The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

There’s a good reason why the Internet is referred to as the World Wide Web; there are many strands of information meeting other strand at various junctions, and it is all too easy to get hung up on it. Okay, that’s some pretty corny humor at the end of that statement, but true nonetheless. Discerning a quality piece of information from one with an ulterior motive can be tricky, which is where interacting with others via the social media end of the spectrum can be to your advantage.

Some businesses will view comments, reviews, and opinions on various sites as potential damage to their reputation, but to many, they play a large part in the decisions they make for shopping, using services, and so on. The same goes for services that utilize directory listings, which provide those that prefer to do thorough research with an invaluable source of information.

However, many directory listing sites are comparable to scams, which sell irrelevant listings for the majority of their profit, and sell ad space to supplement the rest. There are also a lot of blogs with a similar purpose, which are often classified as ”made for Adsense”, since they are created not to provide valuable information, but to make money.

So where does Social Media fall into the scheme? Utilizing these sites can be a good way to make friends who know the ins and outs of the industry; both your particular industry and the Internet marketing industry. By creating profiles on these sites, finding contacts who share your field of interest, and joining communities focused on your niche, you not only amplify your Social Media Optimization efforts, but you also gain the opportunity to match minds with others like yourself, who invariably are not in the market to get rich quick, but to share quality information, and possibly some quality links to your site.

Moving focus back to the directory listings, consider the difficulty of truly knowing the difference between the good and the bad; it sure would be nice to have a second opinion, wouldn’t it? There are tips one could follow in order to better understand what makes a listing untrustworthy, such as ludicrus requirements like reciprocal links, an increase in visibility with higher costs, 100% guarantees, etc. Still, the best source of information comes from others with experience in the field.

Understanding the marketing world on the Internet can be hard, but there is help. An Internet Marketing Firm such as Reciprocal Consulting is a good place to start.

Linking is the key to any natural search-oriented campaign. While Pay Per Click increases the visibility of your website through strategic keyword building, natural search is a combination of on page and off page optimization. The main difference between the two, as to how you achieve a desired visibility status, is the importance of your site. A site of lesser importance, as determined by Google’s complex algorithm, can obtain the first position in searches utilizing a PPC campaign. While it is possible for the same site to appear within the top 3 for natural searches, it is less likely, and therefore natural search depends more on page rank for a site’s position. The similarity between the two is the keyword relevance to the search.

While it would be nice for your website to appear number one for every search, this is not practical. Via a PPC campaign, this mis-targeted traffic would cost you thousands, maybe more, as the majority of clicks would not take the user to a site relevant to that for which they searched. It would make no sense for a law firm website to show up in the top spot for a “heavy equipment training” search query. The purpose of search engines is to return relevant results, not just high ranking sites. The rank is factored in only to represent the importance and usability of the site itself, generally determined by relevant links. Here are four steps for building relevant links to your site, for free:

Social Media Optimization - this may not be the most efficient approach, as far as time is concerned, but the use of Social Media can prove very effective for the initial campaign. Simply, it puts your website on the map. The main quality to look for in a Social Media Site is the ability to add direct links with custom anchor text. This is possible through your profile, various groups, or occasionally, through message systems which allow users to contact each other, via their profile pages. It should be note, however, that many SM profile sites utilize no follow links, which will not benefit keyword relevance of links. Much like relevant pages on a website linking to each other, if only for ease-of-use, consider the network of pages linked to each other on a site such as MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. It is important to exercise self control with such links, as irrelevant links may be read as spam or abuse of the site. Be sure to read the terms of use for such sites, as violation of such terms can result in the deletion of your account.

Forums - actively participating in forum discussions can increase the online visibility of your company greatly. Choosing a username on said forum that represents your company’s name or primary keyword will increase the relevance of posts, and posting within categories related to your business, its name or its purpose, will increase its importance. Much like social media sites, many forums will have no follow links, so use caution. The best way to utilize a forum is to set up your own. This gives you full control over comments, link properties, posts, and categories. Additionally, relevant traffic generally increases on forums as it allows others to participate in discussions and talk about their own interests in relation to your site.

Free Article and PR Sites - articles and press releases are a great way to build relevant links to your site, and its sub domains, as well as increasing your online availability through referred traffic. Additionally, you have full control over the surrounding text, and many free article sites allow you to include multiple links within the content. An article site might also feature a well-written, highly viewed article on the front page, and if nothing else, feature the submission in a category section related to your article or press release, which will have a URL containing very relevant text.

Blogging - much like article sites, setting up a blog is another good way to build links with more relevance and rank behind them. The only difference is, you can also optimize the blog itself, utilizing your social media profiles, and the articles/pr you’ve written. You may also include links to your blog from your site and forum posts. Cross linking relevant content on your blog and your site, as well as all other areas of the web you maintain, can be quite the task, but well worth the effort and time. Additionally, blogging allows for minimal effort in organizing, coding and optimizing content. Since posts are automatically sorted by date, category and tags, this is an easy way to quickly add content with little hassle; plus, adding images makes your blog more vivid, wont clutter the screen as much, and when ALT tags are properly used, will return links to your blog via image searches. Also, if said images are hosted on your site’s domain, this will add to the relevance of the blog to your site and the use of such images within your blog. You may be hosted on a Blog Site if you wish, but it is generally preferable to be self-hosted, as it implies that your site is more important.

These are only the basics of free link building, and as effective as these may be, there is only so much you can achieve with this method - it really depends on your niche. If you are fighting over less common, less desired, or more unique keywords, these tactics may be enough to put your site on the charts, even at the top spot in searches for those keywords. However, more competitive keywords require more variation, dedication, time, and resources.

When it comes down, most businesses don’t have the time or man-power within the company to embark on a campaign of such magnitude. Consider an experienced, well established, Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to aid you in this endeavor.

In case you’ve been dying to know the answer to this question, the answer is both.

A personalized, custom built Website gives a business many freedoms concerning structure, content, and additional applications, such as shopping carts, forms, dynamic flash interfaces, and more, plus a very fresh, from-scratch, start. While many of these things may be available on a self hosted Blog, there is a difference between having a recognizable format and having one that may very well cause a user to bounce from your page. Self hosted Blogs, while capable of hosting many things that a website can, have an expected format, and should be used primarily for content. Content refers to onsite, html readable text, and links. This includes headers, footers, side bars, body text, posts, etc.

Now, what is the meaning behind this question, and more importantly, why the need for both?

The simple answer:

Blogs are becoming increasingly popular, to the point of absurdity. Every other person who is active on the internet these days has at least one blog to which they contribute, and many have two or three. Still, some have more even than that! So why join the crowd?

First of all, all the well tuned on and off site optimization in the world will not turn leads into conversions. For your sites ROI (return on investment) goals, more than likely there is a thank you page, order confirmation page, or some similar page which contains a tracking code. This is how you tally conversions, and when pitted against clicks, impressions, or monthly budget (depending on your campaign), you can measure ROI. There is a key factor between the initial lead and the conversion: Your Website

I’ve discussed how your optimized keywords and on site content need to relate to eachother, but these things should also be related to the design and structure of your website. If a lead comes to your site expecting to find a list of available products, easy to use shopping cart and easy checkout, more than likely, they will not find this on a Blog.

Another example, on the flip side, is content. While your site’s page content is crucial to optimization, suppose there is a good deal more information pertaining to your business that you wish to share with your potential clients or customers. Having all this information on a website that is also being used for checkout and browsing may bog things down for the user because,  as I mentioned earlier, the quicker and easier it is for them to order and pay, the better the chance they will do just that. Adding a link on your site to a Blog about your company and it’s products, as well as news about upcoming products or services, is the best way to share large amounts of information without interfering with their shopping or browsing experience.

Additionally, having “sister sites” which link to eachother, one of which being a Blog containing feeds, news, links from Social Media Blog profiles, and lots of key content, is a good way to increase relevance and page rank, as well as targeted traffic. You can link relevant posts in the Blog to product pages on your site (and to other relevant posts within the Blog itself), give the user more opportunities to contact you with questions, and provide more than enough information that may already answer their inqueries.

There is a good deal of optimization that goes into a successful Blog (be it Sponsored Ads or Natural Search), but the beauty is, traffic coming to one site will lead to the other, and there is a clean, concise, well designed format which makes it easier for your leads to convert to sales.

While Social Media Optimization may take a backseat to Search Engine Optimization, it requires an equal level of persistance to achieve your desired results. Just like SEO, SMO is an ongoing process, one which will not show immediate results. One of the biggest misconceptions concerning both SEO and SMO is that there is a definitive goal in mind. Sure, we aim to raise page ranks, and we certainly work towards getting sites to the top of search results for their niche and corresponsing keywords, but it doesn’t end when those goals are achieved, it must continue to be successful. Here’s why:

• Web crawlers gather a lot of information. This includes times, dates, and other facts about your site that are relevant to your sites statistics, not just inlinks and on-site content.
• Dates apply to rankings. The longer your site goes without new links pointing towards your site, the less relevant your site becomes to the current date and time.
• Rank is measured not just by the volume of links. A bunch of links from a few of the same sites will not do much good, as this points to only a few sites that consider your site relevant. Continually getting links means a greater chance of getting more links from a greater number of different sites.

Now, how does this apply to your Social Media profiles? Optimizing these profiles is the same process as optimizing your site, with one catch: You are optimizing more than one site.

I find that often times, clients of our Internet Marketing Firm are generally less interested in SMO than they are in SEO because it seems like a waste of time and money to them, but consider this: Inlinks from higher ranking sites will do more for your site than inlinks from lower ranking sites, correct? Therefore, properly maintaining and linking to a Social Media profile that links to your page, which raises it’s own page rank is helping your site by raising it’s page rank!

For more information on improving your website rank and importance, or for any other Internet Marketing inqueries, please don’t hesitate to contact one of us from Reciprocal Consulting.

Internet marketing takes years of experience to master and is constantly changing, therefore requiring dedication to continually grasp in full. However, there are a few basics that anyone interested in internet marketing should know. When it comes to understanding the fundamentals, it’s all in the terms. ROI, SEO, SMO, RM, CI, PPC, etc. These acronyms may mean nothing to most people but to us as an internet marketing firm they are our bread and butter.

Here is a basic rundown of our services and how they can help our clients:

• ROI (Return on Investment) - the key to any campaign in a simple question: is it worth it? The ROI is the net of what is spent on a campaign verses the increase of leads, sales, customers, etc. Depending on your niche, certain marketing campaigns may not be best suited for you.
• PPC (Pay Per Click) - refers to the use of AdWords campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. A PPC AdWords Campaign is the sum of keywords relevant to the client’s website, which are used to target potential customers through bidding for sponsored ads, reaching them on searches, as well as high-ranking sites relevant to the site.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - encompasses nearly every end of internet marketing, more specifically as pertaining to a campaign utilizing search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to reach a targeted audience.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - process of optimizing on-site and off-site specifics in order to increase the relevance of the website to specific keywords and search terms, therefore increasing page rank and ultimately increasing online visibility in searches, essentially, making your site more popular.
• SMO (Social Media Optimization) - targeting non-search groups on social networking sites, such as Technorati, Digg, Squidoo and various blog sites. SMO targets those that may not necessarily search for your keywords because they already belong to an online community which shares information on those search terms.
• RM (Reputation Management) - various augmented forms of SEO and SMO which populate remaining ranking positions on searches for a site’s keyword set. While SEO and SMO may independently secure a top-ranking position, RM will help to populate the remaining positions in order to protect the site itself from high-ranking blogs or review sites slandering your good name.
• CI (Competitive Intelligence) - utilizing various resources and databases in order to compare your site to your competition. By pitting your site against other sites, we get a better idea of which branches of a given campaign are excelling and which need a boost.

These are just the basics. For more information about these services and others, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.

There are many ways to optimize your website through SEO and PPC, but even if your website is showing up at the top of search results, there are at least nine more ranking spots that could be pointing to you. So why bother joining the world of Social Media Optimization when you have the number one spot in search results?

• An added online presence through SMO says more about your dedication to the internet community, which in turn shows that you care more about reaching your customers.
• Depending on which SMO sites you utilize, you can reach potential customers outside of direct search results. If someone is searching Google for your niche they will be sure to find you. However, if they belong to a forum, online community or message board dedicated to that niche, they may not bother searching Google and, furthermore, anyone who finds you on those sites is guaranteed to show interest in your business and will subsequently be more likely to become a customer.
• When coupled with SEO, SMO can push your profiles, posts and contributions to various SMO communities to search results beneath your website. This is an additional protection that falls under Reputation Management, but it is just one way to protect your name.
• Having a presence on multiple SMO sites can generate more links to your website, which adds a layer of security to your top spot on searches.

Basically, Social Media Optimization is an extension of SEO that reaches a large number of more accurately targeted potential customers.

There are many things to consider before setting up an SMO campaign. Everything from which sites you utilize to what your avatar on your various profiles will be, these things all have an impact on your image. Also, choosing keywords wisely can become the difference between an excellent campaign and an ineffective one.

If you’d like to set up a Social Media Optimization campaign for your business, Reciprocal Consulting can help.