Carson and Company

If you are still wondering how to get your company, or pr client noticed, then look at Business Blogging. It is one of the strongest pr marketing strategies you can implement. It takes some work, but the rewards are great. First you need to realize that just having a blog site isn’t going to make things happen overnight. You need a plan, you need to understand how the blog world works, and then your business blogging will all come together.

There are dozens of companies claiming to do blog marketing sites. Only a few truly understand how this mysterious cyberworld can get you noticed. We are one of those companies who have surrounded ourselves with many of the top developers and marketers that know how a pr clients web site can become listed or ranked very high on Google and Yahoo, as well as MSN. There isn’t any top-secret formula, just a lot of planning, consistency and hard work. Like any other web site, a business blog site may take a few weeks to get indexed with the search engines.

To make your blog site more business provide the visitors opportunities to make comments on the site. Have an area that they can signup for your company newsletter, or download and article that relates to your industry. If you need assistance in getting a solid blog site that gets noticed, call George Carson. He can help with the development and the web marketing.

If you want to do other publicity activity to get noticed, then consider these other tried and true efforts. Many of them I have spoken about, but sometimes when you read it by other publicity professionals, you might listen more. These are just a few suggestions I saw that was written in an article called “How to Get killer PR“.

• Attend Events. Introduce yourself to other business people, check to see if there is a special area for networking at these events, or if they have guest speakers.

• Find something that makes you unique, a compelling theme (as the writer states). Find the strengths and uniqueness and talk to reporters about those qualifications

• Be accessible. When anyone form the press calls, or sends you an email, you need to respond in a timely manner. That doesn’t mean when you are ready, it usually means within a couple of hours or sooner.

These few tips are common sense, but often not used. Make your publicity part of your overall business plan. It should include the blogging as well as the many other campaign elements I have spoken about in the past. Look at topics on my blog like “How to write a Marketing Plan“, or “Write a Press Release for the Media Not Your Company”; another good article is “Where to send your press release”.

If you are serious about developing a blog campaign, check out “Social Media Keeps Growing…” and “Internet Marketing Tips“.

Now get back to your business blogging.

Web designers and Webmasters already know how important Meta tags are, or can be, but are they really being used anymore? I worked with a pr client to help them promote their web site. In doing this, we had to re-educate them about the use or non-use of Meta tags.

It seems like this term has a lot of staying power. Maybe because it is one of the only words, other than “optimize”, that the average pr client, or agency hears and still believes it is the “core” to promoting a web site. Not True Anymore! Before I get too deep into Meta tags and how to use them properly, let me say that yes, we use them, but it is now a very small part of web marketing. Most of us doing web marketing for our pr clients use Meta tags as form of structure, not to generate web traffic. But that’s another topic, and one that is much more complex today than it was two years ago.

Meta tags were the hot ticket in the early 90’s (wow, that isn’t that long ago, but sounds ancient in relation to technology). When spammers and gaming sites overused this process to generate traffic to their sites, new rules by search engines began developing. Meta tags have different names such as Meta Robots, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, and Meta Content Type. Since algorithms have emerged the way you use these Meta tags still can help, but not alone.

You’re probably asking what is a Meta Robot? It is a code that tells search bots to either follow your site (URL) or you can direct it to index certain pages. I’ll explain the other Meta Tags so you can understand them better. As a pr client, it may seem a lot to learn. As a web designer, keep this in mind, as it will help a Webmaster or web marketing expert get a site listed sooner.

Meta Description. Critical in a site. It is what people type as keywords. So these are important for your product/service in identifying them correctly.

Meta Keywords. I feel these are still one of the foundations to using any Meta Tag. Be careful not to place more than 18 to 20 keywords. Otherwise it can decrease your sites position with search engines.

Meta Content Text. As important, this can hurt a site by not displaying properly in search listings.

Although there are two schools about Meta Tags, it doesn’t hurt to use them. If done correctly, it can only help to improve a search engines listing, but it alone cannot give you high rankings as it did a few years ago. If you feel you can do this yourself, visit the Search Engine Watch site about meta tags.

If your web site needs more traffic, or better ranking with search engines, give Carson Marketing, Inc. a call. George Carson will show get you noticed. Call him at 949-477-9400.

Search Engine Marketing is both an art and full time business. Knowing what makes them angry can help any pr client avoid being tossed off the list.

If you are a pr client, or an ad agency, or better yet, a web design company, make sure you know the rules of good web development and understand what makes SE’s (search engines) mad. You may already recognize a few of these “don’t do” rules, but I am sure you will find some that you did not know and should avoid.

Remember, if you engage in any of these “don’t do rules” your web site can be banned or dropped from their rankings. That can have serious effects on your web site traffic, and ruin a pr marketing strategy campaign that might have included keywords, optimizing, banner ads, reciprocal links, just to mention a few. These are a few of the things to avoid.

1- Re-Directs. Sometimes called cloaking. This could include hidden text or showing different content to se’s than what your actual site displays.

2- Doorway pages. This is a familiar term and was once accepted as a marketing tool for web designers. No longer is this accepted.

3- Linking to poor sites. Sometimes referred to as “bad neighborhood” sites. These sites have broken links, are usually part of a link farm for thousands of other sites linked together.

4- Broken links on your own site. Getting a “404 errors” is not good. Fix any broken links or pages that cannot load properly.

Many other don’ts exist, these are a few to help you learn what not to do. We have other articles that address similar helpful tips, such as “Build Web Links With Publicity“. Other good reading articles you should read are: “Web Site Marketing in Orange County“, Social Networking is changing how we search“, and finally “Web Site Marketing and Publicity“.

Browse through many of the other articles on local publicity, pr marketing strategies, and email campaigns. I am sure you will find something that can improve the publicity and marketing campaign for your pr client.

Optimizing a web site is not for amateurs. If you are not versed in how SEO’s view keywords in a web site, then it is time to call a professional web marketing company, like Carson Marketing, Inc.

Web site optimization is an art. It requires careful research and placement as well as modification to a web site in order to accomplish your goal…get a #1 ranking on Google, or Yahoo. For over the past 8 years, many web-marketing companies have emerged because optimization has become big business. It is not a hobby that you can do on the side. If you treat this form of business as a part-time activity with your company’s web site, or you pr clients web site, then expect little return.

I’ll explain a few inside tricks to getting a top ranking.

If you do nothing else, at least implement these simple tips.

First, you need to select the best keywords that describe your company and your web site. For example, if you are in the weight loss industry, you need to search for keywords that will generate traffic to your web site. Most commonly used term would be “weight loss”. Although this is the most popular term, you should not use it. Why? Because you will be competing with over 66 million other web sites (web pages). That means it may take a couple of years before you even get to be on page 20.

It is important to analyze terms that people will type, but select terms that are not the highest searched. Such as “weight loss story” is a good example. This still has the words weight loss, but now you narrowed the field and it will give you a better opportunity to build ranking.

There are several search tools that will help you find keywords and their popularity. You need to know how to interpret the data in order to make it work for you. A few good resources for keywords are: www.goodkeywords.com, www.overture.com, www.wordtracker.com. Remember, these are only one of the many tools you need, so use them wisely. Having other web marketing knowledge to make your site increase traffic and ranking would be helpful.

Second, research the competition that has the highest ranking/position. View their source code to see what keywords are used. Then look at how and if they use the correct header tags as well as title tags. If this is all sounding confusing, that’s because web marketing isn’t a part-time job.

Third, check to see if they underlined any keywords, or made them bold. The text in your web site is very important and needs to reflect what is in your source codes.

Last (at least for this part of the topic), check for images. How are they positioned, how are they titled, and if correctly tagged and placed in the keyword.

It would take a hundred pages to explain this subject in more detailed. What I am trying to do here is give you a better understanding of what web marketing is all about. Now the challenge is up to you. If you are ready for a web-marketing program and cannot do this yourself, call Carson Marketing Inc. We’ll make things happen!

Publicity is Everywhere series

As we enter the end of this year, I want to make sure that many of you are taking advantage of the web site your company, or pr client has. If you haven’t checked your site lately, within the past 6 weeks, then it’s time to take another look.

This time you need to look at where your site is ranked. How is it positioned with the search engines? Does the site appear when you type the different keywords…near the top, or way down past the 100 other companies listed? Do you even show up? How many layers of keywords do you need to type before your company appears?

If your site is not getting high rankings, don’t call your pr agency, or the IT department, or the web designer. The search engines are again re-structuring how they rank and search a site. It’s time to get smarter on how you market your pr client’s web site.

That is why I continually recommend pr clients and web-marketing companies to re-visit their web sites at least every 6 to 8 weeks and do updates to re-fresh the site. Many times this re-fresh will require some additional optimizing to meet the new demands set upon sites by the SEO’s. It is a good idea to take advantage of checking your pressroom, contact info and make sure your products and services are current.

If you want us to check how valid your links are, how valid your site is with the search engines, just give us a call. The service is FREE! Yes, free. No strings attached. It is our holiday gift to you.

See Also

• Learn how to get higher page rankings
  SEO and search are changing, is your site ready for their reviewing?

It’s not graffiti anymore, it’s pr

When you first hear or read the word TAGGING, you probably think of taggers who do graffiti on the walls. Well, think publicity and then think Internet, now you’re getting closer to tagging in today’s terms.

It is the linking of web sites. This old term is what describes how we use links to each other sites making search engines locate us faster.

It seems that this "linking" has been around in the earlier days of the Internet. Spammers were probably using this technique of marketing and when we were all hit hard with spam, search engines became more intelligent by counter acting their tactics.

You or your web designer, programmers often use tagging with your site. You have heard the words meta tags, keywords, right? Well, that is a form of tagging.

When a company wants to optimize your web site, this is one of the tagging areas that are often refined.

If you are in publicity and think this stuff is too deep in conversation and you don’t have an IT person, then use this handy tool for creating links. It is Yahoo’s Del.iclo.us. This is a tool bar that you can download from Yahoo’s site.

Tagging can help your publicity in many ways. For example, tagging can be done with pictures that are in your press release (which should be in your pressroom’s web site), or online video. Many sites have this available such as Yahoo 360, or Technorati’s blog that addresses tagging.

Publicity campaigns are no longer a list of releases or articles; it is your web site and making it SEO friendly with tagging, as well as other unique optimizing tricks. But that’s another subject.

See Also

• Create a powerful Web Site with Tagging
  Publicity needs to be tagged

How to write for the web

A friend asked me if there is a difference in writing techniques when creating brochures, press releases and web sites. You probably know that my answer was YES. I directed him to my blog a few days ago that addressed this issue. Then today, I saw an article that was describing the writing habits for the web.

I was pleased to see another person realized the need to educate publicity writers how different it is when writing anything that appears on the web.

Let me share with you some of my findings and experience.
First you need to accept that the web is different when it comes to writing anything. Here are a few reasons how it is different:

• Text is hard to read. Most computers have low resolution, even the higher the resolution, and the smaller the type. This makes it more difficult for people to read on-screen text. They tend to read slower, comprehend less and recall less.

• The web allows you to link pages and sources. Unlike print, you cannot link to other articles, or resources.

Ok, if you agree with these two points let’s move into "How you should write for the web".

• Keep your articles down to 1,000 words. Why, because of my point above that says text is hard to read!

• Use sub-headings and bullet text when possible. This gives the reader a chance to scan the article.

• Give more info. This is where you want to use the links. Provide links to your sources, or references. It helps to build that link strategy you need for the search engines.

• Speaking of links, use keywords and phrases when writing. Don’t go wild and pack a lot of them into the article. That will get you negative action from the search engines. Use keywords wisely and the engines will treat you nice.

See Also

• Use good writing skills for the web
  Know how to write web articles

Know what you are doing first

Everyone who builds a web site claims to know optimizing. The same is true about those small startups saying they can get you listed at the top of SE’s (Search Engines). How is this relating to publicity? Because “Publicity is Everywhere!” If you direct the media to your site, but they forget the URL, they probably will type specific keywords in the SE to locate the web site.

Ok, first let me say not all these companies are out to make a fast buck. But it appears that most of them are selling software or just doing a blast listing to all the SE’s out there. How can these really help? Well, you won’t see any progress for weeks, maybe a couple of months at best. That’s how they get your money and then you just shake off that bad experience when nothing happens and your still listed 348 on Google, or Yahoo.

Web Site Optimization is more than placing a bunch of keywords into the HTML of your site. It isn’t the key phrase either. Because if you do this incorrectly, the search engines will pass you by!

The keywords you selected…how did you find them? If these are the most popular, then you are going to get zero traffic for a long time. Knowing which are the best keywords and what people are using is completely different. Plus, using multiple words can be even more productive and generate traffic. Ok, stop for a moment. Is traffic what you want? I hope not. Because I can get you thousands of people a month easily, but they won’t be qualified to purchase your products or services.

Qualified buyers are what you need. The number of visitors is important, if they are qualified. Keep that in perspective. We can give you the optimization to get listed at the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN among other search engines.

See Also

• Use an expet to get optimization
  This will get positive results

The do’s and don’ts

The blog I wrote on "Publicity is your web site" is one of several parts to taking advantage of a web site as another pr tool.

An overstated word is "optimizing". Since I cannot think of a better word to describe this process, let’s start with these steps:

• Optimize each page

Pr clients and businesses do not realize it, but some web marketing companies only optimize the Home Page and maybe one other page. You need to do all the pages.

• Optimize your Page Titles and Content

In addition, look for keywords that are relevant to your company and industry. For example in the PressRoom page use words that are in the press releases or articles.

• Create inbound links and label your images

This is a great place to have links to published press releases or articles about the company. Or place links to service organizations in your industry.

• Your Website needs to be spider friendly

Search engines use spiders to read web sites. If the site contains flash, you need to address this in the html codes and modify them so spiders can see the code.

• Keep the site fresh

Just like sending out new press releases, you need to keep the content fresh in the text (body). Every quarter have the content be updated, but don’t use a string of keywords, or phrases or hidden text, that will only make the spiders angry and get you on the "bad" list.

Having a good web site that can be found is good publicity. Why? Because when the editors, reporters or other media look at your site it will be easy for them to find you and the products you offer. Keep reminding yourself that "Publicity Is Everywhere".

See Also

• How to make your site Publicity ready
  Web Sites need to be optimized for the media

How to generate traffic

Sometimes it is difficult to explain to pr clients how to get more traffic to a company’s web site in these short blogs. The reason is that it takes more than just a few keywords or phrases embedded into the HTML codes. It requires a plan to get fully indexed and recognized by search engines (SEO).

For those of you who understand the behind-the-scenes, and for those who have a fair knowledge of web marketing, then this is for you.

Before launching your new web site, or your updated site, you need to make sure the following has been completed.

• First, make sure your domain name is registered, or renewed
• Review your home page and the other key pages, these could be up to 5 or 6 different pages
• Make links to your page with other high ranking pages that are already indexed. This will give your site immediate recognition by the search engines
• Develop a PR campaign with releases on your site. These can be releases that have been distributed to the media
• START A BLOG SITE! Not that I haven’t said this a few times before, but a blog site with your company web site will build high rankings with search bots as they crawl the different sites and your links
• Make sure you write articles that are relevant about your company, the products or services you offer. Write articles about topics that you can later submit to other Ezines

One last item for this blog. Get links from other indexed sites to your company site. That completes the cycle.

If you need help with web marketing, give us a call.

See Also

• Building traffic to web sites
  Using the right Web Marketing Tools builds traffic