Jon's In Waikiki (AKA The Waikiki Marketer)

Part 3 of ‘Your SEO Is Not An Office Supply’ is now up and ready for you to read. Find out 2 things you can do easily to protect your business from those  SEOs who promise the world, but deliver a beat up, out-of-date globe.

If you do these 2 things, you will be able to make a much smarter decision about your search engine optimization and get the marketing you need to succeed on the Web.

Read this informative article now:

Your SEO Is Not An Office Supply, Pt 3

Part 2 of this series, ‘Your SEO Is Not An Office Supply’ is now up. In it we explain why Search Engine Rankings (and Google Rankings) are not all created equal.

Find out the reasons why this truth is so crucial to your business on the Web.

Plus find out the 2 things dishonest SEOs will do to make results look good without producing anything that’ll help your bottom line. Read it all now:

Your SEO Is Not An Office Supply, Pt 2

Just put up new article on why businesses shopping for their SEO service is the 1st step to walking off a cliff.

Find out, in Part 1 of this series, why this attitude that all SEO is the same and it’s a pricing decision could be disastrous.

Also find out the 1st thing you MUST know as a business about SEO and what it needs to accomplish for you. Read it here:

Why SEO Is Not An Office Supply, Pt 1

I have a friend whose web designer has screwed up his site badly. My friend been unable to capture leads, the lifeblood of his business, for almost 3 weeks now.

At any time this would be frustrating. In this economy it borders on deadly.

The designer didn’t work out how the lead capture system would be implemented in the new site he was putting up.

He just put up new pages without the capture forms or tracking system the old site had, then merrily went on his way.

A lesson for all business sites – make sure your web designer not only understands, but has a mapped out plan to transfer your sales or conversion system over along with everything else.

Right now my friend is appropriately frustrated and angry. He’s been betrayed by a supposed professional who has basically crippled his business for what will probably be at least a month when this finally gets completely resolved.

The designer keeps getting it ‘fixed’, yet never actually delivering. He keeps ‘forgetting’ one thing or another, never getting the job across the finish line. While it’s too late for my friend, learn from his unfortunate experience. It could save your business.

Updated the Google & Search Engine Stats page with some new data and findings that are very interesting and very illuminating.

Solid data that’s applicable to your SEO or search marketing strategy, no matter what industry you’re in.

Find it here:

Google & Search Engine Statistics/Data

So why is Google doing this? Probably because it’s a Win for them, no matter which way Google Me  goes. If it flies, they win. If it fails, they can still win. Now, how is that possible?

First, if it does fly and becomes a real competitor to Facebook, the spoils are obvious. More eyeballs, further Web dominance, plus a brand new avenue for their very lucrative advertising programs. But, how would they benefit if it fails?

Even if it goes down the tubes, they get one thing they are always after – behavior data. And they’ll get it in spades. Let’s say they only get 1 million people to sign up and participate on their platform. That’s a pretty good sample for reliable marketing, and market, research.

Facebook is already benefitting from the HUGE amount of knowledge they’ve built up from their members declaring exactly what they like, their political preference, what they don’t line and even their ‘orientation’.

If Google could add similar data to their already huge storehouse of search behavior, they’ll have a huge advantage for serving their ads. They’ll know that much more about targeting messages, services and products to the right person.

So what if Google Me dies after a few years of comparatively low use? They’ll still walk away with a mountain of data to use and benefit from in the years ahead. They may take a loss on one hand, but the other hand, Advertising, will make up for that. And fast.

The news that Google Me is getting ready for launch is a little confusing. Why is Google trying to take on a well-established service/site/social outlet like Facebook? It’s not in line with their brand.

On top of that one very good reason, they’re going to have to offer something incredibly advanced over Facebook to get people to change over. After all, people are pretty entrenched now on Facebook, at least for the foreseeable future.

One could say that people were saying the same thing about Facebook when they were the new kid and MySpace was the standard. But MySpace lost the lead because of a lot of things they did, rather than just because Facebook was overwhelmingly better. MySpace and its crazy quilt backgrounds – which made reading anything impossible – and their inability to police behavior were major factors to their decline.

Facebook, though they’ve hit some potholes, has maintained general good will with their users. Even if some of the potholes were of their own making.

So why would search engine giant Google be entering this race? Although it doesn’t make a lot of sense at the moment, I can see exactly what the reasons would be. And it has everything to do with their bottom line. More in the next post.

When discussing SEO and the TITLE tag we tend to only think of its use in ranking. That’s extremely important and should never be overlooked. However, SEO – or at least the effective kind – goes beyond ranking.

A good SEO professional considers the marketing and sales consequences, too. Getting in front of a search is step 1.

Step 2 is getting them to click on your listing instead of the other 9 on the same page. How does the TITLE tag play into all this?

A Penn State study found that the TITLE tag counts for as much as 60% of the decision by a searcher to click on a particular Google listing. That includes yours. So you have to think hard about some things.

Your TITLE tag is the largest, most prominent element in your Google listing(s). It’s sometimes the only thing that’s seen as a person scans the Google results. So you have to grab their attention and do it fast.

You have to ask yourself – how does your TITLE appear to a searcher? Is it just a run on sentence of keywords thrown together?

That might help with ranking, but it’ll do very little to convince your prospect to click on it instead of your competition. Those sounds you hear are customers going to  a site that isn’t yours.

Does your TITLE tag read like a limp description that doesn’t communicate what the page or your site is about? If it isn’t, your TITLE tag is letting you down. Hard.

Do a few Google searches and see what I mean. You’ll see listing after listing that just lays there. Some do even less than that, looking like they were written with the ‘shotgun’ approach.

That’s when a dozen different keywords are thrown in end to end without rhyme or reason, sometimes making no sense at all when read.

Effective, targeted SEO is much, much more than keyword stuffing and spamming the comment section of blogs (You know who you are).

The SEO you should be getting or doing is different. It sells. It advertises. It markets.

Always with the aim of that Conversion box. Are you getting that kind of SEO right now?

Usually Google is the one to lead the way, with Bing & Yahoo, etc. following behind. Not this time. Google just recently added a left side menu, which looks a lot like the ones on…Bing & Yahoo. Nothing wrong with that, but it does put Google in the category that Microsoft fill; that of the big company who takes ideas from the smaller, smarter ones.

    Yahoo has said that their (earlier) implementation of this left side menu increased ‘engagement’, which means more interaction by the searcher and, presumably, for a longer time. That can’t hurt a search engine if the visitor spends more time using it. Especially a search engine selling ad space.

     The left menu gives searchers the ability to narrow down their searches quickly and easily to categories such as Images to see related photos or News to get related news items & stories. The biggest menu option people are talking about in the search engine world, though, is Updates.

   Updates is the category for Google’s Real Time search entries like the latest tweets from Twitter. Social Media takes a new importance as Social Search is weighted more in the new Google search results. There’s also the Nearby option that should be taken into your consideration as a Local Business.

     This means if your local market is the source of most of your business, you need to make sure that you emphasize where you are in your listings and on your website. There’s obviously more to come from this, but Google is making it clear that they’re getting even more personalized in delivering search results. Even if they’re borrowing from other search engines to get it done.

SEOs should take note of how this will affect ranking their sites. It will be making a huge difference soon, if not already.

As you may have read, Facebok just passed Google as the #1 Visited Site on the Web. That’s big news. But what does it mean for your Internet Marketing & SEO? Your strategy has to change, right? Yes & No.

Yes, it does raise Facebook’s importance to even greater heights than before. It means more business will be, and should be, trying out Facebook’s advertising program. Going where the eyeballs are is always a good strategy. But what about our SEO and search engine marketing efforts, including PPC?

Facebook’s win shouldn’t change that at all, at least for now. When people go to Google they’re actively looking for a product or service. It’s still an incredible system that gets you in front of real prospects. If you’re doing it right.

The Facebook visitor is, by definition, a lesser prospect. Their main intent is to connect with friends, play some games, upload photos from a trip. They’re not in the frame of mind of someone who’s ready to buy.

Is there still a lot of potential to marketing and advertising on Facebook? Absolutely. But it’s not a replacement of AdWords or Google rankings. It’s another avenue that should be pursued, though. It just might be a very lucrative one, but don’t expect it to replace Google for getting customers through you door.