SEO is the answer to these questions and more.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starts as a mystery for many companies, but it doesn’t have to. Understanding SEO means anticipating how search engines (like Google and Bing) rate and rank your content. Wrap your mind around that and you can write content that will land you at the top of search results and in front of millions of potential customers.

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock understood the principles of great SEO copywriting without ever logging onto a computer. The Master of Suspense delivered half a century of innovative filmmaking because he understood not just what his audience wanted, but what his team needed in order to serve that audience.

And how does this translate to SEO copywriting? An exercise in analogy can help us here.

You are Alfred Hitchcock.

Google and Bing are your big shot actors.

When your actors ask the traditional “What’s my motivation?” you can tell Google and Bing what Hitchcock told his actors.

“It’s in the script.”

Google and Bing’s motivation to include your articles and blog posts in the top search results can be found in every element of your content (your script).

What are those important elements? A look at the script of Hitchcock’s Psycho can explain it pretty well.

The Title = The H1 Tag

Psycho.

It’s in big letters right on the first page of your script for a reason: it’s the identity of the movie.
The identity of your content is contained in one of the largest ranking factors for your article: the H1 tag.

Your H1 tag is the title at the top of the article. It tells readers and search engines in a short 4-12 words what the article is all about. If it’s not clear in the H1 tag what your audience will get out of the article, Google and Bing won’t know what to do with your content.

So while Psycho may have worked for the 1960 blockbuster, you’ll need to be a little more descriptive with your H1 tag. Include your top keyword and craft an attention grabbing title.

Script Action = The Code

Woman stabbed eight times in the shower.

Don’t remember than line from Psycho?

Good, because it’s not dialogue, it’s action. It’s all the words in the script the audience never hears. But they see the results of the action. And it’s as important as the dialogue itself.

For SEO copywriting, the “script action” is all of the code on the page the audience will never read.

H2 headers are an important part of this action. Just like your H1, H2s tell search engines what the most important topics of an article are. You should be using several H2 headers throughout your writing to highlight the sub-categories of your article. (I’m using them right now, and I feel fabulous!).

Image alt text is another opportunity for SEO in your coding. Alt text is the description when an image can’t load. Search engines crawl this code, so including some keywords in your image descriptions can result in extra love in the search rankings.

The Dialogue = The Body Copy

“I think I must have one of those faces you can’t help believing.”

There are some great lines in Psycho. While script action sets the scene, the dialogue really carries the movie. With each spoken line, you learn a little more about the story.

Just like a movie’s dialogue, every word you write for your audience tells the story of your content. This is called the body copy, and Google/Bing analyze it to determine which audiences (or search engine users) should hear your story.

So if you’re selling toaster ovens, you should repeat the words “high-quality toaster ovens” in the copy about a thousand times, right? No. Please don’t.

Bad writing will lose every time.

Google and Bing are smart. When you show them a script, they want the characters to be fully-developed and believable. Including your top keywords is still essential, but you also need to be using variations of those keywords, and all of them need to be surrounded by relevant content.

The best part about this is if you’re writing engaging and informative content, you’re most likely already using your top keywords and close variations in a natural way. Good job!

From Script to (Computer) Screen

If you write a great script, you will be serving your audience as well as the search engines.

An exciting title will bring in your audience. Masterful action will draw attention to the right details. Great dialogue tells your story.

A quick confession: When actors pressed Hitchcock for further motivation, his last and definitive answer was, “Your salary.” So there’s that.

How is your script coming along?

Have you seen what comes up when you search for something? There’s not just organic results, but ads, suggestions, news stories, product listings, maps, and social buttons as well which all work to enhance your information gathering experience.

Google built tools in AdWords that serve the same purpose: to enhance your ads and give users a more in-depth marketing experience. These tools are called ad extensions and if you’re not using them, you may be costing yourself valuable customers.

There are five types of ad extensions: Location, Call, Product, Sitelinks, and Social. Each serves a unique purpose in giving users additional information about your product or business in addition to what’s written in the ad itself. This post will briefly go over each one so even a beginner will know how to utilize them for their own account.

Location Extensions

Purpose: To show a user the location of your business on a map.

Best For: Retail stores, restaurants, or any facility where one has to physically come to your place of business in order to be considered a conversion.

What Do They Look Like?

How Do I Set These Up? All extensions are located in the “Ad Extensions” tab in your AdWords interface. In the “View” drop box, select “Location Extensions.”

There are two ways to set up a location extension. The first way is to claim your business in Google Places with the same e-mail address you registered your AdWords account to. Once it’s claimed, you can simply click “+ New Extension” and select the business you claimed in Google Places. The AdWords system will recognize that and show your location extension for ads in the campaign you specify.

If you do not have a Google Places account, you can manually enter in your business’ address and information. Click “+ Manually entered Addresses” and then “+ New Extension” under it. Select a campaign you want to apply this extension to, enter in your business’ address, select an icon (they’re pre-loaded into the AdWords system), and upload an image of your logo/physical location if you wish to do so. Hit “Save” and your location extension should be ready to go (once it’s reviewed by AdWords, of course).

NOTE: Once saved, ad extensions of any kind can be selected to run in multiple campaigns without having to re-enter the information.

Call Extensions

Purpose: To display your business phone number on users’ eligible mobile devices as a link which they can simply click to call instead manually entering it in.

Best For: Businesses which can capture a conversion over the phone (buy a product, make a reservation, etc.).

What Do They Look Like?

How Do I Set These Up? In the “View” drop box, select “Call Extensions.” Click “+ New Extension,” select your campaign, and enter in your business’ phone number. Hit “Save” and you’re done.

Product Extensions

Purpose: To show users a picture and basic information of a product you’re trying to sell.

Best For: Physical items that users can buy online.

What Do They Look Like?

How Do I Set These Up? These extensions require you to have an account on Google Base or Google Merchant Center with an active product feed uploaded. Make sure the e-mail you use to register either one of these accounts is the same one for your AdWords account. For more on product feeds, visit Google’s Merchant Blog.

Once a feed is uploaded and running properly, go to the Ad Extensions tab in AdWords. In the “View” drop box, select “Product Extensions” and click “+ New Extension.” Once you select your campaign, you should see your product feed information appear. You now have two options.

Option 1: Hit “Save” and the AdWords system will automatically select the product it thinks best corresponds to a user’s query to show as a product extension.

Option 2: You can manually filter which grouping or label of products you want to show for a specific campaign and then hit “Save.”

Sitelinks Extensions

Purpose: To offer users a list of pages on your site useful in assisting/leading to a conversion besides the landing page.

Best For: Almost any business with sufficient useful content could find ways to take advantage of Sitelinks.

What Do They Look Like?

How Do I Set These Up? Select “Sitelinks Extensions” in the “View” drop box and click “+ New Extension.” Choose your campaign and enter in the link text you want users to see with a corresponding destination URL. Make sure you enter in pages in order of highest priority to lowest as the AdWords system will not always show every extension you enter. Submit up to 12 links and hit “Save.”

Social Extensions

Purpose: To allow users to see if any of their connections on Google+ has recommended your website by hitting the “+1” option.

Best For: Any business with a Google+ page.

What Do They Look Like?

How Do I Set These Up? First, you need to make sure your business’ Google+ page is active and properly linked with your website. Once confirmed, select the “Social Extensions” option in the “View” drop box and hit “+ New Extension.” Select your campaign, enter the URL for your Google+ page, and click “Save.” If your Google+ page is properly linked up, you extension should be verified and eligible to generate impressions. For more on connecting your website and your Google+ page, read this fantastic post from my fellow Portent-ite, Doug.

In a nutshell, Google+ Direct Connect allows users the ability to discover a Google+ page by adding the ‘+’ operator during a Google search query. If you search ‘+pepsi’ or ‘+youtube,’ Google will take you directly to that Google+ page.

See that checkmark? Google+ Direct Connect also verifies the legitimacy of your page. By requiring all participants in the network to link from their website to their Google+ page and link from their Google+ page to their website, Google+ can weed out the genuine brands, companies or cultural entities from the imposters.

Even Ian Lurie’s Google+ profile has one of those nifty checkmarks.

I love this idea because it solves the issue of page squatters. Seriously, those people suck. Theoretically, if hundreds of sucky people try to impose their suckiness by creating hundreds of different Portent Google+ pages, Google could verify us because we’re the only one linking back and forth from Portent.com.

Qualifying for Google+ Direct Connect

Google determines a page’s eligibility algorithmically through some of these signals:

• A link to Google+ using an official Google+ page badge
• A link to the canonical version of the Google+ page URL (the Portent Google+ page is: https://plus.google.com/113999984820418066734/) and use the rel=”publisher” tag in the link
• A link your Google+ page to your home page

The most popular place to add a link is on the “About” tab on your Google+ page.

Also, see the detailed instructions to help your Google+ Page qualify for Google+ Direct Connect.

But Google+ Direct Connect Still Doesn’t Work For Me

Like many websites, Portent should qualify for Google+ Direct Connect, but still doesn’t feel the love. Unfortunately, we’re not alone. Google+ Direct Connect still doesn’t recognize many of the other search marketing companies in the industry.

Try searching ‘+SEOmoz’ ‘+Distilled’ or ‘+SlingShotSEO’ – you don’t get the Google+ page as the most relevant result.

However, in a Search Engine Land report (btw, +SearchEngineLand is on the Google+ Direct Connect network), Danny Sullivan reports that Google+ pages like Amazon and Save the Children do not have Google+ icons linking back to their page or the rel=publisher code installed on their site.

Google says, “We’re still experimenting with Google+ Direct Connect and it won’t work for every Google+ page.”

It goes to show that Google+ is still a work in progress. I don’t know if we’ve yet to hit the Google+ “threshold of significance” or if we’re just sitting in social media purgatory, but I’m hoping for the best by recommending to all my clients to qualify for Google+ Direct Connect. It might not show any immediate results now, but from the way things sound, the direct connect network should have a profound impact on your site’s overall visibility and reputation management.

Yet, there are some definite commonalities that apply to many, if not all, projects and clients. Below are 6 principles for account managers in the internet marketing realm to follow.

Clients care about money and traffic

At heart, clients are very simple. They want you to make them more money and they want more people to visit their website (to make them more money).  Unfortunately, changing a title tag or making the alt text for an image keyword rich doesn’t directly translate into dollar signs and traffic.

That means the onus is on account managers to prove to clients the value of everything the agency does. An account manager needs to connect items being worked on to gains in revenue and traffic increases whenever possible. It will help affirm in a client’s mind their investment in an internet marketing agency.

Honesty Prevails

Don’t lie to your clients. That should be obvious. And don’t take a passive-aggressive approach to keeping clients in the loop when problems arise, either. If your team isn’t going to make a deadline, your client must know that as soon as you do. Even better, tell the client when it will be completed and throw in some added value to help defuse the hardship caused by the delay.

Your client will appreciate your honesty, and probably increase their trust level in both you and your agency.

Don’t stop learning

The Internet world is filled with over-achievers. Every day, companies and individuals come out with tools and platforms that obliterate existing technologies.

So it should come as no surprise that account managers in this industry MUST stay on top of trends and changes.

Naturally there is no shortage of good blogs and resources available for free.  I recommend PPC Hero for paid search updates and tips, and the SEO Moz blog for SEO news and advice.  Also, in the shameless plug department, Portent CEO Ian Lurie’s blog Conversation Marketing is a great read.

Advise, don’t follow

The client/agency relationship can be trying at times. Clients always have a notion of what’s right and wrong for their business.

But sometimes that notion is a bit misplaced when it comes to marketing themselves online. That’s why it’s up to an account strategist to guide the process. After all, they’re paying you to be the expert, and your advice is normally well-founded in past experience and data.

Don’t chastise or ridicule their ideas. Just be honest and clear that other options may better suit their interests. If the client remains steadfast on an idea, look for ways you can modify or expand it to ensure the value remains present.

Organization is essential

Staying organized is a crucial element of account management. There’s an abundance of moving parts on every project, so figure out how to keep track of them. Use project management software, keep detailed to-do lists, and organize your emails so that you can easily reference conversations later on.

Communication is key

Always let your clients know what your team is doing. It worries them when they don’t hear from you. They want to know that you’re working hard to get them visibility and earn them money.

Communicate ongoing work, projects, growth, decline, key performance indicator changes, and the like. That doesn’t mean just sending gigantic emails. You also need to have regular phone calls (like people did in the not-too-distant past).

With that said, be reasonable. Don’t send 332 emails to a client in a day. Respect their time and make sure that you’re reporting valuable news – not mundane and trivial items.

Do I follow all of my advice all of the time? Nope.  In fact, I’m not sure if that’s possible.  What’s really important is remaining focused on all of these areas, and keeping in mind how important each one is in fostering and nurturing a successful client/agency internet marketing relationship. Put forth the effort and the positive results will follow.

A link bundle with all of the goodies I mention: http://portent.co/web1bundle

The slides, on Slideshare: http://portent.co/yAaPa5

If you want to view the recording later on, you’ll need to register. Link coming shortly.

If so, you’re hopefully working hard on your website and web presence.

That’s great! We love local businesses at Portent, and we’d like to help you out. Here are 3 quick and easy steps that you can take to update your website, and grow your web presence.

Put Your Address & Phone Number on Your Site

This is, to many, a no-brainer. You run a local business; you likely have your address or phone number on your site, right?

Sadly, not always.

Many sites have the company address listed, but it’s often hidden away on the Contact or About Us page. Sometimes the number is on the main page, but it’s in an image, and is thus invisible to the search engines. Once in a blue moon, I’ll see a site that flat out doesn’t put their address or phone number anywhere. I’m still confused at how a local business expects to succeed without their address on their site, but I digress.

The easiest and quickest solution is to put your address and phone number in either the header or footer of your site in search-engine readable HTML text. This way, your information is on every page of your site, and you don’t have to work it into the site content nor images.

Update Page Titles with Address, City, or Phone Number

Many local business’ sites are designed and developed cheaply, by people that don’t know enough about designing and developing. I know this from experience – before I came to Portent, I designed and developed some pretty mediocre local sites. But the one thing I did do was make sure that all my client’s pages had locally targeted page titles (the text within <title> in your html) featuring the business’ address, city, and/or phone number.

What we see a lot from local sites, is that the entire site shares the same page <title>s and sometimes never includes anything local.

The solution?

If your business relies on phone calls for appointments, orders, etc. then you should consider the following approach:

[service/product] – [biz name] [phone number] – [city]

Alternately, if it makes sense to target your locality first (home services like plumbers, landscapers, etc.) then I suggest this:

[city] [service/product] – [biz name]

When I write <title>s, I like to call out the business with a superlative, such as Houston’s Favorite Pizza, Atlanta’s Best Tapas, or Minot’s Only Acupuncturist. This will get the attention of your potential customers in the search results by helping you stand out from the competition – who wants to go to the local pizza joint, when you’re Houston’s Favorite?

Claim Your Local Search Engine Listings

Do you own your own place listing on the major search engines? Do you even know whether you have listings on the major search engines?

If not, you should. They’re the most important tools to your local business’ success.

It’s an easy process – it only takes about 30 seconds (depending on your typing speed). Each of these will have a step by step process that is very easy to follow. At the end of the process, the site you have submitted to will call you, mail you, or email you a PIN number to confirm you as the business owner. Enter that PIN, and your listing will be claimed. Submit your listing to the following sites:

• Google Places: http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?gl=us&hl=en-US
• Bing Local: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
• Yahoo: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

Google Local Listing Signup Process

Conclusion

For many of you, your local business is your life. For the rest, local SEO is the key to getting a leg up on the competition. We have a lot of experience in local SEO, and if you’d like a full review of what can be done to improve your local SEO efforts, we can help!

If you have any questions or comments, please add them below. We’d love to let you know what you can do to improve your local SEO.

Listen… Consider… Plan… Do…

Listen

The first step is to listen. Becoming a good listener is exceedingly difficult because the human mind hates unresolved conflict. When you are given a problem, goal or objective your natural tendency will be to create solutions immediately, off the top of your head. Unfortunately real-time problem solving rarely works well. It limits you to what is in your head. With limited information you cannot help but miss things. You will also become prejudiced, closed to alternative solutions.

Instead, train yourself to hear. Listen attentively. If you take notes, write the facts you are given, your reactions to those facts and questions they prompt.  Refrain from offering solutions. This can be difficult so if you feel you have to say something, substitute any ideas, solutions or opinions  with more questions.

Here is the big secret: when the other person is answering a question, keep quiet. Silence is uncomfortable. During a conversation everyone’s instinct is to keep the conversation going. The longer the other person is silent the more we feel compelled to speak. When you make your client to fill-in that silence you often learn the most interesting and helpful stuff.

Consider

Consideration comes in two parts, study and mulling. First, brush-up. Read articles, blogs, white papers, book chapters. Watch videos and webinars. This is not about learning; it’s about inspiration. Your brain will connect what’s in front of you with your project or problem. You will see connections and get ideas. Put them in writing. At this point I like to have coffee or lunch with a colleague and engage in a topical conversation. Often human interaction leads to my best thinking.

Give yourself time to mull things over. Take a walk. Visit the driving range. Take batting practice. Now is the time to let your mind go to work.  Each of us has our own time of day when we think best. Mine is the time between when I wake-up before I open my eyes.  Now is the time to start making decisions and forming a plan.

Plan

Once you pretty much know what you want to do, it is time to craft your plan. It should be actionable, have a completion date and measurable goals. Most plans do not require a Gantt chart, they must be detailed enough that, should you get hit by a bus, your colleagues can pick-up the pieces and complete your work.

Planning can take a few cycles, especially when working with clients. Present your plan. Make sure everyone understands and agrees.

If necessary go back, revise the plan then re-present it until you have buy-in.  Agree with your client on deliverables and goals. Establish metrics, how you will measure results, and put analytics into place.

Do

Of course we do not write plans to sit on shelves. You have to execute them.

Treat your plan as a living document. As you approach each step ask yourself how things have gone so far and whether or not you continue to have confidence in the plan. If not, why? Situations always change. Your job is to respond appropriately. Avoid distractions, the loud things that change nothing, but do not be afraid to tweak or re-strategize when it becomes necessary.

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO includes keyword selection, website architecture, hub pages, internal linking and content optimization. This is one of the original parts of search engine optimization. On-site SEO is vital, after all, if words do not appear on your website why should you rank for them?

On-sire SEO no longer possesses the importance it once enjoyed. Search engines prefer signals that are difficult to manipulate or change and you can change the content on your site whenever you desire. Every time a new ranking signal from outside your website gets added to the ranking algorithms on-site SEO becomes a little more diluted.

Off-Site Link Building

The other half of the original SEO equation is link building. By scraping the web search engines can find out which sites link to yours. The quantity and quality of links pointing to your site determines your websites PageRank or domain authority, a measurement of raw ranking power. Similarly it is better to get 100 links from 100 sites than 100 links from 1 site. Links to individual pages reveal you most important or popular content. Words in off-site links demonstrate search query relevance. Patterns count too. Having most off-site links point to your homepage is less desirable than having links go to numerous different pages. Receiving new links over time is more natural than getting a spike of new links every now and then.

Content Quality

Last February Google introduced Panda, a major algorithm update that penalized entire websites for serving low quality content. Historically search optimizers liked to put lots of articles or blog posts on websites. Quality was never a concern as long as the page got optimized for a long-tail keyword and linked to more important content. Another popular ploy was to add Wikipedia style text to the bottom of shopping cart or store pages. Panda looks for this type of low quality content. If it finds too much on a site the entire domain gets penalized for all searches.

Design

Where content appears on pages has long been a part of on-site SEO. Now Google takes design to a new level when deciding where to rank your website. If you have too many adds or push relevant content below the visible page, forcing people to scroll down, the search engines may decide that you are being less than helpful.

Click Thru Rate

When visitors arrive on your website do the stay or leave? Google can tell when someone leaves their site then returns. If people stay on your site it may improve your rankings, but if too many bounce it can hurt them.

History

Search engines use history for lots of stuff.  Google records every search result you visit. Click on a result and you are more likely to see that site in future search results. Instant search is another example. As you type a query into Google it will predict what you are typing, display the likeliest possibilities and even the search results placements for the top query.

If you have a Gmail account Google can use your email content to personalize search results too. They already use this information to select which advertisements to show to you.

Voting

Run a search on Google. Hover over the results and +1 buttons appear. When you click on +1 buttons those pages go to the top of your results for relevant queries.

Web and Social Media Content

Google loves brands. When they see brand names often enough on web pages and social media updates they become associated with relevant search queries.

Who is In Your Social Networks

This is the new frontier of search. Google will personalize your search results based on who your friends are. Originally Google found your friends by following links to your social media profiles that you placed on your Google profile. Now Google has its own social network, Google+. It knows exactly who you have in your circles because it is in their database.  Imagine the search histories, bounce histories, +1 votes, Google+ content and even the email content belonging to all of your Google+ friends influencing and changing your search results. This is exactly what Google+ makes possible.

There are lots of other way for Google and Bing to change their search placement results: query deserves freshness, query deserves diversity, integrated search results and more.  Search has come a long way from on-site content relevance and off-site link authority, which is why we spend so much time thinking about starting, nurturing and growing conversations. Today the best SEO happens when everyone is writing about and mentioning your company, brand or products online.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaks out against Internet censorship

January 18th was a big day in the fight against Internet censorship legislation. As you may have noticed, major websites like Wikipedia and Reddit took their content offline to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These two pieces of legislation would make dramatic changes to the Internet, allowing media companies to block access to sites that host copyrighted material.

In New York City, I was able to attend a large rally outside the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand protesting the two bills. In an industry known for its workers being chained to their computer screens, I was curious to see how this offline gathering of techies would turn out.

I arrived to find the crowd in good spirits, as organizers handed out Starbucks lattes (of course) and openly discussed the finer points of the proposed legislation. One woman held a sign saying: “This introvert is extrovert-ing to protest Internet censorship,” which no doubt encapsulated the position of many of those gathered.

Free speech in jeopardy?

When the speaking portion got underway, the crowd listened to several leading members of the NYC tech community give their thoughts on the SOPA and PIPA. Andrew Sireij, the lead organizer for the event, explained that lawmakers do not understand of the impact of their proposed actions, saying “congress doesn’t know the difference between a server and a waiter.”

Another lead organizer Clay Shirky said SOPA should instead be called “the First Amendment Sunset Act,” as it would signal the beginning of an immense crackdown of free speech in all areas of the web.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian drew cheers and applause when he described the crowd as “the geekiest, most rationale, reasonable protest in the history of NYC.” Ohanian also pointed out that SOPA and PIPA may irrevocably harm the beauty of the online landscape. He described the Internet as a level marketplace where the best ideas rise to the top, and that “all links are created equal,” a concept that is near and dear to the hearts of white-hat Internet marketers.

“Innovation, not legislation”

A common refrain among all the speakers was that the Internet industry is vibrant and creating jobs right now all over the country, and passing SOPA and PIPA would only harm business and halt hirings. Intriguingly, supporters of the legislation make a similar argument when defending their bills: they say that without regulations, jobs will be lost in the industries that create the intellectual property that’s being pirated online.

Of course, nobody was making the claim that pirating content was acceptable. But it is clear that this bill may go too far in damaging a free and open Internet world that has vastly improved the way human beings communicate, share, and follow their interests.

In reaction to today’s protests, several politicians have retracted their support for the bill, citing the need for more time to establish the proper course of action on dealing with online piracy. Perhaps congress and Hollywood should follow Ohanian’s suggestion of allowing the tech industry to have input on a solution, establishing a goal of “innovation, not legislation.” And if there’s one thing the tech industry is always willing to do, it’s innovate.

Have you laid a good foundation of site architecture, web design, keyword mapping, content creation and link building for your website? I am writing of the basics, laying a solid foundation for visitors and SEO on your website. Before you go diving into social media 2.x you must have a

• Visually appealing website
• Content people want
• Brochure or sales pages that convert
• A steady stream of content that makes people want to visit or re-visit
• A keyword strategy
• Identified and optimized SEO hub pages or targets
• An internal linking strategy for SEO in addition to the optimized site architecture
•  A link building strategy in place or a steady stream of new links to numerous pages

By now, if you have worked on SEO, you have seen many versions of the above list, short and long. My point is that if your website lacks a strong foundation of SEO and conversion optimization all the social media marketing in the world will probably be for naught.

There’s always something. In 2010 it was Twitter results in Google. Last year it was clicks and abandons. Search optimization is ever changing. So before you jump into the latest and greatest SEO opportunities get the basics down first. Then you’ll have something to optimize Google+ and other social media sites for.

And don’t think that you will get around to optimizing your website or adding that blog later. Something will always come-up, get in the way or take precedence. Write a plan. Create milestones and tasks with due dates. Get to SEO 101 optimizing.