Search engine optimization plays a critical part in the success of your inbound marketing efforts by increasing the effectiveness of the other three pillars – content marketing, social media marketing and public relations – to drive targeted traffic to your website. All of these content strategies need to be optimized in order to work towards the common goal of inbound marketing:

• Attract visitors
• Keep them coming back
• Convert visitors into leads
• Nurture leads to build relationships and hopefully, turn them into customers.

A very timely infographic by Brafton News entitled “Why Content for SEO” provides numerous statistics on the value of writing quality content on search engine optimization. Search engines are changing the way they present and rank information to users, making the results much more personalized and localized to each individual user.

As pointed out, “investing in original, quality content creation is essential to SEO success in the current search climate“. Therefore, let’s not play games with search engines and provide them what they want, written in a way that helps them index and rank your content more effectively.

Before you start optimizing your content, develop your keyword list. How would your prospects and customers search for your products and services? Come up with a list of the top (as in less than 10) keyword phrases that you absolutely want to rank high in the search engines and focus on using those appropriately on your site, especially on your pages. For your blog posts, you most likely will have a longer list of keywords that you want to use for blog categories.

Quality content written to focus on specific keywords has several benefits:

• You are more likely to create targeted content that meets the needs of your audience;
• You will write more clearly, enabling your audience to understand what you are writing about;
• You will enable the search engines to better index your content specifically for how you want to be found.

Let’s review how to optimize your WordPress blog.

• Make your permalinks pretty to ensure that your keywords are utilized in the URL. Although this is a simple setting in WordPress, I’ve seen “online marketing experts” blogs set at the default: http://yourdomain.com/?p=123 rather than take advantage of  http://yourdomain.com/optimize-your-wordpress-blog/. Which do you think is better?
• Install a search engine optimization plugin to your website to help you with the key areas that you need to address – i.e. the SEO title, meta description and use of keywords within the content itself. I recommend WordPress SEO by Yoast. In addition, try out Scribe SEO by Copyblogger Media (which I use) or InboundWriter (which I’m testing on this post).
• Be sure to use your keywords properly throughout your content to enhance your efforts. Include them not only in your SEO title tag, but also as anchor text for links, both internal and external, to help the search engines determine the best terms to use when ranking that particular page.
• Create and encourage inbound links by commenting on other blogs and linking out to other expert posts from within your content. Make sure your content gets the widest distribution by posting it on your Facebook Page, tweeting it out to your Twitter followers and posting it on LinkedIn and Google+.

For small businesses, the above tips to optimize your content are a good start. More details can be found in The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog by Yoast (who developed the WordPress SEO plugin).

If you haven’t included search engine optimization in your online marketing efforts because you thought it was too difficult, now is the time to invest. There are some fabulous tools that can help you with the process, enabling you to win the inbound marketing battle.

What questions do you have on SEO that I can answer? Also, share your SEO resources that you find useful with all of us.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

SEO: Essential for Effective Inbound Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Inbound marketing is something that most small business owners have heard of but few have implemented consistently. But for those who do take the plunge, many are experiencing a more cost effective and in many ways a more successful form of marketing, than traditional outbound marketing such as direct mail, trade shows and print, radio and TV advertising.

What is it?

Inbound marketing is using online activities, such as social media, search engine optimization, public relations and content marketing (such as blogging and eNewsletters) to attract your target prospects to your brand, product or service and generate warm leads. These prospects find your brand primarily through search, looking for information they need to solve a problem or fulfill a need.

It consists of a range of techniques, all of which are focused on attracting customers through relationship building.

Why do I care?

When a prospective customer finds your brand through inbound marketing, the useful information you provide gives them a different perspective about your company.

For most small businesses, inbound marketing is effective because you:

• Build brand visibility to those looking for the product or service you offer by developing informational content that attracts their attention.
• Generate warm leads through them finding your content rather than pushing your information on cold prospects.
• Develop and nurture relationships with these warm leads through quality content and online conversations.
• Build your own, permission based email marketing list.
• Develop a reputation as an expert in your field, putting you in a position of authority and trust.

For most small businesses, adding inbound marketing activities to your marketing plan is important to acquiring long term, loyal customers.

What are the benefits?

• Costs less: Enables you to engage in marketing tactics that cost less and are more effective than traditional outbound marketing tactics. According to the “2011 State of Inbound Marketing” study by Hubspot, the cost per lead is 62% lower than leads generated by outbound marketing.
• Creates brand loyalty: Attracts the right audience to your business like a magnet. Most buyers today research the products and services that they need long before connecting with a vendor. If someone is spending the time reading your blog, downloading your white papers and joining your email list, they are making a commitment to your brand. When you build brand loyalty, these warm prospects will make the connection with you when they are ready to buy.
• Builds trust: When you provide useful information, solve a problem, answer questions and connect with those who read your content or connect with you on a social networking site, you develop a more personal relationship that helps them decide whether to do business with you or not.
• Expands your universe: For many small businesses, reaching a broad audience was unattainable due to the cost. Attracting potential customers to your website with quality content can help small businesses reach a broader, more geographically dispersed audience. If your business can service customers nationally or internationally, inbound marketing is a must for your business.

How do I get Started?

This series of posts will cover the basics of inbound marketing. Following this overview, topics will include (and more may be added as we go):

1. Creating your inbound marketing plan
2. Setting up the basics
3. Defining your content strategy
4. Optimizing your content for search engines
5. Building your social media community
6. Capturing and nurturing leads
7. Reviewing your results

So when I ask “How Will You Find Your Next Client — or Will They Find You?”, it is a direct challenge for you to define an inbound marketing strategy and let those who are ready to buy contact you.

What am I not covering that you want to know?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Inbound Marketing – A Powerful Weapon for Attracting New Customers is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

You finally have a powerful website and blog that you are proud to show off, with messages that clearly explain how you help your clients and the value you provide. Now, how do you drive your target audience to your site and generate qualified leads? The following 10 tips create an inbound marketing plan that will drive traffic to and turn your website into a powerful hub for your web presence.

1. Optimize your site around your top keywords

Understanding how people search for your products or services enables you to develop a keyword list that you use for all of your marketing activities. Then optimize each page of your website around one keyword phrase, making sure you use it in your web page title, the meta description tag and appropriately throughout your content.

2. Blog regularly

When you first start to blog, you feel as if you are talking to yourself. However, the search engines do hear you and in time, your content will make its way into the hands of those interested in what you have to say. Good content attracts the right audience and if you know what they care about, what pain they are in or what challenge they need help with, the combination of your content and the search engines will lead them to you.

3. Syndicate your content

Syndicate your blog content to your Facebook Business Page, LinkedIn profile and out through Twitter, making your content visible to your friends, connections and followers. Also use legitimate sites like the 8 communities created by Social Media Today such as MyVenturePad, Social Media Today and Sustainable Cities Collective (the list of the 8 communities is on each of these sites) to distribute your content to a much larger audience, making you visible to their readers and providing inbound links.

4. Build quality inbound links

This is not an easy task that can be done quickly. Don’t believe those who solicit your business by saying they can build thousands of inbound links in a couple of weeks. What they do is connect your website to link farms that hurt more than help. The best way for you to get inbound links is to connect with reputable websites through reciprocal efforts and to implement a blog comment and syndication strategy.

5. Develop a blog comment strategy

Adding to the conversation by commenting on blogs can help you develop your expertise, build natural inbound links, and help others find you. If someone reads your comment and likes what you have to say, they will click through your link to see other written, visual or audio works you may have done.

6. Create a powerful web presence

Your web presence does not end with your website. You need to take control of other online properties that list your business. Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local are a good start, creating credible listings for your business and providing inbound links. Depending on your industry, InsiderPages, Merchant Circle and Yelp are others. Both directories and review sites are valuable properties in building a strong web presence because the number of citations are now taken into consideration for rankings.

7. Engage in social media

Actively participating in social media makes you visible and helps people find you. Your Facebook Business Page and LinkedIn profile include your website link, again helping those who find you via these networks make their way back to your hub. Even if your target market does not use Facebook, create a powerful personal presence to help people find you when they are searching. If your audience is on these networks, develop your business profile and attract your target market, giving them a reason to learn more about you.

8. Add article and email marketing to the mix

Distributing your content via article marketing or email marketing can also drive visitors to your website. Sites such as IdeaMarketers and eZineArticles create more visibility for you and direct traffic back to your website.  A quality eNewsletter can be easily forwarded to others, encouraging them to visit your website. Both build your expert reputation which naturally attracts people to your website.

9. Create compelling free offers

Create offers that are valuable to your ideal client to help them find you. Offer a useful white paper, ebook or template that will be found when someone is searching on that topic. If the offer is valuable to them, they will sign up for your mailing list to receive the offer. You not only attract more visitors but you are building your email list that will build a community around your products and services.

10. Sales Tools

Prominently display your website address on your business card and include a QR code with your website address in it so those with smart phones can easily scan your contact information. Include your website address in your email signature, along with your social media links, so people know where to find information on what you have to offer. All paths lead to your website and it doesn’t matter where they start, as long as they get to the proper destination.

What other cost-effective ideas do you have to drive people to your website?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

10 Ways to Drive Qualified Visitors to Your Website is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Web presence analysis

A Web presence analysis is an exercise that helps you determine how your business is perceived when someone searches for your area of expertise. Important to your online marketing strategy, this analysis answers questions such as:

• How well can your business be found when someone searches?
• Is your brand consistent across all of your online properties?
• How is your business seen with respect to your competition?

Evaluating how you are perceived online will help you pinpoint areas that need attention, enabling you to develop a better online marketing plan that focuses on these specific areas and puts activities in place that will improve the effectiveness of your online marketing.

Web Presence Analysis Overview

A Web presence analysis should include:

• Keyword analysis and research – For your top keyword phrases, where do you rank if at all?
• Search engine visibility – How well can I find you and what is missing?
• Website structure analysis – Does your website lack the proper items that lead to being found?
• Social media analysis – Is your social presence consistent and well integrated with other social properties and your website?
• Competitive understanding – How do you compare to your competitors?

To get started and to make this task easier, I suggest you download and install the SEO Toolbar for Firefox from SEOBook, a set of SEO tools in one convenient toolbar that enables you to gather a wealth of information about your website and those of your competitors that will help in the analysis.

Step 1 – Keyword Analysis and Research

For those of you who follow this blog regularly, you know that I am pretty anal when it comes to researching and then using your top keyword phrases in your web content, your social media profiles and all of your marketing activity. If you search this blog, you’ll find a post or two that talk about the reason for doing this research and the tools that make it easier. Speaking of tools, a nice feature of the SEO Toolbar is the keyword suggest tool. Type in a keyword, select the tools you want to use and get suggestions for other keywords.

Step 2 – Search Engine Visibility

There are two areas of search engine visibility:

• Where your website ranks for your top keywords
• How visible your business is in general (i.e. via social sites, directories and links to your properties).

To find out how well you rank for your top keywords, you can use the Rank Checker. Enter your domain name, your top keywords and hit start and it runs a report that says where your site ranks for those keywords in Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can save the report and run it regularly to track how well you are rising in the ranks.

To see how well your business is listed in various online directories, check out GetListed.org. They check Google, Yahoo, Bing, Best of the Web and now Yelp and HotFrog for your listing. If your business is not listed in any of these directories, you have work to do. Creating your local business listings has two benefits:

• It makes your business more visible throughout the social web;
• It creates more links back to your website.

Step 3 – Website Structure Analysis

How your website is structured has a lot to do with how well you will be indexed in the search engines and how readily you will be found. This may be something you will need help with, but if your site is created in WordPress, which naturally embraces search engines, you will be in good shape. If not, make sure your site isn’t loaded with JavaScript, Flash and other items search engines can’t index and that you follow the usual on page SEO techniques to help search engines better index your site.

Step 4 – Social Media Analysis

Analyzing your presence on the social media sites for this exercise is about brand consistency, message communication and participation across all the sites. Take a hard look at your profiles and make sure you are sending the same message to the same audience for all of them and that you are linking all your profiles and website for maximum visibility.

Step 5 – Competitive understanding

Now that you know how you are seen online, compare your results with that of your competition. Understanding where you are stronger or weaker in relation to their presence will help you determine where you should be channeling your marketing efforts. The SEO toolbar can be used quite effectively to gather that information.

• Visit the site and look at the information the SEO toolbar provides;
• Run Rank Checker for the same keywords to see where they rank;
• Use the “compare sites” feature on the SEO toolbar to get more statistics.

In addition, review their website and social media profiles for their messages, brand consistency and keyword usage.

How visible are you?

If you have never monitored your presence on the Internet to see how well your marketing activities are working, you should do one now to set a baseline for measuring your improvement over the next few months. As you increase your visibility, great things can happen for your business.

What have I missed? Is there something else we should include in this analysis? Add your ideas to the comments. And let us know how well you are doing.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

5 Steps to Analyzing Your Web Presence for Better Online Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

As a small business owner, if you were to focus on only three marketing activities over the next six months, what would they be?

That made me stop and think for a bit. Putting the gears in motion and applying the power of threes, I realized that this question and its answer would help other small business owners focus on what is important for them to be found. My recommendation for three marketing activities include:

#1 Building a first-class Web presence to develop your expert reputation

Today’s small business needs to have a solid presence on the Internet to help build your expert reputation. Building a first-class presence includes:

• Building a website and blog on WordPress
• Creating compelling profiles on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Establishing local business listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Best of the Web
• Launching a Facebook Business Page
• Setting up a Twitter account with a custom, branded background
• Syndicating your content out to relevant sites

In order for this to all work, all the gears need to be moving in unison in order for all the pieces to create one unified image.

Without a quality web presence, you run the risk of people finding you and quickly eliminating you from their list of potential suppliers. Fair or not, people do judge a book by its cover. When your business success depends on building your expert reputation and proving to your target market that you are the best person for them to work with, you can’t take a chance on mediocre Website, blog, Facebook Page, social media profiles, content and the brand identity it projects. Make this activity a priority.

#2 Incorporating search engine marketing activities

Now that you have your first-class presence established, you need to be sure people who are searching for what you offer are directed your way. Understanding how your target market searches for your products or services, what keywords they use and how to make your website rank higher in the search engines can be the difference between finding your ideal client or having your ideal client find you! These activities include:

• Researching your best keywords
• Optimizing your website
• Writing content that utilizes your keywords and helps with optimization
• Creating a linking strategy
• Using pay-per-click to boost your visibility for specific keywords

For most businesses, keyword research and organic search engine optimization of your site and content will be the most effective part of this marketing activity. However, some local consumer businesses do very well with a budgeted and managed pay-per-click campaign to get more people who are ready to buy to your website.

#3 Identifying your top referral sources and meet as many as you can, both off-line and on-line

Meeting, nurturing and building solid relationships with people who are your best referral sources is a marketing activity that is always top of the list for small business owners. The best clients usually come as a referral and when they are a qualified referral, the work you need to do to turn them into a client is minimal. If you succeed in creating that quality Website with a blog that demonstrates your expertise, referral sources can introduce you to their connections through your Web presence first. If the connection likes what they see, your referral source can then make the introduction.

These activities include:

• Online networking using LinkedIn and Facebook to establish meaningful connections and develop beneficial relationships.
• Joining groups on social networks that are locally focused and network both online and off-line
• Attending one live networking meeting a month
• Joining a referral organization

Developing a solid network of local connections generates more opportunities for your business by developing new, beneficial relationships with people in your geographic location. Depending on your business, you may also benefit from connecting more broadly, but start with your local networks and get out and get noticed.

What are your three picks?

Spending time implementing these marketing activities will create better visibility, establish your expert reputation and introduce you to people who can benefit from what you have to offer.

What would be your three activities of choice for your business?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Power of Three in Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Not only have they improved this report by giving you a significantly larger number of queries in the report, they have also provided detail that can help you determine how to improve your site’s ranking. And from a marketing perspective, this will help many small business owners determine how their websites are doing and what types of improvements they need to make to get better rankings.

What you get

You get the number of impressions and click-through information for each search query and each position that your site’s pages appeared at in the search results associated with that query. Plus you also get the pages that were linked to from the search results for that search query.

What can you do with this information?

Review the results for the top keywords to see how and why visitors are coming to your site. Make sure your site is being found for keywords associated with your business. Then find your top keywords using the search feature and review how they are working. Look at your position in the search results. If you see “3rd page +”, your site needs work for that keyword. Now use this information to:

• Determine how to get better ranking for your important keywords.
• Review your SEO for each page of your website to ensure you are including the right keywords on each page in the right places.
• Review your blog posts to ensure you include the appropriate tags and get into the habit of creating tags for your posts on a regular basis.
• Develop a content strategy to help you gain more visibility for your more important keywords.

Don’t forget to use the Google AdWords External Keyword Tool to get the search volume for keywords it determines from your website.

Let’s just say I learned a lot about my own website ranking and which keywords need some work while I was reviewing the changes to help you take advantage of this information. Now it’s time for you to do the same. What does your Tops Search Queries report tell you?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Top Search Queries: Data to Help You Know How to Get Found is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

For those business owners that are writing the content for their website, keep these following on page SEO tips handy. Rather than provide the list in order of priority from an SEO perspective, I will present them in the order the human needs to address them.

10 On Page SEO Tips

1. Write quality body copy using variations on your main keyword phrase. Each page of your website should talk about a specific topic, which naturally optimizes the page. Use the most important keywords pertaining to that page early (within the first 50 – 100 words). Emphasizing phrases of your copy using italics or bold to make it stand out for the reader can have an additional benefit if the emphasis is on a phrase that contains your keywords.
2. Use heading tags (H1 through H6) strategically on your page. Search engines give headings more weight than regular body copy, therefore you should spend time writing great headings with appropriate keywords. A good example is the heading above “10 On Page SEO Tips” that uses a H2 (heading 2) tag. Although studies have shown that the heading tags have no SEO value, have your Web developer style these tags for your site and use them instead of trying to style the fonts manually. This will make your copy more interesting to your readers, even if the heading tags have little SEO value.
3. Use keywords as anchor text when linking internally. If you are offering a great ebook on the “Exercises that Can Cause Back Injuries”, use keywords in the text that links to the document rather than generic words such as “click here”. For example, use: Download your copy of “Exercises that Can Cause Back Injuries“, with the title linked to the actual file.
4. Write a descriptive alt attribute on the image tag for all images using the top keyword phrase for that page. Keyword rich Alt tags help your page get better rankings. Using the keyword phrase as the file name of the image also helps with traffic to your website.
5. Create unique page titles using relevant keywords. The page title is the most important on-page SEO element. Unlike humans that think of your Website as one entity, search engines ranks each page independently. If you are using the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress, create different page titles for each page of your site using one or two keyword phrases that describe the content that not only is interesting to the human visitor but tells the search engine robots what the page is all about for proper indexing. Preferably, put the most relevant keyword first in the title. Don’t leave the page title with the default “Page Name | Blog Title”.
6. Get a domain name that contains your main keyword. If you already have a domain name for your business, this may be more difficult but if you are starting fresh, spend some time trying out different domains to get one that helps your ranking. A useful website for researching domain names is Domainsbot. Type in words and it spins out potential domain names.
7. Use “pretty permalinks”. WordPress handles the page and post naming based on the title you give it so think about what you want to call the page that gets you the most benefits. Having a Services page is nice, but having a Services page that is displayed in the navigation as “Personal Training Services” is better.
8. Control the content that shows up in the search engine results. Writing quality descriptions for each page increases click-through rates from the search engine results pages to your website. So although search engines don’t use the meta description tag directly, when your site does appear in the results, give the reader a reason to visit your site.
9. Create an XML Sitemap and upload it to the search engines. An XML Sitemap tells the search engines where to look for all of your content and ensure that pages on the site get indexed in the search engine’s directory. This is especially important on websites where content changes frequently (i.e. your Blog) or have a large number of pages. To easily create one on your WordPress website, use the Google Sitemap Generator plugin that does all the work for you including notifying the search engines that there is new content.
10. Keep your site structure simple. I usually recommend that your website go no deeper than 3 levels away from the home page in the site navigation. If humans can’t find your content, neither will the search engine robots. Important content should be close to the home page for not only the search engines but also to make it easy for people you are trying to create a relationship with to find.

For those of you who want more education on how to  build the perfectly optimized page, read the post on SEOmoz titled Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization.

Search engine marketing starts with a website that has implemented the basics of search engine optimization. Nothing feels better than having your phone ring and a prospect is calling you because they found you on the Internet. It’s even nicer when they found you in the organic search engine results, regardless of which search engine they use. Strive to do the basics.

Have you implemented basic SEO on your Web site?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

“Welcome” is Not a Useful Keyword – 10 On Page SEO Tips is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

SEO and PPC are Not Commodity Products

These companies that call small business owners trying to sell them their software to manage their SEO and PPC activities are trying to treat Search Engine Marketing as a commodity – a one size fits all so to speak. This is absolutely not the case and most likely the wrong business model for success.

Each of my client’s search engine marketing strategy is unique. It takes a deep understanding of their business, their customers and what they are trying to accomplish with their online marketing. It takes creating relevant content that appeals to their prospects and attracts them to their Website. And, what works for one company may not necessarily work for another.

Are there common elements to setting up search engine optimization or a pay-per-click advertising campaign? Absolutely. But what is a common exercise is just a piece of the search engine marketing puzzle.

Take Ownership for Your Online Marketing Success

The following will help you get the most out of your online marketing effort.

Do:

• Remember that search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns and social media activities are all marketing activities. If you are looking for someone to help you, make sure these people understand basic marketing principals. The technology is a tool – the means to an end – not the end itself. Those who spew technical jargon to confuse you should be suspect.
• Find someone with whom you can develop a long term relationship. This doesn’t mean hiring a consultant on a retainer, but it does mean having someone you can call and pay to help you when you need it.
• Understand that search engine marketing requires a long-term commitment by you to make it work for you. Your site will get better rankings in search engines if you write content regularly, keep your social media outposts updated and active and you monitor your progress and understand what works and what does not.

Don’t:

• Hire a company that requires they take over your website, makes a copy of your website, replaces your phone number with theirs (to track phone calls as well as clicks) or transfers your domain to their control! Your domain name, website and content are assets of your company and you need to remain in control of your assets and your brand.
• Respond to emails that say they can optimize your site and guarantee that they can get your site on the first page of Google. If you notice, all the emails say the same thing exactly – they just get sent from different fake email accounts. These hopefully go into your SPAM folder and should stay there.
• Believe any sales call that claims that their SEO software can get your site top rankings ever will. Although it may work for some small businesses depending on where they are located and how competitive their industry is, most small businesses in and around major cities or in very competitive fields (like plumbing, remodeling or roofing) will never achieve their claimed results. Find someone who can help you with your overall marketing effort to differentiate yourself from your competition.

Matt McGee wrote a very good article on How to Get Started with SEO that can provide a starting point for those  interested in learning more. And although most small businesses may not need the $500 – $1000 per hour SEO consultant, you should plan to invest in someone who can help you do it right. At this point there are too many horror stories of small businesses being scammed out of a lot of money, time and visibility on the Web to not take this seriously.

What do you think? Can SEO and PPC be automated with software and become a commodity?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Search Engine Marketing is not a Commodity Product is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Results from people in your social circle for search term – BETA – My social circle – My social content

What appeared in those results were blog posts from people I follow on Twitter. When I clicked on the link for My social circle I was given a page that described my network of connections that Google used to identify relevant social search results.

What is Google Social Search?

In early January, Google went beta to English searchers with social search. It uses your Google Profile to establish your online social circle and display publicly-available content from these folks to provide a more personalized experience in your search results.

When I did a Google search for Google Social Search, I got two results: a blog post from Jason Falls and a tweet from Paul Chaney. Both were recent and relevant to my search and because I “know” these guys from their blogs and Twitter, the content and their perspectives on this topic will carry more weight than someone who I haven’t met through my social networks.

Matt Cutts from Google explains “How Google Social Search works” in a 4 minute video. It’s worth the watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpTjP6h6Ms

Why You Should Care

With Google is placing relevance on search results based on people you are connected with, embracing and encouraging the use of social media within your business is critical. It is now more important that you:

• Create a quality Google Profile and include all your important links.
• Stop worrying about personal vs professional connections being mixed together. Connecting with your customers and clients is critical.
• Participate in social networks, engaging people and staying visible.
• Embrace social media – it’s here to stay. Include your social media links in your email signatures and on your marketing materials.
• Consider blogging now! Establish an Internet presence that builds your company’s expert reputation.
• Don’t fall for SEO companies claiming they will get you first page results – the game has changed and first page search results will be different based on who you are, where you are and who you are connected with.

Those businesses who ignore social media will soon be at a competitive disadvantage. My advice: Get involved with social media now and take it seriously. Do you still think social media is not for you?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Google Social Circle is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

In most cases, what they actually provide can be done yourself with a little knowledge or with someone who can help you get your advertising off the ground for a lot less. Here is how you get started.

Determining Your Keywords

Finding your keywords are easy to do yourself with tools such as Google AdWords External Keyword Tool or the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Both enable you to plug in your website and they return keywords that they associate with your website. They provide search volume and competition for the keywords. The Google Search-based Keyword Tool also provides a suggested bid price if you want to set up an AdWords campaign. These keywords can be exported so you can organize them into groups for optimizing your pages of your website or to build your pay-per-click campaigns.

Taking Care of Your Online Marketing

Before you rush into implementing a pay-per-click advertising campaign on any of the search engines, you want to make sure your website is optimized first. I just recently wrote a post on Five Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website so make sure you’ve implemented those tips and let your website get indexed by all three search engines.

Next, you want to set up your local listings in all three search engines local business centers. To make this effort easier, create a profile that contains the following information: name, address, phone numbers (office and mobile if you want folks to know it), web site address, contact email, hours of operation if relevant, payment methods, description of your business, products, services, brands and specialties, certifications, company logo, and a half dozen photos of your work if relevant. Put the content in a document where you can cut and paste it as necessary and have your images available for uploading. Then create your local business listing in Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Best of the Web. Here are the links to all three:

• Bing Local Listing Center - Log in with a Windows Live ID to create your listing.
• Yahoo! Local Listing – Log in with your Yahoo! ID to create your free listing. Yahoo! also offers enhanced and featured listings, but wait to sign up for those until you get all your free listings established.
• Google Local Business Center – Log in with your Google account to create your free listing. Google provides a dashboard that enables you to manage your listing. It gives you simple analytic data about activity and search queries used when people saw your listing. They also enable you to offer coupons with your business listing and post a message to your place page.
• Best of the Web – Create an account and submit your free listing.

I usually like to get the above done and let the search engines “do their thing” with indexing your site. Give them time to position your site for your major keywords. Then, if you still are looking for more traffic to your website, now consider creating a pay-per-click campaign. Google, Yahoo and Bing all have pay-per-click advertising that enable you to set up your campaign, manage your daily budget and monitor its progress. Setting up your campaign is simple in all cases. I usually recommend that small businesses start with a low budget and watch how the campaign sets itself up by monitoring your analytics information. You can see where your traffic is coming from, how the search engines are delivering visitors to you, which sites are referral sites and how many people come to your site directly.

In many cases, small business owners don’t really want to do this themselves. But if someone calls you with something that sounds too good to be true, most likely it is. Before you spend your money on these types of services, buyer beware – do your homework. Search the web for these businesses, looking for reviews by other small business owners before you give them your money. Better yet, consult with someone you trust to work with you on your online marketing efforts. You won’t be sorry.

Have you received these types of sales calls? How did you handle them?

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Why You Should Control Your Online Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.