Search Marketing: How PPC Can Enhance Your SEO

June 29, 2010 Filed under: PPC,SEO — Tags: , , —

PPC keywordsIn the “old days” of traditional marketing (about 2-3 years ago) advertising and PR were the two mainstays of marketers.  In advertising, big budgets and creative talent allowed you to control your message and build your brand.  In public relations, influence and relationships with the media allowed you to add credibility to your brand through stories in the press.  But aside from shared branding themes, there was typically little overlap between the 2 worlds, and almost no shared learning.

Search marketing changes things.  In the Internet Marketing world, search advertising (PPC) is the latest form of paid brand-building, while SEO and Social Media are the newest strategies for boosting your  credibility online.  Traditional advertising and PR still exist, of course, but there are good reasons why companies are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets away from these channels into search-based Internet marketing.  The most obvious reasons are:

  • the growing number of hours that people now spend online
  • the fact that businesses can target audiences more effectively and less intrusively, since PPC ads and organic search listings display only when they’re relevant to what someone is actively searching for
  • the ability to measure results and improve the return on your marketing investment

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YouTube Viral Marketing Tips

February 25, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , —

I’ve been reading lots lately about how small businesses can best use YouTube in their online marketing efforts and I’d like to share some useful things I’ve learned.  First, statistics indicate that 4.3 billion videos are watched per month on YouTube.  That’s a viewership that many marketers find too enticing to ignore.   At the same time – and perhaps a major factor in YouTube’s growth – the cost and time required to produce a video is now well within reach of nearly every business. 

Does this mean everyone needs to run out and create a video to jump on the bandwagon?  Not necessarily.  Like all forms of social media, it’s best to stop and think about what value you have to offer before jumping in, as content that’s strictly self-promotional isn’t likely to get much viewership. 

So what do YouTube viewers like to watch?  Topics that work best on YouTube tend to fall into one (or more) of 3 categories:

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Learning to Blog in 5 Easy Steps

January 21, 2010 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

There are an estimated total of well over 100 million blogs on the Web and roughly 20,000 blogs are started every day.   How can there be that many people with worthy information to add to our collective knowledge?  And with that many people already contributing, you may ask yourself how you could possibly add any more value by starting yet another blog.  And how on earth, you might ask, can you come up with new content (and spare time to write the content) on a regular basis to keep your blog fresh and interesting? 

Those are good questions – and, frankly, the most common questions people ask when they think about starting their own blog.  We work mostly with small-to-midsize business owners, and many of our clients are on the fence about whether they can create a blog following and whether creating a blog is really worth their time.

To blog or not to blog

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Local Search & What it Means for YOUR Business

January 4, 2010 Filed under: SEO — Tags: , —

We’ve been working with several small-to-midsize businesses and medical practices recently who want to attract more local visitors to their website.  In other words, when someone searches for your keyword phrase, together with the local city or region, how can you make sure your website will appear to the right of the Google map in the search listing?   Local Search is the answer.

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Top 5 “Content Quality” Measures for SEO

December 2, 2009 Filed under: SEO — Tags: , , , —

website copyediting

If you’ve spent any time in SEO circles you’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King.” It’s because search engines are all about content – their job is to “read” it, index it, and match it as closely as possible to the search intentions of their users.  The higher the quality of content, the more effectively search engine spiders can bring searchers to their desired destination — and bring qualified visitors to your website.

But what does high-quality content mean in the world of SEO? Correct use of grammar? Valuable insights? Newsworthy copy? A clever turn-of-phrase? Lots of SEO keywords?

The answer is Yes to all these questions. Your first priority is to understand what  your target audience will define as content quality, and you are probably the best judge of that. There are, however, some important SEO-focused quality measures that will help the search engines to rank your website higher. Perhaps not surprisingly, these are tips that most journalists use to make a story rank higher in the minds of their human readers too.  At the end of the day, these are qualities that make content worth reading – by anyone.

  1. Clear, well-articulated, and focused content. Each page of your website (or contributed content that links to your website) should have a clear main point, expressed simply and clearly in the title, heading and first sentence.  As any good journalist will tell you, don’t wait to tell readers what your page is about.  Search engines would agree.
  2. Unique, original content. The more you can differentiate your website content from your competitors, the more you’ll stand out.  Like a newspaper reporter looking for a unique angle, the search engines will ignore (or worse, penalize you) if you duplicate copy found elsewhere. Be clear on your unique selling proposition, and tell it in your own original way.
  3. Fresh, new content. Ask any reporter – news is hot! Fresh, frequently updated content lets a reader know your site is vibrant, active, and worthy of repeat visits.  Search engines will read it as a sign of reliability and a signal to return to your site often.  If you can add content regularly (with a blog, for example, or new pages), you can expand your range of content and enlarge the “funnel” of keywords that point visitors to your site.
  4. Action-focused content.  Journalists know that action makes for a good story. Good marketers know that a “call-to-action” can turn a prospect into a lead and ultimately into a sale. It is also a good way to draw a website visitor deeper into your site, and convert them into a paying customer.
  5. 5. Keyword-rich content. The journalist analogy is a stretch here, as reporters don’t intentionally fill their stories with loaded words for calculated effect (or do they?).  While human readers don’t fall for such tactics, search engines do, and they’ll rank you better for keywords that are prominently (but naturally – no stuffing!) featured on a page.   

At Sound Web Solutions, we’ll help you develop high quality content geared to improve your search engine rankings.   We can:

  • Suggest SEO-friendly edits to your website that will help it rank better in the search engines
  • Help you re-purpose existing materials (white papers, research, press releases) into fresh, new content that can bring new visitors and links to your site
  • Have our copywriters create new, original, high-quality, keyword-rich content
  • Train and mentor you to create your own blog or other SEO-focused content

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Have Search Engines Replaced Journalists?

October 30, 2009 Filed under: SEO — Tags: , , , , , —

I met with a woman yesterday who talked about a new business she’s launching – creating beautiful, glossy, magazines as a company-sponsored advertising vehicle, published quarterly. The idea – implemented both in print and online — was compelling, and my eyes feasted on the gorgeous sample products she spread out across the table. The magazine – funded by a single sponsor and some cooperative advertising – had both high production quality and serious, informative articles, written by professional journalists.

But wait, I asked, how can anyone find articles in an advertiser-sponsored publication to be objective?   Aren’t they just a mouthpiece for the sponsoring company? Where’s the credibility?

Google search engineAnd yet, said my SEO voice, that’s exactly what we do for our clients. We help companies build out quality content on their website, write articles & press releases for distribution with links back to their website, and engage through social media to share their views online.   Where’s the objectivity in any of that?

Here’s the funny thing.  Objectivity and credibility aren’t necessarily what they once were.  I’m not saying they’re unimportant, only that they’re not so clear-cut in this age of information.  It used to be that “media” – e.g. journalists — played the role of unbiased interpreters. They were the credible truth-tellers, the ones you could trust to get “the real story” and explain it to the public in clear, objective terms. But somewhere along the way to our currentSearch engines - subsitute for journalists? information-overload society, the job became too big and media outlets, challenged to stay on top of the information flow, turned more and more into channelers of information rather than interpreters.  As their numbers dwindle and media editorial budgets continue to shrink, the ability of the traditional press to act as primary source of objective reporting is further diminished.

So where does our “truth” come from?  More and more, it comes from the collective wisdom of the Internet – from the sea of information available online. Rather than a journalist, the primary filter is a search engine and the interpreter is the individual user.

I ask again — Have Search Engines Replaced Journalists?

In a word, no.   But it’s a question worth pondering.

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