If you’re well read on the basics of SEO and SMO then you’ve heard that “good content” and “lots of it” are key in making your online presence pop. This is very true but disparities do exist which you should consider.
I recently came across an article in the Spring issue of Search Marketing Standard which reminded me of the real-world consequences of poor link equity management.
With the astonishing popularity of sites like Amazon and MySpace many lesser known online retailers are taking notice of the elemental differences. Allowing for customer comments, photos, and more importantly reviews is quickly becoming a requisite feature of any e-commerce business and it’s a move that’s paying off! Studies show that customer reviews are around 80% positive and that 63% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a site featuring reviews and other forms of feedback.
These days search engine marketing firms (or SEMs) offering everything from SEO and Social Media Optimization to Branding and Article Syndication are absolutely everywhere. While a good percentage of the industry uses what is affectionately known as White Hat marketing strategies you should also be aware that there are many out there with very questionable marketing practices.
Social Media Optimization (aka: SMO) is a fairly new concept defined by Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. The concept of Social Media Optimization makes perfect sense with the emergence of Web 2.0 sites like myspace, digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon and youtube; and essentially creates additional distribution channels for your web content. The result can mean omnipresence on the Internet.
In the world of online marketing the buzz words blog, spend, viral, and social media abound but with few exceptions there is a very important word missing … analysis. What’s the point of developing online advertisement programs, publishing articles, optimizing your meta tags, and increasing your inbound links if you can’t accurately and intelligently track the effectiveness of all your efforts?
Press Release Optimization and Distribution is an effective marketing strategy that has the potential to generate sales, leads, online/offline publicity, and increase the brand awareness for your product or service. Additionally, a well written press release that appeals to the media’s thirst for a good story and that is properly optimized with keywords that you want to rank for can naturally increase your back links (one way links); a search engine optimization tactic that is essential to rank high in the search engines.
Article syndication is not about writing a substandard article, paying a distribution service to spam several hundred article directories; and then driving the user to a horrible customer experience; usually a poorly designed website bombarded with Google Adsense.
So you’ve taken the leap and started your own business. Congratulations, you’ve done what most will never do … taken a risk in pursuit of a dream! You already know that starting a new business is an extremely daunting task with a myriad of things to accomplish.
What? Ok, sure the title is a bit misleading but there’s a simple yet important lesson to learn about branding your business. Ask yourself, how many times have you been browsing the net and you come across an unbelievably horrible website? The colors are off, the copywriting is bad, and the graphics look like they were created by a 3rd grader. Many times the product or service is desirable but there is something in your mind that says FIND IT SOMEWHERE ELSE.
