1. Set goals for your top pages. Think of the top (most often visited) pages on your website as landing pages, or the storefront for your online business presence. The content and layout of these pages will be the very first interaction any online visitors has with your business, so before you add content, think about what it is you want to accomplish with this interaction.

Depending on your type of business, you may be looking to gain emails for your prospect list, perhaps you are selling products and want your top pages to include your ecommerce (shopping) pages. No matter the goals of these pages, you need to be sure that your content is written to obtain the goals you hope for from your target audience.

• Tip: Not sure which of your website pages are “top” pages? Installing Google Analytics to your web pages then monitoring for about a month will give you a good idea of where your site visitors spend the most time on your website.
• Tip: Be sure your landing top pages are linked to your home page and other site pages. One of the easiest ways to lose a new visitor is to drop them on a page with no way to navigate to other pages on your site for more information should they need it.

Step 1 – Think SEO-Titles

The first key element to search engine friendly copy is to think about your audience and craft a title that appeals both to their interests and search engines.

• Tip: Keep your content title around 60 characters long with a keyword or two to help appeal to the search engines. Make sure your title is compelling to draw attention of your readers.
  • “5 Ways to use Facebook for your Business Marketing Today” is a lot more compelling than “Facebook Marketing Tips”

Step 2 – Behind the Scenes

When you post a blog, article, or web page content, you’ll have the opportunity to add META descriptions to your page content. META content is the keywords and descriptive content that search engines read along with the web page content itself. META content is housed in the HTML or load pages (where you drop your content) of a website or page and often show below a page url in an organic keyword search list.

• Tip: Be sure your META description closely matches your page content. Search engines rank pages higher with META descriptions that most-closely fit the current page content.

Step 3 – Keep it Pretty

A lot of web content has some sort of graphic in it, and these pictures can get in the way of your SEO. To keep them as a viable part of your page content, be sure that each page image has an ALT tag that describes what the picture represents. ALT tags are placed in the page setup the same as the META description. If a reader cannot see the graphic in the page for some reason, they’ll have the ALT tag as a reference. Search engines will read the ALT tags as part of the page content to help with SEO.

Your content is not just how you engage your audience; it’s the driving factor behind your search engine optimization. Take the time to ensure that it’s consistent from the code-side in your META data to your page content that your site visitors see and you’ll reap the benefits of solid, keyword-oriented content in higher search engine ranking.

1.      All about You: Your Twitter profile includes a link to your website along with information about your business. Be sure not to overlook the importance of this aspect of your page. Keep the content directed to both your website and your target market to be sure they understand who your business is to them, right away. A well-worded profile or bio will drive relevant traffic to your site and help with conversions from site visitors to potential clients.

• Well worded bio: @SouthwestAir Dallas, Texas. The LUV Airline! Planes can’t type so @christimcneill is piloting the Twitterverse! For official concerns please use the link provided.
• Not so great version: @JoeBland USA, Texas. Internet Marketing Trainer, Mortgage Broker/REALTOR®http://JoeBland.com.

2.      What’s in a Name? Only everything. Like any business owner knows, the name of your business is the first impression your target market gets. The same goes for your brand name on Twitter. For every re-tweet and mention within your Twitter network, your brand rates higher for your SEO.

3.      Connection Question. Links in tweets are not new, but pairing them with effective keywords in your tweet improves your brand awareness. The subsequent click-throughs to your website will enhance your SEO organically.

• Sample tweet with links: How Pick the Right Web Designer http://bit.ly/cEelpt. Are you ready to update your website? http://bit.ly/d5LXNw

4.      Tag it and Bag it. Hashtags (or #hashtags) Hashtags are #keywords linked with a #, which allows for #trackingtweets and organization on #Twitter. They make it easy for companies to organize their tweets, but also allow for their contacts to follow a particular conversation on a given topic. With the ability to track the discussion, brand awareness increases as does conversion rate potential. With more awareness to your tweets, the potential for more click-thru’s exists as well, to boost SEO.

5.    Now that your Mention It. Mentions are tweets that include a brand name, for example: “Here is a great article from #COMPANYNAME”. Your brand is then shared with any of the tweeting company’s followers. Keep track of your mentions because each one is extending your reach on Twitter and enhancing the SEO capability within that larger audience.

6.      Give Back to the Community. Your Twitter community, that is. Re-tweeting and mentioning others posts and brands is part of the give-and-take nature of Social Media and ranks your brand higher on the site.

7.      Tell the World. Share a link to your Twitter page on your website home page to help site visitors find and follow you online. The more followers, the better the SEO potential.

By approaching your Twitter account with a targeted strategy, considering your target audience, their interests and including hastags, strong keywords and links in your 140 character tweets, your website will see the ongoing organic (non-paid) SEO benefits that Social Media can provide.

1. SEO Begins with your Website Creation. In other words, during R&D (Research and Development) when businesses are making decisions on the layout of their web page, the color schemes, graphic and content locations, many companies fail to consider SEO in the actual build of their website. This can have a long-term effect on a website’s SEO capability, due to the ever-changing nature of the internet.

Implementing keywords into the META data in the site code as well as the website page content is one important step to a strong SEO start out of the gate.

• META Tags are the Title, Description and Keywords for each and every page in a website. They help search engines to find the website’s individual pages when a web user performs a keyword search.

Search engine’s crawl new sites intermittently, so if there is a strong keyword base in the right places throughout the site, the initial page rank will automatically be higher.

The same consideration should be given to the flexibility of your website – its ability to move with the times as technologies change and advance. The site should be built with a keyword and content strategy, but navigation structure, page naming and layout all effect SEO, so be sure that these items are adjustable to keep up with current trends and best-practices.

1. Header Tags – Be Specific. While H tags (Header tags) within META data in website code are not critical to SEO for any website, it’s important to be specific about your header tags to help build out your overall website content strategy. For example, a legal website has a page referencing a client service offerings. The existing header tag for the page is “COMPANY X, Services”. Unless someone is searching for the business name, the chances of that page coming up high in search engine rankings is low. However, consider a header tag like this for the same page “Bankruptcy and Foreclosure Services in the San Fernando Valley, CA”. The header tag not includes two of your sites keywords, “bankruptcy” and “foreclosure”, but it relates to a geo-target location of the San Fernando Valley in California.

Knowing this is the page title, the website copywriter can hone the page content to include the keywords and focus on the topic of the page header as noted. Most search engines rank web pages higher that relate closest to their META tag content.

1. Consistency (sometimes) is Key. Do you have an offsite blog that sends updated content to your website to increase your SEO? If so, you’re not alone. Keeping content on your website current and new is on way to draw the discerning eye of search engines, but keep in mind, like all things, too much change can do more harm than good.

While updates to your website are necessary for solid SEO results, if you have a standard list of products or services, and solid keywords in the code and content on those pages, then keeping these pages content static allows for search engines the time to search them out and rank them continually. Keep in mind that the page content should be directly-related to the META and header tags for best results.

SEO is not a one-time effort on the part of any website. It needs to be an integral part of any web marketing plan, from the very first planning session throughout the website existence. Consider the lifecycle of your SEO plan and, if necessary, step back to fill in the blanks of missed steps that could be dragging your website rank down.

So, you’ve invested in keyword research, done your homework and maintained your META,  Title and ALT tags. Your website is populated with original content regularly, either from an offsite blog, industry-related RSS feed or other content source. You’ve maintained a solid position somewhere on the first page for most search engine searches, but you’ve noticed that your competition is starting to creep up on most pages.

So, what is a business to do when you’ve managed all the tried and true methods to enhance your Search Engine Optimization?

As web marketing becomes more the norm than the anomaly in most industries, the competition becomes fiercer to obtain a top 1-5 ranking in web search results. While this poses a unique concern, innovative approaches to SEO and web marketing allow companies that are willing to think out of the box to break through in search engine results. With the recent changes to Google’s algorithms, which partially determine SEO locations, 2011 poses some new options for companies who want the top slots.

It’s About Give and Take

Social Media has taken its seat as a necessary factor in a web marketing plan and with that comes the benefits of back links, pings and click-through’s go links in blog content, tweets, pages and posts.

• When posting content, adding links within the text will allow readers the option to click through to your website or wherever the aforementioned link lands them. This process is referred to as back-linking.
• Click-through’s happen when a reader clicks on the link and
• Pings to your blog happen when the post url is shared with a search engine, through bookmarking or database submissions.

All of these options allow for extended reach for your blog content and increase the visibility of, and potential interaction with, your blog. Businesses will benefit by focusing on user experience within their Social Media Interaction as well as by making their websites more user-related, in lieu of the informative and industry-driven websites of recent history. Today’s web shopper, whether they be businesses or consumers, are much more discerning and know how to use the web to their goals. Be sure your business profiles, pages and site focuses on their needs and interests. Your page rank will benefit.

Along with user focus, Bing has changed its search criteria to consider Social Media signals and Google is considering their importance as well. Back links, click-through rates and pings, like buttons, tweet popularity and other significant social media metrics will pay a part in search engine ranking as well.

Another way to give and take? Blog commenting continues to rise in popularity, with businesses investing time and research into finding solid, industry-related content to comment on.

• Blog commenting is the practice of researching and following industry-related blogs that cover topics important to your target market and posting a comment from your brand to the current posts while including a link to your website or blog post to build brand recognition.  (See the screenshot below)

This is not the link building tactics of the past, with bought links, and link farms in the mix. This is thought-out, content heavy blog commenting to build a company’s reputation as a thought-leader and innovator in their industry. Including a back link is almost an afterthought, but one that packs serious SEO punch.

When entering the realm of SEO for your business, the key points to remember are to keep your content fresh, insightful and targeted to your audience. Include links to your website, and you will see your page rank rise over time.

Find Where the Target Market Lives Online

Targeting mom’s across the US who drive the grocery shopping in most households, the American Egg Board proceeded to locate the sites that mom’s would most often use in the social media sphere. Their research showed that America’s 1.4+ million moms were most likely to use the following sites:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Blogs

Creating brand-driven profiles for these sites to supplement their Incredible Edible Egg website was the first step in their SMM push.

Engagement Strategy

Facebook

The goal on Facebook was to engage their target market with recipes, tips and facts about eggs and their applications. Responses to comments or questions made by any of the pages 84,956 FANS are made promptly.

Twitter

Tweets are made multiple times a day to reach out to the sites followers, noting recipes, uses and quirky links that relate to eggs. As with Facebook, comments or direct communications with the profile are responded to in a timely manner, keeping with the fast-paced timeline that Twitter provides its users.

Flickr

Recipes coupled with tantalizing photos are the driving content for the American Egg Board’s Flickr account goals.

Blogs

For their blog outreach, the Incredible Edible Egg has employed the assistance of almost 70 “Mom-bloggers” to write posts about the benefits and uses of eggs in a daily diet. With more than 180 posts since January 2010, the conversation topics have covered recipes, farm tours, cooking education, coupons, cholesterol education and egg-related events like Easter or World Egg Day. The response has been strong and growing.

Logistics

The American Egg Board included a crisis and tracking aspects to their Social Media Marketing campaign to ensure usage policies in case of crisis response requirements as well as monitoring tools to gauge recent and ongoing quality and quantity of their reaction to the campaign.

What Was Learned 

As they noted in their self assessment, the need to focus on the relationships that are built within the SMM plan is the key aspect to any social media success. It’s not about how many fans you have or if you have the most followers; it’s about the give and take between a brand and its target market that will result in long-term brand building for any company.

Why Does My Page Look Weird? Layout Changes…

Logged into your Facebook FAN page lately and clicked the “upgrade your page now” button? Looks strange right? Well, there are some reasons that the visuals of your page have changed. Let’s break it down bit by bit…

As noted by Facebook, the new layout allows you:

•             To set defaults for your email notifications and how you post to your page – as yourself or your page. You can also select which featured pages appear in the left column.

•             To manage your settings for email and posting preferences, go to Edit Page and Your Settings. To select which pages appear in Likes, go to Edit Page and Featured.

Okay, so why is this a good thing? FAN pages are now able to monitor news feeds from other pages, receive emails from other pages and receive notifications about FAN activity. Previously, only a profile was able to see these communications and interact with them. The FAN page is now able to stand alone to interact with other pages and Facebook users without the standard Profile Page as a portal. You can have a FAN page with no profile page – although I still wouldn’t recommend a brand being just a brand in the VERY B to C Facebook realm yet. A face to go with the name, I think, will still be beneficial.

What about that Photo Grouping at the Top of My FAN Page?

Do you use graphics in your marketing? Recently attended or presented at an event? Have new products to show? The photo grouping at the top of the new Facebook layout gives companies the opportunity to show off their latest pics, right on the landing page of their FAN page. Only the page owner’s photo’s are shown here.

Where to Go on your Page?

The Navigation bar in the new Facebook FAN page layout is in the same place as on a Profile page, making it a universal location for page navigation and much easier to find.

Use All of Facebook as your Page

Per Facebook’s notes on the subject:

• Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
• See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
• Like other pages and feature them on your page
• Make comments as your page on other pages

Again, the need for a profile for the above tasks has been made obsolete. This doesn’t mean that your existing Facebook profile page will go away or be altered in any way, simply that you won’t need to rely on it solely for interaction with other pages or Facebook users.

Goodbye FBML, Hello iFrame

Allowing for higher functionality, layour and graphics quality for Facebook FAN page landing pages, iFrames are the evolutionary step to the existing Facebook Markup Language (FBML) pages that have been in use for the last few years. While the FBML pages certainly served their purpose, the upgrade to iFrame code will allow for micro-website functionality, like click-thru graphics, e-commerce options and crisper, more defined graphics within a Facebook FAN page.

Overall, it’s easy to see why Facebook made the changes to the FAN pages as noted. The use of Facebook by brands is increasing, and there was a real need to add to the functionality and interactivity of the FAN pages. With the new tools and options at the disposal of business owners and brands utilizing a Facebook FAN page as part of their Social Media Marketing plan, the potential for marketing success only increases.

It’s an unfortunate reality. Businesses seem to follow trends before they ever consider research to build an actual strategy for their SMM. It may be that the impression that social media is “easy” to do has lead to a more laid-back (read: non-researched) approach to most social media campaigns. The result? Marginal or hard-to-define results.

Social Media is just like any other aspect to your marketing plan. It requires a plan of action, research to define the specifics of that plan and a strategy to follow. Remember to consider the following in your social media research to be sure you build an effective social media strategy:

Who are you targeting?

Oftentimes, each marketing push goes to a general population that you call our target market. Occasionally, you are promoting a specific event, offer or product that is best directed at a small sib-group of your overall target market, a market segment. As a dual-sided first step to your social media research, you have to assess what it is your marketing with this latest campaign as well as the market segment, if any, it is directed towards.

Now Go Find Them

Social Media offers a vast array of sites and pages, forums and blogs that could be of interest to your target.  Once you know who you want to reach with your social media campaign, it’s time to go out and find the most popular blogs, forums, sites and pages that engage that group.

Tip: Some social media sites cater to either a B2B (LinkedIn) or B2C (Facebook) target market, while others (Twitter) can cater to both effectively.

Tip: www.HowSociable.com will grade a social site based on a brand or keyword search. You know the sites with the highest scores are where your audience is most likely to see your content. The following search was run for keyword “real estate”

Go Forth and Look, Listen and Learn

• Once you know where your target hangs out, it’s time to learn the rules of engagement. Listen (read) what topics are hot, what the audience thinks about them and consider how they relate to your brand, product or newest promotion.
• Due to the mass of sites that you could be engaging, it’s important to learn the rules for engagement on each site. Each one will house different registration requirements to engage your audience as well as spell out do’s and don’ts as to how you are able to pursue them online. Being aware of each sites rules and guidelines will not only save you from wasting time on the “blocked” list, but will allow you to plan your content and outreach options more effectively.

Tip: http://www.blogpulse.com/ offers users a search capability for keywords or brands that will pull up the latest “conversations” on your search topic and even track the existing conversation per each blog or site.  

By researching to build your social media strategy, you have spent valuable and effective time understanding what drives your target market and how you can reach them where they live online. Positive results will follow.

According to the post, Cisco recently won the National/International B2B Manufacturer category in the 2010 B2B Twitterer Awards. The company has successfully implemented a B2B social media marketing plan that saved them more than $100,000 for a recent product launch, proving that social media marketing can, in fact, have significant bottom line results for businesses.

The processes used by Cisco for their social media marketing (SMM) can work for any sized B2B company. No matter the budget, there are specific steps that can be put into place to enhance the success rate of SMM and allow for increases in sales as a direct result.

Some of the Cisco SMM processes to consider with your B2B marketing plan:

• Have specific corporate guidelines for the interaction of staff within the SMM plan.
  • The Cisco SMM guidelines outline how staff should navigate their existing social media sites, profiles and pages as well as how they should effectively engage the Cisco audience in each of these mediums.
  • The guidelines help ensure that anyone who touches the Cisco SMM sites maintains the message and tone that Cisco needs for their latest campaigns.
• Open your social media efforts to your customers and target market.
  • Cisco has created a landing page on their server that incorporates content and links from each of their social media sites, pages and profiles to educate readers of their ongoing SMM efforts as well as their current promotions, deals or offers. It’s a powerful hub for their social media marketing.     
• Listen as much as you talk.
  • Cisco has implemented a multi-tier social media monitoring system that resulted from five stages of listening trials starting with traditional forms of listening like focus groups, to implementing and adjusting social media listening tools until they saw quantifiable results.
  • It’s important for every company to test their social media monitoring to achieve the marketing goals set for SMM, whether it is brand building, lead generation or sales.

Cisco has seen the cost-effective, bottom-line results that an effectively implemented and monitored social media marketing plan can drive. Keep their efforts in mind when assessing your SMM plan.

It goes without saying that Social Media Marketing offers a much more interactive aspect to any corporate marketing plan, but how does that have an effect on your staff, your marketing investment of both time and funds? There are a few simple miscalculations that can derail your Social Media Marketing plan before your very first post; tweet or friend request is made. Consider these points as you plan out your Social Media Marketing integration.

Prioritize the Effort Internally

The most difficult aspect of changing internal processes is ensuring that the manpower exists to cover new time requirements for the work entailed. Social Media, although highly cost-effective, is an interactive form of marketing. Therefore, it takes daily maintenance and interaction from a member, or members, of your staff that have the time to set aside the time to respond to comments, update new posts and comment on connections news and content.

Often times, deadlines, meetings or special projects can usurp the time needed for Social Media interaction. Be sure the staff you align with your Social Media Marketing goals is aware of the time requirements to make it successful.

Even companies that outsource their Social Media Marketing will need a point person to work with the service provider to maintain that the marketing efforts mirror the existing marketing goals. By building a strong provider-client relationship, the need to micromanage all aspects of Social Media Marketing is reduced significantly.

Emphasize your Brands Voice in the Market

As noted, there is a time investment involved when utilizing Social Media Marketing (SMM) to reach out to a target market and if the time is not spent in the right places, the SMM projects can become unmanageable.

When planning out a SMM timetable, place the emphases on the interaction with your existing connections combined with reaching out to new potential contacts, followed by researching and sharing informative and engaging content for your connections and finally spend time monitoring the response to your efforts.  Often times, the focus on metrics can overtake the focus on site interaction, and while SMM is about expanding your brand awareness through networking, the real distinction that SMM offers is the ability to speak, with a human voice, to your target market based on their interests and focus. Pay attention to your network size, of course, but emphasize your voice in the market first.

Consider the Goals

Your Social Media Marketing budget highly depends on the goals you have for this aspect of your marketing plan. Do you intend to use your SMM for building your brand awareness in a new sector or with a new audience? Is your SMM intended to supplement your more traditional marketing efforts online? Or maybe you are using SMM as a lead generator for new prospects. Whatever the goals of your Social Media Marketing, you need to decide what purpose it will fill BEFORE you set a budget for your efforts.

Your SMM budget depends on the site you intend to use, the fee-based services that can help you reach your goals and the time your staff may have to spend interacting with social media service providers or producing content for sites, pages and profiles. Again, there is an often-underestimated time investment with Social Media that must be applied to see results.

Like any other marketing efforts your company may invest in, your Social Media Marketing will benefit from a detailed, well-thought out plan, focusing on the points mentioned above. Manage these aspects internally so you can be sure that your SMM drives the marketing goals it was intended for successfully.