After only two weeks on the scene, BING managed to surpass Yahoo!’s numbers and grab the number two spot under Google for searches. Exciting news for Microsoft, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

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!

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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- 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.

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.

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.

• 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.