Website Promotion is not Voodoo

I posted a link to Matt McGee’s 7 Questions Small Businesses Should Be Asking and got this question from one of our customers, Steve Kinchen at Hall Piano Company.

It was a great excuse to do a little impromptu analysis. We may do a brief series of these.

Hall Piano Company Local Search Analysis using Matt McGee's 7 Questions Businesses should be asking.

Steven Kinchen Read the article… How does HPC stack up?

Will Scott

Pretty darn good, I’d say.

By @mattmcgee’s standards you’re pretty well covered

We’re back with another thrilling installment of our bi-monthly series: Top 10 for the Weekend! Keep reading to find out tips and tricks, as well as what’s new in the world of SEO

Great Apps to Customize Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook recently hit a new milestone: 500 million users! With this high volume it is a perfect platform for marketing, and people are already taking advantage of this opportunity. Here is a list of great apps that allow you to customize your fan page to its fullest potential.

Is Facebook the next evolution of Local Search?

Facebook stormtroopers devise plan to beat Google

We all knew it was a matter of time before Facebook started expanding into web search and they’ve finally done it by unveiling their own Facebook local search option: Open Graph search engine. What is Open Graph, you might ask, here’s what Facebook reps are saying, according to an allfacebook.com story:

“all Open Graph enabled web pages will show up in search when a user likes them”

I am frequently asked what the next big thing in paid marketing is – while I tend to keep my online marketing secrets close to my chest, I always answer Facebook. With hundreds of millions active users, it is Sutter’s Mill in the pay-per-click Gold Rush. As paid search platforms are experiencing exponential growth and decay, it offers advertisers an opportunity to target potential leads at a significantly lower cost than traditional PPC.

As the world’s largest social media site, Facebook has become the popular choice for the local and niche businesses. By allowing marketers to directly interact with people through paid ads, interest groups and applications, it adds a level of engagement lacking in traditional online marketing.

Once again we’ve collected some handy links that we thought you’d find enjoyable and useful. Have a look and maybe you’ll get some ideas for what to do on Monday when the clients and customers start calling…

1. GoogleSpeak – “We currently do not support the location” = Banished?

As much as we love Google Maps… it’s got a long way to go until it’s a fully reliable business tool. It works perfectly for many, but some businesses end up with a problem-laden listing or market and just can’t seem to get it straightened out. If you’re a small business struggling to get your business details out there, you are not alone! Stay tuned for future posts on how to manage it!

Yelp is intended as a review site where users can write and read reviews for local businesses to help make informed buying decisions. It’s a powerful tool in that users trust the real opinions and feedback from their friends and neighbors. Yelp’s user-driven reviews allow everyone to add in their opinions of products and services at local clubs, restaurants, and businesses in all forms.

There is obvious value to a small business owner in getting users to leave positive reviews. The question is how much should a business pay for a review? No, no, no … I’m joking. The question really is how do you encourage customers to leave Yelp reviews naturally and organically without abusing the intent of the site?

Alert the Emperor! Facebook has Conversion Tracking!

Data.

This is the most fundamental building block when trying to determine the success of a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

Data tells you if that “iffy” ad copy you wrote is actually paying off and it also tells you when something’s gone belly up and is stinking up your cost per lead. But despite being extremely useful, data is also extremely problematic especially when you are using third party report tool with unrelated PPC platform.  The data gets well… unpleasant. This statement has been especially true for me using tools such as Analytics to track Facebook advertising performance.

Search Influence’s president, Will Scott, will be speaking at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West on March 3, 2010.

The topic of discussion will be Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers.

For the full agenda and exhibitor list, please visit Search Marketing Expo West.

Hi, my name is Anthony and I am a recovering search marketing luddite.

Facebook Yields High ROI on PPC Ads

For years there have been only three internet ad services I viewed successful: Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and MSN Adcenter.  Don’t misunderstand; I was aware of other services.  I am a social media packrat after all, but I never considered them realistic alternatives to the holy SEM trinity. They seemed like gimmicks. As PPC manager at Search Influence, I provide these services to our clients but I never realized how truly profitable social media advertising was until I started comparing the conversion rates. The numbers spoke loud and clear – Facebook (to my surprise) was generating a high return with a significantly lower cost because of demographic targeting and editorial-like advertisements.

In the middle of August we started testing Facebook Advertising for one of our plastic surgeon clients.  The surgeon wanted to reach potential tummy tuck and breast augmentation patients.  We selected a number of stock images and loaded the ads.  However, Facebook rejected all of our ads (The Downsides) because they did not follow the Facebook advertising guidelines.

Facebook Advertising Early Lessons

This was a shock to me, the surgeon and the 5 other people who saw the Facebook advertising mockups, because we thought we used:

• relevant and appropriate images and language
• correct grammar
• spelling and punctuation