When discussing Social Media Optimisation, the big social sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us, almost always come up, but search marketers should consider  spending some time learning
about some of the smaller niche social media sites – sometimes called – micro communities.

For some businesses, search engine optimisation (SEO) or pay-per-click
(PPC) advertising simply may not be enough. SEO can take a long time, and PPC prices continue to become more and more competitive. In some high profile markets, it simply may not be practical for a smaller business to compete. Niche social media sites have the potential to
help drive a higher volume of traffic than some of the more traditional methods can achieve.

At the recent SMX Social Media
conference, SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin and Liana Evans from KeyRelevance discussed the concept of micro communities,
and how they could be used to drive traffic to niche sites.

At SMX Social Media, Liana Evans presented a case study for a site offering meal replacement products.  They had poor organic ranking results (except for their business name), and had spent tens of thousands of dollars on PPC – with very few inquiries and no sales as a result.  Liana
worked with the client to implement a social media campaign focused on bloggers of sites that discuss ways to lose weight.  The concept was to reach these people, and
see if they would be interested in trying the meal replacement product – for free.  

The
results of this micro community campaign were far superior to the original PPC campaign.
They were delivered hundreds of trials, got hundreds of dollars in
direct sales, got good brand exposure, and even received a number of
links with the resulting SEO benefits as a bonus.

OK, so
how do you find the right social site, with the right target audience
for your project?
One obvious way to achieve this is to use the search engines, naturally.

Rand Fishkin also suggests the following as a sample of niche communities:

Arts & Design

• deviantART – focused on the arts
• Urbis – artist and design community
• ThinkVitamin – for web designers, developers,
  and entrepreneurs
• SportsShooter – for sports photographers
• threadless -
  t-shirt designs community
• VIRB – art and design of all kinds (including web design)

Business

• Yelp – local business reviews
• AVVO – find and rate lawyers
• Trulia – real estate community
• RealEstateVoices – Digg like site focused on real
  estate articles
• Small Business Brief – small business marketing
• Sphinn
  - web marketing

Food & Wine

• BakeSpace – share and swap baking recipes
• FoodCandy – network for talking about food
• Cork’d – one near and dear to my
  heart, review, cellar, and share wine

Health & Wellness

• WebMD Community – health and wellness
• Peertrainer – fitness community

Kids & Parenting

• DonorChoose – community for public and private schools
• Minti – parenting
• imbee – Facebook for kids 7 – 13

Shopping

• eBay
  community – forums on the eBay site
• Etsy – ebay for handmade goods

Other

• Care 2 – community for non profits and charities
• Librarything – share and review
  books
• Wayfaring – create and share maps
• CouchSurfing – network of
  people offering up couches to sleep on for travelers
• Helium – human powered knowledge portal

If you are careful about choosing the right micro community, the traffic is likely to be much more focused on your niche, than you could hope to achieve at a traditional social media megasite.

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AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product and one of its main sources of revenue.
AdWords offers Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, as well as site-targeted advertising for both
text and banner ads.

Pay per Click Advertising

Advertisers specify the words to “trigger” their ads and the maximum
amount they are willing to pay (or bid) per click that they receive. When a user searches on Google, ads
for relevant words are shown as ’sponsored links’ on the right side of the
screen, and sometimes above the main search results.

The AdWords program includes local, national and
international distribution options and a huge variety of configurable options when setting up and running your Ads. Google’s text advertisements are short, consisting
of one title line (max 25 characters) and two content text lines (max 35 characters each).

The order of paid listings depends on other advertisers’ bids and the ‘quality score’ of all ads shown for a given
search. The quality score is calculated by Google from a number of factors including historical click-through rates and
the relevance of an advertiser’s text, keyword and landing page to the search.

Site Targeted Advertising

A few years ago Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Via the AdWords control
panel, advertisers can enter keywords of interest. Google then offers to place
ads on sites advertisers consider relevant within their content network.

Advertisers then bid for placement, and can also build a list of sites
where they do not wish their ads to appear.  It is not  currently possible to obtain a list of sites
where their ads could appear), however it is possible to see a report of where their ads
showed and how many viewings and clicks were achieved.

Google Adwords can provide a very effective and relatively low cost means of building traffic for your website, and can be particularly effective for new sites, as a way of getting traffic while their organic (natural) rankings build up.

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Links are one of the most important factors for high search engine
rankings. If your website doesn’t have enough incoming links then it will be very
difficult to get high rankings for a competitive search term.

It’s also important that you get the right kind of links. 20 “good
” incoming links will get you much better rankings than than 100 bad incoming
links.

OK, so what makes a good incoming link? There are a number of points that can make
a link better than other links:

1. Use your keyword in the anchor text

Make sure that the texts that are used to link to your website contain
words for which you want to get high rankings on search engines.

2. Relevancy

Links from related web pages almost always work better than links from unrelated
pages. Links from unrelated pages may not hurt your rankings (although they are unlikely to help) but Google
likes links from websites that cover topics that are related to yours better.

3. Relevant landing page on your site

While it’s okay to get links to your home page it is better to get links
to the page that is most relevant to the chosen anchor text. If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it’s more
likely that your web page is really relevant to that term and it’s more
likely that you’ll get high rankings for that search term.

4. Authority Links

Links from pages with high “authority” will help to increase the TrustRank
of your website. Links from websites with high PageRank have a positive
effect on the rankings of your own site.

If a website
is well known and if the site has good search engine rankings then it’s
likely that it is also an authority website.

5. No nofollows

The nofollow attribute tells search engines that they should not follow
a link. Links with that attribute will not help your search engine rankings.

You will probably have to check the HTML code of your link partners
to find out if they use a nofollow attribute to link to your site (do this by viewing the source, finding you link, and looking to see if “nofollow” is present)

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While Yahoo is the second most used search engine behind Google, when it comes to online shopping, it seems that Yahooers (Yahoo surfers) may actually be the biggest spenders online.

Wayne Perry, president of SiCap Industries, says that Yahoo surfers spend 30 percent more than other consumers on average.

SiCap Industries makes natural health products – distributing their products to around 10,000 stores worldwide – and also selling online via a number of partner web sites that sell natural health products.

“We haven’t figured out why, but our web stats show consumers referred by Yahoo definitely spend more money on our websites, and according to data collected from our retailers, yahoo surfers also spend more money in the stores that carry our products. This has been a consistent theme for nearly three years,” says Perry.
As they plan their internet budget for 2008 SiCap Industries is taking a closer look at their Yahoo surfers.

Online retailers are still not taking full advantage of search
engine optimisation (SEO) opportunities with their Web sites, according
to a new study by search and interactive marketing agency Oneupweb.

In the study, “Once Again… There’s Still Money on the Table: Internet Retailer Study 2007,” Oneupweb looks at the SEO efforts of the top 100 retailers as rated by Internet Retailer magazine.

Oneupweb found:

• 20 percent of retailers’ sites were well-optimized
• 20 percent of retailers’ sites were moderately optimized
• 34 percent of retailers’ sites were nominally optimized
• 26 percent of retailers’ sites were not optimized at all

Sites were considered well optimised if they had unique and relevant
meta tags, optimised alt tags, and a large amount of indexable content.
Moderately optimised sites had unique meta tags, low to moderate
content, and minor site architecture problems. Sites were rated as
nominally optimised if they had only homepage titles and meta tags
optimised, little indexable content, keywords on homepage copied
throughout the site, site architecture or content management system
problems. Non-Optimised sites had no evidence of SEO at all.

While on-site SEO is not the only factor involved in search
engine rankings, Oneupweb found that 90 percent of the well-optimised
sites were positioned on the first page of Google results for at least
two keywords. In comparison, this study found that only 22 percent of
non-optimised sites appeared in the first Google search results page
for two or more keywords.

Do you have a very clear understanding of your customers ? Do you know who they are; what they like; where they live; what at else they buy; and what they like about your products ?

Perhaps more importantly what do you know about the visitors to your site (or shop) – who don’t actually end up buying a product. What encouraged them to visit (or pop in), but didn’t entice them to buy ? Were they really potential customers at all ?

If you don’t know who your target market is – if you don’t understand who your best prospects are (and I mean if you don’t know everything about them) – you’ll end up wasting a lot of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention time and money) marketing to those who will never buy from you.

Of course, you may be targeting several markets. But if you can’t properly identify all your audiences, you’ll almost certainly end up chasing after the wrong crowd. You’ll waste your time promoting your products and services to someone who, was never really interested anyway.

Spending some time and effort very carefully defining your customer and thinking outside the box for who might be potential customers can be very a powerful exercise. One of my clients recently doubled annual sales once they realised their best target market was actually one they had never considered would be interested in their products.

So, what are your best target markets? Can you clearly define them? Can you get narrower in your description? How are you addressing each in your marketing communications? Do you truly understand their objectives, key pain points and potential buying objections?

Whether your products sell for $10 or $1 million, make sure you’re absolutely clear about who’s going to “get it.” Then, go to market with a message that each of your clearly defined target markets can relate to.

There are many techniques for marketing and promoting you site – Paid Advertising is a fairly common one, but there are various options for getting into the Paid Advertising area…Paid Adverstising can be a very effective at generating traffic to a brand new site while the organic traffic builds up. 
 
an outline of some of the most common Paid Advertising options follows :

1. Pay-per-Click Advertising. (e.g. Google Adwords or Yahoo Serch Marleting) – offers very targeted
   traffic and you have a great deal of control over how and when your ads are displayed.. Excellent for promoting affiliate
   programs or selling products online. 

   As well as the traditional Keyword Targeted ads, Site-targeted advertising should also be considered.

2. Ezine or Newsletter advertising. Traffic is
   especially targeted if you can arrange for a personal recommendation
   within the newsletter/ezine by the owner. Might not be that useful to promote the same website
   several times on the same list as the members are largely the same.
3. Banner Advertising. Depending on the placement,
   banner ads are great for branding purposes. Click
   through rates and traffic can be strongly related to banner design, tagline
   and the relevance of the site you are advertising on.
4. Paid Reviews on Blogs. It’s important to pick
   quality bloggers with a decent amount of integrity, trust, reach and
   authority.The more objective the review, the better. Undisclosed reviews will
   generally work better but it is difficult to find high quality bloggers
   that don’t disclose.
5. Text Link Advertising. Useful because it can also provide you with some SEO benefits. Pick a high traffic site over one with a high PageRank. Design your anchor text to encourage click throughs and ensure
   that your link is placed in a visible location and not somewhere like
   the footer. 

   It may be better and cheaper to contact websites directly to inquire if they sell text links, instead of using a network.
   

6. Paid Syndication. This involves a sponsorship of a
   website, whereby your content will be syndicated and integrated into
   the framework of the site in question.

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While it may be relatively easy to find websites to advertise on through third party ad
networks, a strategy which will almost certainly result in higher referral traffic and greater brand exposure is :

1. Make a list of the search terms/keywords relevant to your website’s theme (products / services).
2. Enter these keywords into the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live, etc…)
3. The best websites to advertise on are within the Top 30 search results
4. Contact each of these websites and inquire about advertising

Getting links from these related websites has the added benefit
of improving your own search engine rankings, not to mention that
you’ll save a considerable amount of money.

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The 30 day Challenge to create your own online business is just about to kick of again …. For the 3rd year – and starting on Wednesday 1st August, the challenge to make your first $10 online begins.

For the full 30 days of August (or 31 actually) Ed Dale and Dan Raine and Nicolas Messe are going to be showing you exactly how to start your own Internet business and generate your first income online, all without spending a cent of hard cash… although it will clearly involve some time commitment on your behalf.

I’ve not been involved in any of the previous 30 day challenges but this one promises to be bigger and better than ever… incorporating video tutorials and podcasts… and simple guides and instructions on some of the most sophisticated Web 2.0 technologies around.

I’ll be directly participating in the challenge myself… and encourage you to go and take a look and see what it’s all about.

see : The Thirty Day Challenge for more info

In these days of increasing online competition, most web site owners recognise the importance of marketing their sites, and not just assuming that they will be found. However, many are unsure whether they should promote their site with SEO (search engine optimisation) or PPC (pay per click advertising).

The answer is probably not that black and white, and in fact most websites work best if you incorporate a combination of SEO and PPC. The best mix will depend on your specific business goals and needs.

To help with the decision on when PPC or SEO is most relevant, outlined below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each :

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Advantages:

• Immediate Results : PPC generates traffic almost immediately – not in several months time. This makes it ideal for New sites which will take a while to be listed organically.
• Time based promotions : PPC ads are ideal for time dependent activities such as special offers, competitions, or seasonal sales .
• Control : PPC can be stopped or started whenever you wish – so you’ve got some control over traffic volume. If you are swamped with orders or enquiries you can turn PPC off until the backlog clears. PPC also provides a great deal of control over other aspects – such as budget, and even the geographical location or time of day your ds aree displayed.
• Testing : PPC ads allow you to relatively easily (and cheaply) test the effectiveness of different keyword phrases and landing pages.
• Search Engine Unfriendly : PPC ads can be used to promote sites that may not otherwise be found via search engines e.g. new sites, single page sites, or sites that for other reasons may be difficult to rank organically for.
• Keyword Range : PPC ads allow you to bid on a large range of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you don’t necessarily want on your web pages.

Disadvantages:

• Expense : PPC advertising can become expensive (with little or no return) if the wrong keywords are used, the bid price is not appropriate, or if the campaign is not managed.
• Fraud : Click fraud can be an issue – particularly for very competitive areas.

Major PPC provides such as Google Adwords, Yahoo and adCenter are offering much better tools for setting up and managing Adwords campaign,s however they can still be complex to manage effectively – if you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should seriously consider professional campaign management.

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages:

• Cheap : Once established, traffic through organic search engine results is almost free.
• Long Term : Once optimised, your website should continue to deliver traffic for the long term.
• Cost Management : the number of visitors isn’t based on your budget – your budget doesn’t need to increase to increase traffic.

Disadvantages:

• Up Front overheads : SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
• Long Term results : SEO is not usually a quick fix, results can take weeks or months to be achieved.
• Black Hat : be aware of some SEO techniques which are not approved of by Search Engines, these can sometimes have reasonable short term results, but may ultimately have a negative impact on your rankings.
• Site redesign : SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it can cost considerably less in the long term. However, correct use of optimisation techniques is important (sometimes they can backfire).

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation both provide opportunities to promote your site and build traffic. Both can contribute significantly to the success of your online business. If you use both wisely, you should be able to get many new site visitors and customers without spending a fortune.