SiteProNews |
- Four Tactics to Use Reverse SEO to Mitigate a Corporate Crisis
- What Should You Know About Article Marketing?
- Four Social Media Marketing Myths
- 10 Steps to Negotiating the Best Business Deal for You – A SPN Exclusive Article
- Why Both Weight Loss and Google Rankings are Limited Goals
| Four Tactics to Use Reverse SEO to Mitigate a Corporate Crisis Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:59 AM PDT 
Whenever someone searches for the company name, the story will be the first several listings to appear on the first page, not the company’s home page. But with proper tactics, this story can eventually be pushed down off the first page. Here are four reverse SEO tactics a PR professional can use to suppress the negative stories from search results Reverse SEO Tactics #1. Start a Blog on the Company Website Search engines love websites that post new content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to do this. Not only does it help the PR pro do some reverse SEO during the crisis, it also helps the marketing department with regular SEO, so the company can be found for their chosen keywords. If the search engines can see regular updates to a website, they are more likely to push it to the top of their results, displacing the negative story. Reverse SEO Tactics #2. Respond POSITIVELY to the Criticisms The worst thing to do during a crisis is to let emotions take hold and to respond in kind to negative comments in the heat of the moment. While the first instinct may be to take on the naysayers and critics, a shrill outburst will not only delay the reverse SEO efforts, it will fan the flames of the story. There are too many cases of PR pros forgetting themselves and causing the story to grow bigger than it would have if they had left it alone. In some cases, the response even becomes a story of its own. Reverse SEO Tactics #3. Use Social Media Ranking Tools to Determine Whether the Person is Even Worth a Response Hopefully, companies managing their reverse SEO efforts are using social media monitoring tools to keep up with online mentions. These tools find all mentions of a company’s keywords in different social networks, blogs, and forums. The temptation is for a PR pro to respond to all of them. This can be a big mistake. Not everyone who responds has the influence to have a big impact on the story. Use a social media scoring and ranking tool to see whether the person has any real “clout” before responding. If they have a low score, it is safe to ignore them. Otherwise, a wasted response to a non-influencer may give continued life to the story. Keep in mind that regular search engine optimization takes time – as much as three to six months. So does reverse SEO. Companies cannot count on immediate results on their reverse SEO efforts. They need to remember they are in this for the long haul. While companies need to deal with a corporate crisis in the usual manner, they need to realize this is a long-term strategy as well. Just like with every other crisis and problem, this too shall pass. But its effects can linger, thanks to the search engines, if it is not dealt with properly. For some companies and individuals, an old crisis will still rear its ugly head whenever someone searches for the company name, because they did not take the proper steps. But reverse SEO techniques will suppress those results after the original furor dies down. Reverse search engine optimization is an ideal long-term strategy to deal with company crises, and to protect its online reputation. Not only does it deal with problems as they arise, it can be an effective inoculation against future crises as they develop. Article by Julie Ann Ross. Rostin Ventures principals have extensive experience in restoring reputations online, using Reverse SEO among other tactics to provide positive Online Reputation Management Services (ORM Services). http://www.RostinVentures.com. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| What Should You Know About Article Marketing? Posted: 24 Oct 2011 08:40 AM PDT 
Of what benefit is article marketing to you as an online marketer? There are basically two benefits: sustainability and getting free targeted traffic. When you write your articles and submit them to ezine publishers, they continuously bring to your website a steady stream of visitors for many years to come and at no extra cost. You receive free targeted traffic because you don’t directly pay for it apart from the initial charge paid to article submission service providers for distributing your articles. The benefit of having targeted traffic is that you do not labor to persuade an already attracted customer and whose interest has been aroused through your article marketing techniques. Success in article marketing requires you to submit quality articles. Quality articles are those that contain and provide to your readers good information. These are articles that are very well written, which add value to the internet fraternity. When you write quality articles, you stand high chances of building positive perceptions in the minds of your readers, which in turn helps you to build your own credibility. When you become credible enough, you obviously begin to make money through the increased sales of your products. The quality of your articles will determine your success in article marketing campaigns. Additionally, success in article marketing also depends greatly on the quantity of the articles you submit for distribution. You do not have to write so many articles in a very short time, expecting to get quick returns. That’s not how it works. I have come across many marketers, who circulate the internet with over 400 articles in a span of only one year. It’s being overambitious. Two or three articles a week are good enough to work for you profitably. Remember that while quantity matters a lot, it should not be overemphasized at the expense of the quality of your articles. Quantity should not supersede quality if your aim is to successfully promote your business through article marketing. It’s important to brand yourself well by having your own writing style. Most people who promote their website and products through article marketing do not write their own articles. In fact it’s difficult for most marketers to write their own articles. They instead prefer to source them from outside. But whichever the case, I would advise you to go through those articles and edit a few things to make them compatible with your style. The uniqueness of your style is part of your brand and can bring you good results in article marketing. How authentic are your articles? If you really want to benefit from article marketing, then the content of each article you publish should be original. Search engines are most of the time crawling the internet in search of new unique content. Even your readers will return to your website if you provide them with new original content. Remember that your articles’ originality and uniqueness are two important article marketing factors that can lead you to prosperity. Keyword optimization is an important factor in article marketing. Keywords are words or a set of words that best describe what your visitors will look for. They are words, which your targeted audience type in at search engines like Google to receive the information they are looking for. If your article does not rank among the first 10 to 20 results when doing a keyword search, then your targeted audience won’t be able to read your articles. The onus is on you to learn how to optimize the keywords in the articles you write in order to get free traffic from the search engines and to succeed with your article marketing method as well. Persistence is another key factor in article marketing. I have come across article marketers, who write so many articles at the start and go in recess only to wake up again after one year. That’s not good and does not help you to build your business. Success is not only achieved through quality and quantity, but it’s also achieved through persistence and continuity. Consistently write your articles, based on your plan to continue attracting your targeted audience to your website and to retain your existing customers. The length of your articles matters a lot in article marketing. They should be of a reasonable length, say 800 words, for you to benefit optimally. This is because search engines will rank your article based on the word count (number of words in a specific area), keyword density (total number of keywords compared to the total number of words in your article), keyword prominence (relevancy of a keyword in the specific area) and keyword frequency (number of times a keyword appears in a specific area). It’s therefore difficult to rank high if these factors are not considered and long articles tend to be at an advantage. Last but not least, do not be in hurry to get quick returns when using article marketing as your marketing strategy. One thing you need to know is that it takes some time for your articles to get good rankings and to be disseminated to various ezines. Success in article marketing depends mainly on being persistent, writing quality articles (articles with unique content and properly optimized keywords) and having many articles distributed. Charles Kiyimba owns http://www.CashWithGoleza.com and http://www.golezadesigners.com where popular home business ideas and opportunities are tested rigorously to find out what works and what doesn’t. Visit today to discover the secrets behind building a successful home business. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Four Social Media Marketing Myths Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:52 AM PDT 
The Company’s Customers Do Not Use Social Media This is a common myth, and one that continues to astonish a lot of social media marketing professionals. Some companies do not use social media at all, yet they profess to have the knowledge of their customers’ social media habits. The best way to find out if customers are on a social network is to join it and upload the customer email list. If no one is truly on there, the company can avoid it and never use it again. But if at least 20% of the list is on the network, the company should use that network and engage in social media marketing. People are saying bad things about the company already. The only difference is that by not being on social media, the company cannot know how big the problem is. Social media marketing professionals can recite case study after case study about companies that were caught completely unaware about a problem on social media for weeks or months, until the mainstream media called to ask about it. The only way to see if people are saying bad things on social media is to be on social media. Social Media Is Not Mainstream There are 170 million Facebook users in the United States – nearly half the population. Very few things have that level of participation, except television, radio, and newspapers (and newspapers are dwindling). By ignoring a social media marketing opportunity like Facebook because of the mistaken belief that it is not mainstream, companies are ignoring a large part of their target market. Of the 81 million Gen Yers in this country, 96% of them are on a social network of some kind. In fact, many of them do what they can to avoid mainstream advertising, by recording TV shows and skipping the commercials. However, they can be reached via social media marketing methods, like Facebook ads. Furthermore, social media marketing professionals can also specifically target their ads to Facebook users, based on their age, sex, relationship or job status, and even geography. Companies can reach women in their 50s who live in Florida, or single men who are between 18 and 24, living in a large city. Rarely, can mainstream media achieve such targeted results. Social Media Results Cannot Be Measured Actually, the advantage social media marketing has over mainstream marketing is that it can be easily measured with different social media monitoring tools. Not only can these analytical tools measure where something is being said about a company, it can measure the sentiment of the message, to see if it is positive, neutral, or negative. Website analytics can even determine how many people arrive at a website, what steps they followed to get there, what pages they visited while they were at the website, and even if they made a purchase. This means that not only can social media marketing pros monitor the traffic to a particular website, they can determine what online mediums are having an impact on sales. Mainstream advertising cannot do that. Internet marketing is not a new field – it is more than 20 years old – but there are still plenty of myths that surround it. And until these myths are disproved and social media marketing joins traditional marketing as an accepted and effective marketing channel, social media marketing pros will continue to fight this battle on a daily basis. Article by Julie Ann Ross. With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Ventures has refined video seo practices for distribution in social media. http://www.rostinventures.com offers video seo, social media marketing and online reputation management services that are affordable and drive search engine ranking through Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Social Marketing and web 2.0 communities and resources. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| 10 Steps to Negotiating the Best Business Deal for You – A SPN Exclusive Article Posted: 24 Oct 2011 07:23 AM PDT 
I have had plenty of success in negotiating opportunities lately, specifically since I am not known as an expert negotiator. I have negotiated raises that were 5 times what was proposed, negotiated an executive level position worth thousands beyond the job description with triple the job security, and negotiated online services worth hundreds of thousands of estimated income for my company. How did an amateur like me accomplish these things and learn how to negotiate in business? Here are 10 steps that I use for effective business negotiation: How simple this sounds, but how difficult to realize. You need to know specifically what it is you want from the transaction or negotiation. Don’t wait for the other party to state their point of view to decide what yours is going to be. If you want a raise, how much? A commission for click-thru sales, what percentage? Write these things down as a wish list of all the items you do want before you begin negotiations. If not you may think back and find you were persuaded into agreeing to terms for things you didn’t need to begin with. In order to counter effectively and find how your value proposition matches the other party’s needs, you first need to know what those needs are. Again, be very specific in terms of dollars, percentages, times, etc. Experienced negotiators will take their specifics and read between the lines to find needs not stated, emotional issues like political victories within the organization. Exercise Patience Lack of patience on your part can make you appear an amateur and ruin a deal. Ed Brodow, writer of “Negotiate with Confidence”, says that your patience can be devastating to the other person if they are in a hurry. The opposite is true for you. Conceal self-imposed deadlines that reveal to your adversary that you might be subject to a timetable. “Never accept the first offer”, says Brodow. “They will be more satisfied if you reject the first offer– because when you eventually say “yes,” they will conclude that they have pushed you to your max. Know Your Walk-Away Moment One of the biggest issues with auctions for the purchasers is that people get whipped into an enthusiastic craze during the process and bid, and ultimately purchase, something at a much higher price than they would have ever considered possible. They neglect to know their ceiling bid. This can happen in negotiation too. You must know your fallback position or cut-and-run point. What’s the bottom line amount you will take? What Battle Is Worth Fighting? In any settlement you will need to compromise if for no other reason than to allow the other party to feel they have gotten something out of the deal. Decide early what are the key compromises you will not make– what’s really important to you. Don’t die on a hill that isn’t worth dying on, folks. If you ‘re being offered a position as an executive in a company, is the monthly car lease an important enough point to be a deal killer? Match Benefits to Their Needs For you to expect anyone to give you something, you know you have to provide quality benefits to him, whether in a verbal negotiation or a written pitch. Now you know what he needs, so review your list of attributes for yourself or your company, and look for matches to the needs of your negotiating opponent. Professional negotiators will find unfulfilled wants that the other party has that weren’t stated and point out how cutting a deal will satisfy them. For example, I recently negotiated a deal on behalf of an online business portal with a national data provider. The data provider permitted us to upload data that is normally purchased on a subscription basis for access to the predicted web traffic on the portal. This traffic means click-thru sales, which we even negotiated a commission on! Pursue Win-Win Deals This is an attitude that has to occur for you to be profitable today. There are no more winners and losers in discovering consultative sales or negotiations. There has to be winners on both sides of the table, so find gaps that you can fill and look how the other guys can fill your gaps. The truth is that every company and every person is different with different needs and wants. Use that to your benefit. Something that has little cost to you in concession may be a major coup for the people you ‘re doing business with. Let them have it, because the reciprocal situation applies for you. Free software is an example. Software costs little to reproduce, so therefore the marginal costs to a software company are miniscule, but the value of a package may be tremendous to the right party. Everybody profits if all sides keep the needs of their opponent in mind instead of thinking about defeating them. Opportunities will surface that you never imagined possible. Find Workable Compromise This goes back to a prior point. Certain things you cannot live without, but others are manageable. Know early where you can be flexible and just how flexible you can be (Gumby or Plasticman?). Any time you give in on a point in one area, including terms of payment, it is perfectly appropriate and expected that the other party will yield somewhere else. As long as you keep from flinching on your critical negotiation goals, you can find compromises that permit both sides to come together in the middle without losing face. Don’t Underestimate Your Worth This is a basic sales mantra that I live by, and it occurs daily when people concede on price or terms without narrowing the scope of service or demanding comparable concessions. If you are willing to take a hit to your bottom line in exchange for zero, your authority goes down, now and in the future. If you do it once it becomes precedent setting. Moreover, it leads to mistrust, because you just proved you did not give your best deal from the outset. You’ve set yourself up for the proverbial spitting for distance contest, subjecting your side to future browbeating for unjustified concessions. Any time you surrender anything in a negotiation, make sure that you show value becomes a little less from your side or demand additional value from their side. Stick to Your Guns If you offer a good proposal and you know it, stick to it! Don’t let fear, condescension from your counterparts, or chiding language make you back off from your position. Let her vent, telling you how preposterous your argument is while proving nothing, and then re-emphasize how she wins by doing business with you. Put the ball in her court by asking her to demonstrate there is no value in your offer. It’s easy to throw stones. It’s much more difficult to prove those airborne stones were deserving of flight. Don’t back down and you won’t fail the final test of the negotiation. If you cannot achieve satisfaction, follow negotiation expert Brodow’s Law: “Always be willing to walk away.” Other deals are just over the horizon, so don’t get too vested in this one. Document the Deal ASAP You’ve got what you want and so does the other side. “Look honey, it’s a win-win situation.” Great! Get it written down before you pat yourself on the back and get it to the other party for sign-off. Why? To begin with, tomorrow his memory may recall something in a different way. Second, many times negotiators occur between the leaders of organizations or people who guide the operation but have no legal background. As soon as the lawyers and analysts get hold of the agreement, you can bet that items will be questioned today that were a done deal yesterday. Oh yeah, it’s true. The next time you're in a situation where there is give and take, remember that a negotiation is going on, whether you call it that or not. Apply these ten little rules to your situation and watch with marvel as you get that pay increase, secure that new position, make that next sales commission, or get that great deal. Then go out to your favorite restaurant and reward yourself with a hot meal for getting what you wanted– on you. You deserve it. Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development and cost management consulting firm for small to mid-size enterprises, and Virtual Mastermind, an online network of Mastermind Groups for small business owners. He has made a career of leading, inspiring and raising the game of small business people. He is the author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the Smart Shop, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com. He can be reached at kwalinskas@smartcompanygrowth.com. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Why Both Weight Loss and Google Rankings are Limited Goals Posted: 23 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT 
It reminded me of my own pet peeve: how people usually measure the success of their SEO work by checking how well their site ranks in the search engines. Yet, similar to weight loss being a poor main goal for your health and fitness regime, where your pages rank for specific keyword phrases is also a poor main goal. Healthier Body – Healthier Website Your principal goal when eating in moderation and exercising regularly should be to become healthier overall, and ultimately to live a longer and more satisfying life. And your chief goal with an SEO program should be to create a better overall website and make more money from it – which, incidentally, can also make for a more satisfying life! Writing articles nobody is really interested in about the history of your products is like eating lots of junk food. It’s empty calories. There’s no value in it to anyone (except perhaps the donut store) and it keeps you from eating the good stuff. Writing keyword-filled content just for the sake of search engines works the same way: It keeps you from adding true value to your website. While you can try to cover your big ole body in a floral mu’umu’u, let’s face it, you’re still out of shape underneath it all. And it’s the same with your website. There’s no sense adding good content on top of bad. If it’s already full of junk (food), it’s time to trim it down and cut out the crap (content). So how do you measure the effects of trimming the fat? I’m not saying that weighing yourself and checking up on your rankings are utterly useless. In the beginning, both can be a good way to make sure you’re on the right track. Let’s say you get all into your new health kick because none of your clothes fit and you can barely make it up a flight of stairs without having to stop for a rest. The more you exercise and eat right, the better the numbers on your scale are going to look. This can definitely keep you motivated. But the weight loss itself is only one result of your success. Other results might be that you look and feel better. In fact, even if you lost only a few pounds, if you’re eating better and exercising regularly, you’re likely a whole lot healthier and may even have a lot more energy and overall focus. And so it is with SEO. When your rankings for a few key terms move from “nowhere to be found” to being on the first page in Google, it shows you that you’re certainly on the right track. But here’s what is more important: You’re likely seeing not only more visitors to your website, but more targeted visitors. And just as more energy results from a good exercise regimen, more conversions and sales come from more targeted website visitors. But you can only lose so much weight (and check so many rankings). If you keep up with your fitness program you’ll probably get to a point where – even though you’re back in your skinny jeans – the needle on the scale has stopped moving in the “right” direction. When you measure your success by how many pounds you’re losing, this can be confusing. You know you’re exercising often and eating correctly, but can’t understand why you’re not still losing weight. And this is where my husband’s pet peeve comes in. According to him, the more you exercise, the more muscle mass you put on your body. This in turn may even cause you to gain weight because muscle weighs more than fat. At this point, it’s silly to be constantly weighing yourself and worrying why you’re not losing weight anymore. So at this point you can change your goals. After all, you are probably looking fabulous with a whole new body shape. You’re healthy, fit and trim. Your scale isn’t measuring your lost percentage of body fat, nor is it taking into consideration the fact that you’re stronger and no longer short of breath. So why keep looking at the scale? It’s the same with your website. Once you know you’re on the right track with your SEO, you no longer need to check your rankings. They simply don’t tell the whole story. Rankings don’t make you money or make your site convert. They After the initial stages of your SEO program, it’s time to put away your rank checking software (or scale) and adopt new goals – start counting how often your phone rings, your contact form gets filled out, and how fabulously your website is converting all those extra targeted search engine visitors. Then sit down and have a healthy fruit smoothie – because you deserve it! Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen. If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future! Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
Reverse SEO can help mitigate a corporate crisis, especially when the crisis is being played out in social media networks and on blogs. Many times, a story grows online instead of in the mainstream media, which can cause major problems with a company’s search engine rankings.
Article marketing is one of the best marketing methods of driving traffic to your website. But do you write articles to market your business? Do you know the secrets of writing successful articles? One thing I discovered is that most prominent and well established online marketers use articles to market their websites and to promote their products. This is the reason why I would like to share with you the hidden information about article marketing.
Social media marketing has many myths and untruths surrounding it, usually spread by people who have no knowledge whatsoever of social media marketing and how it works. These are some of the most common myths that abound, and some possible responses to use when faced with them.
Today in business you don’t get what you request– you get what you bargain for. You see, everybody asks “What’s in it for me?” So for you to get what you want, you'd better expect to answer that doubt for the people you collaborate with by learning negotiation know-how. 
My husband and I were talking the other night about one of his pet peeves: When people start exercising and eating healthier, they usually measure their success by how much weight they’ve lost (or not) as shown to them by their trusty scale. It annoys him because, while losing weight is one sign that you’re doing things right, after a certain point, it can only tell you so much.
| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment