Geo-Targeted Microsites and SEO

The great thing about the "Internets" and Internet Marketing is that you can be as creative as you would like with your strategy to grow brand awareness, customer loyalty, sales and leads.  As long as you stay within the accepted (white-hat) rules of SEO, web design conventions and track your campaigns you will be able to measure your success (or lack thereof).

As our populace grows more comfortable and gains experience with utilizing search engines their queries are becoming more and more sophisticated.  SEO and internet marketing professionals are keenly aware of this.  Long-tail search phrases or phrases that contain a geo-location (area, city, county, state, region) are becoming more and more prevalent.  Because of this, businesses that offer products and services in multiple cities are faced with the challenge of getting their website to come up for geo-specific keyword searches utilizing SEO.

Trying to optimize a website to come up in search for multiple locations utilizing SEO is difficult to do, even with a robust geo-targeted landing page strategy.  This is because your website, on the whole, will be oversaturated with city names.  When Google spiders your site it may become confused as to what location is the most important to rank you for.  Should you have a competitor in one of the cities you wish to rank for that is only in that city and they have an optimized website, they will more than likely come up higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) than you.  What's the best strategy to overcome this challenge?  Geo-Targeted Microsites.

Rather than optimizing one main website to come up for multiple geo-specific searches consider building several mini or micro-sites with unique URLs targeted for specific local search queries in your internet marketing campaign.  If it's done on the right technology platform and optimized properly it can be affordable and highly effective.  The affordability comes from recycling the webdesign across your microsites.  This methodology will increase your company's SOV (share of voice), leads and ultimately sales.  It's also a strategy that I have successfully deployed and tracked over the last 16 months while reaping the benefits of the hundreds of leads the strategy has provided.  Below are the search engine results achieved by deploying highly optimized geo-targeted microsites.

Geo-Targeted Keyword Phrase:  Fort Wayne Web Design

Strategy:  Microsite and SEO

Geo-Targeted Keyword Phrase:  Indianapolis Web Design

Strategy:  Microsite and SEO

Geo-Targeted Keyword Phrase:  Warsaw Web Design

Strategy:  Microsite and SEO

Geo-Targeted Keyword Phrase:  Elkhart Web Design

Strategy:  Microsite and SEO

On-Page SEO Conventions

Often times clients or prospective clients get discouraged when I tell them they have to write 60+ unique page titles and meta data for maximum SEO success with 60+ pages on their site.  That's a daunting task for anyone even SEO professionals.  However, over the years I have discovered a very efficient methodology for writing unique SEO strong page titles, meta keywords and meta descriptions.  Once you have a primary keyword phrase defined for your overall website and primary keyword phrases for your subpages you can easily define a repeating convention for your page titles and meta data while maintaining uniqueness for each.  Below is an example:

Overall Website and Home Page Primary Keyword Phrase:  Fort Wayne Web Design

• Title:  Fort Wayne Web Design
• Meta keywords:  Fort Wayne, web, website, design, development
• Meta description:  Fort Wayne Web Design is a full service Web Design and Internet Marketing Company serving Fort Wayne, IN.

SEO Subpage X Primary Keyword Phrase:  Fort Wayne eCommerce 

• Title:  Fort Wayne eCommerce - Fort Wayne Web Design
• Meta keywords:  Fort Wayne, Web, Design, Fort Wayne eCommerce, Services
• Meta description:  Web Design Fort Wayne eCommerce solutions and services.

SEO Subpage Y Primary Keyword Phrase:  Fort Wayne Web Hosting

• Title:  Fort Wayne Web Hosting - Fort Wayne Web Design
• Meta keywords:  Fort Wayne, Web, Design, Fort Wayne Web Hosting, Services
  
• Meta description:  Web Design Fort Wayne web hosting solutions and services.

The above examples represent a clearly defined SEO convention that offers unique page titles and meta data for every page in a website.  Since you know what the primary keyword phrase is for each page it's just a matter of replacing the keyword phrase from one subpage with the primary keyword phrase from the next subpage for successful SEO.  Below is an example:

SEO Subpage Z Primary Keyword Phrase:  XYZ ABC 

• Title:  XYZ ABC - Fort Wayne Web Design
• Meta keywords:  Fort Wayne, Web, Design, XYZ ABC, Services
• Meta description:  Web Design Fort Wayne XYZ ABC solutions and services.

You may also notice I have broken the defined SEO convention on the home page meta description.  That's a conscience decision because I know it will most likely be the most competitive keyword phrase on the search engine results page (SERPs).  As a result, I must make sure the meta description is competitive with other websites on the SERPs.   So, the finished meta description is a result of competitive research and keyword SEO.

In addition, you'll notice that the defined meta description convention includes the overall primary keyword phrase switched.  Instead of having "Fort Wayne Web Design" in the meta description it says "Web Design Fort Wayne." This is done because I know that the primary keyword phrase for the internal pages will start with the phrase "Fort Wayne." Otherwise my convention would look like this: "Fort Wayne Web Design Fort Wayne XYZ ABC solutions and services." That would make for a poor convention because it fails as a descriptive marketing phrase and reads badly.

Keyword Themes in SEO

I often get asked to search engine optimize sites that have been built and deployed already.  These projects actually take more work and resources to optimize than if the site was being built from scratch and tend to be strategically flawed sales funnels in internet marketing.  SEO should start before any line of code is written, design considered or site map developed.  SEO starts immediately after target demographics are defined and personas are developed.  Why should SEO be started before the other steps above?  The reason has to do with the on-page factor we in the SEO and internet marketing world call Keyword Themes.

Put yourself in the shoes of a search engine and consider what a website looks like to a search engine spider while the site is being indexed.  Search engine spiders are looking at source code.  What is in source code?  A whole bunch of letters, numbers and character strings that tell web browsers what and how to display a website and its functionality.  Many internet marketing professionals are not programmers and tend to forget this. 

Search engine spiders keep track of every character string it's confronted with and the number of times they're presented.  This process creates a ranked list of words for every page and is critical for SEO.  The words at the top of this list (1, 2, 3, etc.) are that page's keyword theme according to the search engine.  Each word is assigned a significance based on the search engine spider's perception of several on-page factors (i.e. placement, repetition, Page Title, Header Tags, Bolding, Alt Tags, etc.).  Once a search engine has spidered more than one page and determined the pages keyword themes it can combine the ranked keyword lists from all of the pages it's spidered to determine an overall website keyword list.  This final list shows your website's keyword theme.  Google's Webmaster Tools reports on website keyword themes:

Because of keyword themes it is very important to do a keyword workshop to create a list of keywords your potential customers may type into the search engines.  These keywords allow you to predefine what every page's theme will be and what the overall website's theme for SEO will be before it goes live.  Assign a primary keyword or phrase to every page on your website.  This assignment will drive all of the content on that page.  Otherwise, you're crossing your fingers and hoping Google ranks you for those keywords.  That is not SEO. 

In order to convince the search engines that a particular phrase should be the overall website theme it is important to make your homepage's primary keyword phrase the secondary keyword phrase for the rest of the pages in the site.  That way the overall keyword theme is well represented throughout the website and your SEO attempts will have a better chance for success.

Websites that are optimized after they are developed tend to have multiple pages with no real SEO value or don't fit within the keyword theme strategy.  These pages actually hurt your SEO and chances of high rankings because they dilute your overall website's keyword saturation with meaningless words.    

10 Effective Steps for On-Page SEO

Always keep in mind the number one rule of SEO:  Whatever you do on your website you do it for the user first.  The biggest mistake I see people make when executing any type of SEO strategy is to "skirt" the system.

If you follow the ten simple steps below Google will have a clear understanding of what your website is all about.  Whether or not Google defines you as "most relevant" (#1) is truly up to you.  If you write high quality content and follow the rules below you will have one third of the SEO equation solved (Programming, Keywords, Backlinks).

1. Choosing the right keywords for SEO

When Search Engines spider the content of your website they ascertain a lot of information. When they are done they determine a "theme" for every individual page and an overall "theme" for your website. This is important to know because search engines define your theme based on the individual words and word combinations on the each page. They also look at backlinks, but that is another article.  Self-defining these themes is called on-page SEO.

So, in order to plan a successful SEO strategy a Site Map and Keyword Workshop should be done before any development takes place. There are dozens of free keyword tools out there on the web, but I recommend Google Keyword Tool for SEO research.

Once you have done your Keyword Workshop and Site Map identify a primary and secondary keyword phrase for every page. You can have more, however you run the risk of over saturating your page and Google assigning an incorrect theme to that page or overall website. Here is an example for an internal eCommerce page of Web Design Fort Wayne.

Primary: eCommerce
Secondary: Web Design Fort Wayne

The primary keyword phrase should be different for every page. However, your secondary keyword phrase on all internal pages should be the primary keyword phrase for your home page. Your company name should never be a primary keyword phrase. If someone is looking for your company online they will find you.  Below is an example from Google Webmaster Tools showing what Google believes is the overall SEO theme for Web Design Fort Wayne.

2. Every page should have over 250 words and less than 1000 words for effective SEO.  If you find that you need more than 1000 words for a page then consider creating subpages to break up the content.  Any words over 1000 Google does not index, but ignores.

3. Your primary keyword phrase should be in the first line of your content, the middle of your content and the last line of your content for SEO.

4. Also, you want your keyword phrase to show up at a 3 - 7% saturation ratio for each page for SEO.  I recommend downloading SEO Quake.  Once you have it installed, just click the density link on the menu and it will give you a report similar to the below example.

5. Include one Heading 1 Tag with your primary keyword phrase on each page above the pages content.  The word eCommerce is the primary keyword phrase that has the H1 Tag.  It's a bigger font, bolded above the content and is important for SEO.

6. Make sure your page titles are keyword rich and every page has a different page title for SEO.  Google will "punish" you if you have identical page titles.  See Optimizing Page Titles for SEO.  In addition, don't use words that do not matter for searches (ie. a, an, the, Home Page, my, your, best, overview, industry, etc.).  This will negatively effect your SEO. Here's an example:

7. Put your primary keyword phrase on pictures using alt text.  It's the words that pop up when you hover over an image with your mouse.  These keywords become even more relevant to Google when you place the image in close proximity to the actual keyword in your content for SEO.  Warning:  Do not "Keyword Stuff." Make sure that the words are relevant to your content and the image.

8. Meta Tags

Google does NOT use the keyword meta tag for ranking. This tag has been overly abused in the past and is not a very good SEM tool these days. However, other search engines use them and should you choose not to include them or have identicle Meta Tags you can have your SEO efforts dinged.  Having said that...here's a loose list of things to remember:

• Limit Keyword list to no more than 20 targeted phrases of two or more words.
• Separate using comma with no spaces.
• Avoid repeating keywords more than 3-7 times
• Repetition up to 3 times is ok, just don't place them one after the other.
• Limit it to 1024 characters. List keywords in order of importance. Don't repeat the same keyword more than 7 times.

9.  Meta Description

Limit your Meta Description to 65 - 150 character spaces.

Google wants the Meta Description to accurately represent the web result.  They frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content.  This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.  Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve click through, they won't affect your ranking within search results for SEO.  See the snippet below.

10.  Bolding

Some keywords can be bolded to point the search engines in the right direction for SEO.  When you are writing your web content you will probably want to stress a certain word or two.  Bolding a word to make it stand out doesn't carry the same weight with search engines like a Heading tag would.  Don't discount it though, because it does matter.

Any time you stress a word and make it stand out you are also stressing that word to the search engines.  Using Bold Text should be done only when it fits into the flow of your content.  Over bolding your content can detract from the overall look of your website, make users think you're yelling at them and have a negative effect on your SEO.

Why SEO is Like Golf

1.  Miniature golf, Par 3 courses, 18 hole golf courses - The keyword phrase you're going after determines what type of course you're playing on.  Coming up number one on Google for the phrase "New York" would be like playing in the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club and winning.  However, going after the phrase "Ligonier grocery stores 24 hours" is like playing on your favorite miniature golf course, quick and easy.

2.  A perfect game is impossible - Nobody can hit 18 hole-in-ones in a row.  But, just like golf, in SEO you just have to play better than the your competitors to win.  In SEO, your competitors are the organic links on the first page of Google.

3.  Teeing off, Short Game, Putting.  A good 300 yard drive reminds me of a website launched with its on-page SEO factors carefully crafted with keywords put in all of the right places.  That's exactly how you want to start a round.  However, you still can lose if you don't pay attention to your short game (off-page factors) or putting (programming).

4.  Sand Traps - Sometimes good SEO and internet marketing professionals accidently get websites caught up in bad keyword neighborhoods, link farms or even red flagged by Google.  This is a result of losing focus and being sloppy.

5.  Mulligans, Blackhat, Cheating - SEO is no different than golf:  People cheat.  If they get caught Google will throw them out of the SERPs.  Golfers get tossed from the tour.

6.  Golf Equipment, Instruction - Ever try to shop for golf equipment online?  There's thousands of items available for sale that allow you to play the game or improve your game.  SEO and internet marketing is no different.

7.  There's no guaranteed winner - Nobody can guarantee results in SEO just like nobody is guaranteed to win in golf.  However, some people and companies can have a pretty good record of SERP placement over time.  If you're going to invest, invest in a solid track record.  I usually bet on Tiger Woods.

8.  Keyword Research, Mental Game - How often do you hear that golf is a mental game?  Even the best players in the world can have a poor round if their head isn't in it.  I've seen lots of SEO professionals do everything right in SEO, but fail because they chose the wrong keywords to go after.  Doing good keyword research and preparation for SEO and internet marketing is like having your "mind in the game" in golf.

9.  Getting good takes time - Nobody steps on a golf course for the first time and plays like a pro.  SEO is no different.  Depending on the keyword you're working on, it could take 12 or more months to see first page placement in Google.  Patience is a requirement in the SEO business.

10.  Basketball is a sport, but it's not golf - Don't expect your web designer or IT programmer to get your website to the top of the SERPs.  SEO is a completely different sport.  Nobody would expect Charles Barkley to beat Vijay Singh in a tournament.

11.  Golf Carts, Cigars and Beer - What do these have to do with SEO?  Not much, but believe it or not, SEO professionals are not a bunch of computer geeks that don't like to have fun.  If you don't believe me, attend a search conference or internet marketing after party. . .

What is a Page Title and why should you use it for SEO?

A Page Title describes the contents of your web page in one line and is very important for SEO.  It's likely to appear in search engines' results and in bookmarks.  It's also the first thing a search engine's spider sees on your page.  Since your page title will be seen by both readers and search engines, it's particularly important.  The most important keyword phrase for my business is "Fort Wayne Web Design." Below is a Page Title example using "Fort Wayne Web Design."

• HTML Page Title of "Fort Wayne Web Design:"

• Here's what the Page Title "Fort Wayne Web Design" would look like on Internet Explorer:

• Here's what the Page Title "Fort Wayne Web Design" would look like in a Google search:

Your title is the most important part of your page as far as search engines are concerned and SEO.  Google, Yahoo and Bing also support the page title tag and place a lot of importance on keywords that appear inside it.  Here are a few tips on how to make your page title tag more appealing for both SEO and people.

Using keywords in your Page Title

Don't just make your title the name of your company.  It's far more important for a page title to contain targeted keywords for SEO.  Although you may include your company's name, including keywords should be your top priority.  So, instead of "Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc.," try "Fort Wayne Web Design - Digital Hill" for SEO

Though it's important to include keywords, you shouldn't just make a list of all the keywords you come up with.  Rather, try to include them to market your services.  Avoid using common words that search engines are likely to ignore, such as "home, overview, best, etc." Additionally, geography can be very important.  Users tend to search with the name of the nearest metropolitan center in the search query.  If you only do business in Fort Wayne it should be included in your title.  For example: "Fort Wayne Web Design - Digital Hill"

Your Page Title's Length

Although all search engines allow up to 150 characters, they will only display 80 characters or so in their results listings.  To make sure that browsers and search engines display the titles of your pages correctly, limit your title to about 80 characters.  Also, the more words in the page title the more diluted you primary keywords become.

The Importance of Keyword Proximity

Keyword Proximity refers to the distance between two related keywords in SEO.  Generally speaking, the shorter the distance between two targeted words, the better that page will rank for that primary keyword phrase in the major search engines, all other variables being equal.  As an SEO example, consider the heading or title "We sell engines that are remanufactured for all makes and models of trucks made by Ford Motor Company." 

• 18 Words
• 4 Key Words - 22% keyword Density
• 2 Key Terms - Fragmented
  

The SEO keyword combinations to consider here are "remanufactured engines" and "ford trucks." Notice the distance, or proximity, between the keywords "Ford" and "trucks", the distance between "engines" and "remanufactured", and the distance between the two key phrases in relation to each other. These factors are very important to consider, especially the distance between Ford and engines.

To optimize the phrase "We sell remanufactured engines for Ford Motor Company Trucks, including all makes and models" for keyword proximity, two SEO concepts need to be addressed: keyword prominence and keyword dilution.

Keyword prominence in SEO refers to the position, sequentially, of a keyword or phrase in relation to the rest of the text in any given area.  In SEO words at the beginning of a tag, section, paragraph, heading or area are assigned a greater value than those occurring at the middle or end.  Keyword dilution in SEO refers to the effect of text in the given area that is not directly related to the key terms being targeted, or the effect that targeting multiple keywords or phrases has on each other.

Consider "Remanufactured engines for Ford Trucks." Remanufactured engines has a greater keyword prominence than Ford Trucks.  Considering that there are 4 non-stop words ("of" is a stop word that will be ignored accept in cases of exact searches) and two key phrases, the density of each phrase is 50%.  The keywords are diluted by 1/2. In the case of "Remanufactured Ford Truck Engines," Engines is reduced in importance, Ford gains in importance and remanufactured still has the greatest prominence.  Our end SEO title, by applying both prominence and proximity looks like this:

• Remanufactured Ford Truck Engines - all makes and all models.  To increase keyword density for SEO, thus reducing the dilution, the "all makes and models" can be removed; this is logic filtering (removing irrelevant text to reduce dilution and increase key term density for SEO).

Variations for key term breadth:

• Ford Truck Engines - Remanufactured
• Engines, Ford Trucks: Remanufactured
• Remanufactured Engines - Ford Trucks

The keyword density in this title would be 25% for each word, which is excellent, as each word is part of a targeted term for SEO.  The density of the key phrases is 50%, i.e. "remanufactured engines" and "Ford Trucks." The three variations above could be used to improve the key term density in the body of the page without repeating the keywords in the exact same manner.  If the site theme were remanufactured engines, then the page title: "Remanufactured Engines - Ford Trucks" or any logical variation would be ideal.  If the site theme were Ford Trucks, then an ideal page title would be: "Ford Trucks - Remanufactured Engines." If the site theme were engines, then an ideal page title would be: "Engines, Remanufactured - Ford Trucks." Proper SEO web copywriting and technical writing addresses all of these issues as a logical step in the writing process for SEO.

Your Page Title's Appearance

Don't use all CAPS in your title. Search engines hate it and it's difficult for users to read.  No one like to be yelled at and it's a bad SEO practice.

Marketing/SEO Copywriting

Aside from containing keywords, your page title needs to interest your reader in the material on your site.  If you're a webmaster with no previous marketing experience, you might want to get some help in this area from a copywriter or someone in marketing.  Keeping length in mind, review your keywords and try to come up with a title that entices the reader to learn more about your site.  Don't use marketing language such as "We're the best" or "Overview." It will only clutter your page title with stop words without adding much relevance.  Remember, if your page title is identical to the key words typed into Google, it is automatically relevant to the user.  Use your Meta Description to entice the user with marketing language.

Golden Rule for SEO

As always follow the golden rule of organic search engine optimization (SEO):  Create pages for your users, not SEO.  This means writing a descriptive and convincing page title appealing to your audience.  You can then make your page title SEO friendly by ensuring that your keywords appear in it.

Page Titles and Human Directories

Directories that are composed by human editors rather than robots, like Yahoo and DMOZ, don't care about your page title for SEO.  They do, however, care about the title you specify in their submission forms.  Each directory should let you know how long your title should be on its form.  Prepare a shorter, alternative title for directories that allow a maximum of 40 characters.

Top Ten SEO Mistakes

Over the years I've been lucky enough to audit dozens of websites for SEO and search engine visibility.  Some websites have been professionally developed, some built by a highschool kid and others built by the client.  They all had one thing in common:  The business was unsatisfied with their search engine results.  Part of doing an SEO audit is to also reverse engineering the top three websites that come up for a particular search phrase the client wished to come up for.  As a result, I've been exposed to the SEO practices of nearly 200 websites.  This competitive analysis allows for the identification of SEO weaknesses and mistakes that can be exploited in the SEO process.

Below are the Top Ten Most Common SEO Mistakes in Internet Marketing

1. Wrong keywords chosen for optimization - Do a keyword workshop before you do anything on the internet, not just SEO.  It's very important to know what people actually type into the search engines to find your products or services.  This information is critical in everything you do on the internet.  In my experience 90%+ of business owners are wrong when they define their primary keyword phrases without doing any research because they are industry insiders.
   


2. Over saturated page titles - This is a major mistake made by even SEO professionals.  The more words you put in a page title the less saturated that page title is for its primary keyword phrase.  If you want your home page to come up for "Fort Wayne Plumber" because 500 people per month search that phrase, than make your page title "Fort Wayne Plumber" and not "Fort Wayne Plumber | Company Name, Commercial, Residential - Home Page." Also, always avoid stop words like "Overview, Industry, and, the, but, etc." in SEO.
   


3. Identical page titles & meta data - Google's Webmaster Tools will report if your site has identical page titles or meta data on more than one page.  That counts as a SEO "ding" against your site.
   


4. No link building campaign - SEO has three main areas of consideration:  Programming, on-page factors and off-page factors.  Off-page factors such as incomming links from other websites are just as important to your search engine placement as the keywords in your content.  Organizations seeking top SEO placement for highly competitive keyword phrases should always deploy some type of link building strategy for SEO.
   


5. No XML Sitemap - An XML Sitemap is a file that can be submitted to all of the major search engines telling them what pages they need to spider on your site.  Idealy, you want to have a dynamic sitemap instead of a static one.  That way, if you add pages of content in the future the sitemap will automatically update itself to reflect those changes.
   


6. Forgeting about alt tags & link text - Don't forget to add content for handicapped website visitors.  The blind use text reading tools to navigate the web and alt tags tell the text readers what images and graphics are.  Link text explains to the person where a link goes to.  Google also reads this content and it can be used for SEO.
   


7. No H1's or H1's with no keywords - This is the most prevalent SEO mistake seen on most websites.  Based on my experience, a header 1 tag on a page is the second most important on-page factor for SEO.  Just like page titles you need to make sure it contains your primary keyword phrase, it's not over saturated with meaningless words and always avoid stop words.
   


8. Less than 250 words on a page - Every page should have over 250 words and less than 1000 words.  If you find that you need more than 1000 words for a page then consider creating subpages to break up the content.  Any words over 1000 Google does not index, but ignores.
   


9. Stale content - Google has a vested interest in showing the most relevant and fresh content the web has to offer.  If you never update your content it will become stale and Google will find it less relevant for its SERPs.
   


10. Under saturated content - Each search engine has their own keyword saturation recommendations for SEO.  As a rule of thumb I'm shooting for between 3% and 7% saturation.  In addition, you want to make sure you have keyword phrases in the first paragraph, middle of page and last paragraph of your content.  Below is the formula for determining keyword ratios:

*As seen in Writing for the Web:  SEO Guidelines for Copywriters 

Example:  keyword phrase = Ford Mustang Tires     
# of total words on page = 600     
# of words in keyword phrase = 3     
600 ÷ 3 = 200     
# of times key word phrase is in content = 10     
10 ÷ 200 = 5%

Social Media + SEO = Social Media Infrastructure

How do you optimize social media to come up in search with SEO?  What social media sites should I use for my business?  Won't social media take up all of my time?  These are questions I get every day and the answer is simple:  Build a Social Media Infrastructure.

1.  What is a Social Media Infrastructure?

Definition:  Social media platforms chosen for engagement and how they are connected to one another for SEO with a Blog at its base pushing content to other platforms.

2.  Why should I build a Social Media Infrastructure?

• SEO - By connecting your social media platforms via RSS, widgets and traditional backlinks you are building an SEO "keyword neighborhood" that will raise the relevancy of all of your web platforms in the infrastructure for those keywords.  The result, if properly executed, can be multiple first page results for some of the keyword phrases in your SEO "keyword neighborhood."


• Saves Time - With a Blog at the base of your infrastructure you won't have to post content on multiple platforms.  Once the infrastructure is in place you will only have to post once.


• Increases Reach, SOV and Website Referral Traffic - The more social media platforms used in the infrastructure the more people will see your content, brand and message resulting in more referral traffic for your conversion platform or website.


• 3 C's - You will have Consistency, Clarity and Congruency of message throughout the web.

3.  How do I build a Social Media Infrastructure?

• Do a Keyword Workshop


• Gather your digital assets (video, pics, graphics, audio, presentations, press releases, etc.)


• Build a Blog


• Choose multiple social media platforms based on your digital assets and target demographic


• Connect the platforms with links, RSS feeds and widgets for SEO (recommend http://twitterfeed.com as a start).


• Make sure lead generation websites, microsites and/or landing pages are linked into the infrastructure for SEO.

Since 2002, Chad H. Pollitt has played an integral role in designing, developing, deploying, executing and tracking robust web marketing strategies for over 100 client companies and organizations and is an internet marketing expert.  Chad is a decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and an Internet Marketing Manager at Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc., the leading web development and internet marketing agency in the Midwest.  His white papers and articles have been published in over a dozen newspapers and websites throughout the world.  With over 10 million dollars of tracked ROI for SEO alone, he has been featured on multiple radio shows, podcasts and in The Wall Street Journal.

For over 12 years, Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc. has specialized in Web Design, E-Commerce, SEO, Web Hosting, Social Media, Flash, 3-D Animation, Database Development, and Web Marketing and Promotion Strategies in Northern Indiana and throughout the Country.  They can be contacted at 1-888-537-0703 or www.digitalhill.com.

Internet Marketing press release submission is a proven way to increase valuable link backs to your site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Links to your site from trusted sources provide a vote of confidence that search engines value and factor into your Search Engine Results Placement (SERPs) while increasing the likelyhood of a successful SEO campaign.

 
Additionally, Internet Marketing press releases help to drive new traffic and "spread the word" about your organization's brand, products, services and/or message.  The ultimate goal is to have Google pick up your PR and include it in their powerful Google News Feed which is widely distributed across thousands of internet platforms.  Press releases can also be published via social media marketing platforms for additional exposure.  Below are important considerations when submitting press releases:

• Optimize press release copy for Google (SEO)
• Always publish press releases on company website first
  
• Write keyword rich catchy titles (SEO)
  
• Submit to multiple PR sites
  
• Include links to company landing pages
• Publish on Social Media Marketing platforms last

 
A weekly program is ideal, so to continually build valuable fresh back-links for SEO and drive new traffic to your website.  Every week webmasters should optimize and submit valuable PR updates for Newswire distribution.  Digital Hill can submit Internet Marketing press releases on your behalf to the Newswire and dozens of social media platforms.

 
Some PR sites charge a fee or recurring fee for inclusion.  Digital Hill will identify those PR sites that are worth considering and present you with the option of inclusion.  Should Digital Hill uncover additional pay-for-inclusion press release services you'll be notified of the opportunity and have the option of inclusion.

For the past few months we have been working with our client Permalatt Products Inc. of Bremen Indiana on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  They are a manufacturer of vinyl lattice so obviously we went after the keyword "vinyl lattice".  We redesigned their website keeping SEO top of mind.  We optimized their website with several SEO techniques with a focus on their #1 keyword vinyl lattice.  After only a few months we have achieved our goal a #1 natural listing in Google for the keyword Vinyl Lattice.  Permalatt's phone and email inquiry have increased dramatically. With our SEO techniques they are now coming up ahead of Lowes, Home Depot and several other big box companies. 

Pemalatt is also ranked #1 in Bing.com, Yahoo.com and Ask.com for the keyword vinyl lattice. Done properly our seo techniques work, and as proven with the Permalatt.com website can achieve great results. Contact us to find our how our SEO techniques can work for your website.