Is Your Brand Visible Online? Internet Marketing Guide to Search Engine Optimization for Your Brand

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One of the foundations upon which the field of Internet Marketing is built is Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of ensuring that a web page is found and indexed by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) so that when people are searching for keywords of value to the business, the search engines will return results for those web pages to the person searching. These listings of links to other web pages are known as the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

SEO is mostly built upon discovering the keyword phrases of value to a particular business and then optimizing the content and links to a web page containing that keyword phrase. Most of this part of SEO is product and service related. For example, an electronics manufacturer might want to optimize a keyword phrase like “52-inch Panasonic plasma TV” so that people looking for information on that product will find his web page and it will have the opportunity to sell products it has in inventory.

The SEO professional researches the keyword phrases that have high value to the business by determining how many people are searching for that term, how many other web pages are optimized for that keyword phrase, how strongly they are optimized for the phrase and how likely it can be to obtain a first page ranking on the SERPs for that keyword phrase.

However, not all SEO is about products and services. If SEO is the foundation of Internet Marketing, the pillars upon which most of the structure is built must include an element of branding. Much of the searching on the Internet are people looking up information on companies they’ve heard about. Whether it’s simply looking up contact information, or they’ve heard about your brand from some other source (referral, traditional advertising, etc.) and want to know more about you, many people type in your company name or some iteration of it.

Many of us assume that people will find us because we believe our brand is unique and we should therefore by default be the #1 listing on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). But are we? And who else shows up on that page? And if they have better Conversion Architecture on their site, are you giving sales leads to a competitor?

Try this exercise now. Open up a new window in your browser, go to Google and type in your company name. See who comes up and then come back here to find out why. Go do it; I’ll wait.

How’d you do? Are you giving away free leads? Do you have every listing on the Search Engine Results Page? No? Then consider that someone who is looking for you is also going to click on one of the other listings on the page and go to their site. You could be giving away free leads to your competitor.

How to monopolize the first page of the SERPs So, how do you monopolize the first page of the SERPs? You have to have more than one web property listed on the SERP. I hear you saying, “but I only have one website; how am I going to get 10 listings on Google? Well, there are a number of ways. Read on.

Run a search on your strongest competitor or a brand you know well and you’ll see that they likely have many web properties. They might have a number of entries for different pages of their website. They may have an entry for their company blog (which could be on their website or on another website they own. They may have entries on other sites for articles they have written. They may have directory sites that have listings for their brand. And of course, they may have listings for their social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or a YouTube channel Most likely, if they have all of these, they probably don’t have any of their competitors on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page.

So, you can see that there are a lot of different ways for people to find a company online. And you can have the same results.

Local Listings are Critical

In the SERP example above, I didn’t ask you to include any geo-locators (City, State, County, or other geographical locator). If I had, you may have seen listings for Google Places, Yahoo listing, Bing local listings or other l local directories.

These listings are very important to establishing your online presence. This is particularly important on Google, where the Places listings are often the first organic listings on the page. These listings also help authenticate your brand with the search engines.

One critical point on local listings and directories is that you have to be very careful to ensure that your business information is listed in exactly the same way everywhere on the web. The search engines are very interested in knowing that you are a legitimate business before they will index your location.

Other ways to increase your web properties are through your social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. All of these properties are indexed by Google and if you have the right keywords, you’ll be indexed for more than just your name. Also check out local directories. If you don’t find any of these when you search for your business name, search for your competitor’s name and see what directory listing they have. Then submit to those same directories. Publish articles on free article submission sites like EzineArticles.com. Bookmark your site on sites lie reddit.com, squidoo, giigo.com, delicious, and many others. Create a Manta profile.

Most of us have had occasion in the past to look up a business location online only to find when we got there that they had moved or closed or weren’t where the internet said they were. Google is aware of this and now scans the entire web to confirm the listing it has for your business on any number of other sites. Something as simple as spelling your street address as Main St. in one listing and Main Street in another listing will cause the search engines to consider these two different businesses. Google’s spiders are very smart, but they can only look at the information that is presented to them. The old “S in; S out” applies.

A Guide to Making Money With Twitter

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Twitter, when originally started was basically considered as a social networking site. Twitter is very popular for its vast base of subscribers spread all across the globe. Things have changed in the recent past & people are now considering twitter as a very powerful medium of social marketing.

To begin earning with twitter you should follow step by step approach. Remember one thing twitter is not for you if you are looking for an opportunity to get rich over night.

The first step to start is to build a good number of followers. Here popular misconception is that you should have very huge number of followers to earn maximum. This is although not completely wrong but not completely true also.

The number of followers is one of the factors that determine your earning potential but the most important test your followers should pass is that they should be interested in what you are promoting. Suppose you are promoting a product which is completely unrelated to what your followers are looking for they would not bother to even click your links. To be most effective your followers should share the same interest with you or should be from the same niche which you are promoting. Having thousands of followers without any common interest would hardly pay.

Once you have built up the list of followers now you should build a solid confidence & trust in the minds of your followers. You can share useful information that is really a value addition for them. It is not always prudent to bombard your followers with offers & other useless stuff. People usually would not like to receive spam & they would simply un follow you.

You can recommend some products which you have already tried & tested. Good product recommendation would create a good impression about you in their minds & people would love to read your tweets & in fact they would wait eagerly for your tweets. Product recommendations could earn you a good amount of money if you are promoting the product as an affiliate.

Promoting your own product would also be profitable if the product is really very good & the customers see a great value for money. If you have built a good relation with your followers then you would get your sales doubled or even tripled due to the social viral nature of twitter. People tend to recommend good things to their followers & if they like your product they would recommend the same to their friends & followers. There is no limit to how much you would earn with the word of the mouth publicity.

In summary I would like to say that you should use the social networking tools like twitter very carefully & responsibly & should not directly jump to promote something. Imagine yourself in the place of your followers. Would you like to receive promotions & offers from a person whom you hardly know or whom you don’t know at all. On the other hand you would definitely give a try to a product which your one of friend recommended. You should remember that you are dealing with human beings & should respect their emotions. The main reason why social marketing is popular is the human touch to it & you should use it in a proper way.