How To Maximize SEO And Leads With Social Media Marketing

Marketing in the distributed web today can become very, confusing very fast.

Imagine you have content distributed all over the web and you continue to do this every week (and you should). Facebook pages, HubPages, Twitter, article directories….the list is endless, especially when you add the local and market focused social nets, blogs, and directories. If you did not have a strategy for managing the content and how you want to engage and move customers around your distributed content this can quickly become a giant mess. Even worse, the power of these efforts working together will be very diluted.

What to do? Track and plan…

1. Make sure you have tracking in place so you know where your content is and how well that vehicle is performing. Links within sites you are publishing content to should have tracking code (bit.ly is one of many solutions for this) so you can measure your return on time and money. You can also look at your Google Analytics reports and look at the reference sites report to measure how productive your social media efforts are by channel (e.g Facebook, ezine articles etc).
2. Social media marketing is as much about SEO as it is about increasing your digital footprint to generating leads and traffic. So, planning out anchor text cross linking in advance will really help make sure that you (or whoever you outsourced social media page creation and maintenance to) maximize this opportunity. Remember you want to send “link juice” to your social media authority sites as well as your website. Think of it as a nest that becomes woven together into a solid cross linking strategy.
3. Be consistent with your linking strategy as you publish new content every week to the various sites. Make adjustments to what content topics you focus on as you learn from your tracking.

Putting it all together is where the magic happens for your business. This will separate the companies that throw-up a Facebook page and think they are doing social media marketing from the businesses that are using it as a serious business building tool.

What do you think?

The Difference Between Building Authority And Talking About Yourself

I recently read a great report called Authority Rules by Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger. It’s a well written easy to read piece that outlines 10 rules to building authority for your business and persona.

Building authority in the new distributed web is critical to the success of your Internet marketing efforts. Let’s look at the definition of authority for a minute to better understand why:

au-thor-i-ty noun: [1] A citation (e.g. from a book) used in defense or support; [2] the source from which the citation is drawn; [3] and individual cited or appealed to as an expert.

On the web, the way Google and other search engines see authority is through links from other sites to your site. How influential are those other sites and how many of them link to your site also play a big part in your perceived authority by search engines. So this concept of building authority is very important because while you build authority on the web, other sites will be linking to your site and your business will win search engine rankings (SEO). It becomes self perpetuating…very cool if you can do it.

Here’s the way Brian puts it in his report;

“In order to get the power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior online, you need to become an authority that others cite (link to) in their online content. Which means, of course, you need a content-rich website that demonstrates your authority in the first place.

Your content actually demonstrates your expertise, compared with a website or bio page that claims expertise. This is a crucial distinction, because it truly levels the playing field and allows anyone to come along and build authority that outpaces even recognized and credentialed experts in a particular niche or field.”

The truth about authority perception by humans or machines is what people say about you is much more important than what you way about yourself!

How do you get people talking? Have a point of view and let people know through content you publish on and off of your webiste. Use a blog, articles, guest blogging, commenting, videos, podcasts…the list is endless.

The key is creating content now. Imagine, you have been working your entire adult life building your business and developing a great reputation. Then, some upstart comes into your market and starts publishing content, doing webinars, and suddenly, they are the perceived expert in your niche. Not fun…

We will have a webinar on this shortly….stay tuned.

Secret Local Business SEO Strategy Using Google Maps

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Google Maps is a great service, right up there with its competitors at Yahoo!®, Mapquest®  and others. However, one extra twist that’s going on at Google is that you can include your business address & information, and it gets integrated into the Google Maps search results via a tab near the top of the page.

Even more important, with the move to Universal Search, Google started integrating other types of search queries on their main web search, including local search results. The local listings are being driven by companies listed in maps.google.com…this was most commonly referred to as the 10-pack or 10-box. But here’s an update, as of November 2009, Google has removed 3 of the 10 box listings to make local search even more competitive – the 10- box is now the 7-box!  Here’s an example of a search for “Florists in Reston Va”

We’re going to briefly cover how to get your business website listed in Google Local Maps. But first I want to tell you why this is very important if you run a local business.

Very recently, and I mean very…as in April of 2009 Google started displaying local search results for NON-local search queries! So, knowing how to work Google local maps is very important to your local business ranking.

It’s most likely that these non-local search queries are pulling map results based on the searcher’s IP address. Example being if I’m looking for ‘florists’ on Google I’ll likely get a local search “7-box” listing. From an organic SEO marketers perspective this is not great news since it’s pushing their listings potentially off of page one (listed BELOW the 7- box)…however for a savvy SEO/SEM marketers, they’d have already taken advantage of this and be in the 7-box listing.

Ok, so now you’re ready to begin. You want to go to http://maps.google.com and then click on the link shown below (Put your business on Google Maps)…

If you don’t have a Google account you will need to sign up for one. Once you have a Google account you can then click the Add New Account button and then follow the steps.

For the Company/Organization section it is *VERY* useful to ensure you’re focused on your geo- targeted keyword phrase. Also keep this in mind when filling out the Description box. Make sure you work-in, naturally of course, the keyword phrases/terms you want to be pulled up for when someone does a search. This is one of the major criteria for getting pulled into the Local 7-box on Google queries.

One other thing to note. If you have a consulting or other type of service business, make sure to put in your local number as it may encourage potential customers to call. If you do not have a local number consider getting Vonage or Skype and requesting one. Do NOT use an 800 numbers as Google prefers you have a local number.

It’s also a good idea to have pictures, logos and even video if possible in your listing so that you take advantage of all the ways you can reach potential customers and differentiate your business.

One last thought, make sure to test the keywords you want to use to see if the Google 7 box appears for them before finalizing your keyword choices. You will have a better chance of appearing in the 7-box if your keywords already trigger the 7-box to show up.

Now go do it!

Business Marketing: Where Content is King and Collaboration is Key

Business marketing using social media networking places companies at a distinct advantage over competition. How’s that? Well, this marketing approach wastes no time and money in getting right to the heart of what customers want. Answers to questions they have in places like blogs, forums, search engines and product review sites.

Yes, you read right. Free marketing by answering the questions your target customers have in the places they like to hang out in online. They are discussing and commenting on their problems and possible solutions in niche communities all over the web. You have an incredible opportunity to be the company or person that is there when they need you most.

Where Content is King …

The win-win marketing connection is—real-life focus group activity on a massive global scale that reveals highly targeted information consumers are looking for. The goal is to become the trusted source of information. This is much more powerful than advertising.

The key is to determine what SEO keywords and phrases to use for your blog posts, articles, videos and other media you distribute in these social community sites.

Next, determine how to write your articles so they answer issues people are looking to solve and also satisfy shopping needs they’re trying to fill.

… and Collaboration is Key

Here’s how you hang out, Internet-style:

• Join social-site sub-groups that reflect your interests

• Chime in with good ideas, comment with your opinion, provide a sound analysis of the problem situation or simply organize disparate info so it becomes coherent by providing a context for further discussion by group members.

• Or, ask outright, “Who’s doing social marketing? I am, and I’m looking to interview anyone who’s interested for my blog.”

I tried out my strategy. Lo and behold, Michael Licamele, VP Marketing for TotalMortgage.com responded. We got to chatting. The upshot? We’re going to team up and write a book on how social media is a great business marketing tool for real estate!

My partnering with Michael underscores an important cog in online marketing—collaboration is key. Collaboration makes it all work out in a highly targeted and interconnected global arena. Why? Because generating business leads is all about building good relationships.

There’s lots more business marketing tools for starting an online marketing company. You never know what you’ll discover, until you start trying different tactics.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to http://www.gennextmedia.com today.

Business Marketing: Optimizing For Humans And Machines

Marketing in the “new normal” means optimizing your messaging for both humans and machines.  That’s right, you heard me right.  Before you call out the Terminators let me explain.

Marketing in the distributed web provides a much larger footprint to find and engage  potential customers.  The other big benefit is that every piece of content has the opportunity to be indexed by the search engines. So you need to keep both of these objectives in mind as you write and distribute content.

Here are four tips to keep your distributed web social media campaign looking good to humans and search engine machines so you achieve your business objectives:

1. Your number one objective is to convert your customers, so when in doubt, go with the customer focused copy or headline.

2. Do your research upfront and identify (and answer) the most burning questions your target customers have.  This will keep  communication on target for both search engines and target customers.

3. Focus on a few keywords or phrases that your target customers are searching for, and thread those through your distributed campaign. Everything should line up including headlines, descriptions, Web 2.0 page headings and copy in the body of your articles or other text.

4. Use keywords as anchor text for links out, and also use the same anchor text to cross link your various distributed content.

So, we don’t need John Conner to save us from the machines.  We just need a good keyword strategy and consistency in how we use them.

Accidental SEO:The Laws Of Physics

That’s right search engine optimization is like one of the basic laws of physics.  For every action their is an equal and opposite reaction.  Well, in the case of SEO it may not always be equal, but something is going to happen if you just make some basic changes to what you are doing on your website.

A CEO I work with mentioned yesterday that they changed their website last summer.  Nothing special or very strategic, just an update.  They increased their leads (and share of search engine results) over 600%! Not bad for a website re-launch sans consultants or strategy.

Now, we are not suggesting you can just throw a dart against the board and expect these kind of results.  The point is sometimes we get so confused by all the strategy and latest techniques that we don’t do anything. With the right content management system, and a creative staff, most businesses should be in a position to test lots of new things frequently and very inexpensively.  Quick cycles of implement, test, learn rinse and repeat.

Key guideposts for this kind of implementation:

• Have a keyword strategy set that you are confident will get you results (traffic and conversion) if you win.  Nothing is worse that aiming at the wrong goal and finding out after you win.
• Test one thing at a time so you isolate variables and know when something is really working. Also know what you are testing…what is the outcome (leads, sales, downloads) you are looking for?
• Record everything you do.  Make sure you keep a record of every change you make, with date and results.  This will help you continue to build on your quick cycles and not go back and repeat implementations that did not work.

These same rules apply for social media implementation.  SEO and social media are related and together a very powerful combination.

Now go give it a try!

7 Step SEO Action Plan For The Distributed Social Web

Success in the new “distributed web” is directly related to the concepts and benefits of SEO.  Social media marketing provides a controllable method of getting authoritative external links both directly and indirectly.  You get links directly by distributing and publishing valuable content(with anchor text links to your site) across various web 2.0 sites and content directories. Indirect linking benefits are derived from the incremental clout that you derive from you larger footprint on the web as a result of content distribution.  Bloggers and non-competitive websites would see huge benefits from getting reciprocal links from your expanded presence on the web.

Many “SEO Experts” make the task of search engine optimization appear to be more complicated that it really is.  Here is a 7 step action plan that will put you on top, particularly when implemented in the context of a social media marketing strategy.

1. Decide on the one search phrase you want your page to rank for.  It is possible to rank the same page for several searches, but by focusing your efforts on a single search term, you increase the power of each of your links.

2. Title your page with a variation of the phrase you want it to rank for. Your page title will be displayed prominently in the search results, so add additional descriptive words that will make humans want to visit your page.

3. Create a headline on your page that confirms the promise of your title.

4. Write your page content primarily for humans, but do try to use your complete search phrases and the separate works in your phrases into the text.  This will help both humans and search engines to understand what your page is about.

5. Create links to your page using link text that contains variations of your search phrase.  Natural places for these will be in the navigation menu for your site, footer links at the bottom of your pages and links within the text of your content.

6. Get external links to your pages that also use variations of your search phrases. This will help not only your rankings, but will also garner visitors from these other sites.

7. Rinse and Repeat!  No site is ever “done”— only made incrementally “better”.  So, continue creating content, linking it together and getting links from other sites.