Keyword Marketing – How To SEO A Blog Post

by Tara Jacobsen Leave a Comment

Keyword Marketing - How To SEO A Blog Post Years ago I wrote the perfect blog post and have been using it ever since to illustrate how to use Keyword Marketing to SEO a blog post (search engine optimize).

Just do a search for FUNNY REALTOR POSTCARDS and my post Realtor Marketing Funny Realtor Postcards comes up at the top of the list….but why?

There are a number of reasons:

Generally I rank on Page 1 of the Google for Realtor Marketing so my posts about realtor marketing rank well too! PLEASE know that this is because I wrote LOTS of realtor marketing posts and eventually I made the grade. I have three terms I am trying to rank for including realtor marketing, entrepreneur marketing and small business marketing. What are your three main keyword phrases?
I did all of the on-page SEO perfectly (if you don’t know what that is, never fear, I will be breaking it out for you below).
Lastly I found a keyword phrase that gets SOME traffic and which could help my top level keyword move up. I use a neat plugin (SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2) to see what terms people used to get to my pages and for this page they used: realtor postcards ideas, funny real estate postcards, funny real estate postcard ideas, clever real estate postcards, humorous real estate postcards, funny realtor postcards, humerous (sp.) real estate postcards, funny real estate marketing postcards, realtor postcard ideas, and Funny Real Estate Marketing.

Now, I feel a little funny when I tell small business owners about this when they are just starting out as it is possible that ranking well for the search term realtor marketing might have given me an edge that is hard to overcome.

What to do, what to do? Okay, I am going to write a blog post that is perfect in every way for a site that DOES NOT rank highly or nationally for a search term and see how it goes!

The SEO Challenge

Get a post related to property management or denver property management to rank for the DenverRealtyAndRentals.com website. I have been kicking around the idea of having Tena rank for something along the lines of “executive property management” or “luxury property management” so let’s start with doing some searches using the Google external keyword tool…here are the terms I looked for:

executive property management
luxury property management
denver executive property management
denver luxury propert management
ft collins executive property management
ft collins luxury property management

How to seo blog posts

IMMEDIATE SCORE! Executive property management had an immediate score….low competition according to Google and high local monthly searches (2,400). In comparison “luxury property management had 3X fewer searches, giving us a clear winner.

Next I wanted to see how much competition there was so I went online and did a Google search for “executive property management” WITH the quotes which shows me who I am competing directly with nationally. Okay, 775,000 results nationally…not bad but sigh, that is a lot of direct competition. Now the good thing was they were almost all geographically centered sites…so, what does it look like right here in Colorado….

DOH….there are NO competing sites at all for “denver executive property management”…double score. What about ”ft collins executive property management”? Same thing, no results.

Now I have been doing keyword research for going on 15 years and I would have guessed that luxury property management would have been the higher search. This is why you always have to check!

The Metadata

I hate when people talk about Metadata because it is confusing to my biz peeps. Basically metadata just means that it is the bits the computers and Google use to know how to classify a site. There are 3 parts to metadata, the title, the description and the keywords (we are not going to look at these today as they are not as important as they were in the past).

The Title

Do a google search for something like “Small Business Marketing” (without the quotes) and you will see that all the top results have that phrase or close to that phrase in their post title tags…

How to seo your blog postings

As you can see here, almost every post has that phrase, in that exact order. So, we need to make sure we don’t mess up the SEO for our perfect post! While it would be tempting to use:

Denver and Ft Collins Executive Property Management Services

you probably have guessed that will not work as well as using:

Denver Executive Property Management | Ft Collins Executive Property Management Services

because we need to get the words we want to rank for in the property order! That straight up and down line between is a really great way to separate our search phrases as it doesn’t bother the search engines. You make it by doing Shift plus forward slash which is above the Enter key on my keyboard.

The Description

The next thing you might have noticed from the above picture is that the words “small business marketing” are prominently displayed in the content of the top results. This is going to be important to getting us good rankings.

SOOOO….next I have to figure out what kind of content ranks well in the search engines so I am going to do a search for “new york executive property management” and see what I can swipe – use this as a model ONLY!, copying someone else’s stuff verbatim really won’t hurt them too much but will assure that the search engines think you have duplicate content and will not help you at all!

Rats, for a search term that has decent results, we got a whole lot of nothing to copy…so I will have to wing it:

Providing Executive Property Management services in the Denver and Ft. Collins Metro Areas, Denver Realty and Rentals is your best choice for superior property management service.

You are going to use this description as your metatags description AND as the first paragraph of your post!

The Picture

Another great place to get your words in is on your photo. We named this photo denver-ft-collins-executive-property-managment.png and made sure the description and alt tags of the photo read the same!

Additional SEO Items

You want to make a sandwich of your SEO using your main keywords in the first paragraph and then also as the end paragraph
Make sure that some of your subheads or bolds include your targeted keywords
DO NOT stuff your keywords in there excessively! You should have a nice mix of keywords and content so that people can read what you are writing. We have all had the experience of reading garbled text because they tried to use their keywords too frequently – don’t be that guy!

Curious about what all this SEO looks like in real life? Well, check out our final product at the perfect post:

Denver Executive Property Management | Ft Collins Executive Property Management Services

The Results

Page 1 Listing SEO Less than a week later, Tena ranks #3 on PAGE ONE OF GOOGLE for an anonymised search for Denver Executive Property Management! WHOO WHOO

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Filed Under: keyword marketing Tagged With: keyword marketing

How To Do Keyword or SEO Research | Keyword Marketing

by Tara Jacobsen Leave a Comment

Today we are going to talk about how to do keyword or SEO (Search Engine Optimization) research for your website, blog or other internet property in order to increase your keyword marketing efforts.

The very first thing I want you to do is go to the google and do a search for any keyword, let’s say how to make paper airplanes (you can click the link to see the search)

As you can see, all of the results that come up have that keyword phrase in their headline or at the very least in the description somewhere. This is VITAL to know as most small biz owners and non-seo types do not understand that google cannot extrapolate. If you are selling salon services in New York City but talking on your blog or website about coupon clipping, the chances that google will rank you highly for your target term are none.

There is just too much competition out there now with people who produced content that EXACTLY matches what the user is searching for and that is what google is going to give them…exactly what they are looking for.

So should you produce crap that has those keywords and hope google doesn’t find out? Nope, that does work anymore either! Google uses algorithms to figure out if what you say your page or post is about and then factors in how many people link into it, whether people bounce (come to it on a search and then reject it by clicking the back button) as well as zillions of other factors to make sure that what you say in your title and description is actually what the page is about!

Tools For Keyword or SEO Research

The Google External Keyword Tool – works great for finding out how popular a keyword is and how much competition you will have for that word.
Google – this is a duh moment for many people is figuring out how many competing sites there are. If you do a search without quotes, you will find the keywords in any order, if you use quotation marks, you will get the results of that keyword in that particular order.

Google analytics – if you do not have analytics on your site, stop right now and go get them on there! Figuring out what you rank for easily allows you to pick the low hanging fruit of keywords that you can ultimately rank for without a lot of effort.

So there you have it, my top tips on how to do keyword or SEO research for your Keyword Marketing efforts!

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Keyword Marketing – Does Bad SEO Hurt

by Tara Jacobsen 3 Comments

Keyword marketing and SEO is definitely a science. Marketers take the current SEO “rules” and help to increase your rankings by using what works now (things like posting to Google+, using the webmaster tools, social media, commenting, etc.)

But I had an interesting question the other day, does BAD SEO hurt your marketing efforts. My thought was no, but after some research I am not as confident about that. It seems that bad SEO does hurt and has to be fixed when it is encountered by the Google. So what does that mean?

If you doing keyword marketing 10 years ago (some of us were, really!) then doing HUGE HTML sites with lots of pages worked because there was not blog content to compete with.

If you were doing Keyword or SEO marketing about 5 years ago, the prevailing thought was to make blog networks with “thin” content (meaning just a lot of SEO, few pages and little authority) and get them ranked and THEN pass link love back to your main site. This worked.

If you were doing SEO marketing 2 years ago, the best way to make a big impact was to have a couple of crappy articles written, “spin” them and then post them to sites like Ezine Articles. This worked then.

Oh, oh, oh, another thing to do was set up fake profiles on all the social media sites and directories with your exact keywords pointing back to them, or how about the fancy smanchy “fake” comments posted on websites all around the world with links back to your site? OOPS, forgot the make a Squidoo page, Wet Paint, etc and have links back to your site.

If you are in the SEO marketing space now and staying current, you know these “tricks” no longer work, but do they actually hurt? After listening to an amazing webinar yesterday by Leslie Rhode of the SEO Braintrust, a absolute EXPERT in search engine marketing, I think they do! The cool thing was he took questions from attendees and “diagnosed” what had gone wrong. Almost everyone on the call had at some point done one or more of these “tricks” to get higher rankings in Google, but had since been “slapped” hard by Google, no longer appearing in search results.

The thing that struck me is the amount of work that you have to do to UNTANGLE the harm that was done in the past. That fake directories thing, if you were using that technique, you might have 7,000 or 70,000 fake directory links that you have to contact and try to make legitimate or just ask them to delete them. ESL (English as a second language) blog comments, better try to walk back the cat and get those blog owners to delete your spammy comments.

Leslie said that for most sites it was worth the effort to fix them in Google’s eyes, although I don’t know if I would have the patience to do that myself!

Black Hat, White Hat and Grey Hat SEO

So what does all this mean to our people? Regular business people out there trying to get attention from the search engines so they can get some more business? Well, first let’s talk about the types of SEO Marketing…

Black Hat SEO Marketing is done in back rooms by programmers and is designed to “game the system” while perhaps hurting other sites. One example of this is hackers who hack WordPress blogs, redirecting them to sites for pharmaceuticals or loose women. When people do this kind of SEO, they are building sites that may be only up for a couple of days or weeks, get lots of illegal traffic and then get shut down by their providers and delisted from Google. They are not trying to build a business.

Grey Hat SEO is when you are knowingly violating the terms of service of the Google (like spinning articles so there is no original content) but Google is not currently penalizing you for it. Another example of this kind of thing is to have white text on a white background thinking that Google can’t tell the difference. More about that later!

White Hat SEO is boring. It takes time and energy. It means growing a website with great content, going and commenting on other peoples blogs, posting to social media and building an “internet city” that is built on a strong foundation, not on tricks and gizmos! We tell all of our people that it will take at least 6 months to see any improvement on their rankings and so LOTS of people don’t hire us, instead responding to one of those “we can get you on the first page of Google emails“. That having been said, we work mostly with legitimate business owners and are proud of the fact that nothing will “blow up” in their faces when we are done! find out more about our social media and SEO marketing services…

What The Google Cares About

Okay, I promised to talk more about Google and why even dipping a toe over the line into that gray area might hurt. Let’s take an example from today. Pinterest is a new social media network and it has great SEO and linking back properties. I stay on top of “stuff” and so I saw a software that we could buy which would automatically search the internet and “pin” things to Pinterest boards. Now, it was not good software, it pinned all the pictures to one board and they weren’t really pictures of what they should be (the title might be great dinners and the picture was of a dog). I have seen a bunch of spammers on Pinterest using this and a LOT of pictures getting flagged as going to inappropriate content.

So why do they do it? Spammers and scammers and crooks are, and have been with us. They would rather try and cheat the system rather than doing the hard work of growing a business. I always wonder what would happen if they put all that effort into something productive….but that is their choice!

Google uses mathematical formulas written by really smart guys and gals (called algorithms) to make sure that the very best content is being shown on their search results. Their client IS the searcher, not the advertisers or those of us creating the content. They do not care if we made a mistake and did something foolish, they will just take us out of search until we fix whatever it was that we did in the past that makes them mad today.

So they have updates with cute names like Panda and Farmer and Penguin. These are tweeks in the search engine algorithm that penalize people using techniques that are gray or even black! I guantee that there are people getting TONS of traffic right now from those fake Pinterest pins but that Google will figure out how to stop them and all will be right with the world again.

Long story REALLY long, if you are growing a legitimate business with a real online presence, PLEASE do a little research before you allow some fly by night SEO marketing company talk you into the “latest and greatest” SEO marketing trick that used to work but doesn’t anymore!

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Filed Under: keyword marketing Tagged With: keyword marketing

SEO Tips…Taking Over A Long Tail Keyword On Google And Social Media

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

SEO tips abound AND I have heard recently that “SEO IS DEAD” – I put those caps in on purpose so you can understand how adamant the discussion is! That having been said, I think that there is definitely a place for SEO in social media as well as on your website or blog.

So first off, let’s see what term we are going to attack…there are a couple of places that I go to find this but first we need to know what we are trying to accomplish. You can do this two ways…if you have a product to sell, then you want to get a keyword (or keyword phrase actually) that will help you sell more of those. If you want to get more traffic to your website, then it behooves you to piggy back on a popular phrase you already have on your website!

While I target small business and entrepreneur marketing primarily, I do have a little niche in Realtor Marketing that I like to keep healthy. I started up this site when I was just getting out of real estate in 2008 and so initially the Google ranked me for that term and I have been successful at keeping that connection, even while building up more authority as an entrepreneur or small business marketer.

In this video we are going to look at the difference between picking low hanging fruit keywords (ones that compliment what you already rank for) or how to find new keyword phrases to be able to rank for and sell stuff.

So now we have a keyword we are going to look trying to rank for (pinterest marketing tips)…what can we practically do?

Should I send all the pinterest marketing tips traffic to plain jane marketingartfully.com or should I send them to my sales page for my pinterest marketing course (this is the one that I chose – Pinterest Marketing – Video Training Course)
Next I went to my Google+ account and plus-oned the page (I can do some of these things from the post with the likey-likey plugin thingy (YES that is the technical term!) I made sure to use the search term while plussing it… see the google post
Next on my SEO list is Pinterest. Now, Pinterest does show up in google searches BUT if you SEO your pin right it will show up in pinterst searches too so over to the pinterest I go! link to pinterest pin
Shoop, shoop, shoop on over to the Twitter to tweet with a #Pinterest #Marketing Tips – throw in those hashtags on twitter when possible!!! see the twitter tweet
Over to the Stumble Upon to link it up! see the stumble upon link
Ahhh the facebook….Facebook is closed system so I am going to try and do a note and see if that gets us anywhere with our pinterest marketing tips keyword! so lame…can’t make links but…here is the Facebook note link

Now, there are about a million other places that I could make a link….like YouTube (see the youtube video with the link back and the keywords here), Tumblr, Squidoo, etc…but as a start I think I have a good chance of something somewhere winding up ranking on this keyword on Google’s universal search! find out more about google’s universal search for small business.

So, hopefully I have made a good case for why you would want to use these SEO tips to go about taking over a long term keyword that could help you grow a certain aspect of your business! Google is important but so are the social media sites and even offline marketing and sales.

PS – If you got all the way down here I wanted to give you something a little more (more advanced and more technical!) If you noticed the link to the Google Universal Search post has keywords and is linking INTERNALLY back to post on my website…this is great for making google know what your site is about because YOU control the keywords!

PSS – If you knew that, maybe you don’t know yet that while naming your Pinterest boards is important, maybe more so is filling out the descriptions so you turn up in search well! Just sayin…:)

Filed Under: keyword marketing, social media Tagged With: keyword marketing, seo, social media

About those "We can get you to page 1 of google emails"!

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

So I am astounded that those “Get You To Page 1 of Google” emails still work! In today’s search engines, there is only one constant, nothing is the same for each user and having a SEO (search engine optimization) company make that claim and get my peeps all worked up makes me crazy!

Getting on page 1 of google for what?

Let’s start with the keywords. When you hire a company to “get you to page 1 of google”, they are going to have you pick some keywords that you want to rank for. I can tell you, most business owners do not know what a good thing to rank for is! Consider Realtors, mostly they want to rank for their town and the search term “realtor”. So let’s break that one down…

Most people looking for a realtor who are going onto the internet search for the term realtors (with an “S” at the end), just like you wouldn’t look up St. Pete Plumber, you would look up St. Pete plumbers. So right off the bat, you could get to page 1, but for a term that doesn’t matter much.

Also there is a difference between the term Denver Real Estate and “Denver Real Estate”. In one I put the quotes around the whole phrase, meaning that the words have to be in that exact order. Without the quotes, they can be in any order and don’t necessarily have to contain all the words. Search results for Denver Real Estate are 163,000,000 and for “Denver Real Estate” are 5,450,000. If I was a snarky SEO company I could tell my customers that I had gotten them on page 1 for something both obscure (with not so many searches) AND have the quotes to make it easier to accomplish, with my client never the wiser.

Page 1 is a mess!

Okay, so what I was just talking about was straight ranking. Now let’s talk a little bit about other factors that effect what gets shown to YOU by google when you search.

It matters where you are because google knows the IP address that you are searching from! So if you search for hot dog stands, you do not get the ones in New York City, you get the ones closest to where you are, maybe some news about hot dogs stands and possibly some hot dog stand pictures.

It matters who you are because google follows you around the internet, figuring out what you like the most. Do you like videos, you will see more video results. Do you have friends on Google+ who have liked something, maybe you will too! If you are logged into google, you are effecting the search results you get.

The Google Experiment

So today I took a couple of hours to go over what results look like from all different browsers and all different types of people. Here is the breakdown of what I looked at:

Tara Jacobsen – I logged into google with my login
Realtor – I used another computer and logged in with a Realtor client’s google account
Proxify – This is a service that allows you to access the google from a generally blank slate
Retail Company – This company does sales and marketing but with big box stores, not my little moms and pops
iPad – On my iPad I logged out of google and did the searches (this seemed to be a little tainted I think because I got similar results to what I got on my real computer logged is as me)

So we have different people searching on different browsers (nothing I can do about my IP address so I am sure that affected the results too!)

What I found when searching for term Entrepreneur Marketing (no quotes) was there WAS some consistency in the top places, but after that, there were some REALLY big differences in what google returned as results. Here are my big take-aways.

None of the searches had any videos for this search term (the video link was to a page with a video, not the cute embedded videos on the search pages).
Proxify (who didn’t have any relation to anything else) showed indented listings (the ones under the main listing) for both my site and entrepreneur.com. They also did not get nearly as many listings as the other searches did.
I was surprised to get news results as I generally do not see those in my searches. I am not a newsy kind of gal!
The realtor had really weird results compared to everyone else! She had A LOT of friend connections in her results as she is pretty well connected online. She had links from three different friends on this search.
I thought it was REALLY interesting that I logged out of google on my iPad and got VERY similar results to logged in my big computer.
If a SEO company told you they could rank you for entrepreneur marketing, they would have a hard climb. Both Entrepreneur.com and MarketingArtfully.com (my site) have spent YEARS working on SEO to rank for these terms and would not be easy to knock off!

So, there you have it! A little bit about why those emails about getting you to page 1 of google are, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, total crap!

Looking for a good marketing company that can help with ALL your needs?

We work with small business owners to help you with your online presence, from Google search rankings to social media marketing.

This is not a get rich fast scheme, but a solid marketing plan by a company with over ten years of experience in the online marketing field! Give us a call today to find out more 727-415-9165!

Filed Under: keyword marketing Tagged With: google, keyword marketing, seo marketing

Top 5 SEO Small Business Marketing Tips

by Tara Jacobsen 5 Comments

When I talk about my Top 5 SEO small business marketing tips, I am referring to how to rank well in the search engines for targeted keywords that will increase traffic to your site organically. These are search engine optimization tips which can help you get more readers to your blog.

Search engine optimization or keyword marketing is super fun, it is like a little contest to see if you can beat the person who holds the rank ahead of you in Google or the other search engines. BUT to rank well, you need to know EXACTLY the search terms you want to achieve for both your overall site and then each individual post. The math looks like this:

1 blog post about realtor postcards + 1 blog post about realtor logos = Realtor Marketing
1 blog post about baby safe laundry detergent + 1 blog post about green janitorial supplies = Green Cleaning Products

Trying to rank for BIG AUDACIOUS keywords starts with ranking for little attainable keywords first.

Tip One for SEO Small Business Marketing Tips

Know what your big audacious keywords are!

Small Business SEO Marketing Tip Two

Know what your tiny keywords are! I have a program that I use to find out what keywords I can gain rank for which we use to help our clients gain positions for targeted keywords. You can do the same by using a tool called SEMRush to find out what keywords you rank for organically already. Now, this will only show you the top 10 but it is a good place to start without having to spend a dime. Take those and make it your goal to move them up a couple of positions by the first of next month.

MAKE SURE you write them on a piece of paper and hang them in front of you while you work. When you are thinking of writing a post, make sure that you have those target keywords in there somewhere in the title and content!

Super Important Tip Three

Put google analytics on your website and look at it.

The picture above shows my google analytics for Marketing Artfully the last rolling month. I know that “social media services” is doing well because I am sending paid traffic to it is, BUT customer demographics is doing well also. Customer demographics is a subset of marketing that I am interested in but which I never really tried to rank for, I just put up a couple of posts and got the traffic. You can reverse engineer some great keyword rankings by figuring out what people are already searching for and finding on your site and then doing more of that!

PS – I bolded “look at it” because most people don’t, or if they do then they are not sure what they should do!

Tip Four for SEO Small Business Marketing Tips

Learn to write posts with keywords in them the correct way. This is one of my HUGE pet peeves with copywriters who write interesting articles but who do not know how to keyword them correctly. It is great to produce excellent content, but it is even better if it gets people to read it and find you knowledgeable or even makes you money because you have something to sell. Writing for writings sake is noble, but not lucrative.

Here are two posts that will help you write good, keywordy articles:

Here is my last tip – Write more. I know, not sexy but it is true. Sometimes I think to myself, why don’t I rank for that keyword and then realize it is because I have not written an article about that specific topic. Google and the other search engines do not care what you hope to rank for, they only care what you have added to the internet. The huge peaks on the chart above show that I have SO much more traffic on a day I write and bookmark a post. When I am focused on getting rankings I am writing A LOT and it is REALLY not convenient to take the time away from client work to do so BUT it is vital to the long-term success of my business. Do it first thing before any other work and then start your day.

Well that is it, my Top 5 SEO Small Business Marketing Tips – if you have any good, practical tips, shout them out in the comments!

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Filed Under: keyword marketing, small business marketing Tagged With: keyword marketing, seo copywriting

SEO Copywriting – A Keyword Writing Case Study

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

SEO Copywriting is an art which most small business owners struggle with. I am hoping this example from a client who is trying to rock the SEO, but who is doing all the right things, the wrong way will help some of you recognize how you are sabotaging your own SEO Copywriting efforts!

Rae Ann, of Green Cleaning Products fame, has been learning all she can about how to write well for the internet. She has taken courses that told her to use tags (good) and has added a bunch of plugins to help do this automatically (bad). Here is the story of one of her blog posts and how we took it from good to great!

Names were NOT changed to protect the innocent BUT I warned her about this post!

SEO Copywriting

SEO Copywriting starts with having one keyword that you are trying to rank for per post. Trying to rank for two or three different keywords will just dilute your message so much that you wind up ranking for none!

This is the title of the post we are using: Why Green Cleaning Products are Important for Your Business. I like it and will use “Green Cleaning Products” and Business as something to try and rank for.

Her original first paragraph (which we will also use as the blog description) was:

In designing the Green Action Plan for your business it is important to understand the thinking of your customer base. For instance if you decide to use green janitorial chemicals and supplies and let others know about it will the consumer care? The short answer is yes.

Our keywords are not in this paragraph, in any order. Here is the re-written first paragraph:

We are often asked by clients, why are green cleaning products important for your business? If you are designing the Green Action Plan for your company, it is important to understand the thinking of your customer base. For instance if you decide to use green janitorial chemicals and supplies and let others know about it will the consumer care? The short answer is yes.

Reinforcing that phrase in that order will allow the search engines to index her page for things that are important to us. Here is how SEO Copywriting comes up in a google search (that is the term that I am trying to rank for for this post). You will notice the bold bits where google has highlighted that your search term is in the title AND the description tag.

The next thing we wanted to do was reinforce that phrase in the body of her post. We do this by using <bold> tags or <H2> tags around the phrase. The html will look like this:

<H2>Measuring Green Cleaning Products Business Goals</H2>

We use bold, H1 and H2 tags to show Google that highlighted content that contains our search phrase is indeed important to the context of the post. It is SO worth your while to learn just a little bit about HTML and how it affects your SEO (search engine optimization efforts) BUT you can also use the WYSIWYG editor and just select the Paragraph Style, Heading Two or B for Bold.

One last benefit to this this is read-ability. Having your content broken up into sections with these headers makes the post more readable!

Keyword Ready Blogs and Static Front Pages

One thing Rae Ann wanted when we started her site was for it to look more more like a website than a blog. With that in mind we set up a static front page that had links to some of her favorite keyword posts. It did look nice BUT… We changed it over to a true blog format with rotating content on the front page last week and her search engine traffic jumped immediately.

I am seeing more and more blog designers who are making “websites” with a blog button that gives access to the content. I have had some fierce conversations with clients about this and (though it is anecdotal right now) I firmly believe it takes some of the great blog ranking love out to “hide” your content through a blog button and will fight against this with every fiber of my being!

SEO Picture Naming Conventions

One thing Rae Ann did right was to name her pictures with her keywords in the title (ie seo-copywriting-keywords.jpg) AND she uses her keywords in the description and alt tags.

The Last KEYWord

When you are wrapping up your post, you should use your exact phrase again one last time at the end. I generally try and pair it with a call to action to get them to call or contact us.

Well there you have it, green cleaning products ARE important for your business. Click the link if you would like to find out more about our commercial green cleaning products or give us a call today (720) 746-0803!

How Much Is Too Much

So we have her keywords in the title, the description, the metatag keywords, her pictures, the headlines, and the last sentance – whew. That is A LOT of keywords. So when is it too much of a good thing? Conventional wisdom says that your keywords should not be more than 5 percent of your content of the post. It also says that your post should be at least 300 words long (mine are frequently 800 to 1,000 words or more). What I do to make this less of a hassle I write a post that I like and THEN go back and add all the seo copywriting bits.

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Filed Under: keyword marketing, middle of the road

Small Business Marketing and Social Media Marketing Services

by Tara Jacobsen

If you are here, you are probably a small business owner or entrepreneur who has heard all the buzz about social media marketing and how it can help grow your business. BUT who has the time to do all that tweeting, blogging, and networking when you have a business to run? Our social media marketing services can help!

Social Media Marketing and Marketing Artfully

Today’s social media stretches across sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and blogs. Oh, for the good old days when you could just order the yellow page ad once a year and be done with your advertising! Now it seems like everyone wants the small business owner to be a technical guru who knows how to set up all these sites and THEN can find the time to post every few days, make comments and interact regularly. Seriously, who can do all that AND take care of running their business?

I KNOW, every social media marketing company says they are different, but we have the tools and know-how to keep you on the front edge of new products and programs (our clients had early access to google plus and have been growing their circles almost as long as the service has been available!) Our owner is a nationally recognized marketing speaker whose hand guides all of our marketing efforts on behalf of our clients, assuring that what you put out there will have the maximum effect. Additionally, our staff is all located in the USA and have been with us for years (some since day one!)

If you know that you need to be doing all of this but don’t have the time or energy to handle it all, give us a call today 727-505-5384 or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

How Does Social Media Work For Small Business?

Social media marketing is great for getting the word out about your small business! If you do it right it can keep you top of mind for all your prospects, clients and past customers in a friendly manner that does not scream SELL, SELL, SELL. Too often we see small biz owners with great intentions doing social media wrong, too strong, too salesy, too, too, too.

I KNOW you have gone to a networking event and gotten stuck in corner listening to "that guy" talk about his product for what feels like hours without a break to breathe or get to know him. Social media (or social networking as it is more rightly called) is actually about building trust and making real connections with people, rather than just shouting your marketing message at them.

Your social media empire is built over time, growing your friends and likes, following people on Twitter and getting followed back, building your links in the search engines so that when someone is considering buying your product or service, you get the call!

Give us a call today 727-505-5384 to find out more or Request a FREE, No Obligation Quote

Nice Things They Are Saying About Us!

Having Marketing Artfully manage our marketing has been a lifesaver. Before we started with them, I had a hard time justifying the expense in my mind. Boy was I wrong! They are worth every penny and then some.

They keep us on track with our social media, bloging and u-tube video marketing with the added benefit of SEO expertise. They let me do the part I enjoy and they handle ALL of the rest. I don’t even have to think about any of it which is such a HUGE relief.

And the best part is that not only are our past clients and people in our database regularly telling us about ‘how they see that we’re so busy’, we’re also getting high-quality referrals, leads and sales as a result. In fact, we’re closing on a sale in 2 weeks netting us over $11,000 in commission simply because of our Facebook presence!

~ Julia (& Matt) Fishel, Palm Harbor Florida Realtors

Small Business Marketing Services

Social Media Marketing

Your social media marketing efforts can seem to eat up your day. Who has time to make friends, get followers, post information, write notes AND do business. In this day and age, having a professional looking Facebook Business Page is a must have. Using Twitter might seem like a waste of time to you, but your competition knows that there is business to be had there. We can help design, implement and manage your social media empire at a great monthly rate that will not break the bank.

Some Facebook Business Page Examples:
How To Buy USA Real Estate
Suncoast Partners
FitNut Nutrition
Advanced Healthcare Clinic

Some Twitter Branding Examples:
Pluma Designs
Bob Day – Send Out Cards
Smarter Women Colorado

Search Engine and Keyword Marketing

Search engine and keyword marketing is built into everything we do. From our smallest client to our biggest companies, finding the right search terms matters, not just to Google but on Facebook and Twitter too! Our keyword guru will find a mix of attainable keywords to rank for which are relevant to your business AND which have good monthly search traffic. This keyword research is a $250 value which is included for EVERY one of our clients.

Blog Website Marketing

Blogs ARE for business. There is no better way to get a consistent message to the search engines and your social media sites than to have a blog site. We work with you, targeting your goals and then producing relevant content for your site. We SEO it AND post it, sending your message out on a regularly scheduled basis to the search engines and social media. It is your choice how much control to have, some of our clients review everything we post, some just are happy that marketing is happening without them having to lift a finger!

Some Business Blog Examples:
Florida Rental Boat
Fitness Nutrition Denver Boulder
Kim Bogart – Pasco County Sheriff Candidate
Lakewood Bookkeeping Accounting

YouTube Video Marketing

Video marketing is all the rage for good reason. With the new Flip cameras and digital recorders, we can make a movie, post it to YouTube, add it to a blog, upload it to Facebook and generally market the heck out of it. AND the best part is that slick, commercial movies are out, real people are in. Whether you want to be in the videos or would rather use screen captures and voice-overs, we can help.

Some YouTube Examples:
How To Buy USA Real Estate
Deborah Ward and Associates
Pinellas Peach – Palm Harbor Real Estate

What Makes Us Marketing Experts

Today it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry has taken a social media marketing class and is now calling themselves an expert. Our marketing guru, Tara Jacobsen, has been in marketing for over 10 years, is a nationally recognized marketing speaker and has had marketing pieces published as national examples of effective marketing campaigns. Her in depth of knowledge across the board allows us to provide you with a comprehensive marketing plan that will get you leads and ultimately increase sales.

All of our receive a monthly report to review goals, set milestones and check analytics of what was accomplished the previous month.

Our team includes Tara, Stacy Hansen of Personalized Marketing Corp., Michelle Vazquez our client services manager, writers, technical geeks and admin people who are all working together using systems we have developed to make sure your online and offline marketing efforts run smoothly.

Small Business Marketing FAQs

We talk to small business owners every day about their small business marketing needs and some questions come up over and over. Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions we get. If you have any further questions, please give a call at (727) 505-5384 and we will get back with you as soon as possible!

What do your services cost? – We have monthly plans that range from $397 to $997 a month depending on what you need done for your marketing. The quality of service we provide for each type of client does not change, only the amount of time that is available to work on the projects. We talk with you BEFORE you sign up to make sure that our efforts will be able to meet your expectations.

Do you require a contract? – We do not require a long term contract, although we do ask though that you budget for at least three months for maintenance as there is time at the front end for our efforts to kick in. There is no contract for the setups, all charges are made up front and do not require that you use our social media maintenance.

Can you bill us? – Honestly, we keep our prices low by avoiding invoicing and chasing checks. All of our billing is done through Authorize.net which is a secure, online service. We bill in advance for the month and schedule work for clients after they have paid. Because we have time and expenses involved in our work, if you miss a payment, work will cease until you get a valid form of payment entered into the system.

Do you have custom small business marketing services or a la carte pricing? – We are always happy to talk with potential clients about your needs and tailor a program to meet your budget requirements.

Can you send me some info? – OF COURSE! We have a comprehensive pricing sheet that breaks down all of items we do for our clients, simple request a free quote and we will be happy to send you the pricing sheet!

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Filed Under: facebook marketing, internet marketing, keyword marketing, top tabs, twitter marketing Tagged With: small business marketing services, social media marketing company, social media marketing services

How To Write A Blog Post That Will Rank In Google

by Tara Jacobsen 5 Comments

It is amazing how many bits go into writing a blog post that will rank in google. While there are a million different posts out there on this topic, this post is laser focused on one of the more practical aspects – keyword marketing.

When you sit down to write a blog post, the first step is to make sure that you have a topic that you are interested in and which will compliment your three main keywords for your site. My site is all about small business marketing, entrepreneur marketing and realtor marketing so I HAVE to talk about some kind of marketing (which is good because I am obsessed with all things marketing).

The next step is to start writing. Put down everything that you think is going to be relevant and interesting WITHOUT worrying about what keywords you are going to be using. Yesterday I started out writing a post about “Using national marketing campaigns for small business marketing” because I had seen a good link posted by one of my friends on Facebook. This is the first paragraph (which I use for my description) when I started:

The easiest way to jump start your small business marketing is to use national marketing campaigns. Piggy backing on something that a national company has spent GAGILLIONS to produce is a great way to help build YOUR brand!

Interesting to me, easy to research BUT after I got a little ways in I started wondering if anyone was searching for that! It is great to be a purist and write about what you are interested in BUT I want people to actually find and read my words also. Come to find out that NO ONE was searching for that type of thing. Now this doesn’t mean that I have to scrap the whole post and start again. I did a search on the google external keyword tool and found out that 135,000 people search for “funny youtube videos” – now that is MUCH better! So I kept writing my post about “funny youtube videos” when I realized that doesn’t have anything to do with marketing (and I am not funny but that is for another day!). RATS.

Okay, so I need to get it into the realm of marketing so I checked and there are 1,300 people searching on google for “funny youtube commercials”. A MUCH smaller number but probably people who are going to be at least a little interested in what I have to say about funny videos and marketing.

Here is the final description that I can up with for my “Use Funny YouTube Commercials For Small Business Marketing” post:

The easiest way to jump start your small business marketing is to use funny YouTube commercials for small business marketing. Piggy backing a funny YouTube commercial that a national company has spent GAGILLIONS to produce is a great way to help build YOUR brand!

I KNOW – that seems like an awful lot of effort just to get your keyword marketing right, BUT it actually took about a half an hour to write the post and 15 minutes to “fix” all the keyword problems. At the end of the day I am happier with how it turned out AND am way more likely to rank well in the Google!

Filed Under: blogging, keyword marketing, middle of the road Tagged With: blog marketing, google, keyword marketing, writing blog posts

Keyword Marketing Capitalize On Current Events

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

Keyword marketing has reached a new level and super exiting level. ANYONE can rank on page one in Google for a search term that thousands are searching for if they capitalize on current events.

So what are current events in the Keyword Marketing world? Current events are thing that are new and noteworthy that people will be searching for OR large events that have their own humongous marketing budgets that you can piggy back on.

How can a motorcycle race team use Apple’s Marketing dollars to get viewers?

So you know Apple, Steve Jobs and all of them? You know their marketing budgets run in the millions of dollars right? And you know that they just launched the iPhone 4 with a digital video camera. They are IN THE NEWS! Well this little team of motorcycle racers in Colorado did a GREAT job of leveraging the power of all that marketing by being one of the first people to USE the phone to do a mini documentary on an interesting subject (the phone has been out less than a week at this point).

iPhone 4 Short Film – “156 Turns” – Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with Ducati Multistrada

Another whackjob, I mean GREAT marketer who will be capitalizing on this launch is the “will it blend” guy. He takes perfectly good things and blends them. Why this is so brilliant marketing-wise is that he is showing how good his product is AND getting more and more viewers by each and huge product launch that is out there. He has blended iPhones, iPads, Olympus cameras, and even Facebook. Each of these are a great keyword that most everyone is chasing but that he is getting ranked for!

So how can a small business owner do this? Well a Flip video camera costs less than $200 bucks. And creativity costs nothing. One example that springs to mind is one of our clients who paints horse portraits. She could pair the term “horse portraits” with “Kentucky Derby Winner” or “Belmont Stakes Traditions”.

For people who sell makeup, look to the Grammys, Oscars, Miss America, etc. For those who sell toys, Santa, Christmas, Child Star Birthdays and more would be good. Basically you need to put on your thinking cap and try to find topics that are in the news now that would be a good match for your industry!

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Filed Under: blogging, case studies, keyword marketing

Do URL Keywords REALLY Matter Much To Google?

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

Does using URL keywords help drive organic traffic from google and other search engines is on my mind today. The URL keywords efficiency at getting google to notice a website is controversial but REALLY interesting.

The URL Keyword Controversy is a big deal in my world, probably not so much in yours BUT it does affect your online business empire! The URL (or Domain Name) keyword question is about whether using keywords in your domain name would increase your ranking in google and other search engines. So instead of picking www.abccompany.com you would pick www.wesellwidgets.com.

We have many clients who are adamant that they want to use their business name as their domain name for their blog (check out more information about the difference between blogs and websites). We have even had prospects that have sent us pages long emails about why we are nuts for trying to steer them towards using keywords in the web name where they host their blog instead of having their company name.

Well, if you think that having search engine keywords in your domain name helps, then using your company name as a your blog URL is silly. Since lots of people are looking to buy widgets or whatever you are selling and few people are searching for your company name, naming your URL your company name is counter productive. Here is a video from Matt Cutts (the google guy) who says that keywords in the domain name do help a little bit. Well, I will tell you, I will take every advantage I can get for my clients.

Additionally, it has been proven anecdotally over time with our clients. If we name a website www.HomesForSaleVictorvilleCA.com, they will rank for on page one for that common search term (there are over 30,000 searches for that term a month and over 173,000 search results to compete with) so why wouldn’t you do that instead of using the Realtor’s name which does not have enough search volume to register. I also have a colleague who got traffic and leads from an intervention steps website with a good keywordy url that did not have any backlinks or anything else to help promote it, so more evidence from a third party even!

Just as an aside, that does NOT mean that I think you should use a long, convoluted URL like http://bestrestauranttampabay.com for your marketing pieces, OF COURSE you will buy a good url like www.SnookersBlog.com and POINT it at your Best Restaurant Tampa Bay keywordy URL. BUT to google, since you actually built the blog or website on the good keywords you get a little bonus!

To muddy the waters a bit more, here are some somewhat supporting and contrasting posts from google about the benefits of having keywords in the URL:

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Filed Under: keyword marketing Tagged With: google, internet marketing, keyword marketing

Taking Advantage Of Trends On Google

by Tara Jacobsen 3 Comments

Taking advantage of trends on google is a great way to get increased traffic to your website! Here is how a website took advantage of the new iPad launch to get increased traffic to their website from google.

When using my new iPad, I noticed that it would be MUCH easier to have icons on the desktop that linked directly to websites rather than using the bookmark feature from within the Safari browser. I did a search for “how to add an icon to your ipad desktop” and found this link “How to Make an iPad Icon for Your Website or Blog” but below that was an indented listing of how to do what I wanted.

OfZenComputing did a great job of finding keywords that people are searching for now and having a post out there that was great bait for generating incoming links. Here are some of my observations about what they did right!

Ways that this site took advantage of trends on google

Using the keywords in their title that covered a number of different searches
Naming the picture on the page “ipad bookmark to home screen” which increased the chances of google listing them
Internally linking the first post they wrote with the followup post the next day, reinforcing the keywords internally
Providing valuable information that people need (what you needed to do was blatantly obvious after I saw it so don’t assume that your knowledge has to be extremely technical)
The second day they made a photoshop picture that you could use to make your own icon on your website so that people could bookmark you too and gave it away for free

Tools to find out what is a hot topic right now – so how do you know what is trending now?

Watch the real news – many times you find out what is happening on the interwebs by watching the network news. It is their job to cover topics people are interested in.
Go to Google News and see what they are covering
Use Twitter Search to see what is hot right now and to do searches on keywords that you are interested in targeting

Filed Under: internet marketing, keyword marketing Tagged With: google, keyword marketing, search engine seo

How to Choose the Right Keywords for Your Small Business

by Tara Jacobsen 4 Comments

How to choose the right keywords for your small business is one of the most important things that you can do with your marketing efforts. This post features guest author Reid Peterson, Internet Marketing Educator at growthinharmony.com!

Keywords Small Business Marketing For those of you that don’t know by now – your keywords do matter.

That doesn’t mean to choose a keyword like “Real Estate” because you are a real estate agent and you sell real estate. You would spend the rest of your life competing for a search result ranking that might make page 5. (if you’re lucky)

And you might think you’re clever and choose “Real Estate Denver CO” because you sell real estate in Denver, Colorado.

Guess what? Instead of taking a life time to rank high in search results pages, it may take a decade. (and if you’re a rock star- like one who would publish two or more blog posts per day, it you might get to #1 rankings in a year.)

Yes, SEO companies promise you page 1 rankings (and often #1 ) by tomorrow, but even if that is true (which I’m still waiting for someone to video blog their success of that), you would have to pray that the views of your website are converting to business. Are they?

So your website success (earning business from the people who view it) starts somewhere- where exactly is that “somewhere?”

It starts with keyword research and you have to be both very smart and creative about the keywords you choose. Here’s how to use your smarts and creativity to choose the right keywords for your business:

1) Know your customer. And I mean know them well- all five senses (maybe avoid what they taste like though.) You’ve probably heard that you must know your ideal customer’s needs (wants) but do you know how they react to the emotional umcomfortabilities that create their needs and wants? Yep, you must know that!

2) Listen to how your customer communicates. What words do your ideal customers use to speak or write? Those are your keywords right there! (I now feel complete but also compelled to write more)

3) Test the words your ideal customer uses. Now that you know what your customers say to express their needs, you have to see if there is enough search volume for these phrases. Google “google external keyword tool” for a free method of checking the search volume for these phrases. You can also use wordtracker (not sure if it is free) or a software that I think is inexpensive: Market Samurai (this is what I use and it serves me well.) When you select your tool, determine how many searches is enough for your business to prosper from.

4) Wordsmith the phrases that you select. You may have thought “Real Estate Denver CO” was a great keyword phrase because it has a specific location included in it, but guess what? Other real estate agents have also done the same thing. The competition is probably very high to compete for. Instead, get even more specific (and creative). People searching real estate online may be in the market to buy a home… Why not compete for the search term “buying a home in Denver?” (You may be surprised)

5) Use your smarts. Your final step is to analyze the key words/phrases that you’ve creatively crafted. Use analytics (in your head) to assess the relevancy of the phrases. Do they represent the language/communication of the community that represents your ideal client? If you were a good business person and listened to your ideal client speak emotionally about what they need, would you hear them say the keywords that you selected? If not, it’s time to go back to being creative and come up with new ones.

Going through this process of using your creativity and smarts will help you select the right keyword for your business; Ones that reflect the needs of your ideal clients. Also, ones that provide the comfort that your clients are seeking (which means sales for you!)

Reid Peterson teaches people how to market their business online. He teaches in focus group formats; empowering business owners to learn self SEO, Social Media, and Better Blogging methods. To learn more about Reid Peterson and how you can master your own online marketing, visit http://growthinharmony.com

Filed Under: blogging, internet marketing, keyword marketing Tagged With: google, keyword marketing, realtor marketing, small business marketing

Social Media Marketing Is Facebook Beating Google

by Tara Jacobsen 3 Comments

Social media marketing and especially Facebook is taking over Google for driving traffic to my website. More traffic is great but social media marketing success is less predictable. So is Facebook beating Google on my site.

I attended a workshop a couple of YEARS ago where the speaker said that Facebook would take over Google as the search engine of choice for most people. I do not think that Twitter was even on the radar at that point yet. According to Facebook, they have more than 400 million active users today.

As a search engine, Facebook is a very subjective, easy to use tool. I have to say that when I want a good local place to eat lunch I Facebook my Denver friends rather than searching in google.

So how does Social Media Marketing matter to your website or blog?

Over the last 30 days I have been obsessing about getting more traffic to my website. I have increased the last rolling month by over 200 visitors and my bounce rate has gone up a couple of percent because of the new traffic. So where has that traffic come from?

Stumble upon (642 Visitors) – now this is not your typical social media outlet BUT I have to say that there ARE people who have signed up to “follow” me on it so I am counting it! There are other sites like Digg and Technorati that also send me traffic but they are not counted in that number.
Google organic (302 Visitors) – that covers 254 different keywords with between one and ten hits per keyword.
Direct (272 Visitors) – I think that this is from people who are just typing in my url from marketing pieces or coming from a link in an email. This is the hardest to track.
Social Media Combined, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (107 Visitors) – I do not try on the social media front enough. Sigh. April will have to be “see how many hits I can get with social media” month! That having been said, for the same month long timeframe last year I got 13 hits from social media. Almost 10 times as many! And I think I was trying harder then…:)

So is Google irrelevant. Not to me. I LIKE keyword marketing and the challenge of ranking well for targeted keywords. I like being able to have empirical data that tells me what is working and what does not.

That having been said, I like using Hootsuite.com because I can get stats from there about clickthroughs to my tweets. I like being able to target tremendously tight niches using Facebook advertising and I like the challenge of getting ever larger numbers of fans and followers.

So, long story short (too late I know), I do not think Google is going to go away anytime soon and I am not throwing all of my eggs into the Twitter, Facebook OR Google basket. I am spreading the joy that is my website all around the internet so that when the next big thing comes along (which it will) I am positioned well with my content at the ready to capitalize on it!

If you would like to find out about how to effectively implement Social Media Marketing, please click the link!

Filed Under: facebook marketing, keyword marketing, social media Tagged With: facebook marketing, social media, social networking

Internet Marketing Keyword and Product Names

by Tara Jacobsen 4 Comments

When you are doing internet marketing, keyword and product names are more important than almost anything else you can do. It is great to have a product or service, but if no one can find it then you are going to have trouble making sales!

Internet Marketing Keywords Friday I wrote a post about Small Business Marketing Naming Concepts which covered the basics of generally naming your products but I feel like I missed something in the internet marketing translation.

Why Keywords and Product Names Matter

I cannot stress this enough, keyword and product names matter more today than ever! Getting sales or leads from the internet relies on humans being able to find your company while doing searches. People find information by doing looking on search engines. Every one of you has “googled” something at least once in your life so you know what I am talking about. Search engines are just databases of information that is indexed by taking words you use and comparing them to words other humans use and seeing if they match.

This is not rocket science. If I name my best product Small Business Internet Express instead of naming it the Marketing Artfully Success System I have more of a chance of showing up in the search engines for the search term “small business internet” which is closer to my product than using my company name or obscure terms like success system.

Just so you know what this would mean to your business in the real world:

Small Business Internet is searched 49,500 times per month
Success System is searched 33,100 times per month and
Business Success System has not enough searches to even estimate

So if I was trying to let small business owners know that I am selling internet products, the name I am using DEFINITELY will have a better chance of being found than something less fun and sexy. Now I KNOW it not fun to name your products what they are. It is more fun to make great marketing campaigns based on something funny or clever, BUT that makes it harder to get the word out there.

As a small business owner, I do not have the resources to do a branding campaign big enough to get the general public and especially the search engines to understand that a made up name is really a small business internet marketing program.

Incoming search terms:

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Filed Under: internet marketing, keyword marketing, marketing materials, niche marketing Tagged With: internet marketing, keyword marketing, small business marketing

Internet and Keyword Marketing Are Constantly Changing

by Tara Jacobsen 1 Comment

Internet marketing and especially keyword marketing is fun, challenging AND changing! It used to be so easy to define your business and then run with that for years or even decades. A barber was a barber and didn’t try to be a stylist or add things to his business. An accountant did books for small businesses and knew that tax time would bring a huge windfall to her business.

We do a keyword marketing analysis for each of our blog customers and I consider this to the MOST important phase of the project. I have often been floored when I find that there is little or no competition for keywords that I expect to be huge and also have been surprised that obscure keywords have such a high competition in the marketplace.

That having been said, it also pays to listen to what humans are talking about. Lately I have noticed a trend that when people call and ask me to speak they keep asking about “social media” instead of “social networking”. Now when I started out speaking and working with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter a while ago, it was all social networking BUT times they are a changing and I am always curious to see what the numbers have to say.

DOH – Social Media gets 135 THOUSAND searches a month and Social Networking gets only 12 thousand. Sigh. That means that I had to go back in and change my graphics on my social media how to videos, on my buttons and re-write my sales pages. I have to re-think my adwords campaigns and even how I present myself as a speaker. I have to change my vernacular and even go in and add new tags to my old social networking posts. Darnit. I wish everything would just stay the same, but it does not and that is just how our new world is!

If you are a small business owner, make sure you are listening to your customers. Have their words or needs changed. Do they want you to provide something that you aren’t currently doing. DO NOT get stuck in a rut or resist change because it is hard. I was reminded of a book that I read years ago (Who Moved My Cheese) which basically said that if you are not willing to listen and make changes your business will wither and die.

SOOOO get out there and call your best customers TODAY. Find out what they are talking about and what their needs are that your company can provide. Check your keywords to make sure they are helping your marketing efforts and product lines. If you have not checked them in 6 months, today is the time to do so. Look at all this change as an opportunity to fix what was not working and improve your bottom line while you are at it!

If you would like to have a keyword marketing analysis done, we are honoring our $100 price point through this month only, then the price jumps to $250. Also, the book reference contains an affiliate link, if you click that I will get a little bit of money. If you would like to avoid giving me a little bit of money just do a search for that title on Amazon..:)

Filed Under: case studies, internet marketing, keyword marketing Tagged With: internet marketing, keyword marketing, small business marketing, social media, social networking

New Google Search Features and What They Mean

by Tara Jacobsen 2 Comments

There are some big changes in how Google delivers search results. The three that I am obsessed with right now are the Google and Twitter real time search results, the Google local search functions and the Google “your friends” search results.

GOOGLE REAL TIME TWITTER RESULTS

Google returns twitter results in real time right on the search page. Did you know that? Did you think of how that could effect what you post on Twitter? Now don’t get me wrong, they are not posting up to the minute “tweets” on every topic BUT they are posting tweets on trending topics like they did during the superbowl for “superbowl ads”. There they were returning real time twitter results at the top of the search page right under the first organic listing.

So when you post to twitter are you using your keywords? Google is a giant database that has nothing to use to categorize your information other than words (OK – I know that they are working on categorizing videos too but that is a post for another day!) SOOOO when you post a tweet about your blog post or a Facebook note or something else that leads from your breadcrumbs back your main site, make sure you great keywords as part of your 140 characters!

Here is some great insider information on the google blog about the real time twitter search results.

GOOGLE LOCAL SEARCH RESULTS

This one is pretty annoying to marketers. Basically it means that Google can change the results you are shown based upon your IP address, whether or not you are logged into google when searching and even some of what you have searched for and clicked on previously.

This means that although you do a search and your site shows up in the top ten results on the first page, that may not be the case all across America (or even across town). The way to check and see if you are seeing a true result is to go to a proxy site like the elegantly named Hide My Ass and THEN type in the google search site. This will allow you to see what search results are coming up without all the baggage that comes with using your computer at your home or office.

Additionally, this means that there is no easy SEO solution!!!! If someone calls you and guarantees that they can get your site on the first page of google for a search phrase, ask them how they are going to accomplish that so it works globally. Additionally, paying lots of money for one search phrase is silly – if you are going to spend that kind of money use adwords and get lots of search phrases!

YOUR FRIENDS GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

Last but not least, Google now tells me the search results that my friends are returning. My blogging buddy Michael Martine over at Remarkablogger is “ranking on the first page” of my search results for internet marketing because google knows that he is is in my gmail contacts. THAT IS HUGE! That means that people google thinks are connected to me will see MY results on the first page.

Many times small business owners want me to tell them how social networking benefits them. They want to know that all that effort they are putting in makes a difference. Well, if you had asked me last week for a really great reason to have friends, and twitter friends and big contact lists in google I may have answered differently. Today with google buzz starting up and then seeing these new search results, I am more committed to growing large networks than ever!

Filed Under: internet marketing, keyword marketing, social media Tagged With: google, google and twitter, google friend search, google local search, google real time search results

Google Buzz and Gist Updates

by Tara Jacobsen 2 Comments

There are some really new things happening like google buzz and gist which could be a great way to keep up with your contacts and what they are doing across Facebook, Twitter and their blogs. Warning, if you want the world to be the way it was 20 years ago and not have to continually learn, change and figue out new technologies this is NOT the post for you!

GOOGLE BUZZ

Google Buzz is here (just FYI I didn’t know it even existed until 2 days ago so you are not very far behind the curve…:) What I have found it to be thus far is an incorporation between my google contacts and my gmail in conjunction with their blog posts and twitter tweets and more. It showed up as a little button below my Inbox. Now I did request to be added to it so I am not sure if it would have just showed up anyways or not – just in case here is a link to Google Buzz.

The way that google finds these items to post is by searching what you have entered in your google profile so make sure that your blogs, facebook and twitter accounts are up to date!

I will do a more in depth post on this alone once I understand what it is BUT there is always a first responder advantage so get signed up and worry about the rest later!!!

gist GIST

This seems like it could be really neat…or a huge waste of time! Basically what it is is a way to load all of your favorite people’s social networking and blog stuff into one place and then be able to keep up with them all at once across platforms. That having been said, it seems like it might take A LOT of time getting all that stuff loaded in initially. I think if it catches on A BUNCH then eventually other people will load their own stuff and you won’t have to do it BUT there are not that many people preloaded now.

I am going to write about the benefits of being first to market on Monday so make sure to check back!

Filed Under: internet marketing, keyword marketing, niche marketing Tagged With: gist, google, google buzz

Google Local Business Listings – Great for small business owners!

by Tara Jacobsen Leave a Comment

Want another way to get more clicks to your website? For FREE? Google local business search is free, easy and sent 22 people to my website last month. Is that a lot? Not compared to the regular search, but considering that I set it up a couple of years ago and never touched it again, I am pleasantly sureprised.

Google sent me a message today that I can now get reports on my local search clicks so I popped back in, added my new Colorado location, uploaded some video testimonials and bang I am live!

Make sure you verify your business with a phone call or email. If you use the phone option, they call you within seconds and give you a pin number to enter to verify your given phone number is active.

Filed Under: case studies, internet marketing, keyword marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With: google local search, internet marketing, small business, small business marketing

How To Leverage Google – Do More of What Is Working!

by Tara Jacobsen 2 Comments

So I was looking at my Google Analytics the other day and noticed that I was getting more organic click-throughs from the search term “Realtor Email Newsletters” – YAY! While I work with all kinds of businesses, we have a product called Thrive that focuses on marketing for Real Estate Agents, Mortgage People and Title Companies.Â

I have been trying to make it REALLY clear that this is not a real estate blog and that MOST of my clients are small business owners NOT realtors BUT that was just too big an opportunity not to tell you about!!!

So what will I do to leverage this great search term?

Wrote this post with a link to Google to tell them I love them!
Wrote a post over at Active Rain (a blog for realtors and real estate) that links to my productÂ
Will post this blog post on my Facebook page to add to the effect
I will make pages on sites like Squidoo and Wetpaint that capitalize on the search term

Another great problem I heard about this week comes from Julia Fishel, a fantastic Palm Harbor Realtor. She emailed me to ask what she could do about the fact that she wrote a great blog post that ranked high for Palm Harbor Realtors on Active Rain that was showing up high on Yahoo but that did not “hook” to her real blog. Here are some things she can do!

Put a cool banner at the bottom that drives people from the high-ranking post to her blog where she can collect data like email addresses
Make sure she uses that term in some of her post titles and other online info – I am huge fan of the path of least resistance. While it is admirable to try and rank highly for ALL the search terms you could, I tend to figure out what works naturally and then reverse engineer my stuff to capialize on it!

So there you go – Do you know how people are finding you on goole or yahoo? Make sure that you have google analytics loaded on your site so you can see all the incoming search terms people are using to find you!

Filed Under: case studies, internet marketing, keyword marketing Tagged With: real estate marketing, real estate newsletters, realtor email newsletters

Social Networking Will Replace Google?

by Tara Jacobsen 2 Comments

So why do I think social networking will replace google and how does that make this post a followup to telling the truth? (I wrote a post a couple of days ago about why I think that telling the truth is the best way to conduct business!)

Firstly, I attended a Jeffery Gitomer training session and he said that “truth” is going to be the new standard for business and he cited the Enron bunch as people who scammed the system and got caught, much to the detriment of their businesses. Well that training was BEFORE the huge financial meltdown that has occurred because of what is perceived as Wall Street defrauding the public.

Secondly, I then attended a training session (I get A LOT of training!) where a tech guy said that google will be irrelevant in 5 years. GOOGLE and IRRELEVANT in the same sentence? How can that be?!?!?! Well it just so happens I agree with him to a point. I DO think people will still “Google” you to see if you are who you say you are, BUT I also think that social networking will become so large that if you need a referral you will just ask someone you know – online!

Many of my online “friends” I have never met in person but I trust them and their judgement. If I needed a plumber here in Colorado (I am new), I would NOT go to the yellow pages OR google, I would ask my online realtor friends if they had a good referral! If I needed a dentist, doctor, printer, good travel agent, ANYTHING, I would ask my “friends” first. And as more and more people join these networks it will become more apparent that goole will be less attractive and referrals more-so.

So have you googled yourself lately in relation to your business? Does it show you? Check out “Tara Jacobsen Marketing” and you will see LOTS of entries that show that I am who I say I am on google – that is a very good thing!

Filed Under: entrepreneur marketing, internet marketing, keyword marketing, social media Tagged With: google, internet marketing, marketing, social media, social networking