What’s the point of Social Media?
There is a point, its just not a point that fits all companies.  The idea is that in social networking circles where someone you know has someone they know that might possiblyknow of someone you’d like to talk to about possible business it’s a way that you can hook up rather than if you just made the call out of the blue.  In the not so old days, this was called personal business referrals.

If you are looking for a job, LinkedIn might be a good bet.  You review the contacts you are first tier with and then look at who they know in their first tier (your second tier) and so on and so on….until you find a connection that may help you to get into a company or find out if they are hiring and get that contact to introduce you etc. etc.

We will spend the next few blogs exploring the opportunities or lack of opportunities out there today in social networking for average Joe clients.  We will also provide you with some need to know information and tips so that the next time you are asked by anyone if you “Tweet, Facebook or Blog” you will be in a position to know exactly what it why you do and what value it adds to  your company.

 Here are some of the benefits as per Google: at you can do with Subscribed Links:

1. Create search results specific to your product, service, or expertise.
2. Design a basic version in minutes to see how it works.
3. Build a dynamic version using XML, TSV, or RSS files or feeds.
4. Include images in your Subscribed Links.
5. Include gadgets in your Subscribed Links.
6. Test your Subscribed Links interactively and get debugging messages.
7. Define query patterns using lists of keywords or regular expressions.
8. Invoke the calculator to help construct your results.

Business owners can benefit by organic search results because searchers skip over paid advertising more than not.  People don’t want to be “sold to” but would rather look “to buy” something.  So why are there countless companies out there trying to sell local business owners on a one dimension solution with pay per click advertising? 

The local search market is different than the general search market.  SEO for local business’ should provide you with quality optimization (on-page) as well as a well rounded submission, social networking and ranking service (off page).

Reviews are very important!  As a business owner, you should have your SEO company provide you with an easy to access URL so that you can encourage your customers to write an online review. Business’s receiving these types of reviews and details about their services, food or operations will tend to rank higher in the search results.

Get your own domain name! Your business will benefit in the rankings over those businesses who do not have their own URL.  This is a simple process that does not need to cost a lot of money or take a lot of time.  A one page informational site with directions and clearly marked address and phone number will suffice.

Be linked with other related businesses or professional organizations, these quality links will increase your rankings as well.

Quality Content Wins Over Quantity Content!  Make sure your site content addresses what your customers most want to know.  Affordable hair styles, painless dentistry, 5 star restaurant, 22 years in business etc. Place what you do at the top of the content.

If you take the time to present your business to the potential customers searching for your type of services online - you will increase your business.

For any questions or comments contact Top SEO Marketing, Inc. a leading provider of organic search marketing and local search marketing services.

By now you may be wondering what this has to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Top SEO Marketing’s core focus of search marketing.  It reminds me of all the people I’ve met who told me stories about the disappointing results they received after they paid their web design company additional dollars for “search marketing”.   Business leaders who only thought they knew what search was all about - and web designers who presented on the right “sound point keywords” to appear as an authority.  Together this ill planned and ill equipped venture was a bit fishy from the start.  Expectations high, the CEO begins to plan on how bes to handle the leads the “optmization” will produce.    Not too long after writing a check out to the web design turned SEO expert, the CEO begins to feel as though he’ll never get a nibble to his web site from search.  Instead of pulling in qualified leads, up pops the snake!  When questioned, the newly minted SEO person tells you its Google’s fault, not theirs.

When you go fishing you expect to see a fish on the end of your line.  When you go to hire an SEO company, make sure you can tell the diference between a fish and a snake.  If you do get burnt by an SEO company, do not think all SEO companies are the same.  Don’t throw in all the equipment, let us show you what we have accomplished for other bsinesses simlar to yours and what we believe it will take to make a credible lead generation tools from your web site,  www.topseomarketing.com

Call us for a free site evaluation today!

Local businesses might view search engine optimization as useful for larger sites, companies who sell products online, not a local dentist, medical center or career counselor.  While its true that SEO makes a huge difference for larger businesses by driving qualified traffic to their web sites, local search marketing is designed to drive traffic into your brick and mortar location.

You can add Google Friend Connect to your web site as well as to your blog …here’s an excerpt from the Google site: 

Build your community
Anyone can join your site and discover other members by using information from a variety of services, including Google, Yahoo, Twitter, AOL, orkut, and Plaxo, strengthening your community as visitors become members.

To get your copy and paste code, just click on the following link - Google Friend Connect

Next post we’ll discuss how best to utilize SEO with social networking.

Basically, in a survey from 112 respondents, senior marketing executives have found that the most effective methods for getting conversions were:

• search engine optimization
• pay per click (PPC) and
• email tactics

The least effective?  Ad networks and video ads.

For managed search engine optimization, pay per click, targeted search engine optimization and local search engine marketing - contact Top SEO Marketing today.  www.topseomarketing.com

Domain Theft: The Set Up

A lot of businesses are not technical.  They don’t need to be, or they don’t have time to sit down and study all the intricacies of the internet that we, as internet professionals have done.  They oftentimes select a web development company and assume a certain ethical standard exists never thinking about the repercussions of allowing them to set up everything - soup to nuts, including registering their domain name.  It should be understood that these web development/host companies are acting on behalf of their clients.  However that is not always the case.

The Domain Heist

Set up complete, now fast forward to the point where the business decides to go in another direction by hiring a new design company and internet marketing company to provide them with a new site branding and greater visibility within the search engine organic rankings.  The new company requests a transfer of the domain name from the registrar who in turn can not release the domain name unless the first web developer who originally registered it gives permission.   This should be an easy transfer and to be honest, it happens most of the time.  But most should not allow you to sleep better at night if you have a similar situation.  In this case, all requests were ignored by the previous web developer.  While the owner was listed as my client - the billing/admin/technical contact was not - so my client did not receive the renewal notice, however they were doing a routine check to make sure all domains were in their name and found the main site domain that was coming up for renewal - had already been renewed.  Renewed with the ownership changed over to the previous web developer.  After several attempts to contact this individual directly, they were finally able to talk with a 3rd party representing the web developer only to find out that the developer wanted $20,000.00 before he would turn over something that wasn’t his in the first place back over to the rightful owners.  Something that should have been done when the registrar logged in and sent the request in the first place!  It is exhortation in my book - though I’m not a lawyer I do know when something stinks to high heaven!!

Damage To Internet Marketing & Repercussions:

We had just spent six months working on the site to increase the visibility of our client with this domain.  All efforts going to consolidate multiple domains that had sporadic rankings and no clear branding and turning it into a site both relevant and reputable within their industry as well as the way it was viewed by Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines.  While the site was still up on the primary domain, no longer owned by our clients - we all knew it was simply a matter of this fellow changing the DNS pointers.  (For non techs think of it as someone going to the post office and filling out the forms re-directing all your mail to their business.)

To pay $20,000 was beyond ridicules.  Afterall, this isn’t the Old West - Cybersquatters can be held accountable.  Owners are given more leeway today in order to make sure this type of thing doesn’t occur during a renewal period - it’s even more destructive under these circumstances.

A bit of history.  Domain sniping was popular a few years back prior to the Redemption Grace Procedure (RGP) being enacted.  In the case where a business accidently lets their domain name expire, there is a grace period that enables them to correct the mistake.  Fortunately hosting companies like GoDaddy or eNom retain names for auction through services such as TDNAM or Snapnames allowing for the domain to go up for auction.  In this case, there was no lapse in renewal - prior to renewal coming due, the web developer stole the domain and unethically removed the rightful owner from the registrar.

The Domain Name Lesson

There are remedies, and in this case the web developer will be notified that his actions have forced the rightful owners to file a claim with ICANN. Domain name disputes involving alleged bad-faith registration are typically resolved using the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy (UDRP) process developed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).   If you are a victim of a domain theft, you may also file an InterNIC Registrar Problem Report regarding a cybersquatter posing as a registrar.

The lesson is clear - do not trust the registering or renewal of your domain name to some 3rd party.  Always be responsible for ownership and make sure that you keep track of your domain and renew your domain early.  From an SEO point of view, all the work we did would be lost.  The linking and associations would all have to be contacted and switched from the branded site to a less than optimum seondary domain name.  The time lost will cost our clients a lot of potential business in addition to the alleged “exhortation payment” requested by this unethical web developer. 

Click here for more information about Cybersquatting.  If you have any questions on how to protect your search engine optimization and branding efforts when moving to a new domain, please give us a call and we will be happy to work with you.  If you are a web developer looking for a way to make some fast cash by taking advantage of unsuspecting clients - we urge you to think again, the fines and damages may cost you a lot more than you tried to exhort!

The above example is basically a net meeting, presentation that shows you how best to bid keywords on a pay per click campaign.  Interesting in that we also utilize YouTube when our clients want to gain the most visibility from a video.  Rather than embedding the video on their site, we now upload the video to YouTube (space limitation equal to roughly ten minutes) and then embed the YouTube code onto our client’s site.  This way we can optimize the video within YouTube which will hopefully expose our clients information to a larger interested audience.  We can also add it to several sites should they have multiple domains, without worrying about duplicating any content.

If you have a video, you may want to direct your webmaster to upload the video on YouTube optimized with very specific keywords that are directly related to what is discussed on the video.