What Lies Beneath is Always So Scary

At the end of our discussion I promised to review his website and dig further into his online presence. I’m not going to offer to help or even send a proposal, unless I know what help is needed. So I dug further and I did a fairly deep review of his website and his online activity. What I found did not make me happy.

As I reviewed his website, I realized his osCommerce site had some significant problems with core functionality. He didn’t have basic SEO features like an XML sitemap, H1 tags, SEO friendly URLs, canonical links, etc. What was worse, I realized his website only had products and all the product descriptions were duplicates of other websites’ content. So to sum it up, he had a website full of duplicate content that was also missing some fundamental SEO components. Oh what lie beneath is always so scary.

Pulling Off the Band-Aid

Sure I can help with social media, but in some cases I won’t. What? Really? You turn away business and future clients? Ah yes, yes I do. In some cases social media is only going to partially help and in most cases, the prospective client isn’t looking for partially as an outcome. He wants a game changer. He wants real results that provides real ROI. This gentleman wanted an immediate increase in traffic that would occur right before his peak season happened in October and November.

My proposal included setting up a blog, setting up social media accounts, and fixing his SEO. I quoted working with his existing webmaster to fix the website and I quoted rewriting his product descriptions so he had unique content. After reading through the proposal the prospect requested a call to discuss. Great I thought. I didn’t offend him with calling his baby (aka SEO) ugly.

Sins of the Past Always Cause a Stalemate

The discussion went okay. The prospect said the proposal was right on and the costing was completely in line with what I was proposing. Great. Yes I do think “great” a lot during the whole prospecting phase. He said he agreed that he did need everything that I proposed. But – oh why is there always a but in these calls?

A year ago this gentleman worked with another SEO consulting firm. I told him I could see that some SEO work had been done on his website. After all, all the products had unique meta titles and descriptions that used keywords and they were within character limits. The problem was he said he couldn’t tell what the SEO consultant did and that the ROI wasn’t there. He was still relying on his pay per click campaigns and they were expensive. He didn’t get ROI with the last SEO consultant, so he was hesitant to move forward with me. Snap! Not great and in fact a total bummer. Foiled by an SEO consultant I’ve never met and never will meet.

I am now at a stalemate due to sins of the past from another SEO consultant. I am saddened to say this happens a lot. This happens a lot more than any of us good SEO consultants would like. There are a lot of SEO consultants out there that stink. They have good intentions, but just don’t know what they’re doing and the clients don’t get the results they need. It is very difficult to convince someone to trust you when another, less educated you, already burned them. And I can’t blame this gentleman for being cautious. I would be too. Thus we are at an impasse, a stalemate, and what feels like a dead end.

Time for a Hard Decision

In our follow up call he asked that I review the proposal and that we take baby steps towards the end goal. What are some small things we could do to help drive traffic and could prove me as knowledgeable to him. I told him I would review the proposal and follow up. And I did. I’m sitting in New York at a conference and still thinking about this prospect.

Unfortunately there isn’t one set of tasks or changes that are going to drive the result he wants. He needs his website fixed for the missing SEO elements so Google will embrace it. Google won’t embrace it unless he has unique content that continues to grow. And he needs inbound links, which will come from blogging and social media activity. In my heart I don’t believe any of these things, set apart by themselves, will produce results. It just won’t work.

The mom in me wants to take care of his SEO and fix him. I want to heal him from head to toe. But I can’t. Social media or any small part of his proposal is a band-aid and it isn’t healing him. It is temporary and it would leave him without results.

He isn’t ready to take the leap of faith with me because his last leap ended up with him falling without a net. I get that, but it doesn’t change my view of his current situation, my desire to help, and the experienced internet marketer in me saying doing a tenth of what was proposed will not help.

It is time for me to walk away. Oh I hate when this moment occurs and I realize it is the best course of action. A business associate always says he “hates to lose” and me walking away would kill him. But winning a client and not achieving the results he wants is not winning. Well maybe in Charlie Sheen land is, but not in Rebecca land.

I am now off to write the goodbye email. The “I wish you luck” email. The “come back to me if you change your mind” email. Some may take this gesture negatively, while others may take it positively. I don’t know and I can’t control his reaction. I can only stay true to my beliefs and the business ethics by which I live.

In some cases, the social media band-aid does nothing more than cover the scary stuff underneath that will continue to sit there and fester and grow more and more ugly. While some may choose to apply this band-aid, I will not. I want to heal.

Holistic Internet Marketing is Essential

I believe in holistic internet marketing. I don’t believe there is one magic bullet that will be the saving grace for a company. I think success is based on a lot of things that come together. I’ve experienced this with my own company and with my clients. It isn’t a fabulous website that sells the masses, or an SEO wizard that finds the best keywords, or even a social media guru who brings mentions, clicks, and likes. It’s all of it, working together in harmony.

You can create the best website, but without real traffic, a pretty website provides no value. You can have an excellent SEO campaign that drives thousands of visitors a day, but with a horrible website, they won’t convert. You can make friends with millions via social media, but you have to have something tangible for them to see to make them stick. It isn’t one tactic that drives success, but a cohesive internet marketing plan that is well designed and well executed.

The Two-Headed Monster Have Arrived in New York

This morning I sat in a session at Affiliate Summit East listening to my friend Rachel speak. She was coaching new affiliates on creating a plan and getting started. I’ve always have a hard time explaining to people what Rachel does, because it isn’t something tangible like the websites I build or the Facebook pages I set up. But Rachel’s gift is to be able to take an idea and form it into a complete plan that is executable and fairly guaranteed to be a success.

I think this is one reason Rachel and I get along so well professionally. We’ve been referred to as a “two headed monster” of internet marketing and that “it’s hard to know where one stops and the other starts”. I’ll take that as a compliment, because Rachel practices the cohesive marketing that I believe in. She may not know as much as I do about SEO, but I don’t know as much as she does about affiliate marketing and startups. But together, we’re a pretty powerful force because we have a consistent view of internet marketing and the need for cohesiveness with online promotion.

You may not believe what the two-headed monster preaches, but we do and we do because both heads of the monster have the Google Analytics data, clients, and revenues to prove cohesiveness works.

Rachel has been in affiliate marketing for over a decade and I’ve been doing SEO and website design for almost as long. From our own collective years of experience, we have both learned there is no easy fix or massive rewards without a solid plan and a lot of hard work.

And So I Began Blogging

If you read our Who We Are page, you’ll see a comment about us being earlier adapters of blogging. I personally have been blogging for many years and I was doing it well before it was considered mainstream or cool. At the time, I was the geek who spent her time – aka wasting her time – blogging. I worked for a small software company and I was the VP of marketing. I was the marketing budget. I was paid well and my salary was the sum of our marketing budget. No advertising, no outside web firm, no SEO specialist, nothing. If I wanted something to happen I had to do it myself. So I began blogging. And blogging helped give the company a 400% sales growth in two years. I was crazy in the minds of our decision maker and president. But he let me go and he let me be free. He gave me freedom to allocate my time where I deemed appropriate. He gave me autonomy and that independence brought out the blogger in me and helped drive sales growth.

In my head and heart I know blogging is critical to internet marketing. This is especially true if you are an employee of a technology company. I was back then and the woman I spoke with a week ago is too. I know B2B tech marketing. I did it for ten years and I know what works. Blogging works and I know it. It works for B2C and it works for B2B. It just works. In today’s world, to not blog is to not market. To not blog, it to not SEO.

Blogging is powerful. I’ve written a lot content for our website but they are pages. They are static and they are, well, boring. Blogging is real. When you read one of my blog posts, you are reading me. It doesn’t matter if I’m blogging about ERP software like I did years ago or about WordPress web design like I do now. I blog about past events or about the thoughts in my head about tomorrow. I blog about real life and about what matters to me. And in many cases, this reaches out and connects with someone. It connects because it is personal and because it comes from within.

It’s why I’m sitting on my first morning of vacation, writing and working. I’m passionate about my company and what my company can do to help others. I believe in blogging, just as much as I believe in my company. I believe both can help change the world, because it helps connect with that world via the internet. To not blog, is to not market. To not blog, is to give up.

I don’t want to give up on the woman I spoke with on the phone. I sent her a proposal for SEO and it included blogging. For her company to succeed on the internet, they have to turn their stale, three year old website into a fresh, blogging machine. They need to connect with their target market, their prospects, and their future customers.

My Blog Post is My Loon Call

As I type on my Mac I hear the loon in the background. The loon and his call is one of the reasons why I awake early. I enjoy his call and his connection. I’m not a loon and my voice doesn’t have the same beauty as the loon. But I can blog and at times my blog posts do. I’ve connected with people, with strangers, and I’ve made an impact. I know this is true because I’ve found many clients and customers through blogging and I’ve been doing it for many years. I’ve gone to trade shows and encountered people who read my blog and followed me and my company because of it. And when I left my old employer to launch my own consulting company, those people – my blog readers – came with me as clients of my new company. It’s been two years since I launched Web Savvy Marketing and I still have my ERP peeps show up as new clients. I’m building a website and long-term SEO campaign for one right now. The president knew me and my marketing expertise, because he read my blog posts years ago. That is powerful and more powerful than virtually anything else you can do in marketing.

I started my consulting firm in the midst of a recession. Looking back I now see quitting my corporate job to follow my passion was a major risk. It was somewhat crazy given the fact that I lived in Michigan and our state was going through the worst economic turmoil I could ever remember. In my heart I knew my company would succeed. I knew this even though no one else did. Somehow I knew I could do it and I could find clients outside of Michigan until our local economy shifted. My husband had faith in me and I had faith in the internet. When he asked me how I was going to find clients, I told him I was going to blog and blogging would bring me clients. My husband, the good man that he is, said he had no clue what I meant but that he had faith in me and he knew I could do it. And he was right. I could and I did. The company I created on faith is growing and expanding and surpassing anything I had imagined or had hoped for originally. While my husband will attribute this to my marketing knowledge and desire to help people, I attribute this success to the power of the blog and the ability of my blog posts to connect, to inspire, and to bring forth new business.

If you look at the dates of my blog posts, you’ll see an interesting trend. I blog and publish a number of posts and then nothing. I go quiet. I go quiet because every time I blog regularly, I obtain a bunch of new clients and then I get to busy to blog for a while. Once I get these companies quoted and moving along with my team, I have time to blog again and my cycle begins again. This drives my husband insane and he tends to view it was a broken process. I view this as a success and know this trend illustrates the indisputable power of the blog post.

Make no mistake, internet marketing is a battlefield.  You’re going to war against a million other websites and you need to have sufficient weaponry to compete and to walk away unscathed.  You need to know your enemy, you need armor for proper defense and you need a clearly defined plan of attack to win the online battle.

When was the last time you performed a marketing recognizance mission?  Have you looked at your competitor’s website recently?  Or even their general internet activity?  I’m always surprised that many small business owners, CEO’s, or marketing executives do not make this part of their overall marketing strategy.  I do this with my own company and with ever client that contracts me to design a website or engage in an SEO project.  I want to know the websites they compete with so I know how to best position them.  I want to understand the battlefield so we can plan an effective attack.

If you are a website design client of mine I expect you to take the time to perform your own marketing recognizance mission.  Since I will be doing one for you, I expect you to do one too.  I want you to look closely at your enemy and I want you to be prepared as we enter into battle.  Why does it matter?  You need to intimately know the enemy.  Your website visitors will know your enemy, so you should too.

In previous blog posts I’ve mentioned my client questionnaire.  I ask clients to complete this before we begin our engagement.  In many cases, I email prospects the document with the proposal so they know what they are in for and so they have realistic expectations of my marketing philosophies and me as a website designer.  The vast majority of these people don’t “get” why I require this step until they review the questionnaire.  It then becomes crystal clear that internet marketing is a war and that they are currently going to battle with a toothpick and not a armored tank.

So do you have a toothpick or an armored tank?  Most likely you cannot answer this question yet, so take the time to evaluate your armor.

Review the Website Battlefield

• Identify your key direct competitors
• Identify benchmark companies within your industry
• Review competitors’ websites
• Review benchmark companies’ websites
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of the competition
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of the benchmark companies

Evaluate Your Armor and Prepare to Plan Your Website Attack

• How does your current website and online presence compare to that of your competition and the benchmark companies?
• List elements of your competitors and benchmark companies’ websites that you would like to incorporate into your new website design and build.
• List gaps within your existing content that need to be addressed and consider the timeframe and resources required to develop said content.
• Evaluate your internal resources and their ability to create a website that can address your gaps and weaknesses.
• Evaluate your budget for obtaining outside assistance for web design, build, and optimization.

Review the Online Battlefield

• Is your competitor using pay per client (PPC) ads and if so, what keywords receive the largest portion of their ad budget?
• Is your competitor’s website designed around a set of core keywords?
• How does the competitor score for these core keywords in organic search results (i.e. natural search not attributed to paid placement)?
• Is your competitor active in social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, or YouTube?
• Is your competitor actively blogging and/or guest blogging on other websites?
• Is your competitor utilizing content marketing strategies for lead generation and potential sales?
• Is your competitor actively engaged in inbound link building?
• Is your competitor utilizing a drip marketing campaign or regular newsletter campaign?
• Is your competitor active on local search directories and are their profiles optimized?

Evaluate Your Armor and Prepare to Plan Your Online Attack

• What competitor keywords best align with your organization?
• What other keywords should you consider and target?
• Can you afford a PPC campaign?
• Do you have the knowledge and staff for organic search engine optimization?
• What changes to your existing social media activity needs to take place to level-set you and your competitors?
• Do you offer any unique and authoritative content to help differentiate your from your competitors?
• How does your blogging efforts compare to your competitors?
• Are you utilizing content tagging websites and RSS feed automation?
• Do you have the knowledge and staff for a link building campaign?
• Do you have a newsletter and would this apply to your target market?
• Have you claimed your local profiles and are they optimized?

As a website designer and SEO expert I cannot completely prepare you for battle.  This is a joint effort and we need to collectively prepare for and fight the battle together.  I can help in your internet marketing war, but I’ll need you to help in this effort.

One of my first website clients was a referral from a friend.  This client was going up against some savvy competitors and I knew he had a steep climb.  I built him a WordPress website and tried my best to prepare him for the battle that lay ahead.  With his new SEO friendly website I gave him armor.  Unfortunately he failed to plan his actual attack and he didn’t even walk onto the battlefield.  He sat in his little bunker doing the same things he had done for years.  He did not take the competitive analysis I had done seriously, nor did he believe in social media optimization, inbound link campaigns, or virtually anything outside his existing practices.  One year later my friend keeps asking me why the website did not grow in search traffic.  What?  Really?

In that same time-frame I launched a website for another client who did go to battle.  In his battle he was fighting against some of the biggest companies in America who had huge internet marketing budgets and a large number of internal employees dedicated to reaching page one search results.  This client not only went to battle with my armor, he kept me on to help him plan and execute his attack.  We were a force to be reckoned with and we beat the snot out of his competition.  Everything we did had purpose, we planned our attack and executed it as planned.  His search traffic grew almost 500% in one year and he even stopped spending hundreds of dollars each month on PPC ads.  But he reinforced the armor I provided, he prepared a strategic marketing plan, he went to war with eyes wide open and he fought and fought hard.

Initially the client I feel was a failure crushed me.  At first I felt like I failed him.  But then a fellow and very wise WordPress consultant reminded me that I cannot fight a battle for a client who does not want to go to war.  There are potential clients and situations where I have to retreat because I’m trying to win a war with someone who simply wants to spend his days sleeping in his bunker.  It was a hard lesson, but a valuable one.  I try to identify those people early on and I avoid them at all costs.  We are not well matched and we have two totally different views of internet marketing.

Don’t let yourself fall asleep in the bunker.  Rise up, go on a marketing recognizance mission, plan your attack, build your armor, and go kick your competitor off of page one search results.  It is possible.  You just need to decide if you have the fight in you and then you have to rise up and fight.

Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment as “The emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error.”   The term enlightenment reminds me of the small business owner and his undeveloped view of internet marketing and more importantly, how he and his company fit within today’s internet dependent culture.

Now don’t take that comment as a negative view on the small business owner or small business in general.  I love the average small business owner.  I am a small business owner and this segment is my client base.  More importantly, small business marketing and in particular, internet marketing, represent all that is possible in a free market such as the United States.  Anything is possible.  A newly created or existing small business can obtain substantial sales growth, reinvent a brand, or simply achieve market penetration just by successfully marketing over the internet.

If all of my pro-internet ramblings are true, then why do so many companies struggle with branding themselves on the internet and bringing in tangible sales?  A lot of prospects I talk to claim to have little or no website traffic and no real financial gain from their internet marketing efforts.  But why?  Why do so many make this brutally honest claim?  Because they are not yet enlightened!  They remain ignorant of the true meaning of internet marketing and they are immature.  They cannot see the true state their website’s or how this website compares to the gazillions of other websites on the internet.

I do my best to enlightened people with my overly frank assessment of their website, SEO, and competitive position.  Yes my phone conversations are as unfiltered as my blog posts.  Even with my openness, I many times fail to reach the small business owner because he/she is not yet ready for self-reflection.  They are not yet ready closely review the true nature of their marketing efforts or even look to see what the perception of others might be.

If you are a small business owner and you are still reading my post, good for you.  You have stepped onto the path of enlightenment.  You have taken the first step.  You’ve accepted my harsh comments as “passion” and not “arrogance”.  My unfiltered assessments are meant to provide value and my passion exists because I truly believe in what the internet can offer for those who embrace it.

When performed correctly internet marketing can liberate a company.  It liberated me and it has liberated my clients.  It can take transform or even create a business in a relatively short period of time.   But small business marketing on the internet takes effort and it takes knowledge.  You just can’t whip a WordPress website or blog up and call it good.  You have to extend you reach and touch your audience.  You have to work at it and do so in the right manner.

So now the question must be asked – have you embraced internet marketing?  I didn’t ask if you had a website, I asked if you’ve embraced the internet and all that it offers you as a small business.  I don’t know is not an acceptable answer.  Self-reflection can be both power and painful.  But the journey of browser-based enlightenment will end with a large reward.

Enlightenment Begins With Ten Simple Questions

1. Where do you show up in the SERP (search engine results page)? Think about what keywords or phrases people would use to locate your website and Google these terms to see if your website shows up on page one of the search results.  Please don’t tell me you are on page three, because page three does not matter.  Very few searchers ever look past page one.  And please don’t search for some obscure term a crackpot SEO consultant told you to optimize for back in 1985.
2. How many websites (other than your own) link to your website? If you have a Google account and can use Google Webmaster Tools, the answer is quick and obvious.  Since I know most small business owners have no idea what I’m talking about, we’ll go about it the old fashion way.  In Google’s search box insert link:yoururl.com.  Does anything come back in results?  Google won’t show all links, but you’ll quickly see if any exist.  And some should exist.
3. How many websites (other than your own) mention your website? You can view this on Google by simply inputting your full URL in quotations.  And how many did we find?  Five or ten is not stellar performance, so please don’t start smiling yet.
4. How valuable are the links or URL references that you found? Hopefully you discovered something tangible and not a bunch of outdated or irrelevant information.  Or worse yet, a bunch of negative reviews you didn’t know existed.  Inbound links and website references should exist in quality website properties and be relevant to your target market.
5. How is your company and website listed in local search directories? Here I am referring locally focused websites like Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Foursquare, MerchantCircle, etc.  Do you have a listing and if so, is it accurate?  Remember, if you don’t claim your local search listing, someone else can and will.
6. Are you active on any social media websites? Social media refers to Facebook company pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.   Do you have an active account and when was the last time you updated anything?  Is your Facebook page filled with spam or is it filled with content your target market would actually want to see?  And the most important question – do you interact with your online community?
7. How is your blog looking? Yes I said blog, because the world loves blogs and Google does too.  Blogs provide a means to communicate with website visitors in a conversational manner.  Proper blog management is critical to internet marketing success.  So do you have a blog and if so, how often are you posting fresh and worthwhile content?   Do you provide an easy method for visitors to share your blog posts to social media or content tagging websites?
8. How healthy is your RSS feed? An RSS feed is a listing of your recent content and/or blogs, which is used to distribute your blog posts to other websites.  Do you have one and is it active and accurate?  How about an XML sitemap for that matter?  Similar concept but used my search engines.
9. When was the last time you commented in a forum or on another website’s blog post? Again, blogging is conversational.  Conversation requires two-way dialogue.  This means you to your visitors and your readers’ comments and/or feedback back to you.  It also means other bloggers to you and your feedback to the blogger.

10. Think about your industry’s overall presence on the internet. Are you and your company visible? To be considered an industry leader or even a local industry hero, you have to participate.  You have to be seen and you have to engage.  While your target market may not be visiting your industry’s benchmark websites, the search engines do and they should find you there when they visit.

Most likely you’ve read through this list and realized your internet marketing activities can be greatly improved.  Brace yourself, because we haven’t even looked at your competition yet.  I can only pick so hard and for so long at you without feeling a little guilty.

For right now I’ll let you stew over my ten questions and in my next blog post we’ll take a look at your competition.  And while you may tell yourself you are as good as your competition, you will be surprised to know you are wrong.  Dead wrong.

As we discuss a custom bar and bamboo flooring (I’m a bit high maintenance I’m told), it reminds me of my SEO clients. Like myself, they themselves have a pain threshold. While we both share budget constraints, their SEO pain threshold is also associated with internal resources, project timing, return on investment, and anticipated payback period.

Similar to my long list of remodeling desires, the small business owner can quickly run through his wants. He wants to meet his marketing goals and this typically means increased website traffic, better branding, additional leads, better conversions and engagement, and at the end of the day, he wants an increase in revenue and profit. Unfortunately, he also usually lacks internal marketing resources and internet marketing expertise. He doesn’t have a clue what an H1 tag is, an alt tag, meta, or how to improve his inbound links.

Measuring Your Threshold of SEO Pain

So if the small business owner doesn’t know SEO and doesn’t have an internal resource that is a tech-savvy do-it-yourself type of girl, what’s he to do? He is going to have to hire someone to fill the role in-house or he is going to have to outsource this task to a seasoned professional. But before he runs to Google and starts searching for an SEO consultant, he needs to ask himself a few questions and formulate some concrete answers.

1. What are the most important internet marketing goals that need to be achieved?
2. What is the timeframe for achieving these goals? Is this a firm, must have date or it is a desirable date?
3. What internal resources are available to allocate to this project?
4. Do the available internal resources have the technical and marketing aptitude for accomplishing the goals?
5. What is the available budget for this project?
6. What is the required payback period for the project? How soon is ROI expected?

Before you even begin to search for available SEO consulting firms, you need to have a firm grasp of your pain threshold. We search experts come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some of us are big and fat and require $300 or more per hour. Some of us are small and lean and only require $100 per hour. Some are even smaller than that, but I would not recommend searching the bargain basement with this type of project.

The key to launching internet marketing project successfully is to know your pain threshold and your expectations. More importantly, it is to make sure they align and are in sync. Once you have a solid grasp on your needs and wants, you will quickly be able to decide which type of SEO firm is within your project scope and budget.  This will not only speed the search for right SEO expert, it will help the small business owner find a suitable fit.

Why does it really matter?  For me, I only want to engage with you if I can help you and help make your project a success. To determine if that is possible, I have to obtain an idea of what success means to you. Most small businesses I speak with have not thought this far ahead. They know they have issues with their current website or web promotion efforts, but they don’t have a good feel for expectations.

An internet marketing campaign can be a huge endeavor or it can be a quick refresh of what you currently have in place. Until a needs assessment is done and project scope is defined, it is difficult for any website designer or SEO consultant to truly provide feedback on project budget or timing.

Common Internet Marketing Goals and Objectives

A typical internet marketing campaign can focus on improving six or more different goals, although I really think most projects can be broken down into five distinct areas.

1: Revenue

I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of this goal because I think it is simply to broad. Everyone wants to increase revenue and there are many ways to accomplish this, so I’d rather clients be a little more specific so we can truly focus on tasks that will deliver tangible results. Narrowing the revenue goal to say increased profits via a reduced sales cycle would be more specific and would help us collectively target the right tasks within your internet marketing campaign.

If increasing profits and a reduced sales cycle were your primary goal, we could provide additional information (or better information) on your website for prospects so that they could be better informed before they reach out to you as a new lead. This could be through navigation changes, defining personas (your target market) and filtering content, or by providing clearer call to actions.

2: Branding

Branding is definitely an internet marketing goal I like and one that is problematic to companies of all sizes. Most small businesses don’t think about branding until they encounter a specific issue or talk to someone engrossed in marketing like I am. I believe in personal branding, corporate branding, and branding of your product or service. For small businesses, the internet provides a world of opportunities for increasing brand awareness.

If increased branding is your goal, we can work on your website, your SEO efforts, your social media usage, local search directories, your public relations, etc. I could go on and bore you to death, but I’ll stop. The point is you’ve given me a pain point that I can target with a solution.

What I also like about branding is that it is a measurable goal that we can track and quantify. From mentions in social media outlets to inbound links to your website, to searches for your company name or product – you can see changes and track improvements.

When I originally started my business, no one Googled my company name because it didn’t exist until I thought of it. Since creating my company and actively marketing myself on the internet, there has been a steady increase in searches for my company name. This means there are mentions of my company on the internet, someone has read it, and someone is trying to locate my firm to learn more me or my company. As a small business and a marketer, this makes me happy because it shows my efforts are working and I am making progress on my branding efforts.

3: Lead Generation

Increased lead generation is another business goal I love. Not only is it absolutely traceable, it is how I originally found my way to SEO, website design, and internet marketing. Years ago I was a salesperson for a small technology firm. My product was good, so I could easily close new business if I had prospects. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have enough new prospects and leads. The cheapest route for me to obtain additional leads was to teach myself internet marketing. I’m proud to say I did, I viewed the process as fun, and I found my true passion.

I used a CRM software package to track the source of my leads from origin to close. I could tell you exactly how many leads came from the internet and their close rate. The internet leads were farther along in the sales funnel than any other lead source and they had the highest close rate. This only fueled my fire to increase my internet leads. I went from virtually zero internet leads to the internet accounting for the majority of my sales in no time. I also helped the company grow 400% in two years. For me this proved lead generation was not only a great goal, but a goal you can obtain and measure along the way.

4: Product or Service Sales

Utilizing an internet marketing campaign to increase product or service sales is an admirable goal. It is both obtainable and there is something to measure, so it makes me, the marketer, happy. If you came to me with this goal, I’d want to brainstorm to discover why you think your sales are lower than their potential. Is it your website or is it lack of inbound traffic? Either one is fixable, we just need to narrow our focus and plan our attack.

5: Visitor Conversions

One area most small business owners overlook in website design is conversions. A conversion is the method of migrating your website visitors into prospects, sales, registrations, or whatever else you want the average visitor to do once they land on your website. While everyone “gets” the idea of conversions, many people forget about the concept during a website design project.

The key to a strong web presence and functionally robust website is defining your design and navigation around what you’d like your website visitor to do upon arrival. Most likely this will include multiple paths built around an individual persona (or visitor type). When you take a moment to consider your options, the process usually becomes quite clear.

Small website design changes can have a big impact on how you convert website visitors. An example of this is a newsletter sign up box. A lot of small businesses put this below the fold (low enough on the page you have to scroll to see it), which significantly decreases usage. Move it up to the top of the sidebar and you should exponentially increase your conversion rates. Change your wording to better articulate why people should sign up and again increase your conversion rates.

I had one client go from about 250 new subscriptions each month to around 700 simply because I changed the sign up box verbiage and placed the destination content more prominently on the website. The change was so drastic I was kicking myself for not thinking of this earlier in the year. I love this example because it shows how three minutes of coding can have dramatic and long-term results.

6: Engagement

Engagement is a total buzzword these days for us internet marketers. I use it with hesitation because of this painful truth. Buzzword or not, engagement is a valid and measurable goal.

So what does it mean for the small business owner? It refers to your interaction with your prospects and clients. While some will view this as simply “likes” on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter, I view it as page interactions on Facebook, Twitter mentions, content sharing, blog comments, client reviews, etc. The modern web is filled with opportunities to interact with your target market.

While some skeptics view engagement as marketing fluff, internet users in 2011 will expect engagement and interaction from the brands and companies they follow. Actually they demand it and if you plan on ignoring the goal of engagement, you’ll quickly find yourself in trouble.

So What’s Your Internet Marketing Goal?

I really think your goals will vary based on your individual situation, your industry, and your product or service offering. The important lesson in this discussion is that you need to consider your business goals before you spend time or money on any internet marketing campaign.

Flash forward twenty years and I now claim to be an Internet marketer who spends many hours as a WordPress designer and an SEO expert. I love what I do, yet still miss my first love of Psychology. Recently my two loves collided as I remembered Swiss-born psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her book On Death and Dying. She outlined the five stages of grief a person and their loved ones go through when presented with death. I was reminded of this recently as I spoke with a business owner that reached out to me concerning his outdated website. The discussion and the desire to hang on to something beyond repair reminded me of the book I read so many years ago.

While letting go of your old, outdated website is not as traumatic as losing a loved one, it does represent change. Many of us tend to hang on to what is comfortable and easy and avoid a voluntary jump into the unknown. The small business owner is no different. While he may know his ten-year-old website is horribly outdated, the desire to change it seems overwhelming, unimaginable, and unnecessary. He steps into the first of five steps of grief.

A Review of the Small Business Owner’s Website and His Five Stages of Grief

1. Denial – My website is fine. No one comes to it anyway, so I’m not going to waste any money changing it. Who really cares about what is looks like? It’s my product (or service) offering that makes a difference, not my website.
2. Anger – If people don’t like my website than I don’t need to do business with them. I’m not spending thousands of dollars to have some web designer try and communicate my marketing message. I know what’s good for my business, not some graphic designer who spends his entire day on Twitter. SEO, local search, and Facebook. Who are these people and what the heck are they talking about? I don’t need any of that stuff.
3. Bargaining – Okay maybe my website is a little dated. I think I’ll update it myself and tweak it a bit to freshen it up. If I update the pictures from 1985 and put in a few keywords, I’ll be good to go. My cousin built his fraternity’s website ten years ago, so I think I’ll take him to dinner and ask him to help. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’m sure I can just make a few changes and get a huge impact without spending any money.
4. Depression – Oh my gosh, this website project is a nightmare. I don’t know HTML, I can’t locate the original website designer, and I have no idea how to strong content that people will actually read. I can’t tell the difference between CSS, PHP, and HTML. What do they mean Google doesn’t look at meta keywords anymore? I have no idea what meta is, let alone if Google reads it. What is black hat SEO? I don’t even know what SEO means, so how am I supposed to know if my website uses black hate SEO practices?
5. Acceptance – Yep, completely over my head. Need some help and need it now. My competition is killing me, prospects don’t know what I do or when I’m open, and anyone I do get to look at my home page runs away laughing. The time has come to get a professional web designer to overhaul the website and start fresh. 2011 is the year of my Internet debut.

While this list may be praised by some and criticized by others, it is a reminder of why so many small businesses struggle with their web. In the Unites States, 55% of people use the Internet daily with Americans spending an average of 60 hours online each week. With the growing availability of broadband and the increased popularity of smart phones and devices like the iPad, the level of Internet usage will only continue to grow. Small businesses cannot ignore the need for a strong web presence and that having a marketing plan now means reaching prospects and customers through the Internet.

Five years ago I would have agreed with most small businesses owners. Internet marketing was still difficult and not an easy task to accomplish. While I’ve been working with SEO and website design for years, technology didn’t really get small business friendly until the world of open source kicked it up a notch. Websites were expensive, you needed a graphic designer, and you needed an SEO expert to help guide you along so someone other than your employees would find your website.

Enter WordPress, the fast growing, open source CMS package that is launching everything from blogs and small business websites to fancy portals for stars and magazines and television networks. WordPress is my passion and the software that liberated me and countless other small business owners. We are now empowered to take website design into our own hands. Or, at least outsource the creation of the website, then manage it internally if we choose. We have an option. We can create a great new website that is search engine friendly and pleasing to the eye and for a much lower budget than we could ten years ago. We have choices.

If you are a small business owner who is stuck in one of the five stages of grief, visit wordpress.org and learn more about WordPress website design and your options. WordPress will allow you to create and manage your web presence in the same software as CNN, Katy Perry, Carnival Cruises, Lexus, and The New Your Times. Best of all it is free and you only need to locate a good WordPress designer to help get you started.

Social media is about engaging with your audience, increasing brand awareness, and providing value to the visitors who land upon your Facebook page or Twitter profile. Notice I started with the concept of engagement, because at the core of social media is communication. Social media is about communicating with your audience in a two-way dialogue and utilizing that communication to help meet your marketing objectives.

When I hear people or companies brag about their high number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers my mind wonders back to high school homecoming and the quest to be crowned the queen. While I had no interest in becoming homecoming queen, becoming the reining queen of Facebook would be kind of cool. But I digress. We are grown ups and this isn’t about counting votes and proving to the world that you are the most popular Facebook page within your niche. It is about good old fashion marketing delivered over the world wide web.

I am on my social media soapbox because I am tired of witnessing consultants trick companies into thinking a growth in Facebook likes or Twitter followers is success. I am annoyed because the unsuspecting small business owner will believe it and will pay money for little value and virtual no return. I am on my soapbox, because I want to help small businesses and provide tangible value.  I am angry because uneducated consultants are not just providing minimal value to small businesses, they are giving the rest of us a bad name and turning some small business owners away from social media.

I’m upset because it boils down to some simple math and a look at a few real world Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Sample Facebook Metrics for B2B and B2C Pages

One might look at website #6 and believe this brand is doing an exceptional job in their Facebook effort. After all, they have the most page likes, so they must be doing something right. Ah, no. Compare the percentages for B2B website # 1 and B2C website #6. The B2B brand is a lot more social media savvy than the B2C brand. While the number of likes for the B2C website is highest amongst the sample, the active Facebook page users and inbound website traffic from Facebook is very low. The B2B website has a much lower number of Facebook likes, yet has a much higher level of engagement both on Facebook and in traffic to their actual website.  Website # 1 is doing a better job because the page provides value or actual content.  Website # 6 just seeks out people to like it, but never actually puts anything on the page itself.

Sample Twitter Metrics for B2B and B2C Pages

Now look at the same two websites on Twitter. Both websites have a respectable number of Twitter followers, yet neither have an exceptionally high amount of traffic migrating from Twitter over to their actual website. I could go further into this data by providing mentions, tweet volume, and such, but I think I’m making my point and I don’t want to bore anyone to death.

What Do All the Social Media Numbers Really Mean?

This data can be diced and sliced in a variety of ways, but knowing these accounts like I do, I can conclude a lot just from the basic data I assembled above.

1. First and foremost, the number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers does not equal success.
2. Real social media success is more about engagement and less about the popularity contest.
3. If you don’t provide content in your social media efforts, you’re going to struggle providing value.  If someone visits a Facebook page that looks exactly like it did five months ago, the chances are they won’t come back and they won’t look further at you or your brand.
4. Look beyond the numbers within your actual social media account. Look at tangible conversions to new leads, new clients, and repeat customer purchases or interactions.
5. Before you engage in a social media campaign or with an internet marketing consultant, know what equates success. Don’t go by their promise to increase your followers of fans, because it means little if no one engages with your brand.
6. Use tools like Google Analytics to provide tangible metrics on website referrals, duration or depth of visit, goals, and conversions to see if your social media activity is making a difference and providing value.
7. You your own financials to see if social media is helping or hurting your bottom line.
8. Don’t listen to or accept promises that seem to good to be true. They probably are much better in theory than in real life. I can increase your Facebook likes by 1,000 by giving someone on Fivver.com $5. This won’t mean anything unless it converts to something tangible for your brand.
9. Don’t just focus on the short-term high of a promotion, event, or download.  I believe the B2C sector does this in many cases.  The B2C sector needs to take notice of their B2B counterparts who pay more attention to getting the audience back to their website to provide more value than just the one snippet in their status update or tweet.
10. Social media is an upward battle that doesn’t just materialize into ultimate success overnight. An audience capable of delivering ROI will take time to build.
11. If you’ve hired a social media consultant, validate their success yourself and don’t just take their canned reports or updates as success.
12. Review your new social media audience to validate it against your target demographics. Facebook has excellent reports for viewing geography, age, etc. If you sell medical products to the geriatric set in Michigan, 20,000 teenagers in India are not really going to bring social media ROI.
13. Not everyone is good at social media.  If you are concerned about your ability, hire an expert.  Just do so wisely.
14. You can’t ignore social media.  As much as I’m tired of hearing about the likes of Groupon, I know the company and their deals are here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook are also here to stay, so get used to it and embrace it.
15. Integrate social media with your website to both connect long-term with your visitors and to allow them to share your promote your content to their own network.  Good content will bring likes and followers.

If you haven’t yet engaged in social media, now is the time.  Just remember not every internet marketing consultant is legit, honest, or even educated enough to provide social media marketing. If you are outsourcing your social media, then make sure you pick someone who truly understands traditional marketing efforts, your messaging, your industry, and what you consider to be social media success.

Article Resources:

• Web Savvy Marketing on Facebook
• Web Savvy Marketing on Twitter

I actually like blogging.  I enjoy it and it has been a huge help to me professionally.  Last weekend I attended WordCamp Detroit and I was surrounded by bloggers.  I wasn’t prepared for that one, as I use WordPress for website design and I guess I assume everyone in the room would too.  Was I wrong.  There were bloggers everywhere.  Many who had day jobs and blogged at night about their hobbies or in an effort to make a few bucks.  WordCamp Detroit reminded me that blogging is a profession that if done properly and with dedication, can provide a healthy income.

Is there a right way or a wrong way to blog?  Absolutely.  Over the last year I’ve trained a number of clients and presented webinars on blogging best practices. I enjoy blogging and I try to teach others that they too can not only learn to blog, but learn how to create the “perfect” blog entry and love it along the way.  Over this last year I’ve realized not everyone is a blogger and you cannot force them to become one.  That being said, you can teach wannabe bloggers to blog better.

So What is a Blog?

A blog is short for a “web log” and is maintained by either an individual or a group of authors. A blog will typically focus on one topic or niche and is published on a regular basis. There is no limit to the variety of content a blog can contain. A blog can include commentaries, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics, charts or videos. It can be, and often is, a multi-media experience.

Individual bloggers, when they are good, are often times branded as authority figures or celebrities and gain momentum in and of themselves. Personally I’m in love with Matt Cutts, but I would not have even known about him if it were not for his blog.

The public has gotten so conditioned to blogs, that many now expect to find a blog on both business and personal websites.  If you are selling something on your website, most visitors will expect some educational commentary in the form of a blog on the website.  They’ll want to read about why product A is better than product B and they’ll want to do this before they even consider purchasing.  This is best done via a blog, because you can communicate to your reader is a more informal and natural manner.

Why Does the World Love Blogs?

1. People Like Blogs – Blogs provide a sense of intimacy. And it’s this intimacy over the Internet that allows the marketer to capture an audience. And if you can do this, you will capture Google.
2. Search Engines Like Blog – Search engines like blogs, because they create fresh content that is relevant to the website and the reader. I believe this is most demonstrated with the speed in which Google picks up and publishes blog content.  Google can spider and index a blog entry in as little as 30 minutes.
3. Marketers Like Blogs – Blogs help a marketer promote their website, business, product or service. They feed and nurture the core website, help to cultivate branding, convey the marketing message and recruit people to follow their website, business, product or service. Blogs can also be picked up by other bloggers, the media, and blog entries can quickly create a momentum all on their own.

What Are Some Best Practices for Blogs?

1. Focus on One Key Topic or Niche – If you don’t know what to write about, think about what is of interest to you. Look at other blogs and what makes them interesting or think about something that can relate to the product you are selling.
2. Build Your Blog Around the Kitchen Table – If you are using your blog as a marketing tool, think about what the reader would want to hear if you were sitting at the kitchen table with them casually discussing your product or service.  My boat dealership has a gentlemen who is a natural salesperson.  My kids love him and if someone walks through the door of their store, Ron is going to be able to close the deal because he is a people person and he has a natural way about him that makes you like him.  If you can translate Ron’s natural ability with people into a blog post, you’d have people from around the world wanting to buy his boats.
3. Write About What You Know - If you try to blog about something you hate, you will in turn hate blogging. Blog about something you love and your blogging will become a passion and not a chore.  If you are a marketing person and you hate your product, it is going to be difficult for you to blog.  You’re better off asking someone else to write the blog posts and you edit it, as you can only be a good blogger if you have a passion for what you blog about.  It is kind of like cats and people who hate cats.  Cats have a sixth sense for people who don’t like them and I swear my cats will stalk you if this is the case.  They just know.  The reader will “just know” too, so don’t bother talking about something you hate.
4. Make it Interesting to Read – Your blog post should be easy-to-read, fun, and interesting, so make sure it doesn’t read like a dissertation or thesis. If it’s not immediately interesting to read, it doesn’t sell across the Internet.  The easiest way to make a blog interesting is to tell a story of interest and make it personal.  I’ve related Girl Scout cookies to ERP software and ERP software to buying Christmas gifts online because it was relevant and it was my personal experience.  It was real, which made it interesting.
5. Aim for Dialog and a Two-way Communication - Talk to the reader like they are human and allow people to respond to your blog. Today’s Internet is about interaction.  Anyone hear about a little website called Facebook?  Yes I said interaction. That means you need to allow comments and you need to reply to them – the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
6. Include a Great Title – Pick a great title that is unique and reaches out and grabs your audience’s attention and makes them want to read more. I believe so much in this point, I wrote an entire blog post on it.  Visit my post A Good Blog Title is Like Wrapping Paper on a Present to hear my full views on the subject.
7. Have a Great Introduction Ready – You have a few seconds to engage the reader, so your introduction or initital paragraph better be good and it better align with the rest of the blog entry. It needs to set the scene and provide something that entices the reader to stay with you and actually read the full blog post.
8. Don’t Forget About Subheadings – Use H2 and H3 headings to help balance the blog post and give readers sections where they can focus their attention. It will be beneficial to both the reader and the search engines.
9. Don’t Forget About Bullets – Not everybody likes to read paragraphs, so mix it up. I rarely sit and read an entire paragraph. I scan the paragraph and actually pay more attention to bullets than anything else. This is just my personality, because I’m a constant multi-tasker. You have to be prepared for me and the millions like me.  You also should remember that human nature dictates how we read bullets.  Most people read the first one or two then skip to the last one in the list.  This item is number nine so much likely you aren’t even reading it. If you are, then kudos, you’re a better person that I am.
10. Don’t Forget About SEO – Remember that your blog is many times targeted at both the reader and the search engine spiders. When a SEO client tells me he has the perfect idea for a blog post, my first question I ask him is what keyword are you targeting. Eric absolutely gets this, but Jeff and Andy, well, not so much.  So I nag them about keywords and I make sure the blog posts uses our targeted keywords to link to an internal web page to help build deep links within the website or blog.  And yes, we always use use keyword-rich anchor text.  If you don’t know what that means, you need an hour discussion with an good SEO consultant, because it is important.
11. Bring it Back to Your Product or Service – If your website sells a product or service offering, remember not to lose site of your marketing goals. If you’re an affiliate marketer or business who’s sales heavily rely on internet traffic, you need to write content that can be associated with your offering. You can discuss virtually anything, as long as you bring it back to your product or service and the key focus of your blog itself.  It’s okay even if the topic is off the wall, as long as you bring it back to your product or service. My most off the wall blog topics are the ones people remember most. And for me, they were the most fun to write.
12. Stay Focused – Stay on point and your audience will then stay in touch with you. Don’t be my daughter. I call my daughter the clock builder, because she just can’t give you the time. If you ask her the time, she just can’t say it is ten o’clock. She has to go into painfully slow detail about how she built the clock or how she figured out how to tell time. As much as I love her – and I do – she loses my attention because I really don’t care what type of jelly Tommy had on his sandwich at lunch. We were talking about her homework. See I almost lost you there didn’t I?
13. Update Your Blog Regularly – Okay this one is funny, because this is like the pot calling the kettle black. I know and believe this, but I struggle with it bigtime. I spend so much time on my clients’ projects, I forget about my own blog. But I digress. If you post blog entries irregularly, your benefits from blogging with be limited. To gain a base of followers or subscribers, you need to have something tangible for them to follow or read. This means regular and meaningful updates and posts. I prefer at least one blog post a week and you can go up to five posts a week if you have something relevant to say. I have one client in a very competitive keyword environment and we blog three times per week with fresh content. He is going up against the big boys, so we have no choice. But we win on strong content and on keywords.
14. Make Your Post a Multi-Media Experience – Consider it eye candy for your blog. A blog can include a variety of content that can consist of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics, charts, or videos. Didn’t I say this already?  Yes, but it is important so I’m going to say it again.  One word of caution is just don’t include a graphic or video that isn’t relevant.  That is just annoying.  I love blog eye candy as long as it provides a real purpose.
15. Soften the Sales Pitch – Your blog post isn’t a constant sales pitch. If it feels like a sales pitch to the reader, you will lose your audience and you will fail in your blogging effort. You can insert a call-to action, as this will be your pitch opportunity, just don’t be too aggressive.  And for heaven sakes, make the pitch relevant to your post itself.  Talking about chicken soup and offer your reader a new car doesn’t provide any continuity so don’t do it.
16. Watch Your Spelling and Grammar – Make sure you proof your post before publishing. Check for any spelling, punctuation and grammar errors that may appear. A poorly written post can damage your credibility. Once you post, check it out online just to make sure it is correct. I often see an error online that I didn’t see in the backend publisher.  And yes, I’m a horrible speller and have been so since about age six.  While I try to find errors, you still might find on within my blog posts.  I apologize for this now as I know it will happen.
17. Spread the Word About Your Blog – Extended your blog entries with RSS feeds to websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media sites.  An RSS feed will automatically be updated each time you release a new blog post. You establish your RSS feed connection once and then allow the RSS feed to automatically update your page or profile with each new blog post. That means new inbound links and you do not have to touch anything beside your blog post.
18. Chirp Like a Bird – Tweet your blog post and encourage others to retweet it. Thank those who help spread your message and be appreciative.  And yes, I’d love if you tweeted this post.  There is a little button at the top of this post that makes it super easy for you to do so.  If you want a a cool button like mine and you use WordPress, there are a bunch of plugins that will whip it in for you.
19. Remember to Ping the Post - Utilize a ping service, that allows you to automatically notify blog directories that your blog has been updated. I use WordPress for all my blogging and website design projects, so the ping ability is built right into the software. Get a good ping list established, so whenever you write a new blog post, the blog directories on your “ping list” will automatically be notified of the change. The bigger your ping list, the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources. The bigger your ping list, the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources.
20. Have an Sitemap.xml File – For some unknown reason, this is the one topic area where clients look at me as if I’m from Mars. Venus maybe, but certainly not Mars. Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file that includes content for your entire website, that is submitted to all the major search engines and updated each time you add or edit a page or post. When you have a robust sitemap.xml file this will literally “reach out a touch” the search engines and nudge them in a way to inform them that you have new content available. This is critical for keeping the search engines up to date on your fresh content and for encouraging them to quickly provide your content in search results. WordPress has a number of great plugins to manage this process, although I can tell you from experience with my client base, not every web software does so be careful.

So now I’m getting ready to close so this is where an excellent wrap up discussion would come in and then I’d sneak in a suttle call to action. But I like blogging and I could talk about SEO and internet marketing all day long, so I’ll skip the pitch.

Okay I’ve changed my mind.  I will tell you one quick story to close. A few years ago I was at a technology trade show in California. I’m a Michigan girl so this is a little but of a journey. At the show a man continued to tell me we had met and he knew me. I had never seen this guy in my life, so I had no idea what he was talking about.  Finally after a few hours, he remembered that he subscribed to my blog on IT Toolbox and he started to tell me his favorite posts. Not only did he recognize my face from my blog, he remembered individual posts and could tell me what I had said.  He actually had personal favorites.  Now tell me any other method of marketing that can touch people and imprint on them in that manner?  At that time I was marketing ERP software, which is generally considered a necessary evil and not something you want to digest and remember.  But Jay did and I thought that experience was very cool and an excellent example of how internet marketing just works.

That my friends, is the power of blogging and one reason I love internet marketing as much as I do.

This week I was preparing my slide deck for a webinar I’m presenting on Tuesday for my friends over at Lurn. The webinar is titled “Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic”. The preparation for this webinar reminded me of wrapping paper and my ultimate love for Christmas. Yes you read that correctly, in my mind I think of titles and meta as wrapping paper.

Here is why. Line up two presents of equal size and cost. One is wrapped in a brown paper bag (earth day was this week so let’s recycle) and the other is wrapped in beautiful shiny paper with perfect corners and exquisite ribbon to match. Which one do you want to open? Unless you have mental issues, you’re going for the one I wrapped. That would be the pretty one. Blog entries and website pages are the same. Visitors and search engines lunge at the page or post that is wrapped perfectly. This means well-written content that is accompanied by a fabulous title, concise meta description, and relevant keywords (if you are targeting search engines other than Google). These three elements are the teasers that make you want more. Just like the perfectly wrapped present.

Unfortunately, blogger and “wanna be” webmasters are a dime a dozen these days and everyone thinks they are the next great publisher of content on the Internet. They are not. I am thankful the folks over at Lurn feel the same as I do and they are trying desperately to education these up and coming Internet moguls with some good old fashion SEO expertise. Once you get past Lurn’s glitzy landing pages, you’ll see they have great content on SEO and Internet marketing. So much so that I wish they’d been around seven years ago when I entered into the world of SEO and website design. This isn’t a push for Lurn, it is an education. I 100% believe they provide great content for the SEO newbie. Below is a list of best practices I’ll be discussing Tuesday. Lurn believes in these just as I do, which is why I believe in Lurn.

Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic

1. Write an eye-catching, well-written headline
2. Use your headline, descriptions, and tags to gain traction
3. Use your keywords in the title
4. Build keywords into your alt tags
5. Include headlines and descriptions that will resonate with those readers
6. Include information you want your visitors to see when they see your link in search engines
7. Watch your character limit
8. Don’t overdo it
9. Utilize the H1 tag so it helps both the reader and the search engine
10. Pick the right header for the job

So my SEO friends, I will leave you with this thought. When crafting your next blog entry or web page, ask yourself this – is your wrapping job good enough to give to your mother (aka Google)? If you aren’t pleased to attach your name to it, rewrap it and make sure the presentation is as good as the page content itself.

As I read through the pages I’m awestruck by the explanation given for the qualities associated with the searcher’s experience. The authors boil this down to a simple illustration called the User Experience Honeycomb.

The User Experience Honeycomb Includes

• Useful
• Usable
• Desirable
• Findable
• Accessible
• Credible
• Valuable

While many readers might not deem this concept worthy of much pondering, I do. If you understand search and website design, you know the user experience is paramount in any Internet marketing effort. Explaining this to prospects and client’s is sometimes difficult for me, because not everyone grasps the subject. Some individuals are so burdened by their daily work requirements, they have a difficult time digging into the theories behind a quality search experience. Search is a science and an art that goes much deeper than just the front page of Google.

Many times one of the first things a prospect asks about is reaching page one of Google. Unfortunately, most think this is a short-term event that is triggered by voodoo and magic. They think there is a quick fix to reaching page one and converting each visitor to a lead or a sale. It isn’t that simple. Search has come a long way, but it still requires work. And more importantly, solid content that embodies the honeycomb concept mentioned above. If you provide useful content that visitors will find usable and they can easily locate, you will be rewarded.

Reaching page one or increasing your Internet sale volume requires work and real effort. If you are afraid of either, stick with your pay-per-click campaign or physical storefront and just call it a day.

I have a client who recently told me he doubled his sales funnel since his new website went live a few months ago. Why some may not believe that claim, it is true. I watch his Google Analytics account closely and I can tell many people are finding what they are seeking on his website. They are staying and they are converting.

Together we built a new website and launched an Internet marketing campaign that was built around the honeycomb theory. He produced solid content that people in his industry would find useful, usable, and valuable. In doing so, he increased his already high credibility factor. I took his strong content and made it findable and accessible. Together we became a powerful force and his company is reaping the rewards.

The client believed in the long haul of Internet marketing. He received benefits quickly and I’m sure has obtained a great deal of his project ROI. He did so because he is smart and he believes in the value of hard work. He also believed in the honeycomb theory. When I would talk about usability, he would listen. When I would say we should have “x”, he would deliver it quicker than I expected. He would also think about the project on his own and make valuable requests that would benefit the overall process and his ultimate success. He was an invested party and an active participant that believed in the honeycomb theory.

As I continue to read through my new book, I already applaud the authors for simplifying what many of us website designers and SEO consultants find so difficult. After so many years of working with organic SEO and website design, I find it fairly common sense. Well, I’m a geek and I am not normal. For others, they need an understandable concept and thus far, that authors of Search Patterns are providing just that to their readers.

If you would like more on the subject, I encourage you to purchase the book. Search Patterns is available through O’Reilly Media.

After college I found a temporary position at a barcode and data collection distribution and before I knew it, I was a full-time employee running their operations.  Why?  Because I fell in love with the ERP system they installed three months before my arrival.  That and the fact that I was one of the few employees who “got” new their ERP system.  I didn’t just get it, I embraced it with my entire being.  For the next three years I worked 60-80 workweeks and spent much of my time on the applicable.  And while it wasn’t perfect, it helped me manage a national distributor with multiple branches and distribution centers.  Again, I was in love with my job and my ERP software.  To this day I miss the chaos and the challenge of fixing every operational woe with my ERP system.

Flash forward fifteen years and I’ve moved from my first college job through working ten years for an ERP developer and now I run my own Internet marketing company.  The trouble is my love for marketing and ERP rarely seem to connect as much as I would like.    While a VP of marketing at an ERP developer, I myself struggled with managing marketing via my ERP system.  While I lived off my personalized dashboards and workbenches, I used a lot of offline processes to help manage what my beloved ERP software could not.  Don’t get me wrong; I knew exactly where each lead came from, where it was at in our sales process, and how long the sales cycle should take before new business was closed.  I had lead generation and tracking, but I lacked the ability to proactively manage marketing.  Within my ERP software, everything I did for marketing felt reactive, which is not at all, what marketing is supposed to be.

Honestly, I don’t think I’m alone.  While I doubt there are many marketing people reading this blog entry, I know they would concur with me if they did.   And I don’t believe ERP developers have reached the concept of automating marketing enough to work hard at developing strong marketing content for their user community.  They are side tracked with fuel surcharges, customer service needs, and compliance issues.  And really, who listens to marketing people anyway?  We are overhead plain and simple.

Today I received a feed from Web Strategy by Jeremiah.  He was covering CRM software (aka ERP software) and the newer functionality for social media management.  Yes, social media, the new darling of topics on the Internet.  Social media reminds me so much of ERP software, because just like a complicated ERP system, few people get it.  They think you can throw up a Facebook page or Twitter account and call it good.  Not so fast.  Just like an integrated ERP system, your social media accounts are fully integrated with your overall marketing campaign and search engine optimization.  There are rules to follow and there are reasons why you do what you do on Twitter versus Facebook.  Honestly, I think you either get it or you don’t.  I always felt the same about ERP software.  You need to look past your little piece of the ERP pie and you need to look into the entire pie or organization to see how your data input alters another department, process, or users.  Social media is the same.  Your tweet on Twitter will alter other marketing activities.  Good or bad.  The Twitter community is persnickety and they speak differently than Facebook or MySpace.  Make a mistake and you will be ignored or blocked.  Do the same in an ERP application and you’d just lose your program access.

Okay I’m running off track here a bit.  I have to really question the blog entry by Jeremiah, because I truly question if the ERP developers and their programmers get social media and marketing.  I question if they can truly meet the needs of marketing departments and look beyond a simple project plan, marketing budget, or lead-tracking program.  Marketing, and in particular Internet marketing, is like voodoo.  Hard to quantify and difficult to measure results, yet something I believe in.  Okay I don’t believe in voodoo, but I did catch your attention.  I do believe in successful marketing and I do believe in ERP software.

So Jeremiah, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and Salseforce – do you really get it?  Are you writing software code that your marketing department lives and breathes by or are you writing code that helps your salespeople sell your ERP software?  Ask yourself the question, then ask a marketing person who understands both their functional role and your ERP software. The answer may surprise you.

Last week Google’s Internet marketing Guru Matt Cutts posted a new video in their Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.  I love these videos because they are short and to the post and without any pitch or longwinded verbiage cluttering the real message.   The video that caught my eye was Matt Cutts’ discussion on Sock Puppet Marketing.   Yes you read that correctly.  Mr. Cutts is talking openly about puppets.

Puppets aside, the discussion was in relation to an individual or company creating fake Internet personas for marketing purposes.  While Matt did not go into how Google would react to such tactics, he did provide a very funny puppet commentary to illustrate the process.  While the entertainment value alone was good, Matt briefly described a real-world scenario where one company was fined over $300,000 for creating fake testimonials on the Internet.  He further talked about why he and Google felt this practice was harmful for all involved.

The short of this video is this – Internet marketing is powerful and effective.  People, companies, and the government now consider Internet marketing in the same ranks of traditional marketing techniques.  If a technique wasn’t legal in traditional marketing, it isn’t legal on the Internet either.  If marketing misrepresents anything, it isn’t marketing.  It is just bad business.

Matt summed this up with stating you should avoid anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see or read.   I struggle with this, because I am a mother and I know different mothers nag about different things.  I would be a larger nagger than most.  So, I would modify his statement to caution against any marketing tactic you have to think twice about.  If you question it, don’t do it.  You’ll be much better off in the end.

What does Social Search mean to you?

If you use Twitter for business, it means you’ve just had your world expand exponentially.  If you have few Twitter followers and struggle finding new Twitters to follow you, don’t despair.  Your tweets will soon be broadcasted to the world.

If you use Twitter for personal communication and you tweet about anything and everything, tweets beware.  Be a bit more careful about what you tweet, because like it or not, your tweets will reach more people than you may want.

As with anything in this Web 2.0 age, think before you type.