Put Some Personality Into Your SEO

Search engine optimization is all about creating targeted streams of inbound traffic coming to your website on a daily basis. A dull SEO campaign really doesn’t help anybody. The user who might bump into that piece of marketing won’t find it useful and the search engines just get cluttered with more material that just gets [...]

Search engine optimization is all about creating targeted streams of inbound traffic coming to your website on a daily basis. A dull SEO campaign really doesn’t help anybody. The user who might bump into that piece of marketing won’t find it useful and the search engines just get cluttered with more material that just gets in the way of things. With the search engines evolving and changing it is important for your efforts to really have some sort of personality applied to them.

Let’s take a look at some of the areas you can give your online marketing efforts a kick start to get people wanting to click on your website:

Online PR: Instead of just sending out a press release to get more links why not trying to send it out to get great links and fantastic press. If you send out dull pr you might notice that there are some blogs that pick up anything just to build content. That is not going to help you or your business. If you want a major online publication to pick up your pr topic you will have to give that pr topic a bit more flavor. Try announcing a new client that might be larger than normal if they allow for their name to be used. Maybe you have formed some sort of partnership that is worthy of a headline. This is more likely to get picked up and receive better links than just announcing a new section of a website launching. Put some personality into the pr and it will go much further.


Social Media:
Instead of just launching a Twitter or Facebook page and dropping links to your blog posts take a different approach. If you can get your community conversing with you your social efforts will go much further just helping your SEO efforts in the process. SEO is much more than just creating rankings, it is about building your business online so it requires more than just placing links here and there. Ask questions in your community. If you have followers in your Twitter account people will respond you just need to give them a reason to do so. Ask relevant industry questions to get some conversations started.

Video Marketing: Video marketing is a great way to really spread your presence online but you have to do it the right way. If you have the budget buy a decent camera, a tripod and some editing software. Take the time and make some good solid promotional videos to help you spread the word online. If you make it right people will pick up your video and blog about it. This action will give you nice strong links pointing to your website. Always shoot for making your video viral.

Putting some personality into your marketing will allow things to go much further online for your business than if you didn’t. People don’t respond to just links, they respond to marketing so go and brand yourself as a real business online.

Trusted Sources vs Less Trusted Sources on Google News

Clearly, Google News has it’s own algorithms and techniques in ranking stories and articles. Danny has one of the most comprehensive articles on ranking stories in Google News that I know of. But I spotted an interesting thread at the Google News Help forums about how possibly some stories can, over time, hurt your trustworthiness in Google News.

The person is trying to somehow communicate to Google that some of his stories are press releases and wants to tell Google not to index or add them to Google News. Why? Simply because he doesn’t want to impact his “trusted source status” with Google News.

Inbal, the official Google News rep in that forum replied:

Thanks for your honest feedback. I encourage you to submit your press release hubs to our team; this should not have any implications on your current news site’s ranking.

I believe you can even do this type of labeling in the new sitemap format for Google News, which is going to be required soon. Not sure why she didn’t mention that as a solution.

But what takeaways do you get from this? Don’t abuse your Google News access, because Google can drop your rankings in it easily.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.


Clearly, Google News has it’s own algorithms and techniques in ranking stories and articles. Danny has one of the most comprehensive articles on ranking stories in Google News that I know of. But I spotted an interesting thread at the Google News Help forums about how possibly some stories can, over time, hurt your trustworthiness in Google News.

The person is trying to somehow communicate to Google that some of his stories are press releases and wants to tell Google not to index or add them to Google News. Why? Simply because he doesn’t want to impact his “trusted source status” with Google News.

Inbal, the official Google News rep in that forum replied:

Thanks for your honest feedback. I encourage you to submit your press release hubs to our team; this should not have any implications on your current news site’s ranking.

I believe you can even do this type of labeling in the new sitemap format for Google News, which is going to be required soon. Not sure why she didn’t mention that as a solution.

But what takeaways do you get from this? Don’t abuse your Google News access, because Google can drop your rankings in it easily.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.



Link Building Sources That Are Important

Everyone keeps telling us links are very important for our ongoing search engine optimization efforts. Some of these types of inbound links are obvious but some are not so obvious and could still generate both power and visitors to your website. It is important to understand all the variety of different types of relevant [...]

Everyone keeps telling us links are very important for our ongoing search engine optimization efforts. Some of these types of inbound links are obvious but some are not so obvious and could still generate both power and visitors to your website. It is important to understand all the variety of different types of relevant links that you are capable of achieving over time.

Here are some of the most important types of links to build to your website:

1. Press Releases: Press releases are a very important ingredient to any online marketing campaign. Links embedded into the press release can generate very useful links for your website from other industry related sites. If it is a really newsworthy topic and other websites pick up the information it will be even more beneficial in generating new pathways to your website.

2. Articles: Articles used to have a bit more weight to them but they are still very important. The right types of articles could very easily get picked up on other industry leading websites leading to very good links and a steady stream of highly targeted website traffic.

3. Profiles: Website profiles usually only give you one link but that one link is a very important link. Whether it is from Facebook or LinkedIn the links let the search engines know that you are serious about growing your business in many different areas online.

4. Forums: Most forums are very old so the links you could get from them will help your business in a great way. Not to mention the traffic you could generate from being active in a forum is sometimes very surprising. Many of the older forums have a great deal of activity and if it’s a forum dedicated towards your industry than you should be there regardless.

5. Local Profiles: Don’t think because you want to take your business international that listing yourself in the local places and directories isn’t important. The links will let the search engines know that you have a physical address connected with your business helping grow your trust factor.

6. Blog Comments: Leaving intelligent related comments behind on your targeted industry blogs is very helpful. Many of the links appear in Google webmaster tools all while driving highly relevant traffic to your website.

6. Industry Associations: Local online and offline industry associations are a great way to build trust with your website visitors. Often many times association memberships include the opportunity to have profiles and links to your website. This not only helps with link building but builds highly relevant visitors to your website.

These are some of the most important link sources you should have as part of your long term link building efforts. Remember it is important to diversify your approach so you never want to be top heavy on any of these efforts. Keeping your links balanced and growing is the name of the game.

SEO ROI Jumps Around Like a Kangaroo

If you are trying to calculate your ROI on performing SEO for your business you are going to be greatly disappointed. Search engine optimization ROI can be measured over time through an increase of visitors, and conversions (sales, leads, phone calls, etc.). But since SEO is such a long term effort that never really [...]

If you are trying to calculate your ROI on performing SEO for your business you are going to be greatly disappointed. Search engine optimization ROI can be measured over time through an increase of visitors, and conversions (sales, leads, phone calls, etc.). But since SEO is such a long term effort that never really has a finish line and preliminary conversion numbers are virtually impossible to accurately predict over time. The only thing you can really do is improve. Improve, positioning, quality of content, call to actions, incoming relevant links, improve your authority and improve your ROI over time.

It is important to know that search engine optimization is not paid advertising so nobody knows when your website will appear in search results and where it will appear. It’s not like some paid advertising models where you know your ad will appear in a certain spot immediately and how many people visit that location on average. In this scenario you can sort of predict how many visitors might make it to your website. With SEO you cannot put this value on it. Your website takes time to climb and you can’t predict how many other bloggers and writers might begin to write about your business from your SEO efforts ultimately creating new streams of visitors that lead to conversions. Search engine optimization is a combination of proactive marketing and some technical aspects.

How can you put an ROI metric on distributing an article or press release surrounding your business? To many business owners I speak with they try to put an ROI value before they pull the trigger to move forward with search engine optimization which can be challenging. Some decide to not even pursue it because of not being able to identify a value or number on proceeding with the effort. This is the worst thing you can do for your online business. If you launch a Twitter account and begin a conversation and 6 months down the road someone from that conversation decides to become a client how can you predict that occurrence?

Depending on what type of industry you might be in your SEO could take quite a while to really kick in depending on how saturated and competitive your space might be. If you decide to not perform any SEO on your website you are already shooting yourself in the foot. Creating many pathways to your website from a variety of sources is one of the most important ways to build your online business. This process takes time so it is important to start it as soon as possible.

SEO is Kind Like a Credit Card

What I mean is that search engine optimization is open ended and always occurring. Much like a line of credit SEO is something that is always evolving and changing based on your activites. There is no set duration of time that SEO must be completed or once you finish optimizing your website it is done [...]

What I mean is that search engine optimization is open ended and always occurring. Much like a line of credit SEO is something that is always evolving and changing based on your activites. There is no set duration of time that SEO must be completed or once you finish optimizing your website it is done and completed. If every business was just able to optimize their website and then kick their feet up and wait to appear on the first page than the party would be very crowded would you say?

It is important to realize that optimization is something that businesses never stop doing. I think when SEO was created it should have just been called “proactive marketing” because essentially that is what SEO really is. Do you think large brands just marketed their business for 30 or 45 days and then took a step back and grew into the giants they are today? No. SEO is an ongoing effort that is always changing and evolving. There are no magical pills or universal steps to getting it done because every business is different and requires different steps to achieve their goals. Marketing is an effort that you never stop doing for your business which is why it is important to realize the connection between SEO and marketing. Yes rankings are important but rankings alone don’t grow a business into a large brand. Treating your website like a business is what will cause it to grow. Rankings don’t build a brand and keep customers long term. Being proactive and getting involved in social media and positioning your company as a leader in the industry is what will get your business to grow as a brand. SEO should always be approached with a quality versus a quantity approach. Spamming the search engines only to achieve high rankings is not going to help you or your business in the long run. Every website SEO campaign should be treated like a full grown marketing campaign. A well written press release topic announcing something very news worthy could go much further than one written just to help with rankings. The well written PR topic will also help with rankings because more websites will choose to link to it rather than just a keyword heavy press release designed to achieve rankings with little to no substance for the readers.

SEO does carry with it fundamental steps every business or website should take when first starting out marketing themselves online but soon thereafter that strategy will be vastly different from everyone else. Remember that SEO does not have a destination point. It is the process of building your business online while achieving rankings for certain keywords in search results. Keeping this mind you can quickly see how SEO is not a short term effort.

How To Increase Your Online Presence Right Now With Press Releases

We all want more business. More customers mean higher profits. One way to achieve this is to have a powerful online presence. Making your website work for you 24/7 should be the #1 priority of your online marketing strategy. The challenge is to get past the clutter. To soar above the competition. And to rank [...]

We all want more business. More customers mean higher profits. One way to achieve this is to have a powerful online presence.

Making your website work for you 24/7 should be the #1 priority of your online marketing strategy. The challenge is to get past the clutter. To soar above the competition. And to rank high on the search engine pages.

So, how do you successfully drive traffic to your site? Let’s look at one powerful strategy you can apply to enhance your online presence today: submitting press releases online.

Regularly publishing a newsworthy release is an excellent way to boost your online visibility. When you post, it helps maximize your SEO efforts and drives more traffic to your website. As mentioned in the previous section on directories, including keyword-rich links in the copy increases your search engine rankings. Another benefit of submitting news worthy information online is that they are archived. One release will get exposure for a long time.

Regularly posting -or whenever you have something newsworthy-is great for publicity and direct exposure. Companies, journalists, PR agencies, and the general public opt-in to have specific types of press releases sent to them daily.

There are numerous PR websites. Some are free while others charge. Express-Press-Release.com is free, easy to use, and requires no registration. www.PRWeb.com allows you to choose from 4 distribution packages. The basic package is $80 and the most advanced is $360.

Anatomy of a press release:

• Must be newsworthy and interesting.

• Must include your key message.

• When announcing a new service or product, you must be clear about what it is and why
it’s important.

Michelle Salater Writing & Editorial Inc. is a copywriting and editing company specializing in writing marketing materials for travel-oriented companies and small businesses. Visit http://www.mlsalater.com and sign up for The Tourism Marketing Solution, a free newsletter that offers articles and tips on how to successfully market your travel business.

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