Defining The Many Online Marketing Terms

There are so many different terms that communicate marketing on the web – from online and internet marketing to search engine optimisation. This can all become very confusing for an individual that is not well acquainted with the industry. So, what are the differences between an internet marketing service and SEO?

I am going to first explain what I believe the two terms to mean – feel free to comment below if you have any differing ideas;

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the practice of improving a websites search engine rankings. With the aim of ensuring that the business holds position one on page one, for their chosen key phrases.

Internet Marketing – an umbrella term that encompasses a range of practices related to improving a business’s presence online. This could include e-mail marketing, social media and other such techniques.

Although not entirely comprehensive, I think that these short explanations communicate the main differences – SEO is focussed upon having a presence within the search engines whilst internet marketing is related to appearing across the web as a whole.

Just some of the techniques that an SEO consultant may use include article marketing, press release writing and distribution, directory submissions and link building. Whereas an individual that is offering an internet marketing service may offer search engine optimisation, plus e-mail marketing and social media marketing.

Essentially, internet marketing ensures that a business covers all of its bases online. This is extremely important as making a profit is the most important outcome for a business owner. By investing in combined SEO and internet marketing, businesses can ensure that they have a presence in the search engines, in their clients’ inboxes and on their networking profiles.

Of course, many companies that would traditionally just offer SEO understand this and have developed somewhat over recent years. Many now combine SEO with the above internet marketing services.

What would you consider to be the main differences between an internet marketing service and SEO? Do you think that having a presence elsewhere on the web is as important as featuring highly in the search engines?

What Can Social Bookmarking Websites Offer As Part Of An SEO Campaign?

At the South by Southwest Interactive Conference last week, a new version of a popular social bookmarking website was revealed to be in the pipeline. Digg is the first choice for SEO consultants and casual internet users alike, as it is the perfect platform for both saving and publicising websites and their content.

With the online social world moving at such a fast pace, it seems only right that Digg should reinvent itself. After all, with SEO consultants seeing increased benefits in social bookmarking, there has been a significant rise in the number of social bookmarking websites claiming to be the next best thing. If you search for ‘social bookmarking sites’ in Google, there are lists of hundreds of social bookmarking websites.

Social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious and Mixx offer a number of benefits as part of an SEO campaign. Below are the main reasons why I think consultants should make use of these sites;

Inbound Links – Link building is one of the primary techniques used by optimisers. Links that point to a particular URL will gain attention from search engine robots. The more quality inbound links that a website has, the more authority that it achieves in the eyes of search engine such as, Google, Bing and Yahoo.  This can benefit a website in a number of ways; its page rank may increase, which could in turn push the website up the search engine listings to the prime, page one position one spot.

Of course, no inbound link is quite the same. More authority is likely to be achieved if a link is from a relevant site with a high page rank. For example, if building links for a home furnishings company, it would be beneficial to add the link to a ‘home’ section of a social bookmarking website.

Wide Audience – Search Engine Optimisation has developed rapidly over the past few years and whilst link building is still an important technique, consultants are increasingly concerned with reaching out to not just the search robots, but real internet users.

Social bookmarking is a means of publicising a website and its content. It allows audiences to learn more about the latest trends, news and opinions. With an audience of many thousands using Digg on a daily basis, it offers an opportunity for websites to be seen amongst the crowd.

Content Sharing – One of the main benefits of social bookmarking is that it enables users to share interesting information with their friends, family and colleagues.

If a link is interesting to a user they are likely to add it to their own list of bookmarks or even re-post it on their social networking news feed. Used alongside social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, websites and their content could reach an extremely large audience in just days – or even hours in some cases.

Social bookmarking offers a number of benefits to an SEO campaign, as a key tool there is no doubt that the new Digg will offer a whole host of new features to search engine optimisers. I hope that it provides a wider range of categories to post under, what do you hope that the new design and features will offer to users?

Entering a new market for any business is never easy, and starting a new SEO campaign on a brand new website is no exception.  Any good SEO campaign will be geared towards Google to ensure the site receives the best possible exposure in the search engines. However, it can be a tricky procedure, as Google (though they’ve never publicly said this, only hinted at it) has what is known as a ‘sandbox’.

The name ‘sandbox’ stems from people using juvenile SEO techniques such as buying links from link farms, creating duplicate content and other ‘childish’ black hat techniques. Basically these sites are literally ‘put back in the sandbox’ with the other children!

What do I do if I think my site has been Sandboxed?

Don’t panic! – If you think your site has been sandboxed, the natural reaction may well be to fret over it and send yourself mad with worry. This needn’t be the worst thing in the world, I always say, if you can turn adversity into fortune then you’re in for a stress free, successful life!

Sit back, and look at things objectively, there are things that can be done to help you get some business, even if it’s not going to be as effective as the possibility of catching those high value keywords you originally wanted to target.

Look at your keywords, and try and think ‘outside the box’ – see if you can find some keywords that, although are less popular, will still bring you traffic and sales. Start link building slowly for those phrases, it will, over time strengthen your campaign so isn’t a waste of time at all.

Look at the Longtail. Longtail keywords can be extremely powerful for conversion, and should be incorporated into all SEO campaigns anyway. Build up your content with relevant articles and pages written expressly for this purpose. Your site will be healthier and stronger when finally released from the sandbox, so this is most definitely the way forward.

Search out ‘authority’ links, such as DMOZ, industry standard sites, Fortune 500 sites etc. Also .gov .edu domains can provide relief from the sandbox filter as these are highly trusted sites and are usually exempt from the sandbox.

Think away from Google – often I find my sites perform extremely well on Yahoo and Bing, but start out slow in Google. Although traffic from less widely used search engines will always be much reduced than what you would expect from Google, these search engines shouldn’t ever be overlooked.

Look at generating traffic through social media marketing. Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming more widely used, and could overtake Google in popularity. You can generate traffic and sales opportunities by using this different approach. There may even be a social media platform related to your industry.

Think about email marketing. If you have a list of existing customers, send them a newsletter telling them about your new site. Always give them the option to unsubscribe – otherwise you could run the risk of losing your existing customers, which would be entirely counterproductive.

If your site has been sandboxed, it can take up to 8 months to be released. However, if you do all the things mentioned above it should perform almost straight away when it is finally released.

You will have a lot of content published on your site targeting the longtail. These pages will still be there, working away for you as long as they remain on your site. Your time will not have been wasted! You may even find that the conversion rate from these pages is higher over time than that from the highly competitive keywords originally picked.

Have you ever heard of D-Moz?

I’m sorry I don’t listen to hip-hop…

Dmoz isn’t some bling covered rapper from across the Atlantic, I’m sure most people actually assume this when they hear the word…No? Just me then.

If you’re just starting out in the world of SEO (as I was a couple of weeks ago) then you may be unsure as to what Dmoz is.

Dmoz is actually an abbreviation of the original domain for the Open Directory Project (ODP), the largest human-edited directory on the internet.

In brief, Dmoz is a global directory with a vast number of categories, including websites regarding:

• Technology museums.
• Welding and soldering.
• Sporting eyewear protection.
• Bowling for gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
• And, much, much more.

I don’t think I’m dabbling in hyperbole when I say Dmoz contains directories of every imaginable thing, and every unimaginable thing!*

If you speak a couple of languages why not help Dmoz out by translating a directory or two into one of the many languages used.

To keep the behemoth from collapsing under it’s own volume a dedicated team of editors (somewhere in the region of 8,000) trim the fat and keep the system operating as smoothly as possible.

Although the site is free it’s owned by Netscape who are committed to a social contract which aspires to keep the site free and give back to the (internet) community.

With regards to SEO, a listing on Dmoz is essential, it’s a given, a standard for websites.  If your site isn’t on Dmoz then you’ve never heard of it until now or…I can’t think of another reason without insulting people, so let’s just leave it at one reason.

Google acknowledged Dmoz’s importance allowing it to command a high PageRank, therefore giving weight via backlinks to listed websites and making it vital for websites to be listed.

This is from the about page on Dmoz, and sums up the project more concisely than I could: “ODP editors are Web searchers creating a directory for other Web searches”.

Dmoz is for the people, and by the people.

Written By Robert Greenhill, Creare’s newest SEO recruit

*Yeah, fine, I dabbled

Will This Feature Reinvent Search Engine Optimisation?

Recently Google Social Search was put into the public domain after extensive beta testing at the tail-end of last year. After performing a Google search, this new feature finds relevant public content from your web social circle and highlights it at the bottom of the traditional results page. Many observers are asking the question – what does this mean for SEO?

While there may be a few changes in how search engine optimisation is performed, the reality is that the jury is still out. The first flaw with the feature is that users must be logged into a Google mail account for the social results to be presented. This is because it only picks up social network connections that are linked to users’ public Google profiles, such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Linked In, blogs and even images from Picasa and Flickr.

The second area of concern is the lack of Facebook presence in Google Social Searches. This particular social network is considered to be the biggest in the UK, if not the world. But it is essentially closed off to search engine spiders, meaning potentially optimised material will stay private. This is clearly going to have a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of Google Social Search, and needs to be rectified before it can be considered as a major force for the SEO industry.

What are the advantages?

It has to be pointed out however that Google Social Search could open so many doors for the SEO industry. To have so much social content in one place is obviously a powerful tool. The ability to build a large-scale network of friends, friends of friends and business associates will enable greater linking opportunities, and also provides new rankings to ‘exploit’. Viral content, such as Michael Angrave’s SEO Song, will spread like wildfire, and grow at a greater rate than ever before.

The bottom line remains the same – quality content is still king. As outlined in a recent blog post ‘Social Media Marketing for SEO’, by contributing material that is relevant and interesting you will identify yourself as someone to link with.

Once Google Social Search has had its flaw ironed out and moves into the wider public sphere, it is likely to become a tool for SEO firms to take advantage of. So get networking!