I am not using Social Media yet. Why is using Social Media to market my product or service so important?

For those of you new to social media here is the quick overview. Just think of social media participation as being in an online ‘gathering place’ or community with a common interest, where you can post messages. Just like the bulletin board in the office, with the added feature of being able to post a reply, creating a thread.

Some people have one eye on these ‘boards’ all day just so they can interact with their friends online. The best known websites that provide this facility (and a lot more) are Facebook and MySpace.

To make it even simpler, there are programs that let you monitor several of these websites all at once.

Twitter is a strange bird, pun intended. You can ‘tweet’ up to 140 characters in your message. If people are interested in your message (and there are a LOT of people using Twitter), they may choose to follow you. The next time you tweet, your followers get the message.

From a marketing perspective, this is GREAT. Here are self-identifiable groups of people potentially interested in your product, and a loudspeaker system (Twitter) that lets you announce your message. These people congregate in groups on Facebook and MySpace, and they talk amongst themselves. A viewer from the past would say ‘what else is new?’. The point is that word of mouth is alive and well on the internet.

To market your product or service successfully, you need to ‘get the word’ out somehow. Now you can send your marketing message to these communities directly, by participating in these groups and getting your message on their bulletin boards. Not everyone will read it or react to it, but some will eventually.

-------------------------
Marshall H. Goodman, Consultant
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing
Phone: (905) 764-3731
Email: goodmama@mhg.on.ca
Website: www.mhg.on.ca

What do I need to do to optimize my website to improve its position on Google's Search Engine Result Page (SERP)?

You should optimize your website in order to improve your search result ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.. This is important because more and more of your potential customers are using the Internet to research and look for your products and/or services. By optimizing your website it increases the likelihood that your company’s website will appear at the top or close to the top of the search result pages, which increases the chances of your website being seen.Your competitors are optimizing their websites in order to improve their page rank in the search engines your customers are using. If you don’t keep up you risk falling behind, which ultimately leads to lost revenue.

There are several main areas of optimization of your website that I will go over today:

• the title tag of each page


• the URL of your website


• the meta tags for keywords and website description


• the HTML 'heading' tags (H1, H2 etc)


• the 'alt' tags on images displayed on your site


• lastly, the text on each of your pages

Let's look at the basics first. The title (the HTML title tag) of your webpages should have your website name and the name of the page that shows. So you should have a 'abc.com - Home' page title on your home page, and 'abc.com - About Us' page title on your about page. And so on.

You should have a set of html 'meta' tags (information tags used by search engine 'indexers' or 'spiders') that let these search engines categorize your website in their indexes. There is a keyword meta tag that lists all the keywords that are related to your business , and there is a description meta tag that is a paragraph or two about your business, which should include some of the keywords as well. Give an example maybe? Eg. If you’re a fitness company, some meta tags might include your location, and words like ‘fitness’, ‘training’, ‘exercise’, ‘nutrition’, ‘working out’, ‘health’, ‘equipment’, etc.

The next area to look at are the HTML heading tags or H1 H2 etc. These are considered important by the search engines so the use of them for chapter or page headings is indicated.

Every image on your website has a property called the 'alt' tag, or alternative text tag. You should put your website name and important keywords in every alt tag, because Google indexes these as well.

Your home page contents play an important part too in search rankings. Most of the search engines look for content changes, as it helps in the ranking formula. You should also have some text that contains your keywords on your home page too to maximize the chances of placing higher in search engine rankings.

By taking these steps, you improve the odds of placing well in search engine rankings and ensuring your company is “on the radar” of your potential customers.
-------------------------
Marshall H. Goodman, Consultant
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing
Phone: (905) 764-3731
Email: goodmama@mhg.on.ca
Website: www.mhg.on.ca

Introduction and Topics (and a secret.. shh)

My name is Marshall H. Goodman and run a marketing agency www.mhg.on.ca specializing in basic Search Engine Optimization and basic and advanced Social Media Marketing campaigns.

There are two important initiatives in a company’s internet marketing campaign. Search engine optimization (SEO) to improve Google organic search results and Social Media Marketing Initiatives (SMM) to increase website traffic. These internet marketing initiatives are intended to improve your company website’s ranking on the Google search results pages and to expose your company’s website as a product destination in Social Media circles.

In this blog I intend to discuss scenarios that are relevant to today's marketing environment. I am considering some of the following topics:

• What do I need to do to optimize my website to improve its position on Google's Search Engine Result Page (SERP)?


• I am not using Social Media yet. Why is using Social Media to market my product or service so important?


• Why do I need to take care in choosing my keywords?


• Do I need to know about geo-targeting my keywords?


• Is the Page Rank of a website that links to mine important?


• Where is all this new traffic going to come from and how do I know?


• My Social Media marketing campaign is giving me lots of traffic. Now what?


• Why is a 6 month Social Media marketing campaign an investment and not an expense?

Oh yes, the secret. At first there were keywords, then there were back-links. Now its your internet reputation, and the care and feeding of it, that is the most important element in a sucessful internet marketing campaign.
-------------------------
Marshall H. Goodman, Consultant
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing
Phone: (905) 764-3731
Email: goodmama@mhg.on.ca
Website: www.mhg.on.ca