Is Your Brand Visible Online? Internet Marketing Guide to Search Engine Optimization for Your Brand

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One of the foundations upon which the field of Internet Marketing is built is Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of ensuring that a web page is found and indexed by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) so that when people are searching for keywords of value to the business, the search engines will return results for those web pages to the person searching. These listings of links to other web pages are known as the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

SEO is mostly built upon discovering the keyword phrases of value to a particular business and then optimizing the content and links to a web page containing that keyword phrase. Most of this part of SEO is product and service related. For example, an electronics manufacturer might want to optimize a keyword phrase like “52-inch Panasonic plasma TV” so that people looking for information on that product will find his web page and it will have the opportunity to sell products it has in inventory.

The SEO professional researches the keyword phrases that have high value to the business by determining how many people are searching for that term, how many other web pages are optimized for that keyword phrase, how strongly they are optimized for the phrase and how likely it can be to obtain a first page ranking on the SERPs for that keyword phrase.

However, not all SEO is about products and services. If SEO is the foundation of Internet Marketing, the pillars upon which most of the structure is built must include an element of branding. Much of the searching on the Internet are people looking up information on companies they’ve heard about. Whether it’s simply looking up contact information, or they’ve heard about your brand from some other source (referral, traditional advertising, etc.) and want to know more about you, many people type in your company name or some iteration of it.

Many of us assume that people will find us because we believe our brand is unique and we should therefore by default be the #1 listing on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). But are we? And who else shows up on that page? And if they have better Conversion Architecture on their site, are you giving sales leads to a competitor?

Try this exercise now. Open up a new window in your browser, go to Google and type in your company name. See who comes up and then come back here to find out why. Go do it; I’ll wait.

How’d you do? Are you giving away free leads? Do you have every listing on the Search Engine Results Page? No? Then consider that someone who is looking for you is also going to click on one of the other listings on the page and go to their site. You could be giving away free leads to your competitor.

How to monopolize the first page of the SERPs So, how do you monopolize the first page of the SERPs? You have to have more than one web property listed on the SERP. I hear you saying, “but I only have one website; how am I going to get 10 listings on Google? Well, there are a number of ways. Read on.

Run a search on your strongest competitor or a brand you know well and you’ll see that they likely have many web properties. They might have a number of entries for different pages of their website. They may have an entry for their company blog (which could be on their website or on another website they own. They may have entries on other sites for articles they have written. They may have directory sites that have listings for their brand. And of course, they may have listings for their social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or a YouTube channel Most likely, if they have all of these, they probably don’t have any of their competitors on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page.

So, you can see that there are a lot of different ways for people to find a company online. And you can have the same results.

Local Listings are Critical

In the SERP example above, I didn’t ask you to include any geo-locators (City, State, County, or other geographical locator). If I had, you may have seen listings for Google Places, Yahoo listing, Bing local listings or other l local directories.

These listings are very important to establishing your online presence. This is particularly important on Google, where the Places listings are often the first organic listings on the page. These listings also help authenticate your brand with the search engines.

One critical point on local listings and directories is that you have to be very careful to ensure that your business information is listed in exactly the same way everywhere on the web. The search engines are very interested in knowing that you are a legitimate business before they will index your location.

Other ways to increase your web properties are through your social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. All of these properties are indexed by Google and if you have the right keywords, you’ll be indexed for more than just your name. Also check out local directories. If you don’t find any of these when you search for your business name, search for your competitor’s name and see what directory listing they have. Then submit to those same directories. Publish articles on free article submission sites like EzineArticles.com. Bookmark your site on sites lie reddit.com, squidoo, giigo.com, delicious, and many others. Create a Manta profile.

Most of us have had occasion in the past to look up a business location online only to find when we got there that they had moved or closed or weren’t where the internet said they were. Google is aware of this and now scans the entire web to confirm the listing it has for your business on any number of other sites. Something as simple as spelling your street address as Main St. in one listing and Main Street in another listing will cause the search engines to consider these two different businesses. Google’s spiders are very smart, but they can only look at the information that is presented to them. The old “S in; S out” applies.

Affiliate Course – Marketing Education 101

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It is rather mystifying why so many new marketers assume being educated isn’t important.

You wouldn’t be able to safely drive your car around town if you didn’t take driver’s training. No one would ever try to fly an airplane without going to pilot school. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, over 90% of new affiliate marketers get the crazy notion that they can cash in big without any knowledge at all. Those are the ones who complain all the time. They could be busy making money if they had only seen the importance of enrolling in an affiliate course. Marketing online is the road to making millions.

There is a right way to perform the work of an affiliate marketer.

Those are the steps and strategies that can make a millionaire out of the garbage man. There are a lot of wrong ways to be an affiliate marketer too. Like taking shortcuts and not doing the initial research needed to open up the revenue stream. One of the worst things you could do is waste tons of time hanging around in the affiliate forums. Yes, you can learn some great stuff from the big dogs do drop into a forum from time to time. The most frequent forum dwellers are losers at actual marketing. If they put that effort into learning what they need to know in affiliate course, marketing would be their focus instead of complaining.

What can you learn from an affiliate course? Marketing strategies like these:

o How to work smart and not just work hard.
o The easiest way to make your landing page convert fast.
o Why over 90% of affiliate marketers fail to make money.
o How to take total advantage of free marketing tools online.
o How to get people to pay for information.
o Why the free way is not the right way.
o How to cash in through social marketing.
o How to locate and drive the right target market.
o How to get on the fast track to making big bucks.

You owe it to yourself to do whatever it takes to learn everything you need to know to succeed.

Marketing does work. There are affiliates raking in over a million bucks a year. That isn’t a scam, it is the indisputable truth. When you have enough of working hard, you’ll either see the light or throw in the towel. It is worth some sacrifice to get past the learning curve as a marketer. I ate peanut butter bread, Ramen noodles and frozen French fries for a week to be able to enroll in the affiliate course. Marketing with the right knowledge made it all up to me really fast. I’ll never have to eat Ramen noodles again! What about you? If you are ready to make some serious cash, get started on a solid marketing education today.