The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Get used to being known as a keyword rather than a name. If you're trying to generate search engine rankings, at least. For example, which of the following would make a better signature for an article or blog post response?

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

or

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

Intuitively, you might think the first one is better, since your business name is hyper-linked. However, the second link will help boost your ranking for the specific keyword "pool table". Assuming that that keyword accurately reflects the products you sell (and that you have done some keyword research to make sure the keyword generates traffic), then the second one is much better for your business.

If your goal is to achieve search engine rankings, then you need to put your ego aside, and do everything you can to seed the Web with links to your site that contain your main keywords. Article writing is a great way to do this. Personally, I'm not convinced that making forum posts with links is still a valid method. I feel like the search engines probably discounted the value of those links a long time ago. But there are plenty of other techniques.

If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article marketing, internet marketing, keyword research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

This week we published an article on our web site discussing a concept we have developed called Keyword Relative Value. The article can be accessed via the link below:

http://workmedia.net/articles/Keyword-Relative-Value.asp

To quote from the article:

We developed a formula intended to attach a numerical value to a web site's search engine ranking for a specific keyword. The resulting number, called the Keyword Relative Value (or “KRV”), places a value on a keyword for a particular web site based on two parameters: the amount of expected traffic for the keyword and a site's ranking in a particular search engine for the keyword.

Here is the KRV formula:

KRV = ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2)

where T = the expected traffic for a keyword and R = a web site's ranking for the keyword in a particular search engine.

The above formula derives the value for one particular keyword. A much more instructive exercise is to calculate the KRV's for a group of keywords. We call this the Aggregate Keyword Relative Value ("AKRV"). The formula for AKRV is as follows:

AKRV = X(ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2))

where X is the number of keywords that have search engine rankings.

The point of these formulas is to boil your web site's search engine visibility for a common set of keywords down to a single number. You can then track this number over time and compare it to your competitors to gauge your visibility against your competitors. We believe this concept is a powerful new tool to give web site owners a stronger sense of how well they rank in the search engines, in an easy-to-understand format: a single number.

To learn more about KRV, please read the article linked above.

If you could use some help improving and understanding your search engine visibility, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword relative value, keyword research, keywords, KRV, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

In the last few weeks, I've been doing a ton of article writing. It has definitely moved to the top of my list of favored strategies. Article writing serves two major purposes: branding and SEO. From a branding perspective, a well-written article can create the impression that you are a true professional in your field. From an SEO standpoint, it can result in lots of keyword-loaded links back to your web site. If you want to use article writing as a strategy for promoting your web site, here are some tips that will give you more impact.

1. Edit and proof-read your articles carefully. An article can end up on hundreds of web sites, and it never goes away. It basically lives forever as a symbol of who you are and what you represent. So it's pretty important that the article be well-written and grammatically correct. It is a reflection of your professionalism.

2. Try to write in a Web-friendly manner. Reading on screen is more difficult than reading something on paper. So use a snappy writing style with lots of short paragraphs. One structural style that works very well for the Web is a top ten list. It doesn't really have to have ten items. Right now, for some reason, top seven lists are hot.

3. Write in a conversational tone. Use the word "you" a lot to engage the reader.

4. Use an article distribution service. I recommend articlemarketer.com. In the past, I have used isnare.com. Isnare is cheaper, at just $2 or less per article distributed, but articlemarketer.com seems to offer wider distribution and much better reporting as to where your articles have been sent.

5. Use an author box that contains a keyword-rich link back to your web site. This gets to the heart of the power of article writing. If you have an article on lots of web sites that all have a link back to your web site, that is good. However, if the text used in those links contains a keyword for which you wish to rank highly, that's even better. For instance, let's say you sell ostrich skin cowboy boots on your web site. If you write an article and distribute it with a link back to your web site in the author box that says "ostrich skin cowboy boots", that will help boost your search engine rankings for that phrase. You would not get the same boost if all of the links simply had
your web site address.

Obviously, to make article marketing work, you need to have something to write about and you need to be able to write reasonably well. If you have difficulty in this area, seek out an article writer to do it for you. We would be glad to help. Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

An excellent source of links to your web site are the sites that already link to your highest-ranked competitors. Do you want to really get in-depth in researching what web sites link to your competitors? Then follow these steps:

1. If you don't have the Firefox browser installed, go download it: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

2. Install the SEOQuake plugin. You can download it here: http://ff.seoquake.com/

3. Go to http://search.yahoo.com and search for the links Yahoo! has recorded for your competitor's web site. The search query will be in this form:linkdomain:websiteaddress.com -site:websiteaddress.com -site:www.websiteaddress.com

You will be returned a list of web sites that point to your competitor's site, excluding links from the same site.

4. Turn on SEOQuake if it is not already. This is done by clicking the small SEOQuake icon on address bar on the right-hand side of your browser screen.

5. Sort the links by PR or by age by clicking on the down arrow next to "PR" or "Age" on the line that starts "Sort:" directly above the first search engine result.

Now you will have a list of sites, sorted by age or importance, that link to your competitor. These may be excellent candidates for linking to your site as well. Certainly target the sites that appear to be involved in link swapping, because you can get a link from these sites very easily by just providing a link on your site back. Then go after the ones that may be more picky.

Building up links to a web site can be very frustrating and time consuming. If you could use some help with anything related to SEO or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web site marketing, Yahoo Search

Well, well...here we are...200 blog posts. Please excuse us while we give ourselves a pat on the back...[pat, pat, pat]...

We thought we would use this occasion to give some of our very best tips for promoting your web site:

• Pick one keyword for which to optimize the front page of your site. Make that keyword the first words in your title. Use it twice in the copy, once in a header, and once in bold. Use it in the alt attribute of the first image on the page. Use it in the text of every link throughout your site that links to your home page. And, if possible, use it in the text of links on other web sites that point to your site. Speaking of links...
• Get lots of external links pointing to your home page. I don't care what some "experts" say - we have seen time and time again that linking still works as an SEO technique.
• Write articles. This may be the single best way to acquire one-way, keyword-rich links to your site. Do it often. If you do one a week, in a year's time you will have a TON of links. If you can't write, there are companies you can hire to do it for you. Or hire a smart local high school kid to do it.
• Publish a blog. Search engines love content that changes often. That's exactly what a blog is - content that you update often. But you need to post at least twice per week.
• Use paid search. Sure, it delivers targeted traffic to your web site. But possibly even more importantly, it generates mission critical data. It will tell you things like what keywords generate the most traffic, what keywords generate customers, what web page copy converts at the best rate, etc.
• Use your analytics. You need to have a strong understanding of what is going on on your web site. For example, are your visitors using a particular screen resolution that doesn't work well with your site? Is there a particular location where a lot of your visitors come from? Is there a particular page on your site where most visitors leave? Google Analytics can answer all these questions for you, and it's free.
• Never stop trying to do better. Using the data from paid search and your analytics, you should constantly be looking for clues as to what changes to make to improve the performance of your site.

If you do these things, you will be successful. But is it work? Of course. That's why we're able to be in business. Because it takes time to implement a search marketing campaign and get a feel for what the data means. So if you could use some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, call us today at 888-299-4837 or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

See ya in blog post number 201!

Labels: article marketing, blog, internet marketing, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Article writing continues to be one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques in existence. It has two major benefits: it is a good branding move because it makes you appear like an expert in your field; and it generates one-way links to your web site which often contain specific keywords in the link text. If you write articles regularly, you will do yourself a lot of good. But there's good...and then there's GOOD.

So how do you write a GOOD article?

We're not really talking about good in the sense of writing that is compelling and interesting. I mean, if you can do that, then that is a huge bonus. We're really talking more about writing that will improve your search engine rankings and close business.

First off, you should have a specific keyword in mind when writing the article for which you would like to improve your search engine rankings. If you don't already have a specific keyword in mind, you might want to visit http://Nichebot.com or a similar service to look for keywords that get a lot (or at least some) traffic that are relevant to your business. It doesn't do you nearly as much good to write an article focused on a keyword that nobody ever uses.

Once you have decided on a keyword, then you need to try and use the keyword in the title (if it makes sense), the article body, and most importantly, in the author's box. The author's box is where you can actually make a hyperlink out of a keyword. If you can insert a hyperlink in the body text, that's even better, but that is often frowned upon.

As far as the content for the article, one easy way to create content is to pull it from your blog (you do blog, don't you?). For example, I just authored an article based on two blog posts. Each blog post discussed a real life example of poor web site marketing at the local level. So I combined the blog posts, re-wrote some sections of it, and titled it "Two Examples of the Damage Done by Poor Local Web Site Marketing".

Now I'm going give you a power tip, so pay attention. When conducting online research for an article, I use Google Notebook to collect snippets of information into a single page where I can view it all. Basically, I'm creating notes on the fly from different sites that I can use as the basis for my article. This technique could save you a lot of time.

When writing your article, use proper grammar and spelling. You can write the article in a conversational tone (which is good), but you don't want to appear ignorant. Remember, there is a branding component at work here. You want to come off as a true professional in your industry.

Once the article is written, it needs to be distributed to article directories. You can do this manually, one at a time, or you can use a directory submission service. The manual way is best, but it takes oh so long to do. You will probably want to use some kind of automation to get your article out to as many places as you can.

If you see the power of article marketing but just don't want to do it yourself, Work Media offers an article writing service. Call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, copywriting, internet marketing, search engine marketing, seo

We have recently begun being more aggressive promoting our own web site. We have very strong rankings for search engine marketing related keywords that contain the word "Nashville", which is generally where we advise businesses with a brick-and-mortar location to begin. It is often very difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for broad, non-geographically targeted keywords. So generating rankings for keywords specific to your home market is a great way to begin driving traffic to your site that consists of very strong prospects for your service. It has definitely been beneficial to Work Media to be near the top of the rankings in Google for search terms like "Nashville search engine marketing firm". In fact, just out of curiosity, I just typed exactly that search term into Google and we have the top-ranked natural listing and the number one paid search listing. Now that's good shelfspace.

Anyway, we've decided it's time to start promoting our site for more broad terms, not specifically related to Nashville. We have a ton of content on our site and the site is reasonably well optimized, so the main thing we're concentrating on is off-site optimization (i.e., getting links pointing to our site). We've been working on it for a few weeks and have already begun seeing results. But one odd thing happened which we have seen happen a lot. So we thought we would tell you about it so if it happens to you, you don't freak out.

There is one keyword in particular we are keen on ranking for, so it is the main one we have concentrated on in our linking campaign. When we started, we ranked a little past 100 for the keyword. A few weeks after beginning our new efforts to rank for this keyword, we disappeared altogether from the Google results. But we were not worried - we've seen this before.

Sure enough, after a few days, we were back in Google's results for the keyword, this time ranked in the 60's. Nowhere near where we hope to be, but a real nice jump from where we started.

When a web page suddendly begins to have lots of new links pointing to it, that page tends to disappear from the rankings, only to reappear later, higher ranked. Our theory is that when Google picks up on a lot of new rankings for a page, it temporarily removes it from the rankings in order to do some additional analysis on the page. This analysis probably includes Google asking questions like: Are the links relevant to the site? Is the site strong in content? What do we know about the site?

Since our site is very strong in content, well-aged, and has been indexed for a long time, we think Google performed the analysis and made the determination that we were not trying to spam our way into its index. It then re-ranked our site accordingly, taking into account the new links we have.

This is all just a theory, really. But we've never been ones to stress out over trying to figure out exactly how Google's algorithm works. We just follow the basics...and it works every time. So if you undertake a linking campaign and find your site suddenly disappearing from the rankings, don't worry about it. Unless your site is junk, in which case it may not make it out of limbo. So make sure your site is strong on content.

If you need some help with your own site's search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

Local businesses are losing sales by not taking advantage of the Web as a sales tool. No, this is not based on any kind of poll or data analysis. It's based purely on my own experiences. It is usually the case that for every one person who experiences a problem, or expresses dissatisfaction about a situation, there are many more people who feel the same way. So I am going to make the assumption that there are many people who have the same frustration I am about to discuss.

Businesses at the local level just don't seem to get it when it comes to online marketing. They will spend thousands of dollars on TV ads, print ads, radio ads, etc., but give no attention to their web sites. Here is a cold, hard fact: more and more people use the Web to do product research and find local businesses with whom to do business; and that trend is only going to continue. So why would ANY business not have a strong Web presence that shows what products or services it sells, and that makes it easy to do business with it?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I am researching gas and electric fireplaces for my house. One large retailer in Nashville who I thought sold fireplaces (since there is a fireplaces page on its site) has ZERO visibility and almost no information about its fireplaces. If I did not already know about the company, I would not have looked at their web site to start with since it is not possible to find it in the search engines. As it turns out, I found out that this business stopped selling fireplaces two years ago...despite the fact that they are still shown on its web site. I mean, come on...in TWO YEARS you couldn't update your web site?

So I continued my search. I only found a single local business online that had a reasonable number of the kind of product I was looking for. The business' web site was not very good. There is very little information about specific products. It is an ecommerce-enabled site, but there is so little information about the products that I don't think any user would feel very comfortable placing an order online.

I cannot find a single business in Nashville that sells fireplaces that has a well-crafted web site with adequate information about its products. And that can be found in the search engines. There is probably a retailer in Nashville with exactly what I want. But I can't find it. So I am reduced to physically visiting random stores in hopes of finding what I want. Wherever that perfect store is, it is probably going to lose a sale.

If you own a physical business that sells products locally, all you have to do to have a MAJOR advantage over your competition is put up a high quality web site where visitors can get lots of information about your products. If they can buy the products online, that's even better. And PLEASE have the web site built in a search engine-friendly manner so your site can be found. Ask your web site developer about this. If he is not experienced in SEO, either hire another designer or bring someone onboard who can work with your designer. Yes, it will cost some money, but it will be a very, very good thing for your business.

If you need help promoting your local business via search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 615-263-2811 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, local search marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Friday afternoon...and we've not made a single blog post this week. Not good. I don't really even have any knowledge to impart today, so I figured I would just use this post to let you know what's going on around the Work Media offices.

We have been working with a company called Student Loan Financial Group for a couple of months. We were doing paid search,which was really cool because they had a big budget and (at first) just needed as many leads as we could get. The closing rate of the leads turned out to be low, so as the campaign went on the priority shifted from volume to unit cost. Toward the end, we really had the thing humming, generating a strong number of leads at a very reasonable cost per lead. The student loan business is very cyclical, so that campaign has ended. The kids are all in school now so not too many people are still looking for student loans. We are also engaging in an SEO campaign to generate free traffic. That is going well. The whole student loan industry is in a crunch right now (as are most things to do with credit), so we're not sure what the future holds but hopefully we'll get a chance to take what we have learned in the first round of paid search and kick some major ass in round two.

We are in discussions with a few very large companies to run search marketing campaigns. Large companies are definitely our focus these days, as far as our marketing efforts go. Our guy here Jim Reams is making some great contacts that hopefully will pan out in the weeks ahead.

The Google AdWords management application that we've been working on for many months got stalled toward the end of last year because we just got so dang busy. I have decided that the quickest way to finish that thing is to pay somebody who is a lot better programmer than I am to finish it. So I am working on specs that lay out exactly what it is supposed to do, then I will begin searching for a programmer to finish the thing up.

We have developed a proprietary method for analyzing a web site's search engine competitive situation. Rather than post it here, I have written an extended article and am seeking publication in a legitimate magazine or newsletter. More about that later.

Finally, we are just about set to record the first episode of our long-awaited podcast. We finally bought some podcast recording/broadcasting equipment for the office. In fact, I think this afternoon Chris and I are going to take a stab at doing one. We'll let you know how it goes.

That's about it. Busy, busy. But that's the way we like it. As usual, I leave you by suggesting that if you need any help with your company's search engine marketing, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 (615-263-2811 if you're in Middle Tennessee) or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, sem, seo, web site marketing

We have been thinking a lot about this whole linking thing that is causing such an uproar in the Internet marketing community. If you haven't heard, Google is supposedly cracking down on paid links and is de-emphasizing the importance of links to a site's rankings...supposedly. We haven't seen it.

We are doing a lot of work right now for a company that is in an industry in which the top competitors are very aggressive about using paid links. In order to compete, we had no choice but to emulate the strategy. There was just no way we were going to be able to catch up using a purely natural linking strategy. It would take years...and we don't have years. So we're paying for links.

Are we going to be punished for buying links? We think not. Another thing we have in common with the companies we are competing against is that we are all heavy spenders on paid search ads. Is Google going to punish some of its best customers...customers who are generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company...for being aggressive in promoting their web sites?

We understand that Google wants its search engine results to be as genuine as possible and does not want companies doing things to try to artificially influence those results. But as a multi-billion dollar company, we do not believe that Google is going to piss off some of its largest advertisers.

Maybe the situation in your industry is different. But how would Google apply different rules to different industries? We don't think it would do that.

Our point here is that you have nothing to fear by going out and pursuing links to your site. Use a number of different strategies - link swapping, directories, paying for them, whatever. Now...we're not saying you should add your site to FFA pages or other sources of junk links. It will be a waste of your time. But for higher quality sources of links - go for it. The best strategy of all is to create content that is so interesting that other sites are compelled to link to you. Natural, non-paid, one-way links are still king. But regardless of what linking strategy you pursue...do not be afraid.

If you need help with your search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

A lot has been made in the press and in the Internet marketing community lately about Google's attempts to de-emphasize the importance of links in its ranking algorithms. We've been asked a number of times by our clients if linking is still important. Based on what we have seen lately, the answer is a resounding...hell yes!

Google's anti-linking efforts are aimed at stopping web sites from purchasing links. Google feels this is a manipulation of its system. It wants only genuine, non-paid-for links. However, we are currently promoting a client in a very competitive category in which ALL of the top sites have used paid links to drive up their rankings. And they don't seem to be doing anywhere. In order to compete (and compete quickly) we basically had no choice but to adopt the same strategy. Otherwise, we would be too far behind the ball to catch up. We are not using paid links exclusively - it's just one part of a comprehensive strategy. So far the strategy is working, as our client is climbing the rankings.

Whether or not to use paid links should probably be determined by the competitiveness of the industry you are in. But regardless of your stance on paid links, you definitely need to keep getting links. Start with directories. List your site everywhere you can. Then start writing some articles and distribute them. A site we like for article distribution is http://isnare.com. If you are really dedicated, you can start going out and posting comments on other sites' blogs, with a link back to your site or blog (you do have a blog don't you? It's a powerful content creation strategy).

Then you can move into the realm of social bookmarking. This is where it gets really useful to have interesting original content on your site. If you have a really interesting web site with content that people want to link to, you will do well with social bookmarking. Once you introduce your web site via social bookmarks, hopefully other people will find it interesting or useful enough to add their own bookmarks. This can create a snowball effect where lots of people bookmark your site, thus creating lots of very high quality, one-way links to your site.

We are still using links as an SEO technique, and it continues to work for us. So don't worry about what the pundits say - keep working, keep linking, and keep aggressively promoting your web site. If your web site is high quality with strong content, then a linking strategy will work if you are diligent enough. If your site does not strong content, then you need to address that before you worry about linking. First things first.

If you need some help implementing a linking campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link bait, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Matt Cutts is an engineer with Google who has become quite famous within the Internet marketing community for his blog posts that help online marketers better understand how Google works. A recent MediaPost article focusing on tips culled from various Cutts blog posts revealed the following strategy for optimizing a web page for a particular keyword:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the URL, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page.

Brilliant. The above sentence masterfully and simply summarizes how to optimize a web page, at least from a content perspective. Now, certainly there is more to on-page optimization. For example, the way a page is coded can have a significant impact on its ranking. But if you combine clean coding with the above copy writing strategy, your web pages should be very well optimized.

Possibly the hardest part of this strategy is getting the keyword in the URL. The ideal solution is to have a domain name that contains one or two critical keywords. This is often in conflict with a company's branding strategy, however. I mean, we (Work Media) might possibly generate more search engine rankings if we had the domain name "internet-marketing-search-engine-optimization.com", but it just doesn't flow as well as "workmedia.net". It would definitely be harder for people to remember.

Fortunately, blogging provides a way to generate web pages with keywords in the URL. We use Blogger, but most blogging platforms probably work in very similar ways, in that pages are automatically created based on the content of the blog posts. If you use important keywords early in your blog posts, and use keyword-rich tags to describe your posts, then your blogging platform should create archive pages that contain those keywords in the URL.

As for the other parts of the strategy, it's easy. Just figure out the best keywords for which to optimize your site (we've discussed keyword research in previous blog posts) and use those keywords often in your pages, spread out exactly as recommended above.

If you need some help implementing a search engine marketing strategy for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We're here to help!

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, content, content creation, google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, web site marketing

Work Media is in business to provide top quality search engine marketing services - both organic and paid - for a fair rate. Unfortunately, our fair rate often seems very high to people we talk to who don't realize how much work is involved in the process. We often find ourselves bidding against competition that is much lower in price - ridiculously so. To those who are considering very low cost search engine marketing services, we just have to say - Be Careful!

There are a couple of ways SEO firms can offer super low prices. One is by just not doing very much work. SEO is a time intensive, manual process. There are some cursory things you can do related to SEO, but to get real results you have to put a lot of work in, and that work has to continue month after month. The second way to offer super low rates is to contract the work out to foreign companies. The problem there is that there always seem to be language issues. It does you no good to have your pages rank well if the language on those pages is not proper and convincing. Too much is at stake to leave your site to firms that don't take great care in crafting pages that both rank well and convince the reader to perform some action.

Another way to get really low cost SEO services may be to have it done by your son, daughter, kid down the street, etc. This is often the case when it comes to the initial design of a site. But here's the deal - there are a whole lot more people who can design a site than know how to promote one. Often, a design created by someone with no search engine marketing experience will look great but be lousy from a search engine perspective. In most cases, there is absolutely no correlation between knowing how to design a web site and knowing how to get search engine rankings.

Search engine marketing is serious business. That's why we do not try to compete on price. We compete by providing professional quality service and getting results. When comparing services between providers, we advise you not to look at it in terms of what each company costs, but rather in terms of what each company can provide. Are you wasting your money on something that won't give you results, or are you investing money in something that will increase your business?

If you could use some help with your search engine marketing, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Recent search engine updates are causing havoc. They are completely wrecking people's lives and causing babies to starve in third world countries. They are probably responsible for the draught in the Southeast U.S. as well as the California wildfires.

Okay, so we exaggerate. But a lot of people are doing a lot of hand wringing because of changes happening in the search engine indexes. In Google, for example, many sites have experienced a drop in their PageRank, which, as you know, is a measure of the value Google places on a web site. Work Media has experienced our own drop in PageRank. So if your PageRank has fallen does that mean you are going to lose your rankings?

Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, it is completely out of your hands. So don't worry about it. Rather than worrying, get aggressive with your promotion. One of the main reasons for Google's current update is to devalue sites that have a lot of purchased inbound links. Google does not want you buying links. It wants you to get them the old fashioned way - by having interesting content that people want to link to. So do it! Write articles. Do press releases. Add your site to directories. If you don't have time, hire someone to do it.

Another way to fight the effects of search ranking shuffling is to fill your site with new, constantly changing content. Search engines still love content. You can't have too much of it. A blog is an excellent vehicle for doing this. A technique we really like is to use our own blog RSS feed to place content on our site that changes every time we update our blog.

You may also have to be strategic with your optimization in terms of keywords. Don't automatically assumed that the keywords that are most used are the best. If you can uncover some keywords that people use that have little competition, then those may be better keywords to target.

If you keep on creating new content, are strategic with your keyword selection and optimization, and adding new non-purchased links to your site, you will be fine. Google won't be able to deny you.

If you have lost search engine rankings and need help getting them back, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

We're still amazed at the number of times we get contacted about optimizing a BRAND NEW web site that is lousy from an optimization standpoint. Usually the problem is that the site is constructed in such a way that it is very difficult to get any optimized content on the site. For example, it may be an all-Flash site or a site where the text is contained in images.

Please remember this: you MUST have text on your web pages!

Find a way to get some text on your web pages. One technique which is cool is to place text in layers (using div tags) and either hide it off-screen or dynamically display it at certain times, such as when rolling over a link or other object. We have heard that Google may now be checking for this, so it may be a technique that stops becoming useful soon.

Regardless of whether you use layers to hide your text or whatever, you MUST get some text on your page. If nothing else, place it low on the page, below the main section, if your site is constructed in such a way as to not allow text in the main content area.

As smart as search engines have become, they are STILL looking for quality, indexable text. So get some text on your pages!

For help optimizing the content and code of your web site to rank better in the search engines, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: content, content creation, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

For one of our clients we are currently promoting, we are doing a lot of linking - pretty standard stuff for a search engine optimization campaign. As part of this process, we are doing a fair amount of social bookmarking of our client's web pages. We started with del.icio.us, probably the top social bookmarking web site.

We bookmarked every page of the site and tagged each page with a static set of keywords plus keywords specific to that page. Within a couple of days, our main social bookmarks page about those topics was near the top of Google's rankings for some of the keywords - actually above the client we're promoting! So while that's not exactly what we're ultimately trying to achieve, it proves the point that search engines place a lot of stock in information that is categorized via social bookmarking. And in the long run it will help our client rise in the rankings. Although, if someone clicks our link, they will be presented with nothing but links to our client's site - a win, win situation.

Another point is that by bookmarking our client's site, we exposed it to lots of other people who use the same social bookmarking site. If some of them bookmark our client's pages as well, then that strengthens our client's position. And del.icio.us is only one of probably dozens of similar sites, all of which can be used to promote a web site about a particular subject.

So is you have not socially bookmarked your own site's web pages, we strongly recommend it. And have all of your employees sign up for their own accounts and do it as well.

If you need some help promoting your site in the social bookmarking sites (or anywhere else), contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, social bookmarking, social media, web marketing, web site marketing

Heat map analysis is coming of age as a tool in the Internet marketer's toolkit. Heat map analysis creates a visual display of mouse movement or click activity over a web page. The idea is that where the mouse moves to, human eyes are following. Where the mouse sits on the screen, "heat" is displayed. The hotter (more red) the area of the screen, the more that part of the screen is looked at. Or the more clicks an area of the screen gets, the hotter it is.

Why would you need to know this? Because where people are looking and clicking on your web page, that's where you need to place your most important marketing message or your device to capture the visitor's email address. If you know what plot of real estate people are drawn to, you know where to focus your marketing.

At one time, heat map analysis was voodoo magic (as are many things associated with online marketing) beyond the use of everyday marketers, and it was very expensive. But now there are several options for generating free or low cost heat analyses for your own web site. Here are a couple of options:

www.crazyegg.com. This service, which is based on clicks, is free for users tracking less than 5,000 page views per month, and who are tracking four pages or less. Beyond that, they have pay plans that range from $9 to $99 per month.

www.clickdensity.com. This click tracking service is also free for analysis of less than 5,000 clicks per month, although it is limited to a single page. One interesting feature of some of their paid plans is the ability to do web page split-testing.

www.fusestats.com. This is a more complete analytics package that includes heat maps. Their free service is limited to 15,000 monthly page views and 15 heat maps per month, and it is based on clicks. This package can be used for paid search conversion tracking as well.

www.opencube.com. This company sells a product called Mouse Trends, which is JavaScript code that runs on your site. It allows for true mouse movement-based heat map creation, as opposed to just clicks. The cost is $149.

Spend an hour or so examining where people are looking and where people are clicking on your site. The information may be quite surprising, and could trigger some ideas on how to better present the information on your web site. The more you know, the better job you can do of crafting your marketing presentation.

If you need some help generating data for your web site to help you make better decisions, contact Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: analytics, click map, heat map, internet marketing, seo

Work Media has opened up shop at our new offices on 2nd Ave. in Nashville. We have a "sister company" now, in Frank/Best International ("FBI"), a successful advertising agency with some very large clients that include Honda Power Equipment and AKG Microphones. Our relationship with FBI allows us to offer a full array of services, including:

Search engine optimization

Paid search marketing

Public relations campaigns (both online and offline)

Online Video advertising

TV advertising

Print ad campaigns

In other words, we are now a full-service shop. We can accommodate all of your needs. We believe the next wave to hit the advertising industry will be integrated shops that can provide clients with both offline and online advertising services. Work Media is proud to be one of the first (if not THE first) companies in Nashville to be on the cutting edge of the advertising industry. We have access to not only the technology to create cross-media campaigns, but also to the brain power of advertising industry veterans with years of experience creating successful campaigns for some of the world's largest companies.

So what can we do for you? Call us today at 888-299-4837 or stop by our offices at 705 2nd Ave. S. in Nashville. The Work brothers (and our new partners) are ready to go to work for you.

Labels: advertising, internet marketing, marketing, Nashville, paid search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

One of the most important rules of paid search marketing is that there must be a strong connection between the search phrase used in the search engine and what is shown on the page when the visitor arrives. In other words, if a person clicks on your search engine ad after searching for "binoculars", then, if possible, he should arrive at a page that talks about binoculars. This will tend to greatly increase your conversion rates.

The same concept holds true for natural search rankings. If that same person searching for binoculars clicks on your organic search engine listing, then you have a better chance of doing business with the person if he arrives at a page about binoculars. The problem is that organic search engine rankings are much more mysterious and out of your control than paid listings. And generally, the page on your site that is listed in the search engine results will be your front page.

So how do you create this same kind of congruency between the search phrase and the web page content? The answer is to use scripting to detect the source search phrase, parse it out, and then display custom content based on that phrase. For example, keeping with the same example, if the search phrase was "bargain binoculars", then your web page script would parse out each word and compare it to some kind of database table of pre-populated words. So when the script makes a match with the word "binoculars", it would display whatever content is indicated in the database table.

The specifics of how to do this are beyond what we can go into in this article, but if you discuss this idea with a competent web programmer (not a "designer", but a real programmer), he should be able to figure out how to do it.

If you need help thinking up or implementing strategies to generate search engine rankings and improve conversions on your web site, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: conversion strategy, internet marketing, scripting, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

Well, I knew it would happen sooner or later. We've finally gotten so busy that publishing our blog has slipped way down our list of priorities as we do everything we can to keep our clients happy and our business growing. We apologize for the lack of new posts - we know you've been anxiously awaiting a new post for a week now.

Our friends at Bentley Systems are keeping us slammed. We are involved in a major pay-per-click management initiative with them involving many keywords, many ads, and many landing pages. Much like SEO, pay-per-click is a front-heavy process. Once you get your keywords set and your ads written, it's largely a matter of managing bids to maximize your return on ad spend. Bentley is a little different because there are SO many landing pages to create that we're doing a few a week, so it's much more of an ongoing manual process.

Our server crashed this week, putting us in a very awkward position. Our hosting company is replacing both the hard drive and memory. In the meantime, we have several sites down, which is ruinous for search engine rankings.

We also have a bunch of new prospects in the pipeline for whom we have had to have meetings, phone calls, and a series of email communications. We are a small firm. At the moment, the same people who are doing the actual work are the same ones doing the marketing. We hope to change that very soon.

Anyway...no lesson today. We just had not blogged in a week, so we wanted to at least post and say "Sorry", and we will try to do much better from this point on. If there is anything we can do for you, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, sem, seo, sponsored search

We have a client for whom we are managing a small pay-per-click campaign. We are trying to implement tracking, with a conversion being defined as the submission of a form on their site. We need to do this to determine what keywords or ad copy results in the best performance. But we have had a devil of a time getting the tracking to work because the site is built using .NET, so the page with the form submits to itself rather than to a separate confirmation page. And this got us thinking...

Why .NET? Now, we have nothing against .NET (Jerry was employed as a .NET programmer several years ago), but for a small site, we suggest avoiding this kind of technology if it is not necessary. For one thing, you run into problems like we are having now - doing something as basic as implementing a tracking script. It's unwieldy to work with a platform as complicated as .NET. For another thing, a .NET web page will often be returned from the server with a large amount of junk data called "View State". We don't know if the occasion would arise when a query from a search engine robot would return View State, but if it did, it would greatly weaken the on-page optimization of the site.

If you have a small site that you will be updating manually, stick with the basics - preferably good ol' fashion HTML. If you need to use a scripting environment, use something like PHP or ASP, which is much easier to deal with than a compiled environment like .NET that requires a degree in programming to understand.

If you're a Web geek or programmer reading this, you can probably tell us all kinds of reasons why a site built on .NET is desirable. We have no doubt there are many occasions when this is true. But coming strictly from a search engine marketing/optimization perspective, simpler is better. So stick with the basics.

If you need help optimizing your web site for better search engine results, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: conversion strategy, HTML, internet marketing, scripting, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, tracking, web marketing, web site marketing

A recent article in MediaPost.com titled "Hiring Line: Keep Your People Happy Before Someone Else Does" touched on the fact the new media advertising industry (such as paid search) has zero unemployment and workers are very hard to find and difficult to keep. There are just not very many people with any kind of experience in this industry.

So if you are reading this and are looking for a direction for your career, we encourage you to consider search engine marketing. There are basically two paths you can take: natural search engine optimization (SEO) or paid search marketing (pay-per-click, or PPC).

SEO is the process of optimizing web pages to achieve high natural search engine rankings. There is some talk about the diminishing importance of SEO given the rise of social search (sites like technorati.com and del.icio.us), but we think it will be a while before you can disregard natural search. Look at it this way: as long as people continue continue to use computer-based search engines like Google and Yahoo, and as long as your competitors are ranked in those search engines, then you need to be an aggressive competitor and get your site to the top of the rankings.

PPC is the process of running paid search ads alongside natural search results in the search engines. As search engines continue to make it more difficult to generate natural rankings, paid search has become more and more important. It is the single most targeted form of advertising there is. You place your advertising message in front of people are looking for exactly what you have to offer. PPC now includes image ads, video ads, and various other formats. But in its most basic form, it is still the use of words to compel the reader to take some action. It's an advertisement.

SEO and PPC involve two different skill sets. Although there is an element of copywriting in both, SEO involves coding, knowing how to write clean HTML and use stylesheets for formatting, as well as a lot of manual labor in the form of generating links to a web site. PPC is more like a traditional advertising medium, although you have to be skilled at managing bids, which involves some math.

If you seriously want to get in the search engine marketing industry, we advise you to become skilled at both SEO and PPC. You will become a highly desired employee and will have no trouble finding employement (well, that partly depends on where you are - search engine jobs are not found here in the South yet like they are in other areas).

To learn SEO and PPC, you are largely on your own. There are few training courses on the subjects. The best way is to learn it is to set up a web site for yourself, get your hands on as many books on the subjects as you can, and just start experimenting.

Labels: advertising, internet marketing, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

I have had a fair amount of experience working on optimizing web sites that were built on top of some kind of sophisticated content management systems (CMS), and my first thought is almost always the same: man, I wish they had contacted me before BEFORE building the site. The very nature of a CMS works against what you want to accomplish with your site from a search engine marketing perspective. I've said it a number of times, but it bears repeating: you want to maximize content and minimize code. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with a system that has to flexible enough to accomodate all kinds of different content of different lengths, widths, and attributes, the code to make that happen is often very poorly optimized.

But if you follow our suggestions, you will be more likely to hire a company (and a CMS) that will allow you to effectively manage your content and also rank well in the search engines:

Look at examples of code generated by the CMS for other web sites. If you don't have a strong grasp on what well-optimized code should look like, hire a search engine professional to do this for you. It will be money well-spent. If the CMS provider can't provide samples of cleanly coded web pages, move on to another company.

Ask for a list of other companies who have used the CMS. Then search for their web sites in the search engines (by industry, not by company name) to see if you can find them. If they don't appear in the search engine rankings, then that is a clue that the CMS provider creates web sites that are not search engine-friendly.

Ask the CMS vendor about search engine optimization. They will probably say things like you can insert keywords, meta descriptions, etc. That's not what you're interested in. You want to know if they really know anything about search engine optimization - listen for terms such as "keyword density", "CSS", "layers", and "optimization." Again, it may be very helpful to hire a search engine expert to take part in this conversation.

Call companies who have used the vendor's CMS and ask about their satisfaction and if they are getting much natural traffic from search engines.

If after doing the above things you don't feel very confident that the CMS will work well AND will help you establish high search engine rankings, then look elsewhere.

If you need help choosing a content management system for your web site (this needs to be done BEFORE you build your site!), call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: CMS, content, content creation, content management system, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Myriad Search (myriadsearch.com) is an interesting search engine research tool created by the guy who runs seobook.com. It lets you run a search query and generate a list of results that are a combination of rankings in four major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. So the tool has several uses:

• Competitive research. Who are your competitors that rank highly across the board for desireable search phrases?
• Link partner research. Sites that come up highly in the composite rankings for keywords related to your industry may be very valuable sources of links.
• To find out your own standing. If you rank highly here, then you likely have strong visibility in the search engines.
• General research. A site that ranks highly in the composite rankings is likely a strong source of information related to your search query.
  

One unique aspect of the tool is that it allows you emphasize or de-emphasize search engines (using a control called "bias"), and results can be weighted based on total number of results. For instance, if you specify to run the query based on 50 results, then a number one ranking has less weight than a query based on 10 results. These different ways of running queries allow you to take into consideration factors such as:

• Particular search engines being more relevant than others for some searches.
• Some searches being less sensitive to having a top-10 or top-20 ranking than others.
• Some search engines allowing duplicate results, which would tend to skew results.

The tool also allows you to download a .CSV file of your research data.

Myriad Search is a very interesting tool that gives you a unique perspective on search data related to your business. We recommend you give it a try.

For help conducting search engine research for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

We are currently managing a pay-per-click campaign for a client that is going well in terms of driving traffic to his site, but poorly in terms of conversions. The problem is that our client's web site does not look as professional as his competitors. This got me thinking about how a search marketing campaign, whether natural search or paid search, has a branding component that needs to be considered.

It is very often the case that an individual will not do business with a company upon the first visit to its web site. Comparison shopping is easy on-line, and not just for products, but for services as well. Someone looking for a particular service that you offer is probably going to visit your web site and the sites of your competitors. If you don't measure up, you're not going to get the sale.

What this means for you is that you need to have a clean, well-designed, professional looking web site. If you don't, no matter how much traffic you drive to it, you are going to have few conversions. Quality web site design is not the place to skimp. You have to have your presentation polished and ready to go before people arrive at your site. In the real world, you probably wouldn't show up to a sales meeting wearing a stained t-shirt and shorts (at least in most industries you wouldn't). It works the same way on-line - your web site is your salesman. If it looks professional and provides the visitor with the information he needs to do business with you, then you have a good chance at getting the