TopRank Digital Marketing News

As posted by SEO Designer Thomas McMahon to Online Marketing Blog:

“63% of consumers and small business owners use the Internet to find information about local companies and 82% use search engines (Webvisible & Nielsen).  That means there’s a lot of opportunity for local Search Engine Optimization, or local SEO.”

Essentially, local SEO focuses on optimizing content in order to position it in the ‘Local Business Results’ displayed by search engines such as Google and Bing.  Most times, ‘Local Business Results’ appear above traditional search results.

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Does your company have difficulty understanding the right approach to social media? Have you started social media projects only to discover they didn’t produce your expected outcomes?  Have you started a social media marketing campaign only to have it run out of gas or never take hold in the first place?

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden was interviewed by WebProNews‘ Abby Johnson about social media and ways companies can get around some of the common misperceptions and obstacles.

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Wanted: Creative Online Copywriter to Win the Hearts & Minds of Fortune 500 Company Clients

(Who also doesn’t mind having meetings on the lake once in a while)

TopRank Online Marketing has a great opportunity for a talented writing professional to join our content marketing team. Business blogs, websites, social media content and other types of online promotional copy are core skills for this position that helps our clients win on the web.

The search and social media savvy writer we’re looking for knows online marketing communications and messaging from working client side, at an agency or both. Prior experience (2-3 years) with Blogging, Article Writing, Social Media Content Creation and Promotion as well as Search Engine Marketing will win big brownie points.

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Even though there is some criticism of the timeliness retained with books on fast-changing topics like search engine optimization and social media marketing, books continue to remain popular sources of information and insight for marketers.  Questions about recommended books on both topics, especially social media, continue to be popular on QA sites, forums and sites like Twitter. We’ve compiled the following list of useful books on specific SEO and Social Media Marketing topics you might find useful. Many of these books have been reviewed at Online Marketing Blog.

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Nearly every day:

• 14,000,000 gather on Twitter
• 60,000,000 connect via LinkedIn
• 346,000,000 engage through blogs
• 400,000,000 network via Facebook

The sheer numbers point towards an unparalleled opportunity to connect with your prospects and customers in social channels online, many of whom are eager to engage.

So what is the one social activity that your customers and prospects are eagerly awaiting for you to launch?  Why not ask them?

This July 29^th, Lee Odden, TopRank® Online Marketing CEO, and Chelsea Bucoy, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Zoomerang by MarketTools, Inc., present Engage Your Audience With Social Media & Surveys.

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Imagine you were the enlightened caveman (or woman) who invented the wheel.  How would you drum up demand for your new product – by promoting your newly coined phrase ‘wheel’ or by promoting a solution for traveling and dragging?

Today’s start-ups would be wise to heed to this analogy.

Until the product or service you create has its name ingrained in the minds of your target, there is very little chance they will find you regardless of how badly they need you.  It doesn’t matter that everyone needs a ‘pilotguide’ (a fictional and foolproof autopilot for your car) if no one knows to ask for a pilotguide by name.

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At its core, social media is the art of real-time engagement.  Less a business practice, more a throwback to traditional public relations, it is a tactic that when leveraged correctly can help any company achieve its PR and marketing goals.

But while the social media and traditional PR game may have the same goals, they simply cannot be played successfully with the same set of rules.

This July, the new set of rules that can help PR and marketing professionals succeed in social media will be unveiled during Retweet: Engagement Means Business, a free online conference hosted by Vocus.  Joining this conference as a presenter will be TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden.

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Many marketers are on a budget and keyword research is an essential part of search marketing. How can you find out what keywords your customers are searching for so you can optimize your website? Here are 6 free keyword research tools that you can use to do just that.  The Google tools are actually all-free. The other 4 tools offer free versions as well as full-featured paid versions.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google Search-based keyword tool

Wordtracker

KeywordDiscovery.com

WordStream

SEMRush

Did we miss any?

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an online marketing tactic that helps search engines find, index and rank content on the web.   Proper SEO is not a silver bullet or a magic pill that will help a website skyrocket to the top of search rankings in 5 days or less.  When managed effectively, SEO is a tactic designed to produce results that are ongoing and cumulative – rather than dramatic and temporary. In the Search Engine Optimization case study below, flat panel and projector mount manufacturer Chief Manufacturing illustrates the ongoing success that can be achieved with a long term SEO program.

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As software companies inherently work with digitally based products, it can be argued that software companies have an inherent advantage within the digital marketplace.

Of course, the inherent disadvantage of this scenario is a digital space flooded with competition.  Nearly every software company that inhabits space online must constantly be on-guard against potentially hundreds of competitors competing for mindshare.

For the two companies below, both of which have renewed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) programs with TopRank® Online Marketing, this increased competition will be far less of a worry:

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