Protecting Your Online Reputation Without Overdoing It

A reputation is a valuable thing. Businesses, both small and large, are required from time to time to defend theirs, while others provide such pristine service to their customers that they are virtually infallible. However, the best way to protect one’s reputation is to prevent slander from ever surfacing. While no one can control the information that is passed around on the Internet, via blogs, forums, articles and comments, there are many measures that can be taken in order to secure the name of your business in search results. From experience, many internet marketing firms have learned the importance of preventative Reputation Management versus that which must occur post-concern.

Hands down, it is always easier to prevent search results from returning bad opinions than it is to remove those that have already been showing up. The idea behind reputation management isn’t always to hide bad opinions, because there are many bad internet marketing practices in effect, and sometimes, slandering others is how some companies go about improving their own reputation. It’s logical - diminish the credibility of another and automatically yours will augment in comparison – but this is not an ethical practice, and like it or not, those of us whom actually market our businesses ethically must do so in the face of black-hat methods.

Since reputation management is not strictly preventative, there is hope. A significant portion of any effective reputation management effort does not come down to fighting fire with fire – in other words, and as an analogy to the political front, mudslinging will only fuel false accusations and unnecessary name-calling. Therefore, the key to effective reputation management is to take all the good things about your business or company and put them out there for the world to see, so that all the bad things will be shown in their true light as outliers in an otherwise, and formerly, unbalanced statistic-driven equation.

Blog posts, press releases, and reviews are just the start of all the examples of methods by which to distribute positive content about your business. A great way to show the public the truth about your business or company is to acquire the statements of satisfied customers and share them with everyone through any one of (or all) of the previously mentioned methods. There are two sides to the exposure needed to reach as many people as possible with these positive opinions – on one side of things, sending these opinions into high-traffic areas is key, while on the other end of things, performing techniques similar to SEO are required in order to present positive content to those searching for you by name.

All in all, depending on the circumstances, managing one’s reputation can be a task beyond the ability of anyone short of a professional and experienced Internet marketing firm, which is shy it is important to consult a firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

The New BING On The Block

While Microsoft’s BING search engine isn’t exactly news, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts concerning it’s appearance on the scene.

Bing has brought a traffic increase to Microsoft. Exciting news for them, but don’t get excited yet! Whether you are in the business of Internet marketing or simply looking into your options for hiring an internet marketing firm, consider the following:

• Making the Switch- before everyone rushes over to BING for their marketing needs, be it Pay Per Click or not, there are a lot of facets to each engine. While Yahoo! has been at bay in the number 2 spot under Google for a long time, there are many campaigns that don’t work on Google and do work on Yahoo! Just because a site is bigger does not make it better, and while jumping on any given bandwagon may seem like a good plan, there is no rush. Should BING continue in its success, it will only further establish the engine, and thus, it will still be there later on. Still, if you’re one of the people that can’t wait to dive into a new channel and truly believes that a new engine is the way to go, there are other things to consider first.
• Duplicate Content- On a Google search, as a primary example, you will find multiple links to the same site. Between all links to the same domain, there will be home page links, interior links, and potentially file links, like .pdf files and the like. BING, however, is a different story. As of recently, the BING algorithm is designed to remove duplicate content, for the purpose of only showing the most relevant page on a given site matching the search query. This may or may not be a good thing for your site. Many sites might have many similar products or services listed on the home page or on interior pages, in which case a direct link to one product might not be optimal. For eCommerce sites, this could improve ROI since, assuming the product or service page is most relevant to the search terms, such a user would be inspired to buy the product or sign up right then and there. For some businesses, however, browsing is all part of the purchase process, so taking users directly to a product page may very well give them the impression that this is the only option they have. However, even under this circumstances, site optimization will play a role in the success of your online marketing efforts.
• Site Optimization – Another thing to consider is the layout and organization of your site. Suppose users land on interior pages but do not find what they are looking for – are they easily able to access the home page, other similar products or services, and category pages from all corners of the site? It’s often difficult to find a perfect balance between enough options and too many options – and a website can become quite cluttered with too many links and poor layout / design, so a smart plan of action is to have a professional website, designed by an experience firm that not only understands design concepts and techniques, but it familiar also with Internet marketing strategies that must be implemented on-site. Whether you BING or not, be sure you or your hired marketing firm understands how the search engine being utilized works, and optimizes the site for such engines to return the best results.
• Content- Thus far, it is rumored that BING weighs on-site content over all. This means that a site featuring picture galleries without ample description, sites lacking company’s information, and sites without rich context may be penalized for it. This doesn’t denote a negative effect on rank – just the absence of a positive one. Be sure there is rich on-site content to accompany all the beautiful pictures of your products, staff, facilities, etc. A site should read well in your language, because this is what search engines look for.
• Complaints - Despite its swift jump to #2, BING has still received many complaints about how the engine ranks sites. For example, with giving equal weight to interior and home pages on a site, it may find a lower-ranking interior page to be more relevant, and therefore return that page lower in search results, where as a search engine like Google, which displays both interior and home pages, factors in the home page rank as well when considering the position of results. Another problem that many might find with BING, although not quite an official outcry from users, is the weight it gives to interior links compared to the weight it gives to external links. In recent years, it’s always been understood that while on-site SEO is important, it should not factor into rank as much as relevance. On BING, however, it seems that proper linking structure within a site will do more for your rank and relevance than it will on Google, which is known for giving much more weight to exterior links for both rank and relevance. This might be a problem, or it might be good for those with well-optimized websites.
• Pay Per Clickon BING – As I mentioned above, BING’s algorithm is quite unique compared to Google and Yahoo, so for anyone planning to experiment with a PPC campaign on BING, approach with caution. I would not recommend ending a PPC campaign on Google or Yahoo just to replace it with one on BING. I’ve always said that exploring the options is a good way to feel things out and find what works for each business, so I would encourage delegating some budget, or even better, increasing a budget to see what BING can actually do for your company – just don’t put all of your eggs into this basket because it’s fresh and new.

All in all, I’m impressed with BING, but I can’t say I’m surprised at all. Microsoft has been around for a long time and they obviously know their way around IT. I’d say that a gradual transition is best, but even better when managed by an experienced Internet marketing firm.

SEO Client Relationships And How They Contribute To The Success Of A Campaign

Too often, it seems that SEO’s and those interested in hiring them alike get caught up with the numbers and the costs. It is true, Search Engine Optimization is a business, but this doesn’t mean that it must be approached with the utmost hesitation to engage in personal relationships. A lot of times, the interaction between a firm and a client will be the difference between success and failure, so it would only make sense that we should all consider these relationships to be as valuable as all the analytics in the world.

The first step to a healthy manager-client relationship is trust. It makes me a bit angry every time I see an SEO website with empty promises and bad practices they are sold with bells and whistles. It doesn’t help that much of the on-site copy for firms are not always an indication. Every firm should be proud of their services and know what they are capable of, so while an experienced firm will present their methods in a way that makes sense to the potential client and put forth a legitimate sales-pitch, the firm that potential clients should avoid are capable of writing the same sort of copy. This is why it is crucial to talk with a firm, ask questions, and be honest. There are people you’ll meet that are up front regardless of how feelings are affected, and as much as the initial reaction to such people may force us to dislike them, once we can see that they are upfront for the benefit of the other person, we have to admire them. This is how a firm should be with their clients. It’s important to know how to optimize a site, and it’s important to have the tools and knowledge to collect the necessary data in order to do so, but even more important is setting up a relationship with the client in which they are free to ask questions, express concerns, and are confident that the firm is doing everything it can to maximize their ROI.

Once a client can trust their SEO firm, the lines of communication must be strong and clear. Along with that trust comes the ability to continually interact under the same circumstances. It does no good to the firm or the client to sell an idea and then take the campaign in a direction that makes the client nervous or uncomfortable. Sure, a lot of this concern could be based on performance but even when a campaign is doing well, if the communication is not there, the client will have cause for concern. Every client should find a firm with which they can get in touch with easily and feel comfortable discussing their relationship, as well as the progress of the campaign itself. Healthy communication is just as important as a well optimized site.

Another aspect of any relationship is each member’s desire to see the other succeed. A firm should always rejoice in the success of their clients and personally deal with failures. While none of us would like to admit that some campaigns just don’t work out, there will be times when failure will occur, and even though the campaign is coming to an end, the relationship shouldn’t. Many times, the reason an SEO effort doesn’t succeed is due to poor timing. Many campaigns have a window of opportunity that might be missed at no fault of the client or the firm. SEO is part science and part experiment. The secrets of the Internet Universe are unobtainable to everyone, and no firm is an exception to that rule.

So firms, your clients’ websites are your own, and their succeess is yours! Clients, your firm wants you to succeed, and we know that you want us to succeed because that means that you are succeeding! The relationship between a firm and a client is a very important one, and it should never be overlooked.

For those interested in a relationship with an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting, please, don’t be shy.

Managing A Blog For Your Business – More Than SEO

It’s no secret that bloggers contribute a lot to the opinions on the Internet today, as well as the efficiency of a lot of SEO campaigns. Old strategies are dying out because of the social media network, and bloggers are a large part of this (not so recently) new network. There are a lot of ways to promote your business through a blog, the first step of which is to start a blog!

This blog should offer something useful, neat, or just plain fun – whatever the case, you can’t expect to attract readers with bad content, so here are the first steps of a great blog:

1. Choose a good theme that is relavant to the business and optimize the blog with related keywords. This means content rich, organized, and easy on the eyes. Whether you’ve shelled out for a self hosted blog or your blog is hosted on a blogging site, there are plenty of free themes for Wordpress blogs out there. We generally recommend Wordpress because it is more professional and better for SEO purposes. Choose your URL based on the company name. You may have to get creative if there are other businesses out there with similar or same names.
2. Generate valuable content. The content should be consistant (posting at least once or twice a week), and contain useful information, interesting news, fun facts, or neat pictures. Whatever theme you’ve gone with, maintain it! If you decide to change things up in the future, do so gradually. Organize the blog with an “about us” page, a way to contact the administer of the blog, and utilize the perma-link option, so your post URL’s can be read in plain English and associated with the content on the blog (as well as potential search queries that can lead to the blog).
3. Don’t ignore old posts. A lot of bloggers have the tendancy to post and be done with it. The problem there is that after awhile, this content is virtually useless to search engines. A lot of things are taken into consideration when an engine decides to show an interior page as a result, but recency is part of it. If the post hasn’t been touched in 6 months, it might as well not be there. One way to keep things active is to re-visit old posts and see if there’s some piece of information that needs to be added, or something that might need to be changed if something about the company has also changed. Just be sure to inform readers of changes made to avoid confusion about the posts. A strikethrough on over omitted sentences is common, and a notice of something added is also typical in posts that have been edited.
4. Encourage Discussion. Once the blog begins to get a readership, post about topics that motivate visitors to state their opinions. The key is to hit a topic that many people have a voice on, but not to be extreme in a “company” opinion on the matter. You can take a bit of a risk posting an extreme opinion on any matter, and feul a comment-hosted-argument, which doesn’t make any blog look that great. The advantage to the administer of the blog is the ability to delete inappropriate content posted as comments (or to not approve them at all if comments first require approval), but readers can catch on to this and feel like you’re only doing so to protect your reputation, and not have a legitimate discussion about the topic.

Beyond regular posting and blog maintenance there is a world of SEO that can be done for a blog, but these basic beginning steps are necessary for a search engine optimization effort to be effective for the blog. For more information about social media and search engine optimization, feel free to get in touch with Reciprocal Consulting, an Internet marketing firm that can help.

Keeping Your Company Blog Safe And Secure

These days, it seems like everyone has a blog. While the vast number of blogs on the Internet might seem to lessen the chances that your’s will be the victum of hacking or spamming, the greater quantity of blogs out there only encourages more of these annoying pests to attack.

In the Internet marketing world, spamming has unfortunately become a popular way to get free links, referals, etc. While legitimate Internet marketing firms such as Reciprocal Consulting look down on these sorts of black hat practices, the most annoying thing about these spammers is that some people actually click on these links, hence giving them a reason to continue to do it. If everyone knew how to spot spam and no one ever clicked a spam link, they would probably die out, but unfortunately this is not the case.

So, as long as there will be spammers and hackers, there will also be those who wish to put an end to it, and a lot of these programs are not only free, but coded specifically for your needs. The best example is a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Due to ever growing popularity, the Wordpress blog has become a prime target for spammers, both human and robot controlled, but by the same token, so has the number of anti-spam Wordpress plug-ins increased. There are also a few other ways to protect your self hosted Wordpress blog.

• Choose your password wisely- it may seem like elementary knowledge but believe it or not, many people don’t know what makes a password good. The first step is to choose something that is easy to remember, or something that you can write somewhere you will always be able to look it up if you forget what it is. Worst case scenario, you can always have the password sent to your email address, but that should only be the last resort. I personally have a password that includes numbers and letters, both lower and upper-case. The further your password is from a coherent English word or phrase, the better, which is why the combination of numbers and letter is best.
• Check your settings- The Wordpress self hosted blog has a lot of built in features to help protect your blog, many of which can be found in the settings. Many times, an effort to allow more user interaction via comments on a blog will result in more spam, so what I have found to be the best settings for comments is allowing anyone to post, but first requiring myself or another admin to approve the comment. Once a comment is approved for a user, then comments from that user no longer require approval. This way, anyone who’s posted before can feel more welcome posting, which could increase visitor loyalty. There are also a number of great plug-ins available on the Wordpress.com site which can help you deal with spam and security. These are conveniently organized by category, so performing a search for “anti-spam” or “security” should get you a plug-in that works the way you want it to.
• Watch Those Links- Wordpress blogs have a handy feature on the dashboard that tells you who is linking to you. This is a great way to network, but also a good way to see when people are linking to you, even if you don’t want them to. Should you encounter a website that is saying bad things aboout you, or one with a large readership that might send unwanted traffic your way, you can easily see this and send a kind email over to ask the administrator at the other site to remove the link.

There are plenty of more advanced tactics to protecting your blog, but these are the most basic, and believe it or not, the ones most often overlooked.

The Twitter Debate Continues

Awhile back, I posted my thoughts on the hot topic in the Internet marketing world for that week, namely Twitter. Although I jumped the gun with assumptions about the course this fad would take, I maintain my general position on the matter. I came across a post containing a bunch of reasons to use Twitter, and this sparked my motivation to post yet again about the topic. I must state that the following is only my opinion, based on my experience in the Social Media Optimization world.

While I don’t intend to mention all of the reasons along with my opinion of each, there are a few I’ve chosen which, I believe, the writer is directing toward businesses, rather than individuals. As I failed to make clear in my previous post about Twitter, my opinion was concerning the use of Twitter for business Internet marketing efforts, not those of one person or a small group of people.

Competitive – to track what competitors are doing and thinking (watch their tweets, who they’re conversing with, and so forth). Gain insights!

This is a good idea, but why use Twitter? While the idea behind competitive intelligence is to learn secrets, many companies may overlook that which is out in the open. A lot of companies utilize Twitter to market special deals, new products, and more. This is valuable information that may not be available through more conventional CI practices – information that may help other companies figure out how to market their products.

Employee Tracking – See where your employees are, and even what they’re doing. eg. If you’re a service company with contractors on the road, some have used Twitter to reveal where all their contractors are around a city, which indicates how close they are to their next service call.

Most companies that require this kind of information to operate will likely have a method of tracking already. Whether it’s a “push-to-talk” cellular service or a computer system networked into handheld devices which employees carry on them at all times, there are plenty of ways that businesses track their employees, and other things, which can carry far more responsibility than Twitter can. However, some businesses may find it beneficial to utilize Twitter for simple tasks, such as those mentioned above. It all depends on the company and how they run their business.

Branding – To build awareness, trust, and possibly loyalty. If a company Twitters good information routinely, and isn’t overly self-promotional, the profile will gather followers. The profile is then associated with quality industry news and integrity. Frequency and quality of posts then breed familiarity, and eventually trust.

While the effort put into regular Twitter posts would may be more effectively spent on blogging, there is an advantage to the micro-blogging that Twitter offers. In many cases, posting to Twitter to a loyal following makes it easier, not just for the business to get the information out there, but for all of those potential customers to find it. Utilizing Twitter broadcasts and feeds on company websites, blogs, and other SM profiles make it easy to put that information in sight of thousands, instantly. However, any company planning to use the Twitter service to reach users should be careful of how often they post, and what they post about. The key here is regular, consistant information. Like anything in the social media realm, offers go a long way, and good information is priceless when compared to the mundane onslaught of Twitterers posting about what they ate for breakfast.

Reputation Management – to learn about issues and problems people are having with your company, so that they can be corrected. I’m a firm advocate that every problem is an opportunity, when viewed from the right perspective.

Again, the effort put into reputation management would likely be better spent on other means, but a company large enough to have a lot of Twitter users bashing it’s good name might do well to solve the problem before it leaves Twitter. However, the last thing a company needs for its reputation is one who supposedly represents the company arguing with a group of Twitterers about whether or not they were correct in their opinion about said company. Opinions are out there, and always will be – while a company cannot correct every false one, they can make efforts to put the right one in as many places on the Internet as possible - and Twitter is one large group of people to which it makes sense to get the word out.

Twitter is a valuable tool for friends, families and aquaintences to utilize in order to keep in touch and up to date, as well as it can be for businesses. We should never forget that there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere that have been proven to be effective, but where appropriate, Twitter can be used effectively. Just don’t push those boundries too far, or Twitter may eventually suffer the same fate as SM sites before it’s time. The target audience for your business marketing efforts on Twitter is made up of users, not other companies, so if companies abuse the Twitter service like many have been abused before, users are likely to switch to the next big micro-blogging site, and leave the companies to re-tweet themselves.

As the writer of the aforementioned article states: “…the key is in showing restraint in the initial months so that one does not ‘burn out’ on the experience.”

How To Spot An SEO Amateur

Just from observation, it’s easy to tell the difference between an experienced, professional business versus one that consists of amateurs. Generally, the place of business will be an indicator, or those that work there are a dead giveaway that they either do or don’t know what they are doing.

Unfortunately, in the world of Internet business, specifically Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, (since that seems to be a trend for those just starting out), it’s not always so easy to know who you can trust. A professional looking website is relatively easy to make for anyone with a background in web design and coding, and ad copy can be paraphrased, but there are some on-site indications of an amateur that can be dug up if one were to look for the right things.

• Site Copy- A lot of beginner SEO’s can piece together a good looking website and a few decent lines of content for that site, but one sign of an amateur will be the lack of that content. A general description of services and how they work for their clients is a good sign that they lack the experience and knowledge to perform the job right. A site with a lot of gibberish can also be an indication of an amateur, but this is not always easily discernible from a site with a wealth of quality information about their services. If the latter of these situations is encountered, the best idea is to contact the firm by phone and get a feel for their potential by talking with them about their services. A solid group of professionals will be happy to answer any questions concerning the work that they do.
• Prices- Everyone is familiar with the saying “if it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t true”, but not all the time do they go with their gut instinct. It happens with products that sell for less than others - the ones that break after a minimal number of uses. It is in these situations that we wish we had spent a little extra for the higher quality product that would likely last for a much longer time. The same concept applies to services as well, and especially SEO services which are not only considered valuable for the money that is spent, but also the time. A solid SEO campaign takes months, years even, to achieve desired results, so spending money on an amateur campaign that reaps little to no results is not only a waste of that money, but the time put into that campaign – time that your business could have been found by many potential clients or customers. A lot of amateur SEO firms will provide their services for a very low price to sucker in businesses that want to spend less for more on advertising, but the results of an SEO campaign, coupled with the experience of a professional Internet marketing firm, are in direct proportion to the amount of time and money put into it.
• Communication - While not an on-site factor, the communication between an Internet marketing firmand its clients is the cornerstone of the success of any SEO campaign. How a firm communicates its intentions to the client is crucial to the client’s understanding of how their money is being spent. If you, as a client, are not convinced that a given firm is taking the right steps to increase your chances of success, you should always feel free to ask questions, and have the firm address your concerns. A firm that avoids confrontation involving what they do for their clients  is likely not providing valuable services, but rather implementing a few simple tasks that will do little or nothing for your business.

The Social Media Rundown: Where To Start And Where To Go

There’s no doubt, the Social Media is alive and well. Everyone from the independent musician to the corporate giants utilize the Social Media to accomplish otherwise difficult or impossible marketing strategies, and it looks like this aspect of the Internet marketing world is here to stay, at least for awhile.

When engaging in a campaign that targets and utilizes the Social Media, it is important not to jump the gun. As quickly as a brand or name can be rocketed to the top, it can be crushed before it ever gets a foot out the door. For this reason, preparation can be the difference between success and defeat. In the same regard, it’s not just about what you do or how you do it, but what order you decide to accomplish each leg of the journey to Social Media Marketing success. Here are some tips:

• Cover Your Bases- A lot of people have the tendency to jump into every Social Media site they can find and try to make friends, send messages, join groups, etc. The problem with this approach is that the best impression should be your first impression. If you plan to have any lasting standing with the people you encounter on these sites, you need to have something to offer. Depending on your niche, it may be handy advice, a free download, or maybe even a how-to guide. It really comes down to the people who would be interested in you or your business, and what they can get from the connection. Take the time to set up your own site, populate it with rich, valueable content, and make sure your best foot is forward. You wouldn’t show to a wedding wearing half of your tux or dress – don’t show up to the Social Media party unprepared!
• Choose your Friends Wisely – There are a lot of tools available online that one can utilize to track what people are saying about them. Sites like Twitter are a lot easier to track, when they’re all about the talk, but you will never know what is being said before it is said, posted and set in “stone”. Blogs are a large part of the Social media, and everyone has one these days. If you upset the wrong person, they can ruin you, easily. After that, you may have a world of Reputation Management in front of you, but it’s better not to let it get to that point. Be courteous on the sites you join, and be responsive to those who are interested in what you do or have to offer. It’s important to filter out users that it wont benefit you to interact with, and it’s equally important to keep up the communication with those that will.
• You Have To Earn Trust- Every business starts somewhere, and generally, an up-and-coming business, large or small, earns their reputation and much of their clientele from word of mouth, but more specifically, from providing good service and/or products. Likewise, your “image” on the web will have a lot to do with you. If you want your name to be recognized and associated with good opinions, interact in kind. In time, users will stumble on your name and know it because their friend told them about you, or because they saw it on another site. Whatever the case, the best way to brand is by doing what you do, not necessarily better than anyone else, just better than most people would expect. This leaves quite the impression and can make a Social Media effort much easier. SMO is not meant to replace all other forms of advertising, branding and customer relations – it is simply a catalyst for more leads, exposure and ultimately, sales.
• Put In The Time- It may be a no brain-er, but what you get out of your Social Media campaign is what goes in, and time is no exception. For many, time is a luxury, one which that many cannot afford to dedicate enough of to a self-propelled SMO campaign. For a lot of businesses, hiring an Internet Marketing Firm is the way to go, since not only will this save the business the time that goes into it, but these are trained professionals that have experience and knowledge to get the job done right.

Search Engine Marketing As A Team, Not Separate Players

Search Engine Marketing may not be a science, but it can be viewed as the sum of it’s contributors, and their effect on your online marketing success. Too often, people view all of the separate Internet Marketing efforts in their own light, and fail to bring all factors into one whole focus. When it comes to maximizing your ROI, it may be tricky to determine whether a paid search campaign would benefit over a one geared towards natural search, or whether it would be better to analyze the competition than it would be to focus on expanding your own network. Whatever the case may be, the answer will likely be to test all the water.

It’s no secret that a Pay Per Click campaign can have an effect on of of natural search, and such an effect might benefit or hurt the other, but more than likely, your business will see better oportunities when its Internet Marketing efforts branch out.

The Social Media offers a network of users, and therefore potential customers or clients, that have already presented information about themselves and their interests that traditional advertisors would pay big money for. Targeting users on the Internet is easier than ever – which only means that more people are doing it – and it is therefore that much more important to expand efforts into all online marketing areas.

However, this does necessarily mean it will do you much good to pick 3 of these areas and run with them. Marketing your business online is as much about prior knowledge as it is about gathered information, which means that slow and steady will often win the race.

Let’s compare two businesses like the tortoise and the hare.

The first business wraps its efforts around a search and content driven PPC campaign, a natural search effort, the Social Media spectrum, and safeguards itself with reputation management, all the while gathering information about it’s top competitors. After a few months, they will see which effort is paying off the most, and focus primarily on that. However, they can utilize the others to support their main campaign, and during this time, they can see how various strategies affect eachother, and optimize accordingly. Additionally, their presence in the Social Media has established a brand for them, so when users see their ads, or their name in natural search results, they are more likely to visit their site.

The second business decides to pour its budget into a PPC campaign, and gathers information about their competitors. Seeing how their competition bids has given them the advantage to take that number one spot on sponsored search results, but they lack the online presence. Their click-through rate on ads is decent, but once on the site, users will generally decide to check out the other results before making a decision. Their bounce rate is high and visitor loyalty is rather low, since more than often, users will find the first business and recognize their name.

This model is just one scenario, but it illustrates the need to exapand efforts. The tortoise and the hare is a well-known story for a good reason – there is truth to the concept of taking one’s time, thinking things through, and making informed decisions.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

In the Internet marketing world, we manage a lot of clients, but every client is different and each account requires specific techniques in order to maximize their ROI. In many cases, this means running a number of campaigns using methods in Pay Per Click, Search Engine and Social Media Optimization, Competitive Intelligence, and so on. Still, for some clients (and their budget),  just an SEO campaign can greatly increase their presence on the Internet, and is perhaps one of the strongest ways to market a website.

It is reported that Google changed their algorithm once a day on average during the past year. There are a lot of reasons for each of those changes, but all of those changes were made (and will continue to be made) for one reason – to match search queries with the most relevant content. While the history of SEO has had its dark moments, and its share of misconceptions and rumors, the current state of SEO is always changing and therefore, the methods we use to improve a websites visibility in search results must adapt. Search Engine Optimization is both a science and an art, and although it has become a bigger challenge over the years, the goal for everyone is to provide users with the best content for their searches.

The general idea behind SEO is not to “trick” search engines into believing your site is better than others, and it’s not necessary about getting that number one spot at the top of search results. And SEO’s aim should never be general rank, but appropriate on-site optimization and a network of  relevant links. There is a difference between link building and SEO, and I must clarify that although proper link building can be an invaluable part of SEO, simply linking to a website from wherever can not only be useless, but get your site penalized. SEO has not only evolved, it has developed a sense of right and wrong, and you do not want to get on its bad side.

It is always better to play it safe with your on-site structure, which is what search engines will look at when they follow those links to your site. Keyword stuffing, metatags, and link farms are a thing of the past, and can only do your website harm. SEO is not about presenting your site as something it is not, it’s about giving the search engines what they want, to which your site will be rewarded with targeted traffic.

Remember, focusing on pagerank is a pitfall for many. A lot of people assume that a page with a rank of 7 will be given priority over a page with a rank of 5, but this is not always the case. The algorithms that search engines use to determine ranking are based on a nearly infinite number of factors, including onsite content, external linking, keyword ranking, etc. Each factor has its own factors, and those factors have factors as well. At the end of the day, no one Internet Marketing firm can guarantee specific results because no one knows exactly how search engines will read them each day.

One thing we all know for sure is that these search engines are all aiming for the same goal – to provide relevant returns for the keywords that users are searching on, so the one method that we know will always be consistant is to keep things clean, manage a good site, and to never stop improving.

How Black Hat SEO Can Get Your Site Penalized And How To Avoid Firms That Implement These Practices

Many companies find out too late that the firm they hired to preform Search Engine Optimization for their site has been using unethical practices. Usually, they discover this when their website is penalized, or worse, banned from a certain search engine. From the mouth of Google itself, here are the top warning signs that an SEO firm you are about to hire is no good:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.
• Choose wisely.

While Google gives general guidelines in an explaination of each warning sign, knowledgable and ethical SEO’s will have their own gems to offer on the topic. From the experience of working for an experienced, reputable form like Reciprocal Consulting, I offer our own gems.

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue. If you’re not expecting an e-mail from a business, or you’ve never done business with them before, chances are good that you don’t need to read it. Think about it like this: if an Internet Marketing Firm needs to send out e-mails to get business, they’re probably not good at their job. You’ll find many reputable SEO’s by searching on various engines, since chances are these firms have performed SEO for their own site.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Even Google doesn’t show up #1 for all keywords relevant to their site. If Google is subject to their own methods, certainly everyone else is. The problem is that everyone would like to be #1 and when a firm guarantees a specific position in results, you’d like to believe the. A lot of firms also offer a money-back guarantee, but don’t let this sucker you in, as they have ways of fulfilling these promises in ways that don’t help you show up for your relevant keywords. These tactics will also drive a lot of non-targeted traffic to your site, which is worse than no traffic. 
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. No Internet Marketing firm, whether SEO or other, knows secrets that the rest of us don’t. If they are reluctant to share information with their client, they probably have something to hide, like unethical practices. A Reputable SEO will provide ranking reports, analytics information, and just about anything you ask for that is related to your performance in search engines. You should always feel comfortable asking questions of your SEO.
• You should never have to link to an SEO. This is a cheap trick black hat SEO’s may try to implement to get you a lot of useless links. Although sometimes these linking strategies will have an effect – a negative one.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes. Any reputable SEO will be able to account for every penny you spend, and be able to show you what that money is being used for. Any firm that avoids providing their clients with a detailed breakdown of expenses is probably not spending all of the money, or spending less than they claim they are spending, on lower quality link building techniques.
• Choose wisely. Shop around, compare prices, and get a feel for how it will be to work with various firms. You should feel comfortable with anyone who is performing SEO services for your business.

New Opportunities For Small Businesses In SEO?

It used to be that Internet marketing in general, but more specifically Search Engine Optimization, was more difficult for small businesses, mainly due to the competition. Based on the particular niche, one might have to spend more money on quality linking for their SEO campaign, simply because it was more competitive, and smaller business were less able to afford the volume and quality of links needed to build a competing SEO campaign.

However, in recent years, search engines have been weighing locality more into the equation. Basically, what this means, is for small businesses, which would more than likely only be serving a small area around their physical location, searches in their area would be more likely to return a result leading potential leads to their site. While it may not be as difficult to acheive an effective SEO campaign there is, however, a need for careful optimization. Here are a few tips for small and medium sized businesses for utilizing this search engine feature.

• Localize On-Site Content – For a search engine to display your site in returns, it must first index/crawl it, and therefore, information on your site will play a large factor in helping search engines determine if and when to display your site in results for your strong(er) keywords. It would only make sense then that advertising your location on-site would be one of the best ways to tell a search engine which areas to be more likely to display results for your site. Most businesses have a contact page with an address and phone number, but it is important to also include this information on the home page, and any other page possible. Don’t overdo it, as abusing tags and mindless repetition of  information has never proven to encourage search engines to give any extra weight; not since the days of meta-tag SEO.
• Claim What Is Your’s In Social Media – Beyond just your own website, it is important to claim your name wherever else you can. This includes listings, review sites, and sites like Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, etc. Depending on your business, you may be able to sign up for more social media sites, but the idea behind this arduous task is to: a) Give potential visitors more ways to reach your site, and b) Prevent your competition from claiming these for you, which has been known to happen. While the time spent optimizing social media profiles may not be the most effective SEO strategy, your reputation will thank you.
• Focus On The Local Mentions – Now that you have your bases covered in the Social Media world, check out the listing sites close to you. Your specific town may very well have a site which lists businesses, and if it’s on a listing site like CitySearch.com, make sure you’re on there as well. The basic idea is to plant flags wherever you can, but more importantly, where potential local visitors are more likely to see it. Networking is key to accomplishing this, so utilize those social media sites you signed up for and find local blogs that deal in your niche. Make some friends, get some links – not everything can be bought!

There is always more you can do to help your own business – don’t forget that those big businesses don’t have the time to marlet their site as well as you in your own town. Let them focus on the nationwide efforts while you dominate your own local search, and let an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting help!

How Different Types Of Social Media Can Work For You

Within the Social Media sphere there are plenty of tools and methods that one can use to promote themself or their business, or someone else’s business. While each method may have its particular advantages, no single one of these can have the full effect without the others. Generally speaking, these types of effective SMO can be categorized as such:

• Authority
• Networking
• Content Creation
• People Skills
• Technical

This is in no way an official list that SMO’s go by, but a general illustration of the breakdown of different ways one can use Social Media for marketing purposes.

1. Authority – While this is not the easiest way to accomplish one’s marketing goals, being or utilizing a voice of authority on a given topic or within your niche can be a key player in directing users to your site. Whether it be an actor, musician, artist, someone within their 15 minutes of fame, or a silly teenager dancing to techno, these people have one thing in common – when users see mention of their name or work, they will flock to any content including them. If one is able to properly utilize this type of draw, it can do wonders for a website looking for traffic, as long as that traffic is targeted.
2. Networking – It might seem redundant to insist that the “Social” Media community should interact and communicate with one-another but believe it or not, a lot of people forget that Social Media was created for this purpose. A key factor in the success of a Social Media campaign is the ability of you and/or your site to network with users. On-site interaction doesn’t hurt, and actually being a face in the community when representing said site is important as well.
3. Content Creation – While a “celebrity” status or a good group of contacts might reel people in, without rich on-site content, your visitors may not stay for long, and with attention spans the way they are these days (thank you “here and now” technology!), it is vital to hold the attention of your viewers. This sort of Social Media Optimization isn’t as much of the “hunt and gather” type, but more the homemaker in the grand scheme of things. Invites may have been answered but if the house is a mess and entertainment is lacking, people will find another party to attend.
4. People Skills – This end of the spectrum is less focused on the technical aspects of SMO, but important nonetheless. There are plenty of people (many of whom are likely bloggers) that create quite the draw to their writing, photography, art, or whatever, simply because they entice visitors to come to their site. A daily joke, a “what makes me mad” sort of daily report, or a fine piece of poetry – these things aren’t about content so much as how they make visitors feel. Good content and informative reading can keep a user around, but those who crave some sort of satisfaction from their visit might feel unrewarded for clicking that link that led to your page. Of course, this brand of people skills extends into the networking end of things as well. You can know every member on MyBlogLog, Twitter or Digg, but if you never have anything wonderful to say, these contacts of yours will likely ignore your shouts, tweets and updates.
5. Technical – At the end of the day, all the well wishes, clever stories and funny pictures won’t do any good if people don’t get exposed to you and all your hard work. Knowing which tools to use, and when, may very well be the make-or-break for you. Sure, you might get lucky by submitting a good article to a news site, but having the knowledge of just a few of the available tools is far better than a few shots at the “big time”.

For anyone interested in utilizing the Social Media spectrum, let it be known that this is no easy task. Months of preperation can go into properly organizing a SMO campaign, and it is a daily chore to keep up with the methods involved. On top of all that, there are always changes being made to the sites used, and just as quickly as a site can rise, it can fall if not properly monitored. It is probably best to let an Internet marketing firm such as Reciprocal Consulting assist you in such an endeavor.

Can Links Really Be Permanant?

It’s no big secret that link building is a large part of any Search Engine Optimization campaign, but when it comes to link building strategies, there seems to be some confusion over the meaning of the word “permanant” in relation to link building.

There basically are two kinds of links: permanant and no follow. Anyone will tell you that permanant links are better for link building than no follow links, because no follow links contain an extra string of code that tells search engines not to “follow” them, or in other words, don’t track this link. Obviously, this wont help a search engine find your site through that particular link. However, another use of the word permanant in relation to link building is describing whether or not a link obtained will have lasting value.

A permanant link might suggest that link will be there permanantly, or that it allows search engines to track it. All permanant links can be tracked, and links from higher quality sites will have more weight, but no matter where you get your links, all will lose value over time. There is a good reason for this.

SEO is an ongoing process, and search engines make sure that it is. Sure, everyone would love to be able to simply build a link campaign and leave it be, allowing it to continually add weight to your pages search rankings, but that would be pointless, as everyone would have the same ability to build it and leave it, and therefore all link campaigns would be equal and no one would be able to take advantage of this convenience.

The trick to successful link building has to be the knowledge coupled with the ongoing process. SEO’s are busy at work, not only continually building links, but analyzing the data to find new strategies for building links. In this way of link building, irrelavant sites which lack current inbound links will lose weight, and this makes more sense compared to a real world scenario. For example, a restaurant with a lot of good reviews during its first year, but no good reviews during its second year. If those first year reviews had as much weight as the second year reviews, anyone looking for a good place to eat during that third year would be under the impression that it was a great place to eat, despite the fact that for a solid year following those reviews, their food and service went down in quality.

Likewise, links used in a link building campaign must continually be obtained, and the quality of those links should be good as well. So the question of whether or not links can be permanant should be answered with a no, because SEO must be an ongoing process in order to ensure that more relavant and current content is being returned in search results.

When Pay Per Click Steals Your Natural Search Results

For many of our clients, it is very benificial to run campaigns for both paid and natural search rankings, but sometimes, this can cause issues. While an experienced Internet marketing firm such as Reciprocal Consulting can resolve these issues, or prevent them from occuring in the first place with careful planning, many people may not even realize that they are wasting money when Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization conflict in the same results.

The main problem occurs in a scenario where your site ranks well for both the natural search and your sponsored search. If a user clicks your PPC ad instead of the heading for your site in the natural search list, then you pay for the click, where if they followed the link via natural search, it costs you nothing. Depending on which PPC ad is displayed and which page of your site shows for the natural search, however, it may not be a concern.

Since a Pay per Click campaign gives you much more (immediate) control over your keywords and the information that users will see when they perform searches, it is easier to reel in conversions via PPC ads than by visits to your site via natural searches. The advantage of PPC is that you choose what the user will see when they search for certain keywords. When it comes to natural search, there is really no way of knowing what the user will see when your site shows up in the results, or which page they will be led to.

However, there are many methods within the SEO strategy that increase the relavance of the information that is presented to users in natural search. Proper on-site optimization is key to control over that information much like Pay Per Click. Utilizing title, header and meta tags are known to not neccessarily improve your rankings in SEO, but for the purpose of acheiving a higher click-through rate or better conversions for natural leads coming to your site, it is absolutely crucial to use these tags properly.

Another way to avoid competition between natural and paid search results is to lower bids on keywords that rank well in natural searches. This way, should a user search for this keyword, they will be first presented with the natural result, then if they happen to skip over it and move on to a second page of results, they still have the opportunity to find your site through the PPC ad, and in such a case, it is well worth it to drive that targeted traffic to your site.

There are many more methods for co-optimization of both PPC and SEO campaigns, so it is important to find an Internet marketing firm that knows how to use the tools and will not keep you in the dark when it comes to how they run your campaign.

Is Twitter the Future of Internet Marketing?

There have been an awful lot of people talking about Twitter during the last week and, frankly, I’m not sure I like it. Since the world of Internet marketing, and more specifically the country of Search Engine and Social Media Optimization, is all about “hot topics”, I get the feeling that this particular topic is snowballing out of control, and I’m saying my piece now and getting out of the way before it causes an avalanche.

Basically, a lot of people are insisting that Twitter is a great tool for social media marketing, can be used to launch a viral campaign, and may even replace Google for searches one day. Well, I agree with the first statement - Twitter is very useful for networking with friends and family, and keeping in touch, but how far does it go to reach a target market of potential customers and clients?

Here are a few points on which I’d like to offer my opinion:

1. Twitter is a great tool for marketing because there are so many people using it now. The idea behind this one makes about as much sense to me as saying “Times Square in NYC is a great place to witness to non-Christians”. Sure, the volume of possible targets has increased and, statistically speaking, this should mean that more will convert, but other factors are at work. In the Times Square scenario, more people means more eyes watching each other, more voices voicing their own opinions, and as unlikely as someone is to read religious material handed to them by a stranger, or listen to someone talking about the end of time, the thought of others seeing them reading the material can only be a discouragement, and the more people around them, the more likely they are to toss it in the garbage, or not hear. For the Twitter analogy, the more people there are to tweet to, the more people there will be tweeting, and your efforts to launch a viral message for users to retweet may be lost in the shuffle.
2. Searching Twitter is more likely to yield conversions for a business using it, because the results are recommendations from friends and family members, and people are more likely to listen to their family members. I’m not sure to begin with this one, but it would seem to me that anyone who’s opinion I would value higher than a generic review (of a product, for example) is someone I know well enough that I don’t have to use Twitter to get that opinion. I’ll call them, email them, IM them, etc. There are so many ways to communicate with others online, Twitter is actually the last way I plan to connect with people. Given, many people post to Twitter more times a day than should be considered healthy, but this only goes against the effort of putting ideas out there. How many people really log onto Twitter in a given day just to see what others are saying, without the need to say something for their own benefit? It seems to me that for every person reading what’s been tweeted, there are just as many, if not more, tweeting themselves, which is just more information among which yours can be lost.
3. Twitter allows users to follow other users, so it will be easier to target users. I disagree. I have 56 people following me on Twitter, many of whom I don’t even know. In a given day I might check Twitter once, and during that time, I generally check my direct messages, replies to my own tweets, and I might look at what one of the 27 people I follow are saying. I rarely reply, unless it is a reply to me or directed at me, and I almost never click links unless I know what it is already. On the other side, I rarely see responses, and out of the hundred or so tweets I’ve made (specifically to promote my own projects) I’ve received a total of 9 responses, and only one retweet. Maybe I’m one of the few who’s user habits on Twitter are comparable to an anti-socialite at the greatest party of the century, but what do most users really use Twitter for? I have an inkling that users either have far more followers than people they follow, and therefore they are likely on Twitter to post and not so much to read, or they follow so many people that they miss over half of the messages posted daily. So what would this mean for retweets? It means even the catchiest, most important message you could post may be missed or disregarded. How “a message thrown around on Twitter” is better for Internet marketing than “a search result that specifically targets the exact phrase for which a user searches” is beyond me.

What it comes down to for me is this: Twitter can be used for effective marketing, but not any better than Myspace, Facebook, Flickr!, Digg, Sphinn, or any other social media site with a lot of users. A lot of Twitter users post from their cell phones, or while at work, or on the run, so they don’t have time to read others’ posts - only to post themselves. The majority of replies on Twitter are between friends, and retweets are usually a courtesy to those you know beyond Twitter. A successful viral marketing campaign on Twitter is possible, just like it’s possible for me to become a movie star, so is it really worth the time and effort to utilize Twitter for SMO in your Internet marketing firm? If you’re lucky, I guess.

The aforementioned in no way represents the opinions of everyone at Reciprocal Consulting, it is simply my own. These are just my personal thoughts on the “hot topic” of the week in the Internet marketing world.

Onsite SEO and How it Compares to Pay Per Click Ads

A lot of time and effort goes into Search Engine Optimization, so it would be a real shame if after all that hard work, a user skips over your ranking result – even in the number one position, this is possible. While many would consider it unlikely for someone to skip over any results in the top ten, since the general idea is that these first results are the most relavant to their search, consider what the user is reading in that result.

When writing a Pay Per Click ad, you have full control over what the user sees for various searches. You choose the title, description, display URL and destination URL. This makes it easy to target specific users based on their search. However, when it comes to SEO, no one writes an ad to show up for searches – that information is automatically generated based on how the search engines view the page, and a well optimized site for search results can be just as important as a site well-optimized for ranking results.

Remaining consistant with the idea of comparing natural search results with Pay Per Click ads, consider the title of a PPC ad to be the title of your site, or that which lies between the title tags. This is the first thing the user generally see, since it is at the top of your result, plus it is highlighted and underlined as the link to your site. For this reason, it is important to on-site optimization for the name of each page to be relavant to your keywords, as well as the page they label.

The description of a Pay Per Click ad is comparable to text that shows up under the clickable link to your site in natural results. You might notice that some sites have a description that runs into “…” at the end of the second line. This would be like a Pay Per Click ad with it’s two description lines, but the second is incomplete. While less taxing than would be on the effectiveness of the PPC ad, for the natural search, these two lines are still important to your click through rate on natural searches. This short summary of your site is entirely up to you, however, as what is displayed here is what you choose to place between the meta description tags in your html, so choose wisely! The same principles of PPC can be applied here, as it may prove effective to include a call to action, or something that entices users to click on your site result first, regardless of its ranking position.

I’ve done plenty of searches where I don’t find what I’m looking for in that first result because I read these descriptions, and if I see one that sounds more accurate to that which I am searching, that will be the first one I click. Internet marketing is the sum of a lot of knowledge, a pinch of gut instincts and a lot of common sense, time and effort. It would be a shame to have all these things but suffer a much lower return on your investment because of a few facts overlooked.

To discuss the success of your online business with an experienced firm that knows the in’s and out’s of the Internet marketing world, please feel free to contact Reciprocal Consulting. You probably have questions, and we definitely have answers.

Pay-Per-Click Basics

It occurred to me that a lot of the content on our blog assumes a lot about our readers. I’ve decided to skim the surface of Pay Per Click, or PPC, for those that are new to the concept. Whether an interested individual, PPC professional, or a potential client, the following is something we all should know. These are not the official definitions, necessarily, but rather a brief overview of the terms are commonly used in the world of Pay Per Click.

• Pay Per Click- A service provided by a number of search engines, but most predominantly by Google, Yahoo, MSN and many more, and even social media sites like Myspace and Facebook offer PPC services. Pay Per Click services are a more controlled environment than natural searches, which focus on page content and external linking structure, in which one can reach potential customers or clients using keywords and key phrases relavant to their business or service. These keywords are setup to display various ads based on search queries and are intended to connect users with results that match their searches.
• Return on Investment – This sums up the overall effectiveness of a given PPC campaign. The return on the investment put into PPC can depend on many factors, but a properly orchestrated campaign, as the sum of the elements of a well optimized campaign, is the best use of that investment.
• Cost Per Conversion - Conversions are commonly measured by sales on product oriented sites, leads on sites which provide services, and can be measured by a number of other “goals”, many of which can be assigned to a single account. With the use of tracking codes attached to various pages, links, etc., a given PPC campaign can track numerous values, which are then measured against spend.
• Spend – This is generally gauged monthly, and very simply put, it is how much money you spend on the sum of all ad clicks.
• Cost Per Click - This is how much you pay when a user clicks on one of your ads. This also sums up the basic concept behind PPC, where by you only pay when a user actually visits your site via an ad you design to appear for the user’s search query, and therefore giving you a lot of control over your spend. Cost per click, or CPC, will be different for every keyword in your campaign, and the price you pay depends on many things, but is highly dependant on the competition for that keyword. The more specific the keyword, the less competition there will be, and the less you will pay when users click your ad. For example, a click on your ad for the search “personal injury lawyers in Philadelphia” will cost much less than a click on an ad for the search “lawyers”.
• Clicks and Impressions – These numbers will more than likely be very far apart, as the number of people that actually click on your ads is bound to be far less than the number of people whos searched display your ad.
• Click-Through Rate – This number is simply the percentage of people who click on your ads, based on how many see your ads. This number will generally be quite low for keywords that are far too specific or not commonly searched for, and high for more common keywords for which your ads show up closer to the first position. Average click-through rates change often and are different for every niche, and depend greatly on the ads you choose to display for certain keywords. Ads that are more relavant to your keywords will generally have a higher click-through rate.
• Conversion Rate – This number sums up the success of your ads and their ability to attract customers that will buy your product or use your service. For a given number of people, this percentage converts – and remember that a conversion is predetermined to be a return on your investment. A higher conversion rate usually means that you are spending less on each conversion, but this is not always the case. Over-bidding can lead to unnecessary spend.

When it comes down to it, no one statistic will tell you how well your campaign is doing. It is the sum of all these values and the careful orchestration of your PPC campaign that will give yo the upper-hand on your competition. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they can run a PPC campaign themself, and end up wasting a whole lot of money doing so. Others find what they think is a great deal, but end up handing their online success over to amateurs that know little to nothing about PPC and have very little experience.

It is important to know your Internet marketing firm before you trust them with your business – ask questions, and get answers. At Reciprocal Consulting, we like to get our clients involved in their own campaigns, because you know your business and we know how to get results.

How Social Media Optimization Really Helps With Natural Search

I was showing a friend of mine some SEO basics the other day when Social Media Optimization became the topic of conversation. He was asking me how SMO really can help with natural search results in ways that Search Engine Optimization cannot, and in explaining this concept to him, I found myself repeating the same word over and over: Networking.

When it comes to optimization, a lot of us get carried away with the technical aspects of the trade. The truth is, many of us could debate the effectiveness of particular natural search marketing strategies all day long, but what it comes down to is your website’s worth on the Net, how the search engines view that worth, and respectively, when and where your site will be displayed in results. No matter what strategy you or your firm implements, and no matter what keywords best describe your business or service, I think one focus should always remain center stage, and that is the networking aspect of SMO.

Consider your businesses presence on the web. Is your name, brand or logo seen around the Internet, perhaps on various respectable sites, or are potential customers / clients seeing these things for the first time when they land on the the first page of your site (or whichever site their search brought them to)? The same applies to your particular services or products, and so on. The point here being, what are you doing to reach people, and not just making it easier for them to reach you?

When it comes to the world of Social Media Optimization, I believe networking is not only the right thing to do (since that is what these sites are for), but also a large part of the puzzle, and here’s why:

• Consider results from sites like Myspace, Digg, Flickr!, etc. These are just a few of the Social Media sites available to the public, and for free. Within these results, I often see links that lead to personal profiles and pages. Have these people performed any sort of optimization for their profiles or pages? Probably not – and yet, they are showing up for searches, often times near the top of the first page. Why? Because they actively participate in the community – they network.
• Going back to the idea of reaching your target market, and not just making it easier for them to reach you – what will a dormant profile on any Social Media site accomplish? Nothing. Interacting with the community regularly (not spamming!) shows interest in the community, and usually, this means that the community will take an interest in you. There’s a word for this sort of interaction…ah yes, networking.
• Are image searches going to help bring targeted traffic to your site? Probably not – so how else are you going to get your brand and logo out there? Traditional marketing statistics show that branding has effectively brought many companies [additional] success over the years, and there is no reason why this concept should be ignored when it comes to Internet marketing, and it should be incorporated with an SMO campaign. Using your logo as a profile picture can get that image out there to a lot of people. Of course, the logo itself should be well designed and pleasant to look at – perhaps even entice a user to click on it for a closer view (and therefore view your profile). Bottom line – unless you have an active PPC campaign displaying image ads, or a lot of popular friends in your niche that will display your logo (and a link to you) on their site, there are very few other ways to have any control over who sees your brand or logo. Once again – networking is key to get this image out there and seen by the masses.

As has become commonplace for me, I must state that spamming, automated interaction (that is a program designed to visit and add friends, post comments, etc on other users’ profiles/pages), or anything of the like are extremely frowned upon, and furthermore, are not effective strategies. It boggles my mind that between all my blogs I receive about 20-40 spam comments a day.

The aforementioned is not supposed to be a step-by-step, nor a DIY on Social Media Optimization, but rather a polite suggestion to those that practice SMO. It may seem pointless to put the extra effort into a SMO campaign, but from experience, I have found simple interaction and contribution to these communities to be very satisfying, and often do help to achieve SMO goals.

SEO Services That Guarantee Results

I was speaking with a small business owner a few months back about a Search Engine Optimization firm he wanted to hire. His budget was small, his expectations were high, and he wanted my opinion on the matter. The first question he asked me was “Is it worth it?”, to which I had to ask, “What guarantees did they make?”

Think of an SEO firm as a retail store that sells handmade items. This shop will likely state that their inventory is subject to change, and that they cannot guarantee a particular item to be in stock. This is due to the nature of their product, and the fact that the supplier of a particular product may decide to stop making them. The problem here is that some potential customers might view this as unreliability on the seller’s part, and decide to take their business to a larger chain store which can make a guarantee like that, since their items are mass produced, and there will always be a model by which to make more. So would it be ethical for the smaller shop to make the same guarantee as the chain store in order to prevent customers from shopping elsewhere? No. Such a claim would be misleading, as the small store has no control over the claim they would be making.

However, there are no large chain stores in the Internet marketing world, and search engine results conditions apply to all firms, big or small. Because of this, every SEO service that a firm offers is subject to some change, and no firm can make a guarantee on your rankings, results, etc. This is just the way it is.

So going back to the initial question: “Is it worth it?” Well, that all depends on the firm with which you are dealing. Here are some things to look for in a prospective firm:

• First and foremost, any firm that guarantees specific results or ranking is most likely uninformed, unethical, or about to take your money and run. This is a clear sign that a firm doesn’t know what they are doing, or their guarantee on said promised results are misleading, and they will not help your business at all.
• A guarantee for rankings might be fulfilled, however, the keywords for which your site will rank will likely be irrelevant to your business and of little or no worth. A SEO firm cannot guarantee rankings on specific keywords, especially those applicable to a given niche, which is what SEO is all about in the first place.
• A guarantee for results on specific search engines can be achieved, but don’t expect to show up in 94% of the results in the U.S., as this percentage makes up all search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN. That other 6% makes up the many smaller search engines, which are rarely used, and even showing up for the number one result on any of these engines will amount to nothing in terms of  conversions.
• Ask a lot of questions about their plans concerning your SEO campaign. Any firm that makes guarantees but wont let the client in on what they plan to do is likely going to drive non-targeted traffic to the site.

However, there are guarantees that can be made. While firms may not be able to promise a number one spot on Google or a ranking position on a certain number of search engines, there are guarantees that you should expect from an Internet marketing firm.

• The client will always be informed of what strategies are being implemented within an SEO campaign, including what links we are getting for them, and from which sites these links are coming.
• The client knows how much of their budget is being spent on link building and how much is being spent elsewhere.
• The client is given monthly reports containing all links aquired, including all details about those links.
• Generally speaking, a firm can guarantee an increase in ranking. Effective SEO strategies are proven methods, and therefore, certain results should be expected. While a firm cannot guarantee a specific ranking, they should be able to guarantee an increase in ranking.
• A firm must perform an analysis of the client’s website in order to determine the best strategy for the SEO campaign – this generally entails on-site optimization, which may involve additions, or subtractions, from on-site content.

If you’d like to speak with an Internet marketing firm that specializes in SEO and is open to all questions concerning your campaign, don’t hesitate to contact Reciprocal Consulting.

Optimizing Your Website’s Landing Page For Better Conversions

One can perform search, social media and pay per click optimization all day long, but without a properly designed and optimized landing page, your conversion rate will be far lower than your campaigns are working to achieve. Here are some tips for creating a good landing page for your site, and in turn, increasing your ROI.

• Create Multiple Landing Pages- This is often overlooked because most people simply assume that a user will take it upon them self to find what they’re looking for. Sure, a well constructed site will make it easier to browse a site, but for anyone searching for specific products, services or information, they more than likely will prefer to be taken straight to what they are looking for. If you’re running an SEO campaign, your title, header and body tags will assist the search engines in finding the appropriate page to return in the result. For a Pay-Per-Click campaign, however, it is up to you to determine which ad brings the user to which page. This is why it is important to optimize your entire site, so that each product or service page can act as a landing page for those keywords specific to the product / service.
• Call To Action- Informative ads are great, but a lot of times, ensuring your customer they can take action is a better way to get conversions. The difference between “Brand Name Toasters” and “Get Brand Name Toasters” can be great. Also, using more than one call to action within your site’s landing page can help your conversion rate. It is important as well to choose less abrasive calls to action, such as a “Try it Now” button instead of a simple “Buy” button.
• Make it Easy to Contact You- We’ve found that a lot of times, users want information before buying, and furthermore, they don’t want to read your entire website in order to get that information. For things like quotes, price comparisons, etc., it may be a good idea to have an easy to find form on your landing page, which will encourage the user to make their inquiry right then and there. Just be sure not to ask for too much personal information, since many users are careful about what they reveal about themselves online.
• Make Browsing an Enjoyable Experience – While the main goal is to take users directly to that for which they are searching, many times, they will want to see what else you have to offer. In this case, it is crucial to have a site that functions well, looks great and does not bombard the user with ads, flash movies and annoying images / sounds. Concerning sounds, there are very few reasons to ever play a sound on your website, and off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is to play music that the user is searching for, in which case there should be a fully functional player that can be stopped, or paused.
• User Control – Just as important as the enjoyability of browsing your site, for a user to be able to browse the way they prefer is a good way to ensure they will not become annoyed and leave. There should be nothing upon landing that prevents the user from clicking links, scrolling, or reading information – including load time. It is good to keep your site simple, but if you must offer a flashy presentation about your product, link the user from the landing page. Your landing page should offer only essential information and graphics, with a link to those interested in learning more or viewing more relavant images. Otherwise, the user may feel forced, leave your site, and never come back
• Thank You – This is key after the conversion. I’ve purchased products on sites that had no thank you message, and simply took me back to the product page after I purchased the item. This can confuse the user, and perhaps make them wonder if they even purchased the product. Additionally, saying thank you lets the user know you appreciate their business, and you can even add a polite call to action like “Please shop online again with us soon.” The key to the Thank You page is polite and, well, thankful.

Common Pay Per Click Mistakes

Google Adwords is set up to be easy to use, easy to navigate, and with the option to edit campaigns and settings offline, with their Adwords Editor, Google has made it easy to make bulk changes, while still maintaining the same level of detail that allows an account to function well. However, many newcomers to the concept of Pay-Per-Click make the mistake of thinking that PPC itself is easy.

The most common mistake a PPC beginner can make is misuse of match types. While it may be more likely that their keywords are set to the default broad match type only, a lot of times, users can be too specific with match types on certain keywords. This is due to the user not fully understanding the premise of each match type. Many users simply choose broad match to cover a wider range of searches, but for future optimization, this can cause problems, since broad match keyword data is less precise. Generally speaking, when setting up a new campaign, it is a good idea to test all three match types, unless a very tight budget is the issue.

Another issue that may prove counter-productive later on is the structuring of the campaigns and adgroups. While some may have a tendancy to throw too many keywords into a single adgroup with a non-specific ad, others may be shooting themself in the foot by abusing tools like the keyword grouper and ending up with far too many adgroups, each with only a few keywords contained within. What it comes down to is that no one managing a pay-per-click campaign should cut any corners. You can think of building a PPC campaign like building a house – if you use too much material, chances are you’re using the wrong type, and it will cost you far more to build it than it should; and if you use too little material, well, your structure will be unstable and, chances are, your repair costs will be high. Furthermore, the structure and layout for your ads will either result in a high Click Through Rate with few conversions if the ads contain too much on fluff, and maintain a low CTR if you don’t give users a reason to click your ads (ie. ads that are relavant to their searches). This is another reason why match types can make a big difference.

Another big problem in campaigns created by inexperienced managers is the misuse, or lack, of negative keywords. There is a reason for negative keywords, and it’s rare that a campaign will preform better with no negative keywords in place. The beauty of broad and phrase match types with your “positive” keywords is the ability to possibly show up for a larger variety of searches. The beauty of being able to couple this range with a “filter” of sorts (aka negative keywords) is like paying nothing extra to have a bouncer at the front door of your website. For PPC ads, you only pay the cost-per-click (at least, it is recommend that you pay-per-click, and not by impression), much like a club-goer only needs to pay to get through the door. Negative keywords basically check all search terms and if the phrase for which the user searched does not meet the “dress code”, the bouncer tells them to take a hike, and you don’t have to pay for that click.

As you can see, there is much to learn when it comes to pay-per-click, so it is usually best to leave it to an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

Social Media Is Here To Stay

Like it or not, sites like Digg, Facebook, Flickr! and the such will be around for awhile. As the wise man at the hot dog stand would say: “Get ‘em while they’re hot!” Statistics show increasing numbers in social media, which means larger audiences, better resources, and no signs of these highly active sites dwindling. Of course, all this information is useless if you lack the networking skills.

One might argue that social media sites have a characteristic to not last over a period of time. This is true, however, as the short history of SM has shown us, when one site falls another will rise, and with greater numbers. One of the greatest examples of this is Friendster > Myspace > Facebook. I should probably clarify that all three of these sites are still around and functional for members to use, however, looking at the history, one can see a wave which once peaked at Friendster, then Myspace, and is now peaking with Facebook.

One might also argue that social media sites are only beneficial for personal use, not for businesses. Most SM sites do generally target personal users, but there is really only one quality needed for social media optimization - networking. Businesses are made up of people, and people network all the time. Someone from your business can take it upon themself to share their knowledge with a given community, and as a result, spread the word. Forget what anyone has to say directory listings – quality link building is the foundation for SEO, and networking on an SM site can accomplish this naturally. I should point out, however, that many sites frown upon the use of their sites as link-building tools, so ethically speaking, you should only utilize these sites if you plan on interacting with the community as any other user would, and linking only to pages on your site that are relavant to topics of discussion.

Some would say that it would be a hassle to maintain multiple social media profiles just to build a few links. Why spend all those hours making and optimizing profiles when you can buy links? The key is targeted traffic. Buying links is not only unethical, but there is no guarantee as to the quality of these links. It may seem like a good deal to get a bunch of links at a low price, but it’s just a waste of money. A few links from a few good blogs will do far more for your natural search than an infinite number of random links from irrelavant sites containing nothing but links. And part of having blogs post about your site is networking with them.

One aspect of social media that one would never argue is the fact that it’s free. Sure, certain sites will offer a “premium membership” for a small monthly or yearly fee, but this will rarely, if ever, be any more useful for SMO than the basic free membership. This makes SMO a powerful tool not only because millions upon millions of people will be using it based soley on the fact that it is free, but because it costs you nothing more than the time you put into it, or if you don’t have the time to put into it, the fees you would pay your Internet marketing firm to utilize it.

Several Misconceptions Concerning Google Adwords

Most people know that Adwords is a valuable marketing tool, but some are still concerned about using it, based solely on misconceptions of how it works, or what it actually does. Here are some of the more common misconceptions concerning Google Adwords.

Believe it or not, many people think that Adwords is an auction, and that top bids get top spots. This would mean that only the top businesses in each niche would have a change to make an impression, let alone a sale. This line of thinking would be sure to scare away small businesses, but lucky for them, Google Adwords cares more about providing relevant search results than awarding higher bids. Sure, most cases will require you to bid a bit higher on more competitive keywords, but there is more factored in to the price you pay per click. The relevance of the keyword to your ad and the destination page, to name a few. The key here is to focus on you keyword list, and worry about adjusting bids later. There is no need to create a massive list of keywords just to direct a large amount of traffic to your site – this will actually lower your quality score and force you to pay more per click on these keywords, most of which will not render any sales.

We’ve had a lot of clients that ask us to bid whatever is necessary to keep them in the #1 spot, and some times, this is the best strategy. However, you may be surprised at how often #2 or #3 spots will render more conversions than #1. This will be true more often for eCommerce sites, or sites in niches within which people will tend to shop around. If your target audience is the type to visit a few websites before settling on a purchase, being the 3rd or 4th result may be to your advantage, and chances are, you are paying much less for clicks, and therefore paying a lower cost per conversion.

Smaller businesses tend to shy away from Google Adwords, in particular, because the research they have done has shown that they cannot afford the cost per click of Adwords, versus competing PPC services. Usually, this is not the case, but there is a possibility that your niche would not benefit as well from PPC as it would from SEO or traditional marketing. The main things to consider are the average conversion rate within your niche, your maximum cost per conversion and your monthly budget. Sometimes, certain niches will prove to be a pointless investment, but consider this: Even if your research shows that you will break even, your campaign will generally improve, and it may be possible to achieve your desired ROI. The problem with most Adwords PPC campaigns that do not improve are those that are managed by the inexperienced.

This leads me to the final misconception, that most people think Adwords is easy to use. In all honesty, the interface and the concept are a piece of cake, but when it comes down to micro-management, bid adjustments, split-ad-testing, and so on, the best result will normally come from hiring an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to do manage the campaign for you. Unfortunately, many find out too late that Adwords is not a cakewalk.

For more information on an Internet Marketing Firm that can provide your Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click services, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.

Social Media Optimization Restraint

There are plenty of excellent Internet marketing firms out there, but when it comes to newer forms of marketing, such as Social Media Optimization, few of them know the best way to carry out a successful campaign. The reason for this is largely based on the fact that SMO is rather young, but also because a lot of the sites that are kind enough to host users for free, are constantly guarding against their sites being utilized for such purposes. A good example of this is Flickr!, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. Cracking down on photostreams was their solution to the problem, but other sites like Digg and Stumbleupon may become trouble with friend adding. However, this is not due to the administration.

The key to any natural-search-oriented form of marketing is natural linking. If the links appear natural to the search engines, they will be more effective, and since we aren’t all so fortunate to have the support of the Internet from the beginning, we often must take it upon ourselves to spread the word, through relevant (and therefore natural in appearance) linking.

So, the key to utilizing Social Media sites for online marketing is also natural, however, natural to other users. Since the quality of internal links on a site like Digg depend on the users accepting requests to become friends or contacts, your adding of friends or contacts must first appear natural to the users. Having an incomplete profile, offensive content, or a low amount of activity is the best way to send out un-reciprocated requests. Focus first on building your presence, then your contacts, and lastly, quality, external links to your profile, as well as internal links to your site.

Search Engine Optimization is Not a Science

When people ask me what I do for a living, the inevitable followup questions will generally  lead to long explainations that leave the inquery unsatisfied. Basically, my first response is “Internet Marking”, which leads they that inquire to further do so with a question along the lines of:

“What does that entail?”, to which I respond, “Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization and SEO.” To this they ask, “What is SEO?” and I tell them “Search Engine Optimization.”

Even to someone who is computer and Internet savvy, when I try to explain the specifics, they will usually just nod and smile, but everything goes right over their head. This isn’t because they aren’t intelligent or able to grasp the concept of quality link building, but more due to the fact that SEO can’t really be taught to someone in a college course or a weekend seminar, let alone within the twenty minutes on average that these conversations will tend to last.

Like many Search Engine Optimizers, I was given direction during the course of my training, and the rest was self-learned. Sure, the advice of learned others will always benifit those that learn, and instruction can provide foundation, but SEO is always changing, because the “rules by which we must play” are always changing. SEO is not so much a science, but more a type of branding.

Just as a brand is an idea communicated to the target market which associates a name, slogan or idea with your company (and hopefully results in leads, conversions and sales), SEO is the branding of search engines. We use creatively implemented tools to leave an impression on bots that crawl the web, and encourage them to tell the rest of the world about our client’s product or service when they search for related terms.

So yes, while the results of Search Engine Optimization are the sum of links pointing to a site, as well as the quality, quantity and variance of those links, the idea is not so simple in practice. To do this job right, an SEO must be an architect of the Web, constructing a functional, yet appealing structure that serves a purpose and leaves an impression on our target audience, via search engines.

To learn more about branding your company name using highly effective SEO practices, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

Blogs Can Be Your Savior Or Your Demise

I’ve discussed before how a relatively well-ranking blog can destroy your reputation by showing up in searches for your company’s name, but consider the alternative – a network of bloggers that increases your targeted traffic by 300% in one day. I wasn’t so sure this was possible, but I experienced this first-hand.

While comparing an eCommerce or strictly informational site to a personal one may not be the most suitable example, the principles are the same. As far as Social media Optimization and SEO are concerned, quality, varied, and extensive links can build your rank for certain keywords, and your page rank overall. As usual, I have to offer my disclaimer for the use of the term “page rank” as I am not referring to the little green bar that appears in your Google toolbar, or the number assigned by various spy sites. This is the number which you will never really know the value of unless you have a very good friend who works in the right office at Google. Don’t worry about it – Search Engine Marketing is based upon the focus on generating keyword links, not a popularity contest.

However, when it comes to onsite content, and well targetted keywords in the right niche, one post or update can win over an entire blogging community, as was the case for me just a few days ago. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it is a good idea to setup a blog for your company (or have an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting do it for you). This is why…

I decided to embark on a project a little bit different from my usual pixel-based bead art. Don’t laugh, it’s perfectly normal for a 27-year-old man to make real-life pixel art using kid’s craft beads. Moving on, this new project of mine was a musical album, or rather a preview of an album in progress. For 6 or so months now, I’ve been posting to my own personal, self-hosted, Wordpress blog. During that time, I’ve done quite a bit of SMO for the domain, and I’ve managed to rank in the top ten for most of my keywords, number one for many of them. Still, I’ve never seen more than a few dozen views in a given day. In fact, just last week, I topped out at 79 visits. I suppose I thought this was decent for a personal blog.

Leave it to a guy who blogs for Wired.com, and in one day I managed to get over 1,800 visits to my site that day. Basically, I posted the links to my free album preview on December 2nd, the day that I got my 79 views, and the next day, this guy saw it, posted about it at Midnight on the 4th, and referred to me 75% of my views that day.  But that’s not the end.

For the next few days, I received anywhere between 182 and 437 visits, which climbed to over 3,600 on the fourth day. Apparently, the word was spreading.

The day after that, my servers were overloaded and I didn’t know why. My bandwidth was well under the limit. 20,714 views, in one day…that’s how. I couldn’t even post to my blog, there were so many people visiting – who puts their personal blog on a dedicated server? I didn’t, and I sure didn’t think I had to, either.

The point of all this is that many companies overlook the value of the Social Media as a tool to their advantage. Most of the time, an investment in Internet Marketing can be a calculated effort, which results in relatively expected results – not that there is nothing wrong with this. However, I believe that many businesses could benefit from investing in Social Media. An average campaign for Pay Per Click Optimization for one of our clients will drive a few thousand hits a day to their site, but receiving two weeks worth of targetted traffic in one day (without paying two weeks worth of clicks) can do wonders for your ROI. I wouldn’t by any means recommend giving up the PPC campaign, but using as many channels as possible is the best way to make the most out of marketing on the Internet.

Using Flickr! for SEO Just Got Difficult

I’ve been using Flickr! personally for the past few years in order to share my artwork through groups, individuals, and the handy RSS feed included in the basic Flickr! account membership. Although I am a member on many other Social Media sites aimed towards artists of different sorts, including deviantART, Myspace (music), and ETSY (although more of an eBay for crafts), Flickr! has thus far been the best catalyst for self-promotion of my work.

The beauty of a Flickr! account is that each photograph is basically treated by search engines as a separate web page, the main difference being the extension used. In the spirit of the structure of an search-engine-readable page, each image submitted to Flickr! contains a name and a description (which may contain links), much like a web page contains a header, title and body, which may include links. The reason for this special treatment is to make Flickr! submissions search-able in both image and web searches, as a means to encourage online sharing of photos.

Thus far, I personally have gotten a lot of attention and a bit of publicity by using Flickr! as a sort of gallery for my artwork. Likewise, many businesses have found Flickr! to be an invaluable means for Social media Optimization, or SMO. Unfortunately, as of recently, Flickr! has been cracking down and doing some searching of their own – for strictly business accounts using Flickr! for SEO.

Although only time will tell where the hard-working staff at Flickr! will draw the line between personal and business accounts, here are a few things to consider if you don’t want to find your Flickr! account deleted:

• Interact with the Community. Normally, I would say that it is better not to draw attention to an optimization based account or profile on any of these sites, since it may draw attention to the fact that you are not a personal user – however, in this particular case, it seems to me that a complete lack of interaction (via messages, comments, etc) would be a red flag to the ‘cleaning crew’ and may more likely result in account deletion than sticking out like a sore thumb (as long as that sore thumb appears to look like a natural human kindly interacting with other members).
• Use Links Sparingly. This may seem obvious, but when you split up 80 links between 80 photos, you may not immediately realize how many there are in total. While I personally do not get a lot of traffic to my personal blog through Flickr!, many businesses use it for that purpose. Be conscious of how many links you are throwing to the same URL – you should only place a few links here and there, and make sure the surrounding text is relevant but not ’selling’ anything.
• Post More Pictures. This does not mean you should post a ton of pointless pictures, but if you were only uploading pictures of products and linking each one to a product page on an eCommerce site, this would draw attention to the ‘misuse’ of the account, and blatant violation of Flickr! user policy. The key is to post pictures of many different things, all somehow relevant, but not all blatant image adverts. The more you mix it up, the more natural and ‘random’ it will appear to both human and bot browsers of your photostream.

These are a few things that I personally will be trying out to avoid getting my account deleted, but I would think that businesses would have to exercise more caution than personal users.

For more information on effective Social Media and Search Engine Optimization services, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

Designing a Pay-Per-Click Campaign for a Smaller Business

When it comes to small business advertising on the Internet, organic search engine optimization may be out of your budget. I recently talked with a friend and small business owner from Philadelphia who had a very limited budget and was faced with the decision hire a firm he knew nothing about and either get a good deal, or become victim to one of the most common SEO scams on the web, which is a firm that requires a full payment up front before doing any work. My advice to him was to either find a pay per performance internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting, and invest a little more, or try out a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

The general advantage of PPC over SEO is the level of control you have over keywords and the bids on them, but for a small business, the real beauty of that control is the ability to target local Internet users only. In my friend’s situation, he runs a small business in the greater Philadelphia area, so initializing an SEO campaign which would be seen by users all over the country would make less sense than a geo-targeted PPC campaign.

Setting up geo-targeting in Adwords is as easy is checking a few boxes in the Campaign Settings. For those running a content campaign, which is a good idea if you have a little extra ad money to spend, geo-targeting is available on the content network as well.

When in doubt, just ask an Internet Marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting to explain PPC to you.

Creating Placement Adgroups for an Adwords Content Targeted Campaign

If you’re not familiar with the Google Content Network option within a Pay Per Click campaign, it may be worth looking in to. Depending on your niche, there may be countless websites partnered with Google who participate in Adwords. Essentially, these sites have “digital billboards” which are swapped out much like ranking positions on paid Google searches.

Within an Adwords campaign, you can set a given campaign to bid on these spots, just the same as bidding on search rank position. The idea is, visitors to these sites are already looking for information or a service relavant to your business, which makes these ads highly visible to those that may not be doing searches for your niche, but are still looking for it. It’s a good idea to set up a test campaign so that, at the very least, you can see if this is a good option for your company. After gathering a certain amount of data from various reports provided in Adwords, it is best to set up a Placement campaign, which will either allow or disallow specific websites from showing your ad.

The first step is to utilize the Placement Tool to search for sites relevant to your site. By entering a number of keywords for each adgroup you set up, a list returned, and you can add placements to each adgroup from a list of sites returned. Each adgroup will then specifically target the placement sites within to have your ad shown. This is not a guarantee that your ad will show, but a bid much like standard PPC campaigns. Of course, your ads should be relavant to each placement adgroup you setup.

The next step is to set up a number of general content adgroups with your keywords, relavant ads to display, and no placements. Let this campaign and the placement campaign run for the course of a few months to see which sites are showing your ads, how many clicks they are getting, what the click-through rate is, and how many conversions result. Once you’ve let the campaign run for awhile, you can run a placement report for each, which can be set to return the domains with pages on which your ad was shown. Organize your report by conversions and those sites with good conversions (be sure to check for lower costs per conversion as well) can be kept within the placement campaign, or added to it if they show in the general content campaign and were not already in the placement campaign.

Next, organize each report by cost. This way, you can find the sites with no conversions and a lot of spend, or those with high conversion rates. With this list of domains, you can add them to the negative keyword/placement list, so they will no longer show the ad. Do this within the general content campaign, but before you add these sites to the placement campaign, move these sites into a new adgroup that basically mirrors the one from which it came, and add a list of keywords to the group. This way, only pages relavant to those keywords will show the ad, and you will be more likely to get conversions. If the site placements within a placement campaign adgroup including keywords are not converting, then ad them to the negative kayword/placement list.

If PPC confuses you, don’t hesitate to ask an Internet Marketinf Firm like Reciprocal Consulting any questions you may have.

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