Increasing visibility using search marketing practices can be complex. At Get Page One, we emphasize the importance of having strategic vision to achieve favorable search results via the use of organic search engine optimization, paid search advertisements and social media marketing. Yet, rather than falling into the trap of needing to understand complicated jargon such as meta-tags and XML site maps, optimal search marketing results rely on a collaborative top-down approach between a business and its SEO company. Both stakeholders play a part in the success or failure of Internet marketing campaigns.

The components that make search engine marketing work well require an expertise within a multitude of disciplines, many of them technical. Choosing keywords, targeting and optimizing advertisements, deciding on PPC or CPM and setting up analytics are all part of a process that leaves the average marketer puzzled. While complex terminology and knowledge on the technical side of search marketing are a part of your SEO company’s DNA, today’s digital world requires a holistic approach for success.

In other words, best practices in SEM do not always entail your entire workforce having in depth knowledge on the meaning of complicated jargon. However, in addition to the specialized side of the practice, SEM primarily focuses on communication to an audience who is actively seeking out information on the Internet. The saying ‘content is king’ translates into the customer experience. After all, consumers are not simply searching for your site map or what tags you have used. Consumers are seeking relevant information that will provide them some sort of benefit. Simply having a website and Facebook fan page isn’t enough. Great consumer facing content should be a part of the company culture.

Making search engine marketing work for you isn’t simply about nifty software, a website with a few keywords and some inbound links. This is why we emphasize collaboration with our clients so that great content and technical expertise synergize and lead to long-term success in today’s marketplace.

While the practice of searching for local businesses used to stem from flipping through pages found in a several-pound book – now likely stashed away collecting dust somewhere – the consumer is still letting their fingers do the walking. Today, those fingers are both flipping and typing, not on paper, but rather on mobile phones and computers. While business listings in the traditional Yellow Pages and print publications do still exist, the consumer is going digital. For today’s SMB (Small and Medium-sized Business), local search in the online world has taken on even greater importance because shoppers, now more than ever, turn to the search engine and even social networking sites first to discover and buy products and services.

Local search marketing is in essence replacing the traditional Yellow Pages as a method of increasing awareness, while driving both online and foot traffic to the business. Yet, it can be easy to see how an organization may drown in a sea of millions upon millions of search result pages and competing advertisements worldwide. A local search strategy helps optimize these results adding a geographic context to products and services the consumer is actively seeking.

Nonetheless, local search marketing is more than just a business listing on Google Places, paid search advertising or a high ranking in Yahoo or Bing. This comprehensive strategy takes the Yellow Pages ad or listing to an entirely new level with social media marketing and the ability for consumers to connect and search via mobile. For example, social media sites such as YouTube extend local search reach through video, and Facebook Deals let consumers discover local businesses beyond the search engine. Link building through blogs and photo-sharing sites also help tap into the triggers that your customers are using to discover businesses online.

Local search marketing strategies can be an effective tool to attract consumers to your business. If you are unsure of how to get start implementing local search in with your marketing initiatives, Get Page One can help you find out more about this secret weapon.

It may be easy to think that to achieve favorable search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo, simply putting up a video, blogging or posting to Facebook and Twitter will get the job done. However, to achieve optimal results, the combination of search marketing, organic search engine optimization and social media necessitates a cohesive strategic vision. Moreover, this vision is not an end-game approach, but rather an ongoing and flexible process. The need for flexibility stems from the constantly shifting changes in search algorithms and consumer behavior. We are often asked at Get Page One how each of these components operates in tandem to reach results.

While the answers are not always simple, search engines begin the course of online visibility through a complex combination of factors. More than just heading tags, anchor text, backlinks and advertisements, each component in the search process works together to develop placement on search engines, where the best place is, of course, a top ranking. Ideally, through the progression of increasing views and interaction, organizations convert search results into consumer demand and new sales. In a sense, it is akin to a professional baseball team playing for a World Series title. Each element, from pitching and hitting to defense seemingly operate separately. However, these components do not win championships by operating independently. The manager must know when to bunt and steal bases and when to pull the starting pitcher and rely on the bullpen.

Likewise, search marketing, SEO and social media marketing all seemingly function as separate entities. Yet, each has its own objectives. Choosing the right keywords, effective use of ad elements such as targeting and call-to-action, engagement through social networks and measuring results are just a few pieces of the puzzle.

On the Internet, you want to be in the right place at the right time, when the consumer is looking. Each building block in the practice of search marketing helps to realize this goal. Optimal search results typically occur when each building block combines within a comprehensive strategy. Therefore, like a World Championship baseball organization, achieving top Internet ranking is a team effort.

Analytics are a good thing. At Get Page One, we love analytics. After all, they can tell us whether our efforts at search marketing and social media are working to develop awareness and drive repeat business. Bounce rates, click-throughs, likes and re-tweets all provide great benchmarks from which to measure results. However, a raging sea of analytics, customer data and just plain numbers can overwhelm anyone’s mind. Numbers can be deceiving and do not always tell the whole story. So what are some companies overlooking by only focusing on numbers?

The answers may reside in understanding the psychology of your brand, your own customers and the consumer at large. As business leaders, we all tend to think bottom-line. Rational, logical and strategic are part of our DNA. We focus so intently on outcomes, results and analytics that we tend to forget why our customers buy from us, why they seek us out and why they might keep coming back in the future.

Thinking in terms of the physical world, consumers visiting a brick and mortar business in person become involved in the brand experience created by the organization. This experience touches each phase of the sales funnel starting with awareness and hopefully leading to initial and repeat purchases. And offline, just as online, the brand attempts to influence customers and inspire referral business.

Experiential marketing is nothing new; however, just as brands provide a certain experience offline, the Internet experience is equally important. Online, the combination of search marketing, social media marketing, analytics and consumer experiences can combine to tell a more complete story, turning raw data and numbers into useful information. For instance, web analytics can provide unique information about page views and the length of time viewers spend perusing a website. A high bounce rate might indicate an area of the website where users are leaving due to lack of interest and thus affecting conversion rates. Social media marketing analytics such as Facebook page interaction or re-tweets on Twitter can tell a story of how an audience perceives their online experience with the brand outside of a webpage or search engine.

Market research professionals talk about how together, quantitative and qualitative data help chronicle consumer behavior. Quantitative data is like analytics; however, combined with the attributes and descriptive information of qualitative data, we can begin to draw a more robust picture of the customer experience.

Get Page One has an SEO specialist position open in our Austin Office. If you’re interested, and think you have what it takes, let us know why. If we have to tell you how to contact us, you probably aren’t qualified . . . Look forward to hearing from you!

The Job:

SEO Specialist
The ideal candidate has experience with Search Engine Optimization for Fortune 500 class clients. He or she must have strong written and oral communication skills and be passionate about the field of SEM/SEO.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the SEO manager to strategize, implement, and evaluate campaigns
• Perform directory, article and press release submissions
• Promote blog posts, articles and press releases through social media and other outlets
• Establish and maintain relationships with webmasters and bloggers in industries relevant to clients
• Develop, test and execute new ideas for content distribution
• Develop, test and execute new SEO techniques
• Analyze data to measure success of campaigns
• Create informative, detailed reports for clients

Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree preferred
• Knowledge of SEO concepts and best practices, including off-page and on-page ranking factors
• 1-2 years of related SEO experience is preferred
• Excellent written and oral communication skills
• Creative and flexible yet detail oriented
• Highly motivated self starter

Blogging Best Practices from an SEO perspective

It’s important to remember that we blog for many reasons, not just for SEO. The following best practices are only regarding the Search Engine Optimization reasons for blogging. You may need to weigh these against other reasons you may have for blogging such as user interaction, conversion, etc.

Choose One Keyphrase

Each blog post should be targeting one main keyphrase. Use tools such as the Google keyword tool or Wordtracker’s free keyword service to determine the target keyphrase.

Use the Keyphrase as the Title

Title your blog post with the keyphrase and only the keyphrase. If you need additional information, use a sub-head. The title will be read by Google, and will also become the article’s url, two important factors in determining relevance.

Create and Use Relevant Categories

Your blog should be set up to include the category of a post in the url. Creating and using a relevant category will boost the relevancy of a post. Categories should be fairly broad, as you want many posts under each category. Example of a relevant categories would be “Auto Loans”, “Auto Finance”, etc. Each post should only exist under one category.

Pay Attention to Keyphrase Placement

1. Begin the article with the keyphrase if possible. If not, then make sure to include the keyphrase in the first sentence
2. Use sub-heads that use the keyphrase or a subset of the keyphrase
3. Use keyphrase or subset of the keyphrase once per paragraph as a general rule
4. Bold the first instance of the keyphrase
5. Link one instance of the keyphrase to a relevant page on your website
6. Read over article to make sure keyphrase placement isn’t so high as to sound “spammy”

Create and Follow a Linking Strategy

Your should determine the top 5-10 keyphrases that your site addresses and naturally work those links into your blog posts. Each of these phrases should have a consistent landing page. Go easy, these need to look natural and should be relevant to the blog topic. Remember, you are linking naturally, so you’re not saying “for great auto loans click here”. An example would be “I remember when my mom was looking for an (link to home page)auto loan(end link) with a low interest rate.”

Create Unique Meta Information

Each post should have unique meta description and meta keywords tags. We suggest a 50/50 rule: 50% of meta information should be pre-existing material related to the website in general, 50% should be specific to the post. Be sure to begin with specific information and work down to pre-existing information.

Create Unique Tags

As with the meta information, the first half of tags should be unique to the post, second half should be general tags developed for the site.

Submit Blog Posts to Digg

Submit each blog post to Digg. As with the blog post, the title of the Digg should be the keyphase. If more words are necessary to prevent looking like spam, then begin the Digg with the keyphrase. Include the keyphrase in the description of the Digg.

Submit Digg to Google

Submit each Digg to Google’s Add Url page (go ahead and also submit the blog post while you’re there). Again, use the keyphrase as the title of the submission.

Create Companion Press Release

If publishing a companion press release, target a keyphrase that is addressed in the blog as well as on the website, link to both the blog and the web page from the press release with relevant text.

Good luck with your SEO blog post!

The Video Marketing Expo (VMX) is going on today in Austin at the Hilton Downtown. Jam-packed with helpful and interesting sessions about all things online video — including innovative methods for producing online videos for blogging, marketing, lead generation and social media — VMX makes it so attendees will walk away with useful tips and tools given by industry leaders.

And among those industry leaders speaking at VMX is Get Page One’s very own Brian Rutledge. He’ll be giving a presentation about search engine optimization and video metrics, and how new media and video are seen by search engines. This is a great time to learn about the best tools for tracking video viewership and abandonment as well as how to make sure your videos are seen correctly by the emerging networks of online video syndicators.

Can’t make it to VMX? Feel free to download Brian’s presentation: SEO + Video + Metrics.

We came across a great article at MediaPost titled “SEO Investments Expected To Grow More Than 20%.” A report from eMarketer concluded that search engine optimization growth will jump from 17.7% in 2009 to 20.3% in 2013, as paid search growth will actually decline from 15.9% to 11.3%. Basically, with marketers beginning to see how SEO fits into campaigns, investments in SEO will grow at a higher rate every year.

David Hallerman, senior analyst for eMarketer, said that search is the best tool for customer acquisition. The article goes on to say that people “generally find organic listings more relevant than paid search ads,” which means they’re likely to click on search engine results more than they’d click on PPC ads. However, Hallerman noted that marketing campaigns should combine search engine optimization and PPC.

When this is done successfully, it could result in higher rankings. Both have benefits, says the article: While the effects of PPC campaigns are immediate, marketers must spend money consistently. On the other end, SEO takes time and requires maintenance to keep high rankings once they’re achieved. Hallerman explained that the amount of time it takes to deliver a ROI (return on investments) all depends on conversions.

So how do SEO and PPC fit into your marketing campaign? Contact us — we’ll be happy to discuss it with you.

Software engineer Matt Cutts, who is head of the webspam team at Google, recently posted a video response to the question “Will SEO still exist in five years?” The answer? Yes, says Matt. Take a look:

I Was Trying to Change a WordPress Permalink…

Changing a WordPress Permalink should be easier after your post is already published.

The problem: in WordPress, the Permalink doesn’t change after the post has been cast out upon the wild and wooly waves of the WWW. On the post editing screen, you’ll see the WordPress permalink listed under the headline of your post, and to the right of that is a delightful hyperlink labeled “Edit.” Hit it, and you can type in a new WordPress Permalink to make your heart sing.

As any of you familiar with search engine optimization know, that WordPress Permalink isn’t just for looks. A well-designed WordPress Permalink helps draw search engine traffic to your site. And traffic means business.

Unfortunately, that new WordPress Permalink doesn’t work. It’s totally useless after the post has been published. There’s nothing to tell you that. Just the hard reality that you can sit there, refreshing your blog, and the damned post URL — aka WordPress Permalink — is obdurate and unchanging.

How to Change That Stubborn WordPress Permalink

The secret trick to fixing that ugly Permalink, my WordPress pals, is to edit the title of your post. This gets WordPress to throw out the old URL and use the new URL you entered into the WordPress Permalink “Edit” dialog. If you don’t want to change the WordPress post title, edit the title to something different, save, and then revert it to the original title you wanted.

When Not to Change That Stubborn WordPress Permalink

Of course, if you’ve already got a bunch of pingbacks and incoming links to your post, changing the WordPress Permalink is inadvisable. All that incoming traffic will go 404, costing you traffic. You might, however, want to change it anyhow as long as you 301 redirect the incoming hits to your shiny new and improved WordPress Permalink.