Backlinks are commonly ranked in the top 5 in terms of most important steps for ranking your website or webpage on the front page of search engine results.  So what are the top three backlink criteria for using this critical factor for getting moved up on the SEO ladder?

1. Keyword Relevancy – Make sure the links back to your page are relevant to the page content.  Anchor text,      Title & Meta Tags, and Content all play a valuable role and should be addressed before creating the link.  Keywords are often compared by the search engines to establish relevancy within the link and search engine result page.

2. High Value Links: Establish your links with pages with a high Page Rank value.  PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (“incoming links“). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. (Click here for more Page Rank information)

3. Avoid Excessive NoFollow – Avoid excessive backlinks with Nofollow in the HTML  attributes.  In a nutshell, nofollows are intended to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. (Click here for more Nofollow information)

Make sure you or your SEO professional understands and implements a strong Backlink practice when getting your website or webpage ranked in the search engines.  Remember quality of backlinks often trumps quantity when getting ranked high in search engine results.

Having trouble with backlinks?  Leave a comment.

Provided by ReadyLaunch

Well here is a sure-fire way to root out the bad ones.  Have you ever thought about trying to cold call them or have a friend do it?  Read this story….

A customer of ours hired a telemarketing and email marketing company to bring in new leads.  They were tasked with calling and emailing potential customers using lists obtained from a variety of sources.  That in itself seems harmless right?

So this outbound marketing company just happened to market to a local company who touts itself as being a leader in the home improvement market.  They sent the home improvement company a harmless email inviting them to participate in a FREE online listing service.  Still harmless right?

Well what happened next was shocking and an alarming display of nasty behavior.  Someone with the home improvement company called after business hours and left a nasty-gram on our customer’s voicemail.  Here is part of the message:

“Yes I’m trying to reach this “blank” company.  Uh, we don’t want your business.  We’re too busy.  We’re back about three and a half years.  Just wanted to let you know to stop F’ing  with my email.  You don’t have no need for a request.  Don’t bang on my email, nor my website, nor my phone, nor my pager, nor my wife, nor my kids, nor anything else over there.  You guys don’t have a clue who you are F’ing with.  You know what I mean!  If you don’t you’ll find out……”

YIKES!

What do you think of this home improvement company?  Would you hire them?

In most states this message is considered to be public tender.  In other words, a blogger, news service, or other online content publisher could use this information to destroy the reputation of the home improvement company.

What’s the lesson learned?  Always treat your customers and all other contacts with professionalism and integrity.  If you don’t like the approach someone is taking to earn your business, simply send them a note to kindly take you off their list of contacts….period.

What is content?  The answer is practically everything that is written and/or read by a viewer and a search engine.  Content includes product descriptions & specs, instructions, FAQ’s, title tags, Ads, Blogs, Forums, Press releases, Articles, and many other forms of electronic display.

Read more…

Learn more from ReadyLaunch

Guess what?  That’s not what we are talking about!!!

MBA = Marketing + Branding + Acquisition

These three little words that are arguably the root of all online success in today’s online marketing environment.  Why, do you ask?

Marketing is a “social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others. (Wikipedia)

Branding or a Brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer.^[1] Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies. (Wikipedia)

Acquisition or to Acquire, gain, usually by one’s own exertions; to get as one’s own, as, to acquire a title, riches, knowledge, skill, good or bad habits. (Wikipedia)

So why is an MBA strategy important on the Internet?  Basically, the Internet is beginning to reach the mature stage from an Internet marketers perspective.  The bell curve of the guru marketer with their secret sauce mentality is reaching its peak in terms of their performance value.

Consumers and online searchers alike are beginning to demand a much more professional look and feel in terms of the presentation, creative quality and content than has ever existed before.

The online marketer together with the associated content writers, graphic artists, developers and sales dept’s must all work together in a cohesive fashion in order to gain optimum control and accountability over what is quickly becoming the main-stay in research and purchasing activity.

The small business owner and manager is falling farther behind.  The opportunity to capitalize on Internet marketing and the tremendous low cost advantages to Market & Brand their business and Acquire new customers won’t last forever.  Did you know the Internet is quickly running out of addresses?

To learn more visit ReadyLaunch

What expertise should I look for?

Research: What experiences and what tools are used to identify Keywords and Keyword phrases used in further research and future content?  What practices are used to identify people and tribes of potential customers?  What mechanisms are in place to identify optimum response rates?

Our experiences have proven that a visible telephone number shown on the header of a website can not only increase revenue by as much as 100%, it can also provide a tremendous positive effect on authority and trust values.  Many online researchers and consumers alike believe that an 800# provides a sense of security with their decision to purchase.

Obviously providing an 800# alone will not reach the intended goals of doing so.  A business must then implement a system to answer and take the appropriate action as requested and shown in the eyes of the caller. Developing proper telephany expertise in sales and customer service is a must.

Telephone Systems must be researched and implemented.   The following questions must, at a bare minimum, be addressed:

- Does the system provide ACD, Multiple Voicemail, Transfer, Groups, multiple methods of Call Distribution, and DID numbers?

- Does the system have CRM capabilities and what systems will it integrate with?

- Does the system provide variable methods of reporting; by employee, phone number, time and day, group, area code, and department?

- Does the system provide import/export and data support to integrate with outside reporting systems?

Finally, it is wise to understand what type of business you are involved in.  Do you sell a need based product or service?  Or, maybe you sell a more emotional or decision based product or service?  The payback and profitability for purchasing a system and hiring a staff for support may well rest on the answer to these questions.

Do you have a telephone sales story?  Leave a comment.

Provided on behalf of Brookstone Marketing Group

Such a good post I decided to repurpose.

In a recent interview conducted by Smart Brief, Shiv Singh, vice president and global social-media lead for Razorfish, author of “Social Media for Dummies”, discusses several key elements that will be essential for brand and business development starting in 2010.  Here is an exerpt from the interview.

What are the three trends on the horizon that business leaders absolutely must keep up with?
Social brands. The company must be willing to let its employees and its brand advocates become the face of the brand. Consumers demand that, and brands like Best Buy, which are evolving into social brands (think Twelp Force), will be the ones that win.

Real-time brands. Companies that are dynamic and responsive in real time to their customers and their needs will be the ones that succeed. This doesn’t just mean real-time customer service, but real-time market research, real-time product development and real-time customization and personalization of products and campaigns alike.

Identifying, nurturing and managing relationships. Customers increasingly are also influencers, and companies will need to know who those people are and how much influence they actually have. Along those lines, understanding how customers come together as communities and make collective decisions will be important, too.

Do you have a small business?  Leave a comment.

Click here to read the entire interview.

The answer is somewhat difficult to answer.  Brookstone has identified over 15 marketing channels available within the online marketing environment.  Picking which one or better yet which ones are best suited for your business requires more knowledge and experience than a typical small business owner possesses.

The easiest general marketing channels to understand are Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, and of course SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Free Listings.  Of these three, generally speaking, Social Media Marketing requires the least amount of expense.

PPC can absorb anyone’s budget very rapidly if not monitored on a daily basis.  In addition, the knowledge required for success in combining the affects of keywords, Ad copy, page quality, content relativity, and ad positioning can be a somewhat daunting task for the beginner.  PPC can provide a very rapid increase in revenue and profits if performed wisely.

SEO requires a lot of patience and skill to get your listing anywhere near visible.  Getting your listing on the front page often requires a lot of testing and many months of waiting.  The end result can be very lucrative if your listing appears on the front page and top listing.

Social Marketing has the lowest cost of entry for both cost and time.  A beginner can usually make some impact on their customer leads within days.  However, the avid Social Marketer knows how to employ a solid overall strategy to optimize the results in a very big way.

The best social marketing strategy includes reciprocity, a commitment to scheduled postings, the ability to listen, transparency, community, and above all honesty.  Failure to include, at the very least, these main criteria can drastically damage your results and possibly your reputation

To get additional information click here: ReadyLaunch

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For instance, what if we constantly examined “how” TV spokespersons do their job and instead of relying on the “why”.  ”Why” allows us to listen and understand their intent and message.  The “How” would bog us down with unimportant useless facts about what type of camera, microphone, etc. they were using to broadcast their message.

The same holds true in the everyday lives of professional sales people.  The urge and habit seems to be to get caught up in the “how” instead of focusing on the “why”.  For ReadyLaunch, the habit would be to talk to customers about how PPC, Social Marketing, Blogging and more actually works.  We get caught in the never ending loop of trying to over-educate the customer on how things work.

Obviously the lesson here is to remind ourselves that our real goal is to not spend hours on end trying to teach and therefore convince the customer that our products and services really work.  Doing so can come across as a lack of confidence in our own products and campaigns we have to offer.  Concentrating on the “why” we do what we do and “why” the customer should make the decision to employ us for their advertising and marketing will reap them and us far greater rewards.

The “why” allows us to share and convey the benefits of working with ReadyLaunch.  The “why” is what we concentrate on when we raise our children, get gas in our car, mow the lawn, or even drink coffee.  The “how” in life may be more suited for biologist, scientists, and geologists.

Finally, using the “why” allows us to accept failure, get past no’s, and react positively to negative influence.  So if we all keep track of the “why” more often we will stay extremely positive, well balanced, and reap the benefits of successful accomplishment of our everyday goals.