Digital Marketing Consultant

I hate to say this, but if you are not careful, you will get yourself into trouble with Social Media.  McAfee Labs puts out a report each year which tries to forecast what is coming up in the way of trouble...and it ain't pretty.  It concerns both the Internet and the cell phone.  It concerns the hardware and the software.  It concerns Facebook and Twitter.

I will take some of the sections about which you should inform yourself starting with this quote:

“Social media connections will
eventually replace email as the
primary vector for distributing
malicious code and links.”

Further the report says, "The threats landscape has changed considerably in the past year. McAfee Labs has seen marked increases in malware sophistication and targeting as well as a continued increase in the overall volume of daily malware threats. We have also begun to see some very significant changes in the types of threats that aim at Apple iPhones and other mobile devices. But there is good news, too, primarily a significant decrease in the daily amounts of email spam we combat. These ups and downs lead us to wonder how threats are evolving."

Please make sure your family is aware.  Follow along.  I will report more on this tomorrow.

Every word of content placed upon a website is important and should be designed to attract both the visitor and the search engines.   Article marketing is another way in which the power of words can be used to bring profitability to a website.

If you are looking to increase your earning potential, then you cannot overlook the power of words when effectively used in an article marketing campaign.   Well written articles published on the internet frequently are sent from reader to reader gathering attention as it makes the circuit around the Internet users of the world.  Articles that provide quality content with links and reference back to your products and services act as a moving marketing tool making its way from Internet user to Internet user. 

As your article is passed between users and read by many, the user attention also attracts the attention of the search engines.  This is SEO at work for your online business.  Quality articles and website content are effective marketing tools on the web today.

The first step in article marketing is to provide high quality informative content.  After you have provided quality content with the power of the word, it should be published on the Internet and then you should be able to sit back and watch as your products and services become known across the Internet by both potential customers and the search engines.

What do you need to mobilize your website?  The power of the word can take your website to the next level and beyond.  Don't hesitate to read more on our wisdom book.

TOP 5 SOCIAL PORTALS

YouTube: Brief Overview

What is YouTube?

YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

How Does it Work?

Like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, YouTube is free to use. All you need to do is register with the site and create a profile if you want to post videos or comments. The videos you publish - which include tags, a category, and a brief description - can be made public or restricted to members of specified contact lists.

YouTube also allows videos hosted on its site to be embedded in other Web pages, such as blogs or personal websites.

Ideas on Promoting Your Company on YouTube

When it comes using YourTube to promote your company, here are some ideas on videos you can created and upload to YouTube and also your company YouTube channel.

• Existing company webmercials
• Video version of your company blog posts
• Videos on your product / service demos
• Videos of company events
• Videos of customer testimonials

Personal note: Let me invite you to lunch on line: http://www.squidoo.com/FreeLunchForBusiness

I end each day's segment with this link in case you want to research possibilities: http://bit.ly/WSIDigitalMarketing

This is the 20th in a series of articles over several weeks to explain social networking.  Now I am describing each of the five major social portals. Copyright ©2009 by WSI

TOP 5 SOCIAL PORTALS

The Difference Between Profiles and Pages

On Facebook, profiles are meant for people and pages are meant for businesses. However, you are going to need to create a company profile in order to create a company Fan page. The Fan page is where you will want to concentrate your efforts for the following reasons:

• Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators, so that you can have multiple people help manage the account, and if one of your administrators leaves the company, you can still have control over the page.

• Pages are, by default, public and will start ranking in Facebook and public search results.

• Pages are split into different categories (local businesses, brands, musicians) that help you get listed in more relevant search results.

• Personal profiles have friends, which require mutual acceptance, whereas anyone can become a fan of your page without first going through administrator approval.

Facebook Tools and Resources

Facebook Marketing Guides:
• Inside Facebook blog dedicated to providing information on how to market on Facebook - http://www.insidefacebook.com
• Check out the HubSpot Page (http://facebook.hubspot.com) to see some of the ways to create an engaging page, and also become a fan to get updates about future resources

Usability Tools:
• Firefox Add-ons for Facebook - http://facebooktools.blogspot.com/

Research Tools:
• Lexicon - This Facebook tool allows to you to find out what people are saying on Facebook and understands the trends that are happening so you can tailor your information and communications to these topics where applicable.

As usual, I end each day's segment with this link in case you want to research possibilities: http://bit.ly/WSIDigitalMarketing

This is the eighteenth in a series of articles over several weeks to explain social networking.  Now I am describing each of the five major social portals. Copyright ©2009 by WSI

TOP 5 SOCIAL PORTALS

5 Best Practices on Promoting Your Facebook Fan Page

1) Create an Engaging Page

Use applications like the discussion board and YouTube video box to add more interesting and engaging content to your page. Give users a reason to become a fan of your page and engage with you.

2) Leverage the Viral Nature of Facebook (The News Feed)

The added benefit of creating an engaging page is that every time a fan engages with your page – from becoming a fan, to posting a comment, to attending an event – that activity is published to their “news feed”, which is seen by all of their friends on Facebook. When a user first logs into
Facebook, they see a feed of their friends’ recent activity, so your fan’s each and every activity on your page gets shared with a greater network, giving your company more visibility.

3) Draw on Your Existing Network

You most likely already have email subscribers and blog readers – so make sure they know that they can now become a fan of your company on Facebook. Consider emailing your opt-in mailing list, including a link to your page in your email signature, blogging about your Facebook page, and posting a link or badge to your page on your website or blog.

4) Make Your Page Publicly Searchable

By default, your page will be public so that it can get indexed by search engines and give you the opportunity to drive organic search traffic to your page. If you don’t notice your page showing up in searches, make sure you have set it to be publicly indexed and searchable. Go to “Edit Page” and then “Settings” and set your page to be “Published (publicly visible).”

5) Use Facebook Ads for an Extra Push

Facebook ads allow you to advertise a website or something on Facebook, including pages, groups, and events. If you’re familiar with Google AdWords, the system for building and running ads on Facebook is very similar. Facebook has a great resource guide detailing the best practices for advertising on their social portal. So if you are looking to do some advertising for your company on Facebook, be sure to visit http://www.facebook.com/ads/best_practices.php and learn from Facebook directly on how to advertise on their portal.

As usual, I end each day's segment with this link in case you want to research possibilities: http://bit.ly/WSIDigitalMarketing

This is the seventeenth in a series of articles over several weeks to explain social networking.  Now I am describing each of the five major social portals. Copyright ©2009 by WSI

Common mistakes that can result in low search engine rankings

Customers these days don’t just browse or surf the Web anymore – they search.  Search engines allow consumers to search for a desired product or service online by typing in keywords and relying on the search engine to find relevant matches.  As a business owner, you want your website to be found easily by potential customers… so what if it isn’t even being indexed?  

In this three part series of articles, you will learn ten common mistakes that may be standing in the way of your website and the top positions in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.

Hosting Issues – Your server is too slow
There are a lot of websites out there for search engine crawler programs to try to index.  Some experts estimate that there are as many as 4 billion sites live, so search engines don’t have much time to spend trying to index them.  If the host server of your website has a slow Internet connection, the search engine will attempt to index your text, but will often time out which may result in your site not being indexed at all.  You can help avoid being passed over by the search engines by limiting the size of your home page to less than 60k, or simply by switching hosting companies to someone more reliable.  

Hosting Issues - You’re using a free Web space provider
If you’ve decided to host your business’ website with a free hosting provider, you might want to reconsider.  Some search engines will only list a certain number of pages from a single domain, so if you’re sharing that domain with thousands of other people, you can’t rely on your site being indexed at all.  In fact, some search engines leave off free hosted pages altogether, due to the amount of spam sites they receive from these domains.  

Truly though, as a business owner, your website URL should be one that instills confidence and trust in your potential customers that is easy to remember and to type – and free domains simply aren’t that.  Www.genericsites_forbusinesses.com/~canada/heathersflowers/home.htm simply doesn’t look professional, regardless of whether it was indexed on the search engines. It’s worth it to pay for hosting to get a URL that reflects your business AND is seen by search engines.

You have special characters in your URL
Choose your URL carefully.  Most search engines have difficulty indexing pages with special characters in the URL, such as &, $, =, %, and ?.  Many search engines ignore pages with these characters in the URL entirely, so it’s best to avoid them altogether, just in case.  If the search engines skip right past your URL, they will never get a chance to index the keyword-rich, relevant content of your site.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have text hidden in the background colour
In the past, some people have tried to trick search engines by hiding keyword rich text on a page by making the font colour the same as the background colour.  The text would then be hidden from viewers, but would theoretically still be ‘seen’ by search engine spiders, resulting in a high page ranking thanks to the keyword density.  

Unfortunately for those who have used this trick, most search engines have learned to catch it and will penalize your site for trying to “spam the search engine”.  They can even recognize if you’ve made the text a slightly different colour from the background.  

To ensure that your site isn’t blacklisted or penalized with low index rankings, simply don’t try to trick the search engines.  Make sure your website is keyword rich, and do it the right way.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have overused your keywords
It’s important to realize that overusing keywords on your website can be just as detrimental to your search engine rankings as not using keywords at all.  Many search engines avoid being spammed by carefully filtering out sites that overuse the same keywords or phrases repeatedly, either in their meta tags or in the body of the text.  While there is no magic number to determine what is ‘keyword rich’ and what is ‘keyword spam’, a general way to judge is simply to read the text aloud and objectively determine if the text sounds fake or natural.  If it sounds like you’re forcing the keywords into the text, it’s a good idea to cut some out.

Ineffective Optimizing - You’re using the wrong keywords
Sometimes the problem with your keywords is not how often you’ve used them or how you’ve formatted them, it’s specifically which keywords you’re using in your meta tags and in the body of your text.  When optimizing your site, you must be sure you’re using the words that your customers would likely search for – not necessarily the words you would use to describe your company.  When choosing your keywords, try to think like your potential customers and what they would likely type in to find your website.  

If your business is called “Heather’s Blooms” and specializes in bouquets and flower arrangements for weddings, you won’t want to only optimize for your company’s name or terms specific to your corporate identity (for example, tag lines or slogans like “creative floral creations”).  While some potential customers will search for you by name, the majority will be searching with more general keywords, such as: florist, flower arrangements, wedding flowers, wedding bouquets, bridal bouquets, etc.   Also, optimizing with geographic terms is a great idea, since most searchers will look for a business specifically in their area.  

Your site has poor link popularity
Is your site ‘popular’? One of the factors the major search engines look at when determining the quality of a website is its ‘link popularity’ – how many sites link back to yours.  If other credible sites link to yours, it boosts your site’s credibility and testifies to the quality of your site, which then boosts your rankings in search engine listings.

However, having unrelated links on your site and to your site won’t help your ranking.  Links must be related to your business and the content on your site – for example, if you run a flower shop, a link from a gardening center would be a good one, but a link to a drycleaner would not.  There are many reciprocal link programs that you can get your website involved in, which will help your link popularity – just make sure that the websites you’re trading links with are appropriate ones.

Problems with Content – You’re using frames, so search engines can’t see the text on your site
Using frames to design your website can result in low search engine rankings, because many search engines have problems reading the text within frames.  If your site is designed solely with frames, the only text the search engines can read are the title and meta tags – and that’s just not enough text to ensure your site gets indexed.

The best solution is simply to avoid using frames altogether by designing your site using layers instead.  However, if you site is already built using tables, a good idea is to add a detailed description of your site in the <noframes> section of the HTML that the search engines can read.  This won’t guarantee that your site gets indexed, but it will help.

Problems with Content – You don’t have enough text on your site
Search engine spiders read the text content of the site – they can’t actually “see” what your site looks like or how relevant the graphics on it are.  So, if your site relies too heavily on Flash or images, the search engines won’t have enough text to read to index your site appropriately. While flash and images are aesthetically appealing, they can seriously hurt your rankings if you use them in place of actual text content.  If you still decide to use a lot of images on your website, make sure that first, you write descriptions of the images in the <alt> tags, and second, you have other pages on your site that are text-rich so the search engines have something to read.

Time – Sometimes you just have to wait
If you avoided or fixed all of these problems and your site still isn’t found in a search, don’t panic.  Most search engines take up to six months to index a website.  Due to the rapid growth of the Internet, the number of websites launched every day is staggering.  Search engines simply can’t keep up.  So, sometimes, you just have to wait for the search engines to find you.  While you’re waiting, remember to refresh your content, since new, relevant content will appeal to both search engines and visitors alike.

Do any of these mistakes sound familiar to you?  You’re not alone.  The ‘rules’ of search engine indexing are constantly changing, so what may have been acceptable a year ago could get your site blacklisted from the indexes now.  

The best way to ensure that you aren’t doing more harm than good for your site is to enlist the assistance of a professional – someone who is aware of the most current best practices and can help your site be found by your customers.  Contact John Danenbarger today at John@SEOforSite.com. And for a different sort of on-line presentation that you can also have, check out http://www.seoforsite.com/Digital_Marketing.aspx

  The poor business year 2009 is happily over.  We have all returned to work, be it in an office building or our in-home office, and planned for the year to come.  What are your plans for your business?  You have done them, right?  Do you plan on taking your business to the next level of success, surpassing this year’s goals?  This year, make some resolutions that will impact your business positively in 2010.

Resolve to Develop Your Online Presence

If your business has already moved into the online marketplace, congratulations!  You’ve taken a great first step.  Now, it’s time to make sure your online presence is effective.  Many small to medium sized businesses have very basic websites that act as simple online brochures.  For 2010, decide for yourself that an e-brochure just isn’t enough for you, and resolve to move your website forward.  Effective sites today are interactive and tailored to meet the needs of visitors to the site. In the new year, do some research and find out what your customers want out of a website – (e-business functionality? Downloadable white papers? Product photo galleries?) and make sure your website delivers on their needs. 

And, make it fresh!  If you haven’t updated your website in a while, start the year out by adding fresh content to your site.  Your visitors and customers will appreciate it, and so will the search engines.

Resolve to Reach Your Target Market

Can your target market find you in the major search engines?  If you’ve never thought about this or defined keywords to organically optimize your website, it’s definitely time to start. 

If you have optimized your site but are still not easily found, maybe you need to start the new year by researching what it takes.  Have you used words or phrases that your customers would actually search for, or have you used potentially obscure ‘catch phrases’ taken from your company’s mission statement?  Many businesses make this mistake, not recognizing that how they define their business is not necessarily how their customers would search for them.  If you’re unsure of how to select your keywords or what words and phrases are right for your business, there is a wide variety of online tools that can help you (www.searchmarketing.yahoo.com, http://adwords.google.com, and www.webmaster-toolkit.com, just to name a few).

Getting your site found through search engines isn’t the only way you can reach your market in 2010.  Why not take your business a step further by initiating an Internet marketing campaign to really reach out and get your business noticed?  Try email marketing, place an online banner ad, join a reciprocal link program to build traffic to your site, develop a public relations plan and get your press releases published online and in local print media.  All of these tactics can help you make 2010 a benchmark year for your business.  Push yourself and your business beyond what you ever thought possible.

Say ‘farewell’ to 2009, and ‘hello’ to the possibilities that 2010 can hold for you and your business.  Take some time to plan the year to come, and resolve to make 2010 the year your business profits online – a year to remember!

Get some help making your Online New Year’s Resolutions today by contacting your local WSI Consultant at www.SEOforSite.com or call toll-free 866 448-7483.  Start 2010 off on the right track!