SEO + SMO= The future of online marketing.

Most internet business owners are very familiar with the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). They may have spent thousands of dollars to ensure that their business would rank highly on the Google search engine directories or with one of the other search directories that are used regularly by millions of people. But, as with any market that becomes saturated, SEO is not a panacea for guaranteeing that an internet business with grow and thrive and other methods for reaching a target audience must be explored.

With the growing use of social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., a new marketing avenue has been introduced to business owners to reach their audience through Social Media Optimisation. This type of marketing will increase a business’ ability to reach their potential customers on a more individual and personal level and will also provide instant feedback to the owner of what their customers want or need from their products.

Developing an effective marketing strategy using Social Media Optimisation will require internet business owners to learn a new method for connecting with their customers. While articles and advertising work very effectively as marketing tools for SEO, there is a more personalized and targeted method for reaching customers through social media outlets such as Facebook. In order to be effective, an individual will need to search social media blogs, chatrooms, forums, etc., that discuss the specific product or service that is being offered on their website. The social media network is not one that will respond to a global mailing to every source of advertising. The approach is much more personalized and will require a dedicated amount of effort to establish and maintain.

While social media optimization may add an extra tool to the internet business marketing strategy, it has been indicated by Facebook and Twitter advisors that it will be most beneficial when used in tandem with other internet marketing strategies that are employed.

Popularity: 3%

Everyone Thinks They Are An SEO Expert

One of the main factors in promoting a website or new business is the ability to rank high on search engines. Most people don’t have a clue when it comes to making this happen, so, they go to “experts” who profess to know SEO and will state emphatically that “IdoSEO”. Many of the companies now popping up, or adding SEO to their list of products or services are really doing nothing that you couldn’t do yourself or, at least, a lot cheaper. When you are looking for an SEO Expert you need to ask some important questions that will tell you right away if they are the SEO expert they profess to be.

1. What programming languages do they use or know? A true SEO expert must be able to do some programming and understand code in order to optimise your site. If the person you are talking to does not at least know html, they are not going to be able to perform an effective SEO function for you.
2. Do they use an SEO program? It’s a very simple question. Many companies that do not have the skills or capabilities to perform SEO themselves are buying SEO programs and software. There are two reasons that this is a red flag. One is that this is an indication they cannot do it themselves; and two, is that you can buy the same program and get the same results a lot cheaper for yourself. The results will not be as effective as hiring a real SEO expert, but you will get the same results using SEO software yourself, as the company you’re paying to use it for you.
3. Where does the SEO company or agency you are considering land in the search engine result rankings when you Google them? This is an important indicator of how effective they are. If the SEO company you are considering employing can’t gain ranking for their own website then how are they going to do it for yours?



4. Does the SEO company or “expert” host their website in the target demographic of their customers? This is basic SEO knowledge, however, many “IdoDEO” companies and self proclaimed SEO experts don’t apply this to their site, how can you expect them to help you or your business if they don’t even know how to help themselves?
5. What is the cost vs return ratio average? If you are considering utilizing an SEO expert they should be able to tell you what the average cost vs return ratio is for their customers. Of course they can’t guarantee the ratio for your website, but they should be able to give you an average for their total customers. If they can’t do this, again, you’ve hit a red flag. When a company will not share averages with you they either aren’t keeping track of their products, results and customers or they don’t care. Either way, you need an SEO expert who is familiar with numbers both good and bad so that you can make an intelligent decision about whether the investment will be worthwhile to you at this point.
6. Watch out for the buzzwords. Unfortunately, everybody has access to all the buzzwords for SEO it just takes a few minutes to read a few SEO blogs to get a basic grasp of this. Just because a person can talk about SEO intelligently does not mean they can actually perform the function. Dig deeper, ask for some sites they have done work for and Google them to see where they are ranking in the search engine results pages. Just as with any contractor you should be able to get references and if you can’t, that is another red flag. Buzzwords don’t mean anything if the company you are considering don’t know what they mean. It is important that you have a clear knowledge of what you want, what the words mean, and what to ask for before you commit to an investment with an “oh… IdoSEO” Expert.

Follow these steps and watch out for the pitfalls of entering into something you might not fully understand or you too could get perplexed by the “IdoSEO” man…

Popularity: 4%

Popularity: 12%

Yesterday I visited Internet world 2009. After going to the SES expo earlier this year in the business design centre in Angel, London, I was expecting the show to be a much smaller affair.

Internet world 2009 was held in Earl’s Court two, and packed out the whole of the hall! The show certainly lived up to the hype and expectation from its pre-event marketing.

I was very impressed by the turnout, but unfortunately for me I was only able to visit the show on the very last day due to work commitments, however, I was able to see everything I needed to cover and managed to scale the whole show hall top to bottom, watch some seminars, get some questions answered, and get chatted up by a rather nice promotion girl ha! – It pays to be the Coolest Geek on the net!

I learned a few new hints and tips from the show, and expanded my friends list on linkedIn (note to self – I MUST bring more business cards!). One of the most impressive things in the show overall was the volume of SEO professionals and new SEO start-ups. During this recession, hitting the number one spot in Google has become an absolute priority for most online businesses and it’s evident that SEO is certainly the industry buzzword and marketing product at the moment, that said it’s what the market is hungry for right now, and it’s all about supply and demand!

It was evident at the show there were many new businesses that where a bit of a “bolt-on” SEO start up. That said every single booth offering SEO was rushed off their feet with clients wanting to know much more about what they had to offer. Now, here in the UK, it would be a great time to start up a new company based on SEO! (roll on my business)

There were many CMS (content management system) companies, and to me it’s fascinating the way these are developing. From the back-end it’s as if you’re using a windows application to simply build your website. Personally I prefer to tinker with the code and know what code is actually implemented, but still it’s showing the direction of the CMS platforms.

Internet World 2009 Seminar

I sat in on a seminar about direct marketing, this is a very interesting market to me as it included many hints and tips on direct marketing via e-mail, behavioral marketing and some other sneaky tips to increase conversion rates, that I’ll cover later on in this blog. I was very impressed with the developments in these technologies, however, one thing that seemed to elude the presentation was the capture of the e-mail addresses. I asked the question during the presentation:

“how is it you collect the emails in the first place to be able to direct such specific, targeted emails?”

I was told that you could buy the data from large data houses, that said, I think if you can capture the data directly yourself then you have a much better chance on converting your customers. Very interesting all the same and it’s thrown me many new ideas for my current projects.

One of the most popular seminars at the show seemed to be the social networking talks with the likes of Twitter and co. It’s certainly a hot property at the moment, with that in mind, I’m not sure anyone can claim themselves to be an authority in such a new field. The guys that are the real authority in the likes of social media marketing are the ones that make serious cash at this moment in time, utilizing these tools and techniques currently within their own marketing strategies, not the ones talking about them at shows and giving all the “good” information away, even so, there were a few interesting hints and tips I picked up on the social networking landscape.

There are a few other things I saw at Internet World 2009 that I just had to point out in this post. One of these things was originally an Adobe product which I saw presented on the TED talks on YouTube a few years ago. Fortunately for me the product was only there on the last day and I got to have a little play with this super cool new device “Microsoft Surface” – Brilliant! (filmed this with my LG KU990).

A cool £10,000 will snag you one of these beauties! New coffee table anyone?

Other highlights of the show to me included:
a magician (I’m always wowed by magic), not SEO related however very good all the same.
A group of three dancing girls one of which was dressed in a huge character costume, finally when I was asked if I am a male model, but of course! Ha

All in all Internet World 2009 was a great show! Roll on Internet World 2010!

Popularity: 42%

Did you know you can search for trends on Facebook? This is a very smart tool which was actually shown to me while back by my old work colleges at Shopzilla. I remember spotting some trends mainly across social activity based keywords (eg party, drinks etc). These were obviously used mainly before weekends and bank holidays, I used the tool for a while then bookmarked it pretty deep in my bookmarks folder along with my 1000’s of other sites, after a while I forgot all about. Recently when I was doing a combination of bookmark cleaning and work on some advanced keyword research I re discovered Lexicon.

Lexicon can be found at http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/. You’ll need to log into your Facebook account before being able to use the tool. Lexicon is a Facebook trends search tool that, when used correctly, can be a very powerful SEO tool indeed, you can view the social keyword trending of real conversations across Facebook. The tool scans over what people are writing about on their Facebook walls and displays it in graph format, much like Google Trends does for searches performed in Google.

It’s very interesting to search for buzz trends and breakout keywords. Think you’ve spotted a niche breakout in the market? Why not check it out on Lexicon to see if people are talking about it, if so, optimize for it! Currently you can compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. Either way this is another great tool for your SEO work. The only downside I’d say to watch out for is the time adjustment slider along the x axis of the graph, sometimes it’s a bit slow to respond in Firefox and can lock up, so rather than just zooming straight in to a specific week slowly adjust the bars.

Whether this SEO tool is for the Coolest Geek on the Net! (primarily me ), for all you SEO’s out there, or just folks who wanna see when most people on Facebook are getting lucky this is a very nice fun utility that can be used to supplement to your arsenal of keyword research tools.

Popularity: 19%