A breakdown of some of the most common and effective internet marketing strategies

SEO……………………………….slide 5

PPC……………………………….slide 15

Reputation Management…….slide 23

Google and Bing both have two sets of search results.

1. Pay per Click (PPC)

Also known as sponsored listings, paid advertisements, or ads related to.

2. Organic

These are the search results that are not paid to show up, theoretically these are the search results most relevant to your search query.

PPC provides a great way to achieve quick rankings but each click does cost you money so you need to make sure the clicks are converting. Organic listings take more time and effort to achieve great rankings but once you achieve reach the desired rankings you can drive more traffic long term and not have to pay per click.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting your website ranked in the organic search results for relevant keywords.

◦ SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience.

Internet marketing and specifically SEO has come along ways since its inception. SEO strategy used to favor linking above all else. That theory still holds some weight but there are many other factors now involved to in order to create great page rank and authority.

Optimizing a website may involve

◦ Editing and creating on-site content

◦ HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keyword.

◦ Social media

◦ Linking

The crawlers from major search engines will go and crawl your website and make sure it contains everything it needs to be properly indexed and where to rank you things like:

◦ 301 re-direct: is basically a way of showing the Search Engines this page has moved

◦ Page title: make sure your page Title is relevant to your website◦ Page rank: The vote of confidence Google gives your website◦ Sitemap- Crucial step in getting indexed is a proper sitemap and

submission to Google! HTML site map is a page on your site that provides a route to all the

other pages you have. Keep this regularly updated and current to the rest of your website, and your homepage should contain a link to it

XML sitemap is the back end language that is seen by search engines. This is the same as an HTML site map, it just provides search engines with an easy to follow map of how to find everything on your site.

◦ Robot.txt file – Gives instruction to the spiders

Inbound links – hyper link coming from another website also called a backlink

Outbound Links – A link on your website, that sends traffic to another website

Nofollow links - When a link from one site does not pass SEO credit to another.

◦ When would would you use a nofollow link?

When linking to a external page that you don’t want to endorse

Like we touched on before back when the internet was first created the algorithm's were very focused on linking and essentially quantity was everything. Flash forward until February of 2011 when the first major change called “Panda” was released preceding the April launch of “Penguin”.

◦ Panda aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites“ and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

◦ Penguin was aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black hat tactics, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content and others.

Linking strategies have evolved quite a bit in the last year and a half. No longer is buying 1000 links for 100.00 helpful but in fact it is going to be harmful and could result in getting de-indexed by Google for up to 12 months!

Think Quality over Quantity◦ Your links MUST have power and relevancy to really create that “juice”

for your SEO campaign.◦ Quality doesn’t mean just a link with a high AC Rank but also puts a

value on if that inbound link is coming from a website or directory that is relevant to your website.

Where are your links pointing?◦ You need to make sure you have a majority of your links pointing

to places other then your homepage. If your homepage is the overwhelming favorite of the inbound links Google might see them as more spammy then relevant.

Relationship link building is the best way of generating high quality links.◦ Relationship link building is going to be done best with people or

clients you already have a relationship with.

Create a plan and write down who could be industry related and contact them. See if they would mind linking to you in exchange for something they value maybe it could a good review on yelp or a client testimonial.

◦ Another tactic would be through Google Alerts

Here you can literally monitor any keywords and subjects you care about

These methods are not easily acquired but they are proven techniques that generate consistent high ranking inbound links.

Outreach link building

◦ Guest Blogging

◦ Infographics <<< Video to learn more

Content Link Building

◦ Press Releases

◦ Off site content (Squidoo, Info Barrel, Pitch Engine)

Multimedia Link Building

◦ Video Distribution

◦ Presentation Distribution

PPC or Pay Per Click◦ With search engines, advertisers typically bid on

keyword phrases relevant to their target market

◦ PPC campaigns are very black and white and the theory is very cut and dry.

How much profit do you make when you sell your product or service? And how much are you willing to spend to re-create that profit? Google calls it R.O.I.

While building a successful PPC campaign you need to account for a few things. ◦ What is your business structure? (ecommerce, retail

store(s), etc.

◦ What is the goal for your campaign? (sales, lead generation, etc.)

◦ What are you competitors doing? (specific products or broad overviews)

First and foremost you need figure out what your goals are.

Are you trying to generate more traffic to your homepage?

Are you an ecommerce business trying to sell motorcycle helmets, if so then you want your landing page to be on the specific categories that contain the motorcycle helmets and not on your homepage because your conversion is meant to sell a helmet not how to contact your business from the home page, etc.

If you are a car dealership then you are not going to sell a car but you can generate valuable warm leads, this campaigns conversion will be based on how many people you can convert by getting them to click on your live chat, call the toll free number or email you.

Organization is crucial to having a successful campaign. My client’s campaigns will break down like this:

Client>Campaign>adgroup>keywords◦ Campaign will be your generic categories (amish

furniture, Alpinestars etc.)

◦ Adgroups: Queen Anne Dining Chair, Boots, etc.

◦ Keywords: Amish furniture chair, motorcycle boots, etc.

In a PPC you are competitively bidding on specific keywords and phrases and in most cases you are facing your rival competition.

Figure out how much you are willing to spend per click.

If your average deal is $2000.00 and you are willing to spend $200.00 to generate another deal and you know you convert 1/8 of your warm leads that means you really have about 25.00 to spend per lead.

Set your bids accordingly!

Please note:

Bidding costs will fluctuate as your account grows, you will be given a QS (Quality Score) and that will be based on things such as your CTR and can make your bidding and placement more effective.

Since you are literally paying per click you need to make sure your campaign is only searching for words that have a chance in converting. By default Google will keep your search terms very

broad so you are bound to be paying for some very irrelevant searches, so adding negatives is a NECESSITY!

Stay active and make sure that you check your accounts about ever 3-4 weeks for keywords that are not converting but are costing you money.

If you are selling red hats, you don’t want to appear for blue hats so make sure you add the word blue into your list of negatives.

Headline: 25 characters

Description Line 1: 35 characters

Description Line 2: 35 characters

Display URL: 35 characters

Destination URL: your landing page

When writing Adcopy:

DON’T USE ALL CAPS

Capitalize The First Letter Of Each Word

You can only have one !

Don’t use phrases like “click here”

Focus on specific details in the ad copy

1. Perceived Value: What is the consumers pain point or want? What is our solution?

2. Risk: Emphasize things that make the consumer feel safer or that they aren’t wasting their time or money, i.e. “Free Quote”

3. Credibility: We don’t want to appear scammy or dishonest. (i.e. #1 for 50 years)

4. Call to Action: Once they feel safe and the risk is low, convince them to click on your ad! K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) i.e. “Buy Online and Save”

5. Qualifiers: Use these to screen out potentially irrelevant clicks. (Pricing in the headline works great because if it’s to much, they’ll stay away all together)

Online Reputation Management is the process of suppressing negative remarks from the first page of search results and creating resistance for any future complaints to appear on that first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing.

ORM is an important piece to every marketing effort: SEO, SEM, print ads, radio spots, commercials, etc. are generating "buzz" about your business or product and peaks the interest of potential business.

Ask yourself this: if you have a great product and a great marketing campaign you are getting consistent walk in traffic or a good CTR (Click Through Rate) but you are not converting the traffic in sales your probably missing your target ROI What could be the culprit?

Picture the first page of Google search results as your resume meaning you have 7 to 10 spots to create a great first impression, if that first page is revealing words such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Rip Off, etc. it automatically puts a red flag in your customers mind and they may choose to move to a competitor who does not have anything negatively reflecting on their business.

ORM is going to take advantage of a combination of proven techniques to "attack" the issue(s).

Step One:

◦ Create content that has the potential to get ranked quickly and has credibility (page rank) and then make it appealing to the general public.

Step Two:

◦ Get the content you created to rise in the rankings up and above the negative results!

Social Media

Press Releases

Video SEO

Off-site content

Microsites

On-site content

Positive Reviews Pro

Linking

Social Media Sites such as Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn all offer business pages you can create.

◦ These have a great page rank in the eyes of Google. Twitter actually can out rank most social media sites but the draw back here is that

there is a limited amount of letters so if you have a big business name it may not get optimized for the keyword you want.

A well written press release combined with syndication to the proper sources can generate a quick ranking for ORM as well as generate quality high profile backlinks to help your SEO.

Press releases offer one of the best ways to boost your search engine rankings and increase web traffic for your business. Now more than ever, Google values websites with lots of quality, newsworthy content that’s distributed around the web.

Our monthly press release marketing program builds on all the best Search Engine Optimization and content marketing strategies to help you increase rankings and web traffic.

Video’s are another fantastic resource we have at our disposal.

Google bought YouTube and has made it an integrated part of their product line. (you can’t create a Gmail account without them trying to get you to set up your YouTube channel)

Video content accounts for more than 50% of all web traffic in the world. That’s why Google places added importance on the creation and promotion of video content

YouTube videos can be embedded, tagged, titled and optimized for the keywords you are trying to protect.

Websites such as Squidoo, Slideshare, and PitchEngine that already have a great page rank with the search engines can be utilized with the proper content and keyword utilization (don't keyword stuff though).

The combination of high page rank, the availability of custom URL’s and organic strength can be a phenomenal tool to be utilized.

◦ Organic traffic to these individual sites is extremely beneficial in helping you achieve the desired rankings.

◦ Q and A sites with organic community involvement (real users responding) can get you great rankings.

If you have been targeted by one of the major search engines as an auto suggest for a harmful term (ex. Example company scam) then a Microsite can be beneficial for you to sustain long term protection . A great technique for microsites is creating an EMD (Exact Match

Domain) Exmple: if the keyword your trying to clean up is "example

company scam" you may want to buy and host www.examplecompanyscam.com/org/net/etc.) Exact match domains get ranked very effectively but since

your starting from scratch it does take some time to see results.

EMD's are a great resource to spin a potential negative into a positive for example, instead of the potential customer seeing how you are a supposed scam they will see your micro-site and how not to get scammed by someone in your industry or field.

Creating on-site content such as examplecompany.com/reviews /blog can be very beneficial for eating up real estate on that first page of major search engines.

search engines already trust your site, if you apply proper white hat tactics you should be able to get indexed by the crawlers quickly and see rankings in a timely matter.

The two main techniques to get these profiles and webpages ranked above the negatives.◦ Linking

◦ Organically (through community involvement.)

Linking is the last point we will discuss but it is without a doubt the most important. The techniques we have discussed are designed to get organic rankings but linking is really the bread and butter of every reputation management campaign.

◦ The goal of the linking campaign is to link to all positive and neutral information surround the negative complaint(s) in order to suppress the negative into the 2nd pages of search results.

Linking is essentially a big popularity contest, you want as many votes of confidence as you get…..

◦ Here's the catch though bad links (links not relevant, or from bad neighborhoods) can actually hurt you more than help so make sure you are getting quality inbound links.

Organic community strength combined with a high PR are some of the reasons websites such as Rip Off Report, PissedConsumer and Yelp are such a pain in the side and very hard to budge.

Ever heard of fighting fire with fire?

◦ The same techniques used that brought the negatives up the search results you can bring your positive content you created to the top of the search results as well via organic strength.

Increase your popularity (Friends, circles, followers, etc.)

Get your content as many re-pins, Likes, Follows, retweets, etc.

The more comments, shares, times embedded, etc. the better!

I hope this presentation was beneficial and helpful for your future internet marketing endeavors.

If you believe in keeping a clean reputation and want the help from a INC. 500 marketing firm please contact National Reputation and if you need help with SEO or SEM please contact National Positions.

Free Customized Quote:

Phone: 805.410.7984

Email: shaneham@nationalpositions.com