Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

A Reptile Is Controlling You

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:44:49 -0600

by Sage Lewis

I want to talk about how fear is being processed in your brain and how it's all out of whack with modern day society.

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Google Analytics Goals

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:34:08 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Now you get 20 of them! This is yet another great improvement for a great tool.

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Going Down The Long Tail of Local Search

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:53:40 -0600

by Jeff Howard

As the growth of local search continues, companies who serve large regions by remote service, warehouses, or otherwise should not feel disadvantaged from an obscure physical address. These companies can naturally optimize across a region by discovering how searches for niche areas occur within a larger region. Because so many searches are now localized a long tail of local phrases are emerging within major metropolitan areas. By drilling down for the names of towns, neighborhoods, municipalities, counties, and zip codes that receive search volume businesses serving larger regions can take the long tail approach to incremental increases in local search traffic.

Take for example Jacksonville FL, the largest city in the U.S. by definition of land area. Jacksonville has many micro regions and some very far apart from one another. Considering its likely people in such a large region may search not just by "Jacksonville," but more so by their immediate area, for a business operating across Jacksonville the greater number of long tail localized searches equals more opportunities to create a top ranking and boost website traffic.

Regional Keyword Research

The trick is to identify how many towns, zip codes, townships, counties, and so on get a high volume of search traffic throughout a region. Then, match these phrases with the ones used to describe a company's services. Here are a few tips for identifying niche regions:

Use Wikipedia to find out what counties are within Jacksonville.
Search the county names on Wikipedia to discover additional towns, and municipalities.
Run a search on Google for "Jacksonville Zip Codes."
Run a search for "Jacksonville" on any map website and slowly zoom in, noting the names of towns.
For state wide optimization search "List of Cities Florida" on Wikipedia.

The result of these steps should deliver a long list of notable areas within a region. The next step is to plug that list into a keyword research tool, and find out what areas are searched the most.

Adapting to a SEM Campaign

The final step is to integrate the smaller region names into your search marketing campaign. This could be done either with a paid search campaign, or by building out landing pages well optimized for the regional terms like, "Neptune Beach Home Theater Installation."

It's probably best to first beta test the tactic for a few areas and then measures the effectiveness. As for landing pages, the content could basically describe a company's availability in the area, or go into more detail possibly including some localized customer reviews, pictures, and local news as it relates to products and services offered.

Conclusions

Super niche localized traffic doesn't just apply to small businesses servicing small areas. If you're a company serving larger regions local seo can be a means to improve sales in a specific neighborhood, building up website traffic incrementally across multiple areas.

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The Set-It-But-Don't-Forget-It SEO Strategy

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:50:44 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Many people think that SEO is a set-it and forget it endeavor. The theory is that once you optimize the site then there really isn't much more to do after that. This is something that many penny pinchers like to espouse so they can try to "save money". Others just don't like the idea that online marketing is a never ending process. We like to have goals and want to see things through a conclusion.

There are certain SEO strategies that are certainly goal oriented where you can get to a definitive end-point, but SEO as a whole is a constant ongoing process. Just like brushing your teeth, you do it ever day so you can keep yourself out from under the dentist's drill and not walk around with obvious stank breath.

But SEO also isn't about changing things for the sake of change. We don't brush our teeth just for the heck of it. Those who think that you always have to be changing your content, titles, and pages in order to keep it "fresh" for the search engines are pursuing a pot of gold on the other side of a rainbow. The truth about SEO is somewhere in between these two elementary schools of thought.

Do it once but do it right

There are elements of SEO that you really only have to do once, if you do them right the first time. When we take on a new client these are the changes we try to focus on first.

Website Architecture

The architecture of a website covers many things, far to much to go into here. The architecture basically boils down the the construction of the site and making sure that the search engines are able to spider and index all your pages properly. This is crucial. If the search engines come to your site and can't get access to the pages that need to be indexed then you simply won't be in a position to get good rankings.

Keyword Friendly site

Making your site keyword friendly really goes along with the site architecture as much of it is performed at the same time. But beyond the construction of the site you have to make sure you go through and strategically focus on keywords when developing your titles, description meta tags and your content. Many sites we review don't have a lot of text on pages and use duplicates titles and descriptions. These need to be customized and keyword focused for each individual page.

Making your site keyword friendly is a one-time process that can go quickly, depending on the size of your site. This is just the primer before you paint. Once you start doing hard-core optimization and keyword focusing a lot of the work you've done in this keyword friendly stage will be re-edited. The goal here is to make your site as keyword friendly as quickly as possible then go back and fine tune it later.

Internal linking

Internal linking of your site goes beyond having a good navigation structure. Here we want to focus on linking contextually from page to page. Look for opportunities in each page to link out to other pages, sections, products or tutorials on your site.

If you mention something found elsewhere on your site, link to it. If you can add a mention to something the readers of one page will find useful, do it and link it. The link text should be keyword rich. Rather than using "click here," use your keywords and calls to action in your link text. Go page by page taking advantage of every opportunity, provided it enhances the visitor's experience rather than detracts from it.

Do it, do it right, revisit it again

Most things that you change while optimizing your site have to be revisited on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to see how they are affecting "performance" of the site.

Title and description meta tags

There is no such thing as a perfect title or description meta tag... unless it puts you in that perfect spot of first page ranking and gets you maximum click throughs. You have to start somewhere so start with strong keyword rich titles and description tags. Keep in mind that there is more to these than just getting search engine rankings.

Anybody can build a "keyword rich" tag but not everybody can do so while making it compelling. The title and description both show up in the search results which means they both have to be compelling enough to entice the visitor to click through to your site. If they don't then you've got some pretty useless top search engine rankings.

Content

Once you've put together some great keyword rich content for each of your pages, you want to revisit that content to see how it's performing. The titles and descriptions may not be enough to get you top rankings so some minor adjustments may have to be made to your content. It never hurts to revisit your content to see if changes can be made to your headings or paragraphs to use more (or fewer) keywords.

Be sure not to stuff your content with keywords, which can tend to happen over time with repeated "tweaks." Sometimes you don't even need to add keywords but other words that are similar or often used in context with the phrase you are targeting. Either way, only do what makes sense when read from a visitor perspective.

Usability

Making your site more user friendly is a never ending process of implementing changes, reviewing how those changes affected your conversion rates, then tweaking again in order to improve conversions further. Each change will bring varying degrees of success, and often times you have to make several steps backward to make a big step forward.

When implementing and testing usability changes, focus on one at a time or a few that you can accurately measure in order to know which change had what impact. If you're not measuring then you're not doing it right. Some usability changes seem like a good idea but unless you measure you really don't know if it's working.

Do it right and keep doing it again

Keyword research

Keyword research is often done at the very beginning of the optimization campaign, but it is a never ending process. Keywords change. People's search patterns change. Phrases that were once popular have since fallen out of style. It's important that you refresh your research on a regular basis.

You also need to always be on the lookout for new terms to target that can bring in interested people. These may not be the "money" keywords but you can find phrases that people are using to find information, then provide that information to them. It may not lead to immediate sales, but it can lead to a loyal following that will eventually turn into loyal customers.

Link building / social media

There is never an end to getting new links. Many sites can coast for a while on their own popularity or lack of competition, but sooner or later a concerted effort will have to be made to bring in fresh links to your site in order to remain competitive. Everything from traditional link building to social media marketing or buying links should be on the table, but only move forward with the strategy, or combination of strategies, that will most benefit you and your audience.

And once you get links, you need to go get more. Budget this into your marketing campaign to ensure that you can have a slow, steady and consistent build with links. That's the best way to stay ahead of the competition.

New content development

Keyword research ultimately leads to new content development. As you find new phrases, questions asked, information being sought after, this opens up limitless opportunities to provide the information that people are looking for. New articles, tips, products, and resources can be produced simply by following the keyword trail.

As new pages are developed so do new opportunities to revisit some of the other things you've done such as internal linking. With each new bit of content you can review your site looking for ways to link your visitors to this valuable piece of information. Of course, no new tip or tutorial is complete without links back to your main information, products or services as well!

Set-it-and-forget-it SEO is a recipe for short-term success. Some sites can coast quite a while off the initial SEO but sooner or later you're gonna have to start revisiting what's been done, finding new keywords, building out new content, and getting more links.

After spending the money to invest in SEO, it rarely benefits you to lose the momentum you've built. Unfortunately, SEO is a marketing investment that you always have to feed. But along with that comes new and continued success for a long time to come.

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Web Analytics is the Foundation of Driving Strategy

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:25:35 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

In this video yours truly (Manoj Jasra) discusses how it's important to incorporate analytics into your marketing and website strategy from the very beginning and how you can use the stats from your websites to drive decisions which will have a direct impact on your organization.

I am part of the 4 man roster at the Social Media Innovation Summit happening in Calgary on November 12th. This is an event presented by West17Media which is aimed at addressing high-level information planning, a key concern which many other conferences neglect.

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Multiply Marketing Effectiveness Despite Division of Labor

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:23:34 -0600

by Mike Moran

Most people are familiar with the term "division of labor," which describes the specialization that companies adopt to promote efficiency. The assembly line is one of the best examples of the efficiency gains that division of labor provides. In a tiny company, such as a one-person firm, there is no division of labor, but as soon as you start to grow, even a little bit, you start dicing up jobs in the name of efficiency. The problem, from a marketing point of view, is that efficient doesn't equal effective. Division of labor can harm your marketing effectiveness and you must take pains to overcome this natural ineffective state.

All this was brought to mind by a recent bus ride, when the person next to me described how he is constantly working with clients to deliver the service the firm is known for, but hardly ever knows what to say to them to get them to buy more services. He realized it was a problem only after having a chance lunch with a friend at the company who is in sales, who had the opposite lament--the salesman couldn't get to see any of the decision makers that my seat mate rubs elbows with daily.

Image via Wikipedia

Division of labor is the culprit here. Certainly it is more efficient for one person to specialize in sales and another to specialize in client service, but it doesn't make marketing more effective, as that bus rider attested. And, as problematic as division of labor might be for traditional marketing and sales, it's even more difficult for Internet marketing, and social media in particular.

You see, with Internet marketing, the experts need to be part of marketing. That client-facing services person understands the problems being solved and how well they are solved. That might make a good blog entry, or tweet, or video interview. The sales person won't ever be able to communicate as effectively as the expert.

The problem is that the expert doesn't always understand the client problems, where the sales person does. So, in businesses that rely on product development, the engineers know a lot about the technology but little about the clients, with the sales people just the opposite. Effective marketing communications relies on a merger of both.

So, ask yourself what you are doing to foster communications within your own team. Are you making sure that relationships form between the people who have key expertise that must be shared? And are you ensuring that those (now) more well-rounded experts are blogging, tweeting, and doing videos that show off that expertise? Only by breaking down the divisions of labor will marketing effectiveness emerge from the specialties of efficiency.

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Outfox, Outsmart and Outgrow Your Big-Business Competition

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:31:53 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

I believe that one of the key things that keep small businesses small is that the owners maintain a small business mindset. For many, being small is just fine. They don't ever want to be anything more than a mom and pop operation. But others dream big and want to see big goal accomplished but continue to struggle to "make it big." They can't ever seem to get over that hump that propels them out of small-time territory.

If you don't want to be a mom and pop operation, or you want to be more than the small business you are, then it's time to start thinking not like the small business you are but like the bigger business you want to be.

The first place to start is with your online marketing campaigns.

With a few exceptions, online marketing has leveled the playing field significantly for the small business. However, as more companies make the move into online marketing the playing field is becoming slanted again. Bigger companies with larger budgets, better recognized name brands, and a larger team of people to manage multiple online marketing campaigns are gaining an advantage. It's becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to make headway into competitive fields against this onslaught.

But that's not to say it can't be done. There are still plenty of opportunities for small businesses to succeed, even against well-financed competitors. But to do so it requires some clever thinking and swift moving; two things which big businesses are generally not too good at.

Think smarter than a big business

Online Marketing and SEO success is not always about achieving number one rankings. Over the years I've learned to quickly determine which of those businesses that come to us are serious about their success. Those who "want to be #1" are looking for a quick fix. Those that want to build visibility and improve conversions and sales are looking at the bigger picture. Rankings are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Are #1 rankings still possible? Sure. Are they wise? Depends on the phrase, the targeted traffic it draws, the conversion rates it achieves, and the amount of time and money it takes to get it there. There are a lot of great #1 rankings that can be achieved that will do wonders for your company, yet many business owners focus on getting #1 rankings for the keywords that don't give them a good return on their investment.

Even if you already own the top positions, so long as you have the small business mindset you're going to find yourself disappointed. You can only hang on to the tops spots so long with a budget of a few thousand a year, when some upstart comes along and throws tens of thousands of dollars a month at their online marketing campaigns. Enjoy the success while you can, but don't expect to hold onto that forever. Rankings change.

Success is always relative. A small business does not have to spend $10,000 per month in order to do well online. Most small businesses, even if they had such a budget, are not set up to handle the same kind of success as large businesses. You have to grow into that. But every small business owner investing in online marketing needs to keep their expectations in line with what can be done and what kind of success they can handle. Budget doesn't always make or break success, but it does play a role in it. The key is to find the areas where your budget will see the most return.

Organize time like a big business

As a small business owner, you need to determine how your own time is best spent. Do you have time to do it all yourself? Or is it time to think outside the small business box and hire someone to handle certain jobs that you don't need to be doing?

Most small businesses hire help as needed but when it comes to their online marketing they want to "save money" by doing it on their own. Why is the marketing any different from the other jobs you hire for? Would you try to do everything yourself? And if you did, would you be able to grow your business as you want? The answer is likely "no."

Part of thinking like a bigger business is being willing to not do everything yourself and put it in the hands of those who can really bring you the most success. Let skilled people do the jobs they are good at so you can focus on the job you're good at.

Move more swiftly than a big business

While the small business can't always hire everybody it wants for every job there is, they do have one advantage over the big business that can work in their favor. That advantage is adaptability. Big businesses often move too slow, but as a small business you have the luxury of being able to adapt and move fast.

You can have a big business mindset but take advantage of your small business position. Moving swiftly into new areas of marketing can reap huge rewards as you invest in areas your competition is overspending and underperforming, without having to go through layers of approval and red tape.

This is where outside consulting can come in handy. Having someone take a strategic look at your online marketing efforts and help you identify your own and your competitor's weaknesses can really open up your eyes to new opportunities. Of course, you then have to be willing to do what it takes to invest in those opportunities.

Small businesses have to stop letting the small business mindset keep them from performing big. You don't have to be a big business to win in the online marketing game, but you do need to get out of the mom and pop rut.

Be willing to take risks, but do so wisely and well-informed. And like big businesses, be willing to fail a little here and there if it teaches you how to succeed bigger later. You don't have to spend like a big business, but you won't go far so long as you keep thinking like a small business.

Check out our small business news site.

SEO Sessions from SES Chicago

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:34:45 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

SES Chicago is a little over a month away and will feature a very well respected online marketing veteran, Rand Fishkin. Rand is the CEO of SEO Moz and is a regular speaker in the international conference circuit. Earlier this week I caught up with Rand to get his insight on his sessions at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, read our chat below:

[Manoj]: Tell our audience a little bit about the sessions you'll be participating in at SES Chicago and why attendees should drop by.

[Rand Fishkin]: I'll be involved in two sessions - PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle and Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?

I think both of these touch on relatively sensitive issues in the field of search marketing and the exchanges will contain a lot of substance and style between the panelists. The value of the debate should come in the form of the data presented and the arguments employed. I suspect that many practitioners face these same challenges in their day-to-day roles with clients and internal management, and can find a handful of good takeaways to help support their perspectives.

[Manoj]: Is SEO vs. PPC a cut and dry decision? - it's really about your business and what your analytics tells you, correct?

[Rand Fishkin]: Yeah - definitely. PPC is so easy to get started with and simple to track that if you're earning a positive ROI, there's no reason not to make the investment. The only drawback is when PPC optimization takes up a great deal of time and attention that could be focused elsewhere. I've seen organizations that have multiple people devoted to PPC management on a full time basis, and if they could just take a couple weeks of their time and put them towards SEO, they'd likely generate massive amounts more traffic with an even higher positive return. SEO is an investment, but it's almost always worthwhile.

[Manoj]: Are black hat tactics still employed by individuals/organizations. If so, can you give us some examples?

[Rand Fishkin]: Certainly it is, but no I can't share examples :-) There's a small but vocal minority in the SEO field who feels it is far more immoral to reveal those employing black hat tactics than to perform spam, so let's talk in generalities instead. There are plenty of firms, large and small, who engage in link buying, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link injection, etc. In my opinion, the vast majority of these are doing nothing illegal, immoral, unethical or wrong, they're simply operating outside the boundaries of what the search engines recommend. Although we don't use these tactics at SEOmoz and don't recommend them to our clients, I see no problem with those who choose a different path, so long as they're honest with themselves about the risks and open with their clients/mangagers. Personally, I just feel that there's (almost) always a better white hat solution to any problem you're trying to solve with black hat SEO (exceptions might be in highly aggressive fields like gaming, porn & pharmaceuticals).

[Manoj]: If you were to pinpont a couple SEO tactics which are more important to consider now vs. a few years ago - what would they be?

[Rand Fishkin]: There's quite a number of tactics that have gained in prominence and value over the last few years, some of which hardly existed in the early days of Google SEO. A few that fit that category include creation and optimization of XML sitemaps, canonicalization of duplicate URLs, social media marketing via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), viral content creation and promotion via social media, social media profile adoption/linkbuilding and optimization for popular search verticals like Google Local/Maps and Google News. A few of these have been around as long as 5-6 years, but many are new (or gaining prominence) even in the last 2-3.

[Manoj]: In a scenario where you are given 25K to spend for a client who has a brand new business/website, how would you spend it (in regards to Online Marketing)?

[Rand Fishkin]: I'd probably recommend they engage with a talented in-house marketer for 4-6 months (depending on their rate). Getting someone internal working full time on projects, having responsibility to the bottom line and being able to see the company metrics with a incented stake is, in my opinion, the best way to go. As for their tasks, I'd go in this order:

Content quality and value on the website (this could include things like a blog or UGC, but may just means top notch editorial content)
Web analytics - ensure that a good system for recording progress and traffic is installed on every page of the site
Conversion rate optimization and setup of a testing platform (assuming it's a transactional-focused site)
SEO - confirm that all content is crawlable, that important keywords are targeted properly and that all best practices are followed (XML Sitemaps, good internal linking, page structure, etc.)
Viral Marketing - look at opportunities to help draw large quantities of traffic for branding/awareness of the site as well as attract links
Email Marketing - engage with the audience through at least an email newsletter and possibly more personalized/direct kinds of email marketing

After those, I might look into link building, paid search, display ads and other channels in tests, but those would be the first steps I'd recommend.

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More "Goals" for Google Analytics

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:13:13 -0600

by Paul Jahn

A few days ago in the Twittersphere, it's been mentioned that Google Analytics is now starting to add the number of "goals" to 20 (four groups of five), up from four only. For some, this may not be a big deal. For others, it's just fantastic and the possibilities are almost endless.

For many companies, a couple goals fit just fine. If you're generating leads, you may have goals set up for both a long and short form for people to fill out, giving you information about their needs. That's it.

What if you want to get more granular? Maybe you have a new service or product and want to set goals on how many users get to these pages. You can test these goals for the number of pages you want people to visit or even how long you want users on your site.

Or, if you're an e-commerce site 20 goals still may not be enough. That's probably a different discussion.

Let's take a look. Here's how part of your goals page may look now.

As noted above, the 20 goals are for four groups of five. This still allows you to get creative. Here's a small addition. It's not just about a URL destination.

Time on Site and Pages/Visit are just a couple tools you may want to play around with for measuring different site engagement goals.

If you want to measure engagement by "time on site", you can easily do so down to the second.

Same goes for the number of pages per visit.

As always, Google provides an easy-to-understand YouTube video.

Any of you test these new possibilities yet? More robust tools out there that already have this and more, but the popularity of Google Analytics along with its price (free) makes this new for many.

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How Small Businesses Can Brand Themselves On the Cheap Online

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:52:15 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

People often associate branding with money. Lots and lots of money. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign you might see from companies like Target, you most certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But small business owners don't have that kind of money to brand themselves in similar fashion. Fortunately, there are other ways to brand your small business online.

From my examples in my post Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses, you might conclude that a full-scale SEO or PPC campaign is the only way to brand yourself online. SEO can play a role in branding, but you can engage it strategically so you're spending less time and less money while still building brand recognition.

What are you branding?

First you need to know what it is you are branding. Is it your company name? Your products? Your services? Your personal name or online handle? What is it that you want people to remember?

If you're a blogger your name is definitely important. So is your blog name. If you're a business then your business name will be important, as might be your products if they are exclusively yours. The point is, before you start spending money to brand yourself you first need to determine what you have that needs to be branded. Now you have your starting place.

How to use SEO for branding

SEO is a great way to brand your business, products, services or blog. Since you're not going after high-volume keywords, the cost of using SEO for branding is relatively minimal. The idea is to make sure you come to the top of the results when someone searches for whatever it is you're trying to brand. The goal here is to make sure your brand is prominent in the results so you begin to build that brand-name recognition.

The easiest way to do this kind of branding is to simply edit your title tags to include your brand name. If it's your company name, then put your company name first and foremost in your title tag. If you're branding own name, put that there. Most SEOs will tell you not to put your business name in the front of your title tag. If you're targeting non-branded keyword searches I fully agree. However if your focus is on building brand name recognition, then you'll have to sacrifice some keyword real estate for your brand.

The goal here is to make sure people see your company name, or whatever it is you're branding, whenever your site comes up in the search result. This will also help ensure that when someone does a search for your branded name they'll find you up top. It will still be important to optimize your site for non-branded keywords, however. The more keywords you rank on the first page for they more opportunities you have to build brand name recognition.

Look for opportunities to optimize for your pages for some of the long-tail keyword phrases. Being ranked on those often generates more highly targeted visitors so branding to that audience is even better.

How to use PPC for branding

Another thing you can do to brand yourself is to buy cheap ads through Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can do this for your name, products or even specific keyword searches. When going this route you're not competing for top spot, or even for a lot of clicks. Instead, you're looking to appear on a search result page where you'll be seen for as little money as possible. Don't compete. Find keywords that have low click cost or more expensive keywords where you can rank further down the page. Again, the point here is just simply to get eyeballs to fall on your ad--and your brand name--not necessarily to get the searcher to click on your ad (though that's never a bad thing.)

PPC ads are a great way to get visibility for incorrect or alternative spellings of your brand. Bidding on most variations of your brand name will cost you next to nothing on a per-click bases. You can also run your ads on dozens, or even hundreds, of low search volume keywords. These will get very little traffic, and therefore cost very little, but it gives you yet another opportunity to get your name in front of searchers eyeballs. Lots of little exposures often dwarf the benefit of a few big exposures.

I'm fully convinced that there isn't a company in the world, regardless of size, that shouldn't be working on branding itself in some way or another. Branding for your web site or company name is usually the easiest thing to do as most web sites inherently come to the top of the results for those types of searches. But taking it a bit further, expanding your reach can be significantly rewarding, even allowing you to be a little brand in a big commercial pond.

Check out our small business news site.

GeoCities is Gone

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:29:31 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Why do people do these things? Shutting down all of GeoCities. Really? What did poor little GeoCities ever do to you?

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Bing And Twitter - Getting Together

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:18:30 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Bing is all excited about their new partnership with Twitter. But from my perspective, they still have a ways to go.

Check out our small business news site.

Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:28:55 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Branding is a tricky subject for most small businesses. Historically brand building has been a costly effort that only big businesses could afford. But online marketing has changed that allowing even small business to build a recognizable brand. In fact, when it comes to SEO and website marketing, I see the necessity of helping our client's brand themselves in the search sphere.

In the past, we often felt that some clients just didn't need to be branded in the search results. Maybe because they were smaller clients or didn't have a nationally recognized name. But then how do companies become nationally recognized names? You got it. Branding.

Branding isn't just for big companies any more. With the internet and search, it has become easier and cheaper to for companies to brand their names in front of their target audience. Good branding efforts will always cost you some time, energy and even money, but it's not out of reach of the small businesses.

The benefits of branding your web site

A solid branding strategy is important for any small business and should be a part of your online marketing efforts. If you're like most small businesses you are more concerned about selling products or services than in establishing a name for yourself. Why go through the effort? Simply put, branding helps sales.

Let's say you can get one person to recognize your company name and can immediatly associate it with quality. Whether that be quality content, quality customer service, quality products, or whatever. But right now only one person on the planet knows your company by name and they are convinced you are the it place. Not a huge deal, right? Well, yes, it is.

This one person will choose to buy from you rather than your competitor. Your ability to brand your name, and make it synonymous with your quality, has just earned you a sale. But only one sale? For now, yes, but here's what happens next.

That one person who knows your brand tells a few other people about you. The trust you earned with the one person is beginning to multiply. Let's say that one or two of them try you out based on the brand recognition that was passed on to them, they get same quality in customer service and care, and now you have branded yourself in the minds of a couple more people. And, of course, you just got more sales. This keeps going and going, multiplying with each new brand conversion.

The reason your name gets passed on, is because you have a name that has established trust. When someone finds you with a search they are on their own. They have no brand recognition of you, no history, and no recommendations. When you're able to brand yourself to your customers you can then be passed on to others by word of mouth. That's a trusted recommendation.

With branding, you're not just selling a product, you're selling yourself, and it's you--not your product--that gets passed on to each person down the chain.

The most effective branding is not in the number of people you reach, but in the number of times you're able to reach any single person with your brand name.

Let's say you want to buy an Easy Button. (Yes, I have one!) Do you know who makes them? Do you remember those commercials? If you do, its because of branding. If you don't then you have to search for it.

A quick Google search for "easy button" shows a variety of results; Staples, amazon, youtube, metacafe, and others. By now you might remember who made the easy button commercials. If you do, that's because of their branding campaigns.

As my easy button would say: that was easy.

Branding your business online

Now let's put this into the perspective of search since online branding works a bit differently than offline. Run a search for DVD. In this search I see results for Wikipedia, DVDs, DVD Empire, Deep Discount DVD, DVD File, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, and a few others. Note that I'm not just looking at natural results, but paid results also.

I realize that DVD is too broad of a search so I fine tune it to DVD Movie. Huh! Some of these results look familiar. Again I see DVD Empire, Netflix, Deep Discount DVD, Amazon, and DVDs.

I don't particularly like paying full price DVDs so I try searching again with cheap DVDs. Here again I see DVD Empire and Deep Discount DVD,.

Do you see what happened there? In three searches two companies stood out. I now have brand name recognition for each of them for the term DVD.

Every search produced different results, but some sites receive more exposure, and therefore more branding power because they came up in more than one search. Now, without even searching, I have a mental idea of where I can go to buy DVDs: DVD Empire and Deep Discount. The next time I want a DVD, I might just go directly to one of those sites without even searching.

This type of search result branding can work for your business too. It's not about getting into the #1 spot but getting your business on the first page for as many relevant keywords as possible. You don't have to go after highly competitive keyword phrases to get a good amount branding power behind your business.

In my next post, I'll provide information on how small businesses can brand themselves for little or no money.

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The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket - Part 2

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:09:14 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

Now that you've got a Facebook Page for your business or organization, you're probably itching to do something with it. After all, there are more than 300 million people using Facebook on a regular basis. Surely at least a few of them want to interact with you!

Tons of companies come in to Facebook, set up their page, throw a few photos and status updates on it and leave. Doing this is akin to building a web site without bothering to optimize it for search engines and create a content strategy. Facebook is essentially another home on the web for your business, one that's easily accessible because it allows your customers and evangelists to choose to receive updates from you on a regular basis. Think of it as an RSS reader or an email newsletter on crack.

It's easy enough to figure out how to post a status update to your page, but you're going to have to go further than that. In this article, I'm going to take a look at the default Facebook Page applications and give you some insight on how to both use them and leverage them. (If it's third party apps you're wondering about...never fear. I have felt your pain, as has anyone else who has tried to set them up. I'll cover them in depth later in the series.)

For now, let's take a look at the first three native applications that come with your Facebook Page. Today we'll be exploring Discussion Boards, Events and Links. In the next article in the series we'll dive into Notes, Photos and Video.

Let's Go Explore Facebook Page Applications

The first thing you'll need to do in order to work with applications is to get back into the admin panel for your Facebook Page. To do this, you'll need to log in to Facebook and go to the Facebook Page you want to edit. Once you're there, look underneath the large avatar on the left and find the link that reads "Edit Page."

Clicking on this link will take you back into the Facebook Page admin panel. Once there, you'll want to scroll down to the section that says "Applications."

Using the Facebook Page Discussions Tab

We're going to work through each of the native apps, so let's go ahead and start at the top. Find the box that reads "Discussion Boards." If you have the type of Facebook Page that's heavily information based or you're seeking to build a really interactive community, you'll likely want to make use of the Discussion Boards.

If you've ever used a discussion forum, it's pretty much the same feature. Discussion boards allows for threaded conversations on your Facebook Page. While it's true you can also have threaded conversations on your Facebook Page Wall, it just makes it a little neater and cleaner to contain more targeted discussions within the Discussion boards. There's not much you need to do admin wise to get these running. Just head over there to the right side of the page and click the little blue edit icon.

First you'll want to hit "Application Settings."

Go ahead and leave "Box" set to "available" and set "Tab" to "added." (Unless of course you don't want discussions in which case you can remove the discussion tab and skip this entire section.)

Then click over to "Additional Permissions" and make sure the box is checked for "Publish Recent Activity." This will allow snippets of your discussion conversations to publish to your Wall as a way to draw additional fans to the conversation.

Now that you've got the basics set up, you'll need to click back over to your Facebook Page so you can start a conversation. Look for the tab that reads "Discussions" and click on it.

Once you're there, look to the right side of the screen and find the "Start a New Topic" Button.

Click that and you're ready to enter your topic name and the content of your post.

Once you've got it written up, go ahead and click the "Post new topic" link. Facebook will take you to the published post.

From there, go ahead and click on the "Discussion Board" tab and you can go back and see what the list of discussions will look like on your Facebook Page.

Now how you use the Discussions tab is up to you and your personal strategy. If you're promoting a web site that focuses on content, you may want to use it to drive discussions from your posts or to ask questions of your readers. If you're a company that sells a product or service, you may want to encourage your fans to use it as a feedback channel.

Little Debbie Snacks does a great job of utilizing their Discussion tab.

Most of the conversation is fans talking about their favorite products, but the Little Debbie team also pops in to answer questions.

Your discussion tab is one of the best ways to really interact with your fans in depth. Find ways to spark conversation, get in and participate in the conversation and keep an eye out for new content ideas for the rest of your Facebook Page based on what people are talking about.

Using the Facebook Page Event Tab

One of the great things about Facebook Pages is the way companies and groups can use them to build a community. Of course part of building a community is bringing people together to share experiences. Whether it's a public apperance, a contest, an educational event, a sale or pretty much anything else... events are your way to rally your fans together around a happening.

They also serve as a great way to remind your fans you exist because they give you a reason to contact them via Facebook and invite them to come back to your page to interact with you.

So let's head back to the main Facebook Page and once again select "Edit Page" from the list of links underneath your Facebook Page profile picture.

Scroll back down to the applications section and look for the box labeled "Events." Move your mouse over to the right, find the blue edit button and click it.

As with the Discussions tab, we'll want to jump straight to "Application Settings." This time around, you'll need to decide how you want to approach sharing event updates with your fans. It's easy enough to select the Tab setting and give fans the option of exploring a full page worth of events that way, but if you plan to integrate a lot of tab options for content and you know you'll be going light on the events, you may want to disable tabs and enable the "box" option.

If you enable the box, your events will show up in the left side bar under your avatar, along side your content. Like this:

Now that you've got your Events set to show up the way you want them to, let's try adding one.

If you've added an Events tab to your Facebook Page, you can click on it, then look for the "Create an Event" button on the top right side of the screen.

You'll be taken to the first of three pages you'll need to fill out to create your event.

It's important to note that as of right now, Facebook Page Events do not have the same features as Facebook Profile Events. When you're setting up an event on your personal profile, you can set an event to be Open, Closed or Secret. This gives you quite a bit of leeway in using the application for events that may or may not be open to the public. The event option for your Facebook Page lacks this. (Hopefully just for now...)

Fill in the information for your event and click "Create Event."

The next page will give you the option of uploading an event photo, writing a description of the event and selecting the options for how the event will show. You can choose to enable an event wall and then to allow guests of the event to post their own photos, videos and link. You can decide if you want to show the guest list or not and you can allow your guests to spread the word and invite other guests.

When you hit "Save and Continue," you'll get a pop up window showing you what the event will look like when you publish it to your wall.

Hit "Publish."

The event will immediately publish to your Wall. Facebook will then give you the option of going through your list of contacts and inviting specific people to the event. You can also import email addresses and add a personal message to your invite before sending it off.

Click "Send Invitations" or go ahead and skip this part and just leave the event posted on your wall.

Once you've done this, Facebook will automatically take you to the event page you've created.

You'll quickly see where you can upload photos, add video, post related links and make posts to the event wall. Over on the right side of the page you can also RSVP as to whether you are attending, print a guest list, invite more people to the event or even promote the event with an ad.

Once you've got that set up, go ahead and click back over to your Facebook Page and take a look at how the event shows up on your wall stream.

If you've got an active membership for your Facebook Page, you may not need to do much more than publish the event. If you're just getting things set up, you're going to have to do a bit of publicity for it. This is where you'll need to actively issue invites, add that email list, and come up with some creative send to friend incentives to help your existing fans spread the word to potential fans.

Using the Facebook Pages Link Application

Your Facebook Page should be a resource for your fans. It should be a place for them to learn about your company and your offerings, but it should also be a place to get supplemental information, to spark conversation and to share things you find. The Facebook Links application makes this possible.

Once again we want to head back to the settings page. (Go back to your Facebook Page and find the "edit page" link under your page's profile picture.)

As with the last two applications, we'll need to start by clicking the blue edit button on the right side of the Links box.

You'll need to once again decide if you want this application to run via boxes or tabs. I've personally yet to really see a reason why I'd run my links in a tab, so I always leave this option off.

Links are more of an immediate delivery to your audience, showing up in your stream and getting clicked and commented on. That said, I do like to turn the box option on. This allows the last several links you've shared to be archived in the box tab on the left side of your page.

The great thing about adding links to your Facebook Page is the system does a great job of formatting them in a way that makes them stand out. You're not publishing a standard text link here. When you enter a hyperlink, Facebook will automatically pull the title of the page, a description and will let you pick an image. You'll also be able to add your own commentary on the link. If you've ever shared a link via your blog, think of this as a micro version of that.

Posting a link is crazy simple.

Simply go to your Facebook Page and find the big entry box at the top of the page.

Paste your link into this box.

Facebook will automatically go spider the link and will generate a box below the entry point that pulls the title of the page, a description (sometimes the Meta, sometimes a snippet from the page) and any images that may be relevant.

If there are multiple images available, you'll be able to use the forward and back arrows that show next to the image to scroll through and pick the one you like best. (You can also click the "no thumbnail" image if you'd rather not have one, but keep in mind images naturally draw the eye toward them, making link that include images stand out on the page.)

Once you're satisfied with the information for the link, it's time to move back up to the entry box and add your own commentary.

You can highlight and delete the link you entered at this point if you'd like. It will still show as a fully functional link when it's posted. I tend to do this before adding some comments about the link.

Links can be an effective tool for attracting fans and building up loyalty. Share resources with your readers. Give them interesting and relevant information and become the source they trust for the topic you cover.

Coming Up Next

In the next article in the series, I'll keep working through the native Facebook Page applications. We'll take a look at the Notes feature, the Photo Album feature and Video integration. We'll skip over the native Facebook RSS/Blog options because quite frankly, I think they're lame. (Don't worry, I'll share with you my favorite third party app for integrating your blog feed down the road.)

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Redefining social media

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:12:36 -0600

by Mike Moran

I sat on a panel at SUPERCOMM's Digital Media Forum in Chicago on Friday called, "Redefining Social Media." (Eric Forst of Visible Technologies and Edward Moran of Deloitte & Touche spoke with me, ably moderated by Patty Brown of The Content Strategy Group.) The name of the panel initially threw me, because it feels like anything old enough to be redefined seems a bit passé, which social media most decidedly is not. But I think there is a point to be made about social media and how it is maturing.

My boss Rob Key at Converseon likes to say that "All media is social." To me, that captures what redefining social media is about--in a few years, we won't need to talk about "social" media anymore because we'll have made the adjustment to what media has become, a jumping off point for interaction, for conversation, and for community.

"Are we there yet?" Much like a vacation with the kids, the ride sometimes seems interminable as we wait for social media to "take off." In fact, my belief is that the real change we are experiencing right now is not in social media itself, but rather in how businesses are beginning to use it. Where a year ago businesses were "looking at" social media as a possible focus area, now they are at least testing the water, if not jumping in with both feet.

The down economy, while painful for many of us in so many ways, has actually accelerated the use of social media, because we can't afford to keep shelling out for the old ways of doing things. While large companies are shutting down TV budgets, small companies are experimenting with online video, blogs, and Twitter, because they are realizing that the full-page Yellow Pages ad doesn't work the way it used to.

So, to me, redefining social media is more about the willingness of so many businesses, large and small, to give it a try. When times are tough, everything is re-examined and what seemed risky is suddenly less scary than the prospect of revenue shortfalls. The fear of trying new things, or of being wrong, or of making a mistake withers in the face of the fear of losing your business.

So, if you haven't yet stuck a toe in the social media waters, promise yourself to do it now. Not every business needs online videos, or blogs, or Twitter, but very few wouldn't benefit from at least one of them. Examine what you are good at, identify the online neighborhoods where your customers hang out, and make adecision to at least start visiting those neighborhoods, if only to listen. Then, after you get a bit more comfortable, decide how you'd like to join the conversation and engage.

Your business won't fall over dead if you continue to sit on the social media sidelines, but it probably won't grow as quickly, either. Social media usually costs little more than an investment of your time, so what is the harm of trying it out? If it doesn't seem to be helping, you can always stop. Perhaps the big risk isn't trying social media, but rather not trying it.

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