Tulsa Marketing Online Blog » Marketing

January 18th Blackout – SOPA, PIPA, What’s It All Mean?

admin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:08:20 +0000

If you haven’t heard yet, some major, major sites are taking action to protest two major acts that are being run through congress. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the House and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in the Senate are both set up to change the internet in a huge way if they pass. Essentially – the freedom we enjoy to express ourselves and communicate freely online may be in jeopardy.

SOPA has also been titled “The Great Firewall of America” and would allow the DoJ or related copyright holders to have sites blocked by search engines, advertisers, and even internet service providers to effectively shut down any sites that are deemed a threat to national copyright in any way.

The biggest issue with this posed by most opponents is that it will essentially cripple the Net as we know it. And some of these opponents are rather… well known.

As a response, several of these opponents will be taking action tomorrow, January 18th, 2012, in an online “blackout” to help educate many of what a real threat this could pose. Some of these organizations are as follows (all links below go to relevant pages regarding each site):

Reddit.com – Will be completely shut down from 8 AM to 8 PM EST, instead displaying links to educational resources.
Wikipedia.com – Will be blacked out for 24 hours starting at 5:00 UTC.
Google.com – Will not black out, but will post a link on the front page to help educate users.
Imgur.com – Will black out their gallery from 8 AM to 8 PM EST with a message about the acts.

There are other sites that will show some sort of support of this blackout, but these four are some of the top used sites that will have a fairly profound impact. Go ahead and visit any of these links (while they’re still up, heh) to learn more about this and how each of the companies feel on their actions. For more details on what exactly this act is, you can visit this excellent article on CNET about how SOPA would affect you.

Bad Social Media Lessons from Paul Christoforo

admin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:13:08 +0000

So Paul Christoforo and Ocean Marketing have gone viral. But even though they say bad marketing is good marketing, I think this particular instance is an example of bad marketing being bad marketing.

It appears that Paul had a lovely email exchange with an individual who wanted to purchase an XBox 360 controller modification. Paul is the PR man for the company who makes these controller mods, so he was the one to talk to the customer. And I use the word “talk” lightly.

The email exchange went for a while. The customer, Dave, was rather upset by this and decided to CC a few major players in the gaming industry, including Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik and Kotaku. Well PA’s Mike found this noteworthy and posted all of the drama on Penny Arcade. It’s since gone viral, and hugely viral. It’s also been posted on Kotaku and several other major gaming sites as well as on Reddit and Twitter.

One of the newest developments is he’s since removed his Twitter account (@OceanMarketting, yes that’s spelled right) and it’s been snatched up by someone who says they’ll use the account to promote indie games. Update: He’s now using @OceanStratagy (go figure, @OceanStrategy was open and available). The controller mod manufacturer is @Tatterr, and he’s only acknowledged this hubbub, saying that he’ll detail more soon.

As for Paul Christoforo, his name and company name are now all over the internet forever and not in a good way. If you want to keep a good name for yourself and your company, it’s best to treat your clients well.

Especially if they are ‘net savvy.

Update: Looks like Examiner.com has quite a few details on the huge mess this is turning into, as well as finding out more information on Paul Christoforo and his lack of marketing expertise. They’re adding continual updates on this.

7 Internet Marketing Mistakes

George — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:51:54 +0000

In the effort to get links and spread word of your business online, many people can get a bit overzealous. Ryan Sammy put together an excellent list detailing the 7 deadly sins of content promotion. I’ve summarized them here, with my own input on it.

1) Greed (Excessive promotion)

Some people think that putting everything that they have written or available and putting it online to link back to themselves is the only way to do it. However, when doing this a lot of the content you put out is useless. Spammy. This will not do well for your image and can get you a bad reputation, and in some cases get you banned from the sites you submit content to for a temporary or even permanent amount of time.

Try to submit only quality content. This will make people look forward to seeing your information, and if it’s not seen all the time, it also raises impressions of quality. Plus it cuts costs in time and/or money to send information out.

2) Sloth (Trying to save time too much)

Doing good promotion work online takes a LOT of time. This means early mornings, late nights, and details details details in order to do the job right. A lot of people think, “I’ve got this content, let’s just fire it off using my easy-to-use software to all the social networking sites and we’re set.” Well, there’s a major difference between Slashdot, Digg, Facebook, and Fark. The same content will NOT do well on all of them.

Find out which sites would work well with the content you have. Submit to them separately, not all at once, and uniquely, so you have different titles for your posts. Identical titles will hurt chances of going viral.

3) Wrath (Attacking competitors)

Most sites have a way of reacting to posts. By either giving it a thumbs up/down, making comments, or voting on the quality of a post, you can give a response. Some people try to increase their post rankings by down-ranking all of their competition. This can give a little bit of help, but will generally produce only bad long-term results. You’ll make enemies, and some of these people WILL target you and retaliate.

The better way to do this is to not attack, but try to make contacts with others, even your competitors. Sometimes this can help you work with each other to promote your content mutually. And it’s better to avoid making enemies, so any attacks on you are best ignored.

4) Envy (Taking great content as your own)

This is one that I see a lot of. There’s some amazing content that’s right in your market. So why not use it? And claim it as your own? Since you can’t seem to create equal quality yourself because of time or talent, the best choice is to use someone else’s, right? No. It’s the web. People will find out if you steal, and find out quickly. This will get you banned very easily from the networks, and if you do it enough people will place you on their “enemy” list, which can have a variety of ramifications.

If you find content you think is great, give credit where credit is due! (Note: check out my credit to Sammy for his excellent outline on these issues, with a link in place and all.) By posting credit to the original author and/or a link, you’re helping each other. And this causes no ill will when you respect the author.

5) Pride (Bragging about black hat achievements)

Some people try to gimmick the system with certain sites and find ways to get their posts elevated or as a front page listing, but by using nefarious tactics. Even if you weren’t caught originally, talking about doing it and how you were tricksy with your techniques will get you caught. The penalties for this can be drastic and long-lasting.

It’s better to play by the rules. This way you keep your reputation and recognition for legitimate information. The focus should be on providing quality content, not on gaming the system.

6) Gluttony (Single site promotion)

There are times when you find great success on one specific site. Then when you learn how you succeeded, you can get more and more success by using the same methods you used originally. The problem is when you forget about using other sites and focus ALL your energy on the one site. It only takes a minor change to their system and site setup (or even the site to disappear) to ruin everything.

Try to distribute your time to multiple sites. It will help get it to more markets and crowds, plus if one site makes a major change, it won’t hurt you nearly as much. Keep up with the way each site works, and adjust when needed, without pouring all your time into a single channel.

7) Despair (Breaking the rules)

If you try everything and nothing seems to work, it can get frustrating. Sometimes it seems like the only answer is to try dirty tricks, in some cases a lot of the same mistakes listed above. Well, it may not happen immediately, but playing these types of tricks will get you into a bad place. A lot of them will get you banned from sites, networks, and even search engines. Then you’re dead in the water.

If you’re having problems, try looking around. See what other people have been doing with legitimate methods, try some of them. Ask people in your industry what they’ve been trying or have them look at what you’ve been trying. You need fresh eyes to revise your approach. Doing this will help.

Conclusion

Even though it may take a lot of time and get frustrating, playing by the rules of sites and social networks will pay off. Create unique quality content to put on the web in a variety of ways and it will reward you.

Local Businesses – is Internet Marketing Worthwhile?

Eric — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:05:51 +0000

In the past, most local businesses never thought they could compete with major companies. The marketing budget needed to really make a similar impact was usually way out of their capabilities. However, with Google’s latest updates, it’s looking like the smaller business has a much better chance of staying within the public’s eyes.

Today being Black Friday (and considering the upcoming Cyber Monday), a lot of local businesses are starting to worry a bit more about keeping afloat in the offers that come across from major companies, often available online. So how can local businesses compete?

The latest change from Google was the merge between the organic search results and Google Places. This means that in order to have a good shot at sitting inside the Places listings on the front page (now appearing like any normal organic listing, with some minor differences), you need to have a local address. This means that any business can have a good chance at being found by people looking for them if they’re in the same area and they’ve set up some basic internet marketing adjustments.

So before, when the only companies appearing online for a specific market were the monster firms that had huge sites and have a marketing budget that’s astronomical, local companies didn’t really get a lot of attention from the people in their city that were shopping online. Now that Google’s made some changes, a lot of those monster firms (with no local address to compete) are drifting farther down on the front page or are even on the second page. The Google Places profiles for the local businesses are showing up above them.

For any local business that wants to be able to get this new attention that’s available, ideally you need a web site ready (one that people will actually be willing to hang around on and not leave immediately) and a Places profile that’s been properly tweaked. If you have both of these, it gives you a good chance at quick jumps in traffic. This is a type of shortcut for SEO – it works quickly if you do it right, and doesn’t need to cost the same amount as it would for straight SEO.

So do it right, and you can even survive Cyber Monday. If you don’t know the exact details on what to do, it’s best if you find qualified experts who can produce results for both the web design and the Google Places profile. Just be careful about who you choose – do your research to find out who’s been able to show real results, and isn’t just talking it up.

Proper SEO is Not Basic

George — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:57:49 +0000

When doing SEO, it’s not as easy as just picking out your main market keyword and thinking you can jump to the top with that keyword. A lot of people seem to think that generic keywords equal good sales. But this is not the case, more often than not. Good SEO requires work and research.

The key to good research for SEO is to get specific. Ideally you can test your market keywords (PPC is one option) to see what converts. When you can rank for converting keywords, that’s always better than ranking for high traffic keywords that don’t convert. Unless you’re intentionally building a landing point to send people off through ads, you want the people that land on our page to be there because they’re interested in your products/services.

To do this right requires solid SEO, and it’s not a one-step process. Good SEO is continuous, adjusts with the fluctuations in the market and the search engine algorithms, and grows where it needs to. If you really want to get the most out of SEO, a one-time adjustment will not be the best solution.

You can find out more details about what it really takes to do good SEO to get results from Ryan DeShazer’s article in Search Engine Watch.

Apple iAd May Compete With Google For Ad Revenue Levels

Eric — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:44:34 +0000

Apple has recently revealed news on the iPhone OS 4 update. The more interesting part of this news for marketers is the new development of iAd – an advertisement opportunity to allow ads to be created and used within apps on the iPhone.

What the difference between this and ads being served by Google and Yahoo is is that the ads are allowed to be developed similarly to applications. The ads will be served from inside of apps on the iPhone without ever leaving the app. They will be stand-alone interactive experiences, so a creative advertiser could make an ad with videos, sound clips, even an independent app like a game. The other detail that makes this interesting is that Apple is offering 60% of revenue from the ad sales to the developer of the application hosting the ad.

The potential for this is staggering. iPhone application developers could put in ad opportunity inside of their app, and then give away the app for free, getting revenue fully from the ads in their application. Google may have some new competition to worry about stepping into their established advertising territory.

We’ll have to see how iAd works when OS 4 is released. For more details on specifics of the ad potential, you can check out this Gizmodo article.

The Microsoft IE Monopoly Comes To An End

George — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:49:57 +0000

Today a court order goes into effect to force Microsoft to allow Windows users a choice in internet browsers. Previously, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the default browser installation on Windows. As of today, that decision is no longer enforced, and users will have a choice to make that many were previously unaware they even had.

One possibility of this outcome is that Google Chrome may now see some increase in use. Google is doing a heavier push in the mainstream media, so everyday internet users will see the option to install Chrome. If a lot of them choose this, this will increase Google’s hold over the search engine market, and this will also effect many SEOs in their approach to optimization.

It appears the battle between Google and Microsoft (who’s joined forces with Yahoo) may have only now just begun. To check out more details on this story, see this article by HighPosition.net.

Domain Typos Can Be Worth A Lot

George — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:30:33 +0000

As everyone knows, typing in a domain doesn’t always give you the site you intended to hit. And typos like this happen all the time. There are people who have realized this and are making money from it.

There are two ways to make money from domain typos – either by using PPC and bidding on these typos (and then making money from the traffic you get on these usually cheap keywords), or by registering these domains and putting ads on the site for them.

The people that do the latter are called “typosquatters”. And there’s potentially a lot of money in the ads for higher traffic domain typos. Keep in mind that if the owners of the real domain notice you doing this, they can ask you to take the site down.

Whether or not typosquatting is ethical is a subjective question, but the fact is that some people make a ton of money from it, and so does Google. You can find out more about this and the figures involved in this article from Sideways News.

Universal Search – The Next Step in SERPs

George — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:51:23 +0000

The search engines evolve, as does most modern technology. The latest revision in search engine result pages is the “universal search”. This is the displaying of results for searches in not just web site links, but images, maps, videos, blogs, and more.

The universal search allows a large breadth of information to be given that is relevant to any search done. For SEOs, this means adjusting approach on how to get relevant information out onto the web.

When trying to publicize information about something you want people to discover, to make sure you can be found by different areas within this universal search you’ll want to make sure you go across multiple areas with your information publication. This can be done through audio, video, blogging, social media – or getting creative and doing it in unique ways.

It all comes down to doing good marketing, just online. As the web evolves, so must our online marketing. For more good information on the universal search, check out this article by Ron Jones at Search Engine Watch.

Forbes Talks About Value of SEO

George — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:24:08 +0000

When a major magazine that focuses on large businesses and exchanges of huge numbers of money talks about how important SEO is, you know that it’s worth knowing about. Forbes put up an article about search engine optimization and gave a few really great tips.

The article mentions how there are over 12 billion searches each month and that most people never look past the first page on their searches. Because of this, being on the first page of results for your market is becoming more and more valued and valuable.

The tips they talk about are details such as content, keyword organization, and even speed of the site itself. The other element I was happy to see mentioned was the reminder to never forget the visitor directly. I’ve often told people – top listings don’t matter if no one wants to stick around when they visit your page. Because of this, good web design and focus on attractive details to the customer is important.

Negative Attention Can Mean Positive SEO

George — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:21:35 +0000

Most companies perceive getting negative attention or negative reviews as a purely bad thing. However, any type of attention is good for SEO. It will build up links, it puts eyes on the company. And in the case that the bad review or bad attention is a minor part of what is overall a good reputation for the company, getting eyes on the company (even in this way) can be a very good thing.

Also, a balance of positive and negative attention tends to make a company look more legitimate, so this can also make this negative aspect bring positive points.

For SEO, any links that point back to the site (even if for negative reasons) will increase PageRank and sometimes may even affect keyword ranking in a good way. I wouldn’t recommend searching for negative attention, but getting some is not always a bad thing. SEO Consult in the UK has more details on why this is.

The Death of SEO, as Predicted 12 Years Ago

George — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:04:06 +0000

SEO is dead! Come the cries from doubters, and they do vocalize it occasionally. The latest is from a man named Robert Scoble. He doesn’t exactly say SEO is dead, but he questions its validity.

Well, SEO (and internet marketing, in general) is not a static element. There are always changes that fit into it. For people who think SEO is just making some on-page tweaks, then that alone will not do a lot. And as more people and businesses get online, that limited amount of result that pure on-page/on-site adjustments will get will only go down.

SEO has been questioned on how effective it truly is for years now, and many have said it wouldn’t last. As long as 12 years ago. Well, it’s lasted, and personally I think it will last – maybe not in exactly the same fashion, but it’s not going to go away.

Danny Sullivan had a lot of interesting points to say (as well as responding directly to Robert – check his post) in Search Engine Land. Of all people, I think Danny is someone who is worth listening to when it comes to predicting the progress of SEO. Check out his full post to see more.

5 SEO Tips for E-Commerce

George — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:00:08 +0000

Doing SEO for an e-commerce site is tricky. Almost all the pages are virtually identical, so it’s hard to determine how to do standard SEO for these pages. Here are five quick tips to help you do some solid SEO for your e-commerce site (a shortened version of the excellent explanation on Search Engine Land):

Do solid SEO on product pages. Focusing on these will help draw traffic to each specific product. Standard SEO rules apply here – especially remember the title tag, as that will make a big difference. And keep it search engine friendly – using a lot of Flash or something else the spiders don’t like is not recommended.
Proper categorization. Every product fits into specific categories. Making sure you use this as best you can will help. If selling a television, keep all categories in mind, such as a brand name, the size of the television, the type of tv, so forth. The more detailed your categories, the easier to find (good SEO).
Avoid duplication. Having duplicate pages is a big SEO no-no. If you have your URLs structured based on categories, then you can often have each category branching through other categories to a single product, resulting in different URLs but the same content (duplicate pages). To avoid this, you can use parameters (the same URL, different arguments) or even just 301 the duplicate pages all to one single product page.
Use the on-site search engine. To start, having a good on-site search engine is highly recommended for all internet marketing purposes. If you have one – checking the queries people put into it are easy ways to see what people are searching for that couldn’t find it naturally. This is a big “SEO THIS” sign.
Social media! Yes, get on board. By letting people comment on your products or share them with others through social media, you can often get more inbound links than you might expect. Just make it easy for users and visitors to be able to share, whether it be through on-site widgets or a site blog, or even profiles on social media sites.

These tips will help your products on your e-commerce site be found, both through social media and through the search engines. These tips are a revised version of the excellent explanation by Aaron Bradley on Search Engine Land.

SEO Jobs: Demand is Going Up For SEO Skills

George — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:59:40 +0000

It looks like holiday shopping this year has moved even more heavily online. As companies are realizing that more people are actively searching online for their commercial searches, they’re starting to see the value of search engine optimization.

Because of this, the IT industry is starting to anticipate a high demand for SEO skills in 2010. (Yay for us professional SEOs!) In Great Britain alone, demand for SEO and online marketing skills went up by 40% last year.

The skills of SEO, pay per click management, social media marketing and web design are all being looked for, ideally in a combined package. SourceWire has all the details in an article based on this story in the UK. (And I have to add a little something something here – Tulsa Marketing Online does in fact do SEO, PPC, social media and web design. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Social Media and SEO: How They Tie Together

George — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:39:51 +0000

Social media’s been the big thing lately. Mainly because it’s something almost everyone uses. Not that many people know what search engine optimization is and the difference between on page optimization and off page optimization, or what PageRank sculpting is. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a Facebook account.

Well, social media is very effective for business promotion – but the key to using it well is knowing how to make it tie into SEO. Doing good social media is building relationships, and this fits in with SEO by making sure that these quality relationships help build your site and site pages’ reputation (in a good way, hopefully).

Adam Stafford from TechRadar has a great article on how these two things tie together and how to make them work, plus some great examples on how some companies have made them work well.

Demographics and SEO – Targeting Your Pages

George — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:58:21 +0000

Most SEOs look at the keywords for their research – but what about focus on the demographics? By looking at the actual PEOPLE that visit your pages, it can make a big difference beyond the search positions.

Sure, doing solid SEO will get you into position. But will that always be the best way to bring your best traffic? Doing full research on your market and the people searching for your material can often bring to light details that, if focused on properly, can help convert visitors to business.

So many SEOs I see don’t ever think of their visitors past the search engine results page. By looking at who is doing the searches and making the whole experience a better one for them, you’ll get better results (and Google will likely like you more for it).

Carrie Hill at Search Engine Land has a great article detailing how to do this, and more suggestions on how to make it work.

Be Found Online! By Best Buy?

George — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:03:55 +0000

For those of you who don’t know who Danny Sullivan is – one, if you’re an SEO, shame on you. Two, if you want to learn about SEO, learn who he is.

At any rate, Danny Sullivan is one of the most respected SEOs on the planet. He knows his stuff. He works diligently to learn about search engines (in particular, Google) and how they operate.

SEO is something that is becoming more and more well-known, as people and businesses realize this is how sites are to be found online. Because of this, there are a lot of gimmicky SEO plugs (“Pay only $200/month and 1st page listings in 90 days!” types of stuff) going around. They really annoy me.

Apparently Best Buy is getting in on this. And they’re including social media in their “be found online” mix. It’s through a company called “CloudProfile”. And it’s FREE.

The best part? They pitched to (of all people) Danny Sullivan. And he’s taking them up on their offer. See his word on it here.

Google Hits Back Against Scammers

George — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:11:54 +0000

Google’s changes lately have been quite thorough. They’ve made changes for AdWords, they’re changing the way the search engine itself operates, and now they’re coming out to take a stand against online scams.

In particular, the schemes for how to “work-at-home” to use Google and make a ton of money are starting to get shut down by Google. Google is starting to file lawsuits against these companies to bring them down.

For most people, these are familiar schemes – you see them in banner ads, with text like “Use Google to make 1000s of Dollars!”. They generally operate by having a kit you send out for and then have you set up for automatic billing once a month (and many people don’t realize there’s automatic billing).

CNN has a bit more detail in this story. I did find it rather amusing that under this story in their sponsored links, one of the ads said “I’m glad I lost my job! Jobless Dad makes $6493/month working online from home. Read how he…”

UK Tabloid Daily Mirror is Thinking of Humans

George — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:04:16 +0000

I love this story, mainly because it touches on the element that so many SEOs (and marketers) miss – connecting with people. It’s actually a tabloid that has attracted attention for making sure their focus is more on people than on search engines.

It’s great as a reminder – marketing should always be about thinking of connecting with people, not just crunching numbers. If you only think of figures (traffic numbers, PPC costs, number of unique visitors) then you’ll likely lose a lot. If you keep your focus on the people who visit your site, chances are you’ll gain many more fans (and revenue).

More info available also from The Guardian.

Social Media for Online Business

George — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:56:03 +0000

Social media is the newest online wave of excitement. Everyone is getting into it, and a lot of people are wondering – how can I make it work for business? Well, there are several ways to do it, but not all of them are functional.

ZippyCart has put together a good list of specifics you can use to guide your business through Facebook, Twitter, and more. Look through them to help improve your business social media.

Highest Traffic Keywords Do Not Always Bring Profit

George — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:41:03 +0000

It seems like the focus for a lot of internet marketers is finding that top trafficked keyword. However, this can be a mistake by not focusing on the true marketing involved. In some cases, the top traffic keyword is not one that will bring conversions.

Putting focus purely on the traffic numbers for keyword research is the reason many internet marketers are not able to pull the profit numbers many others do. Making sure you focus on the consumer and their intent more than the pure traffic size is key.

This can be done more quickly using PPC, but at a price. And in SEO, solid keyword research must be done to target proper keywords – a mistake here will cost a lot of time and money.

Evan LaPointe goes into a bit more detail about all of these factors at Search Engine Land. At any rate, it’s good to remember that the focus should be on the human experience, not just the analytics numbers.

Search Engine Optimization is a Changing Animal

Eric — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:30:30 +0000

Nowadays the web is getting more and more attention. People are realizing that businesses are made by being found online. The methods of doing that are through creating good web pages, having an online presence through blogs, social media, online advertising. And tied into almost all of this is search engine optimization.

If a business uses any of the other means (social media, blogging, site design), then it all comes down to wanting to be found online, to gain a presence. And this ties into SEO. Whether or not you realize it, if you have a Facebook account, you’re helping one site or another with search engine optimization. Every link you post makes a difference. On Twitter, any link posted can have an impact on visitors and the search engine listings.

Anything online will make a difference in SEO. The key to doing good search engine optimization on purpose (as opposed to on accident, as a surprising number of sites have done) is to continue learning what changes impact the search engines. As it is now, social media is starting to have an effect. But that doesn’t mean you just need to put one post and you’ll shoot up three pages. The trick is learning how it all ties together.

A good SEO stays educated on many aspects of the internet. Just because you learn the basics doesn’t mean you’ll still be an expert SEO four years later (or even one year later). The internet is a changing beast, and knowing these changes can make a big difference in your placement online.

And if you choose to hire someone else to do the search engine optimization for you, make sure that you’re happy with how educated they are on these changes. Learning the basics of SEO is easy – but mastering it is more than just a few steps above that.

How To Determine Quality of SEO Services

George — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:52:51 +0000

Do you get phone calls for your business from people who say that’ll put you on page one for your keywords with their SEO services? It can be difficult to determine which SEO companies can actually do the work they claim (and some of them make full-time SEOs like me just look bad).

Find out what their skills are before agreeing to anything. If you can determine that a company really knows what they’re doing, it can be worth the price. Good SEO is not cheap, but the revenue you get from solid listings on your primary keywords will more than make up for it.

I’ll say now from my own experience – anyone that guarantees position 1 (or even page one) listings in a set time period (or at all, really) is in all likelihood full of it. SEO is part of an industry that is constantly changing. To do it right, you have to keep track of how the search engines operate and adjust where necessary. Bad SEO may work temporarily, but in all likelihood will eventually make your listings drop lower than ever (or even get you blacklisted).

Shannon Rogers with Web Advantage put together a good list of questions to ask SEOs who cold-call you. If you can find SEOs who can answer these well, they may very well be worth the marketing investment.

Great Example of Why SEO is Needed

George — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:16:59 +0000

I just had to pass this one on. This is a real-life example of someone who was trying to find a hospital where a friend of his had been relocated, but couldn’t. All of his searching through Google wouldn’t let him find the right phone number.

In some cases, I can understand, but for a hospital? This is one case where I do agree with him for sure – something should have been done. It’s a great example of how not doing proper SEO will make it so that people trying to find you or your services will never be able to online. In cases like that, the only way to pass on your site (and get traffic) is through offline marketing, be it on business cards or television commercials. I think if you have a web site, it’s silly to have it sitting on the web without getting any natural traffic. But that’s where SEO comes into play.

At any rate, if you want the full details on this crazy hospital example, check out Alan Bleiweiss’s SEO story. It’s a doozy.

SEO for BBC? It’s the Latest News

George — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:24:00 +0000

Yes, even the BBC is starting to adjust to the new wave of internet marketing. It appears that they’re starting to consider SEO when writing their news posts online. And keep in mind for the BBC, SEO stands for search engine optimisation, not the silly search engine optimization we talk about.

Enough of their traffic comes from the web and search engines, so they are making changes. It’s true! I read it on the Guardian.

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