Robots, Ranking, Relevance & Results

1. Robots

As the lotto commercial says: "You can't win if you don't play". You'll never win the SEO game unless your site gets discovered by bots and indexed. How do you get discovered? You can move to L.A. and wait tables, or you can build relevant inbound links, create a crawlable, spider-friendly architecture, and work to get mentions and citations (through social media, for example).

2. Ranking

Of course, ranking is the Holy Grail of SEO – we all want to be #1 on Google. I've been tough on rankings over the past year, but it's not because they aren't important. Clearly, you have to rank if you want to generate search exposure and traffic. My concern, and the message of this post, is that rankings are just one element of the big picture.

3. Relevance

Of course, ranking is only effective if it drives relevant traffic, and I mean "relevant" in the very practical, business-minded sense of attracting visitors who are looking for your products and services. Too many clients want to rank for what they think are the most popular keywords, but that often creates two problems: (1) What they think is popular isn't always popular, and (2) What's popular may not be relevant or ultimately drive click-throughs.

4.Results

Ok, I know "results" is a bit vague, but hey, I needed another R-word. Seriously, I'm talking bottom-line results here - leads, purchases, and anything else that drives your success as a business ("conversions", in the industry vernacular). Traffic is only valuable if it drives measurable results - otherwise, it’s just costing you money.

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Link Building Notes

The very first tip in the notes is Link Building Opportunities

 

Where to look for links:

• Social news sites
• Online media sites such as The New York Times, Boston.com, and About.com
• University sites
• Government sites
• The blogosphere
• Professional contacts (satisfied customers, suppliers, business groups, regulatory bodies, similar sites operating in different geographic areas)
• Personal contacts
• Directories

How to get links:

• Link bait content
• High quality exclusive content
• Missing content on other authority websites
• Article submissions/article exchanges
• Your own blogs
• Widgets
• Through PR firms and offline marketing
• Contests
• Ask for a link (directly/indirectly)
• Micro sites/buying sites for links
• Restructuring your website to make it more link-sexy

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5 Internet Marketing Tips To Promote Your Online Brand

5 Tips For Building Your Brand Online

1. Create a Listening Post

Consider using Google reader or Google alerts to monitor key websites and blogs to keep in touch with where you are being mentioned online.

2. Don’t Just Rely Solely On Your Website

Relying solely on your text only website is becoming less effective when it comes to spreading your companies message. Building your website should only be the start of your online marketing efforts and building your brand is definitely not going to happen if you just stick to your traditional website.

When trying to build your brand you should give your company every opportunity to get noticed. Using text is naturally one way, but how you deliver that text has become much more important. Having a website is only the starting point. You should be delivering your brand through:

Blogs

Video

Images

Online PR releases

Link building strategies

3. Use RSS

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is an extremely effective method for people to get notified of changes to your website and blog. If one of your customers has a large number of websites that they want to keep up to date on, instead of checking the actual websites every few days, simply let them subscribe to your website using your RSS feed. This way, they get all your important new content delivered straight to them. This is possible using a piece of software called an ‘Aggregator’ or ‘Feed Reader’ Popular aggregator’s are:

Google Reader

FeedBurner

NewsGator

4. Consider Social Media Marketing Strategies.

The social media websites below should play a key part in your online brand building strategy. As these websites are used by the larger search engines for content, you will get more visibility when you start to build a presence in these web 2.0 sites.

5. Keep Viral Marketing in Mind.

Viral marketing is an excellent strategy for spreading your message and building your brand through ‘word of mouse’. Perfecting a viral message is not an easy thing to do. A recent example of viral marketing was the Susan Boyle video of her performance on the “Britain’s Got Talent TV show”

The power of Viral Marketing lies with your audience. When they start spreading your message for you, without you having to advertise or push the message, bingo! The more effective the viral message, the more online visibility you get.

In Summary………

Building your brand online should be an ongoing exercise that continually looks for new ways to get your message out there. Increasingly online users are getting information sent to them rather than going searching for it.

Your ability to create a buzz has become increasingly more important, it only takes months now to reach 50 millions potential customers – the trick is knowing how to find them!

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