JUMP Internet Marketing

Get Extra Mileage from a Great Press Release

We've been touting the benefits of press releases for awhile now.  If you're one of our monthly marketing customers you know that I am continually requesting information from you about what's new in your organization.  What I really want to know is, what's news.

A decade ago, if your company wanted to publish news, it created a press release and submitted the release to the media. If you were lucky, your news was picked up and published in newspapers. Today, if your company wants to publish news, it can simply post the news on its website.  That is very easy to do, but doing nothing more than that is usually a costly mistake.

Why?  Don't we want to publish news to our customers and potential customers?  How is it a mistake?

Your website, unless it has TRULY great positioning in the SERPS only captures the attention of those who already know its there.  Sure, you might get lucky that your news attracts a few more visitors because your content performs well.  But why would you rely on luck when just a few extra steps will expand the reach of your message.

After all, isn't that the point of publishing news?  Don't you want to get the message out to as many potential customers as possible?  Then why would you only publish the news on your website?  You know my mantra is "Get a return on that investment."  If you only publish news on your website you are not maximizing the return.

The beauty of online press releases is that they expand your reach without a lot of extra effort.  There are free press release sites such as prlog.org that offer free press release distribution.  They will even host your news on their site. 

That's where the extra mileage comes in. Your news, your content, on someone else's site.  The viewers of that site become your viewers.

There is an even BIGGER benefit of submitting online press releases to help your SEO effort.  Be sure to attend our March eMarketing seminar to find out.  If you're outside the Tulsa area, contact me to find out when we will host a seminar in your area.

Denise
@d_brinkmeyer

Thinking About a New Flash Website?

Then you're not alone.  Over the years I've spoken with many independent business owners planning an upgrade to their website and thinking about spinning graphics, flash, carousels, and such.  The obvious attraction is that done well, they can boost your company's image.

Without proper planning your site can disappear from the search engines.

Recently, a friend of mine allowed one of his employees to redesign the company's website.  The employee was skilled in graphics and web design and my friend felt comfortable turning over the project.  Even though I had strongly encouraged my friend to attend our workshops, he is, like other independent business owners, extremely busy and looking to hand off this project to someone else. (See my post, Time and Money to Burn)

Weeks later, my friend asked me to look at the results and offer some advice on how they could increase visibility in the search engines.

After just a few minutes of research, I had uncovered some disturbing news.  The website, which previously had a few pages showing in Google was nowhere to be found.  The site didn't even show up on the first page for the company's name.

Why?

The new website had absolutely no text on the home page.  It was all graphics. 

I clicked through the rest of the site.  No text, anywhere.

Google crawls websites by a software program that we refer to a crawler or a spider.  It's not a human.  Words that appear in a graphic appear as nothing to a crawler.

It's the end of 2010 and my friend has a new website that will have to be overhauled, again. (I hope he will make time for our strategy workshop.)

If search marketing is important enough to invest any time or money in, then it is important to have the right strategy.  You don't have to spend a fortune, but you do have to invest some time.  The payoff is worth it.  Otherwise, you're just letting your competition get further and further ahead.

Denise

Don't Put All Your Eggs in Google

This was going to be my easter theme post... eggs, Google, get it?  All kidding aside, my point is this: Google doesn't own ALL of the market share even though the latest numbers, globally, are amazing.  Check out this trend report here.

While Google is the big fish you'd like to hook, don't dismiss the importance of your listing in the other engines.

Have you checked your positioning in search engines like Yahoo lately?  If not, you may not be happy with how your listing is displayed in the search results.  Remember, positioning is not enough. Conversion is the golden ticket.  (Now I'm thinking of Willy Wonka.)

You might be horrified to discover that your navigation is being displayed instead of your USP. 

If you've been myopic about Google, I encourage you to spend some time in some other engines this week:

• Yahoo
• Bing
• Ask
• AOL

There is a world outside of Google (even though it seems to be getting smaller by the month.)

While you're at it, check your listings in local directories and Yelp.  If you aren't there, why not?

Happy Hunting,

Denise

For Small Business Owners: Are You REALLY Sure About Your Website Content?

For small businesses, juggling website content management and tracking search engine positioning as well as overseeing operations and accounting can be an overwhelming task.  Over the years we've spoken with many small business owners who had made a good first phase effort in building a website. However, when looking at their target customers as they are represented by keyword phrases in search, we often find a HUGE disconnect between the small business owner's assumption and the reality of his site content.

Most often, the keyword phrases simply aren't there.  There may even be several pages of topically similar content on the site but the words contained in the phrase aren't there.  No matter how you slice it, if the message isn't there then you're getting nowhere with that target.

Here's a worthwhile exercise for small business owners to assess how well their content is aligned with their goals:

Take your top ten keyword phrases (highly targeted phrases that actually represent a buyer) and go to Google.  Type in your domain in quotes "www.[name of your domain].com" and then type in one of the phrases.  Google will tell you whether or not it finds that phrase on your site.  If you want to know if the exact phrase appears on the site enclose the phrase in quotes as well.

This exercise assumes your site is indexed in Google to begin with.  (If Google doesn't see your entire domain then you have a bigger problem.)

The results of this assessment will probably surprise you.  Most of the time we find big gaps and missing content.  

Through September 30, 2009: Be sure to click the free download link on this page.  This download is from one of our most popular seminars.  It addresses key concepts and disconnects that lead to missing website content.