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Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Search engine marketing news and information you can use to grow your business.

SEO Sales Spammers Make the Rest of Us Look Bad But We Should Keep Marketing AnywayToday

by Stoney deGeyter

Unlike many in our industry I'm not against what some consider annoying forms of advertising and marketing. I don't have a problem with cold calling, I don't think all unsolicited emails are spam and I don't think there is anything wrong with direct mail.

Many of these things are frowned upon in the SEO industry, and I understand why. It's because there has been an abundance of "SEO" companies that engage in these methods, perform crappy service and ultimately rip people off. Every industry has its thieves. The ones in the SEO world have created a black mark that makes the entire industry look bad and has caused many in our industry to frown on legitimate forms of advertising.

Before I go any further, let me state I'm not for blind cold calling or email spamming. Good marketing via direct mail is highly targeted, not just sent to random addresses. The same holds true for cold calling and email marketing. Good and proper marketing rules must be followed if you want your business to succeed long term.

Bad Email Marketer, Bad!

Let's start with examples of the bad. Remember back when you used to get all those reciprocal link requests via email? Probably not hard to do, especially since you probably received one yesterday. Personally, I'm amazed people still do this. Of course they are getting smarter...sort of. Maybe not. Now they start the emails out with "This is not spam," or "We are not spammers." (Uh,

Do The NeedfulToday

by Sage Lewis

Life isn't all "puppy dogs, roses, ice cream and cake," as Sage says. Despite all the hype and increase in internet traffic for Cyber Monday, Search Engine Watch still reports a decrease in projected online advertising from 14.5% to 8.9%. As we dive into the depths of this economic downturn, Sage shares some painful examples of how the market is affecting his own company.

Top Ten Ways To Save Money With Paid Ad CampaignsToday

by Diana Adams

Over the previous weeks I have made a deliberate point of talking about how important it is to use Keyword negatives to save money in your paid ad campaigns. I thought I would put together a quick lists of these top ten ways for saving money.

Let's keep it really simple, counting down from #10:

save money with your paid ad campaigns,
1. Use negative keywords
Tune in next week for a more detailed explanation.

Check out our small business news site.

How Do You Decide Who to Follow on Twitter?Yesterday

by Mack Collier

In yesterday's post, I looked at some ways that I have used to get more followers on Twitter.  Now I wanted to spin it around and look at some of the criteria I have for who I decide to follow on Twitter.

Let's say I've just clicked on an email notification from Twitter that someone has followed me.  I click on the link and here's what I am looking for when I check out their profile:

1 - Their ratio of followers to people they are following.  If I see it's about 1:1, that's good, but if I see that they are following 14,000 people and only have 237 following them back, that's a HUGE red flag.

2 - I check their bio.  I'm hoping to get some sense of who they are and what they do. 

3 - I check their avatar.  Yes, a real pic of a real person matters.

4 - I check their most recent tweets.  Specifically, I look for how many replies they have left.  This gives me an idea of how they are using Twitter.  If I see no replies on their profile, that tells me they are probably just on Twitter to broadcast (promote their own content with no/little desire to interact with other members).  I prefer to follow people that are interested in conversing on Twitter.

5 - I check their location.  I am currently trying to follow more people from Alabama and the South, so if their profile says t

Not Another SEO Checklist Post!Yesterday

by Stoney deGeyter

Anybody who knows me, or reads my writings long enough knows that I'm a huge fan of checklists. I'll build a checklist for just about anything. In fact, I pretty much need a checklist for just about everything I do. It's the only way I can remember to do what needs to be done.

Now, I can remember to shower and brush my teeth most mornings (I sometimes forget on rainy weekends when I plan to stay indoors.) But when it comes to things that I don't do on an absolute daily basis, well, a checklist helps me to stay organized.

I won't give you another checklist in this post, I've already provided a pretty comprehensive series of website marketing checklists. But I was reminded the other day of the value of making lists.

Recently my team and I (mostly my team) have been doing a lot of cool research with some of the free online tools that are available. Every tool we find provides a different value and benefit. But we find we often use a tool on whatever site we are working on and then somehow forget about it as we move onto other tools and other sites. Eventually we remember and start working with it again but there is no consistency.

So what's the solution? Another list.

Not a checklist, mind you, but a list of tools, their functions, and the kind of information we can get from them. Sure we could boo