Firstly, thank you to James Hutto, not only for following us on Twitter but accepting our invitation to contribute to this blog.

Leading on from this, I’ll be discussing how utilising your blog can help you network with those within the same industry, as well as increase the success of your SEO campaign.

Many people know that a blog is a vital tool to have within a website, but are not using it to its full potential. A blog offers various opportunities for a business to succeed within the World Wide Web, if used in conjunction with other elements of SEO. Content is still King and what better way to voice ideas, opinions and strategies than using your own website to do so.

Blogging has mixed reviews. There are many people that have been contributing to their blog for a long while without as much as a single comment. Then, there are those blogs that seem to have numerous visits and are highly regarded as being a useful source to find out the latest information and goings on in specific areas of interest.

So what makes a good blog and how can it improve online relationships with both people and Search Engines?

Get It Out There:

Blogging is no good on its own. As with all aspect of SEO, you need various components to comprise a successful campaign. To get the readers you need to find them, and once you’ve got them you need to keep them. But how is this possible?

Well with social media for one. The most obvious place to find people is on some of the most highly populated websites; Twitter, Facebook and You Tube. Regardless of the industry there are people that always want to know more authoritative figures, but haven’t got the time to go searching. Make yourself visible by posting your information and highlighting news that you’re proud of.

There are various online tools that can link from your blog to your Twitter then to your Facebook so at the click of one button you’re covering all bases. Once you’ve got people visiting your blog, the hardest battle is won.

Keep Content Current:

Search Engines are fickle, they get bored and when something better comes along they are likely to choose that over something that isn’t reinventing itself. Search Engines want to see websites producing fresh content, taking the time to build links and spread themselves across the world wide web.

A blog is the perfect platform for reinventing a website, as it offers the opportunity to add fresh content on a regular basis.

The only rule that you should follow to ensure that your blog is successful, is related to the content that you are adding to it.

Make sure it’s recent, exciting and new. You blog doesn’t have to be stuffy, in fact it should be chatty and engage readers. Writing industry based content that is exciting will attract those with the power to influence your company, who will help spread the word within a community. This type of exposure isn’t possible with old copy that people have read about before.

Don’t Focus On A Time Limit:

It is healthy to set goals for a business and do everything to reach them. However getting a blog noticed and building up an authority can take a long time, it’s virtually impossible to put any timing together.

Instead of focussing on what isn’t being achieved, spend time planning what else could be done to improve the blogs authority. This may include increasing how many posts are being submitted, researching further afield or even requesting guest posts from other people to share their thoughts.

This brings me conveniently to how networking can enhance your blogging practices.

Networking for Blogging.

Networking provides the perfect opportunity to discuss elements of your business with others within the same industry. But why stop at tweets or comments? Surely the point of making friends, and followers is to engage in their recent activity and share ideas.

Blogging can strike conversations and with news that is well written, people will soon be keen to learn more about your company. Urge people to contact you and offer your services through your social media. It is called ‘networking’ for a reason and your news and updates are the perfect conversation starter.

It also opens up doors for people to contribute to your website and with so many different opinions on SEO it’s easy to see why blogging is crucial for any SEO campaign.

Improving your SEO is about engaging with those that can potentially help your business grow. Don’t focus on what your website isn’t providing but rather the people that can help get you where you want to be.

A blog holds more cards than perhaps many website owners realise. If you don’t currently have one it’s a must before continuing with your SEO campaign and if you’ve neglected yours recently, then ensure you get back writing, it’s a sure fire way to help expose your business and gain those all important contacts.

Today I attended a great conversation about Social Media, hosted by Howell Marketing and the Memphis Daily News, that was aptly titled “Joining the Conversation.”

There was a great keynote from Dave Chase of Altus Alliance (and formerly of Microsoft), and the panel was comprised of notable names from FedEx and Pinnacle Airlines, among others.

I was struck by something that Doug Shockey, COO of Pinnacle, mentioned when answering a question from the audience about how to plan a successful social media strategy. His comment echoed one that I’ve heard often from people in business who are trying to wrap their head around this new channel: you have to create a sustainable platform for using social media.

I couldn’t help but think about how the opposite is true. Social media is changing so quickly that finding a sustainable model for using some of these channels would be an exercise in futility. This whole online conversation is accelerating and spiraling upward, so I would almost advocate that a truly sustainable model for marketing on the social web should not be your goal at all. At least, not in the sense of using one particular service or network.

The cost of getting involved with social media is so low (free in most cases, with the only cost being your labor, or the cost of your agency) that you don’t have to worry about a long term commitment to one platform or another.

So what if Twitter isn’t sustainable as a marketing platform? It’s a powerful platform now, but what about if they start charging $9.95 per month? “How many people do you think will continue to use it then?” as Ken Woody from Innova, a Memphis VC company that invests in medical and life sciences start-ups, said today.

My Take-away from the panel

At first, what I took away from this conversation about the online conversation made me feel like I got stuck with a crappy gift from a dirty Santa party. I should have learned something valuable from these smart guys in marketing and business, right? Well maybe I did- I just didn’t realize it at first. The realization that planning your social media strategy to death can be fatal is pretty interesting, once I started thinking through it.

Don’t get me wrong here- before we even think about launching a social media campaign for one of our clients, we always define the goals and objectives. But beyond that- you just have to dive in and watch the conversation unfold. Why? Because it is conversational. You don’t script every personal conversation you have, so why would you try to do so for the online conversation?

I spoke with a long-time friend at the event who works for a Fortune 1000 organization in their PR/Communications department. She’s been urging them to get a social media strategy in place and at least join the conversation. But that idea gets mired in the corporate red tape, so nothing happens since they can’t iron out a corporate-wide communications plan for all their brands. Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder what that organization’s competitors are doing. Are they being just as cautious, or has my friend’s company missed the boat?

Social Media represents a new marketing channel, so the first one out of the gate will likely reap the lion’s share of the reward. Marketing 101 says to be where your customers are, and your competitors aren’t. There is an opportunity now that hasn’t existed for decades, simply because mass media has always held all the keys and guarded all the doors.

Don’t over-think your social media strategy;  define your objectives, and jump into the conversation. Be transparent, produce good content, and follow the 12:1 rule of putting in more than you get out, and you’ll be just fine. Trust me- I’m on Twitter, so that means I’m a social media guru!

SEO is a hot buzz-word and the searches for SEO companies has been steadily on the rise since 2004 according to Google Trends. With adverstising budgets being trimmed and marketing dollars dwindling in the face of our now “official” recession, I want to explain to you the reasons why you should be actively investing in Search Engine Optimization for your organization.  

I’m going to lay out some of the reasons why SEO is one of the best marketing investments you can make in this time of economic uncertainty, where every dollar has to count.

Search traffic will not be affected by the Market
Sales might drop and conversion rates may falter, but raw search traffic isn’t going anywhere. A recession doesn’t mean that people stop searching the web. Internet penetration and searches per user are still on the rise, and Search Engines are not going anywhere.

Unparalleled ROI
A MarketingSherpa survey of 3,053 client-side marketers determined that SEO was viewed as the most valuable marketing solution in terms of ROI; even higher than email marketing to in-house email lists. ROI is everything – especially in uncertain economic times.

The Web Outperforms Other Marketing Channels
When organizations look at the paths that lead to sales and income (a critical analysis whenever budgets are under scrutiny), the web almost always comes out with one of two assessments: Either it’s a leading sales channel (especially from an ROI perspective) or it’s deemed to be an area with the greatest opportunity for growth. In both scenarios, web marketing and SEO take center stage.

SEO is Losing its Stigma
Google is releasing SEO guides, Microsoft and Yahoo! both have in-house SEO departments and the “SEO is BS” crowd have lost a little of their swagger and a lot of their arguments. No surprise – solid evidence trumps wishful thinking, especially when times are tough.

Targeted Traffic
Traditional “push” marketing/advertising options often have you publishing an advertisement in a place where you’re hoping it will get a lot of eyeballs. That’s great, but the real question is: who owns those eyeballs? Are they the right people? Do they want or need what you’re offering? Good SEO keyword research can tell you a lot about your targets like what they are interested in and how they are searching for it. When you choose your keywords and optimize for them, you’re addressing an existing need or desire – and you know that the majority of visitors from search engines are looking for exactly what you’re offering. In short, SEO helps to drive highly qualified traffic to your website and gets your message in front of the right people.

Marketing Departments are in a Brainstorming Cycle
A high percentage of companies are asking the big questions – “how do we get new customers?” and “what avenues still offer opportunity?” Whenever that happens, SEO is bound to show up near the top of the “to be investigated” pile.

Web Budgets are Being Reassessed
Paid advertising is tapering off, and global conversion rates are still very low for pay-per-click. When managers meet to discuss how to address budget concerns they should be talking about improving how they grab that “free” traffic, instead of paid traffic.

Someone Finally Looked at the Web Analytics
It’s sad, but true. When a downturn arrives or panic sets in, someone, maybe the first someone in a long time, checks the web analytics to see where revenue is still coming in. Not surprisingly, search engine referrals with their exceptional targeting and intent-matching are ranking high on the list.

Don’t get me wrong here, because I am most definitely biased on this subject. I run an Internet marketing agency that specializes in SEO and Social Media marketing, but so I would always urge clients, prospects, everyone to make SEO an integral part of their marketing budget. The reasons are simple: people are not reaching for the yellow pages anymore. They are sitting in front of a computer all day, so when they need to find something, they go to their favorite search engine and look. With over 60 billion searches online every month, I guarantee that people are looking for what you offer. Wouldn’t you like them to find your site and not your competitors’? SEO can make that happen for you.

Sources: IGraphix & SEOmoz.org

Measurability and Search Engine Marketing: what you need to know about measuring the effectiveness of your efforts.

How do you justify the value of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? This is a question that we constantly have to answer to business owner to justify the value of hiring an Internet marketing firm. Since SEM is a long-term strategy for returns that depends on consistency and accumulation, establishing that return on Investment can be difficult. Here are a few suggestions on how to best integrate web analytics data with other tools to prove the value of SEM.

The key is your analytics software
The key to measurability is that it be as detailed and as comprehensive as possible, and that is one of the most compelling arguments for how powerful Internet marketing can be. There are many great analytics packages out there, and one of the best just happens to be given away for free from our friends at Google – Google Analytics. With the right analytics package in place, you should be able to pull a remarkable amount of information about how people are finding and using your site, and this information is going to be critical to determining the success of your marketing program. First, we’ll look at how people are finding your site.

Understand how people find your site
Search Engine Marketing is all about making sure that people find your site instead of one of your competitor’s sites. Your analytics tool should at least be able to track the critical metrics:

• Which keywords or search terms drive traffic from organic (natural) searches?
• Which sites are referring traffic to yours?
• Which search engines are people using to get to your website?

Identify the search terms and keywords
You also need a keyword ranking tool in addition to web analytics. There are a variety of these tools available, although most of the decent tools out there are have at least some cost associated with them.

Since the foundation of any Search Engine Marketing plan is SEO, it’s recommended to optimize each web page for the few most relevant keywords, depending on the amount of content on the page. The keyword ranking tool is crucial because it’s equally as important to understand how visible your website is for these words and phrases. For example, if you’ve optimized your site for the keyword ‘website design company’, does your site show up in a top listings within the major engines when a user searches for the term ‘website design company’?

Integrate analytics with keyword tracking
Once you have a handle on your website’s keywords and search terms, its time to go a step further by comparing this data with your analytics reports. The key question is: are the keywords you’re optimizing for the words that are actually driving traffic to your website? If not, your SEO program needs to be re-focused.

It’s important to reach prospects when they are in the early stages of the buying cycle, the people who are searching for general information. Why? Once your site has achieved visibility within the general search listings, prospects have the opportunity to dig deeper and learn more about your offerings.

You must track SEM-driven conversions
When you designed your site, what was the goal? Is your site’s content designed to provide information, generate leads, or both? Often times PPC (Pay-Per-Click) landing pages are designed specifically with conversions in mind, while other pages within a corporate website are more informational and simply describe the product or solution offered. We always advocate that clearly pronounced calls-for-action be present on all of your site’s pages, because you never want someone who is eager to contact you to waste even a nanosecond searching for your contact number of form. SEO campaigns for consumer-oriented sites are typically focus on tracking orders and sales, but in the world of B2B, marketers must be able to track other types of actions (conversions) such as white paper downloads, sign-ups for virtual tours and newsletters, contact form registrations, and even phone calls.

You may wonder how you can track calls that are coming in from your website, which is crucial for certain industries where the prospect is much more likely to call than email due to the specific nature of inquiry. For example: a custom fabricators of granite counter tops and bathtubs, or a commercial real estate developer. For any industry (or site, for that matter) that intends to drive phone calls to contact your sales force, the ability to track those leads that come in from the site is crucial! Setup a unique phone number, either local or long-distance, so that you can easily run regular reports on the incoming calls. There are a variety of solutions available for this, such as services like Kall8 that will let you register numbers and setup reporting schedules for specific campaigns, and more.

Measure your link building progress and effectiveness
Are you tracking the effectiveness of your link building campaign? Cultivating links from other relevant, quality sites not only helps search engines place value on your pages, but it also helps drive targeted prospects to your website. Link building is a long-term strategy so you need to have very specific tracking for these efforts in order to justify their effectiveness. A variety of different software options are available for this as well.

If you aren’t conducting a link building campaign or, like most businesses we talk to, you have no idea how many sites are linking to yours, then try this:

• The easiest way to determine websites linking to yours is by conducting this Google search: link:www.yourwebsite.com
• To find additional sites that might be linking to yours, try: @yourwebsite.com

Now for a better picture of how people are working Again, compare this linking information to your analytics data. Are your link partners actually driving traffic to your site? Linking should always be an ongoing initiative, so use these insights to continually improve your linking initiative. If you find that one type of site is driving more traffic, or higher quality traffic, than another type — focus future link building research in this direction.

Measuring additional off-page initiatives
What about all the other off-site or off-page initiatives that make up (or should make up) your strategy? Such as:

• Social media -Measure traffic and results from your social networking profiles, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and blogs and blog sites such as Technorati.
• Video SEO -Measure traffic and results from video community websites like YouTube.
• Optimized PR -Measure results from sites where your press releases and articles are posted.
• Email campaigns – e-marketing has so many amazing features for measurability, each campaign should be carefully quantified for continual improvement.

All of your marketing efforts should be tracked, in one form or another, by your analytics package in order to properly justify the value of your online marketing efforts. And since online marketing meets all of the qualifications for S.M.A.R.T. marketing; SMART objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

Bottom line: web analytics is the key to effectively measuring SEO success. But you have to combine your analytics data with keyword ranking reports, linking reports, and other conversion metrics in order to track improvements over time and to proactively establish the value of SEO.

We made this offer to several of the associations we have spoken to about online marketing and we’ll do the same for you! If you contact us, Valeo will provide a free Internet marketing analysis of your site as well as to integrate Google Analytics into your site for FREE! If you’re not tracking your site then you need this software, and it is 100% free to you.

Contact us now and find out more…