Archive for the ‘Search Engine Marketing’ Category

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How to Get Content Ideas with Google’s Wonder Wheel

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Zombie Wheel. Er, I mean Wonder Wheel on Zombie Survival.Generate keyword-rich content for your website, blog, email newsletters and YouTube videos by using Google’s Wonder Wheel.

If you’re interested in increasing your online visibility, then you need to create quality content that engages your audience. There are many channels that you can use to distribute this content: your website, your blog, an email newsletter, online videos, photo sharing sites, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, webinars, ebooks and more.

Many businesses struggle with how to create new content after they exhaust a few obvious topics. However, there are plenty of online tools that businesses can use to drill deeper, to find more long-tail search terms that they blog about or could create a webinar that would attract new business.

One of the tools that helps accomplish this–and is fun to play with as well–is Google’s Wonder Wheel. It’s a mashup of a mind mapping tool crossed with search results.

I created a short video of how to to use Wonder Wheel to create new content ideas for your own business.

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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, How-To Web Marketing Videos, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Copywriting, Web Marketing, Webinars | 3 Comments »


Flyte Welcomes Joan Crocker to the Crew!

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Joan Crocker - flyte SEO & Social MediaJoan Crocker joins the flyte crew as our new search engine marketer.

If you follow the flyte new media news (and who doesn’t, really? I think CNN has a tab for us on their home page), then you may have heard that our search engine marketer, Nicki Hicks, is moving south for warmer climes.

Although she’s going to continue working for flyte, we knew we also wanted to have a search and social media expert in the office here in Maine.

Enter Joan Crocker, the newest addition to the flyte new media crew.

The first thing you need to know about Joan is she doesn’t like to share. That ice cream cone is all hers. Don’t come looking for a bite unless you want to be starting something. Besides that, there are a few things you should know about Joan:

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Posted in flyte news, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Design & Development | 2 Comments »


What Should I Title My Blog Posts for Maximum SEO?

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Lighthouse View by Stacy CrampDear Rich,

I’ve read that I should load my blog titles with targeted keywords to increase my blog’s search engine visibility. However, sometimes I just want to use a clever turn of phrase, or a slightly irreverent title that is appropriate for the blog post, but maybe not for Google.

How do I balance my needs to rank well at the search engines with my desire to put my BA in English to use?

Titling in Thomaston

Dear Titling,

I would argue that you don’t need to sacrifice your cleverness to create a keyword-rich title tag for your blog.

Here’s how you create titles that work for your search engine optimization and your end user:
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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 59 Comments »


Greetings, Fellow Bloggers!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Blogworld Expo NY 2011In just a couple of hours I’ll be presenting How to Dominate Google and Bing with Your Blog at the BlogWorld Expo here in NYC. If you happen to be checking out our web marketing blog, flyte blog, for the first time because of this, here are a few things you should know:

  • Consider subscribing to our blog either by using the RSS feed or the email subscription to your right. You can always unsubscribe.
  • We’ve got a great resource in The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make. I hand crafted each one of those mistakes, so why not learn from my mistakes rather than your own? Cheaper that way, you know. There is an email registration piece, but again, you can unsubscribe at any time.
  • We’ve got an all SEO, all the time blog over at Maine SEO Blog written by our search engine marketer, Nicki Hicks with some contributions by yours truly. You don’t have to be from Maine to enjoy it.
  • Since Nicki’s moving to Florida (but still working for flyte), she’s started a new blog, Florida SEO Blog. Please give it some love.

That’s all! Now I just have to get the world’s biggest cup of coffee and head over the Javits Convention Center. Feel free to say hello!

Rich Brooks
You Can Also Find Me On The Twitter

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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, flyte news, Search Engine Marketing | 3 Comments »


How to Create Killer Blog Content from Email Questions

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Dear Rich,

How do I come up with new posts for my blog? You always talk about how to use a business blog to rank higher at the search engines and drive qualified traffic to your website, but I have no idea on how to do that.

Frustrated in Fryeberg

Dear Frustrated,

First off: don’t be frustrated! I’m sure there’s plenty of content that you could turn into search engine engine gold for your blog if you just know where to look. In fact, I’m using one of my favorite techniques right now.

A few times a week a client, prospect or random stranger emails me with some question about search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging or social media. Rather than just hitting reply, I turn the question into a Dear Abby style blog post. The way I figure it is that if this one person is asking me that question, how many more hundreds or thousands of people are asking these questions of Google and Bing? Plus, by posting it to my blog it can be easily shared over social media platforms.

What really makes this a powerful technique is that these questions are what people are asking when their doing research into hiring a company like yours. There’s generally less competition for these phrases (so you can rank higher) and they’re very specific (so people who are researching them are getting ready to make a buying decision.)

For more details on how to optimize these Dear Abby posts for search engine visibility, be sure to read How to Turn Emails Into Search Engine Visibility.

Rich Brooks
Blogging for SEO

Photo Credit: Jay Malone

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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 4 Comments »


Why We Blog: It’s About the Visibility, Stupid

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

This post goes out to my good friend Braden Buehler who was looking for real world examples of how blogging can help increase your visibility, online and off. I’ve got dozens of examples, but here’s a recent one.

It wasn’t too long ago that I became aware of QR codes and how they could be used for marketing. I went to see a local presentation on QR marketing and blogged my thoughts in a post called What is a QR Code? What is QR Marketing? I followed up with a post called Should You Use QR Codes in Email Marketing?

Soon after that I wrote a blog post for Fast Company called 13 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing. I also contribute to Social Media Examiner and pitched them on a post on QR Codes, but they already had one in the hopper. Too late.

I also wrote an article (you remember articles, right? blog posts’ older brother?) called QR Code Marketing for Small Business that I posted to our website.

I pitched a story for 207–an evening news magazine that uses me once a month or so for tech stories–on QR codes. They posted the segment to their website and I embedded it in our blog under the header, QR Codes Explained on TV [Video].

I followed all this up with another blog post called 50–Count’em, 50!–Creative Uses of QR Codes. (The bigger the number the more likely people are to retweet it, I’m discovering. At current count the post has 143 retweets and over 100 likes on Facebook.)

What happened next?

I got a call from CNN. (Yes, that CNN.) They were doing a story on QR codes and wanted to interview me.

How did CNN find me?

The same way any of us find information, they Googled for it. I’m not sure which post or article caught their eye, or maybe it was that I had multiple results for QR-related searches on the first page of Google. Whatever the case was, they interviewed me and a few weeks later they ran a story on CNN.com called Marketers Embracing QR Codes for Better or Worse. I was quoted extensively through the article, and they even linked to flyte. (Thanks, CNN!)

For a while that article came up in the top results in the news section. Friends who I hadn’t talked to in a while had read the article (it was featured on the home page of CNN) and reached out. It definitely helped raise flyte’s profile.

QR Code Search ResultsWhat’s the outcome?

Right now the top 3 results for “qr code marketing” are:

  • 50 Creative Uses of QR Codes in Marketing & Communications – from the flyte blog
  • QR Code Marketing for Small Business – from flyte.biz
  • 13 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing – from FastCompany.com, with links back to our blog and my Twitter profile

That’s pretty good since we only started writing and blogging about QR codes about three months ago. And we’re not experts in QR codes. And we’re beating out people with a lot more experience and clout than we have, at least in this arena.

What’s the takeaway?

That you can do this, too. Yes, it took work. I had to write 4 or 5 posts and articles. I understand a bit about SEO so I wrote my titles with good keywords and cross-linked them. But it led to CNN finding me, and I didn’t have to hire a PR firm. In just the past month thousands of people have visited our website and blog who never would have heard of us otherwise. And I don’t have to pay for people to click on my links like the sponsored ads above my results.

And if you can’t do this, because you absolutely can’t write, or don’t have the patience to blog, or can’t find the time because you’re too busy “running your company”…well, then, you can always hire us to blog for you.

#justsayin

Rich Brooks
Will Blog for SEO

Photo credit: Alberto P. Veiga

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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »


How Does the Recent Google Changes Affect Your Website?

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Herb, what's a Google?

If you follow SEO news, you’ve probably heard about Google’s recent update named “Panda” or “Farmer,” depending on who’s speaking. If you don’t follow SEO news, you probably have a life, which is nice. Please feel free to let me know what that’s like.

Google is continually fiddling with it’s algorithm to (assumedly) continually improve the results it provides. Whenever a major change comes, invariably some people who see a huge drop in traffic bemoan the changes, while other people who’s rankings go up state that “it’s about time.”

The biggest losers this time around appear to be “content farms,” big websites with tons of poorly written, keyword-stuffed content. In a recent piece in Website Magazine (a truly great magazine for anyone who relies on the internet for business–which is another way of saying anyone who needs to eat to stay alive) they list some of the sites that have seen the biggest drop-off in traffic this time around. Unfortunately, the article online doesn’t include that graph.

The worst hit was blippr.com, losing almost 98% of it’s traffic from Google. The list contained some surprises (at least to me), such as business.com and merchantcircle.com. There were also some article marketing websites I’ve contributed to, like ezinearticles.com and hubpages.com that were hit hard.

So what’s the takeaway for the average website owner?

  • Quality content counts more than ever. Although the “news” is that a lot of content farms took a big hit, the takeaway is that the rest of us putting up unique, quality content are all edging up.
  • If you used article marketing as a link building technique, that ship has probably sailed. I would focus more on guest blogging opportunities.
  • Don’t put all your eggs in the Google basket. In fact, don’t put all your eggs in the search basket. Instead, diverse your investments, and spend more time driving quality leads from social media activity.

Rich Brooks
Is a Content Farm Aid Concert In the Future?

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Copywriting | 9 Comments »


301 Redirects: How to Keep Your Search Engine Ranking During a Redesign

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Confusing Traffic Sign, Boston MA301 redirects are essential when you’re redesigning your website and don’t want to lose the search engine traffic that you currently enjoy.

The unfortunate thing about a 301 redirect is that it sounds so extremely geeky and off-putting to the average business owner that they’re scared away. That’s too bad, because it is a critical tool in search engine optimization. So, to that end, I’m going to attempt explain the benefits of 301s in the least geeky way possible.

Search Engines and Trust

There are a lot of variables in why one site ranks higher than another site at Google and other search engines. One is how long the site (and a given page) has been in existence, and another is how many incoming links a page has. All things being equal (which they never are), older pages rank higher than newer pages and pages with more inbound links rank higher than ones with fewer inbound links.

Breaking that Trust

Often, when rebuilding a site, you end up changing the URLs–or addresses–of your web pages.  Maybe it’s because you’re reorganizing your site, or maybe it’s because you’re redeveloping your site on a content management system like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. In either case, the new URLs don’t have the trust that the old URLs do, even if a lot of the content is the same.

It’s like moving to a new town. You may have been the greatest manager/plumber/accountant in your old town, but that doesn’t mean anything in the new town. You haven’t changed; you still have an excellent bedside manner or mad sales skills, but you’re starting from scratch in this new town.

When you take your established content, uproot it and replant it somewhere else on your site, you are resetting the clock on when that content was created and breaking all of the inbound links that pointed to it.

Reestablishing that Trust

There are many ways to tell the search engines that you’ve moved your content, but the most search engine friendly way is the 301 redirect. By setting up 301 redirects for your content, you show search engines where your content has moved from, and your inbound links will now direct to your new pages.

How you setup your 301s may depend on the type of host you have. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s time to talk to your web developer and get them involved.

If you want your web developer to create redirects for you, I recommend writing up a guide for him or her to show where the old pages should be redirected. Here’s a guide for you to use, where the first item is the old page and the second item is where you want the traffic to flow:

  • old/old.html -> new/new.php
  • van-halen/david-lee-roth.html -> van-halen/sammy-hagar.html
  • wonka/gene-wilder.php ->wonka/johnny-depp.php

If you do feel comfortable playing around with 301 redirects, .htaccess and other files on your server, there are plenty of resources online:

These are just a few of the top results.

Final Thoughts

301 redirects are also great when you are changing from one domain to another (never a great idea, but sometimes a necessary evil.) Even with a 301 redirect, you should expect a dip during a major overhaul of your website. However, my own experience has been that the numbers get back to normal in about a month or three and then you see increases after that.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Photo credit: nnecapa

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Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Design & Development | 6 Comments »


How Creating Videos Helps Your Online Visibility

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Maine Web Design VideoOnline videos are a powerful tool for search engine optimization (SEO). For some people this doesn’t compute: search engines can’t watch videos the way they can read and understand text, so how does an online video increase your search engine visibility?

Search engines like Google or Bing want to deliver the most relevant content to their users, regardless of the form or medium of that content. To that end, they look at the words in the titles of videos on websites like YouTube or Vimeo, as well as the description and the tags.

There’s also some evidence that they look at other factors, such as the number of views, the number of comments, viewer ratings, whether people watched the video to the end, number of incoming links, the number of times shared, etc. Search engines may even be converting the audio to text and using that to better determine if the video content is relevant to a given search.

It’s also been my experience that search engines want to present searchers with a mix of media in the results: web pages, images, video, local results, news, tweets and more. Each one may be another opportunity for you or your business to rank higher and get in front of your best prospects.

So, if you’re looking to leapfrog your competitors in search, you should add video to the mix.

For example, we wanted more visibility for the search term “maine web design.” (If you’re a Maine web designer you can stop reading now. This doesn’t concern you.) So we created a video slideshow called “Maine Web Design – Maine Business Websites” and posted it to YouTube and a dozen other video sharing websites. (I recommend TubeMogul for posting to multiple video sharing sites at once.)

Within a day that slideshow made up half of the top 10 results in Google’s video search for “Maine web design.” That was nice, but there were no video results displayed on the first page and I don’t know how many people click over to video results for that type of search. Still, it showed the potential of video.

Then, about two weeks ago I happened to perform that same search again and, lo and behold, the video was the sixth result on Google in the regular, organic search results. I logged out of Google to confirm my results, and the video was still number six. (When you’re logged in your results are skewed/tailored based on your previous search history.) Although the sixth position isn’t as good as the first slot, many people are more drawn to video than text links, so it has that added benefit.

Maine Web Designers

I’m not sure when the video started appearing in the regular search results, but it is still hanging tough at the time of this post.

Something to note about this video: it’s just a slideshow of screen captures from websites we’ve designed for Maine-based businesses; there’s no audio, just imagery. However, we did feature this video on a previous blog post, which may have helped its visibility and views, which in turn may have improved its ranking. Blogging about it again should give it an additional boost.

What’s the takeaway? If you’re looking to leapfrog your competition for popular keyword phrases, you should experiment with video. Just don’t expect overnight success; be patient, and keep on uploading new videos targeting different keyword phrases you want to rank well for.

Rich Brooks
Ready for My Close Up

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Posted in flyte news, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 6 Comments »


3 Maine Web Marketing Events

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Maine Web Design CompanyOK, well, two Maine web marketing events, and one virtual event that everyone can attend, all of which have flyte new media connections.

  • How to Make Search Engines Work for Your Business (2/10/2011, Portland, ME)
  • Expanding Your Mental Health Practice Through Web Marketing (3/11/2011, Portland, ME)
  • Blogging Success Summit 2011 (Throughout February, Virtual)

Here’s the skinny on each one:

HOW TO MAKE SEARCH ENGINES WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS (2/10/2011)

Details:

Open to all persons who have a business website, or are developing their business website. Search engine optimization can increase traffic, deliver more targeted customers, and increase revenue. Search engines have become a core resource for individuals looking for your small business.

You will learn the importance of SEO, as well as how to improve your organic search engine ranking and drive more qualified leads to your Web site. Every business with a website has the potential to be found by more customers online.

Learn how to uncover which keywords drive customers to your site, how to make on page changes to increase your visibility, and key link opportunities to build your authority.

The workshop will led by Nicki Hicks of Portland’s flyte new media.

Date: Thursday, 2/10/2010

Time: 2pm – 5pm

Place: SCORE Maine offices, 100 Middle St., Portland, ME (directions)

For more information or to register please visit SCORE Maine.

EXPANDING YOUR MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE THOUGH WEB MARKETING (3/11/2011)

Details:

While many mental health practitioners may be uncomfortable marketing their services, most are downright confused and even anxious when it comes to using web marketing to increase their referrals and build their visibility.

However, with over half a billion people on Facebook and millions using Google every day to find help, it’s impossible to ignore web marketing for long.

In this day long workshop you’ll learn:

  • How to setup a web site that engages your audience, establishes your expertise, and encourages referrals for your practice
  • How to get your web site to rank higher in the search engines
  • How to integrate a blog, video and an email newsletter into your web presence
  • How to handle HIPAA and other Internet use issues unique to mental health practitioners
  • How mental health practitioners can use social media appropriately; how to handle Facebook friendship requests, how to manage your privacy, and how to engage others in the social web
  • How to market and sell information products such as e-books, online courses and webinars

Whether you have a robust web site already, or are just getting started, this day long workshop will help you develop and effective strategy for raising your online profile, driving more qualified referrals through your web site, and navigating the treacherous waters of social media.

All participants will receive a certificate for 6 clock hours.

Transdisciplinary Workshops are approved for 6 CE’s in Psychology by the Maine Board of Psychologists.

This workshop is limited to only 100 participants, so please sign up early!

Date: Friday, 3/11/2011

Time: 8am – 3:30pm

Place: Regency Hotel, 20 Milk St., Portland, ME (directions)

Cost: $150 until 2/1, then $170

For more information or to register please visit Transdisciplinary Workshops.

BLOGGING SUCCESS SUMMIT 2011

This virtual conference, featuring 23 blogging experts from around the world–including flyte’s president Rich Brooks–is the perfect event for anyone looking to take their blogging to the next level. Learn how to increase your search engine visibility, drive more quality leads, attract a following and more.

This month long event is only $597…an amazing deal for content this rich. Check out the Blogging Success Summit page for more information and to register.

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Marketing

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Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, flyte news, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

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