SEO Pledge Internet marketing services
SEO Pledge has a full suite of SEO, Internet marketing and brand building services to help your company achieve the results it needs be successful on the Internet. We understand that these types of services can be overwhelming and with the amount of information the Internet does provide, most companies do not know where to even begin. We want to make it as easy as possible for any company, not only find the services they require, but to actually understand the process. With all of our services, we provide training as well, so each client has an understanding of what is going on behind the scenes and feels more comfortable in our efforts.
Below is an overview of how our services work. We want to build a “web” of content, starting with your website / blog. Once that content is published, it is distributed around the Internet, starting with the marketing strategies we create.
The Internet is growing daily and in today’s business world, it is imperative to build an online brand. The “if you build it, they will come” days of the Internet are behind us. The companies that make it from Internet wannabe to the ranks of the online elite will be those that make brand-building a strategic priority.
A company’s brand represents numerous intangible aspects of their product or service. It is a marriage of perceptions and feelings about quality, image and status. Brand building online focuses on creating in the minds of web-surfers the perception that a product or service is unique or superior.
Before any company starts to build or increase their Internet brand, they should ask themselves the following questions:
1. What are our strengths, what are our competitors’ weaknesses and how are we going to outpace them with the resources we have?
2. How can we leverage the messages, reputation and brand equity that we’ve developed offline?
3. What is the online experience we want our website visitors to have?
4. What is our search engine marketing strategy for building and enhancing our brand online?
5. How can we leave visitors with a great impression, regardless of where they enter our website?
6. How do we prove the credibility of our promises and claims about our products and services?
7. What is our policy regarding when and how to react to online criticism of our company or products?
8. How can we facilitate a two-way conversation with our customers?
9. How can we make our website “sticky”?
10. How can we measure and monitor the results of our brand positioning strategies?
Marketing Strategies
Since the Internet changes so often, it is imperative to keep abreast of the latest marketing strategies. The overall concept basically stays the same, but the specifics will change. Below is an overview of different marketing strategies that will increase the page rank of the website, increase the amount of content to be shared around the Internet, build backlinks, increase search engine rankings and more importantly, build the online brand. It is the combination of all the marketing techniques that make the plan successful.
Search engines change their algorithms frequently, which can significantly hurt a company if they build the wrong way. For example, the page rank of Squidoo.com was recently downgraded because it became a spam haven for “black hat” marketers. So any website that depended on Squidoo to achieve high search engine rankings saw a significant decrease in traffic. This can obviously hurt any company and could take months or years to rebuild.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It could take 6 to 8 months to get results from traditional SEO. However, companies do not have the time to wait that long. The solution is to use web 2.0 and social media optimization techniques for faster results. The goal is to build backlinks (incoming links to a website) via highly ranked sites like YouTube and Digg.com and slowly build the brand through multiple channels.
The 3 main goals of SEO are:
• Rankings – This is the most popular goal for any business, but trying to get number 1 for every major search term is far fetched for anyone. The goal should be to achieve good search engine rankings to receive as much targeted traffic as possible. One way to do this is to target long-tail keywords (3 or more words). It is much easier to be successful at this scenario.
• Traffic – Every business wants to increase traffic and it is an obvious necessity, but the conversion ratio is more important. Great content, building an email list and constant communication with potential clients are just a few ways to increase the conversion ratio.
• Building Backlinks – Backlinks are everything in building a highly ranked website, but relevant backlinks are more important. This is why distributing useful content to be shared around the Internet will go a long way.
Social Media Optimization (SMO)
SMO is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media sites. Social media means communication is no longer business as usual. The rise of social media, made possible by web 2.0 tools such as blogging, podcasting, social networks (MySpace, Facebook), microblogging (Twitter, FriendFeed) and user-generated content sites (YouTube, Flickr), means you’re no longer the only message sender in the game.
The goals of SMO are:
• Increase Linkability – This is the first and most important priority. Many sites are “static”, meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, the content should easily be shared.
• Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy – Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but beyond that, make sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link and make sure to tag the company’s pages first on popular social bookmarking sites.
• Reward Inbound Links – Often used as a barometer for success of a blog and a website, inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, its good to make it easy and provide clear rewards. Using Permalinks and listing recent linking blogs on the site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to the website.
• Help Content Travel – Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When content is portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help content travel further and ultimately drive links back to the website.
• Encourage Mashup – In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use the content. YouTube’s idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can embed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating the content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment the content.
Social bookmarking sites could easily drive thousands of visitors to a website. For instance, Digg.com is the largest social bookmarking website with almost 12 million monthly visitors. Being on the home page of Digg for just one day could significantly increase a company’s brand recognition.
Blog / Article / Press Release Submission (building backlinks)
Submitting content to social bookmarking sites is important, but there are other ways to promote them, which will help in building backlinks and help with SEO. Using submission services to reach Internet forums, communities and hundreds of thousands of readers is also necessary.
What are the benefits?
• Rapid Coverage – As news is all about currency, the chances are that the press release will be distributed very quickly if it appeals. After submission, expect some initial results within 24 hours of distribution.
• Ongoing Promotion – Most services archive releases, so it’s an ongoing form of promotion. Search engines may pick up on the release when it is published on other sites. This creates another avenue for people to find the site and to possibly improve search engine rankings through link popularity factors.
• Credibility – If a respected media outlet or industry authority picks up a news item and publishes it, the readers of that service will immediately feel that the company is credible.
• Extra Content for the website – Any release that is created can also be included in a separate section on the site. It creates a good impression on visitors and clients, provides ready information for journalists who may stumble upon the website. This also helps feed search engines with content.
YouTube / Video Marketing
Video traffic is the number 1 traffic on the Internet and YouTube controls over 80% of the market. 75% of Americans watched an online video last month and there are hundreds of millions of videos watched on YouTube every single day. Not only has video become important to promote a website, it has also become important in selling products and services online.
The goal is to increase the friends, subscribers and traffic to the YouTube channel. This will result in more traffic to the website, blog and any other links attached to the channel. Plus, more views to the videos will help with video SEO.
Text / Video Blogs
Blogs are search engine friendly and are very easy to get ranked. A blog should be the center of all the marketing strategies and will help convert potential clients and drive them to specific product sites. Starting conversations with the readers will bring them back and help them feel more confident in the company. This will also help with SEO and increase brand recognition with the visitors.
Many are still having issues trying to figure out Twitter. What works the best is volume of content and followers. Building followers and providing a constant flow of content will drive more traffic, build the brand and keep people coming back. It is also good for live lead search, instant feedback and reputation management.
Cross-linking all content is a must. A Tweet can automatically appear on the blog and vice versa. Also, the more volume the account has, the better chance the Tweets have to get indexed on search engines.
