While we’re waiting for Steve to show up, I’d like to ask the group a question.
Of all the tactics you’ve tried in your business, what do you think has been the most successful and why?
Richard Miles I don’t know if you’d call it a “tactic” but the most successful thing is dogged, unrelenting persistence, tempered by learning from mistakes and changing directions when needed. n other words, doggedly beating your head against the wall is only good if what you want to accomplish is knocking yourself out. If you are trying to get somewhere, beat your head against the wall, assess the results, try beating your head against the door, assess results, try using the doorknob, assess results. Then rinse, lather, and repeat.
Marketing That Works
Interview with Steve Wiideman, our guest expert this week on Ask a Marketing Expert.
Marketing That Works Great. Glad you could join us. Do you want to tell us a little about you before we move into a discussion of your topic today.
Steve Wiideman I’d be honored. I’m what you might call a “vet” in terms of search engine marketing and optimization. I’ve worked on multi-million dollar, cross-platform, Sponsored Ads campaigns for several travel and entertainment brands. I’ve written several eBooks on the topic of natural/organic search engine optimization, and played a major roll in the development of a local/maps optimization agency in 2009.
Here are some projects I’m working on this year where you can definitely learn more about me and become a rockstar in search engine optimization:
1. Online Workshops – Creative Search Strategies
http://www.creativesearchstrategies.com/
2. Live Events – come hear me speak about SEO
http://www.seosteve.com/live-events/
3. My eBooks and Products – my newest eBook is FREE
http://www.seosteve.com/seo-products/
4. Here’s a link to my no-email-required SEO Content Writing Guide
http://www.seosteve.com/seo-best-practices/seo-content-writing-guide.html
I also enjoy teaching, training, and networking with peers in my industry, which has resulted in several features in magazines, news sites, and popular Internet marketing blogs.
Marketing That Works Great experience and thank you for your resources. Often, I find more people are reading posts than asking questions. I did post one above in response to your comments about using Groupon and Hotspot. My question was regarding shifts in SEO strategies and success in SEO. I also wanted to understand how SMO is affecting the success of SEO — you see so much today about SMO replacing SEO as people rely on their friend’s suggestions rather than search. Can the two be used synergistically?
Marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Groupon, Yelp, etc will definitely improve your overall visibility online. However, when a Googler searches for “buy Skechers shape-ups”, they definitely aren’t going to be expecting a Facebook page to appear, they are going to be looking for the best price on an ecommerce website to purchase a pair of shoes. ROI maily comes from four fundamental e-business models:
1. Ecommerce
2. Subscription
3. Lead Generation
4. Affiliate
Social media definitely improves the probability of Google blessing your website with PageRank, but is the least important criteria to be focusing on.
Here’s an article I think might help the readers here better understand basic SEO principles.
http://www.creativesearchstrategies.com/seo-tutorials/three-basic-seo-principles.html
The disciplines behind each principle will be shared in our workshop series at www.CreativeSearchStrategies.com. “Like” my Facebook page and I’ll send you a free pass to Monday’s event.http://www.facebook.com/stevewiideman
Make the most from Groupon if you are a business who retains customers after the first visit or have a very high margin. After Groupon’s cut and the 50-70 percent discount offer, you aren’t likely to make much profit; unless of course your customers buy other products when they come in or are likely to return soon.
Hotpot is Google’s answer to a more authentic business rating / business review platform. It’s the Foursquare killer, offering mobile technology never before used for local business marketing.
As a local business, you can benefit from Hotpot by requesting a business kit from Google, slapping a window sticker up and asking your customers to give you authentic reviews of your product/service as frequently as possible. Modify your receipt template to include a 20% incentive on their next visit (good or bad reviews accepted) or put a PC at the front desk or entrance (kiosk maybe).
From an SEO perspective, Groupon will give your website and brand more credibility and popularity (Google PageRank) and Hotpot will move you up on the new merged local search results.
1. Sign up to get your offer promoted on Groupon:
http://www.groupon.com/get_featured
2. Here’s a Jing video I did this morning of me signing up for a new Boost Ad and printing my Hotpot window poster (which you can easily print on window decal paper at Staples).http://screencast.com/t/PBbQrrw5xwN
Hope this helps.
1. What is an omnipresent competitor? And, how do I compete more effectively with him?
It’s that competitor you see appear for every keyword you want to be ranking for in Google. Try searching for any movie DVD in Google. Notice how Amazon shows up for just about any title? I can help you discover how and why they are able to do this.
To compete with a competitor like this, you’ll want to use a number of online audit and research terms. You’ll want to insure that your website can be crawled and cataloged easily by Google, with a page for every keyword theme you would like to appear for. You’ll then want to follow the competitor’s breadcrumbs in terms of earning all the same referencing links they have earned. Tools such ashttp://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ can help you do this. These two tasks are definitely a good start.
2. So, I see SEO is really evolving. How has SMO (social media optimization) affected SEO? How can you use the 2 synergistically?
Social Media Marketing (SMM) has become an indicator to Google in recent months, as described in this video from Google’s own Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhwPC-5Ub4
Optimizing your social presence for maximum visibility within prominent and niche social networking websites (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, some industry social site such as ActiveRain, etc) can help Google determine how visible your brand and website are across the Web. For maximum benefit, use words that describe your product and service (not just your brand name) in page titles, post titles, forum signatures, and profile titles.
I personally use “SEO Expert” as a title within the social networks I use. Where do I rank for that term today? You get the idea.
Richard Miles I review a lot of web strategies for emerging companies. It seems like every web designer these days feels the need to add FB / Twitter / and RSS bugs to the page, even if it isn’t linked to a strategy. do you have a 60-second intro to the strategy?
Marketing That Works I’m not a web designer, but I think the idea is that putting social share buttons on a page doesn’t disturb other elements of your strategy, so why not? I’m also not an SEO person and I rarely understand what Steve says, I just do what he tells me regarding SEO. I’m a SMO person and I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t want to share. Its been a very successful strategy for me — I have a page rank of 3 with no real SEO help (until recently from Steve). In addition to my social media strategy, I do a little keyword stuff — so everything is on page SEO. However, while I try to use keywords I know folks are using in their searches, I’m most concerned with making a contribution with my blogs. I’m not going to destroy my writing or cloud meaning to get a few more keywords into my post.
1. It allows for your visitors and readers to see and engage in ‘real-time’, where a website might be seen as the equivalent to a brochure is some cases.
Example: Because I had a 30 minute wait trying to reach Time Warner, I reached out to them on Twitter with my concern. When the concern is open to the public businesses seem to respond much faster and provide better service:http://twitter.com/TWCableHelp
2. Promotions and offers can be difficult to share for some smaller businesses with many arrogant webmasters to deal with (sorry if I offended anyone here). Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks allow you to broadcast a promotion in 15 seconds from a mobile device. No more waiting 3 days for the webmaster to understand your request and translate it to tech.
Viewer Discretion Advised (The Website’s Down / Sales Guy vs. Web Guy) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_Kfjo3VjU
3. Syndication is made SUPER EASY with plugins such as PingPressFM that literally push your blog posts to dozens of social networks automatically, saving you hours of copy/paste time to share content with your readers across the various social networks. Google will follow the links from those social networks to your content and index your page within 5 minutes in some cases. Fast indexing = a good thing.
Our final question was about so-called social media experts:
1. One of my main issues right now is the plethora of people who say that they know New Media and Social Media marketing but who really do not. Many of my clients have hired so called new media marketing experts and are very disappointed with the results. Just reading a …for Dummies book does not make one an expert.
Last year I fielded 100 resumes for an New Media position and only 1 person out of that batch actually knew what they were doing.
The true new media marketing expert can generate sales leads not just friends and followers.
About Angela Hausman, Ph. D.
العربية
Thanks for spending some time to explain the terminlogy towards the rookies!
Hi there! I just want to give a huge thumbs up for the good data you’ve right
here on this post. I shall be coming again to your blog for extra soon.
Thanks, Steve. I’m so excited about working with you — again. You’re the best.