Do you follow businesses on Twitter? Or are you a business on Twitter? Either way, you follow your favorite businesses to get real-time notifications about the latest hapennings and special offers or you promote your own business to connect with supporters and share news. We have talked about the positive role Twitter plays in search engines’ algorthims, which determine what websites are the most relevant – meaning, in large part, which sites are most liked by fellow internet users (people searching and shopping on the internet).

MG Siegler of TechCrunch talked to Twitter’s Adam Bain about newly promoted tweets:

“It turns out that on Twitter, users are already interacting with ads on a level that most would be surprised by,” Bain says. He notes that while traditional online display ads only get a click-through rate of something like 0.05 percent, some Promoted Tweets are seeing engagement in the double-digit percentages. “Engagement matters,” Bain says.

“Users want to be updated when brands have updates or exclusive content. The one problem we’ve heard from users is that when there is exclusive content or deals, there’s a chance they might miss them,” he says. “If the brand tweets at 9 AM, and the person comes in at 9:15 AM, they’ll miss them.”

“Resonance is also really important to us. This is about the realtime opportunity. And that expires fairly quickly,” Bain goes on, saying that in the ideal scenario, the things brands tweet will be “good, not loud”.

Bain says that the realtime aspect of the product is also vital to how Twitter places them. Because hot topics that people are Tweeting about can happen at any time, Twitter needs to be able to talk to a brand and quickly place an appropriate Tweet. “It’s realtime marketing at scale,” he says. “That’s the whole value proposition of the platform.”

A lot of talk has been circulating about Google’s recent algorithm changes, which have still not finished rolling out. Many businesses with prominent organic rankings have taken a dive as of late. Some data from sistrix.com showing just some of the fallout can be seen as follows:

According to the source, the “SISTRIX Visibility Index is an index value calculated from traffic on keywords, ranking and click-through rate on specific positions”. This goes to show how quickly your organic rankings can change with the seasons –typically not for the better. As more and more small businesses turn to SEO as a cost-effective, trackable advertising channel, it is important to realize the value of recurring, professional SEO maintenance.

Once a business is ready to experiment with SEO, it can play out in a few different ways. Knowing the value of search engine visibility, the DIY business owner might comb the web for instructions. Contractors, who are pretty resourceful people, are a great example of this. What he/she would find is mostly outdated information from wannabe SEO’s who took up the profession for a week after getting a life-changing “MAKE $5,000 A WEEK WORKING FROM HOME!!!” e-mail. Then there’s the 60-90 day wait in anticipation of results that never come.

Another breed of proprietor might find the DIY approach to be unreliable, and decide to enlist a professional agency. Unfortunately, this guy doesn’t do his homework before selecting an agency–one that might even be getting him great results. Before you know it, this seemingly legit company has gotten Joe Contractor’s site removed from Google altogether with spammy tactics. His business ends up taking a very real hit with no recourse against some kid in a satellite nation who never gave him legit contact info to begin with.

With a low cost, comprehensive reporting, a brick-and-mortar (US based) location and an army of dedicated account managers, you might find Outrank.com to be a good fit. We make small businesses visible on the internet, which tends to get your phone ringing. If you sign up with us and aren’t happy for any reason, there’s no monthly contract. For a free consultation, call (877) 332-4321.

In one of the biggest SEO headlines in recent months, JCPenney was publicly outed as a practicioner of black hat SEO. The company, whose uncanny organic results have been manually downgraded by Google, was allegedly unaware of the sketchy tactics used by SearchDex, a third party SEO vendor acting on their behalf. Before webspam engineer Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google team took action, JCPenney had front page rankings for multitudes of product-specific keywords, like “comforter sets” for months.

How they did it:

SearchDex used a paid links network that compensates website owners for the placement of links on their sites. By optimizing the anchor text (the text that appears in the underlined hyperlink) with a given keyword for a large number of pages, it did not matter that the pages they used had little traffic on their own or were not contextually relevant. In a specific example shown by Search Engine Land, JCPenney’s landing page for “comforter sets” had 700-plus of these junk sites linking to it, which included sites dedicated to Eastern Medicine, car modification and “How to hack Friendster Private Picture” (I was not personally aware Friendster was even still in existence).

If you have any hand in your company’s search marketing efforts, regardless of size, you should learn from this. Yes, the ROI from their dark alley campaign was probably phenomenal. However, was it worth the mess their PR and marketing people have to clean up now? Google has manually demoted their search results to obscurity. For a company that is trying to transition from its “Big Book” catalog to e-commerce, is a few months of SEO glory worth the work it will take to repair the damage from this fallout? Fortunately for JCPenney, sales driven by organic SEO are only a small part of its revenue. But for any legitimate business seeking long-term online marketing success, pure black hat SEO is just not worth it.

With millions of searches being performed on Google every day, SEO has emerged as the best way to reach a large audience at a low cost. Not surprisingly, the same tactics used by Outrank.com for small business success are being widely used by politicians to provide information to voters and to shape public opinion.

With the US midterm elections in full swing, political hopefuls at all levels of government are discovering the full potential of  search engine marketing. Recently, campaign strategists have made headlines by using SEO to make negative information about their opponents more visible. For years now, voters have used the internet to inform themselves about candidates. In the past few days, Google has noted a significant increase in searches for voting registration and polling places that shows no sign of slowing down in the future.

These tactics have a proven, measurable impact on your business success. This is why companies like BP are throwing large sums of money at search marketing campaigns. Hiring a capable SEO means having control over the way potential customers view your business. Just as Americans turn to search engines for voting information, they are using search to find the services you sell. Call Outrank.com at (877) 332-4321 for a free consultation.

This week, Outrank.com brings you some compelling data to prove how effective SEO is for small to medium-sized businesses. The study I’d like to discuss today was put together by Bain & Company (one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms), in collaboration with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (whose members account for over 85% of online advertising).

The findings of this study (located here) reinforce the power of advertising on the internet for businesses interested in closing sales as quickly as possible. The figure below illustrates this potential:

In this chart, we can see five “brand objectives”–in other words, the effects that TV, magazine, newspaper and internet ads have on potential consumers. Clearly, most small business owners (including everyday contractors, photographers, insurance agents, landscapers, etc.) are more interested in using their hard-earned advertising dollars to drive actual sales. When comparing internet advertising (most notably, SEO) against these other mediums, we see that the internet is the most effective way to turn your advertising dollars into “purchase intent”, A.K.A. profit.

The chart also indicates that, in 2008, companies spent over $35 million on TV ads that were only successful in “Creating Awareness”. Only a minute amount of TV ad spending was shown to result in actual sales. Think about it from the consumer’s perspective. We are all aware of the commercials we’re subjected to when we are watching our favorite shows, but that doesn’t mean we have any intention of buying their products.

With an extremely low cost and access to a large number of customers that are actually looking to buy products and services, SEO empowers the little guy more than any other advertising method. Call Outrank.com at (877) 332-4321 to learn more.

Keywords that internet users type into search engines determine the results shown on SERPs (search engine results pages). That said, Outrank.com believes it is imperative to target keywords for its clients’ sites that are designed to bring them the most business.

With this in mind, here are some important considerations Outrank.com keeps in mind during site optimization:

Consideration #1: Effect of keywords on impressions and conversions

A rookie mistake in SEO is choosing target keywords based solely on their search volume. Relevance is just as important when seeking quality leads that convert to sales. For example, optimizing a site for a company that sells beach balls for the keyword phrase “California beaches” could bring in a lot of traffic but would convert only a small number of buyers, since most searchers are looking for travel information, not products to use at the beach

Consideration #2: Competitiveness of a given keyword

There are literally thousands of web pages vying for every competitive keyword. For every Google search, there are only ten organic results displayed on the first page. Search results are unlikely to get clicks on any page but the first page of results. Fortunately, properly optimizing for relevant, targeted keywords makes it possible to achieve front page placement.

Consideration #3: Unreliability of keyword research tools

There are many tools out there to help users choose a keyword to target. They can come in handy and point users in the right direction. However, when applied by themselves, these tools are like a watch missing its hour hand. Data from leading keyword research tools conflicts drastically and provides no real insight into the most important metric – the intent or characteristics of the searcher using a given keyword.

While these are useful tips when it comes to keyword research, the best solution for local business owners is to team up with an online placement expert like Outrank.com. They help small businesses reach new customers through an optimized web presence, without the constraints of a contract. Call Outrank.com today at 877-332-4321 to learn more.

Outrank.com specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), the practice of improving a website’s ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

When you use Google, Yahoo, or Bing, you type in a keyword to search the internet for what you want. Search engines then use an algorithm to find out which web pages to show you and rank them in order of relevance.

The web pages that are displayed more prominently, especially on the front page, receive a lot more clicks than sites that rank lower or not at all. Because search engines are so popular (see below for the number of total searches for last month alone), a high-ranking website has enormous money-making potential. Websites that do not promote products or services can still profit from online advertisements.

From APWire

Unfortunately, the algorithms that are used by most search engines are largely a trade secret. Search engines claim to do this to prevent the use of deceptive SEO techniques that seek to get a website a high ranking in an unfavorable way. Websites that are determined to be manipulating their algorithms with malicious intent are typically banned. These methods might help in the short term, but eventually they will become detrimental to your site’s rankings.

For these reasons, SEO professionals (like Outrank.com) exist to help you navigate the complicated, ever-changing field of search engine optimization, which allows individuals and businesses to take advantage of practically free advertising.