Over 100 Different Resources for Marketers to Start

February 21, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment 

How do new marketers learn SEO and Pay Per Click? How do professionals stay current with search marketing tactics considering the sheer volume of social media distraction? Below are the top categories selected by readers. However, we’ve taken it a step further and listed over 100 different resources for marketers to start, maintain or advance their level of SEO, PPC and any other type of search based marketing. Enjoy!

Search Engine Marketing Blogs

SEO/SEM Blog Aggregators:

Testing Tactics on Your Own Web Sites

Search Engine Marketing Forums

Paid Subscription SEM Communities

Search Engine Marketing Webinars

Search Marketing White Papers, Research, Special Reports

SEO & SEM Email Newsletters

Online Groups for Search Marketers (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning)

The Big SEM Conferences

SEM Consultant/Agency Advice

  • TopRank Online Marketing – That’s right, we put our own agency :) – The reality is, your current SEO/SEM agency or consultant should offer some kind of ongoing education and/or training on top of ongoing consulting services. If not, call us!

Print Magazines

Offline Networking Groups or Meetups

Books on SEM

Niche or Regional SEO/SEM Conferences and Workshops

Search Marketing Industry Web Sites

SEM Workshops, Training & Certifications

Search Marketers on Twitter

SEO & PPC Focused Podcasts

What did we miss? Please share in the comments.

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Small Business Marketing Tips – 5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online

May 1, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

As small businesses naturally don’t have the necessary resources to launch huge marketing campaigns, they will have to compensate this with resourcefulness and innovation. If you’re running a small business and you’re searching for cost-efficient marketing solutions, here’s how you can use the wonderful World Wide Web to your company’s advantage.

5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online:

Build a Website – You don’t have to pay for web hosting even if you’re running a commercial website just as long as your company can be properly categorized as a small business. Having a company website is the means for prospective customers to learn everything they have to know about the products or services you’re offering. Compared to other online media, a website allows your customers to see and hear about your offer and perhaps interact with you as well.

Know about SEO – Your work doesn’t start and end with building a website. To make your website work as a marketing tool for your business, you need to incorporate SEO – or search engine optimization – elements in it. SEO can help your website zoom to the top of search engine rankings and provide it with all the exposure you need.

In regard to SEO, make sure that you focus on your design and content. Besides needing your website layout to be visually attractive, it must also have easily located links to facilitate navigation. Use HTML as much as possible as this is more SEO friendly than, say, CSS. As for the content, refresh or update it as much as you can because new information will always encourage old and new readers to visit your website. Also, think about the appropriate keywords for your website and use them as much as possible – without committing grammatical errors or ruining the coherence of your content – to delight search engine spiders all the more.

Have a Blog - A blog is one of the most effective online marketing tools today, and if you don’t have one yet then you’re wasting a huge opportunity day after day. A blog allows you to directly interact with prospective customers and almost immediately update them with anything new about your company’s products or services.

To increase the marketing effectiveness of your blog, make sure that you’re writing about one topic alone. This topic must be directly related to your company’s products or services. Furthermore, it must be something that you know and love a lot to enable you to write in a convincing and interesting fashion.

Build Your Network Contacts – Although websites sometimes seem to be creatures of their own right, always remember that a website can’t really operate by itself. It gets updated and achieves success because of its webmaster or owner, and that person should be the one you’re concentrating on getting friendly with. Do your best to build your network by establishing good working relationships with other website owners. This is a give and take situation so be ready and willing to shell out as many favors as you hope to receive. As you become good buddies with these people, you’ll end up exchanging links, and this, by the way, is called affiliate marketing.

Join the Podcast Revolution – Although the popularity of blogs is certainly not waning, that doesn’t mean you have to completely rely on blog marketing alone. There are other marketing fishes in the Internet, and one of them goes by the name of podcasting. Make new podcasts regularly and insert your ads in between. You have to make them short and interesting enough to discourage your listeners from wasting energy just to press the fast forward button.

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Business Consulting and Search Engine Optimization SEO

March 23, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

When you are starting up a consulting business, one of the first places you should be doing research is on the internet. You should first make up a list of strategic keywords and then you’ll want to start looking into your competition. By doing this the you’ll have a clear picture of the challenge of being listed for your chosen keywords near the top of  internet search engines like Google, MSN or ASK.

As we all know the internet is the preferred venue for business research. The consequences of your internet rankings are significant. As a new consulting practice you don’t have much choice … you need to understand search engine optimization and marketing techniques to compete with other tech savvy consultants.

Having a website, blog, or facebook account is just one part of the Internet marketing pie. The SEO game will take time, energy, creativity and will cost some money. Creating a stunning informational site and obtaining an Internet listing is not a stand-alone marketing or advertising solution. These are merely steps along the Internet pathway.

Committing to SEO
To boost your ranking and maximize the return on your consulting firm’s online presence, you will need to, understand the sometimes daunting process called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. There are many great blogs and websites on SEO out there for you to start learning and applying.

If you don’t want to learn it all yourself don’t fret, you’ll be able to find lots of firms that offer SEO services. Like all advertising decisions, you will need to proceed with caution. With Internet providers, it is easy to be misled, but making the smart, informed decision can reap huge results. Again, your consultancy’s marketing plan and advertising strategy calls for lead generation. The web should be a very cost-effective way to accomplish that goal.

Search Engine Optimization firms use keywords, back links, and a host of other strategies to boost your internet rankings. Some SEO companies will submit your consulting site to many search engine sites for a small fee. Usually these providers reap small returns. Like all forms of advertising, consistency is paramount to success. One-time gimmick promotions generally do not work.

You should consider approaching reputable SEO business consulting firms with credentials and references. Inquire as to their services and strategies and ask them to show you specific results they’ve achieved. I’d also recommend that you get the names and contact information of some of their past clients and call them up to get first hand information.

Get specific pricing for all services. Keep in mind that there are effective and ineffective SEO firms out there. When starting your consulting business, you will need internet leads, while SEO is one way to do this, Google Adwords, and other PPC options are a great way to do this.

There are many search marketing consultants, but treat them the same way you would a larger firm and demand all information and view their past results before going forward. You can take on handing your consulting business’ search engine optimization effort yourself – but be sure, SEO takes a lot of time on a continual basis. It may likely make more sense for you to get someone else to do this for you while you work on other aspects of your business.

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