SEO Marketing

If your website is one of the unlucky many websites that are placed in Google’s probationary “Sandbox”, don’t despair. While you can’t control what limits Google places on your site or for how long, there are techniques you can apply that will not only help you be released from the Sandbox, but will make your website stronger in the long run.

First of all, do not attempt to get out of the Sandbox by resorting to spammy "tools” or unethical tricks. This is a good way to get yourself banned permanently from Google since the whole point of the Sandbox is to filter out spammers and con artists. Links are the lifeblood of search engine rankings, so obtaining quality, dependable sources such as “.edu, .gov, and .mil” domains is not only important for proving you are credible to Google and getting released from the Sandbox, but also for the general health and ranking of your site. Building quality links is a slow process, but it will strengthen your website as a whole. Don’t be tempted to purchase links from link brokers, as buying a bunch of links in a small period of time is one of the characteristics that will get you sent to the Sandbox in the first place.

Relevant, useful, accurate content is one of the main things Google’s robots are looking for when they crawl your site. Adding new content, even when your site is in the Sandbox will help you get out and will help your rankings in other search engines. Generally, one of the top issues that put sites in the Sandbox is using popular or controversial keywords. Since keywords are a integral part of search engines it is very important that you use words and phrases that pertain to your site. There are often dozens of keywords you can use for any particular site and be sure to look for long tail keyphrases. If you are having trouble thinking of them, try one of the many keyword tools available online such as Googles free keyword tool to help you brainstorm.

If you own or manage a website, you already understand that optimizing the site for the search engines is an extremely important task (especially if your business relies on getting sales from the website). If you plan on optimizing your site for the search engines, you should understand that search engine optimization does not automatically mean you will get sales and conversions. What?

That is correct, the primary goal of search engine optimization is to increase your ranking in search engines. Although, it’s true that it normally will also get you more targeted traffic, you should not automatically expect a huge jump in your sales just because you began to optimize your site. In order to ensure sales conversions, you need to take many other marketing factors into consideration, such as web design, usability, landing pages, navigation and of course-- does your product offer visitors exactly what they are looking for and at a great value? The benefits of SEO are numerous, but they are longer-reaching and should be combined with proven marketing techniques in order to increase your sales. Don’t confuse search engine optimization tactics with sales tactics.

Understanding your sites statistics is another vital part of search engine optimization. For example, do you know how many people are visiting your site? What are they looking at? How long are they staying on each page? These questions will give you a good picture into what needs to be changed on your site and what is working well. If you don’t understand the analytics of your site, how will you know if the techniques or content you are posting is successful? “When things are going well, even if best practices aren't being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what's made a real difference.” Don’t neglect the statistics of your website; they can be a great resource to help you with your web marketing objectives.

While organic SEO strategies can be a great way to improve your website, don’t forget about the other media and tactics you can take advantage of. SEO isn’t a replacement for traditional marketing, social media networking, printed advertisements, etc. Remember, marketing a business website is a lot like driving a car. If you get too focused on the road in front of you, you may ignore the pedestrian stepping into the road at the corner and likely cause an accident. Likewise, if you get too focused on SEO tactics, you will miss the other strategies such as social media marketing that could really help your business. So, the moral of the story is don’t focus on SEO to the exclusion of other business tactics and SEO does not necessarily mean that you will get sales conversions without taking any other marketing tactics into account.

Yes! It may seem strange, but believe it or not search engines look at various different criteria on your site for ranking purposes and will penalize you if they decide that you are trying to trick them in any manner.

What they are looking for is any type of unnatural behavior that they will flag for “over optimization” reasons. Basically, this means that you will rank poorly for relevant key phrases in your niche. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to have your site optimized by a professional SEO company or at least someone who is very familiar with what the search engines are looking for and what the latest trends are.

Here are some tell tale signs that you may be over optimizing your website:

• Identical Page Titles and H1 headings
• Excessive internal links
• Keyword stuffing
• Excessive poorly written text below the fold (for the search engines and not the users)

If you find that your website is using any of these tactics, you should make adjustments as soon as possible to get your site back on the right path. The search engines are getting smarter everyday and the best optimization you can do has always been in regards to content. Content is still king! You should always write for the intended audience and not the search engines. Stuffing keywords is definitely old school, but I am often surprised when analyzing prospective clients sites and just surfing the Internet that this tactic is still going on and quite prevalent.

Internal linking is a great strategy and you should definitely use it as part of your on-page SEO arsenal, but be careful not to over do it as the search engines can easily spot this. Finally, please make it a point to write unique title tags and headings for each page and never create a block of optimized copy exclusively for just the search engines (below the fold of your website), which again is obviously not intended for your users and the search engines can easily detect.

Pick your favorite restaurant. Any cuisine, any location. Now search for it on Twitter. Chances are, if it is a larger company or chain, you will find it. If your search doesn’t result in an official page, send out a tweet asking if anyone else has heard of the place. “A recent study from LinkedIn and Harris Interactive showed that only 8% of advertisers and consumers think Twitter is a "very effective" promotion tool.” That is quite interesting. However, it is much easier in some respects to measure the effectiveness of a Twitter campaign than traditional forms of advertising.

For example, Taco Bell has a Twitter page. They use it to inform their customers about new coupons, contests, and interact with fans. How effective is their Twitter page? Here are some basic ways any business can track their Twitter statistics and compare them to traditional media metrics. “For raw broadcast reach, your number of Followers is the leading indicator because it quantifies your baseline Twitter audience.” Taco Bell has 16,040 followers. Not bad when you compare it to McDonalds’ 16,727 followers. Pizza Hut, which often partners with Taco Bell locations, has 26,454 followers.

Google Analytics is one of my favorite tools to use to see how much of your website’s traffic is coming from Twitter or any site for that matter. “What are they looking at? What is working? What is not?” Third party tools come in hand and are a valuable way to easily see how effective your Twitter page is. For example, check out Tweet Stats, it puts all your tweets into an easy to read graph that shows you how much you tweet and how often other reply to your tweets. “@Replies, Twitter’s public conversation feature, is the most significant engagement quantifier because your audience is responding to your message.” Taco Bell has an average reply rate of 30.37%. See how simple it is to find the effectiveness of your Twitter promotions?

Social media marketing has become the hottest new way to attract, inform, and influence customers. There are several uses that Twitter is especially effective at such as: updating customers of deals or coupons, offering real-time customer support, or gaining customer loyalty by responding to comments and complaints. Many larger companies are already using Twitter for these purposes.

For example, DellOutlet posts bargains on refurbished Dell computers, DellSMBnews offers advice and information for small and medium businesses, while DellLounge is more of a fan community “bringing you cutting edge trends in Music, Film, Art and Technology.” Walmart.com and HobbyLobbyStore posts current deals and coupon offerings. Comcast, JetBlue, and TheHomeDepot offer customer support with JetBlue even posting the names of those “currently on duty”.

Many major companies use Twitter as a mean to connect with their customers. McDonalds for example states “we’re here to listen and learn from all of our fans and followers” in their biography of themselves. Other examples include SouthwestAir which has “non-official, entertaining discussions with their customers”, HRBlock which answers questions, SnickersIceCrm engages with fans, BBy_community is Best Buy’s online support page, WholeRecipes offers recipes from Whole Foods Market, and WholeFoods offers “fresh organic tweets” from their headquarters in Texas. TacoBell_jobs even offers what available positions there are in all their locations.

Twitter is a wonderful way to communicate with customers on a more personal level without expending a lot of effort. It is simple to set up and maintain a Twitter page, making it a cost-effective method of public relations. Further, the marketing applications you can use it for: pointing people to your blog, website, current deals, or even video commercials makes a Twitter page an important part of any social marketing campaign.

Contests and giveaways are popular ways to increase brand recognition and now with the advent of social media, it can also serve as a way to build a fan base on Facebook. For example, Herbal Essences received thousands of new fans this past summer when it gave away a free bottle of shampoo to the first several thousand respondents,which was very successful for them. Babies’ r Us offered $5 gift cards for everyone who became a fan on January 28th. Incentives such as these give visitors a tangible reason to join and a positive impression of your brand. Consider what you can do for your business using these social media techniques.
Burger King had a creative spin off of this technique. You can receive a coupon for a free burger at their store, but first you must unfriend ten of your friends. “Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook's news feed explaining that the user's love for the unlucky soul is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper.”
“One of my favorite stories about social media involves the Coca Cola Facebook page. The fan page was created by two users who liked Coke. What started as a fan page for fun, turned out to be the largest product fan page on Facebook. Coca Cola, instead of taking over the page and making it their own, Coke rewarded their fans by bringing them to Atlanta and giving them a tour of the Coke facility. The fan page remains theirs, but now they have the blessing and help of Coca Cola.” Why create a fan page from scratch if someone else has done much of the hard work for you? Are there fans of your business or product that already have a fan page for it? Perhaps you could encourage your fans in a similar fashion as Coke did.

The Facebook demographic began as mostly teenagers. The statistics through 2009 show 40% of users were age thirteen to eighteen. Women outnumber men by a slim margin, but the age demographic has changed. The category of age thirty-five to fifty-four has grown significantly and as of 2010 there are over eighteen million users over the age of forty-five. This change in demographic will affect every company fan page as well as the advertising offered. Brands such as Victoria Secret’s Pink fan page that catered to the teenager/college-aged crowd have garnered extremely large, dedicated followings.
According to social marketing experts, “Some brands cannot expect huge followings on Facebook. Brands or product lines targeting the demographic most prominent on Facebook tend to see the quickest growth.” Many political analysts believe that a large part of the reason President Obama won the last campaign was because he marketed himself to the younger generations using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks. Encouraging the young voters to become involved in politics and share their concerns with him led him to be viewed as a modern candidate who was in touch with their needs.
Although contests, giveaways, and other advertising methods can be useful for increasing the size of your Facebook fan page, this type of approach has a quick growth then stagnation period usually. It is much better to provide quality content and grow “organically” for an engaged and active fan base. Word-of-mouth will serve you much better in the long run than a month-long ad campaign. Creating a Facebook fan page isn’t difficult to do, but it can have a huge impact on the success of your company.