On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the “best of both worlds” in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it really doesn’t.

The “two is better than one” philosophy might work when it comes to getting a second opinion from a doctor or a mechanic but with SEO, the last thing a company needs is two agencies stepping on each other to make on-page optimization recommendations. Even worse are the possibilities for confusion with link building.

Imagine hiring two PR firms for the same business and a journalist getting two different pitches for the same thing from two different agencies. Will that really generate better results or just create confusion?

Coordinating with another agency adds additional costs for each consulting firm as they now need to coordinate work with both the client and another agency.

If a company wants to get the best search engine optimization results possible, they should hire the best SEO agency for their organization, not hire two or more thinking it will turn out like some kind of “SEO apprentice”.

With many web sites, it’s enough of a challenge to get all the client side stakeholders on board with the changes in content processes and attention to keywords and links. Having two agencies coordinate which parts of the web site they would be responsible for would add to what is often already a challenging situation.

Most web sites run off of templates either from WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver or a content management system with a database. SEO edits to those templates can affect the entire site or large portions. In that situation you can’t always segment one part for one agency and one part to another.

The other consideration is that adding another outside agency adds to the client side cost for managing the engagement. Managing multiple vendors means more time from the client side and managing two or more vendors who do the same thing, competitors really, adds even more.

“What if we create microsites for each segment of our business and hire a different SEO agency for each?” This is a real question that I’ve been asked and you can imagine my answer. First, we don’t believe in creating microsites just for the purposes of SEO. You can get the visibility you want on different categories under the same domain name through the right mix of on page SEO, internal linking and unique inbound links from external sources. Creating multiple microsites will only dilute SEO efforts with each site treated as its own search engine optimization project.

Not many companies have the unlimited or large online marketing budgets that sit behind requests for multiple SEO/SEM vendors. But for those that do, I would strongly encourage the effort to be put into hiring a single, strategic agency that can provide both high level consulting and training of client side staff for ongoing SEO and link building. Then retain the SEO agency for continued strategic direction, training and implementation when needed. Avoid the additional overhead and headache of hiring two competing agencies willing to work on the same web site for what can be accomplished by hiring the right SEO firm from the start.

There are many search marketing practitioners that read this blog and I am curious if other client side search marketers or other agencies have engaged in a successful and sustained program working with multiple SEO firms on the same web site?

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You can imagine Google being brought up in a browser and searches for “search engine optimization firms” and similar queries are place to find a SEO consultant to “quick fix the problem”.

The real “problem” is that there is rarely a quick fix for the kinds of issues that result in a dramatic change downward in search visibility. The exception being the removal of an errant robots.txt file placed to disallow all engines from crawling a site during development.

“I know enough to be dangerous” is an interesting thing to hear from a web site developer looking for quick SEO services. In some cases, they really do know quite a bit about optimizing and marketing web sites online, they just don’t have the people resources to execute and need outside help. Others might know enough to be dangerous - to themselves. SEO information from 1999 isn’t going to cut it in 2008.

When a company generates a substantial portion of it’s business from the internet, the influences on that online visibility cannot be left to chance. Not staying on top of what’s working and what’s not can result in unexpected outcomes. Bad and outdated information can be very costly.

While I don’t think all company web site owners need to retain a full time in-house SEO consultant or agency in all cases, they do need to allocate resources either internally or externally to keeping company knowledge current. The best source for that information is through testing and measuring the performance of company online marketing campaigns. Conferences, blogs, forums, articles and newsletters can be helpful as well but also require time and money commitments.

I’ll admit to being biased as a consultant myself, but I would rank the periodic or ongoing consultation of an outside agency higher than many other sources since it’s their job to test and measure online campaigns for a multiple companies on an ongoing basis. The cumulative knowledge, experience and insight that comes from working with many different web sites and their associated challenges is of benefit to each web site client individually.

In situations where search visibility has dropped, web site owners and developers responsible for site management/marketing must realize there is rarely a quick fix. The quick drop in rankings does not mean there’s a quick solution to get back.

What is a web site owner to do? Diversification as is possible through strategies such as digital asset optimization are the best prevention. Otherwise, PPC campaigns can be run as well as social media promotions, blogger outreach, online public relations and press release marketing - all to drive traffic while the SEO issues are worked out.

With an industry that has the potential to change as much as search marketing, it makes sense to leverage expert knowledge and experience as well as a process for continuously harvesting new insight from direct observation. Bringing in full time web marketing staff is one option as is hiring an outside agency. Many companies are doing both by using the agency for strategic direction and in-house staff for implementation. Either way, the solution is smart and data based, not a rush for a quick fix.

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Today on this fine Friday ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIGLIST SEO blogs update for you slanting a bit toward agencies but not without some flavor from Germany and the Jungle. Read on:

• AdCenter Community -  This is Microsoft’s official support blog for AdCenter advertisers.

• Mediadonis - Germany based Marcus Tandler writes about his search engine industry and often hilarious personal experiences - mostly in English but sometimes in German.

• MediaVision Blog - This is an agency blog with numerous contributors writing about online marketing and search engine industry news, observations and malarkey.

• The Jungle Map - Charlotte, NC based Hippo Internet Marketing guy Corey Creed writes this agency blog with a fun design about SEO, PPC and business in Charlotte.

Of course it’s an impressive accomplishment to get on this list, so why not share the good news? Decorate that fancy blog with a BADGE. (link back optional)

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With so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and Ambles Kwok, a Senior Engineering Manager from Yahoo Canada.

Chris Silver Smith was first up and gave examples of Web 2.0 technologies including the idea of folksonomy and tagging by showing a tag cloud from Delicious. It’s an alternative method of navigation based on user defined keywords assigned to a piece of content.

If you cannot implement the capability of tagging into your content, you can create a similar effect for SEO benefit by mining your log files for search engine referral keywords and generating a tag cloud from that data. Shows Cabella’s tag cloud as an example implementation:

Another tip is to enable your photos to be indexed by search engines. Many companies hide images from crawlers. There’s high usage of images by vertical search engines. It also creates the possibility of additional rankings in Universal search results.

Share images through Flickr and other image sharing sites. Link your profiles back to your site. Don’t be spammy. Don’t mass upload.

User Tagging: Google’s image labeler program. Enable Google’s users to tag pictures for search. You can opt in your site’s images within Google Webmaster tools.

Have a repetitive task? Use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which is a platform where people who want to make a little money (micropayments) for doing small tasks can be sourced. An example application would be to get people to tag media or content for you such as: unspun.amazon.com

Google Friend Connect: Free API for building site communities.

JavaScript and Form based Navigation:
Many sites still have links embedded in JavaScript. Search engines have problems with following these kinds of links but are getting better. Always include a static link with JavaScript navigation.

Google’s crawler is starting to crawl some form based navigation, such as drop down menus.

Use widgets/gadgets for distribution such as Yahoo Widgerts, Google Gadgets

Yahoo Search Monkey is a great tool for customizing your listings in Yahoo search results. Below is an example of a WebMD listing. More examples are available at the Yahoo! Search Gallery.

Flash and splash pages: Search engines are getting better at reaching content with Flash, but they still have problems.

Ajax, Flash, JavaScript - all need alternative navigation routes. Create two: one for rich media enabled users and one for search bots and users with rich media disabled.

For flash content use the <swfobject> and present altnerative content to what’s shown in the Flash movie.

Redirects: Many sites use Java Script or meta refresh redirects and should use server side redirects instead.

It’s also helpful to provide text transcripts of rich media so search engines can crawl the text content.

Chris’s last tip is to make sure you optimize your blog with plugins and using keywords in titles, categories and within posts.

During the transition from Chris to Ambles, Kevin Ryan asks: “Tag clouds are like the Paris Hilton of the internet. Looks good, but what do they actually DO?” Chris Smith offers an explanation of tags as an alternative navigation method.

Next up was Ambles Kwok, Senior Engineering Manager with Yahoo Canada who talks mostly about the semantic web and using markup to give meaning or context to content. Without context, web pages have no meaning to search engine bots.

One example of a Microformat is the nofollow attribute for links. Another example is the Upcoming.com site that uses Microformats such as: hCard, Hevent, hReview and rel-tag.

Yahoo’s SearchMonkey leverages the Semantic web. SearchMonkey + POSH = SEO 2.0. When you give context to content, it gives meaning to bots. SearchMonkey also leverages the semantic web to enable blended search.

A question for webmasters: How does the semantic web affect my search engine strategy? Here are a few practical examples:

• You perform a search for a persons name and see their family tree, business acquaintances, friends and significant others, along with the ability to download their vcard.

• You search for a keyword such as “ford mustang” and receive a list of sites, photos, and documents that people have decided are related to the word “ford mustang” through tagging on their website.

• You search for a product and receive a list of reviews related to that product which people all over the net have posted on their website.

• You search for a specific date and receive a list of categorized events occurring on that date that people have posted on their website.

Microformats “give meaning to the machine”. Content is king, but content without context is meaningless.

Keywords, URL and links are SEO 1.0. Structured pages are SEO 2.0 - giving context to the data.

Kevin Ryan asks, “Why is SearchMonkey opt in, why is it not the default?”

Kwon: It’s in beta and making it the default could disrupt search results. However some results are “on” by default.

Kwon continued saying that giving more structure to data to search engines makes it easier for them to understand the information and more accurately sort it in search results. Using semantic markup and microformats is a trend.

Kevin Ryan asks, “Define graceful degradation”

Smith: Can your web site be used by people on a variety of browser versions? Graceful degradation means your web site can be viewed on the latest and greatest to text only browsers.

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If you’ve been in the search marketing industry for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a wide variety of conflicting or outdated advice. Since “how to” information in so many other industries is often presented as an absolute, many people look for the same kinds of static and perpetual rules with search engine optimization. The problem comes from not discerning SEO myth and speculation from fact which can be a very costly mistake.

Moderated by Matt Van Wagner, this session (SEO Don’ts, Myths and Scams) included some of the most experienced SEO practitioners in the business with Jill Whalen of High Rankings, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit and Lyndsay Walker from WestJet.

First up was Jill Whalen. I missed the first part of Jill’s presentation and her “Buddah” analogy. Maybe she’ll drop by and mention that in the comments.

Here are things Jill says you don’t “need” to do or are myths about SEO:

• Submitting to a search engine
• Need a Google sitemap
• Frequent spidering helps rankings
• PPC ads will help or hurt organic rankings
• Must have keywords in domain names and URLs
• H tags are necessary
• Words in meta keyword tag need to be in content
• Copy must be a certain number of words. (LOL, Jill says she “made that up” 7 years ago (250 words) for a presentation)
• Must be a specific keyword density
• Should optimize for 1 keyword phrase per page
• You need to optimize for the long tail
• Duplicate content will get your site penalized
• HTML code must validate to W3C
• Navigation must be text links not images
• Can’t use Flash
• Google’s link: command is useful
• Pages rank in PageRank order
• You must be in DMOZ and/or Yahoo directory

Note from Lee: At face value without context, many of these “myths” are pretty controversial. Oversimplifying SEO tips can lead to interpretations that may hurt more than help. It’s worth exploring each in more detail as they apply to each web site’s individual situation.

I should also note that Jill did give some degree of explanation for each, but there were a lot of tips and they went by quickly. Here’s a great interview Manoj from Enquiro did with Jill on this topic.

Next up was Lyndsay Walker from WestJet who has been practicing SEO the past few years and has been developing web sites for over 10 years.

Don’t:

• Use the same title tags for every page. You have around 65 characters to work with and use unique keywords according to content on the page.
• Overuse meta tags. Use the description tag because it’s used in the search results and can motivate a click through.
• Stuff keywords in the meta tags. Keyword meta tag might be used somewhat by Yahoo, but it’s pretty much useless for SEO.
• Use hidden text such as white on white text or hidden with a div tag. You’ll get penalized.
• Use doorway pages made only for search engines. This is an old tactic not much in use anymore.
• Duplicate your content exactly. Some duplication is ok. It can happen even if you don’t mean to. WestJet has different sub-domains showing the same content and can cause issues.
• Publishing before you are ready. Don’t put up content and link to it. Search engines will find it.
• Bury links in JavaScript navigation such as drop down menus. Use CSS instead.
• Use too many parameters in your URLs. Rewrite a simpler URL.
• Stuff keywords in your Alt tags (alt text).
• Use images when CSS will do.
• Use inline CSS. Better to put CSS into an external document and link to it.
• Use Flash to replace content.

Linking Don’ts

• Attempt to get hundreds or thousands of links at once (especially paid or automated).
• Engage in irrelevant link exchanges.
• Participate in link directories. Get links from pages with content instead.
• Participate in link farms.
• Focus all inbound links to the home page.
• Register lots of domains using fake names and addresses.
• Get green pixel envy (PageRank in Google Toolbar).

Tech Don’ts

• Guess what you should do with robots.txt. Make sure you’re using the right information.
• Have multiple URL variations pointing to the home page. ie, different home page links. Lyndsay says you should use 301 redirect.

How do you push back when your boss wants you to implement inappropriate SEO tactics:

• Take the moral high ground
• They hired you as an expert, they should listen to you
• Taking that risk might risk your job
• Do it right the first time
• Fight the good fight and resist temptation to go to the “dark side”.
• You can win without dirty tricks.
• Don’t gamble with your brand and be patient.
• Get over algorithm updates.

Remember who you are optimizing for, users. Don’t forget to communicate with your development team.

Another note from Lee: I would say without more information on specific situations, the approach to some of the myths will differ. What’s important is that people who are learning SEO carefully consider the search engine guidelines from each search engine (Google, Yahoo and Live) as well as what they observe first hand. Then take into account the advice from reputable SEO practitioners.

I apologize profusely for having to leave to catch my plane before hearing Amanada Watlington’s presentation. I am sure it was excellent.

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Matt McGowan, Joe Dolson and Todd Malicoat enjoying some pre-conference conversation

Kevin Ryan getting the most out of Google’s Bill Tighe during the Advanced Paid Search Panel

David Silver Smith really gave up the goods during the Web 2.0 and Search Engines Panel.

SEO myth-buster Jill Whalen tells it like it is as Matt Van Wagner thinks, “Damn, she’s giving away my secrets!”

Jeff Quipp, Jennifer Osborne, Emily Spence and Richard Zwicky working the exhibit hall

Yahoo’s booth complete with Wii and a big push for SearchMonkey

All work and no play makes SEOs dull boys (and girls) so Ken Jurina of Epiar and Yahoo threw a little party.

Paid Search Expert and Microblogging enthusiast Kerstin Baker-Ash and SEMPO Canada co-chair Alexandre Brabant strike a pose at the Epiar Yahoo party.

An Epiar and Yahoo party just wouldn’t be complete without some dancing.

My lunch at SES Toronto. (On 115th floor of CN Tower, not the conference )

Nice view from the CN Tower.

You can find all TopRank photos of SES Toronto on Flickr.

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In the end, Twitter on it’s own and with it’s uptime issues isn’t anywhere near as productive as it is in combination with third party tools like Twhirl, Summize and Twitturly. Return on effort from using Twitter really depends on how you use it. The mileage will vary based on your goals, how much you give and to what extent you use Twitter in combination with other socnets like Facebook, LinkedIn and offline networking.

Here’s my presentation hosted on Slideshare:

| View | Upload your own

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Last week at the PRSA Digital Impact conference I met Steve Rubel, SVP Director of Insights from Edelman Digital and famous (sometimes infamous) PR blogger at Micropersuasion. He presented “2008 Digital Trends: Open Files” which talks about the framework Edelman uses (Faint Signals, Watch List and Hallucinations for tracking digital/social media trends.

Read my live blogging notes below or you can view the entire presentation over at Slideshare or Rubel’s post about tracking digital trends here.

Mass vs Micro. It’s less about reach and more about impact. Mass reach is dying. Micro is blogging, Twitter, Friendfeed etc. Even if people are not producing content and media, they’re impacted by it.

Google is not just a search engine, it’s a reputation management engine and is a place for PR. People trust each other more than authority figures. PR is more about “Public Relationships”, not “Public Relations”.

“Open Files” references the way Edelman tracks digital trends. Signals, Watch list, Hallucinations (you think you see something or not)

Faint Signals:

1. The cut and paste web - the web has evolved into a place where you can take content from one location to another easily. Traffic to your web site is less relevant as traffic can be driven elsewhere. Content follows you wherever you want to put it.

You want content not only to live on a web site, but so that it can spread elsewhere. Make it easy for that content to travel and track where it goes.

Gives example of the NBA using widgets. Can place widget in Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle.

2. Attention Crash - People are inundated with electronic communications. The numer of inputs we have as individusals has exceeded what we are capable of managing. Need to chunck it down. Keep it simple and use storytelling. If they can’t understand it in 3 seconds, they’re gone.

Gives example of Blendtec (willitblend.com). Great example of simplicity.

3. Digital Curation. There’s so much content everywhere it’s difficult to distinguish the “art” from the junk. At museums there are curators to make those distinctions. Online there are curators as well: humans and also algorithms.

Every popular niche will offer opportunities for brands to become the digital curator for that niche. The challenge is to do it before others do first.

Gives example of POPURLS and how they partnered with Intel to create an Intel version of POPURLS.

4. Super Crunching. The digital space is the most addressable media and marketing platform ever. However, many marketers are not “quants” and data is largely under utilized.

Google is the operating system for marketing. Data mining and visulaizations reduce risk, make marketing more efficient .

Example: Google Trends. You can track over time if the work you’re doing has impacted news search. Helps you see if you are creating demand with your PR work for keyword concepts.

5. Collaboration - The web is a platform for action. People are working together for shared outcomes.

Rubel shows a matrix of open and controlled communication. Communicate and collaboration. Different tactics fall in different quadrants. Advertising is controlled communication. PR is lessed controlled. Viral video is far more open but less likely to result in a specific outcome. Blogs, community engagement and ideastorms are open and collaborative.

The web is not just a platform for communication but for collaboration.

Example: mystarbucksidea.com. Anyone can submit ideas and the community can vote on them. Starbucks evaluates the best ideas. Open and collaborative.

Watch List - areas of experimentation

1. Living Room 2.0. The internet is coming to the living room in a big way. Shares that he has an apple TV and Xbox 360 connected to his LCD and also to the internet. Streams itunes and friends Flickr images.

We’re entering a new Golden age of TV via the internet. It’s still very early days though. Buy an apple TV and experiment with it so when the trend grows, you’ll be familiar with the experience.

2. Geek Marketers. There are people at companies tasked with staying on top of things. If you’re in PR find out who those people are at companies. If you’re at a company, hire one of these people to stay on top.

Hallucinations

1. Digital Nomads. Increasing numbers of people who are virtual workers or indpendent consultants. Small number but an interesting trends. They are using web based collaboration tools and lot.Ex

Examples/resources: anywired.com and Tim Ferriss’s 4 hour work week

It’s concievable that companies will become more virtual and distributed.

2. Data Leaking. Information is seeping out of institutions. Technology outside the enterprise innovates far faster than what companies are able to do inside. Gen Y workers expect the same tools in the office that they easily have at home. Work and corporate information is migrating to social networks and other online platforms. Be aware of this trend and be involved.

Traffic is something that can happen elsewhere, not just on your site. It’s important to enable content to travel. Digitial curation is a big opportunity. Find high demand niches and “become the curator”.

–

The PRSA Digital Impact conference was seriously information rich and I heard sentiments from many of the attendees as such. Hopefully PRSA can make them a regular event and in different cities.

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Heidi starts out a with a poll: How many comments for media relations? and How many have created a social profile for a client? A small number of hands raise for each question.

Jason: What are three things you want to know?

1. Less tools and tactics and more to how you’re applying this, illustrating the value of it
2. More about blogger relations
3. Strategy and context. Enough about tools. Are blogs for every organization?

My observation is that based on these questions, it seems many of the PR professionals in the audience are not sold on blogs per se, and tools/tactics are premature. They want to know if a blog makes sense or not, does it fit within an overall communications plan.

Social media is about community not an audience.

Ironically, Jay starts out talking about tools. How do you find the right blogs to pitch? You qualify blogs to pitch not by the reader counts, but by how much that blog’s content is shared amongst others.

Process for finding blogs stats with blog search through something like Technorati. Then use traditional metrics like RSS subscribers. Also mentions unique visitors and email subscribers (for blogs that make that kind of information available)

Social metrics let you see whether a blog’s content gets passed around. Examples: Blogpulse, Delicious, Digg, Newsvine, Google blog search, Reddit, Mixx, Tailrank, Technorati, Stumbleupon, etc.

Once you see that a blog is popular amongst these social metrics, you’ll know that blog is worth spending your time on.

Jason mentions that being strategic about reaching out. Blogs may not be the best first content. He mentions Beam Global, owner of Maker’s Mark his client. He’d reach out to forums about new information before going to blogs about bourbon.

Playing by the rules in social communities gives you permission to contribute. Being transparent is what gives you the credibility to participate and share information with the community.

For PR practitioners: How do I determine whay type of involvement I should have with social media?
How does my target market consumer news.

Heidi talks about the importance of psychographics over demographics. Jason follows up with the distinction in psychographics between bourbon and whiskey brands.

Benefits of social media: Social media efforts are supplemental to your regular PR and media relations campaigns. It;s more direct to consumer communications than most PR pros are accustomed to. Social media carries with it an immediacy.

How do you deal with crisis managment when dealing with dissenting bloggers?  You need to be involved in the space. Consumers can tell a “troll” versus a legitimate complaint. You need to be transparent, open and honest (easier said then done).

Gina Trapani of Lifehacker started a PR blacklist. It gets mentioned that Gian’s personal email address was listed in the Cision database. Heidi relates a story of how Jason Twittered not hearing back from Cision and how she contacted Jason to answer the questions he had. She was quick to reply to his concerns, honest, apologetic and transparent in Cision’s willingness to correct the problem and serve the PR community.

Jason mentions an event tomorrow 1pm Eastern with Shel Holz and Neville Hobson as well as many others in the PR, media and blog communities to talk about how to best improve communications between media relations and the media. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fir

Responding quickly and honestly are key for PR and media relations professionals communicating with bloggers. Being a resource to bloggers and reaching out as a “heads up” and not a specific pitch can be very effective.

Find them, read their posts, what they write about, what they care about, and reach out to them in a very personalized way. willvideoforfood.com best blog pitch letter ever. Actually it wasn’t a great pitch because the blog post didn’t mention Jim Beam, more about Jason’s pitch. Although it does include links to Jim Beam.

Ask for opinions, show that you care.

The pitch vs community engagement involves establishing authenticity: Comment, reach out and participate.

Q and A

Audience: Is there an equivalent measurement you can share with clients that equal to some monetary value

Jason: It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If it’s sales, you need to have that in mind from the start. Links need to go to the same landing page designed to convert to a sale. We report buzz factor, talk valiue, PR clippings. Specifics include feedback, inbound links, comments.

You have to get buy in from corp from day one on what the key metrics will be. RSS subscribers, links, and other outcomes.

Audience: Itmsounds like a FT job, but for an organization that has slim resources, how much time should be allocated to blog relations and outreach?

Jason: You want consistent content, once a week.

Heidi: Blogher recently did a study, that people read blogs 4 times a day.

Jason: More active participation will result in an effect more quickly. Allocate a certain about of time per month for creating that month’s editorial calendar.

Audience: My company sells a diverse range of products, How do you decide whether a blog makes sense?

Jason: Where does your audience spend their time?

Jay: Start by evaluating what’s out there. It’s amazing how many blogs there are for every niche.

Jason: Even if there isn’t a blog for your niche, then take the first mover advantage.

Audience: What’s the difference between blogs in general and blogs run by journalists?

Jason: Coordinate with PR to make sure there isn’t any crossover.

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Below is a list of our favorite online marketing tips , which - as a team - makes us stronger than each individual.

• Build Out Social Relationships Gradually - Social media and social networking are not "dump and run" tactics. Relationships need to be built over a long period of time in a venue that enhances the product or service you are promoting, which is when the promoted piece gets the most positive attention.

• Spell Check – Nothing ruins online credibility faster than misspellings or incorrect grammar. Check your spelling yourself and have someone else review your work. Don’t depend only on spellcheckers, as they may not catch the appropriate word usage or necessary punctuation.

• Understand How Your KPI’s Tie Back to Your Objectives - Will ranking #1 in Google for “wedding favors” automatically equate to meeting your sales objectives? Or, will an increased ranking be a trigger to focus your work on how best to nurture these new potential prospects to customer status?

• Incorporate Keyword Phrases into Promotions – whether it be press releases, online advertising or social media promotions, using a keyword phrases along with yours or your client’s name can enhance how searchers search for the website in the future.

• Use a Clear CTA - When using a Call to Action, ensure that what you are asking is clear and to the point. Also ensure that you are indeed asking a person to do something.

• Identify Yourself - Come up with a good handle and avatar so that no matter what channel you are engaged in, you are easily recognizable.

• Identify How Visitors Use Your Website - When customers and prospects visit your site, what type of content are they looking for and where do they click on the page to find it? By knowing what your visitors are looking for, you can provide the content they need and a user experience to keep them coming back for more.

• Understand your End Goals – Online marketing is similar to traditional direct marketing when trying to reach certain inquiry levels. Understand the desired inquiry level, and follow that back through your amount of projected traffic, touchpoints and the whole universe you need to target.

• Plan & Understand - Be sure to plan ahead when it comes to Online Marketing. There is no shortage of promotion opportunities, however the promotions you select should deliver the desired results. As an online marketer, be sure to first understand what promotion channels deliver the results desired.

• Look to the Future - The online marketing landscape is constantly changing, whether in the form of updated search engine algorithms, new social media outlets or any of the other aspects of marketing that fluctuate. Devote time to keeping yourself educated on what’s new and upcoming in the online world by reading blogs and other industry publications so that you are prepared to meet the new challenges these changes will bring.

• Be Patient – online marketing typically doesn’t work overnight. Once your online marketing program is deployed, be patient and continuously monitor, analyze and refine.

That wraps up some of TopRank’s favorite online marketing tips. Do you have any you’d like to share?

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