Podcast Archives - Page 28 of 28 by Mark Murnahan

6 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking in Under One Hour

When I think of all the things I do to improve client’s search engine ranking, it is enough to make a non-SEO and non-geek’s head spin. It all gets so complicated and geeky that there should be no wonder why many SEO will not shake your hand unless there is money in it.

Today I want to offer you a fast, free, and easy to understand list of actions you can take right now to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. I don’t mean an hour per day, an hour per week, or an hour per month … one hour, and that’s it. Then you can go back to doing things you enjoy. I even broke these steps down for you in maximum increments of ten to twenty minutes, but none of them should take you that long to complete. That is, unless you don’t want to take my word for it and you need to do a whole bunch of extra research to see if I just made this all up to trick you.

This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of SEO tricks and tips to put the SEO industry out of business (I still want to earn a living, after all). This is just sixty minutes we are talking about here. Sixty minutes that will count! So, here it is … a list of six ways to improve your search engine ranking in under one hour. Better yet, it will only take you a few minutes to read this.

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 1-10: LinkedIn Links

Add a link to your website on LinkedIn. LinkedIn can provide valuable link relevance for your website that search engines will recognize. If you do not have a LinkedIn profile, set one up right now. It will take less than ten minutes, and it will be worth it. It is simple, and even if a squillion people do not see it, search engines will, and they will follow the link to your website, thus improving your authority with search engines. This goes for many other social networking sites as well, but the clock is ticking and we only have an hour to get through this list.

If you already have a LinkedIn profile and you have your link on your profile, that is great. You are not off the hook, though. Update your LinkedIn status with a link to a compelling page of your website that others maybe have not already seen, and that search engines may not have not already seen. You can automate this process with a service such as Ping.fm or others, which offer updating of multiple services. Update each of your social networks with the latest content from your website, unless you are ashamed of it and you want to keep it a secret.

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 11-20: Google Profile Links

Add a link to your website from your Google Profile. If you do not already have one, it is very simple to set up, and the value of the links on a Google Profile are fantastic. They may not look very fancy, but Google Profiles are a good place to be sure your links are present. You may add multiple links, and I suggest adding some of your top priority links that you want people or search engines to notice.

In case you are not familiar, here is my Google Profile and you can create your Google Profile here. If you do not already have a Google account, the setup is simple, and it offers many other tools, but we are keeping this under one hour.

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 21-30: Link to Social Media Profiles

Create links to your social media profiles from your website. This not only allows others to communicate with you more closely, it will add link relevance to your social media profiles, which already link back to you. You may think that social media profiles all come pre-built with link authority, but it is not entirely true. Some seem to be valuable almost from the beginning, but others can use a little help. Linking to them will boost their link relevance (which you should want anyway), and when they link back to you the wonderful circle is complete. Don’t worry, it does not need to be as elaborate as my list of social networks, but your website should link to some of your most used social networks.

Your social media profiles already receive link relevance from outside sources, and you probably already made certain that your profiles are relevant to your business. Whether your business appears in searches by way of a social network or to your site directly, you still win. You win even bigger if they are cross-linked, sharing and boosting authority for the same topics. This is making sense now, right?

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 31-50: XML Sitemaps

Create or update your XML sitemap. Since I want to keep non-geeks from going googley-eyed and falling asleep, I want to explain that this is easier than it sounds, and is important to help search engines index the contents of your website. XML sitemaps are not the kind of sitemap that people use to find their way on your site. They are a kind of sitemap which is used only by search engines.

If you have a WordPress blog (as many millions of people do), simply add the massively popular Google XML Sitemaps plugin to your blog. It is a free plugin, but it is definitely worth a donation to Arne Brachhold for his efforts and your time saved. Roughly 3.8 million people have downloaded this plugin, so don’t be silly and say that it is way too hard to use.

If you do not have an XML sitemap because your antiquated website does not generate sitemaps automatically for you, then use an online sitemap generator to crawl your site and create one for you. Once it is created, simply upload it to your website and then add it to your Google Webmaster Tools. Yes, you already have this, because you have a Google account. You were paying attention to minutes 11-20 above, right? Great, then you already have a Google account, and you can follow the simple directions from Google about creating and submitting XML sitemaps.

I gave you 20 minutes for this one, just in case you need it. The clock it ticking, and you can do this!

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 51-55: Feedburner Feeds

This assumes that you have an existing RSS feed, but even if you do not, you can create RSS feeds and still get a lot done within this hour. Create a Feedburner Feed, and do not skip this part, because it is a big one. It will only take a tiny little bit of your time, but it is extremely valuable. You can create a Feedburner feed here. Just look for “Burn a feed right this instant” and enter the link to your feed (usually something like http://awebguy.com/feed).

The links from a Feedburner feed are quite valuable, and since it is suggested that you link to your RSS feed from every page anyway, it only makes sense that you should link to a feed with all the SEO usefulness of Feedburner. Plus, if you have great information to share, odds are good that you will also benefit by having people subscribe to your feed, which is the more obvious reason for Feedburner. See my Feedburner feed for aWebGuy.com to see what the feed looks like. It allows users to subscribe by email or RSS, and there are many Feedburner options that you may tweak later. In fact, the email subscription forms on my blog are Feedburner subscription forms. We are going to keep this under an hour, so for now let’s just be excited that you will have those awesome links pointing back to your website from Feedburner.

Improve Search Engine Ranking, Minutes 56-60: Blog Comments

You now have just four minutes left, so let’s make these count in a big way! I want to preface this by saying that you should never, under any circumstances spam a blog comment form. It is a huge point of contention among bloggers and it is very rude to the blog owner. At the same time, it is not only very acceptable, but also very appreciated by bloggers (me included) when readers leave their productive or considerate comments. It does not have to be a perfectly crafted work of art, but it should be relevant to the article.

You may be shocked to know the value of your comments on a reputable and popular blog. When you add your URL (web address) where it is asked for in a blog comment form, it creates a link. Somehow between absurd rumors that “nofollow” links do not provide great value in search engines and people’s hurry-up, scan-and-click way of Internet life, the tremendous link value of a blog comment is often overlooked.

Although I would discourage focusing on blog commenting as a cornerstone tactic in your SEO efforts, adding your comment to a blog post can greatly increase your website link authority over time. Doubt me if you like, but you read this far, and there is surely a good reason you found this article. This blog has significant link authority (see SEOmoz mozRank), and if you comment with courtesy to my blog and my readers, your link will be right here for search engines and people alike to follow.

Improve Search Engine Ranking BONUS Minutes: Content Sharing

If you finished the list early, the next big step would be to create some website content that is worth sharing with others on social media and social bookmarking sites. When people share a link to your website because you provided something useful to them or that they think will be useful to others, it is extremely valuable to your search engine ranking. (Hint: Something like this article. ;-))

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Enterprise SEO Services: How Enterprise Justify SEO Cost

Enterprise SEO Sounds Great: But What is Enterprise?

I often find myself visiting with everything from small emerging SEO clients to mid-market SEO clients and large enterprise SEO clients. A commonality I find is that each of them have a hard time justifying the initial cost of SEO services, but I want to help explain how they are able to do so. In each instance, there is a clear understanding that they need SEO. After all, it is what makes them visible to more people searching to buy what they sell. Let’s not get silly and start questioning whether SEO works or not.

We surely all know that SEO provides an excellent return on investment when it is done just right. If you don’t know this already, there are a squillion solid case studies to back it up. If you are reading this, you know very well that it works. I wrote this and SEO’d it for you, and now you are here to read it, so let’s not be coy. You want more people to see your brand and your value proposition, and this is something that enterprise search engine optimizers do well. The challenge lies in how to justify the stroke of a pen that puts your money into the SEO’s bank account. So let’s look at that and consider how everything from the enterprise SEO service level all the way down to a “let’s fail fast and get it over with” marketing budget is justified.

What is Enterprise SEO?

Let us first look at the term, enterprise SEO. What does it really mean? Somehow the word enterprise has been used to define an elite level of businesses that spend a lot of money on marketing and have thousands of employees in huge skyscrapers. Let’s put that definition of enterprise to bed right now, and start looking at this a bit differently. I like the definition provided by Princeton University which states as follows:

Enterprise: “a purposeful or industrious undertaking (especially one that requires effort or boldness)”

Using this definition, it seems more obvious how we can categorize SEO and create a description of “enterprise SEO” as opposed to other SEO … call it “hobby SEO” or maybe “wasteful SEO”. This is because, as the definition describes, it is a “purposeful or industrious undertaking”, which is too often not the case at all with SEO. I often witness huge errors when the initial cost of SEO overrides the value of good SEO. I mean, let’s consider this: If you are shopping around for search engine optimization services, are you likely to look for the SEO with the highest cost, or the one with the lowest cost? If you do not recognize this as an absurd question, you should. If low cost is the biggest deciding factor, you have it all wrong. Instead, I want you to imagine seeking the search engine optimizer with a better strategy and a bid that you can justify to yourself, your company board members, your wife, or whomever you answer to.

Tragically, the initial cost of SEO is a big factor to a lot of people, while the “effort or boldness” part of the enterprise definition is devalued due to fear of loss overriding expectation of gain … even when it is substantiated with logic. I stand behind what I said in the article “Fear Affects Success in Marketing More Than Logic“, because I know from experience that it is true.

Common View of Enterprise SEO

Considering a common view of enterprise SEO, it is easy to imagine a team of bright and creative marketers gathered in a meeting room providing consultation to the big company’s internal SEO staff. They craft plans based on a lot of facts and figures, they meet repeatedly to define objectives, they strategize at great length, and they carve out a huge piece of marketing budget justified by real-world estimates based on known variables. Then it is time for implementation on a grand scale to put all of those great plans into profit-producing action.

Enterprise SEO starts to look really costly, but the risks also start to look smaller with all of that valuable data and planning. Most people agree that search engine optimization would be a whole lot easier to justify in this scenario of the enterprise-level SEO campaign. After all, it is no longer a unicorn hunting expedition or an elf-chase … it is a real-world Internet marketing campaign. Large enterprises like Amazon.com, Intel, Pepsi, and eBay would not spend all of that time, effort, and money if it did not improve their bottom line. An important question is how to bridge the huge gap between your efforts and enterprise-level SEO efforts responsibly and without waste?

Bridging Unicorn Hunting SEO and Enterprise SEO

A big difference between the large-scale enterprise SEO campaign and lower-level efforts is how far it is pushed to the point of diminishing return. Let’s look at the bell curve and understand that enterprise SEO strives to reach the top of the curve or a little beyond, while cautious SEO is generally at the very bottom of the curve before the big rise. In any market, and in any medium, there is a point of optimum value to the company. While many smaller or fearful companies are out to “test the water” with their SEO campaign, the bold and purposeful enterprise is pushing forward as closely to the point of diminishing return as possible with their SEO, and often just a little beyond it. All the while, the cautious company is often only reaching the beginning of the curve and wasting time and money. In the process of either instance, much efficiency is lost along the way. There must be a good balance, and reaching that balance is where SEO is most successful.

The reality is that either level of SEO includes largely the same processes, while one is a matter of taking it to a higher “enterprise level”. At the enterprise level, the data samples get larger, the depth of market research is greater, the manpower is increased, and the action steps are more defined, but it requires the same overall steps and makes use of the same or similar skills and tools. Most waste occurs by failing to optimize the optimization.

Too minimal effort with SEO is the most common problem I find with companies. When they barely reach the edge of the bell curve, it is easy to give up early and assume it was all a waste of time and money. This is all because it was not performed with the “effort or boldness” within that definition of enterprise.

I see it more often than not that SEO proposals are dreadfully flawed on the side of what appears to be caution. It seems so much easier to ask for a smaller dollar amount and present a low-cost (and therefore low-results) plan. The same problem is seen by companies going to a bank for a loan and seeking too small amount of money. They are often turned down because their plan is flawed by seeking too small of an investment. If you doubt this, just ask any Small Business Administration financial assistance person, accountant, or commercial loan officer about downsides of underestimating. Businesses trying to work with too small of dollar amounts are very often doomed to fail, and all because they equate less money with less risk. In the real world, it just isn’t this way. Thinking too small is a common precursor to failure. You can take my word for it and save yourself the trouble, or you can go down that ugly path of failure and learn the hard way. Just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.

Enterprise SEO Means Less Risk

Companies of all sizes are more fearful than ever to implement effective marketing including SEO, because it requires money … scarce, elusive, and coveted money. So what often happens is that SEO companies, realizing their market, will give in and offer what companies say they want, whether it is the right answer for the client or not. In these instances, the SEO will address the client’s fears and misunderstanding about the business of search engine optimization, and capitalize on those fears by assuring them that even a minimal effort will do a lot to help. The problem here is that the minimized efforts often do not even begin the climb up the bell curve of successful market reach, and will leave the client disappointed by a lack of results. It is hard to call it an outright scam when it is what the client asks for, but it is hard to view it as ethical when it is not providing the best solution for the client.

Attempting to equate lower dollar amounts with lower risk is an easy mistake to make, but also a frequent cause of failure. Thinking bigger like the enterprise in the huge skyscraper is a good start. After all, every enterprise SEO client started somewhere, and they did not grow by thinking small.

*Photo Credit to David Shankbone
via Wikipedia.

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13 Reasons to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

It seems that the whole world is coming down pretty hard on BP these days. The company has been in a spotlight of bad press, but is all of the negativity really called for? I think it is time that we all take a moment and look at the bright side. Let us look at these reasons the BP oil spill is really not all that bad after all. I think we should go easier on BP and stop being so darn negative, so I have come up with a list of thirteen reasons we should give BP a break. In order to emphasize my points, I have included videos for your review and consideration. I also want to invite you to share your ideas.

Reason One to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: The Animals Were Dying Anyway

Those fish, birds, turtles, and other wildlife were going to die anyway. Nothing lives forever. Heck, most of these animals would just be eating each other if not for the oil spill. BP practically did them a favor. Who wants to be eaten?

Reason Two to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: It Was Not BP’s Accident

Just take it from BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward. As Mr. Hayward said, “It wasn’t our accident.” So there you have it. Get off their back!

Reason Three to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Tragedy Makes People Stronger

What does not kill you makes you stronger. Those people in Louisiana will thank BP someday. BP is just helping to toughen them up. Besides, they are providing alternate jobs to fishermen, and does anybody really like fishing? Why are these people so ungrateful? In the end, they will have more strength than they ever thought they would have. Didn’t Hurricane Katrina teach us anything? Some people called Katrina a disaster, too, but BP knows better.

Reason Four to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: The Spill Was “Relatively Tiny”

The explosion happened way out at sea. It is not like it happened in downtown Los Angeles. Besides, as BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward said “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean.” In fact, he said this spill is “relatively tiny”, so why do people keep making such a big deal out of this?

Reason Five to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: It Got Grannies to Say “Friggin” and “Suck”

The Deepwater Horizon disaster got grannies to say things we may otherwise never see. I mean, how funny is it so hear an old lady say “friggin”. Is the humor worth nothing to you people?

Reason Six to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: All the New Jobs

It may have cost a bunch of oil workers their jobs, but look at all the cleanup, legal, and public relations opportunities it has created. See, and all this time you thought this was just a disaster.

Reason Seven to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: BP Makes Greece Look Healthy

Considering that the expected cost of BP’s oil cleanup and lawsuits far exceeds the amount of money Greece seeks from the International Monetary Fund, it should make us all feel better. After all, a lot of people are complaining about bailing out Greece, but it starts to seem like only a small amount of money when you compare it to BP’s upcoming losses.

Reason Eight to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Politicians Reveal Themselves

The Deepwater Horizon disaster helped to uncover where politicians stand. It often shows how stupid they are.

Reason Nine to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Diversion of Bad Press

BP chief executive Tony Hayward now has a worse approval rating than Barrack Obama, Sarah Palin, or Toyota. Somebody had to take the heat off. BP helped divert millions of eyes from other screwups. I mean, does Toyota really seem so messed up now?

Reason Ten to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: More Socialism for USA

This may not seem like a win for anybody with a sound mind, but it sure is a windfall for some idiots. With so many Americans looking for ways to become a socialist nation, this greatly expands opportunities for the government to run more business. Some have even suggested USA government seize BP the way President Harry Truman took over steel mills during the Korean War. With deeper roots into private industry … the oil industry … this could be a huge windfall for big government.

Reason Eleven to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Conspiracy Theory

If we never had something so extreme as oil spills or terrorist attacks, how else would we ever uncover all of the USA government’s plans to destroy the world and kill all its inhabitants through the decades?

Reason Twelve to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Fun With Nukes

Maybe you think it is silly, but just think about how infrequently we get to blow stuff up with nuclear explosions. Never mind any side effects, at least it could stop the oil spill. Besides, consider the great stories we could tell our grandkids about the three headed fish and how we saw it all get started.

Reason Thirteen to Give BP a Break About Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Tony Hayward Wants His Life Back

Tony Hayward just wants his life back. Shouldn’t we respect the wishes of such a powerful man, after all?

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Is Your Marketing Microcosm Too Micro?

This is not just about thinking bigger, but more about thinking outside of what you know … or rather, what you think you know. This is not an attack against you, or it must be attack against me, too. The fact is that we plain and simply do not know how much we do not know. Until we know it, and address those important but unknown issues, we stand to suffer many losses.

Some people will term it “thinking outside the box” but that is not natural for most people, and it can certainly hold its dangers in office politics. Let’s face it, independent and creative thinking is not encouraged enough. Most people think the way they are told to think. After all, that is most of what proper schooling is about. I respect the way Albert Einstein observed it with his statement as follows:

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

–Albert Einstein

It is hard to believe this occurs in a time with such great communication and collaboration tools, but it is quite common. Just consider how many times a creative person is suspected of gunning for the boss’ job and gets kneecapped for having great ideas. Even when this is not the case, it is often feared to be reality, or there are fears of not receiving proper recognition. Most companies hate to admit this, but a lot of great thoughts never make it up the flagpole because of a culture like I describe here, or somebody mediocre shot it down prematurely. Maybe it is because the decision makers do not understand the value, they are threatened, or otherwise just can’t get their head out of that box. Whatever the case, I know that it exists, because I see it all the time. Companies create their own misery, and the same thing happens in companies from one employee to thousands of employees. It is often a case of not knowing what they do not know, and it stunts their growth … often very badly.

The Tragedy of Projecting Your Own Beliefs

The fact that we do not know how much we do not know about our potential customers and their way of thinking can be tragic. It is so simple to think we have a good picture of them, but a very common fact is that we project our own lives and ideas onto them. When we think we know what they want, or what they should want, it gets in the way … badly! For example, I recall roughly 20 years ago selling cars to supplement three companies I was getting off the ground at the same time. I was pouring everything I could into those companies, and thank goodness. Two were pretty big hits for me.

At the time, I did not really relate to buying high dollar cars. Later, as life changed and I started buying nicer cars, I started seeing things differently. I realized signs of mistakes I had made back then by projecting my own thoughts or lifestyle. I have witnessed it from salespeople who were shy to ask for the sale or to ask for their reasonable profit, because they could not see themselves in my position, as the customer. I like buying nice things. I like cars and motorcycles … a lot. I have spent well over half a million on cars in a given year. I recall making a believer of a sales manager when I purchased three Corvettes, and a Cadillac Escalade from him. He learned to ask for the money when I came to buy cars that range from $60-80,000 each, and I admire him for it. I wanted those fine things, and even though it was not something that made a lot of sense in his life, he realized it made perfect sense in my life. You see, he stopped second-guessing the sale by projecting his life onto customers, and he did a lot more business for it.

You Know Your Market, But Could You Know More?

I am a marketing guy. I work with clients every day who think they know their market. To some degree, they do … they must, or they would not be in business at all. Would it surprise you to hear an opinion that the majority of businesses are really far off the mark where it comes to the most valuable resources for growing their business? This is not just something that struck me today. No, not at all. This is something that I have learned in over two decades of marketing experience and studies.

It is astonishingly true for many companies that a more refined look at their own marketplace is simply impossible from within. They need outside eyes, and new ideas. They do not have the means to reach beyond their microcosm … their little box where they are comfortable. I consider the locker scene from “Men in Black” or “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Seuss. These are good examples of not seeing beyond a small microcosm and realizing things from the other side.

Unless a company is enjoying a huge burst of market share increase, they can generally make big improvements. Come on, we can agree on this point, right? Even in instances of a dwindling market, if a business is not growing but yet somebody else in the industry getting bigger, there is some reason. Would you like to guess the most common reason? I hope you guessed marketing, because it is true that if a company reaches the right people, at the right time, with the right message, and there is a sufficient value proposition, their business will grow.

Marketing … really good marketing makes a difference, but that often requires an uncomfortable look beyond what a business thinks. It means thinking outside of themselves. It all sounds simple, but I have seen it a squillion times that a whole room of marketers will all turn pale and their mouths get dry when you show them how wrong they were. Although it often feels like lightning just cracked through the room, the reality is that it is often far more subtle differences that make the big difference.

It means taking the uncomfortable look outside of what you know. It means knowing that if you do not know it, you had better find somebody who does, and is willing to share it with you. It means finding that lightning and bottling it.

In the end, it often means getting a clean set of untarnished eyes to stand outside the box and help drag you out to see what you could not see before. It should not be a surprise to learn that one of the distinct advantages of a marketing consultant it that they are not already contaminated by what cannot be done, or what a client thinks cannot be done.

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aWebGuy.com Podcast: Get It How You Like It!

Check one, check two … check check. Can you hear me? Hey, we have sound!

I am a writer. I write like I speak … no, not hoarse from all the late nights and cigarettes. I mean fast, frequently, and often at length. Editors have sometimes said that I can write faster than they can read. Since I often write long articles, I have decided to offer another option to take in the information here at aWebGuy.com … a podcast.

It seems funny to me that this comes directly on the heels of an article I wrote only yesterday about the power of written words. Fortunately, I love to talk, too. Just get me on the phone sometime and see how easily a couple minutes can turn into a couple hours.

I have considered providing a video version of the aWebGuy.com blog, which I may still do, but an audio podcast has other advantages. Not the least of the advantages is that I can look dreadful and you will never know it unless I tell you. Besides, if you really want to see my face, it is spread liberally across the Internet anyway. It will not be too hard to find.

My podcast will probably not have a whole lot of fancy mixing and sound effects. I do not plan to re-record it over and over to get it just right. If I slurp coffee or choke on a cigarette, I will just leave it there. I am very accustomed to being live on video. I have produced a nine day live webcast from a car, I have webcasted at 170 miles per hour (270 KPH), I have a weekly live social webcast, and even chased down tornadoes on live video. I should be able to hold it together for a tiny little podcast without embarrassing myself too greatly, right?

I invite you to check out the podcast. I plan to record one to cover each blog article. I hope you will enjoy the flexibility and I welcome your input.

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