SearchInfluence

I cast a big net in asking all of our employees for their favorite internet marketing blogs

We often tell our junior-most employees to read SEO blogs to expand their knowledge. (I have heard this instructed to our freshest faces about 3 times in the last week.) The more experienced staff is humble enough to say in a very matter-of-fact voice, “I don’t have all of the answers.” And in this industry where things change daily, keeping up with the latest has to be an active task by many.

After many conversations with existing and potential clients, I have come to find there are many misconceptions and straight-up lies about our industry. Some of these lies are just bogus and everyone should be aware, so I’ve whipped up this handy guide with explanations!

7. You cannot make money with social media

This is simply a lie. Social media can be a great source of revenue. The biggest complaint about social media I often hear is, “I cannot measure the success of social media.” With the use of iFrames and reporting tools, success can now be more easily measured. An iFrame allows us the ability to create a welcome tab on your page that acts like a website, so we can install analytics, implement a form and utilize call tracking to get a detailed and effective overview of what’s going on.

A Look at the Growing Trend of Internet Marketing Con-men

We’ve all seen these people at conferences, pimping out their extra shiny business cards and talking like late-night infomercials – the online business strategists and social media experts. They claim to have the secrets to creating a successful online brand and promise “more profitable business now” if only you are willing to hear the pitch. They use buzz words like “online reputation score” and “viral marketing” to excite business owners into trusting their expertise and ultimately signing up for expensive year long contracts but never promise actual results.

Congratulations Dat Dog, you almost rank in the Top 3 for your own name!

Anyone who is aware of the most basic and fundamental tenets of SEO knows as long as you’re not screwing up your site too bad (using only flash, no content on home page, etc.), backlinks will be the most important factor determining how well your site performs organically. If you don’t believe me check out how much better Dat Dog performs after I gave them a link in my last Search Influence blog (it actually shot up 10 spots in a few days in spite of being new and having hardly any words on their home page). The problem is, Google may or may not be using all of your backlinks, so not all of them will have value to you.

Have you ever searched for a business by its own name and come up empty-handed? What about searching for its own name PLUS the city it’s located in and still no luck? It happens! Google definitely makes stupid choices at times, but most of the time this happens when we are not telling it the most basic information about ourselves — as redundant as it might seem.

Alligator dogs from Dat Dog's Yelp page.