Discover how clearly written user reviews give you the power to shape your local economy. This article provides specific instructions for styling your reviews powerfully and describes the real-life incentives for doing so.
We've all heard the phrase "You get what you pay for" and deep down we all know it is true. But as small businesses operating on a low budget, it's easy for us to get into the habit of going for what's free when it comes to our websites. The problem is "free" or "cheap" for hosting and other foundational resources comes with major limitations that are costing you much more than you are saving.
One of the biggest benefits of building a blog for your company is the increased traffic that comes from new content and new search listings in the search results. In fact, extra listings in the search results is one of the best selling points if you are trying to convince your company to launch a blog. Especially if you're dealing with someone who thinks people don't read blogs.
Because keyword research is so crucial, a more organized approach to it is essential. Instead of starting the research process looking for words you essentially already know but are just in an unknown order, you must start the process looking for what is unknown. In order to find those unknown phrases, you have to start with a foundation that will guide you from where you are to what it is that you're trying to find, a list of keywords that can be optimized into your site.
I've spent the last month playing around with Twitter. Now that I've had time to really dive into the service, experiement with it and learn some of the finer details, I figured it's about time I wrote a Seach Engine Guide style guide to the service. This multi-part series will cover everything from how to get an account and get people following you to the finer points of twitter marketing and networking. It's not a service that will be worth the time to everyone, but it's certainly proven itself to have practical application for me.
If SEO isn't exactly rocket science (and I don't believe it is), then why are people willing to pay so much for site optimization services?
WordPress is an excellent blog platform which provides complete customization which is both user and search engine friendly. Here are some of the tips, tricks and plug-ins that I use when I setup WordPress blogs.
Every SEO campaign has to start somewhere. Any good plan; whether you're building a home, preparing for a family vacation or looking to optimize your website for search rankings, starts with research. Before you are ready to optimize your first piece of code you need to understand the landscape around you, which means you need to know the condition of your site as it currently is, and the goals you wish to achieve over the course of your campaign.
Most, if not every blogger, wants to write posts that are popular with their readers, and other bloggers. And while there are no foolproof ways to guarantee that others will be interested in what you write, there are several things you can do to greatly improve your chances that others will talk about, and link to your posts.
Once upon a time directories provided value to webmasters who were either looking to get new sites indexed or increase their site's link popularity or both. Now I am seeing a trend where directories are not as helpful in these.
To some, it sounds incredibly simple. To others, it's somewhat mind boggling. Search marketers toss around lingo like "keywords" and "keyword phrases" as if they're part of everyone's vocabulary. While it's true the words are nothing special, the concept can be foreign to someone new to the industry. This article offers up a quick and simple primer on the concept of keywords and keyword phrases in regards to organic search engine optimization.
We've seen a couple of posts popping up in our Small Business Ideas forums asking if links from a specific site are being nofollowed or not. With that in mind, I thought a quick tutorial on how to find out if a link is nofollowed might be handy for some of our readers.
While learning how to effectively manage a paid search advertising campaign can take quite a bit of time, there are plenty of quick and easy ways to increase your chances at success. This article aims to outline five common mistakes that end up keeping small businesses and in-house marketers from maximizing the potential of their pay per click campaigns.
I like to create systems for everything that I do and SEO is no exception. While not every aspect of search engine marketing can be programmed, categorized or easily referenced, (I have a mighty team to handle that stuff!) the bulk of the work can at least be outlined into a handy check list.
There is no denying the power of link text when it comes to search engine optimization. Whether it's your internal link structure, your outgoing links or your incoming links, the anchor text that gets used can have a strong impact.
Since it's hard to build a good link strategy if you don't actually understand why links are so important, I thought that I'd put together a new series of articles that examines why it is that links matter so much.
While it's easy enough to envision a potential customer heading off to Yahoo or Google, conducting a search, clicking through and making a purchase, the reality is that the online sales process is more complicated than that.
Often mistaken for search engines, directories are actually collections of human reviewed web sites that have been arranged into topical categories. Popular directories can serve as excellent starting points for navigating the Internet.
Robots.txt files are often mentioned as being an important foundation of a search friendly web site. To site owners and small businesses who are new to search marketing, the robots.txt file can sound daunting. In reality, it's one of the fastest, simplest ways to make your site just a little more search engine friendly.
I've decided to set up a little challenge for myself and to both blog and write articles on it over the next month. The idea is to try to setup some type of business in my free time and see...
Two of the most popular buzz words in the online marketing realm right now are link baiting and viral marketing. These two tactics are a great way to build links and to build branding when constrained by small marketing budgets...
Next to contextual search (i.e. just a plain 'regular' search on a search engine) Image Search is the fastest growing vertical search in the space. Compared to shopping, news, blogging, etc., image search has them beat by a mile. However, what's even more important about image search, is how Google's Universal Search, Ask's 3d Search and Yahoo's Blended Search are utilizing and incorporating images from each of their image search verticals into the 'regular' search results.
I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep...
Up until last week, I had never had much use for Twitter. To me, it was just another inane example of people sharing far more than anyone wants to know about them. Then I stumbled across a fantastic use of Twitter and started having second thoughts. I still can't see the sense in letting the world know who is hanging out in your hotel room, but I am thinking there could be some unique applications for it.
Is this the end of the target audience? Well, okay, to be honest... no. The target audience is alive and well. But what can you do to improve website performance further? Check out the concept of personas.
Ask has some incredible and unique features that I believe will slowly but surely steal search share from its more popular brethren. Consequently, it seems appropriate to provide some tips on how to optimize for Ask without sacrificing rankings on the other search engines.
I'll admit that as a marketing manager I'm typically slow to allocate budget and time towards a new trend until I start seeing concrete examples of that new trend providing some ROI? Well, an example fell right into our lap and I'm sold
Learn how looking at the ways people find and use your web site can give you valuable insight into your marketing campaigns, your page content and your products. Our Analytics articles cover topics like why you should be tracking your analytics, which analytics programs to use and what you should be doing with the data you gather.
Blogs are simple programs that allow web site owners to quickly and easily publish new content to their web site. Our series of articles on blogging offers practical advice on setting up a blog, deciding what type of content you should publish on your blog and how you can use blogs to market your business.
With social media and search engines driving a huge percentage of the traffic to a web site, it's essential to make sure you're building your brand and convincing people to come looking for YOU. Find out how to build a stronger brand by positioning yourself in search results and by branding yourself through social media conversations.
Getting people to come to your web site is only half the battle. Once they've arrived, you need to be certain you're serving up fresh, engaging content. While writing is a skill that doesn't always come easy, our collection of simple tips and insights can help you rev up your content to gain better search engine rankings and higher conversion rates.
Traffic is not your friend. Conversions are your friend. This collection of articles shares practical advice you can use in your marketing campaigns and on your web site to make sure you are driving leads, sales and sign-ups. Learn how to define your conversion points and then focus on improving them.
Keywords are the words or phrases people type into the search engines to find the web sites they're looking for. Learn how to identify the best keywords for your site and how to integrate them into your title tags, headlines and page copy to improve rankings.
There's no denying the power of links in terms of online marketing. Search engines use links as a way to determine how valuable and relevant your site is and people use links to move from one site to another. Building quality links from relevant sources can go a long way toward improving your search rankings, but it can also drive tons of targeted traffic.
With paper Yellow Pages quickly getting buried in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, local search is being an essential part of any online marketing campaign. Learn which sites searchers are turning to for listings and reviews and find out how you can put your best foot forward on them.
Public relations isn't just for big companies anymore. The web has taken conversation global which means one angry customer can do major damage to your brand. Of course that also means one very happy customer can launch your brand into the stratosphere. Learn the nuances of online public relations through the articles in this category.
Companies worry someone might say something bad about them online. What they should be worried about is that someone might say something bad about them online without them ever knowing it. Learn how to track the conversation about your company, your products and even yourself. Get practical tips and advice on heading off, or recovering from a crisis.
A collection of articles and posts that do not fall into any particular online marketing category.
Purchasing keyword triggered advertising on major search engines or content sites can be a great way to drive targeted traffic to your web site. These articles explore the various paid search advertising options and offer up tips for maximizing the value of your ad dollar.
This category covers high level search marketing concepts. These articles and posts tend to focus on the overall value of search marketing tactics and the need to integrate several forms of online marketing to build stronger results.
SEO is the practice of increasing your rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results of a search engine. The posts in this category offer up tips and advice for making sure your site is search engine friendly and for increasing your rankings through changes in links, content and keyword focus.
If you're new to search marketing, these entry level articles will help you get an idea of what goes into a search marketing campaign. You'll find step by step primers and simple explanations aimed at helping you dive into search marketing without fear of drowning.
There's a conversation going on around you. Are you part of it? Social media sites focus on giving people a way to connect and share thoughts, ideas and creations. Smart companies are figuring out ways to contribute to and become part of this conversation. Learn how to join in without stepping on toes.
Search engines used to focus on delivering up a list of the best web pages for a search. These days, they're also integrating video, images, blog listings, product listings and more. Learn how universal search is changing up search engine optimization and how savvy marketers are taking advantage of it to increase their presence in search results.
News and information from our Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference. Articles and video reviews and interviews are included.
Ever been to a site that made it difficult for you to find your way around? Tried to buy a product, but couldn't find the add to cart option? If so, you've experienced a usability problem. This collection of articles focuses on the need to build your web site around accepted standards so users can quickly and easily find their way around.
Specialized search engines focus on serving up results for a specific topic or from a specific type of media. Vertical search engines may let you dig deep into video results or refine your search to sites focused on one industry. These engines serve as great sources of engaged traffic and learning how to increase your rankings on them can have a huge pay off.
Every now and then a little piece of marketing genius takes off with lightening speed and finds its way to half the computers on the Internet. These articles will give you insight into what makes some pieces fly while others flounder. They'll also help you learn how to find the best starting points to launch a viral campaign.
Those of you who know me realize that I am a big fan of feedback. The very title of my book Do It Wrong Quickly is a snarky way of saying that most of what we do is wrong, and that only by looking for feedback from customers can we realize what is wrong and what actually worked. So, I should be very excited about the announcement today of Yahoo!'s new analytics tool. And mostly, I am. But I am also starting to wonder when fast gets fast enough....
Ever heard of Latent Semantic Indexing? If you're a search marketer, the answer is probably yes. If you're a small business owner, there's a good chance the answer is no. That's ok...it's not a magic term that will turn your optimization efforts upside down, but it is a concept you need to know a little something about.
Spotted a post by Michael Stebbins over at Market Motive about the roll out of Yahoo! Web Analytics to some Yahoo! store owners, developers and advertisers. While I'm still not a huge fan of analytics from the search engines, I (and most small business owners) are still pretty big fans of "free."
If you aren't already barricaded in your basement with a wing stove, a supply of food and water and a small arsenal, chances are good you're wracking your brain trying to figure out how your small business will weather the economic storm. The talking heads have been telling us the bottom is about to drop out for months and with eleventy billion dollars about to get dumped into a mysterious "bailout" package, the rest of us are picking up our buckets so we can start bailing out ourselves and our businesses.
A start to finish guide on how to find, analyze, prioritize and organize your keywords. How to create a solid keyword foundation for your SEM campaigns, whether SEO or PPC, that puts you in a stronger position for success and gives you a significant advantage over your toughest competition.
Keeping the client's expectations is no longer the job of the salesman but instead becomes the job of the project manager and/or SEO. And it has to be done throughout the life of the optimization campaign. No matter how many times an SEO tries to keep the client's expectation in order there are always clients want and expect more than they are currently getting.
One of the things you should be doing on a fairly regular basis for your web site is running a quick check on your keyword phrases so you can make tweaks to your copy. Just because a word or phrase was popular when you first optimized your site doesn't mean it is now and regular keyword research can help you spot "holes" in the search results that you can fill by creating new content.
I ran into a couple of unique situations a few months that really challenged me. Both had to do with unsatisfied customers demanding that we give them money back. Each situation was different and therefore handled differently with a different result. In one case, money was returned, in another it wasn't.
Please bear with me as I go through a brief history of basic online advertising. The evolution of targeted online advertising is interesting, because I believe the perceived harmlessness of early advertising technology and targeting tactics lulled many people into a sense of complacency or perhaps even false security.
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