Archive for the ‘Search & Marketing’ Category

Engaging in proper site SEO isn’t about pulling out a checklist that you can run through in a month, check them all off and say all done! A good optimization strategy consists of a variety of moving parts. Check one issue off your task list today and two more problems show up on your radar. Good SEO is kind of like an engine: There are many working parts, any of which can (and should) be improved, repaired or replaced to boost your vehicle’s performance. The more your engine is used, the more work there is to do to keep the engine in top shape.

With that said, there are some basic components of every SEO campaign (not to mention a really big checklist) that form the foundation of a successful campaign. Anyone who’s been around SEO for any length of time already knows these “basics,” but they bear repeating for anyone who is unfamiliar as to where to begin with their SEO effort: Click here to keep learning

How much link value does a tweet or Facebook like have? It just depends. White hat link builders know that, in most cases, high quality links take time to obtain. The same holds true in using social media to build links. Here are three things to consider.

Have Content Worthy Of Linking To

If you’ve been listening to or engaging in conversations regarding web marketing, you’ve probably heard this mentioned as often as the Pittsburgh Steelers have been to the Super Bowl: you’ve got to have great content to build links.

Having just one piece of content won’t be enough to sustain value over time. It’s vital to have a content strategy. By having a strategy, you’re able to build a following that generally consists of your target audience. If you create well-researched and well-written content around their needs, you’ll naturally build links and become a source of authority. Blogs can be a great platform for sharing content, but there are many other innovative content types.

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In my last post I discussed using personas to create content that targets your potential customer. In that post I defined the differences between personalities and personas:

Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)
Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)

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The Web is replete with blog posts and articles that talk about how important link building is, how it can boost your website’s search engine rankings and why you need to be doing it. However, few Web marketing pros offer helpful, practical how-to’s on link building. We decided to change that.

Today we published our latest inbound marketing e-book, the 2012 edition of Link Building Secrets Revealed. Available for download at no cost on the Pole Position Marketing website, the e-book is a compilation of helpful link-building tips from 10 of the industry’s leading link builders, including: Click here to keep learning

Writing content for a website is easy. Writing good, search-engine-friendly content for a website is hard. Writing great search and user-friendly content for your website is, well, pretty dang difficult. There is a lot that has to be considered when trying to engage your audience because you’re not writing for an audience of one, but of many. And all of them have a personality and motivations of their very own!

When creating engaging content, there are two concepts that you must first understand: why visitors are on your site and what they want to find. These two concepts can be translated into two words: personas and personalities.

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It seems to be getting more and more difficult to define what exactly SEO is. Is it on-page optimization? Link building? Conversion optimization? Or is just about rankings, and leave the rest of that stuff to someone else?

I think it’s some of both and a little of all. SEO has to focus on more than just “getting rankings” and must use the knowledge of the search engines to bring together all the various online marketing elements into a singular web marketing campaign. People seem to be using the term “inbound marketing” more and more to describe this integrated approach.

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A few weeks ago I was thinking about how companies seem to haphazardly invest in various aspects of online marketing. Some throw all their budget at SEO, leaving no room for PPC. Other businesses put so much money in PPC that they leave little room for genuine SEO growth. While Herman Cain’s bold 9-9-9 tax plan may be as dead as his presidential ambitions, there is something that that we might be able to steal borrow to help frame a successful online marketing campaign.

I’ve read that the best way to win an argument is to tell a story, so I got one for you. Well, no. I’m not a good story teller, but I can throw together a pretty decent analogy.

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If you’ve been to any kind of social media seminar lately, you may have heard that making videos is the next Big Thing in online marketing. Depending on your industry and your business goals, that may or may not be true for you. Of course, if you’re even the tiniest bit familiar with online marketing, you know that making videos does not guarantee that anyone will watch or share them. The competition is brutal. On YouTube alone, people upload more than 48 hours of video every minute and watch over three billion videos every day.

So, without a plan for how to create and optimize your video content, you may end up a Sisyphus. (Just saying that word makes me giggle like a junior high girl.) In Greek mythology, Sisyphus pushes a gigantic boulder up a hill every day only to watch it roll back down again. Every day. For eternity. That’s a rough gig.

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SEOs don’t build websites; they build web presence.

SEOs don’t design websites; they make your website more usable.

SEOs don’t build links; they build relationships.

SEOs don’t socialize your content; they communicate your value.

SEOs don’t spam keywords in content to rank; they integrate key words into content to sell.

SEOs don’t sell your products/services; they help you attract buyers for you to sell to.

SEOs don’t drive traffic; they drive customers.

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I often find myself wishing I had the same conveniences in real life like I do on the Web. While a lot of the “offline” world has been made possible (and easier) online–such as using social media to stay connected with friends and family–we haven’t really been able to transfer the magic of offline into the real world.

I often wonder what it would be like if the power of the Internet was made available in regular, everyday life…

High Speed: Imagine having high-speed life capabilities! I could read an entire library or watch all the DVDs in my collection in a few hours. Long waits at the grocery store, DMV and drive-thru are no more! (Yes, I know the drive-thru is supposed to be fast, but is it fast enough? I think not!) Boring meetings are over in a jiffy, and long drives are handled in a few seconds. High-speed life lets you blast right through all the annoying things and spend time on the things you enjoy. Productivity and leisure would skyrocket at the same time!

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