Independant Web Consultants

I was asked a few weeks ago by the fine folks at Integrum, a local Ruby on Rails shop to give them a quick SEO 101 session. Josh Huckabee who is a developer there did a write-up you can read here. Integrum is now better positioned to help their own rankings as well as implement sound SEO strategies into their client engagements.

You can find additional and more in depth SEO information on the Arizona SEO website. Be sure to grab the eBook while you are there.

Just read a pretty good post by a product launch consultant I know about How and when to ramp up a sales force.  Great stuff.

During the Sales Learning Curve your team will go through the process of learning how to acquire customers, what customers want in the product and the sales tactics that work.  Once you’ve been through the learning curve you can confidently begin ramping sales.

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In the internet marketing world, we use the dating analogy to help new marketers understand that importance of avoiding bragging in their website copy.

Picture this: You are sitting at the dinner table with your date, and all she does is talk about herself. Every conversation you try to bring up turns into it being about her and what she thinks about it. After a while, you will feel un-important and hope one of your boys calls your cell to get you out of this rutt. Flat tire anyone?

Bottom line, nobody likes a bragger. Nobody likes someone that goes on and on about how much they rock, what kind of turbo their car has, and how green their grass is.

These same rules apply when it comes to writing website copy. Your website should not be an giant “about me” page. Sure, you should have a company profile with your qualifications, but telling the visitor on a constant basis why they should pick you is a bit over done.

Rule #1: Your content should point out your visitor’s problems
Rule #2: Your content should provide your visitors with a solution to that problem
Rule #3: Your content should highlight how you can help solve this problem.

Your visitor > Your visitor > Your solution for your visitor.

If your visitor feels you care about them, they are more than likely to contact you. So give a little love and help a brotha out. You will benefit from it.

What is the value of maintaining a healthy social garden? At some point it will bear fruit.

How many social networks do you belong to? MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Virb, BestPartyEver, Linkedin, Digg, Purevolume, Last.FM, Pownce, Flickr, Threadless… are we tired yet? At one time or another you may have joined one of these or one of the 1000’s of other social networks out there. You built a little group of friends, and then lost interest and moved on. You left that garden to whither and die in cyberspace.

Yet there may be 1 or 2 networks that you use consistently. Here you have created a quality social graph, participate on a semi regular basis, and are making a “name for yourself”: in these networks you maintain a lush garden.

You Reap What You Sow
Linkedin is a great example. I think one could easily draw a semi-straight line between the energy invested in making new contacts on LinkedIn, and the quality and direct benefit to you these new contacts provide. Your social garden bears fruit, as long as you maintain it.

Here is another great example. My wife Sally (BizGirl) is an avid Twitter user. She has invested much time in tending her social garden that has already born fruit. She has created many useful connections with other professionals, landed a interview with Robert Scoble, and opened dialog with a few VC’s (which is a good thing, since she is seeking funding for her startup).

The Green thumb
While some may see time spent on social networks a waste, it really can be a productive endeavour. The name recognition, branding reinforcement, and personal connections you can make can prove valuable in tangible and intrinsic ways down the line. Tending your social garden is as important to business today as the trade show was 15 years ago.

From an SEO perspective it is a vital part for building links. The content that you push to these networks may generate backlinks to your site which in the long run will help your rankings.

Don’t over fertilize

There is a fine but clearly defined line between being a schmuck that spouts noise all day, and gently finessing your contacts with targeted messaging and marketing. Don’t be the guy that twits 400x a day as you will quickly lose your followers, on the flipside though don’t be afraid to share your ideas and things you find helpful with your network. These nuggets that you pass on may be of help to someone who may return the favor later in the form of a new contact, lead, or personal recommendation.

Bottom line: dedicate some time every week to tending your social garden, it will mature over time and generate ample fruit to your benefit.

Thoughts? How do you utilize Social Networks?

Preface: Increasing exposure of an existing online asset is tough, almost as tough as getting that first market push for a new business underway.For much of the last 10 years Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was loosely defined as: optimizing your website content (verbiage, Meta data, naming conventions) for maximum keyword relevancy, and the procurement of relevant incoming links.

English: Make sure your website content is relevant to the topic, and get people to link to you. If you packed in enough keywords, and built enough links (quantity) regardless of quality, rankings came easy.

Fast forward to today. SEO is about TRUST, and Trust shall set you free.
It is still very important to optimize your content and ensure that you are utilizing on page factors for building relevancy. But now SEO is really a game of trust. For a website to rank well, it needs to be deemed trustworthy. TrustRank as it is sometimes called is a way of assigning value to a website, the higher the value, the higher it will rank.

“PageRank is to The Bubble Up Theory as TrustRank is the Trickle Down Theory. Google chooses [x] number of sites it trusts as a seed, and let’s the TrustRank flow down through other sites via on page references (links)” says Chris Hooley, a leading name in the SEO field.

Links are the primary method of passing trust, and gaining trusted inbound links is the primary way of building top search engine rankings. Chris makes a further economics analogy:

“Think of links as cash. Link Equity. Now think of them in light of those two ways economists look at the flow of cash. You need to accumulate lots of links to PUSH your market position up, and you need to collect big, fat, trustworthy, important links to PULL your market position up. Links can be viewed as currency, and link marketing is no different than brand marketing. It’s just the way we measure the effectiveness that differs. Gaining market share, or gaining link share.�?

So according to Chris, building trust is the golden chalice of top search engine rankings. So how does one go about getting these links from trusted sites? Enter stage left: Linkbaiting. Odd word but very important concept. I’ll let link guru Todd Malicoat define it.

“Linkbaiting is all about the bait. In the same way that you can’t catch a giant tuna with a bag of Doritos - you’re not going to get the attention of important bloggers, journalists, or other folks with some garbage content or news.�?

What Todd is saying is simple: write/publish something worth linking to. He goes on to describe “Linkbait Hooks�? or methods to present information that can be used to attract the attention of a link happy audience.

To summarize then. Today’s SEO game is not about stuffing your website full of keywords. To build solid rankings you need to create content that is worthy of being linked too by other websites that are already deemed to have Trust. They pass this trust on to your website, and little by little your website climbs the charts like the latest Justin Timberlake Album