Archive for: September 2009

Last month (August, 2009), Google announced a beta release of its biggest behind-the-scenes update in more than three years, called Caffeine. Apparently, this update is intended to improve the speed of doing searches on Google, and also to enhance the accuracy of searches on Google as well. Although these changes are supposed to apply mainly to search speed and accuracy, some web site owners are concerned that they could see their Google search positions fall as a result of Caffeine. So if your small business currently has a web site listed in Google’s search results, how concerned should you be?

Well, any time that Google makes changes to its search algorithm, there is a possibility it will affect search engine rankings, and this seems to be true for Caffeine. If you have properly optimized your web site, however, you could actually see an improvement in your rankings. For instance, Caffeine may now be giving more weight to content with higher keyword densities than the previous version of Google, and seems to reward sites that can show a solid relationship between keywords/phrases and page content.

The Caffeine Jolt
There also seems to be a consensus that Caffeine is definitely faster, and according to mashable.com “often doubled the speed of the old Google.” Caffeine also seems to give preference to sites with recent content posted on them. So if you do not regularly update the content on your web site, don’t be surprised if your rankings fall below other sites that do provide fresh content that is updated on a regular basis.

Another eye-opener is the emphasis that Caffeine apparently gives to social media, with sites like Facebook and LinkedIn showing up prominently in the top search results. In addition to this, sites that incorporate social media such as blogs, RSS feeds, and social networking profiles/accounts seem to be given more weight in the rankings as well.

A Fresh Cup
Many experts point out that Google may be reacting to the huge popularity of the social networking sites (like Facebook and Twitter) that can provide “real-time” search results, (for example, coverage of news as it is breaking), which Google currently cannot do. This is also another indication of just how much social networking has gained in importance and influence in the online world today.

Whatever the reason for Google’s Caffeine, it looks like it is already being implemented in various Google data centers, and is on track to replace the older version. According to Google’s webmaster blog (the top Google information source for web professionals), most users will not notice much of a difference in the search results. But if your web site’s rankings happen to fall because of Caffeine, that’s something you probably will notice.

The Perfect Grind
Here are some tips you can follow to help preserve your web site’s current rankings in Caffeine, or even help give them a boost:

1. Optimize your web site. Make sure you have correct meta data (like titles and descriptions) in place on every page, and pay attention to the keyword densities in this data.
2. Adjust your page keyword densities, if necessary. It may be too soon to tell if recommended densities have changed (current recommendations are between 2% and 6%), but make sure your densities are at least above 2%.
3. Update your web site on a regular basis. Google (like other search engines) tries to list the best, most relevant results when users perform a search. If your site has old, outdated content, then Google has little (if any) reason to think your site is a good match to a search query. Other sites (including competitors) that have fresher, more recent content will be judged by Google as being as “more relevant”, and will rank ahead of your site in the search results.
4. Get involved with social networking. This not only helps your business in the Google Caffeine search results, it can also help your business in other ways as well. Social marketing is the biggest thing in online marketing today, and getting better search results just adds to the case for implementing a social marketing strategy in your business sooner rather than later.

The Caffeine Jitters
Also remember that as Google moves toward providing more “real-time” search results, the ranking positions for your web site may change and bounce around a bit since new, live-search results are being added to the search database all the time. But if you pay attention and stay current with the changes, your business can survive and even thrive in the online space, giving you an edge over your de-caffeinated competitors.

As budgets become tighter, many small businesses look for lower-cost alternatives to the traditional marketing activities they have been using for years. But is that really a good idea? Well, in many cases it is a good idea AND can help even the smallest of budgets produce great results. What type of marketing can help a business do more with less and still get great results? Online marketing.

Often when budgets get tight, marketing is the first thing to be cut in order to save money and reduce costs. While that’s not typically a good strategy (especially in the long-term), it is nonetheless a reality for many small businesses today. So instead of cutting too deeply into the marketing budget, it can be helpful to simply switch out some of the older, more expensive methods of marketing to the newer, more cost effective e-marketing methods available today. For instance, sending email campaigns and e-newsletters typically costs less than a penny per recipient, which is far less than the cost of sending hard-copy marketing pieces through “snail mail.”

With online marketing, you can reach people through email, web sites, mobile phones, social networking, search engines, etc., which almost always costs less than older marketing methods (e.g., newspaper and magazine ads, yellow pages ads, direct mail pieces, print materials, etc.). In fact, some online marketing opportunities are very low-cost or completely free – such as some online directory listings, organic search engine results, and business profiles on social networking sites.

In addition to saving money, online marketing provides other benefits as well, including:

• Tracking and measuring – unlike print ads that may or may not be noticed by readers, most e-marketing activities can be tracked to see how many recipients viewed your message, which links they clicked on, how long they spent looking at your message, what time of day they viewed the message, and many more statistics depending on the type of e-marketing used. This makes it easy to determine the ROI on e-campaigns, since you can see and measure your results directly.
• Instant delivery – many types of e-campaigns can be instantly delivered to an email inbox, published to a web site, posted to a social networking profile, or uploaded to a video sharing site such as YouTube (in the case of videos).
• Multiple channels – e-marketing can be re-used on many different “channels” without much (if any) additional work on the part of you and/or your staff. For example, you can publish the same online coupon on your web site, send it as an email campaign, post it on a social networking site, use it as a web banner ad, etc.
• Viral potential – e-marketing has the potential to travel even further on the web as recipients share materials, forward emails, link to videos, re-post on blogs, and basically “spread the word” to their friends and contacts if they like what you have to say. All of this extra publicity, by the way, is typically free!

With traditional marketing materials like print ads or radio spots, there’s no direct way to track who saw (or heard) your offer, or who took action as a result of your message. Online marketing, on the other hand, provides you with specific tracking data that can show you the number of recipients who opened an email (or visited a web page), which links they clicked on, and if they “converted” by following whatever call to action you provided in your e-campaign. Few (if any) other marketing strategies can provide you with this level of detail to show you what worked, or to indicate what could be adjusted for future campaigns to improve your outcomes the next time.

E-marketing is an effective way to reach customers and potential customers, and can be a great addition to any small business marketing strategy. It is easy to do, measurable, and typically less expensive than the older marketing methods you may currently be using. By replacing some of your traditional marketing activities with lower-cost e-marketing initiatives, you can not only save your budget, but you may also improve your marketing results overall. During this time of shrinking budgets and assorted cutbacks, can you really afford NOT to try it?

When optimizing your web site, use only 2 or 3 keywords per page. That way, you can focus on using the selected terms consistently through out the page content and in the meta data (titles, descriptions, alt tags, etc.), making your page more relevant for those terms. Using too many keywords on a web page could end up dilluting the vaule of the keywords, so limit the number used on each page.

As I’m sure you know by now, social networking is the hottest new marketing trend for business of all sizes, including small businesses. But without a dedicated marketing department or a big budget available, it can seem like an overwhelming task to just figure out what to do with social networking, or how to get started with it.

So before you jump in and create a Facebook page or a Twitter account, here are five steps you can follow to make it easier to get your own social networking strategy in place, and also to develop a plan to keep it going for the best possible results with the least amount of additional work for you and your staff.

1. Start with your goals.

Start by determining your business goals for using social networking to promote and market your business. By establishing these goals, you can stay focused on what you want to achieve, and concentrate on the things that will help your business the most.

Some goals to consider include:

• Reaching new potential customers that may not otherwise come in contact with your business
• Getting your message to spread virally through the social networks
• Improving online visibility for your business
• Making a good impression on customers (let’s face it, a social networking presence is an expectation of many consumers today)
• Gaining an edge over your competition
• Building inbound links and improving search engine rankings

These are just a few possible goals, of course. Your goals will depend on the specific needs of your business.

2. Pick a few social networking sites to start with.

The best strategy for many small businesses is to select three or four social networking sites that will give them good “coverage” in the social space. We typically set up our clients in Facebook, Twitter, and either YouTube or LinkedIn, since these are fairly easy to use and they integrate well in an overall social marketing strategy (we will talk about integration in Step 3, next).

It’s also a good idea to customize your profiles and use your company’s existing branding (logo, colors, tagline, graphics, look & feel, etc.) to provide consistency among profiles, give profiles a more professional look, and make it easy for users to recognize and remember your business.

3. Integrate your social networking profiles with your web site and other marketing initiatives.

By integrating your social networking profiles, you can avoid creating social networking “islands” that end up creating extra work for you and/or your staff, where you have to manage and maintain each profile individually. Instead, an integrated social marketing strategy means that you “write once, publish to many” in an organized, well-thought-out strategy that benefits your business and is efficient for your staff to maintain going forward.

For instance, let’s say your monthly e-newsletter has just been published (and sent to your emailing list as part of your regular monthly marketing activities). Now imagine that you want to further publicize the new issue, and also provide links to your web site where additional readers can find it.

With an integrated strategy in place, you can send out ONE announcement that could automatically be posted to your Facebook page, sent out as a “tweet” in Twitter, fed to your account in LinkedIn, published through an RSS feed on your web site, and even added as a new post in your blog. In this integrated example, your announcement would have been posted instantly in five separate places on the web, with just ONE action on your part. That’s the power of integration.

4. Create a Content Pipeline

Once you have your social networking profiles set up and integrated correctly, it’s a great idea to create a content pipeline of items you can use to regularly update your profiles and communicate with your readers.

Start your content pipeline by looking at the marketing activities you are already doing. Do you send out an e-newsletter each month? Post regularly to your blog? Do you run ads in monthly publications, or send out coupons? Do you use Google Adwords or advertise with web banner ads? Do you send out press releases or sponsor community events? Almost anything that you are already doing can be re-purposed and used in your content pipeline.

Once you have a list of items to use, pull out your calendar and put together a basic schedule for adding content to your social networking profiles each week (or month). Remember, if you have an integrated social networking strategy in place, it will be quick and easy to add the content once and have it automatically distributed to all your social profiles at the same time.

5. Track and Measure Results

Like any other marketing initiative in your business, you need to monitor your results in order to know if it’s working and if you are meeting your goals. The same is true for your social networking strategy.

To help you do this, there are many free monitoring tools available online, such as Twilerts or TweetBeep (for Twitter), Technorati RSS Alerts, and Google Alerts that can help you track instances of your company’s name, product, people, etc. when (or if) they are mentioned online.

Also, you can watch your web site stats to see if your social networking strategy is helping to drive additional traffic to your site, and also find out which pages are getting the most traffic. Over time, it should become clear if your social networking strategy is helping you achieve your goals, or if you need to make some adjustments to improve your results.

By using these five steps to build a social networking strategy, you can create a plan to help your business take advantage of this new and powerful method of web marketing, while keeping the additional work load to a minimum for you and your staff.

NOTE:

Five Sparrows now offers its trademarked Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)™ services to small businesses and non-profit organizations that want to use social marketing, but don’t have the staff, expertise, or time necessary to set up, implement, and integrate social networking for their businesses.

If you have been considering social marketing for your business but don’t have the time, staff, or knowledge necessary to implement it, call us today for a free consultation, or click here for more information.

The topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can certainly be a complex one, and for many small businesses it seems like talking about SEO is like speaking a completely foreign language – possibly a language from outer space. But there are some key concepts that, while not entirely simple, are vital to understanding the importance of SEO and what it takes to see a web site listed in the top search results.

Too often, small businesses think that by adding some meta data to a web page or using what they believe are good keywords is going to help them get noticed (and listed) in the search engine results. Unfortunately, those items alone will not make much of a difference to a small business web site’s rankings.

So to help you get a handle on what it takes to improve your web site’s search engine rankings, here are five key concepts that you really should know:

1. Like it or not, getting top listings in the search results will probably take some ongoing work on your part.

   Unfortunately, a web site is not something that can be on your “to-do” list, and then crossed off the list when the site goes live. If you leave your web site unattended and let it go stale, your visitors will stop visiting, and the search engines will have absolutely no reason to keep your site in their search results. Why would they? The web grows and changes everyday with new information, new resources, and new technology that people find incredibly useful. The search engines’ job is to give searchers the most useful, up-to-date results possible, and if your site isn’t growing, changing, and adding value, then it will be left behind.

2. Meta data is only part of the picture – even “keyword” meta data.

   Meta data is the behind-the-scenes code on a web page that tells the search engine spiders all sorts of useful stuff, including what the web page is supposed to be about. But the visible content on your page must support the information in your meta data, so the search engines can see that your page is really about what you say it is. It is important that the meta data and the page content match; however, it is only one of many factors taken into account by the search engines.

3. Keyword research is not optional.

   I cannot tell you how many times clients give us the keywords they think customers would use to search for their business, but when we run the testing, those terms don’t even show up as being searched on at all! In order to be found in a search, you must use the keywords that people actually type into the search engines when looking for your type of products and services. Why would you optimize your site for keywords that nobody ever types into a search engine? That’s why real-time keyword research is essential – let the data tell you what keywords customers are using in the search engines, don’t just guess!

4. Search engine algorithms rely heavily on inbound link scores.

   It’s true – search engines do rely heavily on inbound links as part of their criteria for ranking web sites; at least that’s how it works right now. When search engines first started out, they based rankings on meta data keywords. When scammers figured out how to cheat that system, search engines developed algorithms that gave value to inbound link counts, which is where we are today. No doubt this will again change as search engines continue to evolve. But for now, getting quality inbound links from reliable authority sites is one of the best things you can do for your search engine rankings. Although it is still only one of many factors taken into account when ranking a site, it is one of the biggest factors.

5. Track and measure your search engine results every month.

   Let’s assume you add a new FAQ to your web site every month. It’s great that you are taking the time to do this, but is it working? Does it drive more traffic to the site? Do people come back to that page every month to check out the new FAQ? Does that new FAQ ever show up in the search results? If you are not tracking and measuring, how will you know if it is a good idea to do this each month, or if you are just wasting your time?

   Or let’s imagine that your site falls from position number 6 to position number 106. Without regular tracking and measuring, you probably wouldn’t know the site had slipped, and you would miss the opportunity to intervene and take the necessary action to get it back in the top 10 again.

While there are many, many factors that contribute to how a web site ranks in the search engine results, these five concepts are among the most important. When you understand these concepts it can be much easier to find direction and take action for your own web site. So even if SEO still seems like a foreign language to you, just think of these five concepts as a basic “translation.”