SEO Experts Tips

Twitter is one of the fastest growing marketplaces on the Internet. The reason why so many people like Twitter is because it is actually the perfect communication tool for people who don’t understand and don’t want to learn about Internet technology and the technological geek-speak that goes along with it.

A few years back, I asked someone for his dad’s email address. The son replied telling me that you just email his name. The son was clueless that there was an actual email address behind the shortcut for his dad’s name. He did not understand email, and he did not care that he did not understand it. He was able to use it in a manner that was easy for him, and that is all that really mattered.

What makes Twitter so popular to the masses is that one does not have to be tech-savvy to use the service. The new user simply needs to locate the profile of the person he or she wants to follow, and then the user simply clicks “Follow“. From that day forward, anytime the person “Followed” posts (tweets) new information to his or her micro-blog, Followers will be notified about the message in the Twitter Timeline.

The only thing that is really difficult about Twitter is that new people seldom understand that they must “Follow” someone, before they start to receive messages from others. But once someone has chosen to follow a few people, they get the idea behind Twitter very quickly.

With its’ system of 140 character micro-posts (referred to as “tweets”), users are able to communicate information to other users. Sometimes the tweeted info is a random comment, but often the tweets mean something to somebody.

For the average consumer, they can log into Twitter to update grandma about the lives of the grandchildren and to provide links to family pictures.

Although the service has been available since 2006, the Internet marketing community was really slow to catch on to the value of the Twitter community. Most Internet marketers hadn’t heard of Twitter until 2008. Even then, online marketers were slow to see any real value in the platform. But in 2009, Twitter finally hit its stride in getting the word out about its service, in large part due to the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter Follower Challenge.

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) challenged CNN (@cnnbrk) to a race to one million Twitter Followers. On April 17th, 2009, Ashton became the first Twitter user to reach one million followers. CNN passed the mark a few hours later, but Ashton won the race fair and square.

Understanding The Value Of The Twitter Community
In March of 2008, Twitter was estimated to have one million active users, according to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. But amazingly, over the course of the following year, Twitter was able to expand its user base by 32-37 times, according to which news source you trust for your data.

On July 30th 2009, the Philadelphia Enquirer reported that Twitter had “increased its user base by 37-fold to more than 32 million users worldwide, 18-20 million of whom reside in the United States”.

Now, the naysayers are fond of pointing out that Twitter’s attrition rate is quite large, with 60% of new users disappearing after signing up for the service. But if the Philadelphia Enquirer’s estimation is correct that “only 40 percent of first-timers become habitual visitors”, then the remaining 12.8 million users still make a viable and vibrant Twitter community.

Each individual user inside the Twitter community is capable of building his or her own community of Followers.

As Ashton Kutcher has taught us, building a Follower list is fairly straight forward – when people are interested in you and what you have to say, they will follow you on Twitter to see what you have to say.

To date, nearly 3 million Twitter users have decided that they care enough about Kutcher’s life to follow his personal tweets. Of course, I am sure it helps that he occasionally posts pictures of his wife, Demi Moore, in his tweets. Not only did Kutcher share a shot of his Demi’s derriere, he also proved that rich people have ugly furniture too.

How Can One Benefit From A Large Twitter Following?
Some of Twitter’s 12.8 million active users will benefit handsomely for building a larger Follower’s list, while other people will not.

It is pointed out by @web2marketer, “It’s not about how many Twitter followers you have…the only thing that matters is – are they listening?”

This is the key, of course.

Some people build huge lists of Followers, but don’t say anything worthwhile or interesting. Some are only interested in building their Followers list for the sake of building Followers.

If no one wants to listen to what you have to say, it does not matter whether you have 1 Follower or 2.9 million Followers. If no one is “listening” to what you have to say, you will not make any money from your participation in Twitter.

On the other hand, if people are “listening” to what you have to say and “clicking” the links you tell them to click, then you have a good chance of earning real money as a result of your Twitter activities.

It has been said that the consumer needs to see or hear your name or your marketing message 7 times, before they will trust you enough to buy from you. Professionals in the direct marketíng industry suggest that 82% of all consumers (business people or otherwise) will buy your products or services on the second to the ninth exposure to your marketing message.

Twitter allows you to carry a continuous dialog with those most likely to buy what you are selling – through the Public Timeline of the people following you in Twitter. Once people have started to pay attention to what you tell them, and once they start absorbing your marketing message, then gaining your Followers trust is made easier. Once people are listening to you, you can earn their trust fairly quickly.

An idea presented by @contentmanager is that television has had 80+ years to perfect its advertising model. Television seems committed to the concept of 42 minutes of content to anchor 18 minutes of advertising. These numbers translate into 70% content to provide an anchor for its 30% advertising. In context, he says that the 70% content is designed to attract attention and win trust, and then the 30% advertising is designed to earn profíts and cover the costs of building content.

Understand That It Is A Numbers Game
As a successful Twitter marketer, your first goal is always to attract Followers (an audience). Your second goal is to win the trust of your Followers (your viewing audience). Only after you have earned the trust of your Followers should you endeavor to advertise to your Twitter Followers list (to earn revenue). If you have earned the trust of your Twitter Followers, revenue is certain to follow.

But, as with anything in business, it is a numbers game. A certain percentage of the number of people exposed to your Twitter profile will become Followers. A certain percentage of those people following you, will actually read what you have to say. A certain percentage of those people will click your links. And if that link leads to a page where you can earn revenue, only a certain percentage of people will buy your pitch.

For most people, the only certainty is that they need to grow their audience, and in the case of the Twitter community, they need to grow their list of Twitter Followers. In the numbers game, if you can build up your audience, you can boost your revenue. It is as simple as that.

If you drop by our website shown below, we will show you how we can help you build your Followers’ list. But after that, it is up to you. It is up to you to gain the interest and trust of your Followers. Once you have done that, then the only thing that will matter is – are they listening?

Around the middle of last month I took a phone call from a friend who runs a similar web design agency to ours, with a request for help in putting together coherent SEO/SEM packages for seven of his clients. Before we met, I looked at his clients’ websites and found there was much to do.

When looking at the SEO, virtually all of these sites used keywords in the title that had been plucked out of thin air; most of them had no relationship with the copy whatsoever. With research, we made recommendations for changes in both title and on-page copy. The easy part was the SEO; the difficulty was then to educate the client about how they need to be involved. The feedback from one company was instant and unusual: they accepted our recommendations without question.

In the good old days of directory submissions and the like, SEMs had the sole responsibility for search engine marketing. Not any more. Today, it’s about providing advice to clients on writing press releases and articles, on-site blogging, and how to get involved in social media marketing, together with tweeting.

But how many website owners either have the necessary skills or the resources to relate information about their “products” in a meaningful way in online articles and press releases? In my experience, not many. Most companies appear reluctant to become involved in this, and worse, cannot perceive any real value in a subject they barely understand.

At the height of the dot.com crash at the start of the millennium, I was working with a web design agency in London. To my mind then, and it remains so now, the importance of using the internet as a medium to expand reach and to bring in more business could not be clearer, but the bottom line is that when times get tough, the tough cut internet spend. That will sound a little strange to our industry, but it is inexplicably true.

From my company’s perspective, quality SEO’s are a rare breed and their real value should not only be to provide an excellent service but to educate management (those who will listen, that is) on what we have to offer, which is to help drive traffic to their website and boost revenue. In reality though, this is a far harder job than one would expect. It seems that most companies are resistant to dedicating resources to this effort. As such, SEM lacks both the financial and human resources that need its support.

Our industry has a long way to go yet in assembling and disseminating this concept. With directories moribund and other short-cuts removed from link building processes, providing quality SEO services today belongs in the hands of the wordsmith, the blogger and the social media engineer. And yet, how do we get this message across convincingly?

In one of my posts on this issue, I got the following comment: “Show them the results. Don’t even talk about SEO…then tell them how much in time and resources it’s going to take.” That’s all very good and valuable but how many company executives understand what they are paying for prior to “showing them the results”? Case studies and/or a results-based campaign? That is one strategy we are using for our clients.

In a related article I read recently, an SEO company was explaining why they didn’t end up closing more of their proposals. It was because they advised the company from the outset about how much in-house involvement was required in successfully delivering a comprehensive SEM campaign. It sort of summed up why we need to do more in providing information that will educate companies about the effectiveness of what we are looking to achieve for them.

There is also a case for educating SEO/SEM firms themselves, as almost every week I receive emails from SEO outsourcing companies, generally from India. The majority of these emails pitch the same tired old submission services, including the outmoded reciprocals. On one occasion I decided to try them out – it was a very cheap experiment – and found that not one single link out of the dozen they had submitted appeared in Google’s indexes.

Also, there are many SEO companies that falsely claim they can get a client’s website to the top of the search engines for a given keyword or phrase. This has always been a contentious claim, as we could easily get any site to the top of the first page of Google/Bing if the search term is easy to compete on, although the chances are it won’t be searched on. Too much of the time these blanket assurances are an across-the-board, indiscriminate boast. Try “music”, go up against Yahoo, and see what happens. So, let’s now look at some possibilities:

• It is extremely rare for management to understand the benefits and economics of SEM in organic search and how it can lead to extended market reach and more customers. Too much of the time they take the view that to boost revenue, or in a recession to maintain it, they need to fall back on the reliance of traditional media. The result of this is that migration languishes and profitability targets stagnate. We need to convince them otherwise with case studies and, where appropriate, with results-driven campaigns.

• One of the major problems in SEM today is that human resources do not normally extend to writers who are conversant with the web in general, and blogging and social media in particular. As such, the SEM is often asked to write about subjects they are unfamiliar with. If no in-house assistance is provided, the chances are the project won’t ever get off the ground. Ideally, companies need to start to look at hiring staff that can implement SEM strategies effectively. But they won’t change until management starts to understand how marketing online actually works. When they do, it could result in a shift of marketing spend towards SEM.

• The other difficulty is in the actual measuring of SEM, as the search engines have blocked page ranking tools, which in turn leads to sketchy reports on how the campaign is proceeding. Placement is the only real arbiter on this and that takes time. Companies need to be made aware of this.

• It really is no excuse for companies who are looking to the search engines to broaden their exposure to say that they don’t have the time. They have the time for glossy brochures and hoardings, so why not divert some of that effort to the internet? We may all be experiencing difficult times at the moment and the idea of expanded SEM campaigns now, with companies downsizing and all that entails, should not translate into “campaign postponed”. SEM is the cheapest way of getting a company’s message across to new markets.

As one of the clients we have just taken on board mentioned above, let’s look at the guts of the proposal we submitted in developing their online presence:

• Creation of RSS feeds for the dissemination and syndication of news;

• Submission of articles to high-value article sites;

• Updates to the meta information, including adjusting copy where appropriate to target specific key phrases;

• Creation of a presence in the Facebook community;

• Setting up a Twitter account to post weekly news as well as breaking news;

• Development of an on-site blog with regular updates, linking the headline from the home page so the search engines see movement;

• Writing and submitting to blogs related to their industry;

• Where circumstances permit, post regular podcasts, including YouTube and Google videos.

To sum up, we need to create a method, typically via case studies, by which companies not only see the value in SEM but, more importantly, how they ought to be participating in it.

by John Sylvester