YouTube Marketing for Business Webinar

On this webinar, learn how YouTube can expand your online presence and position you as the expert in your field.

Popular myths about YouTube will be dispelled and it will become clear to you how YouTube can work as a valuable business tool.

Register now for an upcoming webinar

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Details from Search Engine Land about each update are here:

January 2012 - Panda 3.2 Update

February 2012- Panda 3.3 Update 

March 2012 - Panda 3.4 Update

April 2012 - Panda 3.5 Update

April 2012 - Penguin Update

Many sites have had their traffic decrease significantly in the past two months while others have not had seen any impact or have seen an increase in traffic.

When you look at what each of these updates reward and penalize, it’s the types of behavior one would expect to see or not see on a website.

Panda has been all about relevant, quality content and site speed and filtering out sites that contain thin content or overwhelming concentration of ad space.  Penguin is all about improving the filter to detect nefarious SEO tactics like keyword stuffing, link schemes, cloaking, and duplicate content.

So what does this mean for you when optimizing your website (or a client’s website)?

Optimize for the Long Haul

Remember, SEO, one tactic used in inbound marketing, is a marathon and not a sprint.  If your business needs a quick injection of visibility, then consider some form of online advertising.  Make sure the economics truly make sense when you look at cost per click and target audience volume and that you can sustain the campaign long enough to be effective.

The people behind the Google algorithms are just people.  They sit and decide what qualifies as the most relevant search results, then they go implement their decisions in code.  With today’s technologies, the decisions the engineers make to determine what qualifies as relevant search results can be more closely replicated by computer algorithms and that’s how the Google algorithm improves.

With a long-term mindset, keep adding relevant content to your website and attracting healthy inbound links, and you won’t have to worry about future changes to the Google algorithm.

Image by Collin Harvey

Have your sites been affecting by the recent Google updates, and what are you doing about it?

Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan.  You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online. If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity. Download the free Inbound Marketing Plan template now

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Here are 3 essential ingredients you need to have email help grow your business.

A List

The foundation of successful email marketing is the list and to grow a list, you need a plan.  You can use your inbound marketing plan as the basis where you have already identified your ideal clients and compelling offers.

These compelling offers are the magnets that are going to convert your website visitors to leads to help you acquire email addresses from potential buyers and grow your list.

An Editorial Calendar

Before building your list, think about what useful content you want to send to your list members to help establish yourself or your company as an authority in your field and to build a relationship.  Remember, as a marketer, it’s still your job to get your leads to know, like, and trust you.  An email list is not an open invitation to send out offers and promote your products, but rather an opportunity to educate and inform.

Here are examples of the types of content your editorial calendar should map that you send to your list:

• Links to your new blog postings
• Links to relevant articles
• Relevant client anecdotes
• Invitations to webinars
• Updates about upcoming events

A Product Pipeline

As you email your leads and help them transition to prospects, you need to make sure you have something for them to buy from you.  These “products” can range anywhere from a call with a account executive to a training course to a physical product to a full-on service engagement.  They’re the next level of “opt-in” for your list members.

It depends on your business, but most buyers are not going to make high ticket purchases right off your email list.  They’ll need to purchase something low risk first (i.e. low cost, high value items) to see if what you’re offering is what is going to solve their problem.

Put these three components into action, and you will be able to establish a mutual relationship with your list that can help both you and your list members grow.

Image by Esther Gibbons

Have you been able to successfully use email to grow your business?

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Fortunately, for inbound marketing practitioners, this will help their site visibility increase as quality content is a core tenet of a successful inbound marketing strategy.   While the importance of fresh, original content has increased, let’s not forget the other factors Google uses to determine where a website appears in the search results.

3 Techniques for Off Page Optimization

In addition to your website content, which helps Google determine the relevancy of your site for a particular keyword phrase, off page factors such as number of inbound links and number of social shares help determine the authority of your website which figures significantly in where your website ranks on Google for a specific keyword phrase.  The Panda updates have really reinforced the importance of quality content from sites that link to yours.

Here are several off page optimization tactics you can employ on an ongoing basis to ensure you’re helping Google understand how to best rank your website:

1) Distribute blog postings through social bookmarking sites and social networks

Distributing your blog postings to social bookmarking sites and social networks helps to get your content in front of active audiences and helps with building inbound links.  Content that is liked, commented on, or re-posted across various social sites is becoming more visible on Google as this form of social proof is another way for Google to determine which content should be ranked higher.

2) Identify relevant blogs and ask them to allow you to publish a guest blog posting

While this process is the most time consuming and labor intensive, it also yields the greatest benefit in terms of acquiring backlinks from highly relevant sources and giving you full control over how any inbound links are created since you’re writing the guest blog post.

3) Distribute your content online in videos

Video is an increasingly popular form of content consumption online, and the video sharing sites are great ways to distribute your message and acquire links back to your website.  Post your videos to reputable video sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo and give Google another way to find you online.

These are just a few examples of how to perform off page optimization for your website and how you can increase the number of inbound links.

Photo Credit: Raphaël Labbé via Compfight

Are there other off page optimization techniques that have worked well for you?

Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan.  You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online. If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity. Download the free Inbound Marketing Plan template now

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This project was based on Prestashop’s open source ecommerce platform, and Accelerated Online created a complete set of custom designs and templates for the website.  Many Prestashop sites have the standard 3 column ecommerce look that you see frequently on technology product sites.  The team at Object Mythology wanted a totally unique look, and we wanted to use Prestashop to provide the backend ecommerce capabilities.

After familiarizing ourselves with the Prestashop framework, we created and launched the Object Mythology site in record time.  Since the launch, we’ve regularly updated the homepage to feature seasonal promotions and new initiatives by the company.  The team at Object Mythology is always working on new ways to package and present their products online.

Here’s to being a finalist, and better luck in the next competition!

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This is a great feature for you to help you distribute any valuable reports or presentations you’ve created that can help people better understand why you’re the authority in your area of expertise.

Watch this video for a step-by-step tutorial to learn about sharing files on your LinkedIn profile.

Watch Now!

What do you think about using Box.net to share documents on LinkedIn?

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My particular take on Google+ is the value it provides to search results by taking social indicators into consideration.  Over time, I think this will produce more relevant search results as your sphere of influence will have a direct impact on the types of search results you see.  Google+ will certainly take word-of-mouth recommendations to the next level.

Here’s how you can create your own Google+ page for your company.

Do you think Google+ can be useful for your company?

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What do you think about the changes coming to Facebook pages?  Share your comments below.

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• Formatted content
• Links
• Bulleted list
• Sub-heading
• Image
• Optimized page title
• Optimized meta description
• Category
• Tags

By following the steps outlined in this video, you will be able to produce a blog posting that is easy for people to read and will be highly visible in the search engines.

Watch Now!

What are other ways you optimize your blog postings?

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If we end up working together, I make sure that the end goal is a website optimized for search and inbound marketing.  The other perspectives are not going to help us much to build lists and create buyers.

Here are the things I look for on the website — specifically, for local business websites:

1. Keyword-rich domain name
2. Keyword-rich URLs
3. Unique title, meta description, and page headings
4. Keyword-rich content
5. Standard website design
1. Logo in upper logo
2. Prominent phone number in upper right
3. Horizontal navigation with sub-menu drop-downs
4. 2 or 3 column layout
5. Business address and phone number in footer
6. Current copyright date in footer
6. Location-specific images
7. Images with keyword optimized filenames and alt tags
8. Homepage video
9. Sitemap XML
10. Sitemap page
11. Contact Us page including:
1. Contact form
2. Business address
3. Business phone number
4. Hours
5. Google Map
6. Link to Get Directions
12. Privacy policy page
13. Customer testimonials page
14. About page with photo/video of business owner
15. Unique pages for each product / service offering
16. Interlinking between pages within content or a sidebar
17. Quick contact form in sidebar
18. Lead capture process
1. Compelling offers
2. Call to action buttons
3. Landing pages
19. Blog and frequency of updates
20. Social sharing buttons (Tweet, Like, +1)

Many local business owners don’t have all of these capabilities, and they are good candidates for a tune-up.  It’s important to have a solid foundation before beginning any online marketing activity so it’s easy for website visitors to take action and proceed to the next step whether it’s picking up the phone and making an appointment, submitting their email address to access a free guide, or requesting a quote.

Image by Sue Waters

What are some other things a local business website needs to have to generate leads online?

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