It was just a little more than a year ago when I reported about the roll out of the Google Panda algorithm version 2.2 as Google further attempted to measure user response to the quality of their SERPs. Since then, they’ve made dozens of tweaks to the algorithm. Last week, they released a new version of their algorithm called, Penguin, to identify and penalize sites guilty of “SEO over-optimization”.

Word of this pending change started circulating at the last SXSW when Google’s famed head of their Webspam team, Matt Cutts, talked about the “over-optimization penalty”. Then last week, he made the official announcement that Google will be penalizing those sites that are using “aggressive web spam tactics” for gaming their way to the top of Google’s rankings.

So what does this mean for SEO and your website?

If you’re following white-hat SEO practices and you’re posting high-quality, compelling content, you have little to worry about. And I only say “little to worry about” because the reality is that Google does sometimes get it wrong with all the best of intentions. However, if you are using aggressive black-hat techniques, like keyword stuffing, unusual linking patterns, and spun content with anchor text that links to pages with content that is completely unrelated, then you should be concerned.

This latest update should raise a couple of questions for your SEO strategy.

1. Are you trying to cheat your way to the top?

The bottom line is that if you want to get to the top of Google organically, you have to work for it. If you’re a small business owner and you are considering using the low-cost services of faceless sites that promise to get you thousands of links quickly, realize that these are some of the same services that use spun articles and unrelated links that Google is targeting with Penguin.

2. Does your SEO strategy focus on what makes your target audience happy or does it focus on Google’s algorithm?

As the image at the top of this post indicates, you shouldn’t be creating your SEO strategy based solely upon what makes Google happy. Yes, we all want the great visibility and click-throughs that come with sitting in the #1 organic ranking spot on Google’s SERPs. And yes, you should be aware of the how the algorithms work.

However, have you ever seen content that was obviously created for a machine and not a human reader? These are the posts that have low quality content and read as if certain phrases were dropped in repeatedly, with little relevance, or in a way that doesn’t flow grammatically with the rest of the content.

Google will continue to hone their algorithm to improve their SERPs. What you create to cheat the system today can cost you tomorrow. Plus, some of the gaming tactics are pretty obvious for the people who find your content. What does this say about the quality of your products and services? Even if you get this content past Google, you’ll lose credibility with your target audience for being guilty be association.

BTW - I have to give credit to high_plains_drifter in the Warrior Forum for the creation of the amusing image in this post. Great pic! Don’t get caught in this viscous circle.

3. Are you leveraging other channels to reach your audience online?

Even though Google is the king when it comes to search engines and it can bring your business great clicks and targeted traffic when you rank high on Page 1, Google’s search engine isn’t the only game in town. Your target audience spends time on other sites, including social media platforms, bookmarking sites, video channels, and more. Do you know where your target audience spends time? Connecting with them on various locations online increases your visibility and your credibility which ultimate will increase your odds of improving your profitability.

4. Do you know the difference between white-hat and black-hat SEO?

The rules for SEO change pretty frequently. What you may hear as a “good idea” or best practices today can be obsolete in a few months or could cost you rankings in the future. If you are unsure how to differentiate the two or simply don’t have the time to stay up-to-date with these ongoing changes, it’s best to bring on professionals that do. If you are concerned about your past and current SEO strategies and tactics and want a professional review, contact us.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

When I say, “social media,” you say …

“Facebook”
“Twitter”
“YouTube”
“LinkedIn”

Maybe you threw in Pinterest and Google+, too.

Unfortunately, many solopreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses have been drawn by the buzz of these sites and have forgotten about the value of blogging as part of their social media strategy. Or maybe it’s because social media seems so much easier to do.

A quick tweet or the sharing of a picture with a short comment on Facebook takes only a minute. Blogging, on the other hand, takes time. There are brainstorm topics, researching your keywords, writing and editing the content, and embedding hyperlinks while taking advantage of all the SEO elements on the page and in the backend of your website … definitely not a 60-second task.

Just for the record, I’m not saying building and maintaining an effective social media presence is easy. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at all the tasks that I said you need to do for blogging, the same hold true for social media. It’s just that many people don’t perceive it that way. The thought of tweeting a message doesn’t cause most social media managers or small business owners the same level of anxiety that writing a 500 – 700 word blog post does.

It’s this tension that causes them to believe they simply don’t have the time to keep up with a consistent blogging schedule. And if you can’t do it well … why bother, right? Here are two big reasons why and how you can dedicate time to blogging for building your online brand and connecting with prospects and customers.

Why blogging benefits your social media strategies

If you were to envision a successful social media profile for your business, say your Facebook fan page, you probably picture posting content and questions, sparking great conversation, leading to more likes, more shares, and more fans. Here’s how blogging fits in with your vision …

Writing quality blog posts helps your business flex its expertise. It creates a connection and a following. It allows you to give your target audience something of value that they are more likely to share with people they know who have similar needs. Posting links from your blogging on your social media profiles just makes it that much easier. Plus, when you link to your blog posts from your social media profiles, you increase the SEO for your branding site and profiles, giving you greater visibility. And depending on your target market, you may want to consider using Tumblr as a microblogging platform and social media network, all in one.

How to develop an editorial calendar that will keep your blogging on track

When you walked in to the office this morning … sipping your cup of joe … you were probably thinking about the list of action items you wanted to complete before you punched out for the day. How did it go? It’s easy for the day to get away from you if you aren’t focused and committed to completing certain task. Unless you’re a dedicated writer, blogging usually fits under the category of “when I have time”. And when was the last time you felt like you had an extra hour or two in your day?

Creating an editorial calendar helps your blogging stay on track. Once a week or monthly, set aside some time to strategize the following:

• Issues of importance to your target audience
• New products, services or other news about your business
• Seasonal themes that you can tie in to your content
• Keyword research for best SEO practices
• Links you will embed to direct traffic to your site

Once you have your data, you can set a schedule of blog post titles, synopses, keywords and links, with release dates. With a complete editorial calendar, the thought of sticking a post doesn’t seem so daunting.

The big question for you to answer is: How often are you willing to commit to writing? It’s up to you to decide the right frequency that you will stay committed to. Sure, it would be great to write up a new post every day, but if you’re a small business owner wearing multiple hats and juggling a wide variety of tasks, are you setting yourself up for failure, if you do?

Can you commit to once a week? You should try to make this a goal. Once every couple of weeks or once a month isn’t going to give you the SEO boost you want. Plus, it will give you limited content of your own to share as part of your social media strategy. You’re fans aren’t going to be visiting your profiles if you only show up once every other week.

Think of your blog as your hub of information about your business and how you are engaging your market. Your social media profiles help carry your message out to your followers and their friends, and bring them back to your site with the links you have embedded.

If you’re having trouble creating your social media strategy, setting your editorial calendar, or simply want to turn your blogging over to the pros to manage for you, contact us.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Sure, you’ve watched ‘em on YouTube. You’ve shared other people’s videos on Facebook. But have you let your business star in its own online videos as part of your SEO strategy?

If you still question whether online videos are right for your business consider this …

YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google

83.8% of the US Internet audience viewed online videos

Cisco believes that online videos will be 90% of all global consumer traffic by 2015

Why do online videos rock? Here are some the primary benefits:

• Grab people’s attention
• Tell your story quickly
• Add another dimension to your ideas
• Create a buzz with edutainment
• Bring your brand into the 21st century
• Help build your SEO

Creating killer online videos with valuable content is a great start. However, there are some SEO elements you must include to maximize your exposure.

1. Alter the file name before you upload it.

When you download your video, you’ll likely have a non-description file name. Although YouTube allows you to rename it after you post it, rename it first. YouTube has shown some ranking boost when your video has a keyword-centric name before you upload it.

2. Write a keyword-rich description.

Don’t take keyword-rich to mean keyword-stuffed. Remember, ultimately you’re hoping to attract human viewers for your videos, so write a description that they understand and gets them to click on the play button. Having descriptions that look like they were written for a robot won’t help your cause. Make sure you include an active hyperlink adding in the leading http://.

A little insider secret … we recommend that you include the link at the beginning of your description because a limited amount of characters will appear in a Google search and in postings on other sites. This way when people see your video come up under a search, they can click on the link to your site.

3. Take advantage of the tags and other categories criteria.

YouTube and some of the other submission sites allow you to select categories for your videos. For example, does your video fit under the … or the … category? Update the tags to include relevant keywords. If you aren’t sure which keywords are best, you can always do a search on the video site and see what keywords competing videos use to rank high. If your business only services the local market, some directories give you the option to mark your location.

4. YouTube isn’t the only option.

While YouTube is the big boy on the block, there are a variety of other video submission sites where viewers spend time. You can upload your video to Vimeo, DailyMotion, and MySpace. By submitting your video to these other directories, you are increasing the possibility that you will capture more eyeballs. Plus, you are then including more links from reputable sites back to your site, helping your SEO.

5. Link to your videos.

Once you upload your videos to the different directories, link to them from your social media profiles and bookmarking sites. Share them on Facebook. Add them to your blog posts. Bookmark them on Digg and StumbleUpon.

If you have questions or want help producing online videos and taking maximum advantage of the SEO elements, contact us.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Have you seen the following message at the top of your Facebook fan page …

Coming Soon: New Facebook Pages
On March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages …

Did you jump at the chance to transform your fan page to the new timeline format or are you waiting for Facebook to force you? Sure, change can be a pain in the arse and sometimes downright scary, but it’s also an opportunity. To help eliminate some of the fear, I’m going to give you our insight into the good and bad of the new Facebook fan page layout.

Some of the things I don’t like about the new layout are …

1. You can’t set a default landing page, so if you created a Welcome page and set it as the page people land on, you’re now out of luck. The Wall is the new default page. Don’t take this to mean that you should eliminate all custom tabs. You still want to segment your information into categories by the markets you serve and/or the products and services you provide. You can always direct traffic to these pages from other social media marketing and search engine marketing campaigns.

2. The double column wall set up is harder to follow conversations. Do you read down the left column first and then the right? Do you read posts side-by-side? I think most people will find this harder to follow than the previous single-column Wall design.

3. The smaller profile pic will be a problem you if you created a custom image that ran down the left side of your page. The old profile pic was 180px x 540px while the new profile pic is only 125px x 125px (but your image must be at least 180px x 180px). You do get the tradeoff of having a larger masthead image splashed across the top at 851px x 315px. However, in the old profile pic, you could design an image that was promotional, and now you can’t.

4. You lose the left column navigation that ran down below your profile pic. In the old (current) layout, you had the Wall, Info, Photos, and any other custom tabs you created. You still get these on the new Facebook fan page, but they are now boxes beneath your masthead and instead of displaying a lengthy list, you get four boxes (which you can arrange in any order you want), with a drop down menu for visitors to click on to see any remaining tabs you may have.

Here are the things I think Facebook got right with the new layout …

1. The big masthead image displayed across the top of your page is a great way to grab the attention of visitors. Although, you can’t make it promotional, you can still make a big statement with the right image … and series of images.

2. Wider custom tabs that now can be up to 780px wide. This helps when you create graphically pleasing info and promotional tabs. The narrower layout made it more difficult to fit in images and info while avoiding additional scroll bars.

3. You can create your own larger, custom tab images for all apps, even those that were created by someone else. This gives you the ability to design the thumbnail to stay consistent with your brand and how you want to convey it to your target audience.

4. You can pin a status update on your Wall to keep them at the top of your Wall updates for up to seven days. If you have a post that discusses a promotion or a comment, blog post, or question that had success drawing in comments, you can keep it at the top of the Wall so it’s the first thing that your page’s visitors will see. And you know how important first impressions are.

Before you jump in and start dabbling with the new Facebook fan page, I recommend you create a plan so you don’t stumble your way through it and confuse your current fan base. You want to make a solid transition from the current layout to the new timeline format. To help you, our next post will give you insider tips about how you can leverage the capabilities of the new layout.

However, if you’re ready to dive in now to the new Facebook fan page ahead of the deadline, contact us at SmallBizMedia.tv. We can make the adjustments for you, write the appropriate SEO copy, and create the custom tabs and images, so you can beat your competition and create a better connection with your followers.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

When you hear the terms search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM), are you perplexed? Aren’t they basically the same thing? Unfortunately, many internet marketing firms promote themselves under an all-inclusive umbrella and use the terms loosely. So if you’re not a skilled internet marketer and you’re trying to figure out how to best apply SEM and SMM on your own or if you’re trying to decide how to allocate your online marketing budget for your outsourcing provider, it’s no wonder that you would be somewhat confused.

Let’s try to clear up misunderstanding with a quick definition and some benefits of each.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is a form of online marketing that gets your branding site, social media profiles, landing pages, and wherever else you want to direct traffic to, high up on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for specific keywords. Real word example … if you are a nonprofit for special needs kids and an interested family member is looking for an organization in their area, will they find a link to your site on page one of Google?

When looking at a SERP, in most cases, you will see a mix of ads and organic links. On Google, there are ads across the top of the page and down the right side with 10 organic links in the main body of the page. See the example below. The ads have been circled in red; the organic links are bracketed by the green bar.

These are PPC (pay per click) ads that you can get with Google AdWords. Before you get started, make sure you do your keyword research using their Keyword Tool. When you’re logged into your Gmail account, you will find the tool under the Tools and Analysis tab.

When you enter in keywords, you can start with one word or two word keyword phases to see what is popular before you drill down to long-tail keyword phrases, if necessary. For example, if you are a nonprofit, you may start with using the phrases “nonprofit”, “not-for-profit”, and “non-profit” to see which phrases receives the most searches.

Google will show you have many people search by each of these phrases followed by a list of recommended long-tail keyword phrases associated with these terms. I recommend you perform research using these terms with your focus and / or location (i.e. special needs nonprofit, special needs nonprofit Baltimore).

The biggest benefit of using Google AdWords as part of your SEM is you can get to the top of page one much quicker than with SEO strategies.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

SMM is similar to SEM, but instead of ranking high on search engine pages, it gets you noticed in the social media sites. For example, if you sell APA formatting software to college students, when they are chatting with their friends on Facebook, will your business’s name pop up or will they find your competitors?

If we use Facebook as our social media marketing example, you have very specific options for targeting your audience with their ads. When you’re on your personal page, you’ll see ads down the right side. To create an ad, you can click on the “Create an Ad” link above the ads or you can go to the bottom of your page and click on the “Advertising” link.

With Facebook ads, you can zero in on your demographics by location, age, their likes, sex, whether they’re in a relationship or not, and their education level. You can send your ads out only to people who are already fans of your page or to those who aren’t. You have options between placing ads that go back to your Facebook page or link out to external sites.

Just like with Google in the example for search engine marketing, researching your target market before you get started is a huge variable for success. Fortunately, Facebook is very good about showing you how many people your ad will reach. I recommend starting small and testing different ads to see which convert before growing your budget. While targeting is hugely important, you still need to create ads and offers that convert.

Each social media site has its own method for identifying what words are best to use for targeting your audience and how many people your social media marketing will reach.

To SEM or SMM, that is the question?

So which is better for your business, search or social? Both methods give you the option to buy your way to top-of-mind awareness with very specific audiences. The primary questions for you to answer are, “How can you put an ongoing stream of quality content and offers in front of the right people? Where does your audience spend their time?”

More people use searches to look for business, while social media is a virtual word of mouth machine. Both have large audiences to connect with, but primarily for different reasons. So when answering the question of search engine marketing versus social media marketing, you’re likely to conclude that you should be doing both.

If after reading this, you’re still confused, leave your questions below or contact SmallBizMedia.tv.

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide