 SEO Predictions in 2013

5 hours later…

Joel Klettke sent me a last minute tip for SEO’s in 2013 that I didn’t get to add at the launch of this post. See what The Best Looking Man in the World has to say about SEO in the next 12 months.

The best advice I can give to SEO’s has nothing to do with SEO. As an industry, we have all the tactics and strategies we’ll ever need – what SEO’s need now is a business education that will empower them to build companies that will be sustainable and exist in 5 years’ time. Invest your time in learning to run a better business. - Joel Klettke

Currently, I’m working on a lot of things. Some of my projects I’d like to disclose, but won’t. All you need to know is that I have never been so deep in SEO strategy, website development, and brand building in my life. That said, all of this digital marketing in 2012 has got me thinking about what my work life will look like in 2013 (assuming that the world will not end tomorrow.)

When I set out to accomplish things for the day, I cannot go without building lists. If I don’t sit down and create that list, things will slip through the cracks and simply won’t happen. As the New Year approaches, I want to keep a few things in mind. To keep things simple, I’m going to keep my list to three work life goals for the upcoming year.

3 Things My Work Life Needs in 2013

1.  Be More Selfish with My Time – Working a lot can be fun… Unless you’re working too much, and then it really sucks. I can handle my current work load just fine. The problem occurs when I focus less on my daily work and future business ideas, and more on little side projects. For this reason, I’m going to spend 2013 more focused on my daily work obligations, and building out new companies. The side work can wait until old age strips away my creativity.
2. I Need to Create – Over the past two years, I have learned a very important thing about myself; I love building things. In 2013, it’s my goal to keep building things. Currently, I’m working on a new project with a friend that will launch early 2013. I’m pretty excited about it.
3. Take More Time Off – I’m incredibly guilty of always looking at a screen. Whether it’s my computer, iPhone, or iPad, I’m always looking something up or working. After my honeymoon in October, I realized that taking a break and turning off my phone was not only appreciated by my wife, but therapeutic to myself as well. Imagine that… the world continued to turn while I was away.

All three goals for 2013 seem to intertwine well. They all require a little more discipline, creativity, and relaxation in order to see them through. From my perspective, that’s a recipe for success… or at least a vague list of goals that I can look back on next year and say, “I think I accomplished my list?”

Many small businesses contact me saying that they have no idea how to incorporate content marketing into their business plan. For most, it seems as if content marketing is something that only the big businesses can do due to affordability or accessibility to creative talent. This is a tragic fallacy that small businesses have unfortunately swallowed without question. There are a few ways that you can effectively use content marketing for your business. You can take a few extra hours every week to create content and monitor your web presence, or you can outsource content marketing to a trustworthy company.

Whether you decide to dedicate extra work hours to your web presence or pass it onto someone else to manage, it’s always better to have at least some input rather than none at all. Here are 5 easy and effective ways to use content marketing to help boost your web presence.

5 Content Marketing Tips for Small Business

1. If you have a smart phone, start using your brain and take some pictures already! Photos on the job, at a charity event, or of something funny around the office can be great pieces of content for driving engagement. Depending on what the photo is actually of, it can let a possible customer in on how your business operates, or it can expose the more human side of your corporation. Vitrue, aquired by Oracle this year, did a great job of showing off their employees and culture around the office. Check out their blogs or Facebook page, and you will occasionally see photos of an all company breakfast, or of them gathered around a keg at the office for an early cocktail hour. For a small business, Micah from Old Try, “A Southern Print Shop North of Mason & Dixon’s”, kills it with content. I can’t go a day without seeing a new photo of their newest work, of them hanging out at a local bar with friends, or hard at work in the print shop. It requires very little effort for Micah to pick up his iPhone, snap a photo, and upload it to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Micah is also a contributor on my other website, The Trot Line, which helps him extend the reach of Old Try via my readership and through natural link building as well (SEO). The screenshot in this post is from Old Try’s Facebook page. If you think that pictures are a waste of time, check out any Facebook page that seems to be doing well… They drive engagement with photos.
2. Unless your in the business of making top secret weapons for the government, you can probably handle getting a few client testimonials. Do yourself a favor by pulling out your iPhone to get those client testimonials on video! People might ask their friends about working with your company, but they also want to know what everyone else is saying as well. I suggest using video client testimonials because you can SEO a YouTube video, and you can also benefit from embedding the video into a blog post on your website. You can gain valuable content on your blog post by transcribing the video into texts as well.
3. Write blog posts that interest or edify your (potential and current) customers. Clients often say that they don’t maintain a blog because they don’t know what to write about. This is mostly due to the fact that they are under the impression that blogs are online diaries or places for geniuses to transcribe their pearls of wisdom across the internet. It’s time to erase that misconception, especially when it comes to small business. With a blog, your local business has the opportunity to dominate your local market with well written content that is targeted to your hyper-local market. Let readers know about what’s going on in your industry, new additions or changes made to your company, or take the time to solve a few problems that customers frequently have or search for with Google. This is not only a great SEO opportunity, but it is also a great way to actually help others out. Write for people and the search engines. Usually, these two ideas go together like peas and carrots.
4. Don’t forget about e-mail marketing. A large portion of your inbound marketing strategy should involve gathering information of your clients, website visitors, etc. Figuring out a way (honestly) to get people to sign up for your e-mail list is a still a very strong way to market your business with content. Similar to your blog posts, your e-mail marketing should be helpful and informative. Before you press that send button, make sure that you have a great reason for showing up in someone’s inbox. For most businesses, you don’t need to be flooding the inboxes of your loyal fans every day or even every week. A monthly, or even quarterly blast with intent to edify your following is a great way to stick in their mind and offer value at the same time. I really like MailChimp for managing e-mail marketing. They make it pretty easy for folks who don’t have access to graphic designers or coders.
5. Write guest blogs. I’ve had the opportunity to write for a few blogs like Search Engine People, or another southern culture website (to compliment The Trot Line.) Writing a guest post accomplishes a few things: 1) It says you’re not a jerk, because you’re really helping someone else by adding content to their site. 2) You are getting cheap, inexpensive exposure to your brand. 3) You are earning natural links from one site to your own. Writing a guest blog post for a site with more authority, a different or larger audience, and is not in direct competition as you will typically help you out. Make sure that the organization that you guest post for shares similar goals and ideals.

These 5 tips for content marketing are pretty easy. However, that does not mean that they don’t require time and dedication. There is a reason why outsourcing the majority of your content marketing is a very popular option among small to medium sized businesses. Whichever way you choose to go, make sure that you have a content marketing strategy built into your business as soon as possible. The businesses who start today have a head start on the businesses who start two years from now (if they’re still open). If you’re a local business who implements all five of these marketing tactics before your competition does, then it’s going to be all that much more difficult for them to get around you and your footprint on the web when they finally start implementing a content marketing strategy as well.

I put together two short case studies last week showing how implementing a content marketing strategy helped these two small businesses be found on the internet.

• Home Service Industry Social Media Case Study
• The Car Wash Social Media Case Study

I am one of those guys who has 5 screens in front of me while I’m at work.  When it comes to reading and research though, I spend the majority of my time focused on one screen: my iPad.  I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to me to be redirected over and over again to a mobile site, or worse, arrive at a Flash based website [photography industry... I'm talking to YOU]. For browsing the internet, whether I am reading articles from Flipboard, or trying to find a decent car mechanic, I enjoy using my iPad more than any other web device.  As it turns out, I am not alone.

Internet Users are Moving to Mobile

Many of the visitors to my websites are making their way over via mobile device. About 37% of my visitors to The Trot Line are using a mobile device.  Of those visitors, around 82% of my mobile visitors to the site are iOS, followed by Android at 15.5%.  Ladies and gentlemen, the state of the internet is dramatically changing.  37% is a huge number to consider when developing a website. I don’t think that I could stress enough the fact that your website needs to be optimized for web traffic, now more than ever before.  Just in case you still need some convincing, here are a few other reasons why you should consider optimizing your small business website for mobile.

“At Bing, we want to keep things simple by proposing the “one URL per content item” strategy.” Duane Forrester

Optimizing a Small Business Website for Mobile

I believe that the days of over the top websites are long gone, yet many people still hold onto their Flash movie intros and animations.  Steve Jobs and the rise of the iPhone are due much thanks to leading us to the end of the ridiculous web, while ushering in the next stage of the internet; simple sites that work.  As mentioned before, the photography industry is notorious for Flash based websites that blast music and play slideshows… They are also bulky, fit to only one specific set of screen dimensions, and will not open on an iOS device. One of the factors in choosing my wedding photographer (other than his excellent work) was the fact that I could actually see his work on the iPad, which I was using to find a photographer.  His site was on page 1 of Google, but I skipped over a few other photographers in Atlanta before reaching his site [I searched for "Wedding photographer in Atlanta GA" from a metro Atlanta suburb]. I wonder how much more business he is going to win over direct from iOS users because he chose not to develop in Flash…

When developing your site, here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure that it’s mobile friendly:

• Do NOT develop a Flash website.
• Develop for speed, simplicity, and ease of use.
• Add your contact info towards the top of the fold, and make it click-able.
• Make it mobile responsive [more on this below]

Websites (especially for small business) need to be light, load quickly, and the user needs to be able to navigate the website with ease.  For many visitors, they will just want your contact information (most likely, just your phone number) so it’s wise to place your number where the visitor can easily find it.  I like for phone numbers to be large, and above the fold so that the visitor can touch the number and call the business without ever leaving the website.

Small Businesses Should Develop Mobile Responsive Sites

There. I said it. I’m taking a stand, and I’m sticking to it. Small businesses must develop mobile responsive sites from this point going forward.  A mobile responsive website allows you to optimize one URL that is friendly to both desktop users and mobile users.  The opposite would be to have a website that also has a separate mobile website that appears when it detects the visitor using a mobile device (iPad, Android, etc).  That means that if you have a mobile responsive site and are trying to optimize for the mobile web, you only have to optimize one website.  If you do the math, that means that you only need to pay for one website to be maintained and optimized opposed to two different sites.

If you choose to use two sites, mobile and desktop, you should consider the future of search.  As mobile use continues to take down desktop browsing, Google and Bing have already begun pushing for a one website experience.  Google’s Pierre Far announced on June 6, 2012 that Google recommends mobile responsive site design. Bing took it a step further by taking a stance on mobile responsive web design. Duane Forrester made a post in March of 2012, stating “At Bing, we want to keep things simple by proposing the “one URL per content item” strategy.”

Craig Charley puts it best in his recent post about responsive web design for business.

Especially for small and medium businesses, it’s not ideal to be building and maintaining two separate websites. You’re doubling both time and money spent on your web presence rather than creating great content!

Developing with a mobile responsive site makes it extremely easy to set up how you want your site to be viewed by the user. For this reason, it is easy for a user on an iPhone to pull up a small business using mobile responsive design and see the logo of the business show up first, followed by the phone number that is set up in the header as click-able text.  Your website is no longer a static place holder, but something that can be genuinely interacted with to bring mutual benefit to you and your potential customer.

The Takeaway

My advice to small businesses is to sit down and begin thinking about your mobile web design immediately. Consider the user experience, and the cost effectiveness of using mobile responsive design for your website along with other best practice digital marketing strategies.  Early adopters will have the advantage of not having to worry about their mobile strategy two years from now when tablets and smart phones are used for search more than desktops.  This leaves them the opportunity to focus on other digital marketing needs, such as content creation and link building.

Everyday, my company helps small business be found on the internet.  The majority of our clients are mom and pop shops that only need to target local residents within a five mile radius.  When I first meet with a potential client, they occasionally think that they need to target an entire metro area.  While that might be a goal one day, the way people are trending (especially with high gas prices) is sticking to their local areas.  The high gas prices are not the only issue to factor into the equation.  These days, our younger generations just don’t care about driving.  You can see this as fewer and fewer teenagers are getting their drivers licenses.

So, if my target market is within a five mile radius, it should be obvious that my if I am located outside of a city such as Atlanta, I should not be targeting Atlanta (usually.)  If my business is service based and travels to the client, I should want to target a five mile radius even more.  It makes zero sense to travel 30 miles to go paint a house, when there are 18,000 homes that need to be painted around my office.  Still, some business owners do not see the logic in this.  They will likely be the ones that do not survive the next few years, especially as we transition into a mobile age.

Here are some basic ways to build your local market through SEO and content marketing:

Home Page SEO

As it is with any large city with a metro area, locals almost never search an entire metro area when they know what they are looking for.  If I live in Norcross, Georgia, there is no way that I would ever search for a chiropractor in Atlanta.  My returned results would be 20 miles away.  So, the first thing I want to do is establish my true local market for my client.  This should be included throughout the meta code.

• Title – Use your primary keywords towards the front of your title.  You have around 60 characters to use, so choose wisely.  If it were me, I would put the main service and local market closer towards the front.  If the market is saturated with that particular service, try winning somewhere else.  For example, if I was marketing for “apartments in Marietta, GA” (which is extremely saturated), I would win with another angle using “Pet Friendly Apartments in Marietta, GA”.  I can then position my client to win as the local pet friendly apartment community, and eventually the great content marketing and basic SEO techniques used will push my client up the rankings for “Apartments in Marietta, GA” as well.  It’s a double win.
• Description – The description should be informative, compelling, and include your local market as well.  Include keywords, but don’t awkwardly stuff keywords.  We have all come across search engine results with descriptions that literally make no sense.  Not only will I skip over this, but search engines are working on filtering through these types of tactics.  I still come across them, but this might be due to the fact that the local market just isn’t saturated with decent digital marketers.  If this is the case, your creative description can outrank these poorly written meta descriptions.
• Meta Keywords – This is an indicator that has been phased out by most major search engines, mostly due to keyword stuffing.  Matt Cutts recently addressed the issue, letting on that your time is better spent on creating a great meta description.  Move on.

Content Marketing for Small Business

I am still a firm believer that if your content sucks, your web presence will suffer.  Creating great content is not only an opportunity to increase your on page SEO, but it is also a great way to increase your natural links.  Putting thought into the content you produce is essential.  Targeting a local market offers you great opportunities with your content, especially when using a blog to build your web presence.

Here are a few things to consider when writing your content:

• Keywords – Is your content keyword rich?  A better question might be, is your content over saturated with keywords?  Google is getting better and better at penalizing those who try to game this system with stuffing keywords everywhere.  Your keywords should come naturally.  When I include keywords in titles, links, bolding, etc, they must be used with the user in mind.  Will my keywords help the user find the content they need?  Will the keyword linked take my customer to a page that will help them?  Use keywords strategically, to not only make the search engines happy, but also to help your customer.
• Blogging – Using a blog to help boost your site’s keyword density is a great way to boost your search engine rankings.  This isn’t breaking news.  However, last year especially, Google started pounding the companies who tried to game the system who were using content farms to try and boost their SEO.  This means that your content needs to be original.  It doesn’t need to be anything ground breaking, but it does need to be from you.  If you’re going to spend time writing content, you might as well make it useful to your clients.  Small businesses can use blogs to help solve problems that their customers come across.  They can even take the spotlight off of their business every now and then, and share exciting news about what is going on in the local area.  Creating great blog content will help you, your client, and even help potential clients find you when they search for something other than a “home remodeler in Norcross, GA”.  Great content also attract natural links.  These have been used as indicators of quality.  If you want to increase your search engine results, create great, keyword rich, useful content.
• Video – A staggering amount of US citizens have cut the cord to their TVs.  Around 1/3 of the US population has a connected TV. The increasing adoption of streaming video into the home should light a fire under your butt.  Start making video content yesterday!  This seems to be one of the most difficult pill for small business owners to swallow when it comes to digital marketing.  Many business owners think that they need to create video series on a high quality production level.  As mentioned above, the bells and whistles don’t really matter anymore.  All that matters is that your content rocks.  Small business in a local market could kill it with YouTube if they wanted.  For example, a plumber could make a YouTube “How To” series with his iPhone.  By focusing on easy fixes, like “How to unclog your shower drain”, a plumber could earn trust and win over the client who used the video series for easy fixes, but needed a plumber for the more technical fixes.  I would imagine that for the majority of plumbers, driving out to a customer (high gas prices…), and unclogging a drain (taking him away from working a bigger job), would end up being a waste of his time.  Helping someone in your area with an easy fix, that doesn’t really pay well for the business owner anyways, with a simple YouTube video will leverage the business’s credibly in the long run for those big jobs that they really want.  For added SEO value, you can place that video in your blog with written content.  Now, if a user lands on the blog post, they are now under the small business owner’s banner and branded site.  Worst case scenario is that the person cannot perform the task, and needs to call the business owner to help come fix it.
• Photography – Are you stumped over why Facebook would pay out $1 BILLION for Instagram?  Are you wondering why Pinterest is taking off like wild fire?  Photos, as content, are huge!  Users are no longer sending text based updates alone.  They are taking photos.  The web user is quickly jumping on with photography and video as a content source that attracts attention (natural links and social indicators).  Small businesses can make a few huge wins simply with implementing photography into their content marketing plan.  Photos pull your content marketing strategy into the mobile world like nothing else.  For your SEO needs, tagging, titling, and using content to describe your photos adds extra benefit as well.  If you’re small business client isn’t comfortable with pulling out their iPhone to create videos, take the time to train them to use mobile photo apps like Instagram.  This adds extra value to all parties involved.

If you use all of these basic local SEO tactics, you will still only be scratching the surface.  As you implement them, your client’s world dives deeper and deeper into how you can leverage SEO and content marketing into local dominance via search engines, mobile, and social media.

How to Successfully Not Ruin Your Life or Burn Down the Business

If you have been, or are currently a part of a startup, you know all too well that life can get very hectic.  I have found that the startup lifestyle is not for everyone.  No single person involved in the company has it easy.  You never just show up to work, punch the keyboard, and leave at 5pm.  Even though you are pushing yourself past the 40 hour work week, you don’t have to drive yourself insane or destroy your social life.  Yes, there are things you have to just say no to, but with a well managed life, you can prevent the extra stress that comes with wearing 15 different hats at your business.

I am the Director over at TrustWorkz, Inc.  In a corporate world, I would probably manage only a few things.  As of now, it is required of me and everyone else in the company to wear multiple hats to make sure we continue to succeed.  This isn’t the way that it will always be, but such is the life of anyone in a startup business.  My fiance can attest to the fact that there are many long nights and weekends that I am busy reading, writing, and making phone calls.  For awhile, I let my iPhone run my life… Now, I’m running my life with my iPhone and a few other tools to help manage my time, and not lose my mind.  Here are a few ways that you can do so too!

Organizing Your Life

I wake up at the crack of dawn.  I know that the rest of our company does as well, because I see them pushing out articles on Twitter at 5:30am too.  Waking up early isn’t a sacrifice though.  It’s refreshing, and it’s a great way to get ahead of the day ahead.  I do a few things to start my day with my caffeinated beverage of choice:

1. Look at my iCal and make adjustments:  The first thing I do is check my iCal on my iPhone and get an idea of what appointments I have for the day.  I set everything up as a reminder as well, so that I never go overtime if I’m locked into what I am doing at the moment.  If I skipped this step, I would end up missing appointments, meetings, etc.  The iCal is the backbone of structuring my day.
2. Read up on what’s going on:  As a startup, we have to stay ahead of the game, so I spend around 30 minutes every morning absorbing news, articles, blogs, etc on my iPad.  My tools of choice are Flipboard and Zite.  It makes scrolling through headlines infinitely easier.
3. Checking Twitter:  Twitter is an amazing tool if you organize it correctly with lists and columns.  If you really want to stay on top of things, you have to use Twitter.  There is no better tool out there, that I have found, that let’s you know what is going on by the seconds.

Creating Your To-Do List

After I set my iCal at home, I get to work and go over my emails and figure out what I need to do for the day.  I take that stack of stuff, and throw it into my iPhone, again, but with a different app.  I am dependent on lists.  Perhaps it is my generation, but in order for me to be able to function throughout the day, I need to be able to check of to-do’s to help keep me on track and also maintain my confidence of actually getting things done.  I use Clear as my checklist of choice.  It allows me to make list categories, and lists within those categories (I have multiple projects, and grocery lists as well.)  Here’s my order of events:

1. Gather my “stack” of stuff to do for the day.
2. Go through the “stack.”
3. Create a list/modify current lists of what I need to do for the day.
4. Get it done.

The Clear tool on my iPhone is extremely useful because it helps give perspective of what needs to be done.  As I go through my list, with one swipe of my finger, I can literally check things off, and see what I have accomplished ad what else needs to be done during the day.  Having the ability to check items off of my list and see what I have checked off is a confidence booster.  Maintaining your confidence is a crucial part of being successful.  There are most likely other tools out there, like a pen and paper, but I really enjoy this tool on my phone because I take it wherever I go, and it never gets crumpled up or lost in a stack of sticky notes (seriously, does anyone use sticky notes well!?).

Clear Your Mind

You need to take a breather and de-stress.  I take the edge off of the day first thing in the morning (after checking my iCal) my checking off my workout.  Starting the day of on a healthy note gives me a sense of accomplishment before my workday even begins.  I zone out during this time.  It’s all about me, and I desperately need it.  For an hour or a little longer, all that matters is that I take care of my body.  Most startups spend their entire day in front of a computer screen, so getting my heart pumping for awhile is a great way to take a break from this sedentary lifestyle.

It is possible to survive the startup lifestyle.  If you are in a leadership position in your company, it is imperative that you handle your sanity and work-life balance.

How do you manage your startup life?

I remember the days when I couldn’t satisfy my software hunger. Have you had that? That you can’t wait to get your hands on the next piece of software coolness, the next cool feature, the upgraded and better version? Beta programs were my home and when we couldn’t get a legit beta someone in the beta program was always willing to share the latest build. Nothing was more fun than installing an alpha version of the latest Windows again because your blue screens had started to produce blue screens…

However joyous those days were, as you realize, they are over and have made way for a more conservative or frugal “let’s get a toolset in place and stick with it” attitude. On top of that I try as much as possible to see if software I have and know can be used for whatever goal it is that I was eyeing another tool…

This way I’ve grown a set of tools I’m intimately familiar and utterly comfortable with. Those two characteristics in turn mean no lost productivity while learning yet another tool, porting your key data yet again.

Evernote

Back in 2004-ish Microsoft had OneNote. A cool app to store and work with notes. Not long after Evernote came out. While it had some traits of OneNote it had a bit more emphasis on storing notes long term. Notes in Evernote are out of sight so you can easily keep a couple of thousand; note volume in OneNote is visible through all the note tabs representing a note entry.

I switched to Evernote and never looked back. Before the company passed into other hands and started to focus on becoming your outboard brain, Evernote had turned into Google for my life. Whenever possible I make sure I don’t search for information twice. Once I catch myself wishing I had noted something somewhere (say, like that thing you always kept on that shelf but then decided to move to … god knows where now!), I add that information or type of information to Evernote. When did we move to this house? Where is the filter for the vacuum cleaner? What’s the login for this site?

An article on how Target can figure out your teenage daughter is pregnant before you do? Into Evernote. What is Google Caffeine really? A PHP Dropbox client? How to select weekdays and weekends in a MySQL query? What is planning fallacy and how do you avoid it? Where did Matt Cutts say that pages blocked by robots.txt can still gain PageRank?

All those things — and more — go into my Evernote and are in my Evernote.

Besides those clipped articles and factlets, my Evernote contains project references in project specific notebooks. Notebooks with reference material for posts I’m working on or thinking about. Lists of headlines and post ideas in my swipe file. Recipes. Journal entries. Eve-ry-thing.

Over time Evernote has become the first application I install after installing Windows. I can safely handle a fire which would totally destroy my home because virtually everything that matters is in Evernote.

Evernote is free. You can upgrade to premium to get some more features and sync allowance or simply to support the company.

UltraEdit

If there’s one thing about this text/code editor that makes me doubt it would be that its bigger brother UltraEdit Studio has autocomplete and I keep wondering if I should upgrade to it.

Besides that: UltraEdit is the text editor. Multiple tabs. HTML validation. Regex, both common and UE specific. Open from and save to FTP. Save as UTF8 with or without BOM (you have no idea how many weird character situations I’ve solved with that one!). Syntax coloring. Tab collapsing which means that you can use a +/- sign to collapse and expand everything between an open and closing tag: among other things an awesome way to find unclosed tag pairs.

I often open a file in UE to clean it up: I run a little JavaScript that removes uncommon characters; a macro to shorten certain lines; a regex to remove double line spacing. Hop, hop, hop, and it’s done.

In short, this is where I live when I code, whether it’s HTML or PHP.

Windows Live Writer

..is the best piece of (free!) software Microsoft has ever made and is simply the best blogging editor out there, free or paid.

As the editor for Search Engine People I use Windows Live Writer virtually every day and to me it’s the software equivalent of coffee; warm, comforting, energizing, irreplaceable.

If you want to get a quick idea of what Windows Live Writer is and can do for your blogging, picture a pleasant, light-weight, user friendly version of Microsoft Word for blogging. Everything is WYSIWYG with the option of going into code view. Unlike Microsoft usual total and complete destruction of HTML by software, Windows Live Writer creates excellent code that works perfectly together with WordPress.

Image uploading is so much easier with Windows Live Writer; you’re unaware you are uploading. Insert an image, either via the insert menu or by copy and paste, and you’re done. Saves tremendous amounts of time, seriously.

I use the image insertion together with the Windows 7 version of the (free) image resize power toy. Although most images I use are already at the 640px width we use on the Search Engine People blog, running it through that resizer resaves the images with a lower JPG compression rate. It’s not rare to see an image go from a fat 300kb to a slim 50kb.

The more you blog the more essential Windows Live Writer becomes. Without it, adding and scheduling the 10-15 posts per week on Search Engine People would take at least twice as long.

AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey is a scripted text expander — and more.

With it you can do something like type wlw [space] [space] and what appears on screen in the text I’m typing is Windows Live Writer.

Or I can type CM and my browser opens at Gmail to compose a new email message.

Or I can copy a URL and paste it so it strips out all the Google Analytics cruft that gets added so often nowadays.

Referring back to my routine with Windows Live Writer’s image insertion after resizing; I never do that manually. AutoHotkey is setup so that when I hit [CTRL] [Insert] on the keyboard, it opens the file dialogue, resizes and resaves the selected image, inserts it and adds the link back that’s on the clipboard. That’s resizing, inserting, and linking an image in less than 10 seconds vs roughly 45-60 seconds. Multiply it over multiple images, multiple posts and you’re talking valuable time saved.

AutoHotkey can automate virtually any repetitive keyboard/mouse task. On my computer it adds auto capitalization just like on your iPhone. With a stroke of a key it copies something, switches to Excel, pastes it there, and switches back.

It helps if you’re a bit familiar with scripting but there are many examples out there and the forums contain tons and tons of useful snippets.

Definitely recommended.

NTI Shadow & Dropbox

I’ve had it happen once that a big report I was working on got trashed when my hard rive suddenly died.

Never again.

The files I currently work on or with are saved in my Dropbox folder so they — and all their revisions up to 30 days old — are available from other computers virtually instantly. With Dropbox accessible from the web it has to be a very weird situation would you not be able to locate a computer to access and continue with your work.

Locally I have NTI Shadow running. It’s a one-on-one backup or sync solution. It can monitor files and folders to make instant backups or can do so at set intervals ranging from minutes to ours or days.

I have mine set to copy my key folders and files every 4 hours. NTI Shadow simply copies the files which means that unlike many other backup solutions you don’t need anything special to access your stuff.

I’ve also set it to keep a number of revisions and to not propagate deletions.

Between this, Dropbox, and my regular backups, losing files has become rare. This works very relaxed. It’s not uncommon during winter here for the power to suddenly go out. I worry not; even if the file I was working on has become corrupted, I have recent copies and and can carry on virtually from where I left.

Ruud Hein works at the Toronto SEO company Search Engine People. Follow @ruudhein or connect on Google+

We have a fascination with WordPress plugins—handy programs installed on our site in the blink of an eye to add features and never (gasp, heart palpitations, sweaty palms) have to touch code .

Grab your mouse, or pen and paper…

I’m sharing some of my favorite plugins

TinyMCE Advanced (pronounced “tiny mice”) adds additional features to the default tool bar you see when writing a post or page in WordPress.

Two features I especially like are the ability to:

• quickly add a table to keep pesky images exactly where you want them to display, construct columns, data spreadsheets and more
• stop WordPress from stripping the <p> and <br /> tags from the HTML

EXTRA CREDIT if you know what the last icon on the right is named and the action taken when you click there. Go now. Login to your site, click the icon and come back leave your answer in the comments. I’ll wait…

WordPress SEO by Yoast is a robust SEO plugin which improves your site’s SEO on all needed aspects and helps you write better content.

The settings to take care of all the technical optimization appear overwhelming at first glance. Simply follow the tutorials here or here.

Be sure to download a free 27-page SEO report on how to create compelling content that ranks well in the search engines.

The Easiest Way to Connect Around the ‘Net

The Social Media Widget adds links to all your social media networks in a sidebar widget. Yes, the images are included. You simply provide the URL for each of your social networking profiles, choose the size of the images you want and save. Easy-peasy!

If you are just getting started with your WordPress site and don’t yet understand plugins and widgets, you are not alone. Don’t be embarrassed. Drop a line to Kevin. He’ll get you pointed in the right direction.

I’ve been bothering Joel Klettke  about answering a few questions on my site for a couple weeks now, and I finally got around to sending him an email with “specifics” about the post.  Over Twitter, I probably presented the proposals as a few easy Q&As.  I’m sure he wasn’t really expecting to write out a guest post when he received my generic email.

Joel knows his SEO.  I wanted to bring him onto my site because he brings a different perspective, and usually a very logical one too.  Basically, I asked him to share with us his best practice “check list” when taking on a new client.  I asked him for 5 actionable tips.  Here are some SEO pearls of wisdom from Joel:

Joel’s Best Practice “Check List” for SEO

1.  The very first thing I do is take a look at the client’s website and ask one pivotal question: “Will this content EVER convert? “.  Forget keywords, forget links, forget rankings and traffic. If the client’s website looks like it was vomited out by geocities or their content reads like a third-graders poem then any of my SEO work will be a wash.

If I want to prove my value to the client and keep getting paid, I’ve got to define what a conversion will mean for them and then make sure their website isn’t getting in the way.

2. Time to make sure the website’s structure doesn’t womp balls. No sense in building links to a broken site. Before doing anything else, the site needs to pass three tests:

• Can this site be indexed properly? Canonical issues, bad structure and buried orphan pages must become things of the past. Oh, and while you’re at it – if your site is bigger than one page put in a sitemap. I don’t care what anyone else says, it takes 30 seconds. Do it.
• Can a human being find what they’re looking for in 10 seconds or less? If not, you’re doing it wrong. Fix it.
• Are we making the most of our internal linking? Low hanging fruit is the tastiest kind.

3. Next, I return to the on-page content with an eye for optimization instead of conversions.  Three major boxes to tick off and I’m on my way:

• Is the content in easily recognizable ”silos”? Identify pages where your targeted keywords clearly belong.
• Are title tags written in a way that they’ll elicit clicks (and not just rankings?)
• Remember step 1? Re-evaluate whatever you’ve done to the content to make sure conversions didn’t die in the process.

4.  I prioritize my link building efforts. There’s no point in running willy-nilly building links with no direction. Look at your competition. What kinds of links are you missing? What kinds of links are THEY missing? Anchor text? Authority? C-blocks? One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was wasting time building linkable resources when all my client needed to win was more local citations. Spend a few hours planning to save yourself hundreds later.

5.  Depending on what I discover in #4, the last “first” thing I do is execute on whatever the easiest link wins will be. What this usually means is analyzing where my competitors have obtained links and bringing my clients site up to par with the competition. Gotta catch up ‘fore you can lap the competition, I figure.

And that’s more or less it. Of course, a lot of what makes this successful is educating the client beforehand. You just can’t overlook the importance of selling yourself and your service properly to the client before you ever touch a keyboard – otherwise you’ve chosen to take a bumpy road from the very beginning.

About Joel

Joel Klettke+ is an SEO specialist at Vovia Online Marketing. When he’s not busy using his skills to become the best looking man in the world he can usually be found pouring over his clients’ Google Analytics data, flexing or eating animals.  Tweet him at @cstechjoel

Many of my potential clients wonder why we believe so strongly in blogging for their small business.  Some may argue that trying to produce viral content for a small business is near to impossible.  The problem is that everyone wants to be a rock star, while they are completely missing the point of producing great content for their site.

Jon Cooper, of Point Blank SEO, spurred on part of this due to his recent article about natural link building.  Without negating the fact that social media is playing a major role this day in age of online reputation, he makes an amazing point that a natural link is something that puts your reputation on the line.  Earning one still means something.  Google may not penalize you for being associated with a bad website (still up for debate), but 100 links from bad websites may mean nothing compared to 5 links from semi reputable websites.

How to Attract Natural Links

As Jon says in his article, content will almost always drive natural links.  Quality, original content needs to be created by small business for many reasons, but natural link building is one of my personal favorites.  Quality articles posted on your small business’s blog can attract the attention of others across the country.  Natural link building isn’t just a walk in the park.  It might be one of the toughest parts about SEO a website, especially small businesses.  This is why small businesses should also focus on other SEO tactics for their blog.

Building Keyword Rich Content

We know that Google loves constantly and consistently updated websites.  Adding blog posts to your web presence is an excellent way for adding new content.  It is believed that Google even crawls your site looking for a blog section.  Search engines crawl the site scanning for relevant content to your website.  It picks up keywords in your meta data, in your title text, links, bolded words, and regular content.  Every time a blog is published, it helps increase your site’s credibility to Google as long as it is accomplished in the “right” way.  Of course, not everyone is a writer.  Many small businesses have no idea what to write about in the first place when it comes to their blog.  That is why, all too often, you see small businesses who started off the right way, but failed miserably when it came to producing content.  Have you ever visited a beautiful WordPress site, visit the blog section, and then see “Quote of the Week” as a blog post?  Yeah… 15 words will really do the trick for building up your keywords in your site.

Blogging allows you the opportunity to hit long tail keyword searches, along with building your website’s primary keyword list.

For example:  My primary keywords for this website could be “SEO”, “social media”, “digital marketing”, and “Atlanta, GA”.  The long tail keywords that I try to hit are phrases like “blogging for small business”, “why business should use Twitter”, or “Digital Marketing for Small Business”.  Not every one of my blogs covers those topics, but I make it a point to focus on building those words throughout each post in as natural of a way as possible.

How Often Should Small Business Post?

Thanks to Google updates like Panda, small businesses need to be wary of posting too much at one time.  Even if small business makes a blog post filled with quality content, posting too often might send up red flags to Google.  We have seen this in many real estate websites when Google Panda first hit.

So… How often should a small business post to their blog?  I believe that four times a month is not too little and not too much.  Small business blogs that add new posts (pages) once a week are not adding more content than the size of their footprint of their brand.  It allows time to build quality posts (great content) with quality primary and secondary keywords in mind.  Besides… How many quality posts a year can a dentist make?

What to Do When You Are Not Blogging

When a small business is not blogging, they should assess the rest of their onsite SEO as well as their offsite SEO.  Due to the new changes in Google, I would also strongly recommend focusing on connecting through social means.  Find a few of your favorite blogs and comment on them with something real to say.  Don’t just add crap to their comment field.  In most cases, the links you add to blog comments are no follow, so leaving a crappy comment offers you no major benefit.  Interacting with the author by leaving quality comments could land you a natural link in the future (if your content is solid as well.)  Supporting other authors and interacting with them in a meaningful way will help you in the long run.  Spend more time making connections through Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (especially now) to help as well.  That is best left for another post, but keep it in mind.

The Takeaway

If you take away anything from this post, it should be that small business should be blogging because it will help them be found on the internet.  The world uses search engines, not phone books.  Don’t you want to make sure that your small business is found on Google, or are you fine with your website not working for you?