TopRank Internet Marketing News

Despite company marketing and PR budgets being in a state of ambiguity, many marketing and Public Relations organizations are focusing on social media, trying to figure out “do’s and don’ts” to improve online reach. At the same time, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of news content is fast becoming an established part of the mix for many marketing and PR programs.

On their own, SEO and social media channels offer attractive opportunities for reaching industry influentials as well as end consumers through push and pull PR.  Together, SEO and social media combine to create a competitive edge that can boost online PR results.

Link building is an important signal for people and for search engines that the content being linked to has value. There are hundreds of reasons and ways for interlinking web content with the most common being a blue, underlined hypertext link from one web page to another. Since the links to company web site content are important both for driving traffic as well as a signal to search engines that can increase rankings and drive even more traffic, it’s important to acquire links on an ongoing basis.

If you’re grappling with ways to building links, here is a list of link building tactics to consider:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
2:00-3:00 p.m. (EST)

Join TopRank® Online Marketing CEO, Lee Odden, in a free webinar hosted by PRWeb, and learn how you can leverage news content to achieve SEO success!

Attend the webinar on March 18 to discover how news can be a powerful tool that directly reaches the millions of people searching for information online.

With more than 70 million people reading news online every day, news can (and should) be used for more than just attaining media visibility. For instance, news search engines like Yahoo! News and Google News offer a great way to drive traffic to your website and help generate awareness about a topic or company.

Many companies, large and small, are struggling to discover the best way to begin social media marketing efforts. This case study features a small business social media marketing effort with TopRank Online Marketing and online games site, Smartkit.

Situation:

Smart-kit.com is a website dedicated to providing readers with intriguing content, puzzles and games that engage and exercise the brain. Founded by a board-certified neurologist, Smartkit’s goal is to help its readers have fun while exercising their brains. The business model of the web site is based on advertising and game sales.

To help existing and potential customers learn about the types of services TopRank Online Marketing offers and the impact we can have on your bottom line business growth, TopRank is featuring selected case studies of client digitial marketing programs. TopRank services include: SEO, Social Media Marketing, Digital Public Relations, Email Marketing and Blog Consulting. Not every client engages all services, but understanding unique situations, TopRank’s marketing recommendations and the results, will help our readers make better decisions about their own internet marketing investments.

Google uses a method known as PageRank to quantify the “importance” of a web page. PageRank is determined by an algorithm which assigns a numerical weight between 1 and 10 (10 being the highest) to measure the website’s relative importance.

By taking into account factors including quality and quantity of incoming links, Google’s PageRank leverages a probability distribution to determine the likelihood of a visitor landing on a page, and assigns a score accordingly.

However, PageRank is just one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.

PRSA Workshop:  Search Engine Optimization in a Digital World
March 20, 2009 in New York City

Today’s public relations and communications professionals need to adapt and grow with the changing digital landscape just as publishers have moved to the web. Consumers and journalists alike use a variety for search tools to discover and share credible sources of news and information. Can your news be discovered where digital media are looking? Is your text, image, audio and video content optimized for search and the social web?

 
(Lee Odden – far right – at PRSA International conference)

As with most web updates, if not done correctly, changing your domain name can hurt your keyword rankings. If search engines are indexing the current domain name and web pages, it matters a great deal how the implementation of a new domain name is handled.

The first order of business is to create a process for implementing 301 redirects from your current web pages to the new web pages. We would recommend mapping out existing content and implementing the permanent 301 redirect to similar content under the new domain. To improve the user experience, avoid redirecting all pages to the homepage on the new domain.

Competition for visibility online, especially within the Affiliate Marketing world, has increased significantly making it even more important for publishers to monitor brand visibility as part of an online reputation management program.  TopRank Online Marketing CEO, Lee Odden will be presenting strategies for how companies and affiliates can monitor their brands along with tools and tactics at the Affiliate Summit West conference.

The Fifth Annual Affiliate Summit West conference is scheduled for January 11-13th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Session Details:
“Managing Your Brand”
Tuesday, January 13th, 3:15 – 4:15 (MST)
Session 9a
Location: Classroom A – Brasilia 1-3