Seth Godin, a famous marketer that every CEO and marketing director should get familiar with wrote the book Tribes.  The whole premise of Tribes is that as business owners we have a mission to fulfill online. The mission is to be the leader and attract people (who are hungry for leadership) to follow us.  The more people that follow us because of our uniqueness and leadership, the more people we have an opportunity to build a relationship with which can ultimately lead to sales.

How can you start being a leader online? Here’s a few tips:

1.) Start using Twitter. Start following like minded people, start following your competition, start engaging and aligning yourself as the expert in your particular industry.

2.) DON’T Stop using Twitter. Keep feeding your followers with useful information, useful perspectives and ‘food’.

3.) Place tools on your web site that can make it easy for people to join your tribe: subscribe today, join, follow us on twitter, grab our RSS feed, etc.

4.) Start blogging. Not just on your own web site, but a contributor to other industry related blogs.  You don’t need to be a prolific author to accomplish this, drop in, jot some comments and perspectives and start the discussion.

5.) Stay current and relevant.  The more that you are top of your industry, the more useful information you can provide to your followers through whatever online platform you should chose.

People want to follow. You love to lead. Put the two together and start building your own online tribe of followers.  Be sure to get rid of dead weight followers every once in a while and be choosy over who you allow to follow you (keep the rif-raf out.)

Search engines love new content.  Google wants to know that you are staying relevant, the more quality content you add to your site, the more Google wants to visit and digest your wisdom. Here are some quick tips for you to keep your web site ‘relevant.’

* Start A Blog.  If you don’t have a blog, get one installed. A blog is a great tool to keep your site fresh.  Write about your industry, write about your products, share customer testimonials, etc.

* Company News. Start a company news page (or a category in your blog) that showcases any media hits your business has received, archive the pdf’s, show news releases, link to newspaper articles about you, etc.

* Testimonials: Testimonials are a great way to get naturally good content onto your web site.  If you aren’t asking your clients for testimonials, start, and use them.

* Product Reviews.  If you run an online store, product reviews can be a great source of natural keywords and content for search engines.  Encourage your shoppers to leave reviews on products.

These are just some ideas, you could also add whitepapers, research papers, etc. if your market is actually interested in reading them.

I talk to so many business owners who are obsessed with the amount of web site traffic that they are receiving.  Traffic is obviously important, but I’m always much more concerned with the QUALITY of that traffic rather than the quantity. If you are indeed targeting the proper audience through your SEO and Internet Marketing campaigns, you may see less traffic but a higher conversion ratio.

I think it’s mission critical that you bury your nose in your web site analytics at least once a month.  If you don’t currently get an analytics or web traffic report, it’s pretty simple to install and is invaluable when it comes to making educated decisions regarding your Internet marketing.  Once you have analytics, it’s crucial to start paying attention to where traffic is coming from, how long that traffic stayed on your web site, where they went, what action did they take, etc.  You can really start to see emerging patterns after about 2 or 3 months of solid data and should be able to start making some very educated decisions about the future course of your web site.

Some questions to ask yourself about your web traffic:

1.) What keywords are people finding me under?
2.) Are these the keywords that are going to help me close more business?
3.) Are people ‘bouncing’ off of my web site quickly? (Any bounce rate higher than %50 deserves some attention)
4.) What percentage of web site traffic is coming from search engines? (I like to see at least 40% coming from search engines.)
5.) Is the majority of your search engine traffic coming from Google? (Typically 70% of all search traffic should be coming from Google.)

I had a conference call with a great south Florida company today, they were frustrated with their existing SEO company and wanted a second set of eyeballs to take a look at the work that had been done.  The SEO company did a fine job delivering the keyword results they agreed to organically (in the natural search engine listings) but didn’t really take the time to understand what the clients truly wanted or even further, help the client decide what they truly needed.

The SEO firm in question simply picked some keywords that could be easily indexed, like the company’s name and the very specific name of the company’s main product.  Frankly, my six year old could have gotten rankings on those terms, especially since most of the terms are in their own domain name (meaning Google should rank those easily.)

A true SEO firm is a marketing partner.  They should not just jump in, TELL the client what keywords they are going to get them found under and disappear.  A true SEO firm is in it to win it for the client.  A true SEO firm should have a firm grasp of marketing to the right demographic, should take the time to discover what is going to help the client achieve their results (in this case, more online sales.).  Most companies do not go above and beyond.  Those are the companies that lose clients.  Clients simply want results, they want to understand what is happening and some even want to understand WHY it’s happening.  Clients want and expect partnerships, NOT just vendors.

If you ever hire an SEO firm, be sure to dig deep.  Do they understand why blogging is important? Do they understand how providing useful content to site visitors is crucial? Do they understand how to write for a bigger audience than search engine robots and spiders? Do they take the time to listen to YOU and ask YOU about YOUR demographic and prospects? That is the difference. Don’t accept anything less.

What is Organic SEO?

Organic SEO is simply any search result that appears NOT as a result of a pay per click or sponsored listings ad.  Searchers on a search engine such as Bing or Google tend to click the Organic search results 70% of the time as opposed to the pay per click at %30. Organic rankings are calculated by each search engine differently, so your web site needs to be constructed with organic SEO (search engine optimization) in mind from the beginning. Some factors for ranking include: amount of keyword relevant content, your domain name, the web site structure, the amount of quality inbound and relevant links, the use of title and meta description tags, etc.

There are so many so called SEO firms calling on unsuspecting marketing managers and business owners. SEO firms from India wanting to partner with you, SEO firms that promise instant top ranking results in a matter of minutes, SEO firms that can do all of this for a low low price of $19.95, etc.  Here’s one simple way of not hiring an SEO firm, I don’t hire anyone who cold calls me, but here are some tips on what to look for if you chose to hire an SEO firm (other than mine….)

Google Search.
Search for an SEO firm in your neighborhood. The ability to meet in person with an SEO firm is golden, not to mention, if you can find them in Google, they can more than likely get you found.

Client References.
This should go without saying, but ask for client references. I would recommend that you not only call those references, but search for them under keywords that you would use as a consumer, NOT as what the SEO company is claiming.  I quite frequently see on competing SEO firms web sites a list of results for clients under key terms that a monkey could get his web site ranked under.

The Deal.
When it’s all said and done, much of your decision should be based on performance.  If you want a quality web presence, PAY for a quality SEO firm. This is not the place to cheap out, this is your online presence. Seek a firm that offers a month to month service (non contractual) and provides monthly reporting and access to a live human being to discuss your firms positioning, etc.

The Run Away List.
Run away from any  SEO company that starts speaking about cloaking, or doorway pages, or any other type of unethical or ‘black hat’ SEO techniques to getting you ranked.

Run away from any SEO company that PROMISES top organic search engine results overnight.

Run away from any SEO company that is solely about Link building.  Link building is important when it comes to getting organic search results in Google and other search engines, BUT, it’s only part of the equation.

Run away from any SEO company that subs any of their content creation to non English speaking countries.  Content should be meant for human consumption and should be composed as such.

Run away from any SEO company that does NOT return phone calls or emails promptly.

Listening to Seth Godin’s Linchpin book on my mp3 player.  So far, I’m enjoying this book a great deal (I listen while I’m at the Gym so I don’t need to listen to the obnoxious be-bop). Seth Godin is a brilliant marketer and through his book Linchpin is advising us all to be the ‘essential’ piece of our business.  The irreplaceable one, the grease that lubricates the machine.  One way to do this, he recommends, is by being a giver.  The Internet has certainly opened the door for us all to be givers, to feed our audience, to be a ‘linchpin’ or essential piece.

With so many jobs being outsourced overseas and so much economic hardship in our Nation, this book can help open your eyes to a new way of marketing and being valuable to your company and your clients. More to come as I progress.