Funny how the world evolves over time. Now, the distribution model has changed and is less expensive. Press releases are not only being pushed to journalists and media, they are also being served out on the Internet via blogs, news feeders, directories and aggregators – tapping into an enormous audience and in some cases talking directly to the consumer/customer. Also journalists, media and the end users may have subscribed to particular key word feeds which are more of a pull vs. push.

So what’s the big deal to a website owner?
Well, press releases are the new back door to high search engine rankings for popular and competitive search terms. Smart website owners and SEOs should seriously consider adding press release writing, optimization and distribution online into their online marketing mix. Ultimately the benefits of higher search ranking results on key word strings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) results in more site traffic and more site conversions (whatever that being: newsletter signups, product or services purchases, downloads, phone call or trials).

My favorite news distribution tool:
After doing some research online for news distribution providers, business wire and service shops, my favorite choice is http://www.prweb.com/. It is good for those who understand SEO and how to write a release, and it’s also good for those who don’t. You can add on editorial revision, drafting and optimization, if you are the latter. Depending on your news release length and additional services you choose, it can range from $80 to $1,000 for each one to go out. For Sitemasher, I personally choose the “Media Visibility” package at $360 for distributing our news releases, as it has more options for optimizing and distributing news. Sometimes I will upgrade with the business wire add-on – as it can reach an even larger media network. This is for very important releases though. Recently we distributed a news release about Sitemasher’s Blue Sky Award from Microsoft and we valued that as very big news.

Ten top tips on how to optimize your press release, increase search engine rankings and site traffic:
Some changes to the press release are relatively minor, but made major differences in the most critical spots. If you take the extra time to do the following you will see the benefits and your release can potentially be picked up by more sites, search engine results pages, aggregators and directories and also attract more media attention and bloggers who may write about your product or service.

1. Choose news distribution services that have the right features. Research self-serve online distribution services that offer features to optimize your releases (see points below on those requirements and just question if you can do it on their platform). Some don’t offer all the features to properly optimize your news. Not sure if they have the features by looking at the website? Then sign up for an introduction webinar if they are offering one to understand the tool more. Or ask them for a test account to log in and kick it around and actually see the features. Also, look for a service that gives you reports on readerships, downloads, and archiving (for longevity on exposure). Consider the geographic distribution networks and if you can upgrade to larger networks, language translation if you are a global company or plan to go global in future.


2. Optimize, add all important key words in the headline. Understand and define the most important key word strings that you want to be known by and try to incorporate them in your headline. Why? Because it will lift the possibilities of people finding your release or your release being picked up by key word queries in readers and directories. If you state “Sitemasher wins an award,” it is too vague and it will limit your exposure throughout the web that picks up releases via tags (also known as categorization and key word queries). Now if you used “Sitemasher wins Microsoft Canada Blue Sky Award,” you have more potential key words – the release can be picked up for any tags under “Microsoft” and “Blue Sky Award.” Also if people were to Google this exact word, they will probably find your release in one try in the results pages. I actually saw this work, just a few hours after we sent out our release, it was second in Google search results and was picked up by Yahoo and Google news as well as some top aggregators and financial aggregator sites that pull through all Microsoft’s feeds.


3. Optimize, use links, one for each 100 words. Try to follow a rule of one hyperlink per 100 key words. Some SEO experts believe that if you do many more than that, then the release can be over-optimized (also viewed as spam from the search engines) and possibly get penalized and show up lower down in the search engine results. To even take it further make sure the Important key word phrases are the ones hyperlinked (and never something like “click here”), it helps raise the release and possibly your website (if the link is to any of your WebPages), to show up higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for that particular key word or key word string.


4. Optimize, use alt tags. Just the same as defining key words, this tactic can also tell the search engines what is important and also rise up your release within the search engines. So if you have particular pictures that can be labeled with your important key words, do label them so.


5. Optimize, add anchor text. This is an advanced tactic and sometimes a little confusing or hard to find the instructions. However, the formulas are simple, and with a little practice (and by following a few simple rules), adding anchor text to your press release is quite straightforward.
   
   Plain anchor link: http://www.sitemasher.com/cmssolution.htm [Sitemasher]. This will result in a link with the text “Sitemasher” pointing to “www.sitemasher.com/cmssolution.htm,” or whatever you substitute.
   
   Anchor with Title tag: http://www.sitemasher.com/csssolution.htm [Sitemasher __title__ Sitemasher is a cms platform and more]. This is the same as the above except that if a reader hovers a mouse over the link, the text “title text” (or whatever you substitute) will appear.
   
   Note: There’s a space before and after the underscore, which is a prerequisite.


6. Interact and optimize. Use Images, audio, video and PDFs – take it up a notch and make it a multimedia news release – you may attract eyeballs as some aggregators like to rank multimedia pieces higher up on the page. It also gives other bloggers additional pieces to pull through to their sites if they wish. To help with your most important key words in the search engine results, and are pulling in a YouTube video, make sure you also tag it with important key words within YouTube. Also within the news distribution service, you should have the ability to label and tag any images and PDFs with key words and increase your odds of getting even more exposure.


7. Optimize, take the time to tag the release itself. Services like PRWeb have an additional feature where you can define Technorati tags. Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites or news releases. These tags help categorize search results, with recent results coming first. If you overlook this feature and don’t use it, you can miss out on thousands of readers who may be subscribed to or directories and aggregators that are pulling through feeds from these tags. PR web allows you to tag your release with multiple tags, so I choose the most important tags.


8. Optimize, run a key word density check. Some services like PRWeb may have an analysis tool that runs through a test and gives you feedback on key word density and where the key words are. Try to make sure you have at least the two to three most important key words in the title, short description and within a hyperlink and its anchor test. If this test gives you feedback that you’re weak or lack your important key words in some areas, go back and tweak the release.


9. Have a strong call-to-action and landing page on your site. Depending on your message, I’m sure that you can incorporate some sort of call to action or incentive to read more on a special landing page. Maybe it’s as simple as asking interested parties to sign up to your newsletter, read more on your company blog, sign up for a webinar, download a white paper, or sign up to qualify for substantial discounts on purchases. If you have a unique landing page for this release, you can also track how many people clicked through by viewing your site analytics.


10. Provide good content. And finally, add meaningful content. Keep it short and get rid of the adjectives, the first, the best, the paradigm-shifts, trend-setting verbiage, 14 quotes, world-famous, etc. For website owners and SEOs, this may be a matter of educating and retraining yourself or writer to get away from traditional news release writing (hyperbole) that used to just talk to media and journalists. Releases via the web are being picked up by other bloggers, being pulled through and aggregated on other sites, so it’s more important to get down to the meat of it.
    
    If you’re looking to do your press release yourself, here are some good tips on how to write it and the anatomy of a news release:

• News Releases 101: Best Practices
• Formatting Your News Release
• News Release Template
• Quick Tips for News Releases
• Editorial Guidelines

Want to learn more about online PR and marketing?A recent book I read is “The New Rules of Marketing and PR How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing, and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly.” I highly recommend it!

Or would you rather hire a firm to help you with your SEO and PR? Recently, I talked with Deborah Collins at a BCAIMS Seminar from Soya Marketing (www. soyamarketing.com ). She is an online marketing PR and social media expert. We had a great discussion on how PR and SEO have merged. Debbie advises her clients to be very careful when choosing a PR firm, as not all PR firms (especially traditional ones) understand or have invested in the time to learn SEO and online PR and how they work together.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.) If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• Host the contest on a video-sharing (like YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler) or photo-sharing site (like Flikr).
  
• Advertise the contest details on your website with simple and clear instructions. Give the link for where to upload the media piece for the contest. Is it a video or photo contest? Be clear on what they should tag the video or photo so you can review them and pull them through your site (like a mashup).
  
• Define a specific tag or channel that can be used for your contest - making sure the tag is not so generic that it could accidently be used for other photos or videos.
  
• Use the top favorites is an indicator of finalists - no need to collect votes via a form on your site. YouTube or Flickr does all the work and tallying for you!


• Entice the contestants to send out the link of the contest on your site to their friends and family to vote for them. This is where it can become very viral!
  
• Advertise your contest everywhere you can. If your company has a blog, Facebook or twitter account – make sure you cross-promote the contest and link to it! Try sending out a press release if it is a big contest.
  
• Use a mashup to advertise and show off your contest. A mashup is a mini application that combines the submitted videos or photos that were defined under a particular tag on the social media site (i.e., YouTube or Flickr). You can obtain the code snippet from the host site and display the mashup on your website, blog etc by simply copying and pasting the html code. The mashup is dynamically (shows up right away) updated whenever anyone submits a piece to that category.
  
• Define a deadline date and use three to five top votes as finalists and send out a message to all participants asking for votes on the finalists. You can obtain longevity and more interactivity when you include your customers with the final voting!

This is a continuation from my “How Social Media Can Help You With Your Online Marketing Strategies” blog after attending Darren Barefoot’s The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101. He mentioned a case study that is similar to above idea.

1. Pitch a story in an unusual way – I would not be surprised if a site like TechCrunch gets at least 25 pitches per day. So don’t send the same kinds of pitch the others are, or you won’t be given a second.
2. Show your creativity - Send something creative, yet relevant. Don’t send a press release or dry marketing fluff.
3. Make sure the story you are pitching is newsworthy – Pitch an event, product/company launch, something innovative, or something that is time-sensitive.
4. Don’t send a blanket pitch - If it is evident that you blasted an e-mail to a bunch of bloggers, it will be ignored. Customize it and be personable and down to earth. Know the author and talk to him/her. Corporate sales tactics won’t work.
5. Try to offer exclusivity – Bloggers may want to be the first to blog about a story if it is a huge. They want to be on the cutting edge of their topics or expertise.
6. Make sure you understand and relate to the blogger - Research the author and question yourself if it is a complementary blog to what your story is about. Sometimes you can read the blog author’s biography or understand the objective or theme of the site just by reading a few posts. Know whom you are talking to and talk his or her language.
7. Give schwag – Some bloggers like to receive free giveaways and I bet that something that comes via snail mail or Fedex can possibly receive more attention than e-mail.
8. Beware - Understand a journalist vs a new-age blogger. Some journalists can get freaked out if you are too personable and creative.
9. Pay it forward - If you have a blog of your own, post or comment on the blog. You can use this tactic to return the favor (after they blogged about you) or use it as a tactic to get their attention before sending them your pitch. If you have a fair amount of traffic and first blog about them, they may be aware that you sent them traffic if they watch their server stats or have a reputation management service (like Google Alerts). So when you send in the pitch they may want to return the favor. Note: this is usually with smaller blogs as the larger ones cannot review all the server stats and may not notice you. You can also send them a quick e-mail saying “Hey I blogged about you, check it out here…”
10. Be persistent – Don’t get disheartened if you were turned down or not noticed. Try following up, but be courteous with the timeline and your persistence – don’t stalk them either.
11. Make connections before you need them. Mediocre marketers try to befriend bloggers when they need them. Good marketers befriend bloggers before they need them.

Other tips on getting bloggers’ attention:

• How to Get in TechCrunch - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/how_to_get_in_t.html
• Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged - http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/08/top-ten-things-you-can-do-to-get-blogged/
• Blogger Relations 101 - http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/blogger-relations-101/
• How to Suck Up to a Blogger - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_suck_up_.html

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

Looking back to the ‘70s or before, some marketers recognize that hanging around the water cooler at work, talking about happenings and experiences was a form of social media. So, technically, we can say that social media has really been around for decades!

Wikipedia equates social media as the newer age interaction with regards to technology and the Internet:

"Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings."

Recently, I attended a British Columbia Association of Integrated Marketers (BCAIM) luncheon seminar and wanted to share useful insights when considering social media for corporate goals and implementations. The topic was "The Many-Armed Starfish: Social Media Marketing 101 with Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications.

So why is there such a buzz with social media with marketers?

• Because it really works.
• Many online marketers have found that they can leverage social media to get the word out about their company, product or services at a larger scale.
• If executed right, it can have a great return on investment and be an integral part of growing a business online.
• Social media has much more impact and can scale up easier than traditional advertising tactics.
• Social media has lower costs than traditional marketing tactics – with barely any technological setup or subscription costs attributed to it. Beware though, a major misconception is that social media is 100 percent free. That is totally incorrect, social media needs the human factor to massage, tweak, and invest time in. It is an ongoing project that will need love and attention, which in return can be employee salaries or outsourcing costs to manage such campaigns. If you really think it is magic and it’s only a matter of setting up a Facebook or blog account and walking away from it – you’re mistaken!
• More people are participating and hanging around social media because the tools are more assessable for the average person (cheaper laptops, cameras and camcorders) as well as the free or cheap delivery forms available (blogs, wikis, forums, podcasts, video and image-sharing portals, micro-blogs [like twitter], social networks like Facebook and MySpace).
• These social mediums allow users to communicate with the masses and more important with silo communities (people with the same likes and dislikes as you). And these silos may not be obtainable within your physical community, so the online availability just snowballs and allows you to reach audiences you never had before.

Julie and Darren shared with us that social media can help your company with:

• Media relations
• Customer engagement
• Market research
• Advertising
• Competitor intelligence
• Word-of-mouth
• Public relations

How social media helps with your corporate goals may depend on what mix of forms you choose to participate in. These forms are changing and new ones will always be introduced. Keeping that in mind, you may need to adapt to the protocols for each medium.

If you follow some of the basic tips (some are from the seminar I attended and some are also from my own experiences and other readings); you should be able to reap the benefits of social media:

• Be authentic and transparent - Don't try to hide behind anything or a customer persona (like a fake happy customer). You'll always be found out and it will harm you. If you don’t agree, read more about the Wal-mart fake blogs; also known as “Flogs” .
• Listen before you leap - Understand how and why others use the medium. Feel comfortable first before jumping in. Lurk and check out how others are using the medium. Once, I was pressured by my boss to jump in and comment on the blog sphere and I sort of spammed it (didn’t know the rules yet). I was called on it right away by another comment and they were appalled. That is a great sample of what not to do! I realized that I had to learn more on how to better interact in the blog sphere.
• Monitor the web - Keep track of who is talking about you and what they are saying. Use tools that help for your company’s reputation management. I use Blogpulse and Google Alerts, they are both free tools. If you are a larger company global company you may consider a reputation management service that is more robust and a subscription service (like Meltwater News or Sentiment Metrics).
• Participate in the conversation - Jump in and get involved, especially when it is negative. If you don’t participate or own up to negative comments, it will not leave a good impression and you cannot rectify and turn the situation around. In the social sphere, negative comments can be embedded everywhere. If you show some sincerity and honesty when responding to a negative comment, you will be respected – everyone knows you are human. Don’t ignore negative situations or it will snowball. Kryptonite Lock did exactly what not to do, read more about it here on how it harmed them.
• Try different forms of social media and integrate them - Try at least two to three different forms of social media tactics and cross-promote each of them. For example, have a Facebook group and cross-promote your company blog. Twitter about your new blog posts. Connect your twitter to your blog and Facebook status Feed.
• Commit to social media and be realistic - It takes more than just opening an account with a tool and waiting for people to come find you. This is the hard part, only commit to ones that you can really nurture and spend time with. Book time every day or week to participate, massage and learn from it. Make a true commitment.

I really think Social Media should be a part of your online marketing strategy, read my blog on “Multi-dimensional Online Marketing.” At Sitemasher, I have found some effective tactics with Facebook, blogging, social tagging and micro-blogging. I still have lots to learn as this is such an evolving medium, so I may also pick up Barefoot's new book to learn more from an expert, once it’s published (probably early 2009).

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• Use your existing key words in your sales collateral, website or press release as a starting point.
• Run searches for alternates and plurals in key word tools online (like Wordtracker, Google Keyword Tool or Webmaster Toolkit to discover alternates that you may not have known.
• Check out competitors’ websites
  o Read their website body copy.
  o View source and check out their title tags, meta key words and descriptions within each of the main pages.
  o Run a key word analysis report on your competitors site.
• Ask your customers how they’d search for you on the net (what key words).
• Review your website analytics under the “Referrals” area, it can tell you some key words that are leading people to your site.

So, what the heck do I do with these key words?
So you have a large list of key words – what the heck do you do with them now? Below are some best practices for implementing key words. If you follow some of these rules and processes, it will be easier for you to implement and understand how to optimize a site for search engines. You will also start seeing increased traffic and potentially more customers within a month because you are following some of the things that the search engines love about the so-called key-word-dense sites.

• Try to use Excel spreadsheet and sort key words by themes and then match up each set to every page on your site that is appropriate to the messaging for each page.
• Focus on a small set of key words for each individual page. These small sets of key words should be theme-based or complementary to the message that is in the body of the particular page you are optimizing. Don’t ever try to insert all possible key words within an inside page or even your home page. Try to focus on three to six key words or one to three key word strings max for each page.
• Implement these key word sets within all elements of your chosen page including your title tag (shows up in the browser title), meta tag description (hidden text that is usually the search results description), meta tag key words (hidden text), image alt tags (hidden text – but can see it when you roll over an image) as well as the content writing of the body (the visible text).
• Choose the theme set of key words that are most important for your company and try to use them for your home page.
• Each page should have a good mix of matching key words within the body text, hidden tags, title and image alt tags. Do not stuff key words within the title that are not within the page content – trust me, that will most likely not bring you traffic!
• If you choose a small set of key words for each page – you are optimizing that page for the search results, so make sure the meta description sums up the description for that page.
• If you found that some very important key words are not implemented within the content writing of the page, try to incorporate it or suggest it to your boss or your content writer to do so.
• Try to link any key words or key word sets within your site to the relevant page (hyperlink and cross-link pages within your site – Google gives you more brownie points for this).
• Try to incorporate key words within any outside links to your website.
• Don’t try to focus on one general key word for a page – if it is too general, everyone else is most likely going after it.

Key word density is one of many search engine strategies. Read more on “What is Search Engine Optimization,” if you implement a few strategies, they will all help with growing your website traffic.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• Enhancing website performance: Sometimes websites are slow and the site visitors will bounce off the site if they experience it. You can use online tools to measure how fast your website reacts to requests (I use http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html ). Switching hosting providers can solve this issue. Making sure you are not on a shared server with other sites that can slow your website down. A decent hosting company will have burstable solution where you are not capped or affected. Or there are software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies that have a great scalable solution, like Sitemasher has. (Disclaimer: I work at Sitemasher as the Online Marketing Manager). Also, make sure that your website is built on a good platform (online store, or Content Management System that is scalable and does not have issues with bloated databases that will hog the server memory) or find out how to clean up your databases to make your site run faster, if that is the case.


• Advertising to and linking to relevant landing pages: Making sure whatever pages you are linking to from external campaigns on directories or banner ads are relevant and have the same messaging. Don’t direct all campaigns to your home page. If you have a banner ad for widgets, then link it to the widget page and not your home page. The more you leave your site visitors to hunt for the info, the more likely the drop-off will happen. Tim Ash, author of “Landing Page Optimization” is a huge advocate of optimizing your website landing pages. He delves really deep into this one strategy and articulates this practice so well that you will be sold that this alone is one of the best strategies and something that you should work on every day.


• Tweaking usability and design: Look at the tiny details and try to get into your customers’ minds to determine what they want on your site. Learn what others have learned. Incorporate best practices for usability, for example: the checkout button is on top right and search bar on every page. Don’t try to be “different” or “cool” and let the site visitor guess at how to interact with your website. Keep the common-sense stuff consistent.
  
• Enhancing experience and navigation: Help your site visitors find information and navigate back and forth. Use bread crumbs stating how deep the site visitors are in the site and give them ability to go back to first level with one click (non-linear), add hints to where they are on checkout (i.e. “you are on step 1 of 4”) and also have a sitemap link and search on every page.
  
• Encouraging interaction for help: Have multiple points of contact available for your users for support. Online chat is a good one (like HelpOnClick or LivePerson). People want answers and support instantly, and will most likely not want to wait for an e-mail response later or the next day. Have a phone number, help topics and e-mail contact as backup. Having multiple help and support mediums might save you from losing a customer. I have found that for some small online stores, may have first-timers calling in orders or asking live chat questions – they only want to check out if you respond and are actually legit. In those cases, they will probably not ask for support the second time, as they may trust you from the first experience. Also, inquiries and concerns from such customers can actually give you ideas how to optimize your website further, so welcome every one of them. Some will most likely be issues you never even thought of!

There are many more ways and best practices to optimize your website and above are some good starting points. The important thing is that you start to analyze your website metrics and review the small changes as you go to see if they have made an impact. I would not recommend doing many changes at once, and if something does not have beneficial impact, you can change it back. Your website can and should get better when you understand the impact – it is an evolving process!

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• Key word discovery and enhancements: Using tools and competitors’ websites to find out what key word strings to focus on. Also using your analytics or even your pay-per-click campaigns (if you are doing any) for some key word ideas. Looking at each page as an opportunity to focus on a theme of a few key words. This strategy can always be tweaked and enhanced as you learn more about your target audience and how they arrive at your site.


• Content-rich copy: Writing your web copy with key word strings that your potential customer or site visitor will search for you.


• Making sure site architecture is crawlable: Having html pages that can be read by the search engine robots (not a Flash site), having pages that are not dynamic (choosing the right CMS or e-commerce platform), having navigation links that are readable from home page, constantly tweaking and cross-linking pages throughout your site. Linking to sitemap from your pages, and having a robots follow in header (not a “no follow”).
  
• Posting fresh content on a continual basis: If you have a website that has fresh content, the search engines will come back and index your site more in the results pages. Also more new content means you will also have more key word strings and potentially more traffic. Having a blog is a great way to add fresh content, and the search engines love how crawlable they are.
  
• Rolling out the red carpet for the search engines: Includes having a robots.txt and a sitemap.xml with all your pages listed and ranks. The search engines also need you to pay attention to and label every inside web page with unique title tag, meta description, key word tags, image alt tags that match or complement the content within that page. Read my blog on “Why Use Google Sitemaps.” (also, check out Danny Dover's SEO Cheat Sheet - I think it is quite handy!)
  
• Link building: Have complementary sites link to your site. The more relevant and complementary key words the linking site has to your business, the more it will so-call lift your rankings.
  
• Social media tagging: Get your site listed by tagging (which is kind of like getting yourself categorized by key words in directories). This can include digg, del.icio.us etc.
  
• Universal search: Optimizing and labeling/tagging images, video and news with key words. More and more you will see these popping up in the results page versus just text links.
  
• Local search listings: Getting your company listed in local search, also making sure you put your full address with zip/postal code in text in the footer of your pages or contact page, Google picks that up as well.
  
• Using website statistics: Analyzing, interpreting and looking for opportunities and ongoing tweaks for key words.
  
• Avoiding black-hat strategies: This is a bad-guy strategy. Avoid using duplicate doorway pages, cloaking multiple sites with same content, stuffing key words in same color as your background and in invisible Div’s. You can maybe trick Google for a short while, and it would be very hard to get relisted in the index, if they find out and penalize you for it. Follow rules stated in Google Webmasters area and you should be fine.

Each of the tactics above warrants further explanation in separate blogs and you can really invest more time dissecting individual areas and tactics. The more you work on SEO best practices, the more likely it will grow your website traffic. I also like to term SEO as a full-circle process and not linear – you can learn from one SEO tactic that can further help another. SEO is all about research, analyzing, interpreting and tweaking - definitely not a one-time project!

Complementary to search engine optimization (SEO) is search engine marketing (SEM) strategies and for the most part are online marketing campaigns that may have some hard costs (outside of someone’s time to implement). For example: pay-per-click advertising, cost-per-acquisition initiatives, paid directories, banner advertising, e-mail marketing. Read my blog on “Multidimensional Online Marketing Tips” – it will give you some ideas on having a mix of SEO and SEM strategies.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• E-mail marketing.
• Social Media - Can include blogging, participating in forums and other social media tactics, there are so many now, it is hard to keep up (Facebook, MySpace etc.).
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Trying to show up on the search engine results without paying for ads. This can include making sure your site is crawlable, having outbound/inbound links, good site architecture, and a key-word-rich website. Keep in mind that it is evolving to universal search with images, videos and external pages you have on the social networks as well. Make sure your pages have the proper key words and multi-media are tagged appropriately.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Paid advertising via the search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo). These usually show up in sponsored search results as well as on ad placements within the content network. Can also include text, image or video ads served through Universal Search.
• Banner Ads being served via third-party or portal-site sponsorships.
• Cost-per-Acquisitions (CPA) - This can include referral program (or even affiliate marketing), where you pay other sites that give you leads or conversions (signups or paying customers). This can include new CPA programs, which will be evolving.
• Traditional Advertising - Any traditional advertising like print, magazine and video should be complementary or enforce whatever you have online and tie in to either convert or track on landing pages.

I am a huge advocate of this Multi-dimensional Marketing, but in the past I have had a hard time trying to convince my clients on the different tactics (before I was with Sitemasher as the in-house marketer). It was hard to convince my clients and explain the "halo" effect and how all the chosen online strategies will sooner or later snowball and show results. Unfortunately most marketers (or business owners) either ignore MDM or simply aren't aware of the possibilities. I am happy that others (like the presenters at Massive) are advocates of MDM and are trying to educate business owners that there is potential.

Tip #2 – Multidimensional marketing should be looked at as longer-term online exposure versus a one-shot advertising effort. Also, a mix-and-match approach should be adopted at the same time to get the "halo" effect.

So what is the "halo" effect? David Scott explained it as a situation where you use multiple media and tactics to reach your customers and you have "lift" with branding. Chris from 6S marketing mentioned "brand equity." You should look at efforts as a full campaign and complementary. If you are not Nike or Apple, it may take potential customers to see your brand multiple times (also known as impressions) in different areas (i.e., e-mail marketing, in a forum or on the search results) before they include you into their "consideration set."

Tip #3 - Multidimensional marketing demands some patience and transparency when it comes to the social media tactics. Be persistent yet very careful when you venture social media.

• Take your time and learn how to interact within the social sphere and don't rush it. Learn how others use this medium properly. Observe and learn the right etiquette for posting, tagging and interaction with others.
• Don't expect results right away, this tactic does take time to earn brand equity.
• Be transparent and don't try to fool members of the community - they are smart consumers. Don't try to pretend you are a customer of your company and post spam comments on how great you are. They will find out sooner or later (most likely sooner), and you'll be banned or negatively advertised by the community. Try to add value to the community by participating in the topics and giving value with tips. You will gain trust and credibility from the community and they will sooner or later visit your website or e-mail you for more help or advice.
• If you are blogging for your company, try to focus on building thought leadership before trying to get customers. Customers will see that you have a good knowledge network and will contact you for your product or service after you’ve built trust and credibility.
• Be open to negative and positive feedback. Linda Bustos suggests, "If something falls apart, own up to it and turn it around." Respond to comments in a timely and honest way. If you screwed up, state how you are going to fix it and you'll probably win them back.
• Consider a reputation management tool to use and track good or bad comments that are being posted on external blogs (for example: Blogpulse).
• Lightly brand media and widgets, if you overdo it with brand and sales tactics, it probably won't be distributed by the community.

Tip #4 - Go after the Long Tail. Focus on consumer fragmentation for your multidimensional tactics online. Whatever you choose for your mix, try to focus on areas where you can find fragments of your customers that will have a higher conversion rate. Check your website analytics and know where people are coming from to your site. Find them on other places and look for other opportunities to have a better impact to the "halo" (read my blog on "Web Analytics - Simply Reviewing Referring Sites for Opportunities" for some ideas). They may hang out in communities that are complementary to your business or vertical or they may be a type of customer (persona) who uses certain key word strings to find you on the search engines.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know.)

• Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/) - $299 USD/year
• BOTW Directory (http://botw.org/) -$79 USD/year
• BOTW Blog Directory (http://blogs.botw.org/) - $39 USD one-time review fee. If you have a blog within your site.

• Open up a Google Adwords account - There's no minimum spending requirement-the amount you pay for AdWords is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of $5 and a maximum cost of 10 cents for each click on your ad.
• Set up one or two campaigns and avoid guesswork - Google provides keyword traffic and cost estimates so you can make informed decisions about choosing keywords and maximizing your budget. Use it.
• Choose your geo-targeting properly or your budget will be wasted. If you own a pizza restaurant in Vancouver, only choose Vancouver. Don't waste it on people in Toronto!
• Choose only a small list of keywords and include your business name! If your site isn't showing up on the search results yet, bidding on your business name is most likely only going to cost you 8 cents per click, which is cheaper than a decent business card!
• Craft up two to three ads under each campaign - Google will start to serve the best ad that has click troughs.
• Use phrase-match option only when you start out. It is the best way to drive qualified traffic to your site without a huge budget. I would only recommend broad match if you have a large budget and know what you are doing.

Keep in mind that the above are only some guidelines if you only had $550 to start with for the first month and to keep your Cost-per-Click program going it would be $150 per month.

Once you 've gone through the process of setting up a basic search engine submission program, consider taking one of two routes:

1. Learn more and push the limits of search engine marketing - this is just the tip of it.
2. Hire a firm or a search engine marketer. They can get results faster and you can feel more relaxed if you open up a larger budget.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know!)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

• Your site has dynamic content.
• Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or Flash.
• Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

You can also use a site map to provide Google with additional information about your pages, including:

• How often the pages on your site change. For example, you might update your product page daily, but update your About Me page only once every few months.
• The date each page was last modified.
• The relative importance of pages on your site. For example, your home page might have a relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an importance of 0.8, and individual blog entries or product pages have an importance of 0.5. This priority only indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact the ranking of your pages in search results.

You can read more about Google Sitemaps at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318

1. Make signing up easy - don't add a button, then expect the user to click on it to another page with a form. Insert a subscribe box directly in your web page with two fields (keeping it very simple). Don't bombard your subscribers with other questions, they'll get turned off and may not sign up. You are only asking them to dance with you, you are not asking for their first-born.
   
2. State your policy clearly - Link to a privacy promise and stick to it. No one will sign up for your newsletter who is unclear whether you resell names to your partners or suppliers. Subscribers need to know you are a trusted source. If you have some business certifications, logos on your site etc, maybe place them near to the subscriber box.
   
3. Be clear on what subscribers are getting and link to a sample - Make sure your label subscription box includes a clear title. Try using "Free Newsletter", "Free Tips", "Latest Updates", "E-mail Offers", "Monthly Newsletter Tips" etc... Try testing to see what works best for your business. Also, offer a link to your archives so they can get a sneak peek of past issues before signing up.


4. State the frequency in your subscribe box - Nothing is so annoying than thinking you signed up for a monthly newsletter and you receive multiple e-mails the first week. Your subscribers may unsubscribe just as fast if you surprise them. Or how about when you sign up for a newsletter and you don't even receive one? Make sure you state the frequency of your newsletter upfront within your subscribe box (for example: daily, weekly, monthly or bi-monthly) and your subscribers will not be disappointed nor will they unsubscribe.
   
5. Add sign-up form to every page - Based on my experience, I usually sign up for a newsletter after reading an incredibly interesting article on the site. And I would usually come into the site from the back door and not even land on the home page. If you have your subscription link on your home page, but your links page gets lots of traffic, those people will never see that you have a newsletter. Increase your exposure and you will increase your subscription rate. I found that some of the sites I managed in the past, would get 1 to 3 percent sign-up conversion per month with regard to total unique visitors. So if you had 10,000 visitors per month you may have from 10 to 30 additional subscribers per month for this tweak alone.

Do you have a specific question about online marketing? Send an e-mail to shannon@sitemasher.com , and we'll try to post a blog on the topic in the future (and possibly do the research for you, if we don't know!)

If you want to share similar experiences on this topic, I encourage you to leave a comment!

1. You sell products or services and a referring site lists your company as one of the providers in their directory listing. See if they have an advanced profile section, where you can post your full company blurb or even your logo. Some may or may not charge you for it.
2. A magazine reporter an editorial on tips about your industry and links to your site as being one of the few providers (they most likely just Googled you and wanted to give their readers some choices). Try to contact the writer at the referring site and propose to supply them with future tips or even full articles. You'd be surprised at how many editorial writers love having someone else doing their work! Just make sure the tips are unique and are not so specific to your product (not a hard sell); it can subtly suggest your product/services.
3. Someone rates/reviews your products on a portal site and it is positive. Check out if the portal site offers paid advertising options or even an e-mail list sponsorship package. This portal will most likely have tons of other visitors who are interested in your products (with the same profile likes and dislikes as the original reviewer/member). This tactic can be a very focused medium for your company to get more leads from the web.
4. A site that sends you visitors may have a blog that you can comment on. That is, if the topic is related to your product or service. Make sure your comments are sincere and not spam and also link back to your site. Beware - if you leave a so-called spam comment - it will be deleted.