Last week, Google announced that it would begin rolling out “Search, Plus Your World,” which is an integration of regular organic listings, PPC and social updates via Google Plus from your inner circles. For those people who thought social networking was going away any time soon, think again. This update is a bold statement by Google to say that social is here to stay; maybe more-so than ever.
Those who are unfamiliar with SEO practices should know one thing: It’s all about keywords.
While SEO is complicated from start to finish, most marketing professionals understand that linking strategies, both inbound and outbound, are one of the most significant factors in search engine optimization.
Linking a website to another is not as simple as it may seem. Getting links is one thing, but using it as a keyword strategy is a skill in and of itself.
SEOs use anchor text to link a website to another. When you create a hyperlink out of a word or a string of words, that’s called anchor text, and search engines, such as Google, factor that into their search algorithm.
s-420-90.jpg "Kindle Fire, the newest tablet to compete against the iPad")
The recent announcement of the Amazon tablet, Kindle Fire brings additional competition to the tablet market. Some tech analysts believe it is a direct threat to the Apple iPad, but others, like myself, believe it brings choice and lower prices to the tablet market, which benefit the consumer. With additional competition in this particular market, it pushes companies like Apple, HP, Dell and Amazon to improve technology while simultaneously lowering production cost so that they can offer the new technology at competitive prices. As consumers, this is fantastic, but as business people and marketers, this is even better news.
There is a right way to do things and a wrong way. If one wants to act like our U.S. government, then print money, hand out free lunches and use many other quick-fix methodologies to “stimulate” the economy, while turning the focus away from fundamentals and the long-term health. By all means, if this strategy sounds like a smart one to you, then quick-fix SEO tactics might be a perfect fit.
What do I mean by quick-fix SEO? There are many SEO tactics I would consider “quick-fix,” and that’s namely “black-hat” SEO.
In a struggling business atmosphere, companies typically focus on marketing and sales to grow business. Over the past year specifically, the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been used so frequently that it is no longer jargon to those outside of the marketing industry. The fact is, there are many other adaptable marketing methods besides strictly throwing up a website and optimizing it for the search engines.
Podcasting is another outbound marketing tactic that has been around for years but is really gaining traction because of its multi-dimensional value. Advanced technology has reduced the barrier of entry to methods such as podcasting. It is now cost-effective to produce and distribute to the mass public, whereas before, it may not have been easy to produce for the typical small business.
Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin: Are you Indispensable? is a very easy read, and enjoyable at that. I write a review for this book because this is all about differentiation, and to me, that is a significant piece of marketing.
A Linchpin, according to Godin, is an employee that holds a business together. Linchpins are the type of employee or entrepreneur that makes things happen – a “game changer.” Godin states that every business needs at least one, but more would be ideal in case that one person happen to hold your business hostage because they hold the knowledge.
The announcement of Google+, the newest addition to the social media world, is intriguing for multiple reasons and have people wondering if it may be the official answer to Facebook:
- Google Buzz was seemingly a failure and there was no way Google was going to make that mistake again
- The features and functionality look a lot like Facebook but with enhanced features such as video
- Given the fact that it was a lot like Facebook in terms of usage, it seems apparent that it will make a significant impact in SEO and could hurt Facebook overall
With new technology, comes new opportunities. Since the era of the internet, most notably, blogging and social media, people have spent hours upon hours consuming content, whether for educational reasons or for leisure.
The Information Age, as most call it, is a specific time period where data and other forms of content has become at the tip of anyone’s fingers through the internet. The presents all sorts of opportunities, such as blogging, journalism, pod-casting and many other avenues to spread a message.
Most of these are difficult to monetize, however, unless one has set up a subscriber platform to access content or to set up display advertising around the content. Both methods have been proven difficult, because most believe content should be free.
Those who are fighting for high organic rankings may be fighting a losing battle. Most generic keywords and semi long-tail keywords are sucked up and targeted by superior competition, most of them, also using pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, as part of their search engine marketing strategy.
The question, “Does paid advertising have a profound affect on organic search engine rankings?” comes up quite frequently in the search marketing world. The reality is, nobody has an exact answer except for the masterminds of the Google and Bing search algorithms.
It is completely obvious that search engine optimization plays an important role in ranking organically in the search engines. Often, though, businesses completely miss their target audience because the focus remains on broad-based keywords and not local keywords. This is detrimental if the target market for a business is local or regional particularly because broad keyword are essentially national or international level keywords.
When doing business in, say, Beaverton, Oregon, as a retail store, why on earth would you focus marketing at a national level? You wouldn’t, and that’s the point. Therefore, in creating a website, web-marketing efforts would go to defining specific products and services that are targeted to local consumers.