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And by mainstream, I mean “USA Today”. You know, that newspaper you buy when your plane’s late and then leave in the backrest pocket. This little article presents the basic principles of SEO in language anybody can understand. If you are trying to get beginners to comprehend the first steps they can take to get their sites noticed and searchable, this article might be a good place to start.

If your business’ blog generates frequently-searched-for search-terms, that’s dandy, but your site is likely to appear many pages back in a search engine, buried under older, richer, craftier competitors This is called “invisible”, or “you-don’t-exist, amigo”. Not good.

One way to increase your visibilty is to add local appeal. Almost every small business draws, to a greater or lesser degree, from a pool of local clients. Why not include your city, county and nearby place-names in your tags, titles and text?

Here is an example: I was listening to one of many of my subscriptions to podcasts concerning social media marketing. I remembered one podcast concerning “Long Tail keywords“, which is a juxtaposition of marketing terms I had never heard before, and found it very interesting, interesting enough in fact to write this blog post.

But I couldn’t remember which podcast I had heard it on, and my iTunes account is on my home machine. What I did remember is that the podcaster’s home base, and likely their business, was somewhere around Tampa Bay, because they were localizing it through comments about great weather, sports, yada yada.

So I search on the Terms “Social Media Marketing Tampa”, and was able to find their distinctive url www.findandconvert.com, which I immediately remembered on sight, with little difficulty. Had I searched only on “Social Media Marketing”, or “Social Media Marketing Podcast” I would have given up in a few minutes of frustration.

So I am able to present to you the very useful and thought provoking podcast segment “Long Tail Keywords” for your enlightenment below.  This comes to you courtesy of Find And Convert, a Tampa internet marketing company with an emphasis on SMM. I have found all of their podcasts useful and eminently listenable, and I highly recommend that you listen to them, or better yet subscribe and stick ‘em in your ears via your portable mp3 player.

FnC-longtail-sk.mp3

I was listening to Jon Udell on The Gillmore Gang podcast the other day, and Mr Udell, who works for Microsoft, referenced one of his old blog posts about the orders-of-magnitude advantage blogging (and by extension, the use of other social media applications) has over email and other web 1.0 means of communication. Same work, much greater distribution. Here is an excerpt from “Too Busy To Blog? Count Your Keystrokes“:

From this perspective, blogging is a communication pattern that optimizes for the amount of awareness and influence that each keystroke can possibly yield. Some topics, of course, are necessarily private and interpersonal. But a surprising amount of business communication is potentially broader in scope. If your choice is to invest keystrokes in an email to three people, or in a blog entry that could be read by those same three people plus more — maybe many more — why not choose the latter? Why not make each keystroke work as hard as it can?

When I can refer people to a site I have written and continually update as a reference, I am avoiding duplication of effort and putting my best foot forward. Because most questions about your business are essentially the same questions, over and over, you can maximize your reach and authority while minimizing your effort by communicating on your blog.

Read John Udell’s whole article “Too Busy To Blog?”. Read it twice. It is uncommon common sense for busy small business people.

A beauty of blogging as a business tool is that your site is a fluid ever-changing process of the sort that search engines love. You have the ability to go back and update old posts. But should you bother updating old posts, particularly ones which appear to have little traction? Isn’t it better just to write a new post? I would have thought that there was no question that adding a new post was the best use of energy, but this article in Performancing, to whose feed you should be subscribing, BTW, puts a finer point on it. Here is an excerpt:

The solution, in my opinion, would be to write a new post now and update the old post later. Obviously, you want to create the new post to give readers something to read, and people could simply go back to the old article via links if they wished. Afterwards, you update your old post with some of the new information, and then link to your newer post. This gives people that come from search engines and social sites a reason to go to another page on your site, and if that happens, they are much more likely to subscribe.

Read the whole article by James Mowery on the Performancing Blog, and add Performancing RSS feed to your feedreader.

You can repurpose your blog posts, submitting them to the appropriate directories or republishing them in your personal/business social media sites, and have them attract traffic back to your original site.

When you submit your articles to directories, surely, other websites will make use of your article too. With the copyright terms of your articles, the URL of your website will still be intact and will subsequently direct more traffic to your website.

from “The Official Social SEO Guide Blog” (How’s that for a string of keywords in a site title? Yow!)

It is important to remember that splogs and certain dubious robotic bloggers are going to copy your content anyway, assuming it is of value; you might as well beat them to it and leave a trail of backlinks as you go.

A few years ago, in the early months of the podcasting phenomenon, I was the web-presence guy for a very funny and briefly popular podcast called “Area 51″. I had my own little niche podcast, and I recognized the importance of being “of” that community, surfing on its excitement and innovation. But somehow I could never get the “Area 51″ performers to become a part of that adrenalinized world, and the podcast died for lack of direction and commitment. To this day I believe that if the Area 51 crew had been a real part of the nascent podcast community, the exhilaration would have carried them over the rough spots.

I think it is very important to take the time to absorb the zeitgeist of the social media world in which you wish to work. Chris Brogan poses this observation:

It’s interesting to note that companies will spend anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 on a good website design, but will fail to implement even the most rudimentary listening tools to move their capabilities to understand the impact of such a site beyond the realm of hits and clicks.

Read Chris Brogan’s piece concerning listening tools for social media. Or don’t, and just sling spam into a world you don’t really “get”.

Flash embedding: it’s not just for videos anymore. Export to Scribed and you can get the word out just as the generous Brian Solis of PR 2.0 does here. Go to Brian’s site to see the best head shot ever!
Oh, and read the book below– it’s genius.

Scroll through the pages using the scrollbar below.

Scribd.com is so cool, and a fantastic tool. Brian Solis rocks the Scribd with alacrity and verve!

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Okay, I’m going to pretend that we have all agreed that a good domain name is an important art of a unified and coherent web presence. Opinions vary, but let’s suspend disbelief for a bit, if necessary.

I found a blog entry which appears to be distillation of accumulated wisdom about domain name selection; it is a kind of “edu-checklist”, to coin a hyphenated word I wish never to hear again.
Here is an excerpt:

TIP #2: Avoid hyphens. They may make your domain name easier to read, but they also tend to create confusion. “The bottom line with hyphens is that most domains don’t include them. So, when you tell someone your domain, they’ll probably try typing it without any hyphens.”

Read “10 Tips for Getting that Perfect Domain Name” and bookmark it for future reference or to save a friend from making a terrible domain-name mistake. Like hyphenating, for instance

The idea of Social Media Marketing, as I interpret it, is to get other people to happily do your work for you. In this spirit, and with sincere appreciation for the work and thought that went into it, I present this excellent blog entry from “Viper Chill” by Glen Allsopp. It is itself a compilation of how-to-leverage-social-media articles and tips:

Here is an excerpt:

MySpace Tips Summary

• Look Around - Really get to know all the options available in MySpace before you start comment spamming. Messaging can be a good option and there are also paid advertising spots.
• Target a Niche - If you are going down a ’spammy route’, don’t just try to target the whole of MySpace. Look into people in niches for example women or members of certain groups.

Read How to Get Traffic from the top Social Media Sites from “Viper Chill” (Cool name, huh?)