Google+ Pages have sparked a lot of discussion in B2B marketing circles. The ability to add multiple management functionality, site verification, and easy to integrate Google+ badges have leadership teams asking whether this truly is the next social media platform B2B marketers must focus upon.

However, all of the recent hype and scrambling to start marketing on Google+ should not come at the expense of equally critical B2B search engine marketing responsibilities. Balance short and long-term B2B initiatives carefully.

While we’re certainly jumping into Google+ Pages for Business and building our base of knowledge on this social network, here are five indirectly related but completely separate B2B SEO initiatives to remain in focus with, as 2012 rolls along.

Benchmark Not-Provided Keyword Referral Metrics

In my opinion, the biggest short term impact of Google+ Pages, for B2B marketers, will be the potential for rapidly increasing percentages of blocked keyword data, as encrypted search becomes more prevalent.

Here is a snapshot of the average percentages for “not provided” search traffic in our client base, spread out over the first five weeks of launch, and then the full months of December and January.

This not only impacts web traffic reports, but will make retargeting and marketing automation analysis more complicated (by not providing specific keyword metrics).

B2B marketers need to set appropriate benchmarks now and ongoing, specifically calculating trends in branded, non-branded, and not provided keyword information. Here are some resources and recommendations for establishing these benchmarks.

• Smarter Data Analysis of Google’s https (not provided) change: 5 Steps
• How to Understand Your Google “Not Provided” Traffic
• How to Analyze Google Analytics (not provided) Data

Nurture Your Best Third Party Referral Sources

The best links send traffic, leads, and also have a positive impact on SEO strategy. Evaluate third party referral reports to identify the communities, social networks, and publishers that send traffic and quality visitors.

• Know the people behind your best inbound links

Document referral sources and make attempts to secure contact information from these sources, for further link development and potential business opportunities as well.

Commercial solutions like RavenTools provide a nice interface for documenting contact information from link sources, but spreadsheets can also be a nice, free alternative.

Screenshot of RavenTools Link Contact Information

Quality Content Marketing Works, Regardless of Social Networking Platform

Content development becomes too complicated when marketers focus on how to satisfy requirements for specific, individual platforms.

Instead, focus on creating quality content marketing assets for any user within appropriate target markets and make sure to make these assets as “share friendly” as possible, regardless of platform.

Share-friendly content marketing techniques to consider:

• Social sharing buttons from popular social media platforms
• Multiple widths and downloadable information to fit various site dimensions more easily
• HTML code for embedding images, graphics, and media files
• Shorter, more memorable web addresses

Create More Permanent Communication Strategies With Site Visitors

Even though social networks like Google+ provide new opportunities for communicating to target audiences, don’t forget to attempt to ascertain more in-depth contact information once they get on the company website as well.

Conversion metrics should range from initial lead nurturing efforts to more in-depth sales-ready lead opportunities. At all times, make an attempt to collect email address information, name, and potentially ongoing communication preferences.

• Also, build professional networks, within and outside of Google+ Page management.

The element of social media I find most attractive is the ability to network with other professionals in the industry. While Google+ provides another opportunity to bridge these connections, don’t sacrifice successes already made in other social networks just to jump on a new bandwagon.

Benchmark Your Customers’ Interest in Mobile

As I eluded to in a column at the end of last year, don’t forget mobile. While your customers may not be directly asking for it, the pace of Internet use via mobile device simply cannot be ignored.

My recommendation is to start querying your customer base on mobile device preferences, functionality, and what types of content they would like to see from your organization.

This can be done in “drip format” through newsletters, social media, and traditional surveys. Over time, you will have feedback from your audience to move forward in the right direction with your mobile strategy.

Final Thoughts

We are recommending and helping our clients develop Google+ Pages. While it certainly can be cumbersome juggling multiple profiles, platforms, and responsibilities, there seems to be much stronger likelihood that this social network becomes relevant. Google certainly has the resources and reach to support this social network and drive growth (even if their other social experiments have failed in the past).

But what if Google is making a major business mistake and B2B search marketers are getting taken along for the ride? Worse, what if we’re seeing the slow decline as a result of Google’s inability to adjust business models in time to catch the latest competition?

2012 could be a pivotal year for Google, in terms of audience development and influence. What will be key for B2B search engine marketers is to focus on growing their own organizations audience and networks, regardless of specific social networking platform, in an effort to tackle short and long term business objectives.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing

Check Out Design & Promote At The Exhibitor Show In Las Vegas 2012 At Booth # 1166, Learn About Internet Marketing, Web Design and SEO For The Trade Show Industry.

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February 21, 2012 (FPRC) — NAPERVILLE, IL – The Exhibitor Show 2012 Conference takes place at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, from March 4 to March 7, 2012. Design & Promote, a leading provider of SEO services for the trade show industry, will be attending this worldwide conference. Design & Promote has developed their own niche in the trade show and conference marketing industry, and services over 30 clients in that genre alone. Although they have a strong internet marketing client base with trade show display dealers across the US, their goal is to expand their expertise across the entire trade show industry at Exhibitor 2012. Some of the other trade show related companies they want to focus their attention on at this show are trade show shipping, booth staffing, furniture rental, lead retrieval, trade show technology and others.

Design & Promote has a wide range of internet marketing services available, including social media marketing, newsletter management, web design, search engine optimization – SEO, and anonymous website lead generation, all available in a custom package suited for each client. Since Design & Promote is an industry leader in SEO and has already established themselves as experts in the trade show internet marketing industry they can help to make your trade show company an online success. Bruce Jones the owner of Design & Promote has over 12 years of experience in the trade show industry while serving as service manager, technology manager and internet marketing manager for the Chicago area Skyline dealer Tradetec Skyline and as an exhibitor at previous companies he worked at.

The Exhibitor 2012 conference will allow trade show companies to get a sense of what Design & Promote can do for them, and also let the company show off how focused they really are on helping their clients in any way possible. Design & Promote will be showcasing their partnership with VisiStat and their anonymous website visitor, business to business lead generation system called LeadCaster. You can learn more about LeadCaster and sign up for a free trial here: http://www.designandpromote.com/leadcaster/

“Design & Promote has clients from New York to Hawaii, and I知 proud of our diversified client base and wide range of companies we work with. We see and learn so much from the variety of companies we deal with that it allows us to continually improve and expand our expertise, as well as our customer service,” said Bruce Jones, CEO of Design & Promote (http://www.designandpromote.com)

While the company may be internet marketing experts across the United States, Design & Promote is looking forward to growing their business in the trade show niche by having their own booth at the 2012 Exhibitor Show. The five-day Exhibitor 2012 event gives leaders in the trade show industry the chance to see how Design & Promote can help them strengthen their online presence, increase website traffic and capture more leads that turn into sales. While at the 2012 Exhibitor Show stop by Booth # 1166 and have Design & Promote run a few reports on your website and learn how they can make your trade show company more successful by partnering with them.

“Stop searching for new customers using traditional advertising and marketing strategies, use inbound marketing to help your customers find you online easier when they are looking for your products or services. We help you to stand out clearly from the crowd. Design & Promote makes it our business to get your business noticed,” concluded Jones.

About Design & Promote:
Design & Promote is a full service internet marketing firm with a focus on the trade show and event industry. They help their clients get found online with search engine optimization, SEO, social media, and awesome eye-catching websites designed to convert visitors into leads and sales by using inbound marketing strategies. Their clients range from local small businesses to global corporate manufacturers including three INC 5000 winners.

For more information go to www.designandpromote.com

Send an email to Bruce Jones of Design & Promote
630.995.7109

Keywords: web design, search engine optimization, business to business lead generation

One Of The Divorce Attorneys In Chicago, Michael Craven, Named As A Super Lawyer (Wed 22nd Feb 12)

Trade Show Training Company, Marketech360, To Showcase ‘Dashboard Made Easy’ At Exhibitor 2012 (Tue 21st Feb 12)

Skyline New Jersey, A Company Providing Trade Show Labor In New Jersey, Hosts Free Seminars (Wed 15th Feb 12)

Tradetec Skyline, Appointed the New Exhibit House for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (Tue 14th Feb 12)

Webinar Teaches New York Trade Show Managers to Leverage Facebook for Events at 2012 Seminar Series (Tue 7th Feb 12)

As a SEO company, you must have queries from your clients on  getting an unmanageable number of hits to  their site whenever a celebrity dies or a natural calamity takes place or an interesting political debate rages. At such times, your SEO service might be highly sought after for the latest news and updates on these subjects, though sometimes this could also be the cause of sites crashing just when the heat is on. (Recent eg: unfortunate death of Whitney) Of course, you can never be 100% prepared for such occurrences, but its well worth preparing for them. Here are some  tactics by which your client  can handle the  enormous volume of traffic
• Get a lightweight form of the site:A good SEO company will advice the client to have a light weight version of the existing website with essential information. Your lightweight site could be available in mobile and desktop users. The site could also have a lightweight form of your homepage, since people usually want to see this page first before moving on to the other pages of a site. If you post a picture on your site which goes viral, you could then make a lightweight version of that one page with a picture in low resolution which loads faster.
In order to make lightweight pages, remember to exclude all Flash images and instead put in some text in your site navigation and Chrome, and put the largest amount of content in HTML. Also, it’s preferable to use static HTML pages instead of dynamic ones because dynamic pages are more burdensome to servers. Besides, you can cache the static amount of output of your dynamic pages so as to lower your server load.

• Use the services of stable third-parties: You could also host a copy of your site with third parties that can cope up with the high volume of site traffic. Service providers like Google’s blogspot or content network from yahoo are designed to handle large volumes of traffic. On top of that these services come free of cost. So, as an SEO service to your clients, you could duplicate your client  site or pare down the original one and allow it to focus on information relevant to the surge in traffic—such as Google Sites or Blogger; or Google Docs to save documents, forms or presentations. Alternatively, you could also make use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

• Use small file formats: If the information on your site is downloadable, do your visitors a service by dividing large files into smaller ones whose file formats are lightweight. Bear in mind that if you cannot use text files, you can opt for PDFs taken from text content which is not just lighter in weight than PDFs along with images but are also easier for Google to decode and index entirely.

ʉۢ Tabulate data in CSV and XML formats: If you put out numerical data in tables, perhaps it would be a good idea to present it in CSV and XML formats. They are light weight files and enable external developers to utilize your data as external applications where data must reach out to the widest audience possible, as in the aftermath of a natural calamity. This could be a wonderful SEO service an SEO company can provide to a large online community. Google by itself recommends these solutions to sites which may get a surge in traffic unexpectedly. As a SEO service provider it is important to educate the client on such situations and suggesting the above tactics to avoid downtime of site due to excessive traffic

IN-DEPTH: It’s absolutely essential for businesses to evaluate their current mobile experience for consumers conducting their travel related queries on mobile devices and to invest in improvements before being left behind. 2012 will certainly be yet another record-breaking year for mobile, says Mike Giannotti, Industry Manager, UK Travel, Google.

By Ritesh Gupta

Google recently acknowledged that it is beginning to develop a strong understanding of how shoppers engage with their mobile devices and tablets as they make their purchase decisions.

It is also being highlighted that tablets and smartphones, while still in early stages of adoption relative to desktop computers, are showing strong and accelerating gains in search share.

The travel industry needs to take notice of these developments as Google is the biggest source of traffic for most travel companies.  

So how did mobile search shape up in 2011? What were the major trends for SEO and PPC last year?

In order to know more, EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta spoke to Mike Giannotti, Industry Manager, UK Travel, Google.

(Giannotti is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2012, to be held in London (April 17-18) this year).

Excerpts:

What do you think were the major developments for SEO and PPC in 2011? What should the travel industry watch out for when it comes to search marketing in 2012?

By the end of 2011, we saw that 28 percent of all travel related queries in the UK came from mobile devices. Within that, tablets account for nearly one third. What’s more, during the weekend when bookings are typically highest, these devices account for an even greater percentage of total queries. It’s absolutely essential for businesses to evaluate their current mobile experience for these consumers and to invest in improvements before being left behind. 2012 will certainly be yet another record-breaking year for mobile.

In 2012, I expect that attribution will continue to be a hot topic within both the SEM and travel industries as marketers expect more insight into the impact of their campaigns. Last click is widely accepted as an outdated way of measuring search campaign effectiveness and can severely limit growth. The challenge, however, lies in ongoing channel optimisation and finding the right models for each campaign’s objectives without wild complexity. Google launched Multichannel Funnels in Google Analytics last year, offering insight on the interaction between campaigns and channels. Uncovering more data about how consumers are influenced will open up more opportunities for marketers, particularly in travel where research is very intense.

What do you think are the major challenges for travel marketers at this stage when it comes to SEO and PPC?

Beyond attribution, one of the other major challenges I see is real tactical alignment between available inventory, demand and campaign strategy. PPC especially has the ability to be extremely reactive to a changing market and where there are gaps in bookings.

Lately, I’ve seen some companies with excellent use of feeds and APIs to dynamically change the focus of their campaigns based on business need through ad copy, bidding and landing page changes. This tactical side of PPC could be more effectively exploited across the industry. It requires marketers integrating more deeply with trading teams and site developers for yield management.

While SEO continues to be a significant strategy with high return, a successful online marketing strategy needs to have other key marketing components such as SEM (paid search), social media optimisation, online reputation management, and ways to generate authoritative trusted links. What do you recommend when it comes to planning and budgets for search spend this year?

The best strategy is to build a consistent presence across all devices and media when consumers are looking for relevant travel information. Compared to the retail and tech industries, most UK travel companies are falling behind as consumers are finding new ways of researching, engaging and transacting.

Paid search will always be a demand-led medium. The most successful search advertisers budget for search as a cost of sale.  In other words, their booking rates and bidding control their campaigns rather than allocating a fixed “marketing budget” which can lead to restrictions or overspend if the market changes. This removes guesswork and risk from the equation, especially in a year that again holds many large questions for the travel industry, notably consumer spending and the Olympics.

It’s important to mention that every travel company from the largest to the smallest has a USP, and therefore can carve out a niche within search that works for them. Testing and data investigation will reveal where you can thrive, and then it’s a matter of maximising your campaigns within those successful areas.

Google clearly has the potential to alter the dynamics of how people shop for hotel rooms. Being on the supplier side of the industry, how do you think hotels need to be in the sync in the manner in which customers are shopping, and how to market to attract those customers directly to brand websites, which is what Google Hotel Finder can do?

I think there are a few things that hoteliers can do. One of the most important things to get right is to provide transparent and frequently updated prices for customers specific to their booking period. Price promise guarantees and loyalty schemes with real benefits are also major USPs for hotel suppliers. Hotels also have the assets to create excellent video and photo content for customers to review during their research. And, every customer appreciates an easy and straightforward booking process. If it’s a strength, make sure it’s known!

Finally, TripAdvisor published a survey in the U.S. recently that revealed that Wifi is the single most important amenity that hotels can offer, with 88 percent expecting free Wifi. It’s a sign of technology changing consumer expectations, and one that hoteliers should be eager to meet!

Social relevancy will continue to strongly influence search rankings.  Likes and dislikes of customers in social circle will impact the search results.  How should hotel marketers focus on this?

The integration of social information into search results is intended to make each user’s experience more personalised and relevant. Particularly in travel where recommendations are incredibly important, there exists a massive opportunity for travel companies of all kinds to benefit from the positive experiences they already provide to customers.

The best way to get started is to make it easy for customers to endorse your brand by installing the Google +1 button throughout your website, including at product level. Set up a verified page as the home for your brand on Google+ and engage with followers by providing regular and varied updates. Finally, tie all of the recommendations you accrue via your Google+ page, your website, on search and on ads together by enabling social extensions.

Progress 2012 Terakeet Expands Its National Footprint In Armory Square, Terakeet Corp. has tripled its work force in three years, expanding its national footprint in the business of search engine optimization — or SEO –the art of raising clients’ profiles on Google Internet searches. The company, with 32 employees and a scattered army of free-lancer, boasts an A-list of national clients, such as Coca-Cola, American Express, NBC Universal-Orlando and General Electric. Also, it’s co-founder, 32-year-old MacLaren Cummings, made a name for himself in the 2008 presidential election, when he directed the fund-raising components of the websites for the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns. Video by David Lassman Watch video

 Back in ancient times — before TV, that is — the phone company was the Internet, and the Yellow Pages functioned as Google. To get noticed, you bought a full-page ad or leap-frogged the competition alphabetically, by changing your name.

 Thus was born a generation of companies titled “AAA” — arguably, the first search engine optimizers.

 Today, Google guards its search engine algorithms the way KFC protects its 11 herbs and spices, and to get noticed on the Internet requires more than an “A” in your name. Also, the stakes — being listed not to a city but the world — were never greater.

 And the job of influencing those Google searches could be the future of downtown Syracuse. Yes, you read correctly: This is an Internet story — not from Berkeley or Boston, but Syracuse. Downtown Syracuse.
 
There, an 11-year-old company, Terakeet Corp., has tripled its work force in three years, expanding its national footprint and crystallizing the urban renaissance fantasies that have been touted for decades by local political and business leaders.

In Armory Square, the company’s 33-year-old co-founder says the growth is just beginning.
 
“It may sound crazy,” chief executive officer MacLaren Cummings said recently. “But I think that we have the capability, if we make the right steps, to make this a billion dollar company in the next five to 10 years.”

Billion. Ten years. Crazy, or what?

 Three years ago, the company had nine employees. Now, it has 32, estimated revenues in the tens of millions and an A-list of national clients, such as Coca-Cola Co., American Express Co., NBC Universal-Orlando and General Electric Co.

 Plus, it has friends in high places. Really high places.
 
Four years ago, Cummings carved out a reputation as the search engine guru who helped transform Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign website into a fund-raising powerhouse. He signed on for a three-day stint. That lasted several months, working without compensation. After Clinton left the race, Cummings was snapped up by the Obama campaign, again footing his own bills.
 
He’s been called back to work for the president’s re-election, consulting in a campaign whose total cost could hit more than $1 billion.

 Nevertheless, Cummings says his work for Obama won’t pay off in dollars, but in business contacts. Be they Republican or Democratic, captains of industry generally figure the guy who helps run a presidential campaign website knows what he’s doing.

“There is a certain prestige involved with being part of a political campaign, especially one that is regarded as highly technical,” said Cummings, a Tully native who attended Manlius-Pebble Hill High School and graduated from Cornell University in 2001. “There is a certain sizzle factor with potential customers. … The fact that a campaign of that magnitude would hire a firm like ours, I think, says something.”

On South Clinton Street, Terakeet quietly has expanded to take up two stories of the Neal and Hyde Building, which is mostly known for its ground floor, the Syracuse Suds Factory. But within the area business community, the company’s profile has soared.

 “It’s part of the foundation for our future growth,” said Rob Simpson, president of the Center State Corp. for Economic Opportunity, a regional business organization. “You have a young entrepreneur who started here and is growing his business here. … They’re growing and expanding, doing everything right.”

But Terakeet didn’t happen overnight. At times, Cummings’ business career has resembled a state fair midway ride. From his Cornell dorm room in 1998, he launched Mindshark Software and Consulting, a company that engaged clients such as Forbes Magazine and grossed $500,000 in revenues by his junior year.

In 2001, he and former classmate Patrick Danial co-founded Terakeet, based on a voice-recognition software they hoped would revolutionize business call-centers. Angel investors sank $600,000 into the product, which inspired the company’s rather strange name: They noticed that receptionists often parroted the words of callers, so they mashed-up the computer jargon — terabyte — with parakeet.

 “When you’re 18, it seems really cool to come up with a name nobody has heard before,” Cummings explained, with a shrug.

Their software worked. Unfortunately, it also tanked.

“The dog just didn’t like the dog food,” Cummings said. “We learned a valuable lesson: Just because customers all say they want something, it doesn’t mean they are all going to buy it.”
 
That lesson nearly crushed them.
 
“I was very depressed, because so many people originally had told us no, that it was a bad idea,” Cummings said. “They had given us all these reasons why we wouldn’t be successful — and frankly, they were right about a lot of it. But they didn’t give us credit for one thing: We’d started with absolutely nothing. … And they didn’t consider that we would just get up and keep trying.”

 Despite its lack of buyers, their software had created a respectful buzz within the technical community, and they had made business contacts. Around this time, companies with big Internet websites were wrestling with a burgeoning issue: How to get noticed on Google.

 It was the Yellow Pages, all over again.
 
They turned to the art of search engine optimization, or SEO, an industry that began around 1997 and has evolved steadily since.
 
By 2004, companies of all sizes recognized that their huge online investments hinged on the apparent die-roll results of Google keyword searches. Score high on page one, and you’d receive the traffic. Land on page three, and you were buried in the avalanche.
 
Moreover, if something negative stained your reputation — even if it later proved false — the accusation might pop up high on Google every time someone searched your name.
 
In 2004, Terakeet jettisoned its voice software strategy and leaped into the emerging market of influencing Google searches.
 
Last year, the Google Inc., which is based in California, generated $25 billion from search engine advertisements — the shaded links that appear atop most search results.
 
But those ads represent only 15 percent of the overall traffic. Nearly 9 out of every 10 viewers click on sites that rank high on the first page — unadvertised.

 To make a splash on the web, being there is everything.
 
Nationwide, thousands of companies offer SEO services with a wide variety of tactics. The so-called “black hat” consultants — frowned upon by the industry — use tricks and deceptive techniques to boost traffic. They’ll embed invisible key words on a site or send spam emails to the masses. Neither approach suits the needs of a corporation.

 The “white hat” companies, like Terakeet, basically try to win the Google rankings by earning them. They constantly monitor Google’s algorithms, which take into account billions of variables.
 
Terakeet uses its own software to identify relevant blogs, websites and social media, then assigns teams of “link ninjas” to engage with them. The teams create relationships between sites, drawing visitors to and from them, resulting in traffic that enhances its Google presence. In certain cases, Terakeet creates new content.
 
“We have access to a wide array of writers who can develop content for us and our clients very quickly,” Cummings said. “That provides us with an advantage. We’ve gotten large enough so if we can’t write the content in-house, we can access someone who can.”
 
Despite a down economy, the company has steadily grown, and it is measuring the floors with plans to add to the work force. Last year, to enhance its visibility, Terakeet hired Brian Dalton as vice president of sales and marketing, luring him from the web giant Adobe Systems Inc.
 
Last month, the company contacted all 13 of its original angel investors, the friends and family who 11 years ago financed the voice software, with an offer out of the blue: Would they like their money back, several times over?
 
“When the product failed, I think the sentiment among most of them was that they had lost the investment,” Cummings said. “With some, not only were they surprised to get a premium on the original money, they were surprised we were still in business.”
 
Terakeet bought out the original investors and prepares to move forward. The future looks wide open.
 
“Right now, you have a convergence of platforms — the phone, the television, the laptop, the iPad — devices that are all starting to look and function like the same thing,” he said. “Televisions are going online, newspapers are printed online, you’ve got an iPad where you can read a news magazine. All of these convergences are occurring both on the web side and on the device side. It’s all happening at once. There are huge opportunities right here.”

 Yes, you read correctly: He meant in Central New York, not in Southern California.
 
“One of the biggest things I’m proud of is that we’re located in Syracuse,” he said. “The majority of these firms are in Washington, D.C., or Virginia, or the Silicon Valley. The fact that we’re here in Syracuse and working not only with the Obama campaign, but with firms in Boston and New York City, and firms like Universal Studios in Florida, and all over the globe — I think it says something special about what we do.

 “Nearly all of our employees are under the age of 27,” he continued. “We’re hiring people out of Syracuse University, LeMoyne College, Cornell, SUNY Oswego. We’re doing what the economic development people and the mayor are trying to figure out how to do: to attract young people and keep them here. … We’re going to continue to do it. We’ll do it organically, right here.”

 And to get attention, they won’t change their name.

Scot Small, President and CEO of RevBuilders Marketing, a leading SEO company, has been appointed to the board of directors of the Fauquier County Chamber of Commerce.

Gainesville, VA (PRWEB) February 20, 2012

Scot Small, President and CEO of RevBuilders Marketing, a leading SEO company, has been appointed to the board of directors of the Fauquier County Chamber of Commerce.

RevBuilders Marketing is a web design and online marketing company located in Gainesville, Va. which specializes in SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Small was appointed to the Chamber board because of his presence in and work for the local business community.

The Fauquier County Chamber of Commerce is a nonprofit association of businesses in the Fauquier County area. The stated goal of the chamber is to help businesses by promoting a business environment in the county which is receptive to commerce, as well as promoting economic growth in the area.

This is the first time Small has served on the board.

When asked about his recent appointment, Small was enthusiastic. “I love helping people grow their businesses through increased exposure, and that’s a big part of what local chambers of commerce like the one in Fauquier County are about. I’m looking forward to helping the chamber reach its members and help them develop into mature, successful businesses.”

If you are interested in learning more about online marketing or about how SEO works, visit http://www.RevBuilders.com, or contact Scot Small at 703-229-0825.

About RevBuilders Marketing
RevBuilders Marketing is a full-service online marketing agency, offering a complete range of integrated online marketing services: SEO or Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Management, Social Marketing, Email Marketing, and Content Writing. In addition, through effective Web Design and conversion optimization, RevBuilders converts the increased SEO traffic into leads and sales for their clients. RevBuilders Marketing is located in Gainesville, Virginia, serving a client-base across the country. Visit RevBuilders.com for more information.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebseo-company-marketing/web-design-revbuilders/prweb9208951.htm

Need to build links to your websites in order to increase your traffic and improve your rankings? Well, there’s article marketing, social bookmarking, and – blah, blah, blah…

Let’s face it – you’ve probably heard the same old link building strategies repeated ad nauseum around the net. So if you’re ready to try something new and really get noticed, check out the following 13 unconventional link building techniques:

Strategy #1 – Get listed with the library

Google and the other search engines recognize that public libraries have some of the best cultivated, most extensively researched collections of links on the internet, and they often place a priority on these links as a result. So if you can sweet talk your local librarian into adding a link to your website, you could see a substantial SEO benefit from it.

To get started, research the websites of the local libraries in your area and beyond, as the caliber of their websites will vary naturally. Look specifically for groups of reference links or recommended websites and see if the library offers any link categories that your site could fit into. Don’t try to force your link into categories where it doesn’t work (and definitely don’t try to get libraries to link to your thin affiliate niche site), but when you see a potential match, fire off a polite email to the reference librarian requesting a link back to your site be added.

Strategy #2 – Host a giveaway

People love free stuff, so one way to attract a lot of backlinks in a short amount of time is to host a free giveaway. For example, you could give away an iTunes gift card with the only entry fee being a link back to your website. Remember – the goofier or more outrageous your promotion is, the more viral attention you’ll gather (just imagine how many backlinks you could attract if you gave a way a car or similar big ticket item!).

Strategy #3 – Become a product reviewer

Sites like Amazon, Google Shopping and Epinions all rely on user-generated reviews in order to provide the social proof that drives their sales, but it’s not like they’re taking advantage of their reviewers. In many instances, writing product reviews for these and other similar sites gives you the opportunity to leave a reference link to support your research (which, conveniently enough, can lead back to your site). The more reviews you write, the more links you receive.

Strategy #4 – Set up a guest speaking gig

Limiting your link building efforts to the internet is short-sighted – there’s an entire world out there that can help your SEO efforts! For example, suppose you reserved a room at your local university and offered to give a free presentation on a topic in your niche. Assuming you advertised your speaking gig correctly, you could see a surge of backlinks from local news sources or other local publications covering your event (not to mention the participants who share word about your presentation on various social networking sites).

Strategy #5 – Build an app

Building and releasing an app can be a time-consuming, expensive proposition, but if you come up with something really good, you could find your company featured on various app review sites (along with that coveted backlink to your site). To get started, research the types of apps that are currently doing well on the iPhone and Android platforms, then find a developer via Guru or eLance who can help you create your own mobile product.

Strategy #6 – Set up a 1-800 number

Search Google for any 1-800 number and you’ll see a number of directories pop up offering to provide more information about the company you’re searching for. Consider the flip side – as a business owner, you may be able to contact these directories and provide additional information about your business’s 1-800 number, including a link back to your site. The directory owners benefit from the additional details they can provide searchers while you get a link back to your site for your efforts.

Strategy #7 – Release a coupon code

Coupon code sites – like Retailmenot or CouponCabin – are incredibly popular with recession-era consumers, who often visit these sites before making purchases to ensure they’re getting the best possible deals. As a business owner, you can take advantage of this additional interest by releasing your own coupon codes, which will get you featured on these sites with a link back for consumers to use.

Strategy #8 – Alert the media

Make your site media-ready by networking on sites like Help a Reporter Out. Remember – it only takes one mention in a major media publication to result in a substantial amount of links back to your site!

Strategy #9 – Interview the experts

You’ll need to have a little clout in your industry (or a heck of a lot of chutzpah), but if you can snag an interview with an expert in your interview, just imagine how many people will want to link back to your published interview to spread the word.

Strategy #10 – Wine and dine ‘em

Trying to nail down some high PageRank links from major companies in your industry? Do business the old fashioned way by inviting them out to dinner! Wine them, dine them and then ask for a link back to your website when appropriate. You might be surprised by how receptive business owners are after a good meal and a few glasses of wine!

Strategy #11 – Post a job listing

Granted, this option only works if you actually plan to expand your business by taking on a new employee, but if you need to post a job listing, you’re in luck – these postings can result in hundreds of new links back to your site. Individual job listings are often syndicated across multiple sites through services like Indeed.com (in addition to the job seekers who forward your listing to friends and business contacts), resulting in a massive influx of links for your SEO campaigns.

Strategy #12 – Network locally

Brick and mortar stores aren’t the ones who can take advantage of local networking opportunities to boost business interest. Consider the following local networking options from Outspoken Media author Lisa Barone that website owners can use locally to increase traffic and backlinks back to their sites:

• Ask your vendors and local, non-competing businesses that you work with to link to you when it makes sense.
• Join the Better Business Bureau.
• Join your Chamber of Commerce.
• Support local charities.

Strategy #13 – Join industry trade organizations

Not only can joining industry trade organizations boost your perceived authority in your niche, you’re also usually entitled to a listing in the group’s directory – complete with a link back to your site. Yes, there are typically fees associated with this strategy, but you may find that these fees are reasonable when compared with the cost associated with paid directory links or other paid linking methods. You might also pick up business directly from people who access your professional profile!

Whichever strategy you decide to pursue, keep in mind that link building is a long term effort. You don’t need to try out all of these strategies at once – simply focus on adding a few new high-quality links every month and you’ll soon start to see the benefits of your linking campaigns.

All new clients who sign up for local SEO Marketing Plans with Top Ten Website Marketing during the month of February will receive 10% off. New customers can help celebrate one of the leading providers of Internet Marketing’s fifth successful year by utilizing one of the many services offered to maximize exposure and customize and optimize websites.

Fort Lauderdale, FL (PRWEB) February 20, 2012

This month marks the five year anniversary of Top Ten Website Marketing, a South Florida-based internet marketing firm that is offering new clients 10% off on all local internet Marketing plans. Businesses often make mistakes with their marketing by either decreasing it, or using one of the more traditional but much more expensive mediums, such as radio, television, and/or print. Not only are these advertising techniques more costly, but they are also less effective. Top Ten Website Marketing, an SEO company servicing Miami, Broward, and West Palm Beach Counties, helps companies become much more effective in their Internet Marketing with services like creating more efficient website design and “search engine-friendly” websites. These services end up landing businesses at the top of Internet searches.

Top Ten Website Marketing has increased exposure and revenue for a plethora of businesses and companies and is proud to be able to prove their competency and effectiveness with the success of their past and current clients. One of the best West Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami Counties’ Internet Marketing Firm’s main goals is to make the client’s website appear on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing search results. Everyone knows that proper exposure and savvy advertising are imperative to a successful and lucrative business, and everyone wants to be displayed at the top of the list. Well, this SEO Company does just that. They maximize their clients’ publicity in search engines and offer other expert services, like pay-per-click management, custom-designed websites, and website development and hosting. Top Ten Website Marketing optimizes and strengthens clients’ websites, making them more efficient, practical, and user-friendly, guaranteeing superior standings in rankings, and growth in the company’s overall Internet Marketing and recognition.

Along with improved techniques and impressive results, clients of the SEO Company, Top Ten Website Marketing, also appreciate the firm’s professional and personal approach. Customers receive one-on-one Internet Marketing consultations, and assistance with the personalization and customization of their websites, therefore, increasing their overall recognition, ranking and standing, customer base, and of course, revenue. A leading provider of search engine optimization and local internet marketing services, Top Ten Website Marketing uses only the safest techniques to provide their clients with a strong return on their investment. They help customers develop complete and customized plans that fit not only their needs, but also their budgets; for example, this month’s current promotion of 10% off SEO marketing plans and packages. Customers range from a myriad of industries, spanning from plumbers, electricians, and dog groomers, to roof and carpet cleaning companies, restaurants, and spas.

For more information about Top Ten Website Marketing, or to have us put together a personalized, cost-effective Internet marketing plan for your company, please call 305-970-5699 or visit us at http://www.seo-certified.net.

Media Contact:

Pete Pekofsky
Top Ten Website Marketing
Phone: 305-970-5699

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweblocal/internet-marketing/prweb9208803.htm

What SEO trends are important to watch in 2012 for enterprise-level SEO? Many colleagues, clients, and prospects are keenly interested in the answer to this question.

Here are what I think will be four enterprise SEO trends to watch in 2012.

1. Further Corporatization of SEO in the Enterprise

The trend over the last several years has increasingly shown SEO teams “go within” at large companies.

For enterprise companies to realize exceptional results in SEO, they almost always require a dedicated internal SEO team. That’s the case today primarily because incremental gains are harder to achieve, as SEO is becoming more complex, harder (through obfuscation of data, such as Google’s “not defined” segment), and more competitive. Organic results, too, are shrinking and Google’s SERP and paid listings are continually evolving to blend in more tightly with the organic results.

Where does this lead us in 2012? Well, what we continue to see is strong demand for enterprise companies to lean on agencies for SEO work.

As SEO gets investment and resource demands within corporations continually rise, the need for outside support also rises. We see this most strikingly in the need for companies to secure content and off-page support.

Link development, social media, and content strategies will continue to be the primary need of the enterprise in 2012. With this trend comes the solidification of enterprise-level SEO analytics tools for in-house teams (and agencies for that matter). SearchLight, Brightedge, SEO Clarity, Matrix, Searchmetrics, and other toolsets are becoming essential complements to analytics, log files, crawling tools, and Google’s and Bing’s own excellent webmaster consoles.

Every SEO team needs a precision competitive analysis tool.

2. Rich Snippets Proliferate (and So Does Spam)

With one small recent change, Google has made it very easy to get your author photo in search results. 2012 will be the year this absolutely takes off. In fact, it will become a competitive disadvantage to publish without author information accompanying the Google result.

And it’s not going to be confined to authors, either. Rel author is certainly the most interesting recent microformat that Google has introduced, but there are many others. We’ve seen the way rich snippets increase clicks in search results by providing more information and better “pop” on the SERP.

Google’s RV Guha, a rich snippets engineer speaking at SMX East recently, was quoted as saying that “…it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it’s really good for them. They get more traffic. It’s good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it’s good for the web.”

In our testing, rich snippets can contribute to a staggering 52 percent lift in clicks, with spillover effects in increased impressions. And we’ve seen it even higher, although nowhere near the increases reported elsewhere, (which I have no reason not to believe).

Rich snippets positively influence CTR in organic results.

With great power comes great responsibility. Spammers are already jumping all over this one, so I imagine there will be tighter controls coming out soon.

3. It’s All About Social

No discussion of social in 2012 will be complete without Google+. You need a strategy there. Google is forcing that need upon you! And while it appears the Google+ dial has been turned down slightly in SERPs over the last few weeks, there’s no reason to think it’s going away.

There’s a troubling subcurrent to this whole polemic. When Google announced that search queries for logged-in users would not be passed to analytics (but would be passed to AdWords advertisers), it assured the web community that only a small percentage of queries would be affected. However, as Google+ adoption increases, and more users with accounts perform searches while logged in, that number will continue to rise. Could there be a time when 50 percent or more of search queries are “not provided”? Absolutely.

While changes like this absolutely make SEO more difficult, they also push the door ever slightly wider to new competitors. Look for Bing to continue to creep upwards in market share, although it won’t be through the partnership with Yahoo. If anything, all that partnership has done is marginalize Yahoo search. Bing will have to grab market share on the merits of its search experience, and even more importantly, through marketing.

Since you can’t fight the importance of Google+ to SEO, you might as well embrace it. The good news is there are already cool things you can do to integrate Google+ with your search campaigns, such as implementing “social extensions” to connect your AdWords accounts with a Google+ brand page.

SEOs without a Google+ strategy will be left behind. Get after it.

4. Domain Authority: Still the Trump Card

As much as social media is changing the SEO game (remember when Duane Forrester of Bing told us social signals matter more than links?), good old classic domain authority is still the heavyweight in the room. And it will be for some time, at least with Google.

Guess which one ranks higher?

Remember: Google won’t blend Twitter or Facebook data into its search results. Not until it gets significant access to the data, on terms that “won’t change,” according to Amit Singhal. This means it’s all about Google+, at least for now. Even if users don’t necessarily want it (they’ve crested 90 million users, but penetration among the masses is nowhere near where the two other social sites are), Google’s going to push its social network. And it’s got a long way to go.

I’m sure Google is already amassing valuable data through Google+, but it’s for a very small sample of users (relative to the web). Therefore, it’s unlikely that signals from the social network will have a meaningful impact on the organic results. While it’s likely Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social signals are being incorporated somehow (as long as they’re available through the crawl), without direct access to that data, and without knowing its intricate relationships, Google only has part of the picture.

The link graph is still the most reliable set of ranking signals Google has. And so far, it’s still what’s making the difference in competitive SERPs. Classic links still rule, and sites with domain authority (notably brands) remain at a distinct advantage in SEO.

This story originally appeared on ClickZ.

Save up to $400! Register now for SES New York 2012, the leading search & social marketing event, taking place March 19-23. Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik will keynote. Early bird rate expires March 2.