Web Marketing Strategies, SEO, Web 2.0, Social Media, Trends & Tips

Web Marketing and Social Media strategies with practical, actionable tips for marketers.
Aug 27
 
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Start with episode #1: http://www.findandconvert.com/blog/2007/web-marketing-best-practices-trends-podcast-episode-1/

In the third episode of the TBTF web marketing strategies seminar I cover Web 2.0.  I begin with a definition of Web 2.0 and discuss the three major components that businesses should be aware of:

  • Social networking sites
  • Blog marketing
  • Podcast marketing

What You Will Learn

  • Why you should pay attention to social networks
  • How blogs can affect your business
  • Podcasting research shows the opportunities for marketers is NOW!

Aug 27
 
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Start with episode #1: http://www.findandconvert.com/blog/2007/web-marketing-best-practices-trends-podcast-episode-1/

In the second episode of the TBTF web marketing strategies seminar I cover pay-per-click (PPC) advertising best practices. 

This episode covers the most common mistakes to avoid and best practices you need to know to create paid search engine marketing (advertising) campaigns which can be tracked and measured for optimum results. 

What You Will Learn:

  • Bid rate analysis
  • Campaign set up
  • Ad design
  • Landing page guidelines
  • Reporting & Metrics
  • Website analytics
  • Visitor converstion strategies

Aug 27
 
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This podcast was recorded at a live seminar I gave on August 9th at a function sponsored by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. 

My talk is segmented into three (3) episodes.  In this first episode I cover a brief history of the Internet and web marketing best practices including these topics:  search engine optimization (SEO), on-page optimization, off-page optimization, link building, article syndication and optimized press releases. 

I spoke of the basic SEO principles including the important balance between content optimization and inbound links.

What You Will Learn:

This episode will give you insights into the best practices needed to be succcessful in search engine optimization (SEO). 

Aug 21
Podcasting Evangelism
icon1 Bernie | icon2 Podcasts | icon4 08 21st, 2007| icon3No Comments »

I recently gave a talk at an event sponsored by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum.  My talk was about web marketing strategies, best practices and trends.  In the trends section, I discussed Web 2.0 including social networking, blogging and podcasts.

The audience was comprised mostly of marketing managers and small business owners in the Tampa Bay area.  There were about 35 people in attendance.  I was not suprised to learn that most marketing managers did not have a strong understanding of podcasts.  Many in attendance admitted they use an MP3 player, but only a few acknowledged they regularly listen to podcasts. 

I spoke about how podcast use is growing in popularity, as evidenced by a recent survey conducted by Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann, citing that 32% of (business and IT) respondents have increased their use of podcasts in the past six months.   Furthermore, 72% of respondents listened to podcasts on technology topics more than once.

The survey also said that 55% of respondents would be willing to consume white papers and analyst reports as podcasts.  The biggest eye opener in this survey is that 57% said their biggest challenge with podcasts is the scarcity of them.

Wow, if that’s not an opportunity knocking I don’t know what is.  Marketers need to understand that people are starving for meaningful information in an educational format.   The content is the advertising and delivering content in a podcast format is extremely effective and growing in popularity as this survey shows.

I will soon practice what I preach by delivering a podcast version of the talk I gave on August 9th.   Stay tuned…

Aug 10

As the Find and Convert team works with clients around the U.S. we see a common challenge in implementing search engine optimization (SEO) plans: CONTENT

The challenge is that websites are written with a marketing spin, and that’s understandable and certainly a good thing.  Keeping the content relatively brief and clear and concise is also common and a good thing. 

But, search engines feed on content.  In fact we regularly refer to it as spider food.  Yes, links are very important for search engine optimization, but you can’t overlook content.  Google tells us all the time they look at “votes” (links) and matching text (content). 

I’ve seen websites with thousands of pages of keyword rich content, no active SEO plan, yet they rank really well.  The reason is if you produce enough content (assuming it’s good content) other sites will link to you and the supporting content will naturally get indexed by search engines.

So here is a suggestion for your SEO plan if you struggle with content, especially if you don’t want to change your existing content much.  Create a new section on your website and give it a name such as “resources” or anything that makes sense to your business.  Create many new pages of keyword rich content for this new section.  Make each page very focused on a specific theme that fits your product or service offering.  Write at least 200 words of keyword rich content for each page.

An important detail in this strategy is to link back to the corresponding pages in your website that you want people to find about the new page you have created.  The link should be anchored from the specific keywords you want to be found for in search engines.

This strategy is very effective.  Just one more thing to remember….Do it….Don’t put it off.  Content, content and more content will always help improve your rankings.