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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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.

One of the worst kept secrets in Web Marketing is how effective a well planend Search Engine Optimisation campaign can be in promoting businesses on the web. More and more business are incorporating SEO into their marketing plan and looking for someone they can trust to optimise their Web sites in order to achieve top rankings. The SEO industry is very well established in the US, is well under way in the UK and Europe, but is still in its relative infancy in Australia (although we are quickly catching up)

With well over 100 million Web sites on the Internet, it is more important than ever for businesses to improve their online visibility. While most reputable SEO companies use ethical SEO practices, there are others who will try to trick the engines into high rankings by using questionable techniques. Some of these techniques can actually be reasonably effective in the short term - however ultimately, most of them fail, and more often then not, result in the site being worse off sometimes much worse off) than they started.

To avoid falling into this trap, site owners should be aware of unethical SEO techniques and be sceptical of consultants who suggest using them.

SEO Techniques to Avoid

Search engine optimisers (SEOs) are often divided into two camps: the so-called Black Hats, who use questionable techniques to trick the search engines into ranking them highly, and White Hats, who prefer to work with the search engines guidelines in order to achieve lasting success.

Below is an outline of some simple black hat techniques that you should probably avoid. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it will give you a taste of the types of things that the search engines find to be unacceptable.

Keyword Stuffing:

This practice involves the repetitive use of the same keyword phrase over and over in your Meta tags, Comment tags, ALT tags or in the copy on your pages. That certainly doesn’t mean that you should avoid using your keywords altogether - by all means repeat and use combinations of your primary keywords on your pages - but use them to appeal to you users - not just the search engines.

Hidden Text or Links:

This technique involves inserting hidden text or links that are readable by search engine spiders but cannot be seen by your site’s human visitors. This can be accomplished several way, such as using a white link or white text containing relevant keywords on a Web page with a white background. Your site visitors won’t be able to see this text and will not know it is there, but the search engines will. All search engines consider hidden links or hidden text to be spam and may penalise the page, if not the entire site, for it.

Cloaking:

This involves using a software program to direct search spiders to a group of pages specifically created to trick the spider and re-direct the user to a different set of pages. The user does not see the group of spam pages and is simultaneously re-directed to the real site. Cloaking can have valid uses–some sites use it to redirect based on location. However, cloaking that is used to deceive the search engines is considered a spam technique and may result in site penalties.

Doorway Pages:

Also known as Gateway pages, these are low-quality Web pages that exist only to pass visitors to the main Web site without providing any particular value of their own.

Mirror Sites and Duplicate Content:

This involves the creation of several sites with identical content and placing them on multiple servers with different domain names. These sites link to one another and are constructed for the purpose of achieving multiple rankings for identical keywords using the same content. Search engines suppress duplicate content because it holds no value for their users.

Link Farms:

Google’s quality guidelines suggest that pages contain no more than 99 links. Link farms typically consist of one page with hundreds of links to sites within different categories that are unrelated to your site content. Such pages contain poor quality content that is useless to visitors. Reciprocal links from these pages hold no value for you at all and could potentially associate you with “poor neighborhoods”. Avoid these inbound links because they will result in serious penalties and banning.

In selecting an SEO consultant, ask them about their best practices and be sure you know what they’re doing to your pages. Realise that no company can guarantee results and if a company claims a special relationship with Google or any other search engine, run the other way.

Sound like an impossible challenge ? … Well perhaps it is… but what can be done to promote and market a website on a shoestring budget ?

Patrick Sexton (SEOish) interviewed some major players in the search space (Aaron Wall, Andy Hagan, Andy Beal, Todd Malicoat, Neil Patel, Lee Odden and CK Chung) and asked them all if they only had $100 how would they market their website.

Here are some highlights :

$100: Maybe a listing in joeant.com and/or botw.org

With $100… I think I would buy some cheap hosting, put up a WordPress CMS, find some good affiliate programs, and start writing and optimizing.

Attending a few conferences per year for education but particularly for networking can prove to be a very worthwhile investment.

leverage social media. You could potentially do it for free, but if I had $100 I would try and create 1 great piece of content and push it out on all of the social sites.

You will have to learn, and learn, and then learn some more.

The Article - Got 100 dollars? 7 Experts share budget website marketing tips -provides some great insights, and is definitely worth a read. But the overall theme is perseverance and dedication, which come to think of it tends to apply to SEO in general, with or with or without the budget…

You may be aware that Google has very recently rolled out a new search result platform named Universal Search. With this new program, Google has begun integrating information from some of its vertical search platforms (such as video, maps, news etc..) into its regular web search results.

Universal Search presents an opportunity for small business owners to be more involved in search with less technical expertise required. The opportunity arises because of the relativley new and less competitive nature of Google’s vertical platforms.

This article provides an overview of some of the different search elements which may now be displayed in amongst the “standard” search results.

Google Video : is a relatively new field – simply adding a video to your Web site with a good descriptor in the file name can help you take advantage of video search.  Do a search on “video search optimisation” for advice on how to optimise for video.

Basically, you want to name your files accurately, using keyword-rich file names. Create a keyword-rich title tag and description, look for anchor text opportunities, include RSS feeds, create a video site map, and optimize the content on the Web page from which you launch your video. Then submit to video search engines like Blinkx. By uploading your video to various video search sites like Google Video, YouTube.com or Metacafe, you can expand that video’s reach exponentially, and increase the chances of it coming up in a Google Universal Search.

Google Maps: Also known as Google Local, this is already a major part of the search results. If you don’t already have a presence, make sure you visit the Google Local Business Center and sign yourself up for a free listing. This feature-rich program will allow you to build a “landing page” that will help bring visitors to your Web site.

Google News: Press releases will be indexed and displayed as “news” so strategically releasing information about new products and services can result in having Google News pick up your information and display it as “news.”

Google Image Search: Images on your site not only sell your product, they can become a way for visitors to find your Web site via a Google Image Search. Use descriptive keyword-rich file names and alt tags – always keeping in mind it’s important to label your photos with accurate descriptions. Instead of saying “beachfrontunit.jpg” say “gold-coast-beach-front-unit.jpg.”

You can gain some traffic and some search engine presence by looking at just a few of these ideas. Help and step-by-step explanations are out there; a few simple searches can teach you a lot about the procedures necessary for adding these features to your online marketing campaigns.

In his article - 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO - Stoney deGeyter outlines some steps that Small Business owners could take to carry out their own Search Engine Optimisation.

Stoney suggest taking small steps through the process, and setting aside a specific amount of time each day dedicated to the education and implementation of SEO strategies.

Start off with On Page optimisation :

As you learn, don’t take a single source as gospel. Find multiple sources that can confirm each other and also take in contrary opinions. These can only serve to confirm what you believe is the right approach. But most importantly, learn by doing, testing, and analyzing what you have done. Don’t expect big immediate payoffs, but be patient as you work through the SEO process and its implementation of your site.

Move onto Off page SEO techniques :

Depending on the size of your site and the amount of time you can dedicate to it each day, it may take several months to a year to “perfect” the on-page optimization. At that point, its time to start learning more about the off-page factors. Again, baby steps are required here lest you become overwhelmed. SEO is literally a sea and if you try to take it all in you’ll likely drown in it. Instead, just take a small area to learn and master as best you can before moving on.

Running your own effective SEO campaign is undoubtedly a significant investment in time and effort - but can definitely pay dividends in terms of traffic and online sales/enquiries.