The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

The Three Critical Criteria for Judging SEO Keywords

2009-06-24T08:56:00.003-06:00

The first step in any Internet marketing campaign is picking the right keywords. Many businesses and law firms make the mistake of choosing keywords to target based on their opinion of what keywords potential customers would use to search for them, rather than basing that decision on research. Don't do that.

The other big mistake I see some companies make is picking a huge basket of keywords for which to promote their web site. Don't do that, either. Think small in number and highly specific.

So just what do you do? Let research guide your decisions, and pick keywords that meet three specific criteria.

Here are the three major criteria to consider for any potential keyword:

1. Degree of relevance. You want a strong sense of congruity between a keyword and a particular web page. It doesn't have to be relevant to your home page, but it needs to be relevant to SOME page on your web site.

For example, a good keyword for the home page of a Ford auto dealership in Memphis might be "Memphis Ford dealer." A good keyword for a page about Ford Mustangs on this same dealer's site might be "Memphis Ford Mustang dealer." These are completely hypothetical examples.

2. Search engine traffic. The more search traffic there is for a particular keyword, the more potential traffic the keyword could drive to your web site.

3. Competition. The fewer competing web sites there are for a keyword, the more attractive that keyword is for the subject web site.

So the three major criteria for any keyword you are considering targeting is relevance, traffic and competition. The relevance criterion is judgment-based. It is common sense. For the traffic criterion, the best tool to use to generate that data is the external Adwords research tool, located at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. For the competition criterion, I suggest basing it on Google "allintitle:" searches, because this will return the number of web pages that are closest to being specifically optimized for that keyword.

Compile a list of potential keywords using Google's external keyword, eliminate the less relevant ones, then rank them by the number of searches Google claims for each one. Then look for ones that are in a favorable competitive situation. Your highlighted keywords at this point are your best bet for generating targeted organic search engine traffic in a reasonable amount of time. Your chance of ranking for those keywords, and thus generating visits to your web site, is excellent.

Call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some assistance orchestrating an organized SEO campaign for your business web site.

Same Old Problems with Microsoft Paid Search

2009-06-19T12:03:00.003-06:00

I really want Microsoft to be successful in the paid search business. I think it would be wonderful for all of us involved in the search engine marketing game if Google had some viable competition for search engine ads. Unfortunately, Microsoft continues to shoot themselves in the foot.

For example...

We have a new client for whom we are running paid search ads on Microsoft's adCenter platform. But Microsoft insists on billing for paid search in $50 increments. As a result, our client has his credit card revoked by his credit card company because they thought it was suspicious that his card kept getting charged $50 at a time.

This is the SECOND client for whom we have had this same problem! Why does Microsoft insist on billing this way? They are the largest software company in the world...and they can't figure out how to charge someone's credit card for more than $50?

It makes my company look bad when this happens because we have to explain the whole problem to our client, tell them why Microsoft sucks so bad, have them go and get another credit card, etc.

Come on, Microsoft...

You've been promoting the hell out of Bing, spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to boost your search engine business...

Fix your billing!

New Twitter Marketing Blog

2009-05-29T20:12:00.003-06:00

Okay, check out http://twitterforbusiness.blogspot.com/. I've been deeply involved lately in researching various Twitter management tools. You know how we are...always trying to do more with less. This new blog is the start of our attempt to document what we learn in the process of trying different tools and strategies for using Twitter for business promotion. We hope you'll hang out.

Now, as to blogging in general...

Be better than me.

Jerry Work here. I do most of the blogging for Work Media. And I haven't blogged here in over a week. I have been very busy and have actually done a lot of blogging, but for other projects.

So be better than me. Don't forget about your main blog. Take the time every week to type out original thoughts about your business or industry.

You're situation is probably a little different than mine. I do a lot of content distribution and blogging type stuff for my clients in all different industries. Honestly...sometimes I just don't feel like typing out any more blog posts. I really shouldn't use that as an excuse. But I will any way.

You probably have the luxury of only talking about things related to your business. So take the time to type out your thoughts. It will be well worth it.

Product Recommendation: Tweet Later

2009-05-21T08:20:00.003-06:00

I LOVE Tweet Later. I started using the free version several weeks ago to help build up my Twitter follower list by setting the program to automatically follow back anyone who follows me, and to send a personal message to anyone who follows me. Just doing those two things has helped tremendously in launching my Twitter account.

I just started using the paid version, and if you are serious about using Twitter as a marketing tool, then it is well worth the money. With the professional version of Tweet Later, you can pre-configure a bunch of spinnable tweets to be posted at regular intervals. If you set it up right, this can save you a TON of time managing your account.

This strategy is most useful if you already have a lot of content to link to in your tweets. For instance, if you have been publishing a blog for a while, then you can set up a bunch of tweets that link to various blog posts you have written. Similarly, if you have a web site that offers a lot of products, then you can set up a bunch of tweets that link to different product pages.

If you don't have any existing material to set up lots of tweets for, you can still make good use of Tweet Later. It just might take more work to come up with material for all of your pre-configured tweets.

I do VERY little affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, to a large extent, is offensive to me because it involves people pushing products that are basically garbage. But I am impressed enough by this product that I am officially promoting it to my readers. I officially recommend the professional version of Tweet Later. To learn more, visit this link:

http://www.tweetlater.com/86969.html

By the way, there is a one week free trial (no credit card required!) for the professional version, so I definitely recommend you try it out with all of its features.

Software to Avoid: Article Video Robot

2009-05-18T08:15:00.001-06:00

First off, let me say that I LOVE the concept behind this product. The idea is that you can load up a text article into the system and it will automatically create a video, with a robotic voice that reads certain parts of the article. The web site claims that you can do the whole thing – create a video from an article – in three minutes. You can then distribute it to a bunch of video directories right from the same interface.

Great idea…very poor execution.

This software might be adequate if you make your living from affiliate sales and just want to create dozens of junk videos to distribute to try and generate search engine visibility for long-tail keywords. Personally, I am against the creation of junk content just to try to sell something. I am NOT against the creation of large amounts of content, but I think that content needs to be legitimate and of a reasonably high quality.

If your image is important to your business' success, then you should probably not use this software. The videos basically consist of an audio voiceover combined with somewhat animated still images. There is nothing wrong with the idea of creating videos this way (we do it all the time), but transitions should be smooth, and the voiceover should sound somewhat professional. We were spending so much time trying to tweak on our videos using Article Video Robot, it became apparent after a few tries that it would be much quicker to just create our videos manually using video editing software (even if all you have is Windows Movie Maker).

One of the main problems is that the computerized voice readings of article text tend to need a LOT of tweaking to sound reasonably human. The software gives you the option of recording your own voice for each “frame” (which corresponds to a paragraph of the text article) of the video. But again, by the time we do all that, it would have been just as fast to manually record an audio track and mix it with some still shots using video editing software. As for the creation of videos in three minutes…only if you want your videos to look and sound like garbage.

The Article Video Robot web site claims that the company offers a risk free trial. This is not true. After requesting a refund, having used the product for less than two weeks (well within the trial period), we were denied a refund because we had done four video submissions (which was actually two videos, due to two failed attempts at using the system). What I wonder is how we were supposed to thoroughly try the system out without actually creating and submitting videos.

Trust me, I wish I had the time back that I spent trying to use this junk software.

Article Video Robot is definitely not recommended.

Using Twitter Widgets to Update Your Web Site

2009-05-14T09:28:00.004-06:00

I am a big fan of marketing integration. Your offline marketing makes reference to your online marketing, your online marketing ties together with real world promotion, and everything links to everything else. This includes your social networking. One of my favorite techniques for combining blog content and static web page content is to stream the blog to the static pages via RSS. Sometimes it can be tricky to work out the code to make it happen, but it's a beautiful effect when your entire web site gets updated every time you make a new blog post.

In keeping with that tradition, I am now exploring the idea of streaming your Twitter content to your web pages. Fortunately, there is really no code to figure out, although you may have to do some in-line styling to get it to look right. To use it, first log into your Twitter account, then visit the following URL:

http://twitter.com/downloads

You can also get there by clicking the "Apps" link at the bottom of the page. To stream your Twitter posts, click the Widgets link. Then select the type appropriate for your site. You can create a Flash-based widget, or one that is HTML-based. I suggest going with straight up HTML because, for search engine purposes, you really want to have the actual words from your Twitter posts on your web pages, rather than a Flash movie.

Then just copy and paste the supplied code into your web pages. At this point, it is also VERY helpful if your site makes use of include files. For example, our law firm Internet marketing site, www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net, uses an include file for the left side of the pages, which looks like this:

#include virtual="leftside.asp"

So when I want to update the left-hand side of the web pages on the site, all I have to do is change this one file, rather than manually updating every single web page.

Initially, the design of the widget did not look right on my pages, so I used some in-line styling, as shown:

ul id="twitter_update_list" style="list-style-type: none;"

I did not like the way the bullet points looked, so I inserted the style code to tell viewers' browsers not to display bullet points by telling it the list style type is "none."

New widgets are coming out all the time, and we will discuss some more, but if I were you, the first one I would look into using is the Twitter widget that lets you stream your Twitter posts onto your web site.

Need some help using social networking to promote your web site? Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Getting Organized with Your Social Networking

2009-05-06T09:07:00.003-06:00

I have spent a good bit of time the last week using Excel to sketch out a social networking management system. The resulting spreadsheet will be a tool that we will give away for free for use of our readers. And the concept will then be carried forward into an online database-driven application that will be used for our own purposes and our clients'. But the exercise has been very helpful at helping me think through the process of how a social networking campaign should be organized.

First off, I consider content distribution to be a major part of online social networking. If you leave this part out, and just concentrate on meeting people online, then you are not taking advantage of the Web's ability to spread your name and marketing message. So writing blogs and articles and distributing that content should be an integrated part of what you do. The system I am setting up makes the assumption that you will be doing this.

Social networking is one of those things that tends to happen haphazardly, as time permits, whenever you think about it. It can be done much more effectively if you create a monthly social networking/content distribution schedule that tells you exactly when you should be doing things and what you should be doing.

To begin with, I suggest you create a simple calendar of when blog posts should be posted and articles written. Aim for eight blog posts per month and three articles. If you can do more than eight blogs, that's fantastic, but a minimum of eight is sufficient. In a year's time that is nearly a hundred blog posts, which is a lot of content. Three articles in a month may be aggressive, but try.

When you lay out your blogging and article writing schedule, go ahead and write out an idea for each blog post in advance, and create groupings of two or three blog posts in a row that elaborate on the same general topic. Then for each of those topic groupings of blog posts, specify a date to write an article that combines the information from those blog posts. This way, rather than trying to always think of a topic for an article from scratch, you can just use the content you create in the process of blogging as the basis for those articles.

Just doing the above things will go a long way toward giving your content distribution efforts more focus, but we're not done. In my next blog post we will continue talking about scheduling and hit on some other functions that should be included in your calendar.

Work Media is here to help with your social networking, content distribution and search engine marketing. If it involves driving traffic to a web site, we're into it. Give us call at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Free Web Sites that Make Video Distribution Easier

2009-04-28T11:38:00.003-06:00

Wow, we are really doing a lousy job with this blog this month. For about the last week, a large chunk of any available time at my (Jerry) disposal has been consumed with this law firm linking system we've been developing. The code for such a thing is extremely complex, and it seems like I just keep tripping over myself. It would probably help if I were a professional programmer, and not an Internet marketer trying to hack code together on his lunch break or late at night when my eyeballs feel like they're going to melt from staring at a computer screen.

Hmmm...we're already pretty deep into this blog post and I haven't said a thing that is of any use to someone looking to learn about Internet marketing. Here's something:

I have found a couple of sites that you can use for free to do video distribution. Well, one is for distribution and the other is for something else. One problem I have had is cleanly downloading videos from YouTube. YouTube does not have any kind of its own functionality to let you download videos you like. But I found a site, www.savevid.com, that makes it extremely easy...and it works! The videos you download actually seem to be just as high in quality as the original video hosted on YouTube. So...if you have a video or know of a video on YouTube that you would like to do something with, just visit www.savevid.com, type in the URL to the video, tell it what kind of file you would like, and you're all done!

For distributing videos, I have been trying out www.tubemogul.com, and it seems to work very well. I have used a couple of other solutions (Traffic Geyser and Hey!Spread), but this one seems to be the most intensive in terms of providing in-depth analytics, and it is free! Definitely worth a try.

Okay. I feel better now. It has been two weeks since my last blog post, but at least I did give you a couple of sites to check out. Now go promote your web site!

Ping.fm for Updating Social Networking Sites

2009-04-15T08:21:00.003-06:00

I've begun using an online tool called Ping.fm to manage my social networking activities. I have looked at a number of different such applications, but i really like this one. It has a pretty easy to use interface, and it works with a lot of different platforms.

To use it, first you need accounts set up at a few social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and maybe a blog or two. Then you create an account at Ping.fm and add your "networks" by telling the application what sites you want to manage and what your logins for the sites are.

Once that is done, rather than logging into individual web sites to update blogs and statuses and whatnot, you can just type a message into a textbox at the Ping.fm site and it automatically posts it to the various other sites you have configured.

Another interesting feature is that you can also use the application to update your various social networking sites via a mobile device. So if you are away from your computer but have an idea for something to post to your social networking sites, you can just submit the post to Ping.fm via your phone.

This is a concept that I encourage you to explore because it is a high leverage concept. I am a huge fan of writing something once and using it in many different places (when done ethically), and Ping.fm and similar services make that process much easier.

Better Linking by Going Deep

2009-04-08T13:09:00.004-06:00

April 8th and my first blog of the month. Shameful. My excuse is that I have spent a lot more time lately updating my newer blogs, those of the legal marketing variety on a couple of other sites. But really, there should be no excuses. I should just get it done. You need to have the same attitude yourself. You must blog!

Okay, now onto the actual subject of this blog.

When link building, the temptation is to always focus on your home page. Obviously, you would prefer that that be the page most people see and arrive at. It's sort-of like the cover of a book. It creates interest and gives the reader a little idea of what it is about.

So people love to link to their home page. However, the problem with this approach is that it does not account for two things:

1. You need to strive for a connection between the keyword in the link (if there is one) and keywords on the page that it links to; and

2. A single web page can only be optimized for a VERY small set of keywords (technically, it can only TRULY be optimized for one keyword).

So you want keyword-specific links pointing to keyword-specific pages. If you always link to your home page, you are not doing this. Instead, you need to practice something called "deep linking." Deep linking is the act of linking not to the home page but to a more specific sub-page. For example, if you have a web site that sells shoes, and there is a sub-page on the site devoted to Nike shoes, then a keyword link like "Nike shoes" would be more effective if it linked to the Nike page rather than your home page.

For help with your company's Internet marketing, contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net, info@workmedia.net, or 888-299-4837.

Twitter: Don't Bore Your Prospects

2009-03-31T11:09:00.004-06:00

Today I begin Twittering with renewed enthusiasm. Last night I even updated my profile and image. I've got a yellow post it note stuck to the side of my monitor to remind me to update Twitter. If you don't update, then the whole exercise is pointless.

Are you on the Twitter yet? It may seem like an unproductive use of your time, and I can't really blame you. But if you ain't on the Twitter, you got a problem.

Here's the lowdown. Twitter really can help you build up an online network of people who are interested in what you have to say; who can influence events in your life; who can recommend your products or services to others. It is a legitimate business tool. And it's free (not counting the time you spend actually doing it).

So start today. Go set up an account if you don't have one, and make your page look interesting. Upload an image of yourself so you don't have the default brown loop-looking thing as your image. Fill out the fields on your profile page. People want to learn who you are.

Your Twitter posts should: contain relevant keywords; be industry specific; and be interesting to read. If you can make them funny, that's even better. You want to entertain as much as possible.

I'm a professional search engine marketer, but I'm a newbie at using Twitter. But if I've learned anything in the short time I have been using Twitter, it's that you've got to be interesting!

By the way, you can look me up on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jwork.

The Print on Demand Hierarchy

2009-03-25T07:56:00.003-06:00

My company has two books in print on Amazon.com and a third one being written. The books are self-published via Amazon's print on demand (POD) service, CreateSpace. It's a great service that is very easy to use. In a way, it's sort-of a starter service for authors wanting to use print on demand who have limited time and resources to figure it out. So the advantage is how easy it is to get started. The disadvantage is that your visibility and distribution is limited to Amazon.com, Amazon affiliates and possibly a few other select sites, such as Target.com. This is assuming you want to use Amazon for all of your fulfillment work. If you want to purchase a bunch of copies and mail them out yourself, then that gives you more options, although it also means a lot more work.

Stepping up from Amazon, the next level of service is using a company like Lightning Source. Lightning Source provides the same basic service, printing and filling orders for books one at a time, but it offers much wider visibility. Lightning Source is owned by Ingram, a huge company in the publishing industry. When you print your books with Lightning Source, your books enter book catalogs for book stores all over the world to order from, including Barnes & Noble. So with Lightning Source, you get online distribution as well as real world visibility.

However, Lightning Source seems to be more particular about who they work with. The company is not really interested working with independent authors, but rather with independent publishing companies. Here is another major difference between Lightning Source and CreateSpace. When you publish with CreateSpace, if you don't have a publishing company, CreateSpace becomes the publishing company. With Lightning Source, you must be a publishing company or be represented by a publishing company.

So Work Media is moving in that direction. We are in the process of creating a publishing company, and will begin selling through Lightning Source. It will give us much wider distribution of our books and greater real world visibility.

You could do the same thing. Write a book. Start a publishing company. Sign up with a print on demand company. It doesn't have to be either of the ones discussed here. Those are the two that I am most familiar with, but there are lots more. A search on Google for “print on demand” will give you lots of companies to check out.

The main thing to keep in mind is that different companies offer different levels of service and different levels of ease of use. CreateSpace by Amazon is a great way to get started. There is no fee to create an account or add a book, other than a small fee you pay to order proof copies to inspect before the book goes live. And it will get you started, while you investigate options that may give you greater leverage on your time spent writing.

While we certainly don't claim to be experts on the print on demand industry, we feel comfortable using it as a component of a wider online marketing plan. If you would like help integrating POD into your plan (or anything else to do with Internet marketing), contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Business Lesson from the Desk of Jerry Work: Slow the Game Down

2009-03-19T08:27:00.002-06:00

The condition of having wealth can't compare to the knowledge and power gained from the process of creating that wealth. It's not even close.

In sports, top athletes talk about slowing the game down; letting the game come to them. It's much the same way in business. You have to be aggressive, but you can't press too hard without making sure you've built a strong foundation.

This is a lesson that has come to be with much difficulty. I've always been impatient. I always wanted success before I was ready for it. In my early 20's I started my first web design business. The only problem was...I didn't really know that much about web site design! I had been a financial analyst up to that point and had begun doing some casual web site design on the side. I really wasn't that good. But one January, after collecting my year-end bonus from my finance job, I decided it was a good time to quit and start up my own business.

That first venture wasn't particularly successful. After about a year and a half I was broke and looking for work. But the experience got me out of the financial industry and into the web site design industry, work that I enjoyed much more. Since that time, I have had a number of jobs that all deal with the act of conducting business online in one way or another. Eventually, web site design gave way to ecommerce development, which gave way to search engine optimization and marketing. Through it all, I never really achieved much in the way of material success (not on any kind of grand scale, at least), but I learned a lot. The person I am today, and the skillset I have, is a result of my years working this industry from one end to the other, trying to figure out my place in it.

Today, I am a partner in a company that exists to help businesses be successful marketing their products or services online. I like what I do. I get to apply all the knowledge I've acquired over the years directly to helping my clients be successful. It's interesting work.

For example, we are working with a company that manufactures and sells a very high quality line of socks used by many athletes. The first thing we needed to do was re-work their web site so it could be optimized, and migrate it to a new server. We helped their IT guy do all that, and coded a dynamic landing page that uses a URL rewriting component on the server for friendly URLs. So our work with these guys has been programming-heavy, and we really haven't even gotten into the marketing side. But it's all part of the job.

I think a big part of my personal development and path to success has been learning how to be a business man. Early last year (2008), my firm made some nice money on a single client. We got complacent. Rather than continuing to aggressively expand our client base, we rode this one client, content to service it along with our existing client base. Unfortunately, this client was in the financial sector and they ended up basically shutting down. When that happened, it hurt us.

The lesson? If your business is heavily dependent on a single client, then you have got to diversify in the name of survival. Having a strong foundation in this instance means having a wide client base so that you are not hurt too badly by losing any one particular client.

So, learn from my mistakes. Slow down the game. Work hard, but be organized and efficient. If you're just starting out, get as many clients or customers as you can. Diversify. Concentrate on marketing and sales. If you don't sell it, you will be out of business quick. It's not easy building a successful business, but the person you become in the process is a stronger, bigger person than who you are at the beginning.

And of course, if you need help in the area of search engine marketing, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or look us up at www.workmedia.net.

How to Use Trend Hopping with Print on Demand to Sell More Stuff Online

2009-03-17T09:56:00.004-06:00

We have made heavy use of print on demand, or POD, as a credibility builder. POD allows anyone to be an author and publisher. It doesn't matter how obscure the material or how small the audience. Today I want to explore a concept that we call "trend hopping." There are probably other names for it, but the concept is creating books and other material of an extremely timely nature using print on demand.

Trend hopping is the act of quickly creating products based on the public's interests at the moment. It results in material that people have a craving for RIGHT NOW. For example, let's say you sell Miley Cyrus merchandise. You could write a biography about her (or on any aspect of her life) and give it away as a premium to anyone who purchases a certain item. Or you could just give it away to anyone who visits your web site and provides you with their email address. Or you could use it as a prize in a contest. There are lots of possibilities.

Is it expensive? Well, it depends on what you mean by expensive. Orders for your own print on demand book might cost you $2 or $3 per copy. In most cases, that is a small amount to pay for a new customer or new sale. You will have to work the economics out yourself to see if this strategy makes sense to you. Just remember, in many cases, it is worth taking a small loss on the first sale to get a new customer.

With print on demand, publishing your own book is a zero risk situation. You don't have to worry about printing and storing books in advance. POD perfectly matches supply to demand. If 10,000 people want your book, then you end up printing 10,000 copies and no more. If only 15 people want it, then you only print 15 copies.

Contact Work Media for more information about using print on demand as part of your online promotional efforts.

The Lane Kiffin Approach to Marketing

2009-03-13T09:39:00.002-06:00

A recent response to one of my blog posts got me thinking about the concept of notoriety. Does my company push the envelope with regard to Internet marketing strategies? Hell yes! But we normally end up backing up somewhat until we find the middle ground - that area where our techniques can see results, but not get us in trouble. We don't just do it for fun. It's our job to learn what works, and then use that knowledge to our clients' benefit.

But the fact remains some of the things we talk about involve strategies shunned by very mainstream marketers; strategies that some consider to result in "spam." In a way, we are creating a sense of notoriety for ourselves by revealing our envelope-pushing techniques. And it is attracting attention. And it is earning us new clients.

It is a bit analogous to what the new head football coach at the University of Tennessee, Lane Kiffin, has done in his first few months on the job. If you are a fan of college football, then you already know the story. Lane has made many comments that have angered fans and administration of other SEC schools, he has committed a number of minor recruiting violations, and he has created all kinds of negative press about himself.

He has also shined the national spotlight on UT football (where it hasn't been in a long time) and has gotten many top-notch recruits considering UT. Certainly, his success will be judged based on the performance of his team on the field. If they don't win many games, then all the other stuff will be pointless. But purely from the standpoint of getting the attention of national press and potential recruits, his controversial style has done the job.

This approach may not be right for your company. You may operate in an industry where you have to have a squeaky clean image and you have to do things a certain way. But if you are in a position where the things you say can influence the buying decisions of potential customers or clients, then it may be beneficial to you to go against the grain. Get some peoples' attention. Piss some people off. Clients can't hire you if they have never hear about you and don't know that you exist.

Here's a link to an interesting conversation about the merits of aggressive blogging for law firms: http://lawmarketing.ning.com/profiles/blogs/an-advanced-blogging-strategy

Getting Down and Dirty with Link Swapping

2009-03-10T12:41:00.004-06:00

Don't tell me about search engine marketing. I have been doing this for years. I have hundreds of articles and blog posts all over the Web. I have two books in print. I have many satisfied clients. I know SEO.

So I feel qualified to tell you that, without a doubt, link swapping still works. My firm will continue engaging in link swapping on behalf of our clients until we see that it no longer works.

Yet this continues to be a practice that we are questioned about over and over. Look, the purpose of link swapping is not to provide your visitors with other web sites they might want to visit. Not at all. It is only for the purpose of improving search engine rankings.

I'm not at all implying that you should rely on link swapping is your only strategy for getting links. You need lots of links from lots of different places. One way links are preferable to swapped links, and you should take steps to get those kinds of links as well. But link swapping is one important component of your overall online marketing campaign.

If you're going to use this strategy, do it right. To begin with, have mo more than 50 links on a link swap page. So you will probably need to have multiple pages. You also need to supply your link partners with very specific verbiage and HTML to use for their links to you. And remember, this does not have to be a page that is featured prominently on your site. You just need a small text link somewhere on your home page for search engine spiders to follow. That will be good enough for search engines to find.

This is a great way to begin the process of building a catalog of links to your site if you are just getting started.

So don't be a snob. Set up a link swaps page or directory on your site and begin the process of swapping links with other relevant web sites. Over time, it will improve your search engine rankings.

By the way, if you promote a law firm, you have to check out the Law Firm Internet Marketing site.

An Example of a Cleanly Coded Site

2009-03-05T12:27:00.003-06:00

We just finished work on a small web site for a local client, Property Solutions of Tennessee, which provides janitorial cleaning services for businesses in Nashville. Here is the URL:

http://www.propertysolutionstn.com

I advise you to check out the HTML on this site for an example of what a cleanly (and thus, more search engine friendly) site looks like. The main thing to take note of is how little code there is that formats the page. The sections of the page are separated by div tags that describe their appearance. There is some in-line styling used in a couple of places that would be better moved to an external file. But all in all, the code is minimal, which makes it much easier for search engine spiders to find what they are looking for.

Also take note of the keyword-rich title which is not overly bloated. The title is exactly ten words (although the word "of" in the title really doesn't count), and almost every words in the title is a keyword related to the company's business. The page also has meta tags that contain roughly the same keywords used in the title and in the page copy.

The other pages of the site all have a keyword link at the bottom that points to the home page. This establishes a theme for the site and boosts the home page relevance for those keywords.

This site has an excellent chance at ranking well. It is cleanly coded and optimized for specific keywords we uncovered in our research that we think our client has an excellent chance at ranking for. The only thing lacking now is some external keyword links (or any links in the case of a new site like this one) linking to the site.

If you operate on a local level and are careful with your keyword research, you can build a site that has a high change at ranking well, if you code the site well and use your target keywords throughout.

Get Those Social Networking Profiles Set Up!

2009-02-27T09:02:00.001-06:00

Take the time to set up your profiles on social networking sites. I know, I know, it takes forever...but it must be done. And it is my suggestion that you have lots of such accounts. It is not sufficient just to have a LinkedIn profile. You should create accounts at Squidoo and LinkedIn and set up good profiles there. You also need accounts at the major article directories like EzineArticles.

To create all these accounts and set up profiles, you will need to devote at least a half day to it, if not the whold day.

This is the kind of work that would be good to hire someone else to do. I suggest you create a document that has your bio, contact information, links, and any other information you may want shown on your profiles, and then find an intelligent young person to do the work for you. Paying a kid $10 per hour to do it is a bargain compared to using your own time, which you probably value a lot more than that.

Do people really look at other people's profiles on social networking sites? Absolutely. So don't blow an opportunity to brand and market yourself to people who are potential sources of business or leads.

The Competitive Mindset Online Versus Offline

2009-02-25T10:34:00.002-06:00

I'm a big fan of books like Think and Grow Rich and The Science of Getting Rich. I like that mental success stuff. Regardless of how much credence you give to the idea that one's mind can influence external events, you can't deny that your chances of success in business are better if you have a positive, optimistic outlook.

In The Science of Getting Rich, written about a hundred years ago by Wallace Wattles, one of the main ideas is that the competitive mindset works against you. A more productive mindset is one in which you assume that demand for your products or service is unlimited, so there is no reason to be in a competitive mindset. Don't worry about what your competitors are doing. Just run your own business, providing the very best service possible, confident that there are plenty of customers.

I like that mindset. It's a very self-empowering approach. Rather than sitting around worrying, just keep your nose to the grind and work harder. In this lousy economy, that is absolutely the best way to think.

HOWEVER...

The world in which I conduct most of my day-to-day business is the online world, and here, unfortunately, the same rules don't apply. Here is why:

The amount of search engine traffic that is relevant for a particular web site is limited at any given time.

For example, if you sell Nike running shoes on your web site, at any given moment, there are only so many people searching online for Nike running shoes. So, by definition, it is not a situation with unlimited demand; demand is fixed by the number of people performing those searches. So if you want that traffic, you have to FIGHT FOR IT! You are definitely in competition with all the other web sites that sell Nike running shoes. Either your web site has high search engine visibility or it doesn't.

The online competitive mindset has to be one focused on competition. If you don't do everything you can to position your web site to be seen by the people searching for your products, then they will see your competitors' web sites and buy from them.

So...in the real world, demand is unlimited. Online, demand is very limited, which requires a different mindset.

Need help with your online marketing? Call me. I'm Jerry Work. My office phone # is 615-263-2811. Or you can email me at jwork@workmedia.net.

Sometimes You Just Wanna Be Anonymous

2009-02-19T16:06:00.003-06:00

In general, our intention with online marketing is to get as much exposure as possible. However, in the course of doing that, we set ourselves up for failure. How? By being considered overly aggressive by the people who run the sites we depend on to help us spread our marketing message and generate links to our web sites. This can lead to being labeled a "spammer" and being cut off.

So when it comes to submitting content to various web sites, you really want to be anonymous to the web sites themselves.

How do you do this?

With proxy servers. A proxy server allows you to mask your IP address by doing your work under a different IP address. If your IP address changes when you submit web sites and do various other things, it becomes much more difficult to track you. As far as most web sites are concerned, when your IP address changes, you're a different person. Strange, I know.

There are online proxy services that allow you to do your web surfing and other things through an interface that changes your IP address. And many search marketing software packages allow you to work under different IP addresses. If you are going to be really aggressive distributing content online (like we are), then this is a technology you need to utilize.

Of course, you can always just call Work Media and we'll do the work for you.

FYI, here are a couple of sites we have set up on the subject of print on demand publishing:

http://www.freewebs.com/printondemand

http://www.zimbio.com/Print+on+Demand

Staying on Top of Things

2009-02-17T14:09:00.005-06:00

Right now I'm average one blog post a week on this blog, which is not sufficient. I've started posting at a few other blogs, and as a result have not kept on top of this one. It has got me thinking about new ways to leverage my writing. If you have read many of my posts, you know that I am always looking for new tools and techniques, such as article spinning, to get more done in less time. But for maximum impact, that concept needs to be extended not just to article directory submissions, but to the maintenance of blogs, social networking sites, etc.

I'm working on a system for making that process much easier. It would be great if there were an automated solution to take care of everything, but ultimately, there is still a lot of input that needs to be made that is best made by a human brain. So the work for the perfect strategy continues.

We've been doing some research for the print on demand industry. Here is a site you might want to check out:

Print on Demand on Squidoo

We have started selling quite a few copies of the new book, The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book, and things are definitely busy around the office. But we're never too busy to talk to you.

Article Post Robot: Recommended Article Distribution Software

2009-02-10T13:43:00.001-06:00

I have been trying out an article distribution software package called Article Post Robot, and so far I am impressed. Unlike many other things I have tried, this may actually be worth the money. Article Post Robot has some features that I really like. For one thing, it submits to all of the major article directories, and not just directories that are based on a particular kind of script. It also gives you the ability to add your own article directories that you want to submit to.

And it also does article spinning. It uses the traditional article spinning syntax (only it uses "{{{" rather than just "{") and even has the ability to pull paragraphs from different articles located in a directory on your hard drive to create new articles on the fly. So it offers a lot of flexibility and actually seems to work pretty well.

It may be a little soon, because I really like to hammer on any software I use before recommending it, but I feel pretty confident about this one. So here it is: I officially recommend Article Post Robot.

Here is a link if you'd like to check it out for yourself:

ArticlePostRobot.com

In Search of the Perfect Article Marketing Solution

2009-02-04T12:01:00.003-06:00

Jerry Work here. I do a lot of article marketing. For a while, I got heavy into video, but it is more difficult to produce video for third-party clients than it is to produce my own. So ultimately, text content creation and distribution is still the most effective strategy for generating links for myself and my clients. It gives you the widest distribution of your marketing message and greatest leverage on your time.

I am always looking for tools to help me do a better job with article marketing or do it more efficiently. For nearly a year, I used Article Marketer, an online service that is probably the top article distribution service. It gets your articles listed on many article directories in a short period, and then continues with a steady stream of submissions over time.

Unfortunately, I had to stop using Article Marketer. They have their own quality control program and are quite strict about what articles they allow. There were many occasions where I tried to argue my case about why a particular article should be allowed, but there never seemed to be any way to have a dialogue with Article Marketer staff.

In addition, there were times when it literally took weeks to get articles approved and into the distribution queue. I am a professional, aggressive search engine marketer. I service quite a few clients, and I do my own marketing. I write high quality content, and I write it fast. I can’t have my business slowed down waiting on approval by other people, and I can’t have my articles sitting in a queue.

I also need the flexibility to post articles under different names for my clients. Article Marketer requires you to have multiple accounts to do this, which can be quite expensive and difficult to manage. I need a single program that lets me distribute content under different names.

So…it seems what I need is an automated solution. I started trying out something called Jet Submitter, but the problem with it is that it only submits to directories set up using a particular script. Plus, after joining, I read all kinds of horrible reviews based on the company’s terrible customer service. You just can’t feel all that confident about a software solution in those circumstances.

I have also used SENuke, which has a very nice built-in article spinning feature. Unfortunately, SENuke is not of great value for article marketing because it lacks one critical feature…it doesn't actually submit to article directories! It is a social networking tool used to set up pages on sites like WetPaint and Tumblr. This process is certainly valuable, and is one component of a well-rounded search marketing campaign, but it doesn't replace mass article distribution.

My dream solution has the following features: 1. it distributes to all of the major article directories; 2. it requires no input on my part (works completely automatically); 3. submits very different versions of a core article; and 4. with those alternate versions being well-written and professional.

I think the software I want doesn't exist. I’m not sure if I trust the automated solutions that are on the market. The next best alternative is a semi-automated solution, which is software that rotates from one directory to another, but still requires some input on a per-directory basis. I will keep you informed of what I discover while I try out some more options.

If optimized content creation and distribution is something you struggle with, Work Media can help! Contact us at 615-263-2811 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Return to Squidoo

2009-01-29T14:48:00.002-06:00

I logged into Squidoo yesterday to build a new lens ("lens" being Squidoospeak for a web page) for a client. It had been a while since I had logged in, which isn't good but isn't necessarily bad either. One of the great things about Squidoo is all of the modules it provides for building your lenses that update themselves automatically. So you can build a lens that will continue to show new content every day even if you don’t do anything to it for months or years.

Anyway…I logged in to build a new lens and noticed some major changes to the Squidoo interface that make it much quicker to add modules and align modules on your page. Last year, I spent a couple of weeks setting up Squidoo lenses and it was very slow process because of what was required to add and re-order modules. Now that that process is much quicker, Squidoo is much better.

So why should you set up pages in Squidoo? It's been a while since we've talked about it, so here is a super quick refresher. Squidoo is a social networking site founded by Seth Godin that Google really loves. Often, a page on Squidoo that pertains to your subject area will rank quicker and higher than your own web site. So links from Squidoo carry a lot of weight.

You should incorporate Squidoo as part of your social networking/content distribution campaign. If you publish a blog, you should use the RSS module to stream your blog posts to your Squidoo lenses. And use some of the news publishing modules to automatically keep them updated with news about your industry.

The Squidoo teams seems to be trying to make the site easier to use, so if you haven't checked it out yet, now is a great time.