Canadian SEO guest blog with information from North American SEO leaders.

While newer social networks such as Pinterest and Google Plus may be growing in popularity, marketing on Twitter is still an effective way for many organizations to reach their marketing objectives. In fact, 32% of all Internet users are on Twitter (source: MarketingLand), and 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter (source: Digital Buzz Blog).

In advance of the online workshop I am teaching today, January 31 on Twitter marketing (learn more about the interactive workshop here), I put together 3 ways you can improve your Twitter marketing in 2013.

1. Interact and Engage with Your Audience

This may sound obvious, but it’s easy for marketers to fall into the trap of simply tweeting thought leadership content and promotions. Sharing content is helpful, to be sure, but the real value in using Twitter is the opportunity to develop relationships with your audience. So interact with people, reply to their tweets, ask questions, and start building new relationships.

Example: How Zappos Can Improve Their Efforts

Follow and engage with happy customers who Tweet about your product—these people are already promoting your product, for FREE.

For example, let’s say you are Zappos and one of your goals for marketing on Twitter is increase sales by strengthening relationships with your current customers. You can setup an alert for whenever someone Tweets with a combination of the keywords “received”, “Zappos”, and “order”. (SproutSocial is my personal favorite solution for monitoring conversations like this.) Then, you’ll see when your customers Tweet about your orders, and be able to thank and acknowledge them. See tip 2 below for advice on keyword monitoring.

Monitor Customer Tweets

To demonstrate this, I did a quick search on Twitter for those exact keywords, and came up with a reasonable number of Tweets, from both happy and dissatisfied customers. This is an incredible opportunity for Zappos to build deeper relationships with their satisfied customers, and also handle complaints from unhappy customers.

Engage with Satisfied Customers

Don’t ignore customer complaints on Twitter—use them to create a better relationship with your customers.

For the positive Tweets from happy customers, Zappos could reply with something simple like “We’re thrilled you received the order. Let us know how you like the shoes”, and add that customer to a list that they can engage with in the future. The more they acknowledge customers Tweeting about them, the more likely they those customers will be to Tweet about them in the future, as well. Make it easy for them to promote your brand.

Acknowledge Unhappy Customers (and Turn Them into Raving Fans)

As for the Tweets from unhappy customers, there is no better way to turn an unhappy customer into an evangelist than by acknowledging complaints publicly. Based on the activity in the Zappos Twitter accounts, I don’t see them spending too much time on it, but at the least, they could allocate 1 hour a day replying to customer Tweets. Even without the hard data, I know the ROI for engaging with and acknowledging your customers for 1 hour a day is there, especially if you are solving complaints from customers that would otherwise use customer service resources, or never purchase from you again.

2. Monitor Conversations and Relevant Keywords

Monitoring keywords is a great (and easy!) way to find targeted people to follow, offer timely advice, and stay on top of industry trends. Get started by monitoring the following types of keywords, in order of priority:

Brand Mentions

Monitor brand mentions, including Tweets with the domain of your website

Start by monitoring mentions of your company and brand, including @mentions and Tweets with your brand and product name(s). For example, Cisco would want to monitor mentions of the Cisco brand and Twitter handle, in addition to variations of individual products, such as “WebEx”. I consider monitoring brand mentions critical, regardless of resources and priorities.

If you are a larger organization with an unmanageable amount of mentions, tools such as Salesforce/Radian6 can help you filter through the noise and focus your efforts on the most important Tweets.

Links to Your Site

Make sure to monitor when people tweet links to your website, even if they don’t mention your brand name or Twitter handle—you can do this by simply setting up a search for the domain of your website. For example, at OMI, we monitor when people Tweet the keyword “onlinemarketinginstitute”, because that is the domain of our website.

Pain Points

Monitor conversations directly related to the solution your problem solves—use the jargon they use to describe your need. For example, if you are an email marketing vendor, you can monitor when people Tweet with keywords such as “improve open rates” or “improve deliverability”.

Related Businesses and Competitors

Expand your efforts by monitoring conversations related to complementary businesses and competitors. For example, at OMI, we monitor when people Tweet about Marketo and ExactTarget, because they are solutions that are target audience uses, and people we could potentially engage with.

You can also monitor people Tweet about your competitors, and follow them as well. This will provide great insight into your industry and business, and may even allow you to engage in a conversation when it is relevant (but not creepy).

Interests of Your Target Audience

Finally, once you’re successfully monitoring the above keywords and need to grow your efforts, start monitoring conversations about your industry and topics your target audience is interested in. For example, an email marketing vendor could monitor conversations related to events that their audience would attend such as the Online Marketing Summit, or publications that their audience reads, such as the OMI blog or ClickZ. They could also monitor conversations about social media or digital marketing in general, because a marketer that would purchase an email solution would likely be interested in those topics, as well.

3. Grow Your Audience

Unfortunately, fake Twitter accounts usually don’t have budget for your product or service (or know anyone that does, either).

Now that you’re engaging with people and monitoring conversations, start to find new and interesting people to follow to increase your reach. Focus on building a community of potential customers, partners, influencers, and evangelists. Don’t pay for followers or automate the process of growing your audience unless fake Twitter accounts actually buy your product or service (or know someone that will).

Find New People to Follow

To start growing your audience, find and target new and influential people to follow. You can find these users by 1) monitoring keywords and conversations 2) reviewing the followers of people and businesses in your industry and 3) reviewing lists that other related Twitter accounts have created. Don’t worry about only following people that are potential customers—what you want to do is focusing on building a relevant Twitter community. This includes social media partners, related businesses, evangelists, influencers, and of course, your target audience. Even if many of these people may never buy your product or service, they can still help you amplify your message and achieve your marketing goals.

Add These Twitter Users to Lists

Once you start finding new people to follow, I recommend adding those accounts to a segmented list within your social media management tool. For instance, if you identify 20 key influencers or 20 potential customers and add them to a list, you can easily focus on consistently engaging with just those users over a certain period of time.

More Activity Leads to More Followers

As a general rule, the more you Tweet, the more followers you’ll have, the more you engage with the people you follow, the more likely they will be to follow you back. Effective Twitter marketing takes time—you can’t automate it. And you won’t achieve your goals by simply Tweeting once a day or once a week (in fact, inactivity can do more damage than good). But with a solid plan and effort, Twitter may prove to be on of your most effective marketing channels.

Join me Thursday, January 31 at 2pm ET for a virtual workshop on effective Twitter marketing. I will share proven ways to improve the ROI of your Twitter marketing, and will conduct live reviews of submitted campaigns as well. If Twitter is part of your 2013 digital marketing plan, you can’t afford to miss this event. Register now.

This article originally appeared on OMI Blog and has been republished with permission.

Find out how to syndicate your content with Business 2 Community.

Small business internet marketers were happy to say goodbye to 2012. Those infamous Google Updates, Panda and Penguin, had every small business SEO ducking for cover. Thousands of small businesses may never recover fully from the drop in rankings. Ever the resilient profession, ambitious SEO’s started “link removal” practices they desperately hoped would fix the SEO mistakes that led to their downfall. In a hurry to undo the damage, some businesses actually paid to remove links that only months before they had paid to create! Adding salt to the wounds, small businesses also had to figure out what to do with social media newcomers, the monster that is Google+ and that other one…Pinterest, while still fumbling around with Facebook and Twitter.

If 2012 made you want to throw in the towel, the following stats will make you want to think again:

• In 2011, Google had more than 1.7 trillion searches. Source: Google Official History
• 92% of internet users use search engines (59% on a daily basis), 71% purchase products online and over 80% research products/services online before buying. Source: ComScore qSearch

So let’s leave 2012 behind and turn our attention to these tips that will help you filter out the hype and focus on sustainable SEO tactics.

Get Better SEO Metrics

Before I spend even one minute or a single dollar on a new project, I define goals and a measure of success. I recommend you do the same using these metrics:

1. Non-branded organic visits – SEO is not about creating brand awareness, it’s about capturing existing demand for your products/services via industry keyword searches, NOT your brand keywords. Brand keywords refer to words that people use who already know your business (i.e., Albert Moving). Non-brand keywords are the keywords that refer to your category (i.e., moving companies). When evaluating your SEO campaign, you want to exclude those people who use your brand name when they search.

First, set up your Google Analytics account. Once the data starts coming in, keep an eye on your organic non-paid search traffic. Log in to analytics and on the left side of the screen, select Traffic Sources ? Sources? Search ? Organic.

Then, select Advanced Segments ? Non Paid Search Traffic.

Now, look at the non-branded keywords and you’ll see the number of visits per keyword. Use the Analytics calendar feature to compare the numbers to the previous month. Track the changes each month and you’ll know how well your SEO campaign is working.

2. Comparative Ranking Scores – At my company, we developed our own webgrader with which you can compare your organic traffic to your competitor. Every business and industry will have different scores. The important thing to track is where you stand in relation to your competitors. Once you have that critical piece of information, you’ll know where you fall short on your link building efforts for your targeted keywords. We produced this tutorial to explain exactly how the webgrader works.

3. Phone Call Tracking – You don’t have an accurate measure of your SEO and online marketing campaign performance if you’re not tracking the source of your phone calls. Once you start tracking calls, you may find that some or all of your campaigns are more successful than you think! There are many call tracking tools available through companies such as calltrackingmetrics.com and www.callrail.com.

Your business name, address and phone number (or NAP) is the core information that makes up your basic online listing identity. Properly installed, most call tracking numbers do not interfere with the search engines’ indexing of your actual phone number. Most phone tracking scripts use a cookie and a javascript rewrite to determine the source of the call and show the website visitor the phone number that’s been assigned to the particular campaign. For example:

• 888-555-5000 is your actual phone number.
• Your website visitor clicks a link from a Google Adwords ad.
• The tracking script replaces (or overwrites) your actual phone number with a trackable replacement number like 888-555-9999. Upon landing on your website, the visitor that originated from that Adwords ad sees the tracking number, 888-555-9999. When the visitor calls the tracking number, the call tracking system reroutes the call to ring to your actual number.

Execute Your Content Marketing

Content marketing emphasizes the creation of useful and compelling content that educates and informs. It doesn’t sell or push; it draws people in. To guide your writing, think about the problems people encounter that are related to your industry. For example, a furniture store owner could write about how to repair or conceal furniture scratches. A dry cleaner could write about how to care for delicate fabrics so they last longer. Face it, no one wants to link to content that is all about you and your business. Content marketing is a solid, long-term SEO strategy because it makes information shareable and link-worthy.

Content marketing is part strategy and part tactic. A well-executed content marketing program includes:

• Good researchers and writers to develop content that is useful to your target audience, but also related to your targeted keywords.
• Content that is published to other websites through guest blogging, social media, videos/webinars, infographics and so on.
• Content on your website that people will want to share on social networks.

Quality over Quantity

2012 taught us that more links aren’t always better. Most small business websites that I look at have a few hundred links. Yet many SEO agencies are still selling programs that promise thousands of links in a month. In 2013, ask some questions about where those links will be placed. Go for quality over quantity. Keep these SEO tips in mind:

• Focus on root domain links – don’t get caught up with lots of links on the same domain. Get one link and move on. When you find a site that gives you an unlimited number of links by merely commenting on their content, you may feel like you’re making progress, but you’re not. Don’t waste your time.
• Look at domain authority of linking domains – that content you’ve written is a precious commodity. Don’t waste it! Make sure you look at the domain authority of the website before placing your content. Check the open site explorer tool on SEOmoz to get the data. The higher the domain authority, the better.
• Look at the website – Is it littered with ads and poor quality or even tawdry content? If you don’t feel comfortable associating your business with the content on a website, don’t.

Bonus: Social Signals and Rich Snippets

2012 showed us that Google will continue to give us carrots like social signals and rich snippets in the search results for Authorship, Ratings, and Videos. Right now, you should:

• Set up Google+ authorship so you can link content you publish on your website to your Google+ profile. This can help you stand out in the search results.
• Use schema.org to markup any local, video, product and address information. When you use schema.org, search engines get structured information that helps improve search result quality.
• Increase social media activity. At the very least, keep your Google+, Facebook and Twitter pages updated and active. Reportedly, Google+ pages appear in search results for 30% of brand term searches for brands with G+ pages, up from 5% in February 2012.

Always take advantage of these valuable (and free) SEO incentives and keep on the lookout for more in 2013.

Follow these tips to get your 2013 SEO off to the right start.

Being a highly spiritual person, I now strongly believe in the art of love, forgiveness and gratitude. The hardest things to say to anyone are, “I love you,” “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you.” These statements are all things that involve the vibration of divine energy and compassion; it is a relief to one’s soul to purely love, forgive and to be forgiven. It all gives the most amazing feeling, pure and natural love. It is not hard to reach out to one another to embrace all, for their talents and shortcomings, because together we can form oneness and are closer to Enlightenment. Begin to open your arms and receive the help of one another. When we share this sense of compassion, instead of judging, life simply, will be a miraculous place.

Over the course of the past few days I’ve enjoyed watching Super Bowl media day. Reporters have generally done a good job of asking interesting interview questions, especially when it comes to Ray Lewis and his deer antler spray.

Players are well trained and usually give a politically correct answer, yet sometimes they step outside the box and challenge the reporters. Randy Moss proclaiming he is the greatest receiver of all time has to be one of my favorite answers to a loaded question that was asked yesterday.

Do we really expect him to say anything else? We all realize the size of his ego, plus he must be excluding Jerry Rice from the competition when he compares himself against the greatest wide receivers of all time.

Rice’s response to Moss’ proclamation was simple, yet spot on:

Randy Moss said he’s the greatest all-time WR. To which @jerryrice just said, “Put my numbers up against his numbers.”

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 29, 2013

However, that is a discussion for another day considering debates like those become instantly irrelevant after hearing Chris Culliver‘s anti-gay comments. If you haven’t heard the comments yet, click here to listen. Cam Inman of the Mercury News also transcribed Culliver‘s quotes from the Artie Lange interview that was posted on Yahoo! Sports:

I don’t do the gay guys man. I don’t do that. No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. Nah … can’t be … in the locker room man. Nah.

The second-year cornerback out of South Carolina also went on to suggest that NFL players should keep their sexuality a private matter for at least 10 years after they retire. The interview was only about a minute long, but by that point the damage had already been done.

According to Martin Rogers of Yahoo!, there has never been an openly gay active player in the league.

Regardless, sexuality and its openness in an NFL locker room have come more into focus over the last decade or so. 

Which makes Culliver‘s comments more unacceptable than ever. Sure, it’s one thing to think that about homosexuals in your own head, but to say it out loud is complete asinine. Freedom of speech only goes so far because none of the freedoms in the Constitution are absolute.

Additionally, it goes without saying that players have had worse conversations in private. The keyword there is “private.” There’s a difference between talking amongst your friends and thousands of people who will hear your interview at one of the largest sporting events in the world.

I wish I had more to say, but honestly there isn’t much else to say other than he made a dumb comment that he now regrets for making out loud. Culliver‘s comments go to show that homophobia lives on in the NFL and it probably always will.

Jerome Bettis told the Huffington Post Live, “Because it [NFL] is so testosterone driven, it’d be really difficult for a gay player to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m gay and I’m an NFL player.’ ”

Since Culliver‘s comments have been released to the public, the San Francisco 49ers have formally issued a statement on its stance (via Matt Maiocco of CSNBayArea.com):

49ers: “The San Francisco 49ers reject the comments that were made yesterday, and have addressed the matter with Chris….”

— Matt Maiocco (@MaioccoCSN) January 30, 2013

“…There is no place for discrimination within our organization at any level. We have and always will proudly support the LGBT community.”

— Matt Maiocco (@MaioccoCSN) January 30, 2013

The are only a few words of advice I have for Culliver: It’s not required to answer every question and it doesn’t hurt to give a politically correct answer when asked about touchy subjects such as race and sexual preference.

Follow @TysonNFL

The Local’s new series Job Talk offers tips for working in Germany. For the first instalment, we explore the unique aspects of the German résumé.

• Most Germans think fat cats get too much cream (30 Jan 13)
• German workers feel more stressed (29 Jan 13)
• Consumer confidence edges up slightly (29 Jan 13)

Landing a job in Germany as a foreigner can be tough. But knowing what German employers expect from your CV could mean the crucial difference between getting an interview and getting dumped in the wastepaper basket.

The Local spoke to professional careers advisers to find out how job-seekers in Germany can turn a English-language curriculum vitae into a slimmed-down, factual German Lebenslauf.

When sending out an application in Germany it’s important to get the layout of your CV correct. If your information is where German employers will be expecting it, your document will be much easier for them to process at a glance.

“It’s really important to know what you’re doing when writing your German CV. It will get thrown out if you don’t do it in the style which Germans are used to,” career adviser Heidi Störr told The Local.

The first thing to note is that a Lebenslauf is one or two pages in a formal, fact sheet format, which looks and feels very different in style and content from a typical English CV.

“The Lebenslauf is a datasheet, a fact sheet,” Gerhard Winkler, contributor to Der Spiegel magazine’s online careers section, told The Local. “The cover letter is a briefing – where you show how you’re right for the job. Both texts are best when they are factual, sober list free of egotistical statements.”

German CVs are also set out in a two-columned table. You need to separate the table into six rows under the following headings written on the left column: ‘Personal Details,’ ‘Professional Experience,’ ‘Education and Training,’ ‘Voluntary Work,’ ‘Scholarships’ and ‘Computer and Language Skills.’

Underneath each of these headings on the left go your exact dates – the time frames of activities, training or jobs which you will list in the right-hand column opposite. It’s best to put activities in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent, according to career advisers.

The column on the right is where you enter your experiences. Underneath each job title or educational programme, describe your role in short, keyword sentences, concentrating on what you consider the most relevant details for the job you are applying for.

Germans tend to consider some information you might have on your English CV to be superfluous or even egotistical, said Winkler, so leave out any description of personal qualities, interests and hobbies, but do include membership of groups or organizations under ‘Voluntary Work.’

There are a few must-have personal details every Lebenslauf should include which you might not have on your original CV: a photo, your marital status and place of birth. Also make sure you cover your language and computer skills in detail.

The photo question

Unlike most English resumes, German CVs always include a passport-style professional photo in the upper right-hand corner – a detail advisers say you would do well not to leave out.

“German employers are used to seeing a photo on a résumé, they can’t explicitly demand in the job advert that you put one because that goes against privacy laws,” Störr told The Local.

“But they’ll be looking for it so always put one. A photo allows potential employers to make a different kind of personal connection with someone and will help them connect your skills with your face when you come to an interview.”

Finally, since you will be applying for a job in a German workplace, you need to think carefully about which language to use on your CV. Advisers say if your German is up to it you would do well to show it off.

“If you can do it in German, make the effort, it doesn’t have to be word-perfect,” said Störr.

But if those German lessons have not quite paid off yet, then avoid the temptation to get it translated and leave it in English. This will avoid any awkward moments if you get to an interview and an employer decides to test out your language skills.

“If an applicant has no or only a little German but has written their CV in German it would give the impression they had better language skills than they actually had, which could lead to problems,” said Störr.

“Personally, if English was my first language I’d write applications in Germany in English – unless I had to prove excellent German language skills for the job,” Winkler told The Local.

Generally, said Winkler it was important to remember his golden rule for CV writing: “Stick to the facts.”

Josie Le Blond

Measuring SEO success by your ranking position for your favorite keywords means descending behind a curve.

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With users’ behaviors and Google’s algorithms fast and constantly changing, measuring SEO success by your ranking position for your favorite keywords means descending behind a curve. Here are a many suggestive metrics for SEO for 2013.

1. Focus on Your Keyword Portfolio, Not Rankings

Search engine users are removing smarter and some-more specific. Today, over 70 percent of searches online enclose 3 or some-more words in a hunt query. Furthermore, Google reported that over 20 percent of hunt queries are totally new queries that had never been searched before! The prolonged tail is where a expansion is happening, and your plan needs to be built around this growth.

Focusing on “fat head” keywords is an lunatic plan with abating returns. Marketers need to concentration on augmenting a series of keywords promulgation hunt trade rather than improving a specific keyword position. This is famous as your keyword portfolio.

2. Create Problem-Solving Content

Creating good calm isn’t rocket science. If we have difficulty entrance adult with ideas, or we consider your attention is too boring, concentration instead on elucidate a customer’s problem. This can be finished simply by utilizing your organization’s egghead skill to emanate how-to guides, white papers, or investigate studies. If you’re in business, afterwards you’re elucidate problems! Combine people, processes, and program to scale calm marketing.

3. Publish Content on Quality Sources

Last year’s Penguin update eliminated a value of calm published on untrusted websites. This includes low-quality websites, calm farms and many “free” PR websites. Showing adult in Google hunt is a lot like removing a job–it’s your references that make a difference. Concentrate on earning references from high peculiarity and devoted attention websites. Industry organizations and online communities are where we should be edition calm on a unchanging basis.

4. Distribute and Promote Content by Social Media

Social media is an intensely fit channel for distributing and compelling your content. This includes calm that we tell on your website, as good as calm that we tell on rarely devoted third-party websites. Social media channels capacitate we to strech millions instantly, as good as stay on a radar of hunt engine algorithms for topics associated to your content. Google and Bing have both certified to regulating amicable signals in their ranking algorithms, so amicable media rendezvous is a must-do for digital marketers.

Never before have SEO and inbound selling had some-more intensity for digital marketers. When executed effectively, these strategies will expostulate leads, attract customers, and grow your brand’s community.

Aaron Aders is co-founder and arch plan officer of Indianapolis-based Slingshot SEO, a inhabitant personality in online marketing, planning, and execution. Aders steers a vital prophesy behind program and business processes. @SlingshotSEO

It’s Super Bowl season and we’ve all heard the going television ad rate – a cool $4 mil a pop. That’s great for CBS, but what can a brand do in a more cost effective way via digital platforms if they can’t pony up the budget? Fortunately, there are ways to take advantage of big media events like the Super Bowl to help market your brand from a pure digital play.

1)   Market your content

Content marketing is a great cost-effective tool. Snack food is one of the staples of a successful Super Bowl party, and a content campaign is a great way to stay top of mind before consumers hit the grocery store. Costs for most content marketing platforms start around 10 cents a click, a bit of a difference from the $133,000 a second for the big game.

2)   Buy up some keywords

If you are embarking on a marketing campaign based around the Superbowl, a paid-search campaign can help get your brand in the mix. Typical keyword rates range from only a few pennies to several dollars – not a bad investment if you know what keywords to buy.  Pick basic keywords like “NFL” or “Super Bowl” for the weeks leading up to the big event.  Google’s AdWords blog says that basic searches around the Super Bowl will generate more than five million searches per day. Another tip: make sure you’re familiar with the current market rates for the keywords in which you’re interested. Bidding close to the current rate should guarantee some pretty decent positioning.

3)   Use social media to push your content further.

If you’re like most brands, just the thought of purchasing a TV spot during the big game can send you into a tizzy. Luckily, there are many ways to get your video or commercial seen without the ad spend. Push your content and video content through all the relevant social channels (it’s free!) like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Pinterest gets more than 104 million visits per month; Facebook has more than 1 billion active monthly users; Twitter sees more than 175 million tweets go out per day; and YouTube has more than 4 billion hours of video watched each month.  The influence of social media exploding, but the content a brand creates and distributes has a longer shelf life than a traditional TV spot.  Just make sure you promote the links on your web site and social channels to drive traffic.

Utilizing these three techniques could cost you a tiny fraction of a traditional paid television ad, and still ensure some darn good brand exposure.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2013 at 9:30 AM and is filed under Media Planning Buying, Opinions, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Do you have a retail storefront?

Are you a contractor that is supplying services at someones house or place of business?

You should be using a business sign, like a sandwich board or a lawn sign, to draw in traffic or build awareness for you business. Signage is an excellent way to help generate sales leads for your company.

Below are 7 tips that will help you generate a higher percentage of sales leads:

7 Tips for Your Business Sign or Lawn Sign

Phone Number

This is just basic common sense.  But believe it or not, business owners forget to add this one important piece of information to a business sign.

So that you can track your results from any lawn signs, use a unique phone number that people can call. By doing this, you will be able to see how many leads came from that phone number. A great service for this is Toll Free Forwarding or Google Voice.

Your Address

If you have a retail establishment that you want people to go to, why not list your address on your business sign?  It should help you to drive foot traffic to your retail location.

A Strong Call To Action For An Offer

Do you want to get someone to do something? If so, you need to have a “call to action.” Basically, you need to tell people what you want them to do.

A suggestion that ties into the next 2 tips (QR Codes and Text Codes) is to have a coupon or special offer that allows you to capture an email and other relevant information.  By capturing an email, you will have the ability to continually market to someone with an email newsletter.

A QR Code

Add a QR code to your business sign that is tied to a special offer or something that a potential customer may want. The QR Code should send the person to a mobile ready landing page that has a sign up form.

Once the person signs up for your offer, they will be sent an email with a code or a coupon.  A service that I have used before is Kawya.

Text Code or SMS Code

A text code or SMS code will allow a person to text a specific keyword to and assigned short code. This may sound confusing, but in reality, all you do is find a SMS marketing provider and register a keyword. Then you will be able to start directing people to a specific landing page on your website.

I interviewed Jed Alpert, who wrote “The Mobile Marketing Revolution” and he stated that the:

“. . . response rate from adding a text code on a sign is up to 10 times greater compared to no code.”

I can confirm this as I have a client where we added a text code to a radio ad they were running and they saw a twenty-fold increase in sales leads from that spot.

Here’s one more use for a text code:  Place one on your vehicles so that people will connect with you.

For the QR code and the text code, have separate landing pages and coupons and coupon codes. You want to do this so that you can track a conversion rate.

For example, you can see how many people used your text code by the number of hits to a specific page. Then you can see how many people sign up for an offer and finally, the amount of people who redeem your coupon or offer.

Website Address

Make sure that you add your website address to your business sign. If your domain is too long, use a shortener like Bit.ly or get a separate shorter domain that redirects to your website.

Bit.ly allows you to make a vanity url and you can also track the clicks from that specific url. As a suggestion, make sure that if you have an offer on your business sign – that the Web address corresponds with that offer. Don’t just send them to your homepage as your conversion rates will be far lower by doing this.

Email Address

Create a unique email address to put on your business sign so that you can track the amount of inquiries that come in.

Add all of these tips to your business sign and you should see an increase in the amount of sales leads that you generate.  By the way, this isn’t just for signs.  Use these different tactics on business cards, letters, mailers and other printed material that you have as well.

If you have other business sign tips, please share them in the comments.

Sandwich Board Photo via Shutterstock

About Chris Hamilton

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Chris Hamilton is small and medium business sales and marketing consultant who writes a daily blog, SalesTipADay. He also hosts an online video interview show at
NetCastEvent, where he interviews some of the worlds best sales and marketing consultants.

Oh how SEO has changed!

I remember the old days (from 2010 and 2012) when ranking on page 1 of Google was as easy as including your keyword in the page title, image tags, and heading tags, and then blasting hundreds of private blog network backlinks at the site. (Not recommended!)

Those days, however, are long over. Now this type of behavior has the exact opposite effect of pushing websites back to page 100 or worse. In a way, I’m glad those days are over. There was something that left me feeling uneasy about the fact that Google’s rankings could be manipulated so easily.

The good news is, SEO is not dead. In fact, it is more alive than ever. As long as you don’t make the 5 mistakes below, you can get your website ranked on page 1 in Google in 2013 and beyond.

1. Over Optimization

I’ll be the first to admit that I made this mistake myself. If you use WordPress, you may remember those plug-ins called ClickBumpSEO and SEOPressor. Well, when first purchased those, I thought they were a godsend.

I literally followed their on page optimization suggestions to the letter. I made sure my keyword density was high. I made sure that I had external and internal links containing my keyword. I made sure that my keyword was in the first and last sentence and in all heading and image tags. And you know what happened? I ranked on page one!

But it wasn’t for long. In April 2012, all of my websites got blasted off of page one to page 500+. Later on, I learned that I wasn’t the only one this happened to.

The lesson? Over optimization is one of the most common SEO mistakes that will sabotage your rankings in Google. Instead of trying to optimize your page for your keyboard, just put your keyword in the title and the first and last sentence. Never make your Keyword Density over 1%. And most importantly, write for humans, not search engines.

2. Poor Anchor Text Diversification

Sadly, many so-called SEO experts are still making this mistake today. What mistake is it? It’s having too many anchor text links using your main keyword.

Linking to your page with your main keyword as your anchor text over and over again used to get websites ranked on page one. Now that strategy can get your website penalized and flagged.

The best overall strategy is to make your main keyword anchor text only about 10% of your total link portfolio. The rest of all of your incoming links should be variations of your main keyword, social qualifiers, and naked URLs. Here’s some examples:

Main Keyword = weight loss tips

Variations:

fat loss tips
weight loss ideas
tips for losing weight
lose weight
get fit
health tips

Social Qualifiers:

Click here
my website
check out my site
look at my website
this website
here
great article

Naked URLS:

http://mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/

mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/
mywebsite.com
www.mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/
www.mywebsite.com

Notice how there are a total of 18 different anchor texts that are used for backlinking.

Varying your anchor text will keep you under the radar and help your website get ranked the keyword you desire, because the way Google sees it, real websites don’t link to websites with the keyword as the anchor text 100% of the time.

Sometimes they say check this out or click here. By mirroring this approach, it will look like other websites are actually recommending your website as a helpful resource.

3. High Link Velocity

Link velocity always had an effect on rankings. Now it has more of an effect than ever.

If you build your links to fast, you may shoot up to the first page for a few days or weeks. After that, your website will most likely plummet into the abyss.

What works in 2013 is building your link slowly and consistently. No more link blasts from SEnuke or forum profiles. You need to focus on building high-quality links from reputable sites slowly over time. Relevant guest posts and high quality press releases work great.

Once you are ranking, don’t stop building links either. Keep building links but slow down the velocity over time.

4. No Deep Linking

A great example for this is Wikipedia. Their site only has 1% of their back links going towards their homepage, and 99% going to all of their inner pages.

Google notices this and they analyze how many of your links go to your homepage versus the number of internal links when determining your rankings. If your site has tons of links only to the homepage, and no links to inner pages of your site, Google will know something is up.

You’re better off building more links to your inner pages then you are building links to your homepage. It looks more natural and it can have a positive effect on your rankings.

5. Focusing Only On Links

In 2013 and beyond, SEO is no longer just about links. Focusing only on getting back links is a losing strategy. Your focus should be on creating quality content like articles, blog posts, info graphics, and engaging videos, then building up your social media profiles with more friends and activity as well.

Google authorship is one last ranking factor is often overlooked by SEOs. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can see that Google shows people’s Google plus profile photos next to search engine results.

The more friends, activity, and links to your Google plus profile, the more authority you have. And this authority carries over whenever you publish an article. If you publish crappy articles and they are linked to your Google plus profile, you may find it more difficult to rank. However, if you product great content and have lots of activity on your profile, ranking is going to be much easier.

SEO In 2013 And Beyond

At the end of the day, it’s still possible to rank for difficult keywords in Google. As long as you follow Google’s new rules, you will be safe from link penalties and dreaded algorithm updates.

Simply avoid making these 5 mistakes, and focus on the long-term and you’ll find that getting those top three rankings for the keywords you desire is a lot easier than you think.

This article is an original contribution by Steve Goldberg.

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Measuring SEO success by your ranking position for your favorite keywords means descending behind a curve.

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With users’ behaviors and Google’s algorithms fast and constantly changing, measuring SEO success by your ranking position for your favorite keywords means descending behind a curve. Here are a many suggestive metrics for SEO for 2013.

1. Focus on Your Keyword Portfolio, Not Rankings

Search engine users are removing smarter and some-more specific. Today, over 70 percent of searches online enclose 3 or some-more words in a hunt query. Furthermore, Google reported that over 20 percent of hunt queries are totally new queries that had never been searched before! The prolonged tail is where a expansion is happening, and your plan needs to be built around this growth.

Focusing on “fat head” keywords is an lunatic plan with abating returns. Marketers need to concentration on augmenting a series of keywords promulgation hunt trade rather than improving a specific keyword position. This is famous as your keyword portfolio.

2. Create Problem-Solving Content

Creating good calm isn’t rocket science. If we have difficulty entrance adult with ideas, or we consider your attention is too boring, concentration instead on elucidate a customer’s problem. This can be finished simply by utilizing your organization’s egghead skill to emanate how-to guides, white papers, or investigate studies. If you’re in business, afterwards you’re elucidate problems! Combine people, processes, and program to scale calm marketing.

3. Publish Content on Quality Sources

Last year’s Penguin update eliminated a value of calm published on untrusted websites. This includes low-quality websites, calm farms and many “free” PR websites. Showing adult in Google hunt is a lot like removing a job–it’s your references that make a difference. Concentrate on earning references from high peculiarity and devoted attention websites. Industry organizations and online communities are where we should be edition calm on a unchanging basis.

4. Distribute and Promote Content by Social Media

Social media is an intensely fit channel for distributing and compelling your content. This includes calm that we tell on your website, as good as calm that we tell on rarely devoted third-party websites. Social media channels capacitate we to strech millions instantly, as good as stay on a radar of hunt engine algorithms for topics associated to your content. Google and Bing have both certified to regulating amicable signals in their ranking algorithms, so amicable media rendezvous is a must-do for digital marketers.

Never before have SEO and inbound selling had some-more intensity for digital marketers. When executed effectively, these strategies will expostulate leads, attract customers, and grow your brand’s community.

Aaron Aders is co-founder and arch plan officer of Indianapolis-based Slingshot SEO, a inhabitant personality in online marketing, planning, and execution. Aders steers a vital prophesy behind program and business processes. @SlingshotSEO