By now, most everyone has heard of social media and many businesses have at least attempted to incorporate social media in their marketing campaigns.  Social media has taken the online world by storm, first with MySpace and then with Facebook and Twitter, and these sites have completely revolutionized online marketing.

But where do we expect to see social media go in 2011?  For the most part, we don’t expect any big changes.  Social media is a growing phenomenon, and simply put, we expect it to continue growing.  Many companies, including small and mid-size businesses, are currently experimenting with using social media in their marketing campaigns.  Because social media marketing is a low-cost alternative to traditional marketing such as print ads and direct mail flyers, businesses are able to use it to reach more people while budgeting less for marketing overall.

A lot of businesses currently use online marketing and a large portion of those use social media in some fashion in their marketing campaigns.  The number of businesses marketing via social media outlets is expected to grow substantially in 2011. Some experts believe as much as 80 percent of businesses will have used social media marketing by the end of the year.  Businesses are also expected to start devoting more of their budgets to social media marketing, indicating that this form of marketing is leaving the experimentation stage and becoming more of an expected part of online marketing.

Another trend we have seen in social media marketing is a lot of new contracting and consulting businesses springing up.  This is to be expected for a relatively new form of marketing that has taken on such epic proportions as social media.  In 2011, as social media marketing becomes more commonplace and businesses learn what to expect from it, we predict the number of contracting and consulting companies start to narrow.

Businesses are learning to be more results-focused, and marketing companies that don’t produce results are going to start to die out.  As a result, social media marketing as a whole will become a tighter, more results-driven market — good news for businesses who are serious about marketing.

As 2010 comes to a close and businesses start looking to the year ahead, the question on everybody’s lips is where social media marketing is headed in 2011 and beyond.  Predictions range from fantastical growth, to an epic failure — a sort of “social media bubble” that will burst in the coming year.  True enough, things can change pretty quickly in the world of online marketing.

Google announces some new factors in how they determine their search engine rankings, and suddenly everyone is on the new thing like flies on. But social media is a bit different.  It has shown that it is going to be around for a while, precisely because it is so popular with regular people, and so long as that is true, social media marketing will continue to be used and refined by businesses great and small.

Author Information

Kevin Harris is a freelance writer for Adobe.  Adobe software, such as customer management software, and services revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information, anytime, anywhere, and through any medium.  They also offer many other services such as customer experience management.

Photo Credit: Dieter Joel Jagnow

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a hot topic these days. It seems every time you turn around someone is talking about SEO and how it is essential for any company that wants to make a go of it in today’s business world. But what exactly is SEO? And does your business really need it?

Well, SEO is a marketing strategy that is intended to give you a stronger, larger web presence. And with consumers turning to the internet more and more for their product and service needs, SEO is, indeed, a key part of finding new customers and increasing the visibility and profitability of your business.

Site Optimization

Optimizing your web presence can only be a positive thing. After all, how can people know how amazing your company is if they can’t find you? When looking for a product or service people are more apt to turn to the Internet, particularly the search engines than the yellow pages. If you have a poor ranking and a minimal web presence, then potential customers won’t be able to find you online. And that can mean lost sales.

You may think that only large business need and can afford to utilize SEO as part of their marketing strategy, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, a smaller business can sometimes benefit even more than larger companies who may already have a solid web presence.

SEO Strategy

While both large and small companies can benefit from SEO, there is a difference in how it is applied to each. Other things besides business size that need to be taken into consideration when developing an SEO strategy is whether or not your company is local or global and if you deal with products or services.

It goes without saying that a larger company will have more money available for marketing and therefore more money that can be allocated for SEO. On the flip side, larger companies will need a larger SEO strategy in order for it to work.

Larger companies will most likely also already have an established web presence with a high traffic website. Their SEO strategy therefore should be geared towards tweaking the existing website and making it more efficient in drawing traffic by implementing more and better keywords in product and service descriptions, emphasizing competitive pricing and delivery service.

Small Businesses

Smaller businesses may have newer or smaller websites and not as high a volume of traffic as larger companies. While keyword placement can help to direct traffic to the site, a much better option is to use link building in order to increase the website’s ranking and direct traffic.

Increasing your online visibility will help increase your sales and put your business on the map, even if you are a local company without global aspirations. Local people turn to the Internet for their information also. The proper linking and keyword use will put you on top of the game.

Link Building

If your company’s website is new, link building is essential regardless of the size of your company. You want to make sure that you are listed when people search for your product or service on a search engine. And, in order to be recognized and indexed you need to use link building.

The right link building will also ensure that your website is high up in the search results. The higher you are ranked, the more people will be able to find you. Think about it: when you search for something online, how often to you click past the first page of results? Not very often.

Your Strategy

SEO doesn’t just benefit the big chain companies. Smaller companies can also get use out of SEO. The key is to make sure that the SEO strategy is personalized and geared towards your business whether you are selling a product or providing a service.

Author Information

Kara Taylor is an experienced blogger and a specialist in SEO, social media and website content. She uses her knowledge to give expert advice on a variety of topics on a Q&A site. When she is not blogging, she loves to learn new recipes and cook for her family.

Photo Credit: Sachin Ghodke

1. “I Don’t Know”

Let me just caveat this straight away and say that telling your client “I don’t know” is not a bad thing to do. It becomes very bad, however, when you use this phase in isolation and don’t follow it up with anything helpful. SEO clients tend to believe that you should know anything and everything about websites, the Internet and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Whether they expect more of their consultants than in other industries…I can’t say…but it sure feels like it sometimes.

When you are asked an SEO question that you don’t know the answer to, you should of course not try to wing it and make out like you do. This technique usually has two different variations:

1.)    Make out like the client is an idiot for not knowing the answer themselves as it’s so obvious, and shame them into never asking again.

2.)    Start talking gobbledygook about CSS, viewstate, algorithms and noindex commands until the client loses the will to live and moves on.

The best thing to do is admit that you’re unsure of the answer but you will find out for them and let them know as soon as you can. This will not only let them know you are honest, but that you want to help and you know how to find the answer. What more could a client want?

2. “That’s Just Google”

Most SEOs know that Google is heavily relied upon to provide traffic, often more heavily than is comfortable to be honest. Unfortunately, due to Google’s dominant market share we have to play the game and hedge our bets by focusing a lot of our time optimising for this search engine.

Whilst the Big G can be the provider great wealth, it can also take this away in a fell swoop with one or more changes to its algorithm. Largely speaking, if you play by the rules you should be okay, but we’ve all experienced in the past some drops in rankings or traffic that have come as a surprise and need investigating.

When this happens, possibly the worst (and most patronising) thing you can say to a client is “that’s just Google, sometimes it does that”. This is not helpful in the least and does not instill confidence in the client. They know that every effect has a cause, and if you don’t understand the cause then you will not be able to alter the effect. If you don’t know the answer, offer some possible solutions, but again tell the client that you will research the problem, get to the bottom of it, and work to put it right.

3. “But look at the traffic!”

Believe it or not clients aren’t interested in rankings. They’re not interested in links, and they aren’t even interested in traffic. So what are they interested in?

…Money…

A client pays you to do a job and they expect that job to provide more money to them in return. It’s very simple, and yet lots of SEO’s forget this, instead getting hung up on ranking number 1 for a big term or delivering 100 percent more traffic each month. If you are not making your clients a positive return on investment (ROI), there are no metrics in the world you can throw at them that will make them happy.

Author Information

Duncan Heath is a marketing expert working for a Tanda client, who specialises in offering solicitar credito (loan applications) in Mexico. He writes about all things web and client management.

Cuil is the "coolest" new search engine available.

Challengers to Google’s search dominance seem to spring up from time to time with each promising something different from what the Mountain View, California company delivers. Mahalo has tried to present a fresh alternative to the Big G as have Wikiseek, Gigiblast, and a handful of others, but none have seriously threatened Google’s leadership.

Now, a new search engine by the name of Cuil (pronounced Cool) promises to do what others have failed to do, claiming to have three times as many indexed pages as Google. Moreover, unlike Google, Cuil promises to make users’ search private, a subject of increasing concern for people who value confidential web surfing.

Promising to deliver a fresh approach to search with new algorithms based on an entirely new architecture, Cuil claims to index the entire internet, not just a part of it. The company says on their info page:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

My first attempts at using Cuil this morning were rebuffed as I encountered numerous error messages and found broken links on the navigation bar. When I returned later, I was able to successfully enter a few keywords and observe the results. Unlike Google which lists Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) in successive order, the results on Cuil were in three columns, making it easy to scan what was returned. In many cases, related photographs were included, something Google does not provide.

Cuil also promises to drill down into the content on a web page, apparently with less emphasis on title tags when returning search results. Of course, you’ll have to experiment with this new search tool to grasp just how differently it works from Google.

Cuil management is made up of former Google employees underscoring that a career with the Big G isn’t for everyone. The husband and wife team of Anna Patterson and Tom Costello head up Cuil who, along with Louse Monier and Russell Power built the application. Cuil is backed by $33 million in venture capital and is based in San Francisco.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and, interestingly, when you search for the word “cuil” on Cuil the results do not include a link to the search engine.

(Soure: Cuil.com and wire service reports)

I did  a little research myself and discovered that while the home page had a PageRank of 4, most of the main inner pages were PR3 or PR2, with deeper pages showing up as PR1, PR0, if that. Though PageRank isn’t critically important, I was a bit surprised to find that this site wasn’t ranked as well as it could have been. Checking some of their competitor’s sites I found much better results which had me wondering — what were they doing wrong?

Digging deeper I discovered some problems with the site, mistakes made by a webmaster which needed to be corrected:

• For quite a few internal pages, there wasn’t much linking between other pages on the site. I didn’t find that many outbound links either, but there should have been more links between existing pages on the same URL.

• Some of the internal pages were difficult to find. Likely, when the site was first started, these pages were linked to some other page on the site, but were no longer. Effectively orphaned, these lone internal pages were getting absolutely no benefit from other pages, hence the grayed out Google toolbar ranking.

When I mentioned these matters to the owner, he was surprised. Clearly, when the site was launched in Spring 2000, all of the pages were properly linked. A web designer and writer were hired to put the site together and everything worked fine. However, I did learn that the company — in a bid to save some money — made some changes to the site themselves early in 2003 and again in 2005 whereby content was updated, new pages added, and the design tweaked.

I also learned that the owner was the one who did all of the changes. Ugh.

Anyway, the client had contacted me initially with the purpose to have me rewrite a bunch of pages to bring them up to date. His thinking was that the fresh content would be recognized by the search engines and encourage the “bots” to visit his pages. Though this is true, I mentioned that he could save a whole lot of time (and money) if he added the links in himself and update the content as needed. Each page FTP’d to the internet would invite a crawl from Googlebot provided his site map was up to date.

Naturally, I found out that he didn’t even have a site map in place so I instructed him on how to get one.  I also shared Google’s Webmaster Guidelines link and encourage the client to visit Google Webmaster Tools to add and verify his site and do the same with Yahoo! Site Explorer.

As for me, I’ll be doing some other work for this client, but nothing involving fixing internal problems made by others.  Most times I’d rather have people clean up their own mess and take on fresh work without hassling with old stuff.  Besides, learning from one’s mistakes has its advantages, particularly when you manage your own business.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most uttered terms by webmasters, bloggers, and web enthusiasts. We all know what it is, but we have diverging, even contradictory opinions on how to best achieve this.

At one time, SEO “experts” encouraged page optimization for all of the major search engines. Today, Google is the most important — perhaps the only — search engine worth optimizing for. Granted, Yahoo, MSN and Ask each have their place, but Google is dominant and is in many markets exerting more influence then all of its competitors combined, thus rendering everyone else to a distant second tier status.

A big portion of what I do every day is built on SEO: I build links, work on back links, add fresh content, tweak existing content, digg, stumble, and work my way on and on and on. At times it can be tiring, seeming somewhat pointless, but when I check the SERPs (search engine results pages) and learn that a customer has discovered me due to my hard work it all becomes worthwhile.

Allow me to cover some of the myths, tricks and trials of SEO. Some of what I am sharing is simply my opinion, while other methods have a proven track history — steps I do over and over and over again.

SEO Myths

You must saturate your article with keywords. Granted keywords are important, but anything over 2 or 3 percent is plain wrong. This means that if you write a 500 word article you will use “diamond necklace” between 10 and 15 times. Um, that is plain silly…boring to read too. Better: use a particular keyword or phrase three, perhaps five times in the article. That is all you need to do.

Limit your articles to 250 words, submit them to the article directories. No and no. The premise with the first part is that a page with less words on it will load quicker. In some cases, maybe so. But, there isn’t much that can be said in 250 words that makes sense. As far as the article directories go, be very selective: they aren’t all equal — I have two directories that I really like, but I use them with care.

Tags do not matter. Some do, some don’t (as much). META tags aren’t all that important, but Title, Paragraph, and ALT tags are very important. Use them with care and you’ll succeed. (note: see comment below by SEO Ranter who disputes my finding with a comment by me linking to a site which explains their effectiveness today).

SEO Tricks

Writing good content is essential. Well, so is writing jibberish. Seriously, the search engines are not grammar police — I’ve seen many pages do very well that are poorly written. Sure, if you want to engage your readers, you should work on well you write, but that won’t necessarily stop your page from performing well. Focus on writing a lot of unique content too. Quantity isn’t tops, but it can be important.

Add a Site Map. Always a good idea — make your site easier for the search engines to spider. Besides if links break or other problems arise, you can check your site map and quickly correct the problem.

Build Links. Having an excellent internal link structure is important. Wherever possible, point to some of the articles and categories within your site, not just outside links. Point to related sites you control and share some link love with sites outside of your control as well. Exchanging blogroll links is good. Better: set up a separate link page and link from that page. You’ll avoid the clutter and not duplicate links across your blog.

SEO Trials

Oftentimes, feedback is difficult to gauge. Sure, SERPs can be followed, but are people clicking on your pages, reading what you published, and taking additional action such as buying your product? Some people are sniffers, others are lurkers, while still others are shoppers — you want to snag the latter.

SEO can be tiring. Yes, but it is very necessary. SEO should be habit-forming and the part of everything that you write. Good habits equal good results; the opposite is also true. Which method do you want to follow?

Sure, there are other tips and tricks I could mention, but then I’d be giving fodder to my competition.

Meanwhile, familiarize yourself with the many tips and tricks out there and give the good and safe ones a try. Yes, there are some shady ways to do SEO, but I am not covering those. Let your white hat go a bit gray, but wearing a black hat can come back to bite you.

What does this mean? Well, on surface you won’t see many changes as I’m not going to be adding scads of articles to this site in a bid to drive in traffic or to fetch new customers. I’m already managing ten other blogs and working very hard to help them rank high in the SERPs, pull in traffic, and convert customers. I’m a white hat kind of SEO guy, but if there are some gray areas to exploit, I might explore those as well.

Link baiting is, of course, the main way I help bring links in and this is only done through writing excellent content. To that end, I’ve been overhauling a few sites, taking a couple of others up one level, and using photographs and better layouts to help touch up some other pages. I’m not going to reveal all of my secrets, but I can tell you that as I track some of the changes I’ve made, the search engines love them.

So, join with me and link to this blog and if you are a customer needing some SEO assistance, then please consider me for your project. I can best be reached at matt AT thearticlewriter. com — to your success!

Update: Before I forget, anyone who leaves a comment to this thread with a link to a page they want stumbled, I’ll be stumbling that page for them to mark this blog’s transition. This offer expires at 5 p.m. ET, on March 7, 2008.

My most recent post mentioned that Yahoo! was giving one thousand workers the heave in a bid to maximize profits. They aren’t losing money — they just aren’t making as much of it as they want. What a pity — tsk tsk!

Turns out that my rant may have caught the attention of some folks in Redmond, WA who decided to offer the internet giant $44.6 billion for their business. Yes, Bill Gates and company are avid The Article Writer readers and have decided to step in and allow Microsoft to snag Yahoo! thanks to me.

I want a referral fee!

Sure, let me dream or have my fifteen seconds of delirium — but the fact remains this: Microsoft wants the Big Y!

I’m not too surprised to see this offer come forth, though I would have preferred to have learned that it is was the other way around: the Big Y! buying the Big M. Somehow, a internet juggernaut controlled by the same people who brought to us Windows VISTA, Internet Explorer and MS Outlook doesn’t tickle my fancy. Rather, it makes me think that this whole internet thing will soon be run by a small group of corporate titans who care not for the little guy.

My utopian dreaming aside, the earlier days of the modern internet era were kind of fun, but since Google intervened everything is getting, well, organized that I am envisioning some sort of toll road appearing down the line. In order to continue using these wonderful innovations which are now currently free (for the most part), we’ll be expected to pony up some cash.

Will Yahoo! accept Microsoft’s offer? By every indication they’ll give it their full consideration. My best guess is that the answer to this question will be yes.

Looking Forward, Not Back

I won’t rehash all that has taken place the past few months simply because it is common knowledge and I am not interested in looking at what has been. Even as I write this article my focus is partially on the most recent update, with the bulk of my attention given to planning for the future.

PageRank Is Dispensed To Various Articles And Blog Entries

As far as this web address is concerned, the home page and this blog managed to hold steady at PR4 while The Auto Writer, my second blog, fell one notch to PR3. Importantly, specific blog posts and articles I wrote picked up PageRank, with some of the heavier trafficked URLs notching a PR3. Oddly, PageRank seems to have been dished out for blog posts made in August and September while various heavily trafficked articles written in May, June and July show no changes (the previous PageRank export took place on April 27th).

SERPS Trumps PageRank

One thing that has held consistent throughout 2007 is PageRank as The Article Writer has held steady at PR4. Traffic, however, has increased four-fold since January resulting in new business opportunities for me. I rank very well for certain keywords and keyword phrases which has opened up several windows of opportunities for me. Clearly, PageRank isn’t all that important to me as the site’s performance with the search engine results pages (SERPs) is what triggers the work that pays my bills.

Planning Ahead With A New Strategy

Although I don’t want to kill the golden goose, some of my new strategy will change the way that I blog. Specifically:

• I eventually will be blogging an average of three days per week here and two days per week on The Auto Writer. I cannot maintain my current pace if I am to provide material that is interesting and compelling.

• The work I am providing for customers is on the increase. I blog regularly on SayEducate, I’m providing content for a jewelry site, and I recently started a monthly automotive column for a Midwest US magazine (more about that in December). I have a few other irons in the fire I am ready to pull out too.

Finally, I plan on activating at least three new sites over the next two months. I own several domains (dropped, forwarded or dormant) that I plan on developing into full sites. Two sites I plan on keeping while the third I will likely flip. The strategy I have employed with CabinManagers (niche site targeting a specific audience) is paying off and I will employ that strategy in the development of the new sites.

PageRank, Just A Google Tool

PageRank is nothing but a Google tool to measure a site, blog or web page. You can’t do anything about PageRank, but you can bring customers to your site through superior SERPs positioning. By developing web pages which cause visitors to take an important action (click on an ad, fill out a form, buy a product) money can be made, whereas with PageRank you have no control over the process. Besides, it appears Google has devalued this product, perhaps because it has been “gamed” to death.

Now, can we put the PageRank cares behind us once and for all?

PageRank Update Is Here For Some

Word is trickling in that some websites are now having their Google PageRank updated. While this move had been long awaited, it isn’t the change that most webmasters were expecting. Indeed, the update seems to be targeting mostly one kind of site — those which openly and actively engage in the selling of paid links (and/or website reviews). Are you a paid link peddler? If so, you could be in for a nasty surprise — a -1 (even -2!) drop in your PageRank.

Several Websites Take A Hit

I won’t go into detail covering what others are discussing so well, but a drop in PageRank has been reported by Andy Beard and aired by Rob Watts and elsewhere. Andy first mentioned on Sunday the hit his site took and then followed up on Monday with information he learned from Danny Sullivan about the penalty.

The news is ugly: some sites which were previously ranked (at PR6, for example) have been dropped by as many as two rankings with this “special” update. Impacted sites include those with paid reviews (PayPerPost, ReviewMe, et al) and/or paid text links (Text Link Ads, Link Adage, et al). It isn’t clear just how widespread this penalty is being applied, but I have seen it on two other sites besides Andy’s.

The Second Round of Bloodletting

Google’s PageRank update had been expected to be exported to the Google Toolbar in late July or early August of this year. When the update failed to show, it became apparent that Google was holding back in order to apply a long threatened PageRank penalty to certain sites.

In April 2007 Google’s SEO Czar, Matt Cutts, put out the call for people to report paid in a bid to help Google expedite the process. By September 2007, reports that paid link directories were the recipient of the first round of bloodletting came in when Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) dropped for the Aviva Directory, Alive Directory, and others. Rand Fishkin (Randfish) followed up this news when he shared his reasons why Google penalized what he considered to be the bad directories.

Internet-Wide PageRank Export Pending?

With the paid link directories getting whacked by the SERPs and other sites hammered by a drop in PageRank, will an internet-wide export of PageRank to the Google toolbar be far behind? My guess is that we’ll see the long awaited update kick in before the month is out.

Once the dust settles the net result should be interesting, especially if certain smaller and less visible sites outperform some of the larger and well known websites. We may not like what Google is doing, but PageRank is their tool and they are, by far, the largest search engine provider in the world.

Has your site been penalized? What is your opinion about this topic?