Using Data to Drive Your Google Plus Program
Now that Google+ has been around for a while now, businesses are taking notice. And if they haven’t already, many are considering marketing programs using the G+ community. But like any social medium in its infancy, it’s a Wild West type environment where creativity rules in how to best engage your audience. Luckily, there are companies out there that are offering up data (Google included) to help better steer your efforts. If your business is just getting started on G+, there’s lots to think about. But let’s take a step back to some basics, and look at tools that can help you get a better understanding of who’s on Google+ and what’s working for others.
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April 10, 2012
6 Online Marketing Problems Local Business Owners Face and How to Fix Them
If you own or manage a store or business that depends on customers coming in the door, you’ve probably wondered the best way to use the Internet to drive more foot traffic. Regardless of your place in the spectrum of web-savviness, there are things you can do to establish a web presence that can be found online and leveraged into new customers.
If you’ve considered how investing in a website, social media profiles or even daily deals like Groupon might help your business, there’s a good chance you’ve faced one of the following questions of local business owners making a name for themselves online. Here are six common problems local businesses find online along with the info and resources you need to solve them.
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April 6, 2012
Tips for SEO Web Design and Site Architecture
You have a website that you’re pretty proud of. It’s beautiful in every way (and of course, “perfect” to you because it’s your baby). But you’ve decided it’s time to really focus on SEO and you’re not quite sure what the beginning steps are for restructuring and redesigning your site in a way that’s SEO friendly. And once you start really examining the structure, design and the back end of your site, you’re finding out that beautiful, perfect baby is actually really ugly and stinky. And an ugly, stinky baby = big, messy problem for SEO. In this post, we’ll take a very high-level look at some of things you want to address to make sure your site is set up for SEO.
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April 4, 2012
New Study Suggests How to Leverage Consumer Motivations for Email and Facebook Marketing
Marketers live at the powerful intersection of research, psychology and sales. We study people’s motivations so we can convince them to buy our products and services. Our aim to influence public opinion on behalf of brands and business is an endgame shared by all of society’s major institutions, from politics to religion to parenting.
While underlying human motivations don’t change much, our means of communicating do. The research around how consumers use media to interact with each other and with businesses give us marketers hints on the tone and message we can use for marketing on each channel. A new study gives us another data point on what motivates consumers to interact with brands on two specific channels: email and Facebook.
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April 3, 2012
Fun, Free SEO Tool Time
Every once in a while, we find out one of the staff members here at BCI has created some cool search engine marketing tool for personal use. Last week, we heard our software dev manager Aaron Landerkin had one such tool in his arsenal that he made under the radar to help his mates here run very simple, quick research outside of our SEOToolSet®. This tool is called the Multipage Info (MPI) tool, and it gathers the following SEO data for up to six URLs.
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April 2, 2012
Google Speaks Up About Links and Penalties: Link Building News Update
There’s been much discussion recently about safe link building tactics in light of Google’s rising vocalization of over-optimization. This post will get you up to speed on the events unfolding and provide you with resources for link building tactics that are Google approved.
Google has made an effort in the past few months to be more communicative with webmasters. In January and February of 2012, more than 700,000 messages have been sent to webmasters via Google Webmaster Tools. This number surpasses the number of messages sent throughout all of 2010. Messages include both manual and automated communications, such as malware notifications and responses to reconsideration requests.
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March 30, 2012
You’re Invited! Celebrating 100 Newsletters & Seeking Your Insight
The SEO Newsletter this month delivered to a range of reader interests.
- Learn how to mark up videos with Schema.org for enhanced search engine results if you’re in the technical trenches.
INTERNATIONAL: Google Launches Schema.org Markup for Videos - For readers in Europe looking to up their Internet marketing game, there’s a calendar of the year’s SEM industry conferences and events.
INTERNATIONAL: Best SEO Events in Europe in 2012 - You’ll find a comprehensive wrap-up of the news and presentation takeaways out of SMX West.
BACK TO BASICS: SMX West 2012 Highlights and Post-Show Analysis - Of special note, we’re proud to say that March’s newsletter was the 100th volume! We’ve reflected on the characteristics that drive the newsletter’s success, providing more than 15,000 subscribers with industry-leading news every month for eight years running.
SEO Newsletter Turns 100! The Evolution of a Company Newsletter, Eight Years in the Making
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March 29, 2012
I’m a B2B Company, Should I Be Using Pinterest?
Every time a new media channel emerges, gains popularity and shows data on reaching people and potentially driving revenue, everyone wants a piece of the pie. A B2C company might not have to think twice about joining Pinterest, but what about B2Bs? What if your product is “services” – does it make sense for you to use Pinterest to reach your target market?
The allure of Pinterest from a Web marketing perspective and one of its main selling points for B2Bs is to drive traffic to your site (and then hopefully convert community members into clients someday – right?).
While we can’t argue the value of social, it’s not always directly related to the bottom line, so it would seem reasonable that Pinterest could be yet another avenue to reach and connect. But, before you go jumping on the bandwagon, remember that money is on the table.
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March 28, 2012
Video Optimization Checklist for Online Branding and Traffic
The newly appointed prominence of Google Play in the Google nav bar and changes to the YouTube player (see Where to Host Your Video, below) that makes sharing and engagement easier are pretty strong signals of the importance of rich media online.
That we’ve moved SEM Synergy from audio to video demonstrates our own priority to move toward the visual medium.
If your business is planning to invest in video to draw interest and traffic online, consider this checklist for what to do when filming, optimizing and sharing a video intended for online consumption.
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March 27, 2012
The SEO Copywriting Checklist
A lot of people have a lot of ideas on how to best optimize Web content. And that’s OK, because there are many approaches that work — methodologies aren’t set in stone, but for many, tried and true practices developed over the years have created lists like the one I’m about to share with you.
Best practices for SEO copywriting, like any other “best practice,” should be viewed as a baseline –the foundational starting point that’s flexible enough to grow and change on a case-by-case (page-by-page, site-by-site) basis.
In this post, you’ll find a guideline for optimizing Web content; most of these guidelines are for optimizing for the Google search engine specifically (and of course, the end user).
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