Loudoun SEO - Northern Virginia SEO-SEM: Internet Marketing

Virginia Internet Marketing Training - Ask Kelly & Ted - More Traffic?

2008-05-15T04:06:00.001-07:00

Here's a recent question that came to us - while it's a question we obviously hear a lot, there aren't a lot of places to go that succinctly summarize the steps to take (at least from our Internet Marketing, Media and Communications perspective):

"What are your recommendations to generate more traffic, etc? When do you guys get involved - during the page designs, build or post build?"

Our answer:

"Generating more traffic" is a big part of our business - but it's not the "end-game" of your business or our relationship. The "end-game" is more business for you, meaning more sales, referrals, publicity, etc. So, "generating more traffic" is a large and necessary piece of the puzzle, but there are also many things to do before and after the traffic is generated.

To actually generate more traffic, it's going to involve AT LEAST the following activities, each of which requires research, content design and generation, monitoring and updating. (Note - many businesses do just some of the following - determined by their budget, marketing plan and particular competitive positioning).

1 - SEO (search engine optimization) - optimization of the website; there's a long list of things to do, many of which may be peculiar to the specific site. Things like the right metatags, keyword density, html optimization, anchor and alt text, etc. Note that optimization for search engines needs to be balanced against optimization (i.e. usability) for people - the end game is not just traffic, but conversion of landing pages (i.e. people actually take action).

2 - SEM (search engine marketing) - distribution of optimized content and backlinks to sites and directories on the web - the specific form of the content (includes multimedia) and where it's placed will be specific to the site, its business and reputation, and the marketing plan. Note that "marketing" means both "free" placement, and "paid" placement (like Google Adwords). Creating and maintaining Adwords campaigns is a real science - that's why you should only hire "certified" professionals. These campaigns can range from $30 to many tens of thousands of dollars a month in pay-per-click charges - it's serious business.

3 - Social Media Marketing - this is like SEM, but much more "conversational", and there's a certain amount of reputation and community building that needs to happen, among the "right" sites, and very carefully (i.e. you need to play nice in the sandbox). Marketing formats include everything from text comments to videos. Think Facebook, stumbleupon, delicious, etc.

4 - Plain 'ol Online Marketing - this is not necessarily targeted at search engines (but should always consider copywriting that's optimized for keywords) - this includes email campaigns (with associated "opt-in" harvesting), classifieds, banner ad placement, and affiliate marketing (which presumes some digital content has been produced to offer or sell). This also implies some degree of digital content management - meaning, the various content and digital assets are managed and coordinated as they're created, distributed and tracked for performance.

5 - Online/Offline coordination - Northern Virginia media advertising and communications (and elsewhere, obviously) happens with flyers, by mail, broadcast on the tv and radio, on billboards (print and electronic), and at in-person meetups - a coordinated campaign on and off the Internet should be leveraging the same copywriting and graphic themes and messages.

6 - "Communications" - the broad industry we represent is called "Marketing AND Communications"; not all digital or physical content generated for broadcast or individual consumption is for advertising purposes. Much is simply for business communications purposes, whether to simply inform existing customers or to let broader audiences know what you're up to. Like press releases. Press release in particular, however, should be well-coordinated with your marketing campaign, in terms of keywords and backlinks. Other communications might be for individuals and organizations in non-profit activities - like creating an online social media resume.

"When do you guys get involved?"

It's always better to get started on the marketing campaign, and translating it into web content, as soon as possible - so that a new website has "built-in" SEO and SEM features, and so that the search indexes can get started indexing the site and building up the page rank. The answer is, therefore, "as soon as possible, even long before your website or digital content is created".

I Am Modern Magazine for Moms

2008-05-09T17:05:00.000-07:00

Just a quick press release for I Am Modern Magazine for Moms - one of our great partners and a fantastic Northern Virginia business.

Between and Among the Hyperlocal - Intergeostitial Marketing

2008-05-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

We've been experimenting for some time with internet marketing to the areas that are difficult to define in terms of set geopolitical boundaries and zipcodes. Areas you know, and can describe to your friends and neighbors, but nobody else knows about. Most hyper-local marketing initiatives by advertisers and media organizations (like myzip.com and loudounextra.com) zero in on consumers and readers by zipcode, town or community name. A very few are able to organize by the concept of "neighborhood" - but when the area and group of consumers isn't definable from the outside with legal names and numbers, it must be defined from the inside (i.e. by "social media techniques") by place names, descriptions, relationships and a loose aggregation of zipcodes, boundary lines, landmarks and perhaps business names.

We love making up new words (like our last "avonym"); so here's our term for this sort of Internet Marketing - "intergeostitial marketing". Interstitial literally means "standing between", and refers to the space among other notable interest items - interstitial marketing refers, on the web, to those nasty pop-unders that appear between web pages and sessions. The "geo" obviously refers to geospatial determinants - think of an area you'd like to market to in terms of what the Google map looks like, bounded by lat/long degrees - not in terms of what the post office or county treasurer's office thinks of it. More like a politician's view of an area, with boundaries drawn around people and their activities, among referenceable geospatial landmarks.

Our primary example is Dulles South, an area of southern Loudoun, western Fairfax and western Prince William counties in Virginia - generally known as Dulles South from its relative placement to Dulles Airport. Our visitors and readers habitually drive on local segments of Rt. 50, 28, 29, 606 and 629, live in HOA-managed neighborhoods or the few small towns, shop easily among the three counties, typically identify themselves with respect to the county (i.e. eastern Loudoun or western Prince William), send children to private schools in multiple counties, and include a large number of zipcodes that to most marketers don't seem to relate to each other in terms of demographics. But they do, to those that live there.

So in order to market effectively to this interstitial area, it's mostly a social marketing effort, driven by a deep connection, interest and understanding of what seems to outsiders as a very transient and loosely-coupled demographic. News, information, business openings, bake sales, school events, traffic incidents - all these information types need to be promoted, harvested and leveraged to build and maintain the tapestry of keywords/keyphrases that make sense to the area. The advertising and marketing needs to be coupled with the network of local affiliations among bloggers, small-town newspapers, home businesses and email networks. This kind of intergeostitial ad network is also a very new concept - more traditional "vertical ad networks" aren't yet quite getting the concept that a "vertical" market can be a self-defined and self-maintained "super-neighborhood/businesshood", that basically revolves around family life.

We've got lots more to share on this concept and practice of "intergeostitial marketing" as our experiment continues - let us know of an area you feel is similar.

Tags and Keywords

2008-04-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

For those who don't understand the SEO process, one of the very first things we do is try to identify your business, product, service or message in terms of single words or short phrases - called "keywords" or "key phrases". This is because people using search engines typically use single words or short phrases to begin their discovery process, as the initial filter for a set of results. Search engines compare these words against the words used on webpages, and try to make the best matches for delivering results. Many times, you as a business owner may describe what you sell in terms that your customers may not actually, typically use. It's our job to try to make the connection between the kind of language your customers are using, and the language on your website.

One note about "keywords" vs. "tags". "Keywords" are really the actual words that are used by both search engine consumers (i.e. searchers) and providers (i.e. website owners) for direct links between ideas and content. "Tags" are user-defined words used to categorize or classify content, to help others organize or navigate the content. "Tags" are basically more informal, less precise keywords. Sounds like the same thing, but you'll find the term "tags" being used on many social media/bookmarking sites, vs. keywords.

Therefore, we'll start with identifying all possible keywords/key phrases that may best describe your business, that are either most often used by searchers, or should be used (based on industry expertise). We'll test these (by updating copy in ads, blogs or your website), and start narrowing down those that seem to resonate the best, and drive the best search results. Our keyword research is most effective when we're researching topics we're very familiar with. For example, we were asked to help sell "technology governance services". What words ought to be used for this, or might people use to search for more information? Here's a first list we generated...our point is, with this blog entry, that most marketing efforts really need to start with a basic agreement of the target keywords/phrases. If this isn't done first, then all following efforts may be misguided.

Governance Process Issues
IT Governance Improvement
Lack of IT Governance
IT Governance Solutions
Bad IT Investments
Investment Portfolio Management Techniques
Governance Process Integration
Business Process Governance Issues
Governance Decisions
IT Process Governance
Governance Framework
Governance Process Framework
Governance Roadmap
Architecture Governance
Data Governance
Process Governance
Information Governance
IT Governance Practice
Compliance Driven Governance
Governance Decisions
Governance Assessment
Governance Diagnostic
Information Technology Governance
Regulatory Compliance
Technological Accountability
IT Decision Rights
IT Decision Process
IT Risk Management and Governance
Enterprise Governance
Strategic Alignment
Performance Measurement
Resource Management
Value Delivery
IT Alignment
Enterprise Architecture Governance
IT Objectives
IT Accountability
CIO Accountability
CIO Strategy
CIO Agenda
IT Business Value
IT Governance Model
IT Governance Definition
Corporate Governance
CobiT Governance
ITIL Governance
ITIL Assessment
SOA Governance
Reengineering IT Governance
IT Governance Executive Dashboard
IT Roadmap
Enterprise IT Governance
IT Business Value
Integrated IT Governance

Business Owners - You need BOTH a Website Team AND an Internet Marketing Team

2008-04-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Many businesses hire consultants, engineers or website design companies to deliver projects, capabilities and subject-matter expertise regarding Enterprise Content Management, including the entire lifecycle of digital content/asset management. This includes delivery of Portal and Search capabilities, website content management and process capabilities, and back-end data management and storage architectures. The business goals are ultimately about efficient, effective and secure management of information in support of delivery of business products and processes. From a business perspective, however, how do you really know these technical engineering efforts were actually well-executed and ultimately successful?

Most likely the website engineering efforts are measured in terms of contract compliance, adherence and mapping to specific requirements, and satisfaction with delivery and communication on the part of the customer (i.e. your business). In other words, performance is measured only from the perspective of the “Business-to-Business” (i.e. B2B) relationship (i.e. between you and your web design/build team), and from the perspective of your own internal B2B relationships (i.e. cost and process efficiencies gained within your own company). Can your web consultant demonstrate gains or actively improve your business performance from the perspective of your own Business-to-Customer relationships?

Consider this website project scenario. You buy services to develop a great new externally-facing website or portal, with a robust content management capability to support it. It includes very efficient and secure data management architecture, including a secure, SOA-based integration architecture for delivery of messages between the sub-systems and external systems. You also get extensive portal usability features and website statistic reporting functions. The capabilities are implemented in a manner that maps successfully to your Enterprise Architecture (or at least best practice standards), from an IT investment perspective. Then the consultant company either continues to run the website, or it's turned over to another Maintenance team. It's a total success, and a great system. But you may have completely overlooked the competition, and failed to manage your external digital assets.

The competition has evidently also upgraded their website. Additionally, they’ve invoked an extensive Internet Marketing campaign to make sure their customers and partners can quickly and easily find all of the information and products they have to offer, and find it before they find any information you have to offer. Steps they’ve taken, that you didn't:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques were used across the site, to make sure that it ranks exceedingly well for all target keywords/phrases used in search engines

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques were used in coordination with all other marketing and advertising, including keyword-optimized backlinks, copy, advertising, articles, whitepapers and press releases being deployed and managed among all relevant third-party sites, directories, news outlets and online industry destinations. This marketing included multi-media (i.e. photos, videos, audio), and both organic (i.e. “free”) and paid (i.e. multiple “pay-per-click” and other paid advertising) channels.

• Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques were used to help generate additional, on-site, relevant and search-engine friendly content for the website, leveraging Web 2.0 features – this included Blog-style content, feedback/commenting capabilities, participatory forums, consumption and publishing via RSS format, demographic targeting/referrals to feed mashups, etc.

• Social Media Marketing (SMM) techniques were used to encourage additional, off-site content and information that linked to the website and its information, and to encourage positive reputation-building among target demographics and communities on target channels - these techniques yielded even more great search results and collateral press.

These Internet Marketing steps yielded very rapid results. Your site experienced an expected “bump” in traffic, and steady increase in conversions, though some apparent “anomalies” in decreased traffic for particular segments you didn’t focus too much on.

Their site experienced overwhelming “flash traffic” from many online and offline sources, was picked up by media outlets, clobbered you in the search engine rankings (SERPS) for hundreds of keywords and keyphrases, and resulted in a dramatic increases in both their customer awareness and actual market penetration/share.

How could this have been avoided? You need to make sure there's synergy and integration between the provider of your INTERNAL Content Management, Search and Website/Portal capabilities (i.e. B2B), and the provider of your EXTERNAL Content Management, Distribution and Search requirements (i.e. B2C and C2C). A Website Design/Engineering Team AND and Internet Marketing Team. These providers may well be different companies, but make sure you consider utilizing both of these perspectives and types of providers at the same time.

Virginia Internet Marketing Training - Ask Kelly & Ted

2008-04-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a question that's come up - "why is my Alexa ranking so low"?

Here's our answer:

Alexa is just one indicator out of many of your site's traffic and trends, and isn't ever as accurate as metrics collected with your own website statistics package. Alexa gets its rankings via installations of its toolbar - which is a bit skewed towards the Internet-literate and somewhat technical crowd (who actually decide to install the toolbar). That's why sites that don't have anything to do with technology will be ranked artificially lower.

Also, the Alexa toolbar doesn't install at this time for IE on Microsoft Vista machines - so basically you're getting evidence of traffic from just a few segments of Internet users, not all. Additionally, any ranking by Alexa is usually quite delayed, and tends really not to be statistically relevant or useful for sites that aren't in the top few 100,000. We don't view Alexa rankings as useful past a possible general indicator of trends; your Google Analytics are the very best source of traffic trends.

Alexa rankings can be manipulated to some extent, thereby not being very objective measures. For example, in your next newsletter, tell everyone to go ahead and install the Alexa toolbar and set yoursite.com as the default homepage. You'll get a boost, for sure, in Alexa's rankings - but it's a false indicator of actual, useful traffic.

So for now (if you're a smaller site, just getting started, etc.), just ignore Alexa - focus on the Google Analytics (or whatever your site metrics package is). Your overall "ranking" in Alexa doesn't really have any relevance in terms of SEO. What's important is that all the keywords/keyphrases you're focusing on are coming up high in the search results, AND more and more people are actually clicking on them, AND you're getting more "coversions" (i.e. email signups, advertising signups, etc.) from your site. Instead of "ranking" against all other general sites, focus on "ranking" against your competition for advertising dollars and subscribers.

A little experiment with images

2008-04-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

According to this blog from Search Engine Land, much more emphasis needs to be addressed by online marketers on achieving results via universal search - i.e. pay attention to your images and videos.

The fact that images are highly appealing, can convey an enormous amount of emotion-provoking information in a blink, and can be nearly universal from a language and culture perspective isn't new. The fact that image management should be a serious element of your online marketing strategy might be new to many businesses.

In our marketing travels, we've seen many genres of images competing for consumer eyeballs - some focused and niche, some global and mundane. Here's a bit of an experiment - the next few blog posts will include a photo of what we think is probably one of the most appealing types of images for marketing and advertising - a woman working on a computer, or with a computer-driven device. There's many reasons and opinions for this; but we'll simply test it right here for a while to prove the point.

Northern Virginia Multi-Media Advertising, Graphic Design, Production and Distribution

2008-04-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

KME Internet Marketing will shortly be offering logo and graphic design, multi-media advertising and production capabilities to its customers, for coordinated business advertising across the Internet, TV, Radio, Print and Point Displays/Billboards. Formats will include not only websites, blogs, social media outlets and email, but also AV-audio/video (online files, streaming and CD/DVDs) and print production. Production capabilities will include website design, graphic design, AV studio production, and photography.

For businesses who want to coordinate and extend their advertising dollars and presence across all Internet channels and media, as well as into more traditional channels (i.e. "offline") including local TV, Radio, Print and other distributed media, KME Internet Marketing and its partners can provide a "one-stop shopping" capability and campaign management resource from its Northern Virginia Internet Marketing and Multi-media advertising production headquarters.

Top 12 Fairfax County Online Advertising Destination Websites

2008-03-30T04:20:00.000-07:00

Following up on our quarterly Loudoun Online Advertising reviews, here's a top 12 listing of Fairfax Internet Marketing online local community destinations for business advertising dollars.

Advertising your Fairfax County business online, on the Internet, includes several categories of spending that attracts different kinds of consumers. Fairfax County Internet Marketing effort and dollars should certainly be spent on localized global search directories (i.e. Google Maps/MSN Live), localized national directories (like DMOZ, Superpages, Resourcelinks and Yellowpages), localized national review and social media directories (like Facebook, Discoverourtown, zip.net, Yelp and Delicious) and industry-specific sites offering advertising. This review doesn't cover those resources, nor does it include government-sponsored or business-only sites like visitfairfax.org or the various area chambers of commerce.

Note that as Northern Virginia Internet Marketing specialists, KME Internet Marketing maintains a comprehensive directory of all the relevant online advertising services, social media and content sources, and seach engine focused tools and websites on the Internet successfully catering to those searching for businesses and information in this area, though all options aren't necessarily appropriate for all advertisers. Contact us if you'd like to discuss all the options.

A very effective way of quickly and reliably getting your message in front of a very targeted group of Fairfax County residents, including those in Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, Mclean Reston, Herndon, Burke and Centreville, is to advertise on the general, local community news and information directories, that exclusively cater to residents and businesses of the area. Most are very reasonable, tend to show up well in search listings, and drive many opportunities for cross-selling (i.e. someone finding information for neighborhoods finds real estate, home improvement or gardening supply ads).

Here's our initial take on this top 12 list of Fairfax Internet Marketing community directory sites, to be refined and updated next quarter. They're ranked according to our professional Northern Virginia Internet Marketing and SEO/SEM opinion regarding their effectiveness, exposure, page ranking and overall value in terms of local or regional businesses reaching out and attracting broad demographics among residential and business consumers. We don't include pure landing pages, SPAM sites or link farms. Note that Fairfax, with such diverse population centers and large communities, has very different online focus between the different communities, and very active sub-regional site specifically for areas like the cities or communities of McLean, Falls Church, Arlington, Herndon/Reston and Alexandria. Our list includes the broadest possible exposure for the whole of Fairfax County and close-in DC Metro regional locations in Loudoun and Prince William Counties.

A note about the Washingtonpost - while offering great online advertising focused to regions around DC, we don't agree with its policy that you must register to view the online site, and so it's not included here - its Loudounextra.com site doesn't require this, and its soon-to-launch Fairfaxextra.com site likely won't either.

1 - fairfaxtimes.com - great advertising opportunities on a well-built online platform, PR=5

2 - arlingtonunwired.com - although focused on Arlington, a really good site with high PR=5

3 - chroniclenewspapers.com - effective online newspaper in several areas of Fairfax (including the "South County" area), PR=4

4 - fairfaxcountyva.com - part of the "AreaGuides" network of regional sites, decent advertising opportunities and local exposure, PR=4

5 - Countywebsite.com sites - another network of county-specific and area sites, pretty good search engine exposure and number of listings, PR=4

fairfaxcountywebsite.com
www.alexandriacitywebsite.com
www.fallschurchwebsite.com

6 - dullessouthonline.com - covering the whole western Fairfax, plus western Prince William and Loudoun county areas, great SEO and Internet Marketing exposure, plus reasonable advertising rates; PR=4

7 - fcnp.com - Falls Church News Press Online - decent, busy site focused on Falls Church with lots of front-page advertising slots, PR=4

8 - alextimes.com - focused on Alexandria, but a well-built site with lots of advertising options, PR=4

9 - Townlink LLC sites - a network of town-specific sites, decent SEO exposure for advertisers, though sites are a bit underwhelming - PRs = 3

nvaweb.com/business
herndonweb.com/business
restonweb.com/business

10 - centrevilleva.org - good local site with lots of advertising options, PR=4

11 - viennavirginia.com - nice directory focused on this particular area including Oakton, PR=2

12 - connectionnewspapers.com - partitioned into many community-specific areas around Fairfax, though the site could use some work, and much more advertising could be made available - Fairfax Connection PR=5

Top 2 SEO and Web 2.0 questions from Loudoun small businesses

2008-03-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

At a recent Home-based Business Council (HBBC, part of the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce) luncheon, focusing on Internet Marketing and SEO, the questions from small business owners to the forum panelists boiled down to two types:

1 - "I'm doing everything I can, but I'm not getting much additional business from online marketing" - and

2 - "What exactly should I do for my website to get the most visibility?"

These are absolutely the core questions of our industry, and two very different questions without "canned" answers. In terms of question 2, regarding what specifically should be done, the answer comes out of a method, context and investment planning.

a) SEO/SEM standard methods and practices, as best as are available, should be followed to make sure all avenues are covered and all fundamental improvmenets are executed. There's no substitute for this. If you don't know these methods, start researching online, or contact an SEO industry expert. These methods are followed by businesses large and small, around the world, but do tend to evolve quickly (though are based on fundamental business imperatives). So it's important that you or your SEO consultant constantly stay abreast of the fast-changing industry, making sure to keep up. Click-based marketing is a hugely competitive industry, and can change as fast as you can click!

b) The context at this particular luncheon was primarily Loudoun local and regional businesses. Therefore the marketing and advertising options, directories and search engines to use, online/offline coordination all need to take advantage of specifically what Loudoun and Northern Virginia has to offer in terms of Loudoun online advertising venues. Only the most active local online marketing agencies such as KME Internet Marketing will really have the best answers, along with other successful businesses in the area (that can be contacted through organizations like the Chamber).

c) Investment planning for your business in terms of budget spent on advertising is obviously important - and also best managed by consulting an online marketing expert. It's far too easy to waste money on online advertising, all the options available, and before you see it coming your budget will be used up. Click around the web, and you'll find that there exist many, many great ways to maximize your advertising dollar and spend very little in terms of money (vs. time), leveraging your digital assets, by using all the free and "organic" internet marketing methods available. Online advertising doesn't have to cost a lot for large impact, especially in the local markets. Just be sure to track performance of your advertising investment, i.e. the reach, impressions, click-throughs, traffic and other metrics.

In terms of question 1, after doing all this work and spending upfront or recurring money on Internet Marketing, one would expect more business. Obviously, according to the questioners, this isn't necessarily happening. The second part of the "sale", just like any other industry, is to "convert" your traffic - i.e. turn your visitors into buyers. This is a distinctly focused area of expertise related to Internet Marketing that deals directly with the design, usability and effectiveness of your store, your websites and the holistic online and offline reputation of your business (personal, social and business reputation). "Reputation" is essentially what others think and express about you, online - this phenomenon of local direct user input through Internet tools regarding popularity, reputation and feedback falls under the term "Web 2.0" (Northern Virginia). Again, method, context and investment are the key areas of concern, and should be addressed by Loudoun web design professionals - though there are always very simple, common mistakes that should be avoided.

Please contact us to further discuss, in much more detail, these topics - we realize all the answers aren't here, but can be found through good conversation and targeted, custom business planning.

Online Marketing and Presence for Local Newspapers is Essential

2008-03-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here's an article detailing the demise of a local newspaper, brought on mainly by the economic realities of too few advertisers and content for too many papers, along with an 800-lb. gorilla entering and dominating the online content wars. What's important to note, is how coordinated, managed online marketing and search engine optimization is so important to a Loudoun County business (or any other local business) that attracts users and customers over the web - those local businesses that get it, can reasonably expect to able to protect their turf. Those that don't, lose fast. It's also very important to pay attention to how your online advertising dollars are being spent; closely scrutinize the metrics reported by the Publisher with respect to impressions and click-throughs, along with the overall online presence of the publisher itself.

How to use your other domain names for Northern Virginia Internet Marketing?

2008-03-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

Regarding a client question about the other domains you may own, that are like your current one....typically this is mostly a defensive move, to make sure your competition doesn't get those domains; if you were to actually replicate your site to those domains, you'd get significant penalties from the search engines for duplicate content.

However, if you want to make the most of them (from an online search marketing perspective, as we do for several clients in Virginia), you could spend some time/money and actually create a few pages for each of these domains, as new websites that all point back to your central one....the key is to modify the page structure and content enough between them, that they're not flagged as duplicate content...they become genuine "landing pages" with some unique online advertising content appropriate to their title. Stick mostly with longer-tailed keyword phrases that might not be as useful, helpful or relevant on the core site.

We would say that these new sites could be pretty simple, with just a picture or two and good text - and with a clear instruction/invitation/enticement to either "act now" or "link through" to your primary site (being sure to focus all your SEO energies and best content on the core site). One or two extra pages to encourage the spiders to recognize them as a "site" vs. "sales page" are helpful, as well. If you don't want to do this, at least you could set up a "redirect" from these domains, so that if somebody actually typed the domain in, they would get redirected to your site.

Exclusive Internet Marketing Business Network and Forum for Loudoun Businesses

2008-02-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

Would you like to discuss and share information and ideas regarding local online marketing in Loudoun County? KME Internet Marketing now offers an exclusive business network and forum regarding Loudoun-specific SEO/SEM tips and hints, specifically geared towards this Northern Virginia area. We will obviously chip in to moderate, and help explain things for the group...

This forum is available ONLY for our Northern Virginia Internet Marketing clients and partners - and, since we don't work with competing businesses, your situation, questions, advice etc. aren't shared with your competition.

To participate, contact us for Internet Marketing, Website Management, Advertising listings on Dulles South Online, or reciprocal business arrangements or links. We'll work together to market your businesses and bring in more local customers, and you'll then be able to take advantage of this exclusive business network.

Is now a good time to spend on Internet Marketing?

2008-02-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

With the current economic downturn and therefore slowing of consumer spending, leading to depressed business revenues, is it a good time now for spending on Internet Marketing? Like on Wall St., Internet Marketing is best done with a "buy low, sell high" mentality.

Yes, many small and medium-sized businesses, faced with immediate revenue decline, will likely cut advertising as fast as they can call the newspaper. However, there are many, many ways to advertise on the Internet that are powerful, free or low-cost, and should absolutely be taken advantage of regardless of the market. Typical search engine optimization (SEO), search engine markeintg (SEM), and social media optimization/marketing (SMO/SMM) techniques (1) can be done with little overhead expense, other than time (or reasonable service charges to your Northern Virginia Internet Marketing Experts and (2) certainly take a while to develop quality referrals and consistent search engine results.

So, while the market is low (and it actually may be more sustainable and fundamentally healthy than you'd think, here among Northern Virginia Businesses), take the opportunity to turn UP the Internet Marketing machine, and be ready to roll in the dough when the consumers come back in force.

FAQ - why should my small business create a blog?

2008-02-08T13:30:00.000-08:00

This question came in recently from a small business client, who wanted to understand why a blog might be useful - here's our short answer....

"Basically, it's a way to get new material, specifically concerning your business and capabilities (and laced with great keywords), out there on the Internet on a frequent basis. Especially if you can't (or it doesn't make sense to) update the primary website very frequently. Search engines love fresh, relevant content, and sites that get updated frequently. It's simply good for SEO.

For your small business purposes, the blog is basically just an easy content management system - i.e. you can upload content without having to do any programming (HTML coding). Plus it allows you to tag things, and automatically does things for you (like pinging update services, creating RSS feeds, archiving posts, etc.), and it's another category of "site" that Google likes to search, that you don't have to worry about (like you would have to worry about when updating a regular website).

So, the first objective of the blog is just to get more great content out there, with keywords and links to you, for search engines to find. Secondary objectives might be to actually make the blog a destination, to discuss things with customers, receive comments (moderated), share "behind-the-scenes" news", whatever. However, most mature blog destinations are only blogs, that is, they're not substitutes or proxies for regular websites. The best long-term thing to do is to actually host blog capabilities right on your own site.

We actually do this with "Gateway to Loudoun County".....our main site is www.dullessouthonline.com, and the blog is at http://www.dullessouthonline.com/loudoun_county_gateway/ . Note the blog is under the Dulles South domain.

Now, in order to "capture" sales, you should be focusing your visitor traffic to your primary "landing page", that is, the page that says "we're great, cheap, you need us, call now...". So the blog shouldn't be that page, but should funnel readers to it. All external links on other websites should be to that page, which in most cases is your own home page."

Loudoun SEO points out more cool Government 2.0 activity - at DHS/TSA this time...

2008-02-01T05:30:00.000-08:00

In our ever-consuming campaign to get the government drawn, kicking and screaming, into the Web 2.0 and perhaps even 3.0 context, here's another great example we've just seen - a blog by TSA to address traveler concerns...pretty good stuff, and lots of comments already...

Evolution of Security: Wow! What a Response

Social Media Dangers

2008-02-01T05:02:00.001-08:00

While leveraging Social Media Optimization techniques, and participating as a business in social media forums (like Facebook, Myspace, Blog-rings, etc.), is a very effective way at drawing traffic into your online sphere of influence (and possibly actually selling or promoting something), don't forget the potential personal dangers lurking in these venues, especially directed towards your children.

Read more at Dadministrator Internet Safety.

Being careful with your Northern Virginia SEO claims

2008-01-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

As most professional SEO/SEM'ers know, there's absolutely no guarantee of absolute success with regards to organic SERP (search engine results placement) results for keywords or key phrases, except perhaps in a few unique circumstances.

For example, you've invented a new word - once your publication with the word is indexed, well, you're first in the rankings! At least for a little while, until all the bloggers start commenting about it (like our word "Avonym").

Therefore, our message to customers regarding SERPs is a message of "best effort" with "significant professional expertise and satisfied client testimony" to back it up. It's also a message of "improvement in results" with "excellent customer service and collaboration". Through our distinct efforts, we guarantee you'll see some improvement in measures common to online visibility. We say "distinct", because negative SEO action taken by our client or representatives can actually harm or negate any gains we make, as the SEO service provider.

"Improvement" can take many forms, which we outline from a performance perspective in our contract and follow-up correspondence - for some businesses, improvement is simply being featured in the 1st 7 adwords or local search for their business name (where before they were invisible); for others, it's organic 1st page results (vs. 5th-page results), within 3 weeks, on all 3 major search engines for 10 distinct keyword phrases.

The spidering, indexing and ranking algorithms among the search engines are in a constant state of activity and change, as is the targeted content on the web - that's why most serious business clients leverage SEO/SEM services on a consistent, recurring basis - i.e. several hours a week or month, every week or month, all year long. As soon as your competition sees the SERP results change in your favor, they'll optimize their own language or advertisements - and "poof", there goes your placement. It's like the gas station price wars...

So, making claims like "we're #1 in the search results for Google and Yahoo" for pretty broad industry terms like "northern virginia seo" are indicative only of very fleeting improvement and rapid illegitimacy. These kinds of misleading and inaccurate claims can also have long-term negative consequences - the claim never really disappears from the Internet cache.

Local Government in Need of Social Media Lessons

2008-01-01T07:42:00.001-08:00

Here's an interesting Government 2.0 story where a local government official complains via email about a real estate blog's veracity, demands material be removed, and refuses to "respond via the blog" - thereby provoking, as we understand all too readily in the Internet Marketing and Social Media industry, a firestorm of comment and much broader exposure of his unfortunate position. A little education and guidance in things like SEO, SEM practices and the wonderful world of Social Media 2.0 may have helped things - and yet may still.

Walmart's EZ Online Advertising services

2007-12-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

While you're out buying a pallet of toilet paper, or shopping online at Sam's Club, it turns out you can also sign up for business website services, including online advertising. While perhaps useful to the very new, very naive or otherwise non-Internet savvy online merchant, these services are about as basic and limited as you can get. Marketing services are limited to submission of your site to the major search engines and directories. No doubt if the service becomes popular, then "real" online marketing services might get introduced - but for the time being, you'll have to establish your online presence and reputation, advertising copy, link network, social media connections, and optimized web site and distributed content by yourself - or via the very reasonably-priced professional and expert services we offer.

Don't fall for the "EZ" solution, that may look price-competitive - but in the end is pretty much a waste of your hard-earned money.

Top 10 Online Advertising Sites for Loudoun County - Q1 2008 update

2007-12-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Here's our first quarterly update, to look ahead into 2008.

LoudounExtra.com is the big mover, with lots of additional advertising options within content sections and its "Deals" feature - though still a bit pricey and restricted to attract a lot of the smaller businesses. Here's the current rankings, according to (as usual) our own informed, hasty, professional and a bit subjective opinions...(it's a very immature industry, right now). Let us know why you disagree, and we'll listen.

Note this doesn't include the pure news aggregators (like Loudoun Topix), B2B (like the Chambers of Commerce or Merchant Circle) or Search Engine aggregators by content or news (i.e. Google/Yahoo/MSN).

Top 10 Online Advertising Destination Websites for Loudoun County
(Previous rank indicated in () )

1) loudounextra.com - many more advertising options, inline within sections, "Deal of the Day", videos have pre-ads, etc. (6)

2) leesburg2day.com - the grandaddy of online properties in Loudoun (1)

3) loudountimes.com - effective site, good page rank, decent advertising options (3)

4) dullessouthonline.com - lots of new content and free classifieds, extensively optimized for search across multiple online properties and blogs focused on Loudoun County, western Prince William and western Fairfax counties (i.e. the "hyperlocal vertical network") (4)

5) washingtonpost.com (Loudoun News) - getting quickly subsumed by LoudouExtra (2)

6) easterner.com - well-known advertising medium, though under-optimized online ads (5)

7) loudouni.com - much improved search engine results placement (SERP)(10)

8) observernews.com - good, basic advertising options, though more limited online reach (7)

9) visitloudoun.org - great publicity and government tie-in - good directory for tourisim-related businesses, though limited in advertising flexibility (8)

10) loudouncounty.com - older online directory (i.e. not attractive), good page rank, but sub-optimized advertising listings (9)

Search is very important - for Google, the Government, you and me

2007-12-17T13:31:00.000-08:00

Note this recent Senate hearing on "E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access" - it seems Google's discovered that you can't find much useful information via search on government websites....no kidding.

Not only that, but there's not much "Government 2.0" in practice altogether...In the very near future, it’s highly likely that a predominance of State, Local and Federal eGovernment service providers will seek additional routes to inclusionary accessibility by turning to already common web-enabled social interaction methods (like Sphinn!). Some are already taking tentative steps in the public eye; many more are carefully enabling proliferation of such tools within the Intranets, "inside the Firewall". Focusing specifically on the citizen web-enabling efforts of the United States beginning in 2001 with the Office of Management and Budget’s 24 “Egovernment Initiatives”, many of these efforts can demonstrate maturity and success in terms of increased citizen participation, leverage of the Internet and adherence to ADA principles outlined in Section 508 guidance. The US Postal Service, the IRS, and the Department of Agriculture are examples of Federal Agencies that can point to objectives met regarding satisfied constituents and cost-effective, web-enabled IT investments. Some agencies actually are proclaiming "Web 2.0" capabilities, like NASA (which uses Google's own Custom Search Engine technology, thereby enabling "results almost identical to the unsponsored links you'll get from Google's public web site").

Future administrations will likely continue this trend; for example 2008 Presidential Candidate Barak Obama intends to employ “technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networking tools, to modernize internal,cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decisionmaking.”

Just wait till Google's unleashed on the campaign and PAC sites.

Information Governance 2.0 - a new SEO role

2007-12-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

SEO/SEM/SMO/SMM professionals have the obligation to their customers to help them manage not only their online "presence", from an awareness and popularity perspective, but also to manage their actual online inventory of content and information. The discipline of "Content Management" and broader "Information Management", of which SEO is a subset, is the discipline that more large and small customers should be focused on, with our help. Many in fact are, but with the increasing distribution of online content in and out of social media domains, the need for application of "Information Governance" techniques (i.e. the control and decision-making processes around management of information and data) is ever more pressing. Information Governance should always be an upsell of SEO professionals, and it's even more important with the broad Web 2.0 adoption of our clients.

Among Information Technology practitioners and those managing IT systems and budgets, the phrase “Data Governance” isn’t new – though return on investment from its application may not yet be realized. Data Governance includes the myriad processes, organization structures, reference models and standards the help mitigate risk and maximize return from use of data assets. Data assets include actual, physical data and the technology used to manage it, along with the models, representations, metadata and documentation that describe how to manage and use it. The term “information” assigns some level of trust, contextual relevance and packaging definitions to data – therefore, since current social networking philosophies are grounded in information-sharing practices among persons and systems, “Information Governance” is a phrase most appropriate to use in Web 2.0 (or “Enterprise 2.0”) context. Quite obviously, the practice of information-sharing in collaborative settings leads to knowledge; management and governance of “knowledge” is a separate discussion.

By far the most important element of Information Governance is the “Information Steward”. That is, the person (or people) who are most directly assigned or invested in maintaining the value of a company or government’s information assets. The information steward, focused typically on a particular topic, process or line-of-business domain, has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the right decisions are made regarding management of the information. Stewards don’t necessarily create or use the information, they protect its value and integrity. In many organizations, this responsibility is typically (a) unassigned, as a matter of corporate policy and (b) adopted primarily by the IT community, meaning roles such as DBAs, System Administrators or Report Analysts.

A broad definition of “Web 2.0” as an information management domain is one that focuses on the creation and use of web-enabled information that spans the public/private institutional boundaries and includes voluntary, unmanaged submissions by virtual interest groups. So, in this definition, “information management” becomes a bit of an oxymoron – the information isn’t really managed across the entire stakeholder community, and can’t be. It can be governed, however, if an acceptable definition of “governance” is the consensual framework and set of standard resources leveraged for decision-making with respect to explicit risks, value, use and manipulation of specific information types.

Note how quickly in discussing Web 2.0 information that the need arises to categorize, in several dimensions, specific information that can or should be governed. Typical Web Content Management systems manage all web content – information management systems or policies can attempt to cover all information only within very restrictive information management and sharing boundaries. Web 2.0 philosophies don’t include restrictive information boundaries; in fact the opposite is true, that unrestrictive information boundaries are the catalyst for Web 2.0 value. Unrestrictive boundaries don’t mean un-governed boundaries, however, and governance of information-sharing boundaries for particular categories of information useful to a defined, though virtual, stakeholder community is absolutely required for enterprises who have accepted the Web 2.0 opportunity.

Ultimate success in leveraging Web 2.0-enabled tools and participants in the information management processes can not be guaranteed. Success can and must be facilitated by Information Governance 2.0 procedures, policies and defined roles. This kind of socially-aware and information-without-borders approach will result in mitigation of risks around sharing of sensitive information and management of spending priorities.

An SEO/SEM professional is a great candidate to be an Information Steward, and promote or help guide Information Governance objectives for the benefit of our client's IT investment strategy and ultimate business outcomes.

...Let us know if you'd like more information about this topic; we're happy to help.

What's your "Avonym"? (Web 2.0 Pseudonym)

2007-11-29T05:03:00.000-08:00

New word for eveyone, we're claiming coinage here - mainly because we've been struggling with the concept. Across several of our blogs, we use a pseudonym that is also the name of an avatar. While the pseudonym is appropriate for written material, the same name doesn't do justice to the Avatar. An avatar should be more than simply an author tag; it should be a representation of a virtual, complex being. So while "Elise" is a good author's name, "Elise the Destroyer" is a far more usable and effective Avatar.

So what to call this Web 2.0 author/avatar tag? We'll use "Avonym", an obvious combination of the words Avatar and Pseudonym. It's short, understandable, sounds cool, can't find it on Google, and allows transport of identity representation across the boundaries of online virtual life, online content and offline communication.

Now, our avonym is actually not a singular representation - it's actually a "shared avonym" - meaning, several persons use it for postings, communication, second lives. What to call this?

Your Loudoun Advertising Network

2007-11-10T21:43:00.000-08:00

One area we're getting busy with is pooling "impressions" across our content network (i.e. our managed websites and blogs, and business partners) to provide local and regional advertisers with an "advertising network" of targeted eyeballs. So -

Publishers/Bloggers/Website Owners focused on Loudoun County: Let us know if you'd like to join our advertising network - this means you get more targeted, local ads (better than Adsense) on your website, meaning more money for you! Join others providing great content to Loudoun residents, like:

- Dulles South Online
- Gateway to Loudoun County Blog
- The Dulles South Mom-Force WAHM Blog
- Virginia Real Estate Journal
- Loudoun Schools Feedback
- National Security Screens
- South Riding Whizkids LLC
- Slingwheels Stroller Accessories
...and more!

Advertisers: if you'd like a media buy in our network, send us an email - we and our Loudoun publisher partners will provide consistently attractive online impressions for your local advertisements! The "vertical" we cover can be defined as "Living and Working in Loudoun County".