Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Tony Hsieh Zappos CEO Keynote at PubCon 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:05:26 -0600

by Jason Dowdell

Tony Hsieh, has been the Zappos CEO since 2000 after investing in Zappos with his venture fund. In a former life Tony was the cofounder of Link Exchange, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million. Speaking of acquisitions, the Zappos acquisition by Amazon just closed November 1st and totaled $1.2 billion. Now just to be clear, Tony didn't go into a bunch of web marketing tactics, seo tricks or ppc strategies. His keynote address at PubCon was all about the corporate culture and core values of Zappos. If you think about it, that's a lot like on-site seo architecture since both serve as a foundation for future success.

Here are a few highlights from his keynote address regarding Zappos.

They want to talk to their customers and actually consider it a marketing investment.
Their 800 number is at the top of every page of their site.Oh, by the way, they have about 11 subdomains linked from their www site.
Offer free shipping both ways.
365 day return policy.
75% of their orders are from repeat customers.
They often do surprise upgrades to next day shipping.
You can place an order at midnight and receive your shoes by 8am the following day.
Their number one priority is company culture (no surprise there for SEG readers).
They offer tours of their headquarters in Las Vegas and those tours are open to the public. You won't be escorted by a PR liason but rather by a Zappos employee and after the tour you're escorted to the lunch room and allowed to roam around and check out the company. Talk about trust, wow! Oh yeah, if you fly in for a tour of Zappos, they'll shuttle you to their headquarters via the Zappos shuttle, not too shabby.

Some interesting sites to learn more about Zappos are Zappos Life, Zappos Tv and Zappos Insights (their goal was to scale their on-site tours to registered members in order to open their culture to more corporations). I also find it interesting that Zappos.com links to about 30 different social media sites including Twitter and AddThis. My favorite quote from Tony's speech was "Customer service is not a department, its the entire company". I think that sums up his speech quite well.

Check out our small business news site.

Search Marketing Is Easier Than You Think

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:56:43 -0600

by Mike Moran

Not long ago, I spoke to a group of local chemical manufacturers on Internet marketing. (You can download my slides on "How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules.") After the talk, I sat next to an veteran business owner at dinner, someone who clearly appreciated the talk but also felt a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of Internet marketing, especially search marketing. I was happy to put him a little at ease, because he really knows a lot more than he thought he did.

He told me that he is running his business long after he expected to retire, not because he needs the money, but because he wants to pass his business along to his daughter so that she will have a solid paycheck. But he also told me that he feels out of touch with how marketing is done today. He knows how to develop a product that customers want and he knows how to spin his Rolodex to sell it, but he doesn't really understand marketing, especially Internet marketing.

Image by cbcastro via Flickr

He said that his daughter is more computer-savvy than he is, and that she is the person who works their Web site, but he doesn't really know how to help her. I was happy to tell him what he needed to know, which is that he has forgotten more about his business than most people will ever know, and that all he needs to do is to share it.

He is an expert on his products. He knows exactly what customer problems they solve. And, from years of sales, he knows exactly how to persuade a customer to buy.

That's how he can help his daughter. He needs to write down (or dictate) his thoughts to be posted on the site. He could do a few write-ups posted as Web pages, or start a regular blog, even if someone else has to post it.

He has plenty to say:

What customers need. He can tell stories collected over the years of problems customers have and how they were solved.
How the products work. He can describe in great deal the differences between one product and another, especially in terms of how it helps the customer.
Specialty uses for the products. He can tell stories describing the most unusual uses for his products, to help customers think more broadly about what they do.

Before you know it, you can have a few articles every week and begin attracting search traffic. See, I just explained the basics of search marketing without anything technical—because search marketing is easier than you think, at least when you are an expert in what you do.

Check out our small business news site.

Amygdala hijacking - Don't let it happen to you.

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:40:33 -0600

by Sage Lewis

This is unfortunately how we all often respond to modern day problems and issues. Here are some tips on stopping this cycle from reoccurring.

Check out our small business news site.

Neocortex - You At Your Best

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:25:29 -0600

by Sage Lewis

The neocortex is the newest part of your brain. "The cells in the neocortex are arranged in six layers, within which different regions permit vision, hearing, touch, the sense of balance, movement, emotional responses and every other feat of cognition."

This part of your brain is the real you. This is the part of the brain that will set you free.

Check out our small business news site.

A Reptile Is Controlling You

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:44:49 -0600

by Sage Lewis

I want to talk about how fear is being processed in your brain and how it's all out of whack with modern day society.

Check out our small business news site.

Google Analytics Goals

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:34:08 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Now you get 20 of them! This is yet another great improvement for a great tool.

Check out our small business news site.

Going Down The Long Tail of Local Search

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:53:40 -0600

by Jeff Howard

As the growth of local search continues, companies who serve large regions by remote service, warehouses, or otherwise should not feel disadvantaged from an obscure physical address. These companies can naturally optimize across a region by discovering how searches for niche areas occur within a larger region. Because so many searches are now localized a long tail of local phrases are emerging within major metropolitan areas. By drilling down for the names of towns, neighborhoods, municipalities, counties, and zip codes that receive search volume businesses serving larger regions can take the long tail approach to incremental increases in local search traffic.

Take for example Jacksonville FL, the largest city in the U.S. by definition of land area. Jacksonville has many micro regions and some very far apart from one another. Considering its likely people in such a large region may search not just by "Jacksonville," but more so by their immediate area, for a business operating across Jacksonville the greater number of long tail localized searches equals more opportunities to create a top ranking and boost website traffic.

Regional Keyword Research

The trick is to identify how many towns, zip codes, townships, counties, and so on get a high volume of search traffic throughout a region. Then, match these phrases with the ones used to describe a company's services. Here are a few tips for identifying niche regions:

Use Wikipedia to find out what counties are within Jacksonville.
Search the county names on Wikipedia to discover additional towns, and municipalities.
Run a search on Google for "Jacksonville Zip Codes."
Run a search for "Jacksonville" on any map website and slowly zoom in, noting the names of towns.
For state wide optimization search "List of Cities Florida" on Wikipedia.

The result of these steps should deliver a long list of notable areas within a region. The next step is to plug that list into a keyword research tool, and find out what areas are searched the most.

Adapting to a SEM Campaign

The final step is to integrate the smaller region names into your search marketing campaign. This could be done either with a paid search campaign, or by building out landing pages well optimized for the regional terms like, "Neptune Beach Home Theater Installation."

It's probably best to first beta test the tactic for a few areas and then measures the effectiveness. As for landing pages, the content could basically describe a company's availability in the area, or go into more detail possibly including some localized customer reviews, pictures, and local news as it relates to products and services offered.

Conclusions

Super niche localized traffic doesn't just apply to small businesses servicing small areas. If you're a company serving larger regions local seo can be a means to improve sales in a specific neighborhood, building up website traffic incrementally across multiple areas.

Check out our small business news site.

The Set-It-But-Don't-Forget-It SEO Strategy

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:50:44 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Many people think that SEO is a set-it and forget it endeavor. The theory is that once you optimize the site then there really isn't much more to do after that. This is something that many penny pinchers like to espouse so they can try to "save money". Others just don't like the idea that online marketing is a never ending process. We like to have goals and want to see things through a conclusion.

There are certain SEO strategies that are certainly goal oriented where you can get to a definitive end-point, but SEO as a whole is a constant ongoing process. Just like brushing your teeth, you do it ever day so you can keep yourself out from under the dentist's drill and not walk around with obvious stank breath.

But SEO also isn't about changing things for the sake of change. We don't brush our teeth just for the heck of it. Those who think that you always have to be changing your content, titles, and pages in order to keep it "fresh" for the search engines are pursuing a pot of gold on the other side of a rainbow. The truth about SEO is somewhere in between these two elementary schools of thought.

Do it once but do it right

There are elements of SEO that you really only have to do once, if you do them right the first time. When we take on a new client these are the changes we try to focus on first.

Website Architecture

The architecture of a website covers many things, far to much to go into here. The architecture basically boils down the the construction of the site and making sure that the search engines are able to spider and index all your pages properly. This is crucial. If the search engines come to your site and can't get access to the pages that need to be indexed then you simply won't be in a position to get good rankings.

Keyword Friendly site

Making your site keyword friendly really goes along with the site architecture as much of it is performed at the same time. But beyond the construction of the site you have to make sure you go through and strategically focus on keywords when developing your titles, description meta tags and your content. Many sites we review don't have a lot of text on pages and use duplicates titles and descriptions. These need to be customized and keyword focused for each individual page.

Making your site keyword friendly is a one-time process that can go quickly, depending on the size of your site. This is just the primer before you paint. Once you start doing hard-core optimization and keyword focusing a lot of the work you've done in this keyword friendly stage will be re-edited. The goal here is to make your site as keyword friendly as quickly as possible then go back and fine tune it later.

Internal linking

Internal linking of your site goes beyond having a good navigation structure. Here we want to focus on linking contextually from page to page. Look for opportunities in each page to link out to other pages, sections, products or tutorials on your site.

If you mention something found elsewhere on your site, link to it. If you can add a mention to something the readers of one page will find useful, do it and link it. The link text should be keyword rich. Rather than using "click here," use your keywords and calls to action in your link text. Go page by page taking advantage of every opportunity, provided it enhances the visitor's experience rather than detracts from it.

Do it, do it right, revisit it again

Most things that you change while optimizing your site have to be revisited on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to see how they are affecting "performance" of the site.

Title and description meta tags

There is no such thing as a perfect title or description meta tag... unless it puts you in that perfect spot of first page ranking and gets you maximum click throughs. You have to start somewhere so start with strong keyword rich titles and description tags. Keep in mind that there is more to these than just getting search engine rankings.

Anybody can build a "keyword rich" tag but not everybody can do so while making it compelling. The title and description both show up in the search results which means they both have to be compelling enough to entice the visitor to click through to your site. If they don't then you've got some pretty useless top search engine rankings.

Content

Once you've put together some great keyword rich content for each of your pages, you want to revisit that content to see how it's performing. The titles and descriptions may not be enough to get you top rankings so some minor adjustments may have to be made to your content. It never hurts to revisit your content to see if changes can be made to your headings or paragraphs to use more (or fewer) keywords.

Be sure not to stuff your content with keywords, which can tend to happen over time with repeated "tweaks." Sometimes you don't even need to add keywords but other words that are similar or often used in context with the phrase you are targeting. Either way, only do what makes sense when read from a visitor perspective.

Usability

Making your site more user friendly is a never ending process of implementing changes, reviewing how those changes affected your conversion rates, then tweaking again in order to improve conversions further. Each change will bring varying degrees of success, and often times you have to make several steps backward to make a big step forward.

When implementing and testing usability changes, focus on one at a time or a few that you can accurately measure in order to know which change had what impact. If you're not measuring then you're not doing it right. Some usability changes seem like a good idea but unless you measure you really don't know if it's working.

Do it right and keep doing it again

Keyword research

Keyword research is often done at the very beginning of the optimization campaign, but it is a never ending process. Keywords change. People's search patterns change. Phrases that were once popular have since fallen out of style. It's important that you refresh your research on a regular basis.

You also need to always be on the lookout for new terms to target that can bring in interested people. These may not be the "money" keywords but you can find phrases that people are using to find information, then provide that information to them. It may not lead to immediate sales, but it can lead to a loyal following that will eventually turn into loyal customers.

Link building / social media

There is never an end to getting new links. Many sites can coast for a while on their own popularity or lack of competition, but sooner or later a concerted effort will have to be made to bring in fresh links to your site in order to remain competitive. Everything from traditional link building to social media marketing or buying links should be on the table, but only move forward with the strategy, or combination of strategies, that will most benefit you and your audience.

And once you get links, you need to go get more. Budget this into your marketing campaign to ensure that you can have a slow, steady and consistent build with links. That's the best way to stay ahead of the competition.

New content development

Keyword research ultimately leads to new content development. As you find new phrases, questions asked, information being sought after, this opens up limitless opportunities to provide the information that people are looking for. New articles, tips, products, and resources can be produced simply by following the keyword trail.

As new pages are developed so do new opportunities to revisit some of the other things you've done such as internal linking. With each new bit of content you can review your site looking for ways to link your visitors to this valuable piece of information. Of course, no new tip or tutorial is complete without links back to your main information, products or services as well!

Set-it-and-forget-it SEO is a recipe for short-term success. Some sites can coast quite a while off the initial SEO but sooner or later you're gonna have to start revisiting what's been done, finding new keywords, building out new content, and getting more links.

After spending the money to invest in SEO, it rarely benefits you to lose the momentum you've built. Unfortunately, SEO is a marketing investment that you always have to feed. But along with that comes new and continued success for a long time to come.

Check out our small business news site.

Web Analytics is the Foundation of Driving Strategy

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:25:35 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

In this video yours truly (Manoj Jasra) discusses how it's important to incorporate analytics into your marketing and website strategy from the very beginning and how you can use the stats from your websites to drive decisions which will have a direct impact on your organization.

I am part of the 4 man roster at the Social Media Innovation Summit happening in Calgary on November 12th. This is an event presented by West17Media which is aimed at addressing high-level information planning, a key concern which many other conferences neglect.

Check out our small business news site.

Multiply Marketing Effectiveness Despite Division of Labor

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:23:34 -0600

by Mike Moran

Most people are familiar with the term "division of labor," which describes the specialization that companies adopt to promote efficiency. The assembly line is one of the best examples of the efficiency gains that division of labor provides. In a tiny company, such as a one-person firm, there is no division of labor, but as soon as you start to grow, even a little bit, you start dicing up jobs in the name of efficiency. The problem, from a marketing point of view, is that efficient doesn't equal effective. Division of labor can harm your marketing effectiveness and you must take pains to overcome this natural ineffective state.

All this was brought to mind by a recent bus ride, when the person next to me described how he is constantly working with clients to deliver the service the firm is known for, but hardly ever knows what to say to them to get them to buy more services. He realized it was a problem only after having a chance lunch with a friend at the company who is in sales, who had the opposite lament--the salesman couldn't get to see any of the decision makers that my seat mate rubs elbows with daily.

Image via Wikipedia

Division of labor is the culprit here. Certainly it is more efficient for one person to specialize in sales and another to specialize in client service, but it doesn't make marketing more effective, as that bus rider attested. And, as problematic as division of labor might be for traditional marketing and sales, it's even more difficult for Internet marketing, and social media in particular.

You see, with Internet marketing, the experts need to be part of marketing. That client-facing services person understands the problems being solved and how well they are solved. That might make a good blog entry, or tweet, or video interview. The sales person won't ever be able to communicate as effectively as the expert.

The problem is that the expert doesn't always understand the client problems, where the sales person does. So, in businesses that rely on product development, the engineers know a lot about the technology but little about the clients, with the sales people just the opposite. Effective marketing communications relies on a merger of both.

So, ask yourself what you are doing to foster communications within your own team. Are you making sure that relationships form between the people who have key expertise that must be shared? And are you ensuring that those (now) more well-rounded experts are blogging, tweeting, and doing videos that show off that expertise? Only by breaking down the divisions of labor will marketing effectiveness emerge from the specialties of efficiency.

Check out our small business news site.

Outfox, Outsmart and Outgrow Your Big-Business Competition

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:31:53 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

I believe that one of the key things that keep small businesses small is that the owners maintain a small business mindset. For many, being small is just fine. They don't ever want to be anything more than a mom and pop operation. But others dream big and want to see big goal accomplished but continue to struggle to "make it big." They can't ever seem to get over that hump that propels them out of small-time territory.

If you don't want to be a mom and pop operation, or you want to be more than the small business you are, then it's time to start thinking not like the small business you are but like the bigger business you want to be.

The first place to start is with your online marketing campaigns.

With a few exceptions, online marketing has leveled the playing field significantly for the small business. However, as more companies make the move into online marketing the playing field is becoming slanted again. Bigger companies with larger budgets, better recognized name brands, and a larger team of people to manage multiple online marketing campaigns are gaining an advantage. It's becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to make headway into competitive fields against this onslaught.

But that's not to say it can't be done. There are still plenty of opportunities for small businesses to succeed, even against well-financed competitors. But to do so it requires some clever thinking and swift moving; two things which big businesses are generally not too good at.

Think smarter than a big business

Online Marketing and SEO success is not always about achieving number one rankings. Over the years I've learned to quickly determine which of those businesses that come to us are serious about their success. Those who "want to be #1" are looking for a quick fix. Those that want to build visibility and improve conversions and sales are looking at the bigger picture. Rankings are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Are #1 rankings still possible? Sure. Are they wise? Depends on the phrase, the targeted traffic it draws, the conversion rates it achieves, and the amount of time and money it takes to get it there. There are a lot of great #1 rankings that can be achieved that will do wonders for your company, yet many business owners focus on getting #1 rankings for the keywords that don't give them a good return on their investment.

Even if you already own the top positions, so long as you have the small business mindset you're going to find yourself disappointed. You can only hang on to the tops spots so long with a budget of a few thousand a year, when some upstart comes along and throws tens of thousands of dollars a month at their online marketing campaigns. Enjoy the success while you can, but don't expect to hold onto that forever. Rankings change.

Success is always relative. A small business does not have to spend $10,000 per month in order to do well online. Most small businesses, even if they had such a budget, are not set up to handle the same kind of success as large businesses. You have to grow into that. But every small business owner investing in online marketing needs to keep their expectations in line with what can be done and what kind of success they can handle. Budget doesn't always make or break success, but it does play a role in it. The key is to find the areas where your budget will see the most return.

Organize time like a big business

As a small business owner, you need to determine how your own time is best spent. Do you have time to do it all yourself? Or is it time to think outside the small business box and hire someone to handle certain jobs that you don't need to be doing?

Most small businesses hire help as needed but when it comes to their online marketing they want to "save money" by doing it on their own. Why is the marketing any different from the other jobs you hire for? Would you try to do everything yourself? And if you did, would you be able to grow your business as you want? The answer is likely "no."

Part of thinking like a bigger business is being willing to not do everything yourself and put it in the hands of those who can really bring you the most success. Let skilled people do the jobs they are good at so you can focus on the job you're good at.

Move more swiftly than a big business

While the small business can't always hire everybody it wants for every job there is, they do have one advantage over the big business that can work in their favor. That advantage is adaptability. Big businesses often move too slow, but as a small business you have the luxury of being able to adapt and move fast.

You can have a big business mindset but take advantage of your small business position. Moving swiftly into new areas of marketing can reap huge rewards as you invest in areas your competition is overspending and underperforming, without having to go through layers of approval and red tape.

This is where outside consulting can come in handy. Having someone take a strategic look at your online marketing efforts and help you identify your own and your competitor's weaknesses can really open up your eyes to new opportunities. Of course, you then have to be willing to do what it takes to invest in those opportunities.

Small businesses have to stop letting the small business mindset keep them from performing big. You don't have to be a big business to win in the online marketing game, but you do need to get out of the mom and pop rut.

Be willing to take risks, but do so wisely and well-informed. And like big businesses, be willing to fail a little here and there if it teaches you how to succeed bigger later. You don't have to spend like a big business, but you won't go far so long as you keep thinking like a small business.

Check out our small business news site.

SEO Sessions from SES Chicago

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:34:45 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

SES Chicago is a little over a month away and will feature a very well respected online marketing veteran, Rand Fishkin. Rand is the CEO of SEO Moz and is a regular speaker in the international conference circuit. Earlier this week I caught up with Rand to get his insight on his sessions at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, read our chat below:

[Manoj]: Tell our audience a little bit about the sessions you'll be participating in at SES Chicago and why attendees should drop by.

[Rand Fishkin]: I'll be involved in two sessions - PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle and Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?

I think both of these touch on relatively sensitive issues in the field of search marketing and the exchanges will contain a lot of substance and style between the panelists. The value of the debate should come in the form of the data presented and the arguments employed. I suspect that many practitioners face these same challenges in their day-to-day roles with clients and internal management, and can find a handful of good takeaways to help support their perspectives.

[Manoj]: Is SEO vs. PPC a cut and dry decision? - it's really about your business and what your analytics tells you, correct?

[Rand Fishkin]: Yeah - definitely. PPC is so easy to get started with and simple to track that if you're earning a positive ROI, there's no reason not to make the investment. The only drawback is when PPC optimization takes up a great deal of time and attention that could be focused elsewhere. I've seen organizations that have multiple people devoted to PPC management on a full time basis, and if they could just take a couple weeks of their time and put them towards SEO, they'd likely generate massive amounts more traffic with an even higher positive return. SEO is an investment, but it's almost always worthwhile.

[Manoj]: Are black hat tactics still employed by individuals/organizations. If so, can you give us some examples?

[Rand Fishkin]: Certainly it is, but no I can't share examples :-) There's a small but vocal minority in the SEO field who feels it is far more immoral to reveal those employing black hat tactics than to perform spam, so let's talk in generalities instead. There are plenty of firms, large and small, who engage in link buying, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link injection, etc. In my opinion, the vast majority of these are doing nothing illegal, immoral, unethical or wrong, they're simply operating outside the boundaries of what the search engines recommend. Although we don't use these tactics at SEOmoz and don't recommend them to our clients, I see no problem with those who choose a different path, so long as they're honest with themselves about the risks and open with their clients/mangagers. Personally, I just feel that there's (almost) always a better white hat solution to any problem you're trying to solve with black hat SEO (exceptions might be in highly aggressive fields like gaming, porn & pharmaceuticals).

[Manoj]: If you were to pinpont a couple SEO tactics which are more important to consider now vs. a few years ago - what would they be?

[Rand Fishkin]: There's quite a number of tactics that have gained in prominence and value over the last few years, some of which hardly existed in the early days of Google SEO. A few that fit that category include creation and optimization of XML sitemaps, canonicalization of duplicate URLs, social media marketing via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), viral content creation and promotion via social media, social media profile adoption/linkbuilding and optimization for popular search verticals like Google Local/Maps and Google News. A few of these have been around as long as 5-6 years, but many are new (or gaining prominence) even in the last 2-3.

[Manoj]: In a scenario where you are given 25K to spend for a client who has a brand new business/website, how would you spend it (in regards to Online Marketing)?

[Rand Fishkin]: I'd probably recommend they engage with a talented in-house marketer for 4-6 months (depending on their rate). Getting someone internal working full time on projects, having responsibility to the bottom line and being able to see the company metrics with a incented stake is, in my opinion, the best way to go. As for their tasks, I'd go in this order:

Content quality and value on the website (this could include things like a blog or UGC, but may just means top notch editorial content)
Web analytics - ensure that a good system for recording progress and traffic is installed on every page of the site
Conversion rate optimization and setup of a testing platform (assuming it's a transactional-focused site)
SEO - confirm that all content is crawlable, that important keywords are targeted properly and that all best practices are followed (XML Sitemaps, good internal linking, page structure, etc.)
Viral Marketing - look at opportunities to help draw large quantities of traffic for branding/awareness of the site as well as attract links
Email Marketing - engage with the audience through at least an email newsletter and possibly more personalized/direct kinds of email marketing

After those, I might look into link building, paid search, display ads and other channels in tests, but those would be the first steps I'd recommend.

Check out our small business news site.

More "Goals" for Google Analytics

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:13:13 -0600

by Paul Jahn

A few days ago in the Twittersphere, it's been mentioned that Google Analytics is now starting to add the number of "goals" to 20 (four groups of five), up from four only. For some, this may not be a big deal. For others, it's just fantastic and the possibilities are almost endless.

For many companies, a couple goals fit just fine. If you're generating leads, you may have goals set up for both a long and short form for people to fill out, giving you information about their needs. That's it.

What if you want to get more granular? Maybe you have a new service or product and want to set goals on how many users get to these pages. You can test these goals for the number of pages you want people to visit or even how long you want users on your site.

Or, if you're an e-commerce site 20 goals still may not be enough. That's probably a different discussion.

Let's take a look. Here's how part of your goals page may look now.

As noted above, the 20 goals are for four groups of five. This still allows you to get creative. Here's a small addition. It's not just about a URL destination.

Time on Site and Pages/Visit are just a couple tools you may want to play around with for measuring different site engagement goals.

If you want to measure engagement by "time on site", you can easily do so down to the second.

Same goes for the number of pages per visit.

As always, Google provides an easy-to-understand YouTube video.

Any of you test these new possibilities yet? More robust tools out there that already have this and more, but the popularity of Google Analytics along with its price (free) makes this new for many.

Check out our small business news site.

How Small Businesses Can Brand Themselves On the Cheap Online

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:52:15 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

People often associate branding with money. Lots and lots of money. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign you might see from companies like Target, you most certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But small business owners don't have that kind of money to brand themselves in similar fashion. Fortunately, there are other ways to brand your small business online.

From my examples in my post Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses, you might conclude that a full-scale SEO or PPC campaign is the only way to brand yourself online. SEO can play a role in branding, but you can engage it strategically so you're spending less time and less money while still building brand recognition.

What are you branding?

First you need to know what it is you are branding. Is it your company name? Your products? Your services? Your personal name or online handle? What is it that you want people to remember?

If you're a blogger your name is definitely important. So is your blog name. If you're a business then your business name will be important, as might be your products if they are exclusively yours. The point is, before you start spending money to brand yourself you first need to determine what you have that needs to be branded. Now you have your starting place.

How to use SEO for branding

SEO is a great way to brand your business, products, services or blog. Since you're not going after high-volume keywords, the cost of using SEO for branding is relatively minimal. The idea is to make sure you come to the top of the results when someone searches for whatever it is you're trying to brand. The goal here is to make sure your brand is prominent in the results so you begin to build that brand-name recognition.

The easiest way to do this kind of branding is to simply edit your title tags to include your brand name. If it's your company name, then put your company name first and foremost in your title tag. If you're branding own name, put that there. Most SEOs will tell you not to put your business name in the front of your title tag. If you're targeting non-branded keyword searches I fully agree. However if your focus is on building brand name recognition, then you'll have to sacrifice some keyword real estate for your brand.

The goal here is to make sure people see your company name, or whatever it is you're branding, whenever your site comes up in the search result. This will also help ensure that when someone does a search for your branded name they'll find you up top. It will still be important to optimize your site for non-branded keywords, however. The more keywords you rank on the first page for they more opportunities you have to build brand name recognition.

Look for opportunities to optimize for your pages for some of the long-tail keyword phrases. Being ranked on those often generates more highly targeted visitors so branding to that audience is even better.

How to use PPC for branding

Another thing you can do to brand yourself is to buy cheap ads through Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can do this for your name, products or even specific keyword searches. When going this route you're not competing for top spot, or even for a lot of clicks. Instead, you're looking to appear on a search result page where you'll be seen for as little money as possible. Don't compete. Find keywords that have low click cost or more expensive keywords where you can rank further down the page. Again, the point here is just simply to get eyeballs to fall on your ad--and your brand name--not necessarily to get the searcher to click on your ad (though that's never a bad thing.)

PPC ads are a great way to get visibility for incorrect or alternative spellings of your brand. Bidding on most variations of your brand name will cost you next to nothing on a per-click bases. You can also run your ads on dozens, or even hundreds, of low search volume keywords. These will get very little traffic, and therefore cost very little, but it gives you yet another opportunity to get your name in front of searchers eyeballs. Lots of little exposures often dwarf the benefit of a few big exposures.

I'm fully convinced that there isn't a company in the world, regardless of size, that shouldn't be working on branding itself in some way or another. Branding for your web site or company name is usually the easiest thing to do as most web sites inherently come to the top of the results for those types of searches. But taking it a bit further, expanding your reach can be significantly rewarding, even allowing you to be a little brand in a big commercial pond.

Check out our small business news site.

GeoCities is Gone

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:29:31 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Why do people do these things? Shutting down all of GeoCities. Really? What did poor little GeoCities ever do to you?

Check out our small business news site.