This session will provide a rapid fire take on how to tackle the most popular SEM tactics with a small staff and an even smaller budget. Would feature practical, affordable ideas and real world examples on PPC, SEO, Viral, Blogging and Social Media.
This isn't a "how to do this" session so much as a "how to do it cheap and effectively" session. Moderator:
* Carrie Hill, Search Engine Watch Expert and Certified Search Engine Marketing and Promotion Account Manager, Blizzard Internet Marketing
Speakers:
* Jennifer Laycock, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide * Stoney deGeyter, President, Pole Position Marketing * Matt McGee, SEO Manager, Marchex
Strategies that Don't Suck - presented by Stoney.
* keyword organization: once you have your keyword list, you want to know where to apply them to your site. Drive searchers to pages that best represents the intnet of the query. There are 3 types of searchers - researchers (info gathering), shoppers (comparisons), buyers (looking for best options). For researchers - they may or may not be a buyer. They are in the early stages of the process and are in the learning process. They don't know what they want necessarily. Shoppers are looking just for different sites to perform comparisons and are closer to a buying decision. They have a general idea of what they want. Buyers (best option) - they know what they want, they are ready to buy, and they know where to buy. You need to target your keywords to different types of the phases. Check your different keyword phrases - better conversions for longer terms but not as much traffic. Look at your budget and look at where to spend your money.
* website architecture: Title tags are really important but not many people seem to get it. Create unique titles throughout the site. Set up default titles for products. Site content: build unique content for each page. Don't rely on default product descriptions - unique content stands out. Also, have interlinking pages - link to related content whenever possible. Related products is a great way to do it (or related info) .
* getting attention: create a unique valuable resources. Know your unique value proposition. What can you do differently from others? Build information with blogs and articles. It's not what you do, it's how you go about doing it. Develop contributor products - engage known experts (e.g. Link Building Secrets Revealed - 11 experts provided a secret from their link building arsenal). Write authoritative articles, papers, and ebooks, and submit to magazines, blogs, and industry directories.
* PPC strategies: use the Google AdWords editor - export keyword lists, add comments to changes, and more. You want to look at measurements as well - cost/conversion is most important. Know your profit margin! Add your negative keyword list in there - perform keyword reseqarch to see what people type in. Avoid job seekers, researchers, education, bargain hunters, price shoppers, freebies, legal
* CodeMonitor Spy Tool: Stoney uses it for his clients. You can monitor your own pages and see when people make changes. You can see SEO efforts of competitors. You can get information on sites that don't have RSS feeds. You can also see Wiki site changes. - Once you monitor a page, it highlights the difference - compare text, HTML, and browser view Jennifer Laycock is up and she has no voice. :( She's talking about social media - you are your most effective online marketing tactic. SMM isn't about how much money you have to spend. It's really about who you are as a company or individual. Look at who you are - that's the key.
Passion + knowledge = credibility - Bento Yum - blocked search engines but saw community involvement. - Traffic through Flickr - Take a little time and view community involvement as marketing time. - It has to be ongoing - Rule: despise no search traffic (even bad traffic)
Business + Blog = personality - Try to educate your community. An example is the tinbasher, a blog for a metal company. It turned mundane into fascinating stories. Their gross revenues tripled after they put themselves out there. 30-40% of their sales are attributed to this blog. They had 3 employees, now 5. 50k uniques a month. Video + Creative = Viral Love Blendtec blender = Will it Blend? campaign - First 5 videos cost roughly $100 - Crazy coverage and press - iVillage, Newsweek, Playboy, NYTimes - Online sales quadrupled - This shows pricewise that creativity can really covert.
Comments + Blogs = Exposure Find other blogs and add quality comments to them. - Comment early to grab readers' attention
Compassion + Freedom = PR Heaven - I heart Zappos: someone bought shoes for her mother and her mother passed away. When Zappos emailed her about the shoes, she told them that her mother died. They ended up arranging pickup and even sent her a sympathy bouquet. She was touched and blogged about it. (For the record, I am wearing shoes I bought from Zappos.)
Takeaways: it's not about the budget. It's about the attitude.
The last person up is Matt McGee who talks about Guerrilla Marketing for small businesses - the problem with SEO and PPC. You create your campaign and you hope that the person types the right keywords. You hope that the searcher likes your product. You hope that he/she is finding what he/she is looking for.
HOPE is not a marketing strategy. (MATT SAYS THAT SEO AND PPC IS A BAD IDEA! OK, I'm kidding. He specifically addressed me to say that I shouldn't blog that. Too bad.)
Solution is Guerrilla Marketing. There are several places to do that -
What he means: it's not sabotage or illegal or anything spammy. It's unconventional, unexpected. It's marketing without making it look like it's marketing. The rules are - don't spam, avoid the hard sell, participate (connect, don't alienate), and contribute (put the community first).
Flickr - Matt loves this and he has great photos so I can't blame him. The heart of Flickr is the groups - enables discussion, shares photos, etc. Think about this - if you own a music store, you can join groups that are related to music (guitar world is one that he illustrates with thousands of members). Flickr also has place-oriented groups which works if you provide services to specific geographic areas.
Yahoo! Answers is another tool for information sharing and questions and answers. There are also groups that are targeted to specific geographic areas here as well. Yahoo answers says that it's okay to link drop as long as it benefits the user. He has the highest percentage of new visits and the lowest % of bounce rates among the top 5 referring sites (illustrated).
Other options: forums and mailing lists - newspaper forums are really big because their subscriptions are dropping. Yahoo Groups is a great mailing list platform as is Google Groups.
One of his personal favorites is freecycle.org. It operates on the Yahoo Groups platform. The idea is that my junk is your treasure - your junk is my treasure. I don't want something, you can have it. It also helps people get awareness of your services.
Does it work? YES. Cookie company had Flickr photostream and was found by CNN. They got profiled by CNN. freecycle.org - my wife is a real estate agent. We like getting rid of junk in our house - we have 3000 VHS videos. He told his wife, "you send out email to freecycle and add your company information to the signature." One lady came over and did business with his wife for buying a new house. COOL.
