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.

In our conversation he provides obscure long-tail keywords to illustrate his SEO tactics are working. He also tells me he lacks traffic and real revenue resulting from all the time he has allocated to his SEO research and implementation efforts. He finally informs me that he cannot allocate a large budget to SEO. Hmm, I think we have encountered a conundrum.

Why is this the case? Is the small business owner really SEO savvy or is he lost in a web of SEO confusion? I’d say both. He knows enough to make him dangerous. I generally see very old SEO practices being used and many times black hat SEO tactics. Duplicate content and multiple URLs are popular trends, as are bolded words and keyword stuffing. While duplicate content, bolded words, and keyword stuffing top the list of most used tactics for the do-it-yourselfer, the bigger issue and much more difficult problems reside in the website’s architecture.

The website – typically designed and written by the small business owner – is dated and is riddled with structural issues. Content is difficult to locate, duplicated, and irrelevant to the user or keyword focus. There is no hierarchy or silos to content, the website domain is set to expire, the website lacks permanent redirects, there is no sitemap.xml file, and the in-house SEO (business owner) has never heard of Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics. Those examples are real and all are from a prospective client’s website I reviewed this week.

So what should the do-it-yourself SEO worry about? A lot. I do think it is important to mention that the do-it-yourself approach only works if you have little competition. Real SEO is done by an SEO expert who not only is immersed in SEO each day, he spends hours per week educating himself on the latest trends and algorithm changes. Since this is impossible for the small business owner, it is also impossible to expect tangible results from haphazard SEO efforts.

To Achieve Solid SEO Results, You Need to Open Up Your Website and Look Under the Covers

The following ten questions are just a sampling of architectural SEO elements. If you manage your own website and you are a SEO do-it-yourselfer, you need to know what these questions mean and the answers to each. If you don’t, you need professional assistance from an SEO consultant.

1. Have you ever done a keyword analysis?
2. Does your website have a clearly defined structure for assembling pages and/or blog posts?
3. Can you easily locate all the content available?
4. Did you include keyword usage within the meta data and unique to each page or post?
5. Do you have a robot.txt file?
6. Do you have a sitemap.xml file and has it been submitted to Google Webmaster Tools?
7. Are you using Google Analytics and do you know what your current website traffic look likes and how your visitors utilize your website?
8. How long has your domain been registered and how long until it expires?
9. Does your website have permanent redirects in place?
10. Does your website have multiple H1 tags per page?

Most likely you cannot answer these questions and you’re still hesitant to spend money on professional SEO help. I encounter this frequently and I’m asked to “justify” the cost of my SEO consulting services. When I’m asked this I think about my accountant. I have an accountant to do my personal and business taxes, even though I have an accounting degree. But I don’t specialize in accounting and I have no desire to do so. I don’t know the latest tax regulations or the ins and outs of the tax code. I don’t want to know it, which is the reason I never pursued the professional once I left college. I can no more accurately assemble my business taxes than the small business owner can perform his own SEO. My time is better spent on what I can do well, and for me, that’s WordPress web design and organic SEO.

I’ve justified the cost of my accountant (accounting degree and all), so it is really up to you to justify the cost of SEO services. And just like taxes, doing SEO wrong can be worse than not doing SEO at all.

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.

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.

Okay I may have just dated myself with the analogy, but Google reminds me of the TV show intro. Google is better, stronger, and much faster. If you submit a brand new URL and website to Google via Google’s Add URL option and follow up with a XML sitemap through Google’s Webmaster Tools, the main URL is indexed within 24 hours. Actually, my latest website submission was indexed within about 18 hours. The entire website gets picked up over the course of the next week. That is fast. Much faster than the Google we knew years ago.

Of course, please remember that fast indexing does not come without work. Your website needs to be Google friendly and you need to have a few inbound links on Digg or another popular content tagging website. Keeping that in mind, it is much easier to get web presence these days that it was in years past. Google friendly websites and organic off page search engine optimization can and will reward a new website quickly.

That being said, we Internet marketing consultants know that this request is not necessarily realistic. You cannot predict that a famous person will die or that Twitter will be attached and plan for a huge peak in web searches and resulting traffic around such events. You can however, peak into the future if you pay attention to search trending.

Thanks to Google – yes I know I can’t seem to talk enough about Google these days – this is possible. Google Trends allows you to input one or more search terms and see trending data of these searches. In the example I tried, I entered Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and website promotion to compare the trends. Google Trends quickly gave me a relative rating of these terms based on search volume and rated Internet marketing a 1.0, search engine optimization a .50 and website promotion a .08. This validated what I believed, which was more people search for Internet marketing than they do for website promotion. More importantly it told me that these three terms stay fairly consistent with few dips and spikes in search activity. What I didn’t expect it to tell me was that Nevada was the highest subregion. This I am still contemplating.

While my test didn’t show anything significant, a test of the search term “Christmas decorations” did certainly provide insight and validate my own behavior. In fact, I will use this information come fall to show my husband that I am not insane or outside the norm. If you trend Christmas decorations as a search term, you will see a large spike occurs in late November and not December 24th as my husband would wager. We Americans begin thinking, buying, and decorating around Thanksgiving. It isn’t by chance that the stores start filling the shelves with Christmas décor this early in the season. They have marketing departments and they watch the buying trends of the consumer.

So if you want a peek into the search future of your product or service offering, take a moment to review Google Trends. If you see a decline in search terms over time, there is most likely a reason. Case in point is Web 2.0 and social media. The world was a buzz about Web 2.0 and then it seemed to dip, as social media seemed to rev itself up. Or at least this was my perception. While I not always accurate in my assumptions, I was correct in this assumption and Google Trends validated this for me as July 2009 activity showed social media overtake Web 2.0 in searches. Again validating what I already believed to be the case. I’d share this with my husband as well, but he will certainly ask me why he cares about Web 2.0 or social media. At least with Christmas decorations,our discussion can last more than a nanosecond.

Twitter does have capacity issues and frequent error messages, but this Web 2.0 tool is powerful. In seconds a person or company can connect will hundreds of other people that would be virtually impossible to reach via normal communication channels. From celebrities to future customers, Twitter offers an endless opportunity to share your marketing message and watch that of your competition.

Social networking (making friends and business associates through the Internet) is not science, but it is a skill. Your tweets need to be readable and either entertaining or informative. They need to draw interest. Your profile needs to grab attention. While this can easily be done by a great profile picture, cool name, or spiffy background – you need something. When you combine it all together, you get a socially cool Twitter profile that is interesting and includes tweets worth following.

Follow me on Twitter @websavvymrkting.

If you’ve ever read these offers closely, you will quickly become suspicious. The emails come from gmail accounts without phone numbers or website addresses. They offer promises of first page ranking on Google and website traffic increases beyond your wildest expectations. And all of this is yours for little money and within record time.

Take note my friends, nothing of value comes easy. Your Grandmother was right. Positive results typically come from hard work. And so is the case with website promotion. Can a website refresh and an Internet marketing campaign make a difference? Yes, absolutely. But this difference is a result of a qualified Internet marketing consultant who can a implement proven Internet marketing campaign to work for your company. The consultant should have a real website with a real domain (www.something.com) and be ranked high on Google for keywords associated for their own website.

The bottom line is this – if an Internet marketing consultant cannot promote their own website effectively, they will not be able to do a solid job of promoting your website. If you can find them quickly on Google, then they are most likely a real, live, oxygen breathing consultant who can produce results. If you cannot find them on Google, keep looking for someone else.

From my own firsthand experience, I can tell you, a lot of hard work goes into promoting a website and reaching that coveted page one search ranking of Google. It doesn’t happen overnight and it is not something that just happens. Top search engine ranking requires optimizing each website page and promoting those pages off site via the Internet. While designing a visually pleasing website is important, designing one that can be easily searched and one that is supported by a solid online marketing campaign is critical.

If you ask your new or potential service provider a few questions or listen to the questions he or she asks you, you will quickly see the level of their expertise. A true Internet consultant will begin with your overall marketing objectives, your offering, and your target market. A website designer will ask what you’d like on your website. A quality Internet marketer will create a website that is visually effective and that directly supports all of your marketing efforts.

Your website is an ongoing and never ending campaign. Just like more traditional marketing efforts, you cannot expect to create a campaign and have the campaign manage itself. It will not happen. It needs a solid foundation and constant nurturing to make it a success.