MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Internet marketing expert Jeff Foster will host two free webinars designed to teach businesses and website owners how they can increase search engine traffic using proven internet marketing practices.

The one-hour webinar, titled ‘How to Increase Search Engine Rankings’ will be offered on both January 15th and February 16th from 11:00 AM to noon EST – at no cost to attendees.

A webinar offers the same educational benefits of an instructor-led seminar. However, because it is conducted entirely online, costs and logistical problems associated with live training are eliminated. Participants simply log into a secured website and have access to live video and audio.

Register: Increase Search Engine Traffic
Hosted by: WebBizIdeas

Google jumps on the social networking bandwagon and has introduced SearchWiki. When a user is signed into their Google Account and does a search in Google they will see new tools next to each search result. These tools allow users to move / delete / add / comment on search results. Although the comments can be made public (only to others who are signed into their Google Account) the positions they change are only visible to them.

SEO Implications

Although Google has publicly said SearchWiki will have NO affect currently on normal organic search results, the future could. Google is always looking to make their search results better and knowing if 10,000 users don’t want to see a Wikipedia result #1 for every search result may be great information.

Why do you see these Social Bookmarking Icons on every website? Blogs, forums, and even corporate sites have these images. This video explains (1) what they are (2) why the are important (3) how you can integrate them into your site.

What is Social Bookmarking? Article

What is Social Bookmarking? Video

Reliable listing is a search engine optimization company that provides SEO services. This is a video case study that a client of ours requested after being cold called, signing up, being unhappy, and then trying to sold on new seo services requested.

Click here to read the Google Local Tutorial or our article on Video Distribution discussed in this video.

WebBizIdeas Google Local Tutorial will teach a Small Business how to proper optimize their website in Google Local’s listings. A small business can take advantage of this information and have their web site appear in the top 10 results of Google Maps and Google’s organic search engine listings. Local Advertising has extremely high conversation rates and considering Google Local is free internet business owners should take advantage of this.

To read more view our full Google Local Tutorial.

I am an internet marketing consultant for a Minneapolis Landscaping Company in Minnesota.  Yesterday the owner asked me to review an offer he received from a company that cold called him.  We listed his company in Yahoo Local and that is how Reliable Listing got his contact information.

The company sent over a fancy 10 page report “analyzing”  the client’s site.  They highlighted in RED the things he needed to change in GREEN the things that were good.  I can’t express in words how much I despise companies that do this because each one of them is a waste time. 

The are produced many times overseas in India by people that don’t analyze your business..  The companies just try to create a fancy report (cookie cutter template) to put fear in the website owner’s mind.  They don’t look to see what the website or each page is about, they are only interested in the end result.

Here is what they sent:  Reliable Listing Proposal

Here is my response:  Reliable Listing Response

This report is to (1) inform internet business owners not to do business with companies like this (2) to specifically tell customer not to do business with Reliable Listings.  On top of all this they have only been in business for a year; that is barely enough time to achieve good search engine goals.  In the next 1-3 months look for this blog post to be on the first page of Google when you type in “Reliable Listings.”  We will see who really knows a thing or two about search engine optimization & brand awareness. 

For those who missed Comscore’s webinar which reported on the state of the U.S. Online Retail Economy I have attached their .PDF they gave out to attendees.

This report touched on the fact that Q2 & Q3 of 2008 has seen a decrease in online retail growth. In fact they showed since Q4 of 2007 the growth rate has significantly gone down from 19% to 6%. Gian Fulgoni, Co-Founder and Chairman of Com Score, touched on how offline retail spending was dragging down online retail sales. This was actually a good bit of data to hear since we had seen slower growth in sales despite increase traffic for our site, Wholesale Keychain.

The Rich are Still Spending Online!

I thought it was about right that the growth in higher income households saw a 15% increase in spending while the rest of the market segments saw a 3% increase.

What does this data tell Internet Entrepreneurs?

If you are looking to break into the Job Portal industry now would be the time. Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and CraigsList all are criticized for SPAM. If you have a bright idea on how to counter-act Job Posting SPAM and the capital to compete taking advantage of the “fear” of job security is at hand. If you are a strong writer and have experience, knowledge, and passion to help others starting an informative website in the Job Search, Financial, or Real-Estate Market would be a great idea. Affordable web content management software would allow anyone to start this type of internet business. Another segment not shown but discussed is the LARGE increase in classified sites; makes sense with the economy.

Sales Increases & Decreases by Category

Where to put your marketing dollars?

It isn’t any secret that search engines dominate online referrals, leads, and sales. This graph shows that 52.7% of referrals came from Search/Navigation. It wouldn’t be a bad time to look into internet marketing services & internet consulting services.

Yahoo Local is offering one month free to promote their new & improved Yahoo Local. That means you can sign up, sponsor, and feature your website in as many local categories for one month and not pay anything. Yahoo Local does not have any long term contracts so you can cancel after 29 days and not pay a dime.

You can sign up here: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/prlfl_v2.php

The first page of Yahoo Local’s sign up page is important for SEO purposes. Your business name & products & services you offer are important. Your company description is not. Yahoo Local is starting to list their local listings ahead of their web listing so being listed is now very important.

How many keywords should he focus on/site?

Each website I would focus on 2-3 main keywords. This does not mean these 2-3 main keywords can break down into 200 to 300 keywords. If your main keyword is “file sharing” this keyword can break down into 1,000’s of keywords.

How long should a meta tag title be?

A meta tag title should be between 50-80 characters including spaces. Internet Explorer (IE) will display 95 characters but Google will only use 66 and Yahoo 120. So how should you write your titles?

Download Free Peer to Peer (P2P) File Sharing Programs – DVD, Images, Music, MP3, Software

Remember, the Title Tag not only displays at the top of the browser window, but also appears as the linked text in the search results. The page Title is indexed by all the major search engines — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — and is used as part, or in whole, for the page listing in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

How long should a meta tag description be?

Keep your meta tag descriptions less than 200 characters long. If you do not include a Meta Description, most search engines, by default, will use the 30-40 words of your copy, which could look very unappealing to a prospect. Be careful not to keyword stuff your description.

Google has publically stated the following, “accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t affect your ranking within search results.” This means you should be writing your meta tag description for users searching, not for search engine spiders. Read more here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html

These will be 2-3 page sites so how long should his h1 tag be or should he have it?

There are six types of headings: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6. They also rank in the same order for importance, so h1 is the most important in terms of On-Page SEO.

You can use the headings to list your “headline” (h1) with its “tagline” underneath (h2). For example:

H1 Tag: Download File Sharing Software:

H2 Tag: P2P File Sharing Software 2.0 – New & Improved

In the above example, it allows for the key phrase “file sharing” to be used naturally in both headings, thus increasing the on-page optimization score for the key phrase.

How to organize his bread crumbs?

Main Keyword >> Section >> Category >> Title

Have More Questions?

Learn Internet Marketing or contact us

Becoming an expert in your industry can effectively start with article marketing. Article marketing is the process of creating & publishing quality information offline or online.

Today I will be discussing three simple techniques that will help you when promoting an article online. If you follow these three steps you will find success with building links, brand awareness, and increase, traffic to your website.

1. Create Content: Create 2-3 articles a week that relates to your industry. The articles can be web pages, blogs, news, or even videos. It is better to create one quality article than 100 average articles so always ask yourself, will people want to read this? Make sure you create a catchy title and include keywords you are optimizing for in the title; people link to web pages usually using article titles.

2(A) Publish Content: Do not mass submit articles. Search engines love unique content and frown upon duplicate content. Submit your article to the following sites:

0. Find Partners - More than 50% of web sites online are just informational websites. Just because a website does not allow others to submit an article does not mean asking them won’t. You will be surprised what webmasters will do when you call them and ask.
1. EzineArticles.com
2. GoArticles.com
3. ArticleDashboard.com
4. ArticleCity.com

2(B) Submit Content: Sign up at OnlyWire.com and bookmark each article you submit. Bookmarking your own article is not the most effective way to use social bookmarking sites but it is effective in long non-competitive keyword phrases. I will write a post soon on how to properly use social bookmarking sites.

3. Don’t spend money on submitting articles. (i.e. don’t pay to mass submit articles)

***Tip: create a very organized library of the articles you write. Writing 3 pages a week will produce 150 articles a year. Online article marketing can turn into great material for offline marketing once you find what works & doesn’t work cost effectively online.