Don't Be a Twitter Quitter

I found this fascinating quote today:

Much is being made of a recent Nielsen survey which found that 60% of new Twitter users do not return after 30 days. The report provides evidence that the resulting 40% retention rate will limit growth, to no more than 10% of internet users. While this is a graphically compelling argument, Nielsen–like so many Twitter critics–completely misses the point.Rick Wilkerson on April 30, 2009, The Trouble With Twitter and the “Twitter Quitter”, Apr 2009

I must admit that my Twitter journey has been a bumpy one. I have gone through the various stages of denial and acceptance. I started out by saying ...

1. Twitter is stupid, why would I want to follow people and why would they want to follow me.
2. Alright already, everybody is talking about this let's see what it is all about.
3. I'm on Twitter - now what?
4. This is stupid and a time waster!!
5. This is really stupid and a BIG TIME WASTER!
6. Then I had "that conversation" with someone who sprinkled a little bit of Twitter Fairy Dust on my brain and for the first time my brain got it!
7. Twitter Eureka!
8. RESULT: Twitter Evangelist

Today? I am officially hooked on Twitter, but more than just being hooked - I GET IT! Now it's fun to lead my clients down the path toward Twitter Enlightenment with the hopes that a little Twitter Dust will tantalize their brain and they too will get it.

What Does the Swine Flu and My Digital Marketing Have in Common?

If you've turned on the T.V. in the last 24 hours or surfed the web you're aware of the "imminent" Swine Flu. Great measures are being taken to track the virus and to predict the extent of its reach. In the internet consulting world we refer to digital marketing has having a viral effect. I tell my clients you want your digital marketing to reach pandemic portions where buzz is reached and web traffic is elevated to such a level that you are able to measure optimal exposure. That's good right? You betcha!

So, with a play on words in full force I wanted to blog today about the importance of viral marketing. I thought a great way to do that would be to repost Dr. Ralph F. Wilson's blog post called "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing". Keep in mind this blog was originally posted on February 1, 2000 - however, it goes to show the power of viral marketing and the umph behind leveraging the net in amazing ways. Enjoy the read and oh yeah be sure to spread this post to all your friends.

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

I admit it. The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.
Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.
The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

How to Viral Market, MarketingSherpa Toolkit

Viral marketing is (fairly) easy to define, but very difficult to accomplish successfully. MarketingSherpa's How to Viral Market toolkit is the best book available on the nuts and bolts of developing a successful viral marketing campaign. Strongly recommended for serious marketers.
Dr. Wilson's review
Buy the book.

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading -- "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"

"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that's all."

"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing," he said, "and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for "viral marketing."

How to Submit a Press Release Online For Maximum SEO Effectiveness

An effective SEO press release can generate increased online visibility and introduce your products and services in front of a new audience, but they need to be distributed wisely. Otherwise, the news item will likely go unnoticed by important search engines and missed by potential customers. The main method of distribution is through online PR distribution sites. Not all sites have the same value, so you will need to choose wisely in order to get the best results.

Free Vs Paid Press Release Submission Sites

The benefit of free press release submission sites is that they are free! However, everything free comes with a 'price.' News stories published on free press release submission sites are generally supported through ads displayed along the sides of the piece. Free press releases don't usually offer all of the aesthetic and search engine-friendly benefits of a those that have even a nominal fee. Some allow images and a limited number of anchor text or URLs. Others restrict an SEO press release to nothing more than just the basic text with no clickable items.

Paid press release distribution sites generally provide a variety of different options and perks such as pull quotes (large quotes that are pulled out of the text for added interest), images, and anchor text. They may also offer inclusion in search engine news feeds and various RSS feeds on the web. In some cases, you are required to pay a large monthly or yearly fee to join, but in many cases you can pay per press release submission.

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New Service Helps Texters Find Each Other

New Service Helps Texters Find Each Other

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Poor Man's Exchange Server - Google Mobile Sync

I said to my IT guy once, "Hey, I want to enter a calendar appointment or whatever on my Windows Mobile Smartphone and have it wirelessly sync with my Outlook and vice versa." He told me I need Microsoft Exchange Server. "Alright, what's involved and how much?" You'll need a server (a pc), Exchange server software, and a couple of hours of installation time and setting up your cell phone. "Are those my only options I asked?" There are other options, but Exchange is a good solid solution to do what you want to do.

I have found exactly what I am looking for ... and the great thing about it is that the solution is FREE. Google Mobile Sync allows me to sync my mobile phone to my Google calendar. By installing another free application from Google, Google Calendar Sync I can now enter an appointment on my cell phone and be assured when I get back to my office that same appointment will be reflected in my Outlook. How sweet is that!

Click if you have a cell phone and want to install other FREE Google Apps to your mobile device

I Want Google Voice - Don't You?

A few years ago I looked at a service called Grand Central - a service where you never miss a call, but the two features I most coveted was 1. turning my voice mails into text AND 2. the ability to screen callers while they are leaving a vmail and giving me the option to either take the call or not take it. I learned a long time ago that a phone is there for my convenience not the callers.

There are lots of services out there that transcribe your vmails to text, but they charge. To be honest I didn't want to pay. But in a few short days I will be able to have my cake and eat it too. Google bought Grand Central in July of 2007 and the promise of making this long waited for service available FOR FREE is suppose to take place sometime in the next few days according to Google's blog.

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HowStuffWorks "How Domain Name Servers Work"

What is a Domain Name Server? This great little article explains it very well.

HowStuffWorks "How Domain Name Servers Work"

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Tips to Bring Twitter to the Enterprise - PC World

Tips to Bring Twitter to the Enterprise - PC World

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Blogging Basics

So many people ask me about blogging - "Why should I blog?" "What software should I use?" Like anything, there are some great tools and "basics" that you need to know to get down the path of blogging. John Chow offers some great thoughts to get you on your way to blogging today!

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• The Basic Guide To Blogging (johnchow.com)

Cool Creative Ways To Use Your Camera Phone

Everyday you carry around your cell phone and if you're cell phone is like most phones sold today it's got a cool camera built in. Well if you're like me you forget that the darn thing is there. Below are some cool ideas on how to better leverage your cell phone camera. P.S. That's my cell phone camera on the left - I love my Palm Treo 800w

• Remember where you’re parked at the airport or any crowded lot. Photograph the nearest parking location sign.


• Take a picture of your hotel, building address, room number, and the nearest street sign.


• Take a photo of your child every day as a safety precaution when you’re traveling.


• Capture a whiteboard after a meeting.


• Document damage after a car accident.


• Document your home and belongings as proof for your insurance company in the event of a loss.


• Snap a picture of the takeout menu and business hours of your favorite restaurant.


• Shoot a photo of a flyer for an upcoming event or item for sale.


• If you lend out CDs, DVDs and books to friends, take pictures and label them with your friends’ names.


• Take a picture of something you’re about to disassemble, then use it as a reference when you’re putting it back together.


• Entertain kids with a photo scavenger hunt, with a list of things to take pictures of.


• Photograph yourself when you don’t have a mirror.


• Snap a picture of important people you meet, and add that photo to your contacts. People don't mind, and it really helps you later connect faces to names.

What creative ways have you used your cell phone camera?

>>> More ways to use your cell phone camera

Greenfield Daily Reporter Interview with Greg Cross

Greg Cross owns Cross Creative, a professional web design company that serves business, non-profit, church and social media clients. The Daily Reporter asked him some questions about technology and social networking.

Reporter: How did you get into Web site design and the whole technology scene? How have you seen things change over the years?

Cross: I got into the whole website and technology front more out of sheer fascination. I got my first computer in 1989. It was a PC - an 8086 processor, which compared to today's PCs was slow. From there my affinity and passion for technology grew. What is perhaps a greater passion of mine is helping my clients leverage digital marketing strategies, which when done right has a greater long-term impact than traditional marketing strategies.

Reporter: Define "Web 2.0" and explain how it's different from what preceded it.

Cross: "Web 2.0" is a newer generation of websites that are about "user-generated" content. The whole Web 2.0 experience allow users to collaborate, share information, opinions, comments, ideas, links, ratings, bookmarks, reviews, pictures, videos, and more. It really puts the user in the driver's seat when visiting a website that has Web 2.0 elements present.

Read the entire interview here

10 Great Apps for Twitter Users

Harry McCracken over at PC World has a great list of apps and tools that will give your tweeting experience a boost. One of my favorites that makes his lists is Tweet Deck - by far the best app to keep track of all of your tweets. Click here

Other great sites that list Twitter Applications:

1oo Most Popular Twitter Apps

Twittermania" 140+ More Twitter Applications Tools

47 Awesome Twitter Tools You Should Be Using

Twitter Tools for Community and Communication Professionals

10 Great Apps for Twitter Users

Joopz Me Baby!

I love my new Joopz account! What is Joopz you ask? Joopz is a Web 2.0 application that lets me send and recieve FREE text messages to cell phones via a web-based platform. I am still playing around with it. However, I am very excited at the huge potential it has to communicate with my clients. Simply put Joopz allows me to text someone a specifc SMS text.

A unique feature that I am really loving about Joopz is that it allows me to g'roup message' text messages to groups that I set up - unlimited groups. This feature holds great promise as a businesss communication tool. For example, I n my Joopz acount I set up a group called "Clients." I have added all of my clients cell phone numbers to this group. Now I am ready to send specific SMS text messages. I own a website design and development company and this feature will be especially helpful to communicate with my clients whenever a server is down for support purposes or if I need to alert them to something specific about web updates to thier domain. Plus, with two-way text messaging my clients can text me back via their cell phones and I can respond by typing a reply text via my laptop, not through my Palm Treo 800 keyboard.

Joopz even has an Outlook Plugin. With this feature, you can now send and receive text messages directly from your Outlook e-mail. Best of all, the Joopz plug-in automatically syncs with your Outlook address book so you can send a text message to anyone in your Outlook address book along with your Joopz contacts.

Try Joopz today - it's free to try - they do have a premium service that allows you to send and receive unlimited text messages - all for only $19.95 a year. A great deal!

Click to visit Joopz.com

REASON #7 – SAVVY PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS ARE LOOKING FOR YOU - YES YOU!

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Your Top Business Priority in 2009

When is the last time you picked up a “yellow book?” If you are under the age of 21 you may not even know what a yellow book is, in fact, my twelve year old looked at me very weird the other day when I asked him to go into my office and get me the “yellow pages.”

Millions of savvy, prospective customers everyday jump on a browser and search for products and services. Is your company there to make a virtual handshake with them?

Understand Google's Guidelines

From Jon Rognerud, Courtesy of Entrepreneur.com

Meet Google, the "coolest kid" on the cyberblock!

Google is popular, and popularity means it may be tough to get in initially. Even if you do everything right, it could take months to see results, at least if you use their URL submission page. However, there is hope! There's a method to get indexed in 24 hours, so don't even bother submitting through the URL page.

But before you get to that, you should know about the guidelines you must follow to ensure that your site not only gets listed, but also doesn't get banned. Plus, you should learn about elements of your website that Google won't look at.

How to Get Google to Read Your Keywords First

Google's bots read web pages from the topmost left corner of your site to the bottom right. However, most sites are designed with all of the links on the left side, and the content on the right. In fact, earlier in this book you learned that this is the recommended website design you should use. Yet the problem with this design is instead of seeing your content first, Google sees the links first. Your links may not be seen to be as optimized as your content.

One solution is to use three panes rather than two. Keep the normal left and right panes, but add an extra pane at the top left of the layout. Don't put keywords in this extra pane. With this area "blank" when the Google bots read the site, rather than going for the links as they normally would, the bots see that a portion of where the links are is "blank." This then forces it to read the content first, which is more keyword-rich than the links.

Note that not all search engines read sites this way, which is why this guideline was provided in this special section dedicated to optimizing for Google. You could be on the safe side and use the layout anyway, especially if you do plan to submit to Google, which you should. It doesn't take away from the look of the site, and by using it you ensure that your content gets read first. If you don't use it, you aren't giving yourself the best opportunity to rank highly in Google search engine listings. Making tables isn't very hard to do. Most word processors and even WYSIWYG HTML editors provide them, so take advantage of it.

Read the entire post here

Search Engine Optimization for Your Web Site

Whether your Web site is brand new or ten years old, managing how it appears to search engines is crucial to its success. The typical Web site gets 61 percent of its traffic from organic (nonpaid) search engine results, and 41 percent of all traffic from Google alone. Ensuring that the company's site ranks highly in search results is, for most businesses, a make-or-break proposition, which is why search engine optimization (SEO) is now a multibillion-dollar industry.

No one knows exactly what combination of tactics will maximize a Web site's ranking in search results, but a lot of smart people have developed some good approximations based on history and empirical evidence. I asked three experts--Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, and Michael H. Fleischner, author of SEO Made Simple --about what tips and tricks they thought someone just starting out in the SEO game ought to know. The best and brightest of their recommendations follow.

Know What Keywords to Optimize

Search engine optimization is useless if you don't know what you're trying to optimize. For some businesses, picking appropriate keywords is straightforward: A candy merchant would probably choose candy, chocolate, and similar terms. But other business sites face more-difficult decisions. What terms should an online store that sells many different products emphasize? And how should a general-interest Web site that covers a wide range of topicsdetermine which search terms to focus on?

For starters, you should base your decisions about which terms relevant to your business to optimize on which terms people are searching for most often. One way to gauge search term popularity is to use an online keyword tool designed to see measure what general terms are searched for the most. Both the Google Keyword Tool and the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool can help you get a quick, accurate sense of the search volume for any term of your choice, and they will recommend related terms that you might not have thought of.

Ultimately it's a numbers game: You need to optimize for terms that drive the highest traffic and are the most relevant to what your Web site offers. Optimizing your site for terms that no one ever types into a search engine won't generate any traffic for the site, no matter how conscientiously you pursue the optimization. So before you do anything else, carefully select a handful of relevant high-interest terms for optimizing.

Focus on Title Tags and URLs

Experts agree that your title tags should be central to your SEO efforts. When it comes to indexing content, search engines treat the words in these tags--the text that appears in the title bar in your browser--as the most important single element on a Web page. For that reason, you should load it with your keywords, and make every title tag on your site unique. Danny Sullivan says that you should think of the tags as being like the titles of hundreds of books that you've published and want potential customers to be able to find: "If you give them all the same title, no one knows they are about different things."

Years ago many people thought that URL structure was irrelevant and that only the actual content of a page really mattered. But search engines today consider keywords in your URLs much as they do keywords on the page itself. Though most publishing systems make it easy to use keywords in URLs, though many such systems (like WordPress) default to simplistic URLs that consist of numbers instead of including keywords.

It is well worth your while to take the time to make keywords part of your URL structure. Thereafter, a piece about Quantum of Solace (for example) will look more like www.pcworld.com/quantum-of-solace instead of like www.pcworld.com/11/&id=27. And readable URLs don't just help search engines, says Rand Fishkin; they help users, too.

Each page of content on your site should link to by only one URL. Multiple URLs that refer to a single page of content can confuse search spiders.

Be Aware of How Others Link to You

I love it when readers link to Filmcritic.com, my movie review Web site, but a link like Filmcritic.com is cool has far positive impact on the ranking my site receives from search engines than a link like movie reviews. Why? Because search engines take into account the anchor text used to link to a site.

If you want to rise up in the rankings for a certain keyword or phrase, you need to encourage others to use those keywords in the anchor text for the link to your site, instead of just using the name of your site. To make this easy, you can provide the actual HTML code you'd like the linking site to use: Many linkers will simply copy and paste it on their Web site rather than taking the trouble to customize it themselves.

Spell Correctly--or Have a Good Reason Not To

Your site (and especially your keywords) need to be free of spelling errors. Typos can be a huge problem for eBay sellers, who can't figure out why no one is bidding on their "Tiffanny" bracelets. On the other hand, including the incorrect form of certain words that are frequently misspelled can work for you. For example, about 5 percent of searchers misspell "absinthe" as "absinth," so it may be wise to include the misspelled term as a secondary keyword to supplement the correctly spelled version of the word.

Mind the Flash

Flash-based Web sites look pretty, but search engines don't care about that. Sullivan notes that the closer your content is to plain text, the more easily and completely search engines will be able to spider it. Search engines today are better at working with Flash than they used to be, but if you're more interested in strong search results than in a flashy interface, text and HTML are still the way to go.

Resist Duplicate Content and Plagiarism

One of the most difficult SEO problems to remedy is the issue of duplicate content--the tendency of others on the Web to steal your work and republish it as their own. All search engines are terrible at recognizing which version of a page is the original one, and you may very well be penalized as a duplicate page if an engine fails to recognize who was copying who. The penalty is severe, too: Duplicate sites won't show up in search results unless the searcher clicks the search engine's link for "repeat the search with the omitted results included," which no one ever does.

To deal with cases of plagiarism, many Web hosts have a mechanism for reporting abuses such as copyright infringement. (For example, the Google Blogger service has a notification system.) The process can be tedious, but your efforts will pay off handsomely if they help you reverse penalties that are unfairly being assessed against you.

Give OnlyWire a Try

Michael Fleischner says that he's seen clients achieve great success in getting word out about their content by using OnlyWire, which lets you automatically submit a page of content to more than 20 social bookmarking sites with a single click. OnlyWire also gives you the option of embedding a "bookmark & share" link on your pages that permits other visitors to do the same. For best results, Fleischner says, "Individuals should bookmark their home page and channel-level pages once per month and get others to do the same." Submitting select content to major social news sites such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon can produce occasional floods of traffic, too, but that strategy is very hit-or-miss. Ans beware of oversubmitting to social news sites, lest you be branded a spammer.

Use Word Clouds to Link Internally

If you drop a word cloud (or tag cloud) on your home page, according to Fleischner, internal linking to your content "takes care of itself." Linking from one page to another within your Web site--no matter how you achieve it--helps improve your site's search result ranking.

Put Quality First

It may seem too obvious to bear mentioning, but the quality of your Web site's content must come first in any SEO strategy. Search-engine results are, to a large extent, driven by the number of incoming links to your content, whether these links come from blogs, news stories, or social news sites like Digg. Unless you give visitors a compelling reason to link to your pages, you won't get these links and you won't rise up in the search rankings--no matter how frequently your keywords appears on your home page. Write provocative blog posts. Create entertaining and original promotional copy for the merchandise in your catalog. Include photos and videos on your pages. Do whatever you can to set yourself apart from and above the millions of other sites on the Web.

Don't Let SEO Get in the Way

A final piece of sound advice from Fishkin: "SEO should never have to compete with user experience or usability. What's good for users is almost always good for engines, too, so building the best Web site you can--with the best content, design, and architecture--will go a long way to bringing you success with search engine rankings. Just make sure that whatever you build, search engines have easy access to it, and you'll be miles ahead of the pack."

This article was originally found on PC WORLD - Author | Christopher Null | Thursday, December 04, 2008 9:00 AM PST

REASON #8 - A WEBSITE IS THE MOST COST EFFECTIVE SELLING FORCE BY FAR

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Your Top Business Priority in 2009

Your website when designed and developed correctly is a 24/7 selling machine. Think about it. Your website is working for you around the clock, reaching out and touching new customers. Let’s say you hired a marketing person to grow your sales this fiscal year. As a top-notch marketing guru, this person’s resume demanded an annual salary of $100K. Let’s do some simple math:

Marketing Guru Cost
40 hour work week x 52 weeks = 2080 hours
$100,000.00 ÷ 2080 = $48.00/hr

Website Selling Machine
24 hour work week X 365 = 8760 hours
$100,000.00 ÷ 8760 = $11.41

Now granted most small business websites cost no where near $100K to implement, but you get my point. A website is the most cost effective selling force that any small business can utilize in today’s economy. The number of potential customers contacted via your website and the relatively modest costs involved put the ROI of a website far ahead of other sales approaches, such as paid advertising or visits by sales representatives.

So, why doesn’t your small business have a website?

REASON #9 - IT TAKES TIME TO CREATE DOMAIN NAME BUZZ FOR YOUR SITE

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Your Top Business Priority in 2009

So many people think if they launch a new website on a Monday that they should show up on a Google search for that new website on a Tuesday. Let me just bust this myth by saying – it does not happen that way.

Imagine sending out an invitation to some friends inviting them to come to your home for dinner. The purpose for inviting them was to see your new house you just finished building. The invitations go out, but there was one catch - you neglected to provide them your address. As the appointed time for your dinner came and went you quickly became very puzzled why your visitors never came to your home. You had built this beautiful new home and now no one showed up. The next day you bumped into some of your invited guests and you asked them "Why didn't you come last evening to my home for dinner?" Their reply? "WE COULD NOT FIND YOU!"

Thousands and thousands of customers are looking for your website, your home on the internet ... will they be able to find you? It's not enough to just have a website or a nice looking home page. People need to be able to find you on the internet. You can help them better find you through Search Engine Optimization.

When you do have a website, you want the Search Engines to put it high in Search Engine Ranking Reports for the important keywords for your business. This does not happen overnight. Usually it will take 2 months or more to begin to get good rankings. So the earlier you start, the better you will succeed.

REASON #10 - WITHOUT A STRONG WEBSITE, YOU LEAVE THE FIELD TO THE COMPETITION

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Your Top Business Priority in 2009

If you are in business you cannot afford to let your competition stand out in an already crowded playing field. How you do business in 2009 is different. Change is not coming – it’s here! If you are in business and do not have a website then shame on you. Set aside my industry bias here for a minute. Not having a website is giving your competition the edge Bottom line: you're losing business if you do not have a website.

It’s estimated that there are now 337,167, 248 internet users in North America (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats14.htm) While you are reading this someone is going on the internet and using it to find potential products or services that they need and want. Are they finding what they need on your website? The great thing about the internet is that it truly does level the playing field for those in business. A new competitor with limited funds can be highly visible on the web. If your company isn't there, then the competitor may be the only visible provider to the untapped clients you are trying to reach.

It's also important not to allow the competitor to be the first one with a website. It takes some time for a website to establish itself on the Internet with the search engines. If your competitor steals a lead on you, then you may find it difficult to catch up.