Part of the work we do as a b2b internet marketing agency is helping clients choose words to describe their products and services. When we start a project, we ask for a list of the keywords they already use to talk about their goods, as well as for words they might be considering using, have heard their competitors using, or have discovered some other way.It makes for a delicate inquiry, and sometimes an awkward first dialogue. A marketing executive who has spent a great deal of time and money in the creative, analytical, and political work to get agreement on a differentiating way to describe what they sell can be at least disappointed when her SEO agency doesn’t want to work on making their site visible for their new slogan.

After many, many meetings to come up with “Lightspring Cloud Walkers,” hearing us say you’ve got to make your site visible for “diabetic foot shoes” might not be all that thrilling. Or say you’ve spent a year getting agreement on “Mini Mobile Executive Identification Device (MMEID) ” and your SEO agency suggests optimizing your site for “employee badge” and “nametag.” You need the bigger name, you say, because next year the MMEID also will have fingerprint and retina scans built in…and we give back…”security badge.”

Like we say, nobody’s searching on your tag line. At least not yet, anyway.

The Google toolbar (and others!) is a favorite internet marketing tool of mine. It may not seem like a marketing “tool” to everybody, but when I spend time researching on behalf of a client, Google toolbar is front and center. So, I thought I’d let you in on a most-used trick: searching a site, even if there isn’t a search window on the site.

To begin with, download the Google toolbar (not just the little search window that’s installed in various toolbars) from toolbar.google.com.

Let’s say you Google a word, get a bunch of results and then don’t find the term you were searching for on a particular site that was returned as a result. There’s a little icon available on the Google toolbar that looks like Mr. Magoo (for those of us old enough to remember him!)–or maybe it’s a magnifying glass with spectacles. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, but it sure is a handy little guy.

(Yahoo toolbar has a similar function available via the “Search Web” drop-down menu.) This function allows you to search for a term “only on the current website.” If it’s not showing on your Google toolbar, right click a blank area of the toolbar and select “customize.” You’ll be able to click/drag the icon onto your toolbar.

So, for example, when I’m researching a particular search phrase for a client’s organic SEO project, I use Mr. Magoo on the various (mostly competitor) sites and get a feel for how they’re using the term. You can check your own web pages to see if your copy is reflecting the search terms that are important to you.

Enjoy this Mr. Magoo search-in-a-search trick. Actually, you can use it from any site without doing a search first…as long as you have the toolbar open.

Recent economic news – slowing Google PPC revenues, a likely recession, slowing consumer spending, has interesting implications for SEO. And some economists are saying it is going to get much worse.

Of course, no one knows for sure. I like the old moniker for economics - “the dismal science”.

If people cut back on PPC ad spending, what might be the effect on an SEO agency, for example?   If businesses can borrow less, and cut spending, how would that affect the agency? We are a B2B internet marketing agency and are looking at the possible effects of an economic slowdown.

I believe that when times get tough, good marketing is even more important. So I would put more emphasis on a smart, high-ROI web marketing strategy during a downturn.  

This industry might be too young to know how customers will react if the economy gets worse, but I’d put my bets on smart online marketing.

I get two or three new business calls a week. It’s typically a business owner who needs to improve her web marketing, but has no idea what it will cost to get to the top of the search results. Or, it’s a sales guy in a company who is looking for a quick fix, to make his numbers for the quarter. Both get a quick, free assessment, and it usually doesn’t include my recommendation that they sign up for search engine optimization.

Having a small business myself, I know how much I needed sales in the early days, and how much I have had to learn about marketing to understand where sales come from. Have you ever noticed how few advertising agencies advertise? That should tell you something about marketing professional services.

When it comes to web marketing, the small local business owner is clueless about what tools are available. One of the most powerful is absolutely free: signing up for a business listing on Google Maps. Local results are often at the very top of the search engine results, right where you want to be found.

The other recommendation I make is to try pay per click advertising. For a modest budget, maybe $300-600 a month, you can advertise on the most popular search terms for your business, and target only local prospects. Over a few months, you will gather data on what search terms are resulting in traffic, which terms actually turn into business, and how much it costs to be present when people are shopping. Since a full SEO program costs at least a couple thousand dollars a month, PPC advertising can help you test the waters and see if search marketing is profitable for your business. This is a test we recommend, before you make the financial commitment to use SEO to show up on top of the rankings, based on your site’s merits and not ad dollars. If PPC works for you, and you know that only 18% of B2B prospects click on those ads, then SEO starts to look like a better investment.

Following up on the mention yesterday on the failed interview session Sarah Lacy had with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, here is a play-by-play from CNet. Just so you get an idea of how Tweets work (Twitter posts), here is a screen capture on Tweets about Tom Parish’s panel at SXSW:

Every nerd’s dream is to win the epic battle using his brains and maybe some secret ninja skills, thereby winning the admiration of Pamela Anderson.

Unfortunately, most muscleheads would crush the typical nerd in any battle, particularly an epic one, because of one factor: muscle. The nerd’s problem is he’s dreaming of victory without putting the daily sweat into his game plan. He’s trying to short circuit the system. No sweat, no victory.

We see this attitude with black hat SEO. While slugging through competitor sites for a client, Susan the Meticulous discovered a site that put a pile of hidden text on the home page, and then duplicated it throughout the site. They even included links to a completely unrelated website, most likely another SEO client of theirs.

Ethical search engine optimization means that you have to do the work. You cannot short circuit the system. This is one of my biggest soapbox issues. Technology only creates obstacles. It does not provide solutions for SEO.

Black hatters think they can avoid hard work by creating hidden text. It’s hidden because it’s stuffed with keywords and is bad for marketing. Technology is only giving that site an invitation to the blacklist.

If the nerd sweated it out at the gym 2 or 3 times a week, he would have the strength and agility to defeat the musclehead. Similarly, if you add good content to your site 2 or 3 times a week, you will be in a much stronger position as time progresses.

The irony of this is that Sara Rasco, our Blog Overlord, has been cracking the whip because I have been lax in my blog postings. My job is not about writing blog posts, and I’m guessing that yours isn’t either. This is why it’s so tempting to look for the easy way out. The site with the hidden text should have spent the time to write great marketing copy.

Note: if you’re a nerd and a woman, please substitute the words “his brains” with “her brains” and “Pamela Anderson” with “David Hasselhoff”.

No, not by the IRS. We’re talking about having an SEO agency do an audit of your site. It’s something we believe in so strongly that it’s become a policy for us to start with a site audit. If you don’t do it, you don’t know what’s broken or why or how to fix it. Starting a web marketing expedition without the audit is just like taking your car to the mechanic and saying, “It’s making this noise sometimes, and I smelled something funny.” Then him saying, “Oh, that’ll be $3,000.” And then you pay it. If it doesn’t work, you can pay him some more or chalk it up to those cars and their confounding mechanical systems.

You don’t do that, though. No! You get it diagnosed. That’s why there’s a diagnostic fee–they really do have to do some work and look around to tell you what’s wrong. If you’re debating about whether the money spent on a site audit is worth it, the answer is yes. This great little article from Search Engine Land covers the stages of search marketing and SEO your company might find itself in, then explains how an audit would be of assistance wherever you are. Go forth and read!

A media consultant friend used to have this sign taped to his office wall: “Never Do This.”

Below it were newspaper clippings of unfortunate things public people had said. An oil company PR person saying: “Only four hundred thousand gallons of oil was spilled and it wasn’t all ours.” An elected official defending allegations of violating a particular law, saying: “Uh, that’s not a LAW. It’s just a STATUTE.” At our SEO agency, we call it “Worst Practices.”

Last week, doing some competitive snooping for a client, I was at cache:www.competitorwebsite.com for the search engine view. It was the same as the competitor’s homepage - as it should be - with the Google cache box across the top. I scrolled all the way to the bottom, in my meticulous way, no surprises.

Then I clicked for the text-only version. Just what you’d expect - no images, same words. I scrolled to the bottom - oh my.

There, below the footer text, were several hundred words of hidden copy. About eight more seconds of detective work revealed the copy’s formatting code, the css class “se,” designated the right size, color, and presentation to be invisible to a human yet still be indexed by the search engines.

This is bad. If this were ok, web searching would be like ordering the fish at a restaurant that says you can order anything, but really everyone in the kitchen is having a fist fight to see who gets to come out to your table to take your order. The strongest and possibly meanest – or most desperate or corrupt - wins the fight and comes to your table. You’d say: “Could I have the daily fish special?” And she’d say sure, which one do you want: we have fish Brittany Spears, fish steroids, fish nudity, and low cost prescription medications with fish.

If you were patient, or terribly hungry, rather than running out the front door you might say “I asked for the fish special: I’ll have the salmon.” And she’d nod, and say sure, which one do you want: we have salmon low interest credit cards, salmon diet cure, salmon vitamins, salmon product coupons, and online matchmaking with salmon.

Vitriol aside, I was having a great time doing the email equivalent of popping in to everyone’s office and saying “Look at me at this, isn’t it amazing?” Our CEO then asks if that hidden text is on any of the other pages. I rush to view: source. Yes, it is. There is duplicate hidden duplicate copy on multiple pages.

Some of you already are sharing the satisfied elegance of justice, and for those not there yet, the punch line is: search engines despise duplicate text. When it’s found – and it’s easy for an automated process to find – your website gets penalized – those pages aren’t shown. SEO cheaters can be removed from the ranking results, aka de-listed.

So this website, while decently sized and showing signs of some ethical optimization, is nearly invisible to people searching. Whether a Google or Yahoo human picked up on the hidden text, or the automated process detected the collateral damage of the duplicate text, this site is suffering the consequences of its unethical SEO. We regrettably, and with a grimace of disgust, award this site top tier recognition in our gallery of Worst Practices.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and I’m here to celebrate long-term relationships. Several of our clients have been with us for three or four years, and the joy of committed relationship is seeing the little love nests of their web sites become fruitful. Here’s a virtual chocolate truffle to my sweeties: Overland Storage in San Diego, SS White Dental Burs in New Jersey, Clifford Law in Chicago, and Prescott Legal Recruiters in Houston.

SEO is a long-term strategy. It takes months to do the work, and months to see results. Like going to the gym. Hiring an SEO firm is like hiring someone to go to the gym for you…except you’re the one that gets to show off the bod.

If you’re thinking about reworking your web site, plan on a month or two to develop the strategy and plan out the work. Optimizing your web site will take a couple of months, then it takes 30-45 days for your first gains in ranking. Next, link development to support your new content and the SEO strategy, including PR and other social media. More links, better rankings, more traffic. Now, you work on improving your conversions. Are you tracking phone calls and emails that come from your web visitors? What can you give away to get some token of commitment? All these go with the territory, so when you’re thinking about reworking your web site, you have to understand that it won’t really be OPTIMIZED for maybe a year. But an optimized web site has leverage–probably the most effective marketing you can do, because of the long-term payoff.

A web site that’s purring along, bringing in traffic and converting them into customers, is worth the effort. Like a new car (and at about the same cost), it’s exciting to feel the power, take a curve, and cruise down the road. Unfortunately, it’s not something you can drive off the lot…it’s a custom rod you spend a lot of time under before you can take it for a spin.

RefreshWeb just posted a comprehensive list of SEO tips for integrating search marketing into your site. Covers strategy and tactics, with links to all the resources mentioned. Links to free SEO tools.

read more | digg story

This is the first time I’ve used Digg to post, direct to the blog. Like other eager social marketers, we are interested in seeing what happens as we branch out into more engaged, less direct marketing. Well, I have to confess to a little self promotion in doing this post: there wasn’t a Digg that mentions RefreshWeb, so I needed to fix that.

As this blog is written for other people doing web marketing, we will keep you posted on results from our activities. In this case, we are also promoting the free seo tools, tips and tactics via PRWeb in a press release next week, and have mentioned the page in a couple of articles we submitted last month. In January, the seo-tools.php page was the entry page for 30 people…it’s safe to assume these were all new visitors from the articles. The blog was the entry page for 38 people, so that’s encouraging…our audience is more interested in learning from our experience than they are in experimenting on their own…or maybe people are bookmarking or using the RSS feed to keep up with what we’re saying. I’ll report back in a few weeks on the experiment in progress.