Website Optimisation Headlines

Steve Chicken Little Ballmer

by Sage Lewis

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has some pretty extreme views for the business world. I think he might be looking in the mirror too closely when he talks about the business world as a whole.

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Give Bing Some Money Love

by Sage Lewis

Search Engine Roundtable gave some interesting advice on upping your budget over at Bing/Adcenter.

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Sparking Viral Spread - Make it Easy For Them

by Jennifer Laycock

With more and more people signing on to social sites like Twitter and Facebook, companies are working overtime to figure out how to make the companies, products and offerings go viral. While I've written quite a few article about the theories behind preparing a campaign that's likely to go viral, the truth is that some of the most effective viral campaigns are also the simplest. Sometimes it's less about creating a great idea and more about enabling the spread.

I saw the perfect example of this earlier today while hunting for a pair of sandals. I was looking for a pair of slip-on Croc sandals to replace a pair that broke last week. Since I'm going camping with friends this weekend, I wanted to make sure I had replacements before we head out on Thursday. There aren't any local stores here in Canton that sell this style of Crocs, so I headed to Zappos, knowing I'd get fast, free shipping. Unfortunately, Zappos doesn't carry Crocs.

That sent me to the Crocs site, which had my shoe in stock, but charges a hefty fee for shipping. That's when a Google search turned up Shoebuy.com. The site advertising free UPS ground shipping both ways, plus they carried the Crocs I was looking for. On top of that, they were offering $20 off a $50 purchase if I used PayPal. That alone would have been enough to make me mention the site to at least a couple of friends. After all, giving people a great deal is a key way to get them to talk about you.

In fact, I pretty much expected to see the standard "send a discount to friends" option pop up after I checked out. I wasn't disappointed. But the folks at Shoebuy.com score in the viral realm by taking it a step further.

Give the Consumer Control

If you look up in the top right corner of the checkout page, you'll see the discount code for friends. Clicking on that discount shows where they take things a step further and do them right. They not only offer me a discount for my friends, they give me the ability to share that discount in any way I'd like.

If you look closely at that screen shot, you'll notice the standard "email to friend" form. The nice thing is the line of options along the top of the window allowing me to share it via several other social media outlets. As a woman, I love this. I'm not keen on giving the email addresses of my friends to a random company. (I'm more than happy to TELL my friends about a company, but I don't like handing those email addresses over.)

The folks at Shoebuy.com give the power of the message to me. No email? No problem. I clicked over to the Facebook icon and filled out the form to share it with my Facebook friends.

A few seconds later, their coupon and my personal endorsement broadcast to my list of Facebook friends.

I clicked through the list, looking at the options and ended up shooting the link and a quick plug out to my Twitterverse as well. Making a perfect example of how this type of enabling of your customer can take word of mouth or viral marketing to a whole new level. Had the Shoebuy.com demanded email addresses for me to give friends the discount, I likely would have given them just three or four addresses. My best friend, my mom and maybe one or two others. But with these options...it got broadcast to a few hundred Facebook friends and to a few thousand Twitter contacts.

Heck, they even gave me a simple "embed" option complete with code, so I'll go ahead and share it with all your Search Engine Guide readers as well.

Put More into Enabling than Inspiring

I watch companies put tons of time and creative energy into coming up with a brilliantly catchy video, or an enticing blog pitch. Marketers preach viral like it's the key to free advertising, but we try to convince business owners they have to create the next big thing to capture a viral success. While that's one way to go about it, most companies will see a dramatic improvement if they just start with something as simple as creating a really great social media friendly "send to friend" option. Give people a simple and easy message to spread, then give them the tools to spread it. You might be surprised at how far it takes you.

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How To Claim Your Google Maps Listing

by Miriam Ellis

A few day ago, a business owner told me about a rather complex problem with his Google Maps business listing and asked me what to do about it. My explanation was pretty long, starting with the need to claim his listing and ending with a warning that fixing errors in Google Maps isn't always simple.

It took several paragraphs of detailed text to cover what I felt the business owner needed to do and he came back to me with a, "That's great, but how do I claim my listing?" Sometimes, I get ahead of myself when I'm answering questions and in this case, I forgot for a moment that such a huge number of the business listings that make up Google's local index are still unclaimed. Let's get down to basics with this article. If you've been mystified by the verification process, read on!

Why Do You Need To Claim Your Google Maps Listing?

Important Reason #1 - Just as you keep careful tabs on the content you have published on your website about your business, you need to be in control of what content Google is publishing about your business. You may discover that Google has errors or blank spots in their data about you. The way for you to correct this is to let Google know you own the business, which I'll describe how to do, so that you can officially edit the content of your business listing. Claiming your listing gives you improved control over how you are being represented by Google.

Important Reason #2 - Just like the rest of the web, Google's local index is plagued with spammers and crooks. Unclaimed business listings are at risk of competitive hijacking. If you haven't claimed your business listing, malicious parties can step in and alter its content for their own benefit - not yours. This has been an acute problem in Google Maps and your best defense is to lock down your listing by claiming it.

How To Claim Your Google Maps Listing

Step one is to go to Google Maps and do a search for your business. Let's imagine we own K-Mart in San Mateo, California. So, we do a search for k-mart san mateo ca. Unless your business is brand new, chances are it will have been indexed by Google already. So, all we have to do is click the More info link next to the business title, as shown:

This brings up the big popup to the right of the business listing. Click the Edit link, as shown:

This will bring up a second popup, this time a smaller one. In this popup, we see the question, Are you the owner? Claim your business:

Click that link and you will be taken to Google's Local Business Center login page. If you already have a Google account of some kind, such as for gmail or Adwords, you can use your pre-existent login information to get into the Local Business Center. If you do not already have a Google account of some kind, you will need to create one at this point. Once you have logged in, you will be shown the business you want to claim.

Look carefully at all of the data in the listing! Are the address and phone number correct? Are the categories the business is listed in accurate? Are there additional details you could include, such as hours of operation, languages spoken or forms of payment accepted? Make sure the description of your business is as thorough and accurate as possible.

Once you have edited the data so that it is the best possible representation of your business, the Local Business Center asks you whether you would like to verify your changes to the listing by either phone or postcard. A phone call is the fastest way to go, but sometimes, the phone call doesn't work because of weaknesses in Google's phone system and you have to select the postcard route. In this case, Google will send you a small postcard containing a pin number that you need to phone in with when you receive it.

And that's how you claim your Google Local Business Center listing.

Despite the fact that Google has given major prominence to their local search results in the Universal SERPs, they have done very little to alert business owners to the need to verify ownership of the listings. No one, that I know of, has calculated what percentage of the listings in Google's local index are unclaimed, but pretty much everyone agrees the number is staggering. So, don't feel badly if you didn't realize you needed to take control of your listing. You've got the information you need to do it now.

Once you've got this initial, and utterly vital, task completed, you can work towards starting to win reviews from your happy customers and encourage citations from relevant websites. But that's a subject for another post!

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Searching for profits more than answers

by Mike Moran

Everyone is staring hard at Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, and I mostly like what I see, with one exception. I've written before about the search engine conflict of interest between highlighting their own properties and providing the truly best answer. In the quest for ever more cash, search engines are presenting results that point to their own pages. What does that mean to the searcher and to the search marketer?

If you don't know what I am talking about, take a look at search results from any major search engine today. They often highlight Web properties owned by their parent company. Google shows its YouTube videos, Yahoo shows its Flickr photos, Ask.com shows its CitySearch results, each of which shows more of their own advertising. Yahoo's Tim Mayer has been refreshingly open about their goal: to keep searchers on their results pages for as long as possible.

Microsoft didn't start this trend, but Bing is certainly part of it. From the few searches that I did in health care, it seems like Bing is being a bit more aggressive in highlighting its own properties. Search for "arthritis" and see what you get. Here's the top result as of today:

If you look closely, you can see that this is not the average search result--it's not the #1 result on merit. It's the top result because Microsoft has a deal with the Mayo Clinic to provide information on health conditions. I don't know which way the money flows, if at all, but this is a different way to get the top result than we've seen in the past. The other search engines favor their own properties but don't automatically slam them to the top of the list.

I'm not sure whether this is worse than what the other search engines do or not. Bing makes this search result look different than regular organic results, much the way Google pioneered distinguishing paid search results when the industry went through another major ethical dilemma. The other search engines often make their own properties blend in with the ones that really got their on merit.

This is not to say that those results are never there based on merit. Nor does it say that this is necessarily a bad experience for the searcher. Obviously, if searchers didn't click on these results, the technique would not work. And, taken to an extreme, if searchers begin to doubt the honesty of the results, a search engine is toast.

But the truth is that for many searches, such as "arthritis," the Mayo Clinic information doesn't seem any better or worse than say, the information from WebMD. But the WebMD information is far down the page for Bing, while it is near the top in Google.

Some of this is just the difference between how search rankings work across engines, but there's a larger point here. The truth is that if the Mayo Clinic information is featured, searchers are less likely to need the WebMD version, which is bad news for WebMD, but also for anyone whose search marketing strategy is based on content. Ask yourself what you'd do if you were WebMD. Wouldn't you be on the phone with Google, Yahoo!, and dozens of other search engines around the world to get your own deal like the one May has with Bing? It becomes an arms race where only the big and the connected get the special treatment.

If you think this affects only large businesses, think again. The more obscure the search keyword, the more likely that a small business, such as a local medical clinic, has prepared string helpful content that can win the battle of the search results. I searched for "osteomyelitis," a rare bone disease, and found the Cleveland Clinic rated highly by both Google and Bing. Because it is such a rare disease, there was no Mayo Clinic link for that keyword in Bing. But does anyone think that day won't be coming?

And don't breathe a sigh of relief if you're in a business other than health care. You can already see signs of this stuff in travel and shopping searches. It's likely that search engines are just working their way down the long tail, doing the most lucrative keywords first.

The simple fact is that all the search engines are looking to improve revenue and they are no longer going to be satisfied with merely selling ads for the searches. Now they want to sell ads for the results pages you click on, too. And that strategy favors large information providers, not small businesses. Where search was once one of the few forms of marketing where small businesses had a level playing field against large ones, I think that each day the field is tilting a bit more.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. There's only more to come.

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Tips for Social Media Success - A Panel Discussion

by David Carberry

A few weeks ago I attended the Maryland Chamber of Commerce session on Social Media and Online Marketing with guest host Mario Armstrong from XM radio. The panel consisted of Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory, Matt Goddard, CEO of r2integrated and Leah Messina, CEO of Sinuate Media.

The panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new information.

Communities

How are your customers currently buying items or services? Social media outlets such as Twitter don't work for everyone or every business. Let's take a business such as a local plumber or heating specialist. When do you need a plumber? Typically when something is wrong! Most people will more than likely pick up a phone book or do an online directory search. It's doubtful that anyone will follow a plumber's business on Twitter. On the other hand, if you are looking for a recommendation for a plumber, Twitter or Facebook might be the perfect place for you. According to Goddard, "Social media is really about reducing a risk by reaching out to like-minded peers. It's our way of saying, how do I not make a bad decision?" We go get advice and it's sitting inside these communities, we are getting the information when the conversation is happening and it's all about reducing the risk. The social tools that exist are about streamlining the process.

LinkedIn.com has been around longer than Twitter and it isn't getting as much hype. LinkedIn is a risk reduction and helps members make better decisions on how to build relationships. It's Quality over Quantity. Your business should be tied to your area of expertise, local community or industry specialty. If you are a local business in a specific trade industry try to focus on what you do and important topics that are relevant.

The Clutter

There's really no need to tweet about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you just ate. According to Cangialosi , "THERE'S A LOT OF A LOT! " There is no way we are paying attention to everything you have written. There is so much white noise that it is crucial for businesses to stay focused. Try to use important keywords or tags that can be searched for easily.

Blue Sky Factory leverages social media technology by using Hubspot. The Hubspot tool looks at web analytics and takes all the keywords you want to optimize and ranks the conversations that are really important. Blue Sky's goal is to engage the community, cut through the clutter, and sharpen the focus.

Tools and Tracking

Messina recommended several different tools which keep a watchful eye on what people are saying about your product or who might be interested.
Search.twitter.com - Twitter's basic search tool
Google alerts - a great way to have information pushed instead of searching with the other tools
icerocket.com - a social and search tool
radian6 - a monitoring source for your brand across the web
Chi.mp - helps steam line across multiple accounts
Dragon Search - social media calculator

One tool that was not mentioned was Twitter Analyzer, which is a tool that is fun to explore.

Rule of Thumb to Execute Social Media

Mario's last question to the panel was, "How much time do you have for all of your social responsibilities? We all know that owning a dog can be free, but don't you have to nurture it?"

Leah recommends before you update your Twitter account to spend 2 hours researching and compile a list of daily social media updates. Update once in the morning and at the end of the day. Leah typically puts aside 1 hour a day for updates.

Greg doesn't use Twitter to update his Facebook account. The Twitter stream is primarily used for business and he separates his personal account from corporate account. He does his tweets in spurts. He recommends that your conversations grow into one on one dialog. You should pick and choose from one platform to another because it is not relevant between the two socials. Try not to use hash marks in your Facebook account - it may be Greek to many of your friends.

Final Words

Matt states, "The Internet is a buying engine - not a selling engine. You have to be a part of the buying process." You can't force the buying moment. Experiment with the tools available to you and evaluate the outcome.

Leah - "When you reach out you can tease out the most important people that are the influencers. They can help you be a bridge to the community. Be genuine and use it methodically."

Greg - "The influencer in today's social world has a very wide footprint so you need to be very authentic, transparent and methodical." The long term strategy for social messaging is making sure your messaging is exact. What's the right story to tell your audience; is it compelling and why?

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FREE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION ANALYSIS

Go Blog Yourself Step 6: Keep Them Interested

by Stoney deGeyter

Read this post with images enabled.

Having a good headline, a good article and even a good-looking site isn't always enough to maintain an audience. To keep people coming back to your blog day after day you have to go through the extra effort to keep your visitors interested in your content.

Think of your blog as a TV show. How many shows start out strong but can't maintain the interest as time passes? I remember years ago watching the show Alias. It quickly became one of my favorite shows that I looked forward to watching each week. Then somewhere around mid second season it jumped the shark. (The post-Superbowl episode when SD-6 was brought down and the sexual tension between the two main characters... oh, never mind. Yes, I'm still holding a grudge!) Alias just as quickly became one of the many shows that I threw away.

While you don't need to have sexual tension in your blog content (or an evil mastermind, for that matter) to keep people interested, you do need to have an element of anticipation. Your readers should want to come back and read what you have to say next. But unlike a TV show, the anticipation of each "episode" of your blog needs to provide a release, leaving the reader completely fulfilled.

Grab Attention

You need to open your blog with something that draws the reader in. When writing with search engines in mind this can often be a bit tricky. Stories often make the most compelling openings but they often lack the keywords that your audience needs in order to accept the post as valuable. If the story is short, it will grab the reader's attention and quickly lead them into the "lesson" of the content.

You don't have to have keywords in the opening paragraph for the search engines, but it can be an important part of gaining and maintaining long-term rankings. If you can integrate the keywords into the opening story then you've got the best of both worlds.

Story isn't the only way to create a compelling opening. Sometimes getting right to the meat works best. Telling the reader the conclusion before you even tell them how you got there can get them invested into leaning how you came to that conclusion.

I suggest you pick up a few books or read some other blogs posts that address this topic specifically. You can write a compelling opening any number of ways, you just need to find what works best for you, your audience, and for each particular blog post.

Appeal to Needs

Once you have the reader interested in whatever you have to say, you need to keep them moving through the content, consistently delivering information that keeps them intrigued. Unless your blog is for entertainment purposes, readers want to feel as if they have learned something. Heck, even entertainment blogs educate their readers in some way or another. But each reader comes to your site with a basic desire. It's your job to meet that desire.

With business blogs there are three things you need to do. 1) Expose the need, 2) State the solution and 3) Provide the benefits.

Expose the need: What is it you want your readers to walk away knowing after having read your post? Make sure you expose the need in language they understand using concepts and illustrations that are familiar to them.

State the solution: Next, provide a solution to that need. The solution must be clearly stated and accurately explained. What must the reader to to achieve X results? What steps must they take? What products must they buy? What services must they engage in? These are all solution oriented questions that can be answered for your readers.

Provide the benefits: Finally, the benefits of each solution bust be clearly outlined. There is no sense in showing someone what they need, and how to get it if they are not fully aware of the benefits of doing so. The benefit is the final selling point that tells the reader that they truly do need what you are offering and that you have the right solution for them.

Ask Questions

Just as I did two paragraphs above, ask your readers questions. Questions get them thinking about answers and then allows you to insert your knowledge and expertise in providing an answer. An answer for an unasked question is often far less potent as an answer to a question that the reader is already contemplating... even if it's a question you set them up with.

Not every question needs an answer. Some questions are designed to get the reader to move beyond what you can tell them and to think in terms of their own situation. Ultimately, if you can help your readers think for themselves this makes what you have to say even more valuable.

Inform

Finally, you want to make sure that each blog post serves its ultimate purpose and adequately informs your readers. They must walk away feeling as if their time reading your blog post was well spent. Failure to inform leaves your readers wanting. And unlike a TV show, and with the exception of the occasional multi-part series, leaving readers wanting does not bring them back for the next episode.

Keeping your readers interested in your content really boils down to creating good content that your readers find, well, interesting. If you keep your readers interested they'll keep coming for more.

Other posts in the "Go Blog Yourself" series
* Introduction: Writing Your Blog Post with Pen in Hand and SEO in Mind
* Step 1: Know Who's Looking
* Step 2: Know What They Want to See
* Step 3: Have a Good Pick-Up Line
* Step 4: Reveal the Goods
* Step 5: Be Easy On The Eyes
* Step 6: Keep Them Interested

Check out our small business news site.

Matt Cutts on Directory/Paid Links

by Manoj Jasra

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Just what constitutes a spam blog comment?

by Mike Moran

I post something on my Biznology blog each day, and we've got a lot of subscribers so we get a fair number of comments. And I check each and every comment before it is posted, so that I'm not littering the blog with spam comments. But I am finding myself challenged by deciding just what is and is not spam. If you run a blog, I wonder if this has ever happened to you, too.

For those of you that are unaware, search spammers love to target unsuspecting blogs with comments that link back to their sites to try to improve their search rankings. So blogging software has implemented the same kind of anti-spam techniques that e-mail programs have, with the same limited success.

Some blogs use captchas or challenge questions (mine goes that route) to reduce the success of automated spamming software. Some bloggers have implemented a "nofollow" attribute on their comment links to eliminate the benefit of links, but I think that's unfair to the legitimate commenters who deserve the links, so I haven't done that.

But even with what I've done, I still get lots of questionable comments for my approval. Let me show you a smattering of them. These are all real comments that I had to decide what to do with. I'm finding it harder and harder to know what to do with some of them.

What do you do if someone just types, "nice post"? I've decided that it is probably automated spam and I mark it so. So if a few of you liked one of our posts and I made you a spammer, I'm sorry. Next time, say something substantive.

I also mark it spam if someone enters a blatant product pitch with uncertain relevance to the post, such as "if you want to buy the runescape gold or runescape money I think we certainly can satisfy your request.Your choice is our service." (I removed the links before displaying the comment here.)

But a low-key pitch that is on-topic I usually let go, such as this comment on a post about hosting blogs with a link to a Web development company: "Great article post...as of this time.. there are many hosting companies that can choose from. and if you wish to have it free...there are some of them offer a free hosting services." Would you have had a different opinion if that same comment had a link to a hosting company? Or if it had a link inside the comment as well as from the name? Do you just edit out the links and post the comment?

What if the comment is nasty and clueless but somewhat on topic? Here is a comment I got on a post about PR people spamming journalists: "People on the internet do. Journalists in the vast majority are nothing more than worthless distractions to readers, and useful propagandists to whoever feeds them their information." I decided to publish this one, but maybe it is just a clever ranting automated spammer.

If a comment is stupid, short, or dumb, that doesn't make it spam, does it? Now I know that it might be a spammer doing those things, but I am concerned that I might be insulting someone by not publishing their response, and even more concerned that I am tarring them as a spammer unfairly by pressing that spam button.

Maybe I am being too black and white about this, because I tend to either mark comments as spam or publish them. Perhaps I should simply ignore some comments and not publish them, without marking them as spam. It's a middle ground that will make my decision making even more complex, however—three choices instead of two—so I've shied away in the interest of time management.

I wondered if even writing this article is an invitation to spammers to send me short inane comments because I might publish them.

I'd like to hear from you. What do you bloggers do with these kinds of comment decisions? Am I being too lenient? Too strict? I don't want to help spammers but I certainly don't want to punish my loyal readers unfairly. Suggestions are very welcome.

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Go Blog Yourself Step 5: Be Easy On The Eyes

by Stoney deGeyter

It's just a fact of life, good looking people get more attention. We walk through the checkout line in the grocery store and see half a dozen magazines filled with beautiful faces on top of beautiful bodies. A good looking woman walking through the mall is bound to turn a few heads. Commercials are filled with models that pass the schwing test. (Yes, I pulled out my 80's innuendo reference manual for that!)

Our love of beauty isn't just focused on the human body. We love well manicured lawns, beautiful sunsets, and gorgeous building architecture. Some of us even go to restaurants where the food is pretty. Face it, we are very visual people.

It strikes me as odd, that as much stock as we place in things that are wonderful to look at, we often don't take as much care with our blogs. I understand that it's not easy putting together a website that looks good. It takes effort, skill and often a good amount of money. So instead of doing what needs to be done we skimp. Blogs, on the other hand are far easier, it's just a matter of finding a good theme and running with it. But for whatever reason, that often doesn't happen.

We dress appropriately for our jobs but our blogs are going to work everyday in beat-up sweat pants and unkempt hair. It may not be an ugly site, but it certainly ain't much to look at.

This brings me to a humorous aside. Over the years I've talked to dozens of people who run crappy looking websites but they refuse to make any type of aesthetic changes to them. Why? Because they continue to get the rare compliment on how beautiful their site is. I've had this syndrome myself and it can be quite comical. All it takes is a few compliments from people who don't know any better (why trust the experts who do) and it's clear that the world agrees your site is the web equivalent of Halle Berry in the movie Swordfish.

Believe me, it's not.

I looked.

Twice.

Looking good and having site appeal

Having a good looking blog starts with having a good looking website design. It's amazing how easy it is to throw up a blog. But putting one together that is visually appealing to your audience is often another matter all together. There's more to a website or a blog than a header, side navigation, and a few images.

What looks good varies from industry to industry so don't think this is all about being "pretty". You want to look good for the audience you are trying to reach. Pink and flowery doesn't work with a rugged outdoors blog. Hard-hats and burly men won't work on a blog about women's health. Well, maybe it does a bit, I don't know.

The point is, you have to make your blog appealing to the audience it is intended for. You won't have credibility selling scientific papers with images of half-naked models used in your each of your posts. Of course you might sell more if you include the pictures in the papers, but still, your credibility will be shot, and you'll annoy your audience for having to explain to their wives that they only buy it for the articles.

Once you've got a good looking blog, there is a usability aspect that needs to work as well. The navigation, headings, content, visuals and images all need to work together to complete the package.

Nobody get's excited about seeing paragraph upon paragraph of blog content. Or for that matter too many pictures with little textual value. There is a balance somewhere in between. Your text can be made more visually appealing by formatting your heading tags to stand out and get read. Use pictures to provide visuals to your words. If you're are pimping your products or services use pictures to give your content meaning, clarity and further understanding of what you are selling.

Too much of any one thing is still too much. Your blog needs to be balanced. Visuals need content and content needs visuals. And there is no reason that either the content or visuals should not be visually appealing to the site visitor.

Your readers will come to your blog for the content. But if it's not presented in a visually appealing way there will be some credibility loss. This is especially true if your blog is tied to your business website. Build a decent blog design that fits your target audience and appeals visually to them for the type of information they are coming back to read. When you make it easy on the eyes, you make it something that people will continue to come back for.

Other posts in the "Go Blog Yourself" series
* Introduction: Writing Your Blog Post with Pen in Hand and SEO in Mind
* Step 1: Know Who's Looking
* Step 2: Know What They Want to See
* Step 3: Have a Good Pick-Up Line
* Step 4: Reveal the Goods
* Step 5: Be Easy On The Eyes
* Step 6: Keep Them Interested

Check out our small business news site.

PageRank Sculpting and What You Need To Know

by Sage Lewis

PageRank Sculpting is now the hottest topic on the SEO landscape. Learn what it is and how the changes in this area will effect you.

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Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Key Phrase Research

by Sage Lewis

Microsoft's Key Phrase Research tool is now officially in beta. It's a really powerful tool and offers a ton of great information. I highly recommend you check it out!

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FREE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION ANALYSIS

What Gus Is Teaching Me About Marketing

by Eric Brown

This storyline isn't new. Jennifer has blogged about what her kids taught her about SEO, what her kids taught her about blogging, and what her kids taught her about Social Media. A friend in the apartment business just blogged about Bass Fishing and Leasing Apartments.  As you can tell Gus is a dog, a mostly wonderful Bull Terrier. Gus is a year and a half old and is my first dog of my own. Gus goes to the office regularly, and has learned to regularly tweet on his own twitter account @Gus_Urbane. He has created quite a stir from time to time.

ENGAGE AND EMOTION
We have all heard about the Four P's of Marketing, but what about the two E's, Emotion and Engagement, are you fully utilizing them? Gus, like most pets really knows how to evoke our emotions.  In our small business, a boutique property management business, we decided to go after the pet market, and accept pets. Lots of places accept pets, but with weight and breed restrictions, and a hefty pet deposit. We decided to keep it simple; We Love Pets at Urbane, no fees and no breed restrictions.  The theory was this, If we have a good resident, they likely have a good pet. If we have a bad resident, they likely have a bad pet. We worked really hard on an enhanced resident screening system and attracting great residents, which has also improved collections. A nice side benefit to accepting pets!

But the success of this program isn't about accepting pets, It is about "Urbane Loves Pets" which has successfully evoked prospects and residents emotion. Consequently, we own the local pet market. If you are going after sliver markets, go with vengeance and own them.

MAKE IT A PLAYFUL EXPERIENCE
Gus is a pretty happy guy, tail always wagging. He just wants to play, play and play. He is  Fun Boy. With that, we have lightened up the entire leasing process. Apartment hunting is not a walk in the park. We have a Centralized Leasing Center, known as Urbane Underground that is anything but typical. There are farm watering troughs with tropical plants in them. A forty-five foot long bamboo planter. Crazy music playing. A Tropical bird hanging out. A conference table that hangs from the ceiling with no legs. Anything but typical. Point is, it is very whimsical and fun. Lighten up your approach, have some fun along the way.  Life is Short. 

EVERYONE LOVES TREATS
Anyone who has pets know they love treats. Gus is no different, he lives for treats. We have developed a pretty interesting program and have created Urbane VIP cards. They resemble a credit card and enable the holder to cash in on several discounts locally. During the tour, we go through the program, explain the benefits and send them off with an Urbane VIP Card. I am pretty sure our competitors aren't forking over any treats. It is a great way to differentiate, and is funded by the local commerce.  

MAKE ME LAUGH
Gus loves to make me laugh, and he does a great job of that. Our marketing at Urbane is anything but typical or traditional.  We set up movies that reverse play against a backdrop that show silhouettes of girls dancing together, guys dancing together and a variety of other wacky stuff. We can set up the movie in minutes, and it comes on at dark and shuts off at 2;00 AM.

Cars and people literally stop in the street and stare. They laugh, and make lots of comments about Urbane, including some who think that two guys dancing together is too provocative. We like that. Is your marketing material causing your prospects to talk about you, or does it end up in the trash because it is outdated old and stale? BTW, the movie we made cost us nothing to make, the projector is reused over and over.

LETS CONNECT
Perhaps the most significant thing I have learned from Gus is that he loves to connect with people, and so do your customers.  Our blog, The Urbane Life  has caused lots of folks to connect with hip and cool local business, blathering and goings on and just a general give back to the community. But how can you do those kind of things one may ask, what is the pay back. Try this on, page one Google, number one ranking for Apartments Royal Oak, one of the most used search's. Where does your Small Business fare with a Google Ranking. Even more, what kind of web traffic does your community drive? We will have over 14,0000 visitors this month. We only have 360 units. I think the blog is a great payoff don't you?

You too can try these things. They aren't hard, and they are not expensive.  We would love to hear your thoughts.

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The 80-20 Rule Applies to Twitter ... So?

by Karri Flatla

Convincing small business folk to get on board with social media is akin to asking a four-year-old to watch paint dry. It's nice to look at, for a few minutes, until boredom sets in and the child asks if he can go outside and play. Outside is where the action is. There's stuff to do. People to see. Places to go.

And, like watching paint dry, we watch what's happening on the public time line and conclude that not a lot is going on. Well, unless you're a marketer in which case you're immediately drawn to the incestuous sharing of cutting edge information ... er ... well ...

Never mind.

It's fun to be a skeptic though because it makes you sound really smart, like you know something no one else does--something everyone else is just too dumb to comprehend. For example, when TechCrunch told us that that 80% of the "people" on twitter are essentially
squatters, the neo-web pundits gave a collectively cynical "duh!" And the commenters over at Shoemoney Blog seem to think this is indicative of how useless twitter really is. That hey,
they were right all along. It's like one big I-told-you-so love-in over there.

Yet if you read the entire TechCrunch article, you're reminded that twitter is no different than any other web media. For example, about 10% of any forum membership actually participates in the discussion, and that's on a good day. Or, how many of you grabbed a MySpace ID but never used it? Maybe it was intentional (to protect a company brand) or maybe it wasn't (I hate MySpace).

The TechCrunch writer closes the article by saying that:   

"Twitter is no different than any other form of social media. A small fraction of users produce the overwhelming amount of content, even if it is just 140 characters at a time. Everyone else just drinks from the stream."

It's the old 80-20 rule. And it's not really news. The biggest returns result from a relatively small amount of input or, in this case, a small handful of users. Moreover, no one ever said you had to participate (generate content) to get something out of social media. In fact, cruising around a forum without saying a darned thing can be quite informative. Some even call it research.

I feel like a broken record repeating this, but it's not sinking in: you get what you give. And if you don't want to give, that's okay. Just don't complain about what others are doing or not doing. Be quiet and enjoy the show.

So, how are you using twitter? And if you're not using it, what are you complaining about?

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Go Blog Yourself Step 4: Reveal the Goods

by Stoney deGeyter

Read this post with all images and illustrations.

You have a good idea for a blog post, but getting people to keep coming back and reading day after day takes more than a good idea. You have to execute that idea in an appealing way.

Ever wonder why so many commercials we see on TV revolve around sexual appeal? Because sex is appealing. At least when it's packaged properly. Commercials using fat, bear-bellied men or "average" looking women are few and far between. Everyone is nicely toned, handsome or strikingly beautiful.

Blogging is no different. The best titled "pickup line" in the world is only going to get you so far. To get anywhere you have to prove that you've got the goods that go with it.

While I won't provide a step-by-step tutorial on on how to write great content here, I will provide a few points will make what you have to say more appealing and more readable. The key is to draw your readers in and give them a way to enjoy the content, whether they are reading every word or performing a quick scan of your blog post.

Compelling Content

Each blog post must start with a compelling premise or something of interest. Not every post will be compelling to every person, but each post should be interesting to at least a portion or segment of your audience.

Speak the language

One of the reasons why it is so important to know your audience is so you are able to write using the words that appeal most to your audience. There are two parts to this. The first is using the keywords that your audience is searching for. We addressed that back in step 2.

The second is to write for the education level of your audience. You want to find the right balance so as not to speak over the heads of your lesser educated readers while also not talking down to those who are more knowledgeable.

If your blog targets a very knowledgeable audience then you want to keep the "basics" down to a minimum. If you are always explaining basic concepts your educated readers will feel that you're talking to a lower-level audience. At the same time you can't assume that your audience knows as much as you do. If they did you wouldn't need to be blogging. If you assume your audience knows too much then they won't be able to follow what you are saying because they are missing key components of information that have not been shared.

If you know your audience and their knowledge level on your blog topic, you'll be able to write in a language that they understand and appreciate. Speaking to them, not above or below them, is essential to keeping them engaged in your content.

Scannable

Not everybody reads word for word and most people will at least scan the content before they commit to investing the time to read. Making your content scannable is crucial to keeping your audience engaged.

Scanability is all in the visual appeal of the content. Visually, your audience needs to be able to look at the post and see the important concepts and main takeaways . If they find those appealing then they may go back and read the content word for word. If they don't have time for that then you've given them some valuable information just at a glance.

Bullet points: If possible you should break out pieces of your content into bullet points. This doesn't work for every post but you should do it where and when you can. Bullets catch they eye and provide a nice list format that the brain can more easily remember.

Bolds and italics: Make key concepts stand out using bold and italics. This isn't something you have to plan out, but once a post is completed you can look for things that you think should stand out. Anything that's important enough that you want your readers to see without having to read every word can be either bolded or italicized. Don't just use this strategy for keywords, look for key concepts instead.

Using bolded paragraph headings (or hx tags) also helps with the optimization of your posts, provided that there are some keywords being called out. Your first priority in your blog is to your readers so make sure anything you do with keywords is relevant and non-intrusive.

Presenting your content in a way that appeals to the reader both visually and intellectually will help you establish yourself as a knowledgeable author on your topic. With enough time, and the continued production of quality content you'll earn a reputation as an authority. Your readers will trust that your headlines won't just be good pickup lines, but they'll be just the taste of what will likely be a body of content they want to devour.

Other posts in the "Go Blog Yourself" series
* Introduction: Writing Your Blog Post with Pen in Hand and SEO in Mind
* Step 1: Know Who's Looking
* Step 2: Know What They Want to See
* Step 3: Have a Good Pick-Up Line
* Step 4: Reveal the Goods
* Step 5: Be Easy On The Eyes
* Step 6: Keep Them Interested

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