Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

Okay, the title is a hoax. You caught me. I’m a liar who likes to tell stories. There is no “magic formula for website success”. There are only best practices. As a search engine marketer (SEO/ SEM..whatever you want to call it), we are really moving towards being project managers (yes, I harp about this all the time). As a project manager, you have to understand how all the tools at your disposal work, and how they could work better. I’m going to tell you exactly what best practices *I* would use as a guide for marketing a retail (or better yet manufacturer) website online.

Assumptions:

• You have a worthwhile product
• You have exceptional profit margins
• You have a well trained, enthusiastic staff that is willing to work and learn
• You have a plan for growth
• You are willing to change when necessary
• You have a qualified web development team
• You have someone who will handle link development and PPC

10 marketing strategies that matter

Months 1 - 3

Month 1 - Planning
Spend the first month planning. Document and consider every angle to your marketplace. Define your unique selling points. Devise ways you can be remarkable by your customers. Brainstorm and write down EVERY idea in your head that is even remotely related to your new online business. Write down keywords. Start organizing your ideas and writing copy for your pages. Delegate responsibilities to your staff. Start dividing up the work.
Compleat guide to SEM I
Compleat guide to SEM II

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So link building extraordinaire Andy Hagans was the last of several people to ask, “what the hell is Mr. Ploppy?” You asked for it, and you got it. The ultra-brief history of Mr. Ploppy has been added to the archived monday morning SEM tool list.

If you have a business and you have news, you need to announce it. Enter PR - public relations…or press releases…that other PR. As search engine marketing evolves towards traditional media marketing, this type of optimization will become more and more important. Understand the old methods of promotion, and it will help you to create effective strategies for new methods of promotion.

Press releases get you into a good habit of writing about and announcing news. These should be archived on your site as well. Use press releases to promote other forms of viral marketing that may be able to bring your site the links and recognition that you will need for higher rankings and growth. Pay for better distribution on the really important releases, and do free releases as practice for a bit of extra exposure. Check out all the places you can distribute (and I’m sure there are many more): (more…)

I’m a big fan of making stuff easier. Crib sheets make life easy. This is a great idea, and Dave should be rewarded with a bit of link love for his web development crib sheets. He has a bunch of my favorites: Mod-rewrite, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. Really nice stuff to hang on the already tacky walls of your office.

Webmasterradio.fm - That’s a Wrap”
6:00pm - EST

It’s very cool that these guys got a chance to sit and rant together on SEO. Sounds like they’ll be discussing the weekly state of search, and all things fun in the world of search marketing and the like. These two know their stuff, and I’m sure they’ll have some great guests and insights.

You can probably grab a podcast stream somewheres. The topic this evening is about Microsoft purchasing Claria, IP spammers, spyware, dirty business and bad strategy. I’m sure this will interesting conversation and definitely worth some ear time.

Definitely two guys worth listening to on the topic of SEM/SEO.

This post is a little overdue bit about my thoughts on “All Marketers Are Liars” by Seth Godin. The first 35+ pages of this book are amazing. Seth has a knack for putting into action words the things that we SHOULD have known anyways, but no one had ever really thought of. Telling a story…YES! That makes perfect sense, but his explanation of how to go about telling the story is really what makes the book extraordinary. You can tell an AUTHENTIC story and actually live it. People are so used to marketing bull sh*t that when you tell them a genuine story they LIKE to listen. Consumers like to spread the story of something that they think is worth believing in, and that certainly makes life as a marketing professional much easier.
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It seemed like folks were somewhat interested in how to frame a good link request, so I thought I’d write a bit more on the subject. As a lot of people know, I am a big fan of Seth Godin’s work, and try to apply his take on more traditional marketing methods to search engine optimization. In fact, his view is not so much “traditional marketing” as it is “marketing is all around us”. I plan to finish my review of his excellent “All Marketers Are Liars” in the near future to braindump some of my thoughts on that subject. Until then, I think a couple of the concepts I learned apply to creating a link request. (more…)