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How Do I Choose My Plastic Surgeon?

2011-01-21T18:51:00Z

How Do I Choose My Plastic Surgeon?

Let me tell you the secrets in finding the finest one for you and what I tell my family and friends.

Look for the following:

* Board certification

* Report card on high quality

* Licensing / public reporting

I know numerous doctors who have fantastic bedside manner but aren't especially reliable in acquiring the proper medical care you deserve and these traits separate the so-so doctors from the really outstanding ones.

If you've discovered one that meets all of the criteria and you know is in your insurance plan, has convenient office hours and simple access, then I'll give some suggestions on what to look for to figure out if she has outstanding bedside manner.

Importance of Board Certification

Your Plastic Surgeon should be board certified in his field of expertise. Think of it as the distinction between hiring a certified public accountant (CPA) and an individual who just files taxes for you. While you may well get the identical result, if tough issues come up, you might not get the very best advice. Given how much we are all paying for medical care, why would you opt for somebody who wasn't board certified?

To carry this distinction, your physician should have graduated from an accredited residency program as well as passed the governing board's certification exam. The examination may well be a 1-day or two-day written test. Depending on the medical specialty, test takers could also need to have to take an oral examination.

To preserve their board certification, physicians are required to devote a particular number of hours per year to additional medical education. Doctors typically fulfill this requirement by attending conferences and seminars. In addition, doctors ought to re-certify with a repeat examination every couple of years to continue their status. Given all of these requirements, a board-certified doctor will typically provide the most up-to-date medical care. Make sure that your physician is board certified. As a recent article noted, doctors most likely to provide the wrong medical care for colon cancer screening were doctors who were NOT board certified.

Your physician could display his board certificate in the office. Some certificates may possibly not have an expiration date due to the fact in the past, physicians were only required to take the exam once. It was excellent for life. This is no longer true. Current graduates can expect to retake the exam each and every seven to ten years.

Discover a lot more and research your physician at the American Board of Medical Specialties.

Report Card on High quality.

Come across out if your doctor is practicing the newest most up to date medical care by checking out his report card on high quality. Is he doing the proper issues to maintain you healthy?

For example, sadly in the United States patients who have suffered a heart attack get drastically diverse care and several don't get the life saving medication they will need to prevent a future event. Much less than 50 percent of heart attack patients in Mississippi obtain this medication recognized as a beta blocker. Yet in Massachusetts, nearly each heart attack patient is taking it. This failure to prescribe the medication simply was regardless of whether the physician consistently followed the guidelines established by the American Heart Association. It wasn't regardless of whether the patient could afford the medication since all the patients received the exact same insurance, Medicare.

A review of 20,000 patients from 12 metropolitan areas showed that 24 percent of breast cancer patients, 27 percent of pre-natal patients, 31 percent of low back pain patients, 32 percent of coronary heart disease patients, and 35 percent of high blood pressure patients did NOT receive the suggested care developed by expert medical committees.

If your physician isn't performing the proper issues that professionals recommend, then what else is he performing wrong?

Licensing / public reporting

Although your physician does not require to be board certified to practice medicine, he does and will need to be licensed. Find your own state medical board by going to the Federation of State Medical Boards or merely Google your state and medical board.

Each state provides diverse public facts about its doctors. This generally consists of the name of the physician, his license number, when the license was issued, and when it expires. Other states present extra data like history of malpractice suits, felony convictions, or disciplinary action by the medical board. Some states split up the licensing and disciplinary functions into two diverse departments or web sites. Whilst at the state site, look for a link either for physician profile or credential search.

The very first 3 items, board-certification, report card on top quality, and licensing / public reporting I know is unlikely issues you would have come up with.

Bedside Manner

So now that you've found doctors that fulfill these fundamental requirements, what actually is essential for all of us is our doctors' bedside manner. If you have pals who are medical assistants, nurses, or other people in health care, ask for recommendations. Frequently they see us when we are the most stressed. If they like working with us, then it is likely that they will suggest us.

Not positive you got the best? Here is how you know.

Does he or she...

* Sit down?

* Listen?

* Know your medical history?

* Involve you in the decision making procedure or get your perspective?

* Ask you - do you have any other questions?

* Finally, most importantly, does she generally wash her hands?

Follow this guidance and feel extremely confident that you have a excellent Plastic Surgeon!

7 Pitfalls that Will Devastate Your Website Conversion Rate

2010-10-11T19:07:00Z

7 Pitfalls that Will Devastate Your Website Conversion Rate

Is there any more common, sad experience than a business owner or marketing executive rolling out a new website with great expectations only to see its performance fall flat?
If you find yourself in this leaky boat, here are some possible reasons your website is missing the mark with your target audience:

1. Your Website is a “Me Monster”

This is perhaps the most common error, and it’s probably not your designer’s fault (unless you’re the designer). The big mistake that leads to this is assuming that your audience is just like you. It’s not.
Look at the copy on your site – does it make you sound like a “Me-monster”? Your copy should be speaking to your audience, addressing their needs, engaging them in an organized conversation. Narcissistic copy is death to conversion.

2. You Won’t Shut Up.

Your product is the greatest thing since Easy Cheese. You’ve articulated every single reason, often in true “Me-monster” fashion. The problem is, your visitors won’t read long, verbose paragraphs. It takes too much mental exertion.
Get to the point. You can provide more info further down the page for the detail-obsessive, but most visitors want to be able to scan your page to easily figure out what’s in it for them and if it’s worth the cost. Be quick about it.

3. You Chose Form Over Substance

Did your designer talk you into a shiny designy navigation that follows a crazy curvy line around the middle of the page? Or using only symbols and pictures instead of text? Those are SO cool … but regular people can’t figure them out.
It’s OK to be innovative, but not at the cost of clarity and usability. Make sure your site adheres to commonly accepted conventions of website design. Put the navigation in a familiar place, make it look like navigation, make links look like links, etc.

4. You Jumped the Gun with Your Offer

Some Web marketing wannabe masquerading as an expert told you: “Every time you ask for a click, you lose 50% of your visitors.” Thus, you put your form at the top of your homepage, before visitors get to read anything about your offer. If your visitors don’t know what they’re signing up for, you don’t stand a chance of converting them.
Organize the sequence of information on your website. Make it convenient to buy/register/whatever, but don’t preempt your visitors’ ability to learn what they’re getting into. You’re not worth a leap of faith to them.

5. You Leave Visitors Hanging

Every page on your website should have a purpose, should be driving towards a next step. Your visitors expect this. They expect to be held by the hand, guided towards the ultimate outcome on the site. Not forced, not manipulated or restricted, but guided.
What they don’t expect is to be left at a dead end. They’ve read your copy and are ready to either learn more or engage you more intently, but your page has no call to action. Don’t do this to them.
There’s always a next step (even after they buy, but that’s another post), so make sure that every page on your site tells visitors what’s next and provides a way to move in that direction.

6. Your Product/Business Doesn’t Provide Value

It sounds like a throwaway list item, but it’s still happening – people are treating the Internet like a shortcut to making money. Never has that been less true than now.
If your product doesn’t fill a unique need in the marketplace, you won’t be able to persuade people to buy from you. The modern consumer can sniff out a pretender like a rotten egg.

7. You Aren’t Split Testing

Split testing elements or pages of your website is the only reliable way to improve your website’s ability to convert visitors to buyers. Guessing at improvements might work some of the time, but you’ll never be able to quantify the effect of your changes.
By employing valid split testing processes and embracing a long-term commitment to the effort, you will be able to compound incremental increases in your website conversion rate into something remarkable and meaningful for your business. Either you’ll do it, or your competitors will. Your choice.

Quit Screwing Around, Punch Your Website Visitors in the Face

2010-09-30T03:49:00Z

Quit Screwing Around, Punch Your Website Visitors in the Face

4 commonsense ways to sell or get your service or product to someone finding your website8

When people come to your site, they are looking for one thing, and one thing only.

For us, our visitors are looking for one product: Search Engine Rankings. That’s really it.

Sure, they might want top rankings to get more traffic, sales, or to be above their hated competitors, whatever. But, regardless of why, when they come to us it boils down to rankings.

They wouldn’t search “SEO” or “SEO company” in Google then click to our site hoping to find a creative advertising agency. They usually don’t initially come to our site for social media or PPC or website conversion or whatever (although those are great supplemental services for a complete search marketing strategy). And just like our visitors, your visitors are similarly looking for just one thing.

So, what’s my point?

Address the main point.

Don’t mess around.

Make it simple.

Here are 4 commonsense ways how NOT to mess around so you can sell more stuff:

1. Directly punch your visitors in the face with what they have come to see

That’s right. Hit ‘em where it counts. Make sure your site has a clear, powerful, influencing message — which should include points 2-4 below.

2. Show why you’re really good at it

Whether you have proprietary technology, proven strategies, superb quality products, awards, third-party validation, etc., show that quickly. And remember to SHOW why you are awesome, don’t just TELL us you’re awesome. There’s a big difference.

3. Show how you’ve successfully done it for someone else

This kind of merges into the previous point. Testimonials, case studies, stats, etc., show that you’ve done it for someone else and that you can do it for the visitor.

4. And most importantly, give them an easy way to buy it

Sometimes, it really is this simple.

Blogging For SEO: Plan For Success

2010-08-16T16:39:00Z

Blogging For SEO: Plan For Success

Creating a blog can be a fantastic way to do a lot of great things for your site- increase rankings and traffic, spark visitor interest and engagement, and generally enhance the usefulness of your site to users, which can lead to gains both in terms of lead volume and visitor loyalty. It has the potential to be a very powerful interactive tool. But: blogging isn’t going to do any of these things if you don’t do it correctly, and its power as an interactive tool also creates the potential to do damage to your creditability and likability, and brand if you don’t develop and follow a well-considered strategy. With that in mind, here are a few important points to keep in mind when developing and executing an SEO Blogging strategy for your own site or a client’s.

1. You don’t have to be your brand, but you have to respect your brand.
Blogging in a cold corporate voice isn’t fun- for you, or for your readers. There’s a reason people like blogs, and it’s because at their best, they’re both interesting and informative. They connect us on a level that feels more personal than your average professional interaction. But we can’t all just be exactly who we are when we’re on the couch in sweatpants when writing for a professional blog. When writing for your own company, or writing for another company blog, there’s an appropriate balance of personality and professionalism that you need to strike. Where that balance falls is going to depend on the company’s culture and corporate personality and your own, but ideally the person who writes for a blog needs to have a solid grasp of the company’s ideals and voice and needs to be able to translate that voice into writing. If you’re not doing that, you run the risk of either losing your audience because you’re boring them, or because you’re offending them.

2. Keyword research
We are blogging for SEO, right? Not for fun to share our mom’s recipes with our neighbors. An important goal is to rank for keywords that will bring relevant traffic to your site; so identify rankable, reasonably high-traffic keywords for topic areas you’re writing about, and use them wisely in your posts. No keyword stuffing necessary: just use smart keywords instead of any old phrase when writing.

3. Link your stuff.
One of the nicest things about blogging, from a strictly SEO perspective, is that it gives you lots of great keyword-optimized content to link to other great keyword-optimized content. Link articles within the same content category/topic area, and you’re demonstrating to search engines that you have expertise in that area. Very good. Don’t forget to use anchor text that contains the keywords you’re targeting, of course.

4. Know your audience.
You already have some idea where your customers’ interests lie. What questions do they ask you via email? What problems have they been using your product or service to solve? What industries are you targeting? Why do people choose you over your competitors? The answers to these questions can help determine appropriate content to write about. To offer the most value for your site, your blog should both be keyword optimized and linked up, and: helpful to your customers. It makes people happy when the answer is waiting there for them as soon as the question pops into their head. Use your understanding about what your clients want and need to know to develop useful content.

5. And then know them better.
It’s the age of analytics. There are so many tools you can use (including Google Analytics, cost: zero) to determine how people arrive on your site and what they do when they get there that there’s really no excuse to not use them to determine areas in which you’re meeting visitor needs, and areas in which you could add content or improve navigation to clear their path to the information you want them to see.

6. If you’re an expert, great. If you’re not, you’re not.
This is especially important if you’re writing for a company that is not your own. You have to be aware of what you know and what you don’t. You want to avoid saying something completely incorrect or that just sounds “off” to anyone knowledgeable about the industry, both so you don’t cause legal problems for your company and so you don’t lose trustworthiness with potential clients by sounding silly. Focus on what you know and can demonstrate expertise in. If you’re blogging for another industry, you can use your contact in that industry to fact check and edit your blog posts to ensure accuracy and appropriateness, and to help with topic development.

7. Host your blog on your site.
In addition to the PageRank the blog can collect and distribute, it’s nice to have people who visit the blog right there in with your conversion-generating pages, and the most important info you’ve decided to focus on with your main content pages. You lose an important connection (and make Analytics tracking more complicated) if you host your blog off-site.

8. Write regularly.
Having an outdated blog with three posts is going to make your site look poorly-maintained to a site visitor, no matter how often you update your main pages’ content, so creating a blog without committing to continuing to use it has the potential to create more harm than good.

Before creating a blog, develop a strategy and make sure you’re committed to sticking to it. It’s a great tool if well-managed, but as with so many of our activities in SEO, it can’t be done haphazardly, or you’ll end up punishing your site’s rankings and your ROI.

Make the Social Media Expansion in Search Engines Work for You

2010-08-16T16:26:00Z

Make the Social Media Expansion in Search Engines Work for You

Facebook is indexed in Google, so are Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Gmail now has Google Buzz included, ensuring ways to efficiently search through the social networks you are in. Many people initially wondered what the point of social media was. As with almost everything, wherever the people go, the advertising follows. Search engine optimization (SEO) has dealt with some user-generated content in the past and most in the industry understand the value of user-generated content, but the SEO community has not had to manage with user-generated content on this large of a scale before. Although SEO is more client-content and social is more user-content, we have to use similar tactics to harness its marketing power.

Pick the Right Keywords
Choosing the right keywords can go a few different ways depending if you want to associate with trends or establish your own trend. Riding a trend will involve knowing what is currently being talked about. If it is a close association with your business, it’ll be easy. If there is no association, good luck. Chances are including your business name with nothing it pertains to will look spammy and deceiving. Establishing your own trend takes time, a lot of social footwork, and the opportunity for your trend to catch on. As above, don’t stretch the association or it won’t work. See other interesting ways to make Twitter work for you.

Include the Right links
As with SEO, you’ll want to send them somewhere that pertains to whatever information the post is about so the user won’t immediately leave. You’ll also want that page to also convert well, having a call to action, providing balance of information and opportunity for the user.

Get the Right followers
Just because a user clicked your post or profile and has reached your site means their social media experience with you should be over. Give them the opportunity to share the information they found through their social network of choice. Let them follow you, add you as a friend, become a fan, or recommend your business. They’re more likely to either eventually become a customer or become repeat customers through continued contact.

Repeat Your Message…Not Your Actions
Being in just one of the major social networks could be cause for confusion among your followers or random visitors. Why one and not the other? Some businesses won’t find a need to be in all, but it is easier than ever to have your messaging repeated in other networks without having to repost. Show your followers that your business has continuity while making sure your message gets through to them.

Practice Management Tip of the Day

2010-07-13T22:59:00Z

Practice Management Tip of the Day

There's a good chance your patients have spent a lot of time at home in front of their mirrors studying their concerns, so let them do the same in your office. Have large body mirrors in each exam room. Keep magnifying mirrors within arm's reach for the aesthetic patient seated in the treatment chair and waiting for you to enter. They will examine and point out their own perceived flaws and be much more interested in hearing about your aesthetic solutions after they have studied themselves with a critical eye.

4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media

2010-06-30T17:36:00Z

4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media (check it out and if you can’t do it I can do it for you!!)

Social media is all the rage right now. You see it in blog posts everywhere. You see Twitter feeds on news shows. In the last month my mother and several uncles joined Facebook! Simply put, social media is all over the place. But is it useful for the average business?
While not all businesses will use social media the same way, I am convinced that all businesses can make good use of social media. Here are 4 ways any business can benefit from using social media.

1- Get to Know Your Audience

About a year ago I went to Blog World Expo, and one of the points that really stuck with me from that conference is this: use social media to find your audience and then hang out with them. Social media is full of groups, fan pages, and other things that make it relatively easy to find an audience that is already interested in your topic or industry.
But with all of the different social media sites, how do you find out where your audience is hanging out? Here are a couple of resources you can use:
Use search.twitter.com to see what people are talking about that relates to your topic/industry. See what they’re linking to and mentioning. This can lead you in the right direction.
Get a Facebook account if you don’t have one already and look for relevant groups and fan pages. Watch for multiple groups/fan pages for the same topic, and also watch to see how engaged the members are.
Forums are more old school, but they can be great for finding other sites that people are using to hang out. In the end it may be the forum itself is the hangout, or they may direct you to other places.
Once you’re confident that you’ve found the popular hangouts for your industry start engaging with your audience. For many businesses Twitter and Facebook are great places to start since they are so universal, but you’ll also want to look for the niche hangouts.

2- Managing Your Reputation

Social media is a great way to keep an eye on the conversations that are happening online and respond to them. In fact, many companies have employees dedicated to watching the online conversations about their company and addressing them.
Here are a few tools you can use to monitor your reputation online so you can take any appropriate action:
Once again, you can use search.twitter.com to keep an eye on any conversations going on in the world of Twitter that relate to your brand.
For general monitoring of sites, news, and blogs you can always set up Google Alerts for your brand and main keywords to see what is happening online.
For monitoring blogs specifically, you can use Technorati or Google Blog Search. Both can help you monitor what bloggers are saying about your brand or industry.
If you’re really serious about tracking your reputation you could get an account at Trackur. Their pricing isn’t bad and it can be a great solution for companies looking to check in on the conversations happening online in a quick and easy way.
Watching and managing your company’s reputation is one way that every company can and should use social media. If you notice negative conversations happening you can respond and put out any fires before they get out of control.
A great example of this is Comcast’s use of Twitter. They have turned their Twitter account into another extension of their customer service division. For some great stories about this just do a Google search for ‘Comcast twitter’.

3- Promotions

Promotion is nothing new to the internet, but it hits new levels with social media. If you push the right message through the right channels you can reach a lot of people.
The key here is that you have to already have a lot of connections, especially with people that are willing to push the information to their followers as well. Twitter’s Retweet (RT) feature is very useful for this. If someone finds a story, blog post, or promotion interesting, they can just pass it on by doing a simple Retweet.
To be successful in promoting things through social media you have to have a plan and connections. Just sending out a tweet to your 30 followers won’t cut it.
Here’s another great article about using Twitter for advertising: Is Twitter Really an Effective Internet Marketing Tool?

4- SEO and Traffic Benefits

Being that we’re an SEO Company I naturally have to talk about the SEO and traffic benefits of being involved in social media. Social media can be a great traffic generator. Admittedly, it doesn’t always generate the kind of traffic that will convert into a lot of sales but it does increase buzz, recognition, and authority for your site.
Social media is also a great way to have a lot of links built to your site. As a page is promoted on different networks people are going to be linking to it. These links will include tweets, bookmarks, and even blogs. All of these links can help improve the authority of your site and lead to higher rankings in the search results.

Putting it All Together

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, not all businesses will use social media the same. But the fact is that all businesses can take advantage of social media in one way or another. Here are a few places to start:
If your site doesn’t have a blog, you should start one. Blogs are where you’ll generate the content to be promoted on the social media networks. It is also a great way to interact with your customers.
Start a Twitter account. Having a Twitter account will give you a place to interact with your audience and also promote the articles from your blog and from other sources that you find interesting. You don’t want to be a Twitter Spammer just pushing your own stuff. Show that you can be part of the community.
Create a Facebook fan page. Facebook is one of the giants in the social media sphere, so you need to have a company presence there as another way to promote your content and interact with your audience.
Set up profile pages on a few social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious. This will give you a place to create links to your content. Make sure you also bookmark other content from your industry. Also make sure to create links back to your site in your profile.
There is always more that can be done, but these are four places to get started. For additional reading, here’s a great case study from Business.com on how they have been using social media: B2B Social Media – The Business.com Case Study

Jim Vincent
jim@web7media.net
www.Web7Media.net

What Are They Saying About Your Website?

2010-06-22T16:30:00Z

Your Website Visitors Are Talking to You

Continuously improving your Web presence to increase ROI should be the goal, right? OK, but how do you get your potential customers to talk to you so you know what to improve? If you are willing to dig into a little data, you can find out how people interact with your site and where the problems are that need attention. Here are a few pieces of Google Analytics data that you can use to interpret what your visitors are trying to tell you.

Bounce Rate

With a high bounce rate, the visitor is saying, “This site isn’t relevant to me – I’m outta here.” The bounce rate number is just the percentage of single page visits, meaning that all those people left your site without looking past the page they landed on. It’s possible that this means your landing page just isn’t interesting. More likely, it means the people landing on your site were led to believe they would find something different when they clicked on your paid advertisement or organic search listing. If you are getting a high bounce rate, look at what your ads are promising. Make sure your landing page fulfills the promise in the ad.

New vs. Returning Visitors

A high number of returning visitors says, “Your site is engaging enough that I think I’ll come back for more.” New visitors are a good indicator that more people are finding your site, but getting them to return is the part that takes work. Ask yourself what you are putting out there that will bring people back again and again. A really good blog is one great way to do this.

Time on Site

A higher time on site tells you your site keeps visitors from leaving. This could mean you offer plenty of things to explore. But be careful. When I logged into analytics on one of my sites this morning, I found most people were staying for three minutes or so. Then there was this one visit that lasted for three hours. I’m guessing that somebody left their browser open on my site while they left the house for a while. So I obviously didn’t give that visit much attention.

Pages Per Visit

This says, “The first point of contact was interesting enough to make me want to look around.” If you have high average page views, you have done a good job of sending the right people to the site and presenting the information in an interesting way. It might also mean you have created a page structure conducive to further exploration.

Traffic Sources

This is very valuable because it shows you the ways customers come to your site. If they are all coming from Google, then your Search Engine Optimization campaign is working. If you see a huge influx of WebsiteTraffic from a partner site, you could look into ways to increase your visibility on that partner site.

Content

This is where your visitors tell you which content they like best. You are also able to see how they interact with their favorite content by looking at bounce rate, how many of them left the site from that page, etc. If you notice a certain topic always trends to the top, it should probably be a main focus of your content.

The best companies are those that listen to the customer. Google Analytics provides all this wonderful data to help companies do just that. We just have to be willing to dig in a little.

Jim Vincent

Web 7 Media.net

jim@web7media.net

801.554.1620

What Does Google Social Search mean for SEO?

2010-05-26T19:34:00Z

What Does Google Social Search Mean for SEO?

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Surprise, surprise, they've done it again. That's right, the genius minds over at Google have come out with an interesting service called Social Search.

In a nutshell, it takes a logged in user's personal connections and searches through them to find whatever they're looking for. The results are incorporated right into the results of a normal Web search in the way universal search incorporates images, videos, and other content.

This is Google's response to the hyped vertical of social search, already started by companies like Aardvark (which is now owned by Google). The idea behind social search is basically to get the input of your friends, rather than anonymous Web sites. This tends to fit into certain types of searches, such as "What's a good restaurant to take my wife for our anniversary?" rather than "How many light years away is Alpha Centauri?"

Google can search through several social areas, including Gmail accounts, Google Talk transcripts, subscribed RSS feeds, Picasa, Flickr, FriendFeed, and Twitter profiles you follow.

Social Search essentially ramps up the impact that personalized search or search wiki has had. Like those services, results are tailored to your specific profile. However, unlike those services, one can likely expect this to have a bigger impact on search listings.

There may be a sizable number of users who see social results above your top 10 listing. Social Search results are usually placed toward the bottom of page one, but that will probably depend on relevance.

For SEO, consider implementing the following to expand your real estate in search results:

As if you hadn't heard about it enough, you need to have your Twitter account actively posting updates. Use keywords just like on your site, and boost your subscribers as much as possible.

Your company's other social profiles also need to be highly subscribed, actively updated sites with good content. Long-term, consider everything from Google Buzz to Facebook.

With the inclusion of Gmail, it makes sense to start thinking about optimizing e-mail newsletters. Newsletters can be posted online, or found through desktop search, so optimizing them has multiple benefits. This means no more newsletters that are one giant image.

Here's another case for full-text RSS feeds: a subscribed feed containing just the first paragraph or so of complete articles will have fewer opportunities to rank and drive traffic.

Not to sound like a spokesperson for Google, but you can sign up for this experiment in Google Labs and start trying it out today. It's simple to use, which means this service should take off.

There's no need to tell Google anything if you use Google Reader, Gmail, Profiles or other Google services. Also, there's no need to use a separate search service to do social searches – the results will simply start showing up one day in your old standby Google. With a little effort, hopefully some of these results will belong to your sites.

Powerful SEO Content: Understanding Breadth of Coverage

2010-05-26T18:49:00Z

Powerful SEO Content: Understanding Breadth of Coverage

Nearly every SEO has been on this end of a conversation: "The keyword we really want to rank number one for is [enter impossible keyword here]."

I often tell people they need two things to achieve these impossibly unrealistic rankings:

Proper breadth of coverage (BOC).
A time machine set to 1996.

Since the time machine requires a hefty retainer most clients are unwilling to pay, I often set my sights on obtaining BOC that will enable realistic rankings now, with the possibility of long-term growth in the future.

What is BOC?

The term "breadth of coverage" originally stems from Google patents filed in 2003. In the patent, the search giant claims that BOC is one of the factors used to heuristically solve for the most qualified news article. However, the notion of BOC extends far beyond the news algorithm and consistently impacts site rankings in the organic algorithm.

BOC is the total number of qualified web pages in a domain that are thematically/semantically relevant. More credible pages means more authority. More authority means there's a greater opportunity to rank for competitive "head" terms.

Here are four ways of demonstrating BOC to search engines:

1. Create a Logical Keyword Hierarchy

This is especially important if your website attacks multiple themes. Typically, the most general and competitive head terms used within a site should be reserved for the home page. This should make sense, as the home page is likely to have the most inbound links, making it the strongest page. Because inbound links pass rank, think of a hierarchy as a way to trickle down PageRank in a focused, keyword relevant manner.

2. Internal Linking

This is crucial in connecting the dots for Google. If your website has 50 pages of content about the Super Bowl but is unlinked, how does this benefit the user? Simply having the content under the hood of your website isn't enough; however, interconnecting that content creates a web of authority that can be easily understood by both users and search engines.

Be sure to assign each subpage a maximum of one or two keyphrases. Every time this phrase is used sitewide, send a link to that corresponding page using varied and keyword rich anchor text. Remember, the most valuable links are within the body of the text and above the fold. Footer links (especially sitewide) are frequently de-weighted.

If each page serves as a keyword representative, make sure it's reflected in the title tag, H1 tags, anchor text, alt text, and content (and yes, the meta keyword tag is dead).

3. Avoid the Need to Create a New Domain for Every Product/Service

I once worked with a Fortune 500 client that had a penchant for creating brand new domains instead of building within their massively powerful infrastructure. The reason was simple: the content publishers took their awesome domain authority for granted and figured it would magically extend to a new domain. There are perfectly rational motives for starting a new domain; it just means starting the arduous authority building process from scratch.

Working within the infrastructure of your most powerful domain can greatly expedite the ranking process while eliminating the time and resources it might normally take to rank. This is also a more preferable long-term strategy as brand favoritism is a continued trend in algorithmic tweaks. Your website doesn't have to be exclusively dedicated to patio furniture to rank number one on Google, but it needs domain authority and breadth of coverage.

4. Create Powerful Content

This entire exercise is relatively moot if you stuff pages with low quality content. Authority documents tend to fare much better in search engines because they provide a full picture of a subject matter. Detailed, well-linked content is one reason Wikipedia thrives in search engines. Whenever you create content for a targeted keyword, focus on dwarfing your competitor in quality, depth, and scope.

Wikipedia sets a high bar in demonstrating breadth of coverage

The most robust content contains powerful text, images, and video -- all working in unison. When writing, be sure that content:

Has keyword rich headlines.

Is at least 250 words.

Is logically chunked out with headers and bullet points (wink wink).

Has links to other relevant content.

Make sure each piece of content has enough beef to be authoritative and link worthy. Writing content takes time, effort, and willingness to fail, but it can generate relevant traffic for years.

Can Facebook Drive Great Traffic To Websites?

2010-05-26T17:36:00Z

As usual, there's been a lot of talk about Facebook lately, So I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at Facebook traffic to see what could be ascertained through Experian Hitwise data.

For the month of April, the largest downstream site visited after Facebook was Google. OK, so no shock there.

What about the second most visited site? MySpace? Really? Just over 9 percent of Facebook visitors in April stopped off at MySpace directly after checking out their Facebook accounts.

To put that in perspective, only 0.7 percent went to Twitter (although that doesn't count those who use Twitter clients, only those who use Twitter.com).

Now, 19.48 percent of MySpace users head to Facebook once they're done on that site (making MySpace the fourth highest upstream site from Facebook, behind only Google, Yahoo, and Yahoo Mail), so there's absolutely a good degree of back and forth between the past social media champion and the reigning champ.

The third most visited site after Facebook is another Google property, and shouldn't be a surprise. Yes, it's YouTube, with 6.44 percent of visitors heading over there to watch the latest in viral videos. Again, there's reciprocation, with 9.35 percent of YouTube visitors heading over to Facebook once they're done watching Miley Cirus blend an iPad or whatever they've been viewing.

Further down the list, in 19th place, 0.32 percent of visitors went to ESPN, and 0.31 percent went to Plentyoffish.com. For ESPN, the data shows that as being 12.93 percent of their incoming traffic, 1.3 percent points higher than their Google traffic; for Plentyoffish, that's their second highest upstream site behind Yahoo, with 15.26 percent of traffic, 6.11 percent points higher than their traffic from Google.

Why does ESPN get such huge numbers? Having more than 446,000 people who 'like' their Facebook page doesn't hurt. From looking at their page, it seems they do a good job pushing out content that their fans like, as well as interacting with their Facebook fans by asking questions where they solicit responses.

So do these numbers show that Facebook can drive great traffic to a site? Maybe. Without access to individual site analytics, we can't see bounce rates, sign-ups, conversion rates, pages consumed, or whatever other metric we'd like to view to assess the quality of the traffic. The numbers look good, however, which says that maybe sites don't need to be as beholden to the big three search engines as we may think.

Reputation Management and SEO

2010-05-26T17:27:00Z

Using SEO for Reputation Management

First, to understand how negative press can get to the top of the search engines results pages (SERPs), let's take a trip down memory lane and revisit the old urban legend of Pop Rocks and Coke. Amidst all the excitement around the popular fizzy candy, in the late 1970s stories began to spread around school playgrounds that, when mixed with soda, Pop Rocks could cause a mini-explosion in your stomach. Teachers overheard and passed on to mothers. The worried mothers then escalated the news to the press, and soon General Foods, the creators of Pop Rocks, had a reputation problem on their hands.Even after many years of clean business practices, a single negative event can stain your brand image in the public eye for a long time. Simple things like a negative product review in a blog can be detrimental to your brand, especially when competitors are standing close by to snatch up customers. One way to combat that threat is through a reputation management strategy, which can begin with search engine optimization (SEO).

This telephone game of word-of-mouth is replicated online via link-building. First, someone publishes negative comments about your company. As others read the comments, more people start linking to it in blogs and discussion groups. Friends forward to friends, who forward to friends and so on. Next thing you know, the bad press is at the top of the search rankings.

Back in the Pop Rocks days, General Foods responded to the Pop Rocks fiasco with full-page print ads, letters to school principals around the country, and even sent the Pop Rocks inventor door to door to attest to its safety. But what could they have done had they lived in the today's digital world?

Begin by Examining Keywords

If an online reputational tragedy befalls you or a friend, the first step in the repair strategy should always entail keyword selection. You don't want to continue optimizing the same keywords that are used for existing marketing purposes. Different keywords come into play in this case. Since it is likely the negative press is showing up when consumers search under your brand name or product name, you will want to focus your SEO efforts on those specific keywords. The goal is to drive brand-friendly hits up in the SERPs, while pushing the negative press down.

You do this by creating more good press and optimizing around those selected keywords. Links embedded within press releases will give sites a ranking boost while the news is fresh and the press release is at the top of the newswire. When you're embedding the links, don't just hyperlink your corporate domain every time. Instead, ask yourself, "Which links are most important to our situation at this time?"

Experiment with different hyperlinks to different sub-domains, and measure the results to determine which ones will drive your news up the ranks. Always make sure that links are embedded on top of, or near your brand name.

Banish Negative Press through Link Building

The second step is link building. After all, if the negative press elbowed its way to the top of the SERPs through link building, you can do the same with positive press. It is an SEO ace in the hole, and it should be a major part of any SEO strategy. To counteract the negative press, build links to optimize brand and product names.

Think outside your corporate domain. Sub-domains, including news sites, corporate blogs and other pages outside your website, can be key SEO weapons in your arsenal as they take up more shelf space in the SERPs. Optimize these through link building, and make it a practice to ensure that the content on these sites is constantly updated and is as fresh as possible.

Lastly, go directly to the source of the negative press and request they also include rebuttal links. Ideally, they will publish an additional link on that post or page to your response (on your site) to the issue in question, so that your positive messages are given more platform.

When it comes to the Internet, information is a constantly flowing stream, and it flows fast. The only real news is what's up at the top of the search page, so use something that you know works to manage, control and shape those messages that you care about. SEO has a pivotal role in reputation management, as it can remove negatives and enhance positives on the first page of results, which is usually the only page that matters.

Where To Show Up On The Internet?

2010-05-18T16:56:00Z

I love it when the competition says Google is not the only Search Engine. Yes they are right because Bing and Yahoo are there and deserve some recognition BUT we all know where most of your time should be spent. That is just coming from a company that struggles with Google.

Dont let your company only SEO Market a few or even 10 or 15 keyword phrases. I have most of my clients showing up under over 150 to 250 keyword phrases! Wherever anyone looks they SHOULD find you!

10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners

2010-05-18T16:41:00Z

10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners

Believe it or not, all SEO’s were newbies at one time or another. Launching a website can be a very exciting event for an individual or new business owner. However, that excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when the site owner finds out that they are getting little or no traffic. If they are getting traffic, it is most likely coming from family members or friends who they notified through an email or Facebook.

Being involved in SEO and marketing in general, I am usually bombarded by family members and friends with questions about marketing their website or their future website on the Internet. Because of this and my willingness to help just about anyone I know, you can usually find me in a small dark corner at a family party (it has to be small and dark because my wife gets ticked when I’m not up and socializing with everyone), on the phone in the car, or answering an email, Facebook message, or Twitter message about SEO and other internet marketing tactics.

I was on a call yesterday with one of my best friends from high school. Our conversation was focused on general Search Engine Optimization principles and link building tactics that could provide a good foundation and hopefully, if he does them right, some strong rankings in the search engines. One thing I emphasized is the fact that what ever he does, he needs to build links naturally. A natural link building campaign is crucial for success in SEO.

A natural Link Building Campaign is one that is just that, natural! Getting 50,000 links within the first twenty days of your website’s existence is definitely not natural. Getting a slow trickle of links coming into your website and then building up looks much more natural. Also, getting 50,000 links pointing to your home page with the same anchor text is not natural. Vary your anchor text and include long tail versions of your keywords. You should also build links to other pages of your site in addition to your home page. All of these things help with building a natural link campaign.

In terms of links, there are two types of links you can get for your websites, external and internal links. Both are very important and can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings. I want to discuss in detail, ten ways to effectively jump-start your link building campaign.

Friends & Family Members

When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

Add A Blog To Your Domain

Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like Wordpress or b2evolution as does Web 7 Media.net

Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!

Local Organizations

Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.

Local News

Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).

Help A Non Profit Organization

You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.

Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories

Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.

Social Bookmarking

You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirsty. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.

Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories

Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.

Write And Submit A Press Release

Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.

Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens

Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.

Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.

4 Ways your Business can Benefit from Social Media!

2010-04-28T18:09:00Z

4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media

Social media is all the rage right now. You see it in blog posts everywhere. You see Twitter feeds on news shows. In the last month my mother and several uncles joined Facebook! Simply put, social media is all over the place. But is it useful for the average business?

While not all businesses will use social media the same way, I am convinced that all businesses can make good use of social media.

Here are 4 ways any business can benefit from using social media.

1- Get to Know Your Audience- About a year ago I went to Blog World Expo, and one of the points that really stuck with me from that conference is this: use social media to find your audience and then hang out with them. Social media is full of groups, fan pages, and other things that make it relatively easy to find an audience that is already interested in your topic or industry.

But with all of the different social media sites, how do you find out where your audience is hanging out? Here are a couple of resources you can use:

Use search.twitter.com to see what people are talking about that relates to your topic/industry. See what they’re linking to and mentioning. This can lead you in the right direction.

Get a Facebook account if you don’t have one already and look for relevant groups and fan pages. Watch for multiple groups/fan pages for the same topic, and also watch to see how engaged the members are.

Forums are more old school, but they can be great for finding other sites that people are using to hang out. In the end it may be the forum itself is the hangout, or they may direct you to other places. Once you’re confident that you’ve found the popular hangouts for your industry start engaging with your audience. For many businesses Twitter and Facebook are great places to start since they are so universal, but you’ll also want to look for the niche hangouts.

2- Managing Your Reputation - Social media is a great way to keep an eye on the conversations that are happening online and respond to them. In fact, many companies have employees dedicated to watching the online conversations about their company and addressing them. Here are a few tools you can use to monitor your reputation online so you can take any appropriate action: Once again, you can use search.twitter.com to keep an eye on any conversations going on in the world of Twitter that relate to your brand.

For general monitoring of sites, news, and blogs you can always set up Google Alerts for your brand and main keywords to see what is happening online.

For monitoring blogs specifically, you can use Technorati or Google Blog Search. Both can help you monitor what bloggers are saying about your brand or industry. If you’re really serious about tracking your reputation you could get an account at Trackur. Their pricing isn’t bad and it can be a great solution for companies looking to check in on the conversations happening online in a quick and easy way. Watching and managing your company’s reputation is one way that every company can and should use social media. If you notice negative conversations happening you can respond and put out any fires before they get out of control. A great example of this is Comcast’s use of Twitter. They have turned their Twitter account into another extension of their customer service division. For some great stories about this just do a Google search for ‘Comcast twitter’.

3- Promotions - Promotion is nothing new to the internet, but it hits new levels with social media. If you push the right message through the right channels you can reach a lot of people. The key here is that you have to already have a lot of connections, especially with people that are willing to push the information to their followers as well. Twitter’s Retweet (RT) feature is very useful for this. If someone finds a story, blog post, or promotion interesting, they can just pass it on by doing a simple Retweet. To be successful in promoting things through social media you have to have a plan and connections. Just sending out a tweet to your 30 followers won’t cut it.

4- SEO and Traffic Benefits- Being that we’re an SEO company, I naturally have to talk about the SEO and traffic benefits of being involved in social media. Social media can be a great traffic generator. Admittedly, it doesn’t always generate the kind of traffic that will convert into a lot of sales but it does increase buzz, recognition, and authority for your site.

Social media is also a great way to have a lot of links built to your site. As a page is promoted on different networks people are going to be linking to it. These links will include tweets, bookmarks, and even blogs. All of these links can help improve the authority of your site and lead to higher rankings in the search results.

Putting it All Together As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, not all businesses will use social media the same. But the fact is that all businesses can take advantage of social media in one way or another.

Here are a few places to start:

If your site doesn’t have a blog, you should start one. Blogs are where you’ll generate the content to be promoted on the social media networks. It is also a great way to interact with your customers.

Start a Twitter account. Having a Twitter account will give you a place to interact with your audience and also promote the articles from your blog and from other sources that you find interesting. You don’t want to be a Twitter spammer just pushing your own stuff. Show that you can be part of the community.

Create a Facebook fan page. Facebook is one of the giants in the social media sphere, so you need to have a company presence there as another way to promote your content and interact with your audience.

Set up profile pages on a few social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious. This will give you a place to create links to your content. Make sure you also bookmark other content from your industry. Also make sure to create links back to your site in your profile. There is always more that can be done, but these are four places to get started.

Beef Up Your Website

2010-02-20T03:29:00Z

Where’s the Beef?

How to Beef Up Your Web Design

Three old ladies huddle around a burger with a massive bun and a tiny patty. “It certainly is a big bun.” says one. “It’s a big fluffy bun!” says another. Meanwhile the third stares grumpily at the sandwich and then says, “Where’s the beef!?”

She clearly wanted a real burger — not a bun, not an air sandwich, and she didn’t want to be full on just some fancy baking. No matter how good the bun looked, or tasted, it was ultimately useless without the big, beefy burger she wanted.

Similarly, this is what happens when you have designed a smashing layout with a high bounce rate. If your grids are tight, your typography is engaging, and you are getting loads of traffic, but you have a big bounce rate, then your customers are saying, “Where’s the beef!?”

No matter how fancy your site may look, if it doesn’t convert to sales, your site is lacking serious beef. A few tips to adding beef to your website:

1. Be relevant. If a visitor comes to your site expecting one thing and gets something else, they’ll leave your site with a bad taste and will likely never return. You may dress nice, but you MUST be relevant.

2. Engage users. Do this with relevant content, impeccable design and a clear call to action.

3. Provide quick value. People’s time is valuable. Make sure to give them what they want quickly or else they’ll bounce. Offer enough value so they’ll want to spend time on your site and come back again.

4. Clarity. Explain your product, how it works, what you do and why the user needs you in just a few words. The clearer your message, the quicker the reader will take action.

5. Offer Expert Advice. You can do this through blogs, white papers, webinars, etc. This lends credibility to your brand and provides a purpose behind your website. It also helps with search engine optimization by providing fresh new content, andestablishing your site as an expert in your industry.

What is the next phase? While I would argue that content is king and good content strategy accounts for 3/4 of the success for a site, the remaining 1/4 rests squarely on taking that content and making it deliverable and engaging.

You need to take that valuable nugget of information, that hamburger patty you lovingly crafted, and garnish it. Present that information in a clearly legible manner. Use practical infographics that compel the visitor to sit up and pay attention. Engage them with interactive elements to help them really understand what it is they are looking at. Make that game the most amazing thing they have played recently. Compell them. Teach them. Guide them. Don’t make them think.T

he New York Times is a great example of great content leading the way for great design to seal the deal. Apple is another but with a more product oriented approach. ESPN is a great example of a leisure brand excelling at this. This final step will set you apart from the rest. If you are not sure how to speak to your user through these means, hire an expert. There are designers out there who speak this language so well they can engage users without them even realizing it, and these subtle successes are often times the most potent.

Never underestimate solid design backing great content strategy.

This one two punch — opening with a focused quality content, and driving it home with a grand user experience — will ultimately lead you to the top of the charts on a given search engine. You will keep the users you gain, lower your bounce rate, raise your conversion rate, and leave no one questioning the substance of your idea, event, or product.

Special Giveaway

2010-02-04T16:27:00Z

SPECIAL GIVEAWAY!!!!!!!!

To All of my SEO clients;

I am giving away a brand newly built 20 page website or 1 free year of SEO to one of my current SEO clients in June of this yeaar.

Here is what you have to do to qualify.

1.Blog at least once a week (you get 1 point every week if you do)

2. Add an article to your website once a month (another point every month if you do )

3. Someway Somehow you must be actively doing SMM Social Media Marketing and have it linked to your website.(one point each month for that)

4. If you do any press releases for your website 1 point for each one.

5. You also get a point for every video you have on your site and 2 points for any new video’s or any videos of surgery.

Each point is a ticket that will go in the hat for the drawing.

All of these things are what you should be doing anyways to gain success.

On June 1st we will have the drawing and the winner we will either build a new 20 page website or erase their SEO Payments for 12 months.

The 20 page website will be the most up to date technology and the most interactvie website alive (which is what people want)

Good Luck and Thank You for being my CLIENTS!!

Getting High (no not that kind of high)

2010-01-21T17:29:00Z

Getting to the Top of Search Engines Through One Way Linking

One way links are links that point to your site from others, but which are not linked to from your website. Google and many other search engines include link popularity as part of the way they evaluate and rank websites. Links are seen as a positive "vote" towards the quality of the website. As such, the more links from other relevant websites to yours, the better.

Here are some of the ways to get one way links pointing to your website.

1. Articles

Writing articles is an excellent way for you to get free publicity. Getting an article published is free. The publicity you receive by having your article published in a newspaper, magazine or website can be worth thousands of dollars in equivalent advertising space. Well written articles yield better results than advertisements and earn you respect from customers who see you as an expert in your field.

So what exactly is an article???

An article is a short piece of information that aims to educate and inform people about something, which they may be interested in. They are usually between 500 and 3,500 words long and at the bottom of each article is a link to your website as well as a resource box about your company. An example would be my resource box at the bottom of this article. By writing and distributing these articles you are sharing information, which displays your expertise and gains you trust and credibility. No amount of advertising can gain you either trust or credibility. The best articles are 'tips' or expert pieces. People are looking for guidance and will purchase from experts who show them how to solve their problems. Writing your own articles may seem to be a daunting task, but you can get your articles written by professional writers at very reasonable costs and then distributed by various online services, such as Submit Your Article or The Phantom Writers. Also don't forget to set up "Google Alerts" so that you can see whenever your articles are published on various websites. The great thing about articles is that if your articles are well written they will spread virally, meaning that people will pick up the articles from article directories and include them on their website.

2. Videos

Over the last couple of years video has become a popular marketing strategy, as it can quickly generate traffic and interest. Unfortunately many people are still afraid to use it and think it's difficult to do. So now is the perfect time for you to get ahead of your competition. One of the major advantages of videos to traditional written marketing is that it saves your visitors a lot of time understanding what is being offered and there isn't much effort required on their part. Start the video and everything is explained to them right there and then. Hearing and seeing you tell them about your products or services has more credibility and allows you to connect to your visitors on an emotional level. Another great advantage of video marketing is that if you use the right keywords in your video's tags, you have a much better chance of reaching high rankings in many search engines.

3. Submission to Relevant Directories & Search Engines (should be done by your SEO Company)

Your website should be submitted to as many directories and search engines as possible, especially those relevant to your country or industry.

4. Blogs

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily or weekly using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines, like Yahoo! and Google. If you use Blogger (Google's Blogging Tool), every message you post creates a new page on Google so in a very short time you could have a lot of pages pointing to your website, bringing you lots of new visitors.

5. Media Releases

Having a story written about you and your business will not only bring you lots of new customers (at no cost to you), but will also provide you massive credibility. Stories about you in the media are far more believable, powerful and attractive than any ads you could possibly run. People will trust and respect you instantly. A media release (also called press or news releases) should provide enough details to be informative, but it should leave out just enough information to be tantalizing so that the media person calls you to find out more.

SMM-Social Media Marketing

2010-01-20T16:18:00Z

SMM- Social Medial Marketing

Do you want a tremendous presence on Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter and more? I have been doing it for a few Doc’s and can now expand to a few more. 10 hours a week for $400 a month discounted down to $300 a month. Or 5 hours a week for $230 a month. Either way you can not go wrong. Get your video’s on these platforms. Constant updates and linking. Tons of sending your name and practice out to others to get yourself seen.

2010 Online Predictions Part 2

2010-01-08T21:40:00Z

2010 Online Predictions – Part 2:

.The World of Social Media

What We Know-

• Twitter and Facebook dominate the scene, but Twitter has no revenue stream while Facebook becomes the dominating force in Social.

• Twitter and Facebook have become the way people share information, and it is affecting social bookmarking sites such as Digg.

• Twitter has redefined the way people communicate and the way search engines determine what is popular.

What We Suspect-

• Twitter seems to have reached its potential, and is going to be hard pressed to grow any further in its current form.

• In order for Facebook to retain, and increase users, keep an eye out for a completely redefined

“Group” option, or a vertical-ization of a new public section.

• It will be a shock if Twitter isn’t acquired by a larger company by the end of 2010

How Will it Happen?

(Facebook Prepares for Dominance)

One of the most important things we’ll see happen between Twitter, Facebook and upcoming Social Media like Foursquare, is definition. Social media sites will define their purpose, their existence, and their unique selling position (USP) this year.

Facebook is currently one of the strongest ways to advertise to targeted demographics and markets, while Twitter is the best way to “listen in” and distribute news, and information to the masses. As Twitter and Facebook start to better define their USP, corporate America should become more comfortable in developing marketing strategies with social media in 2010.

The first thing that will come with social media “definition” is a mutual goal with Twitter and Facebook. Both entities will make sure users understand that Facebook is not Twitter, and Twitter is not Facebook. The general public will learn and understand they are not the same thing, and there are benefits for using both mediums. By making this point clear to users, both companies should see an increase in users and interaction between users. I predict that the two companies will embrace each other, and incorporate each others’ strength. There is no better way to do this than with an official partnership, or even a merger. (As a side note, “TwitFace” could become Google’s worst nightmare.)

If Facebook (being the bigger fish in the pond) doesn’t take Twitter to be its lawfully wedded partner, then I predict that we will see some big changes for Facebook coming in the ways of “Group” and vertical-ization of a new public profile option.

Facebook’s next direction (in my humblest of opinions) needs to focus on having an option for “like- minded” strangers to connect without giving away the farm, personal family info, embarrassing photos of you that your jackass friend put up. The reason the current “fan pages” don’t work is because there is no seamless interface between you and your fan page. If this all comes to fruition then I strongly believe that we will see Twitter slowly suffer. Facebook would have serious leverage in providing and developing real-time search (RTS) abilities with the new public profile option (all enhanced by the Friendfeed acquisition), in addition to having the ability to connect complete strangers with similar interests.

Twitter will be the most vulnerable company that 53M+ users can’t live without, simply because it makes no money. Again, if a partnership can’t come together with Facebook, then the next logical option would be for Internet King Google to buy up the company so they could strictly control the RTS scene. And Google already has rumors circulating that they are interested. We will then see the most famous tweet of all time from @mattcutts: “What? It was either buy Twitter or create Gtweet.”

THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media War: Facebook bans all Twitter language from status updates because it only comes across as gibberish to non-Twitter users.

THE BEST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook develops a Twitter translator that will automatically translate Twitter language into readable phrases for non-Twitter users to better understand. In addition Facebook will create a “Gaming Facebook Platform” so I don’t have to know what happens to your Farm or Mob family. Just sayin’…