Small Business Marketing

Gryphon Websites is an experienced and professional online marketing company that delivers on time and on budget. In today’s market, companies are being forced to find new cost effective ways of reaching new customers. Your companies website is perhaps the best way to accomplish this goal. Gryphon Websites will help you determine a budget, plan and implement a marketing campaign that will attract new, well qualified customers.

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To be honest i just like these videos

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Building The Blogger/Brand Relationship

There are so many ways for brands to engage mom bloggers, but a successful blogger strategy is not just about tactics, it's about relationships. And like all good relationships, the blogger/brand union takes time and effort. "Bloggers should be part of a broader, integrated communications strategy and not viewed as a 'one-off' effort," says Laura Tomasetti, managing director of 360 Public Relations, LLC. "The result will take you beyond blogger relations and can allow you to create a powerful go-to network of brand advocates."

Such brand advocates were created by Tomasetti and her 360 PR team as they worked with bloggers on behalf of a major supermarket chain. "The effort was successful because we sought to engage bloggers in a true two-way dialogue over time with a high-touch approach," said Tomasetti. This approach not only worked for [our client], but it can work for your brand as well. Here are some ways to make sure your blogger relationship is one that is truly built to last:

Think near- and long-term Yes, you want to spur excitement and immediate engagement, but don't forget to also consider what you will do to sustain the relationship over time. Think about how bloggers can play a role in your broader social media conversations and communications campaigns. "We met with bloggers on an ongoing basis and gave them special access to the brand team," says Tomasetti. "Bloggers were the first to know about important brand initiatives that could help them with the things that mattered in their everyday lives -- like saving money and eating healthier."

Have an open dialogue with bloggers "To imbue your thinking, identify a core group of bloggers who demonstrate an authentic interest in your brand and have an open dialogue with them," adds Tomasetti. "Invite their feedback and utilize their perspective to help shape future engagement efforts." This will not only help with your overall marketing efforts, but will give you great insight into product development and even customer service initiatives.

Make sure it fits Look for bloggers who are a fit with your brand's message and goals. Take into consideration such factors as blog content, reach, activity and reader engagement. "We've found Twitter to be a particularly useful platform in interacting with bloggers and learning about bloggers' passions and pain points," says Tomasetti. "In addition to online assessments, we find it valuable for our teams to interact with bloggers at conferences. At the end of the day, we're still in the relationship business."

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Explaining Local SEO

So I have been racking my brain when it comes to explaining local SEO and how to choose which keywords to optimize for to my customers. See I’m one of those people thinks on a more technical scale, so I have a hard time scaling down what I say to a customer’s level.  Kind of like when a mechanic tries to tell you what is wrong with your car and you have no idea what he is actually saying. So here is my last and final attempt.

Most of my customers have heard that SEO is all about the links coming into your website.  This could not be further from the truth. Especially since Google implemented their new Panda update. Now before some of you get all upset that I just said that, hear me out.  In my mind and what has brought me success in Local SEO are a lot of little tasks which include some but not all of the following.

Google Places profile

Meta title changes

Content optimization

Article Submissions

Directory submissions

Meta description and keyword changes

This list of course is not spelled out in any detail and we can all agree that Keywords are pretty much worthless in the long run.  However, as I said before Local SEO is about all of the little things.  It is very important to look at everything not just links.  This is because although some things are not all that important any more, when you combine a lot of unimportant tasks with the moderately important and very important tasks you will get a strong Local SEO campaign. Remember it all counts. 

Now, how do you find out what a good local keyword would be to optimize for??? Well, there are a couple of routes you can take.  The first and what I find to be the most popular is when the client optimizes for a keyword because it is what they would type in.  This is only accurate about 1/3 of the time. Also, remember that if I were to ask 20 people how they would find a used car dealer in Tucson AZ I would probably get about 15 different answers. The second and probably the easiest, is to use the Google Keyword tool and look at search volumes for a number of keywords.  This is actually really effective for Regional and national SEO campaigns, but not always for Local. The reason is due to search volume.  Even though a local keyword search you’re looking for is popular, it may only popular on a local level and does not generate enough searches for Google to pay attention to it and show its search volume.  The final and probably the most effective way of researching local keywords, is to use a Pay Per Click campaign to determine search volumes and return.

In conclusion I hope that you can see where Local SEO is a lot more than just building links or changing content.  It is a lot of different tasks that must be completed in order to achieve the long lasting results you desire.

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Top 10 SEO Lies

There is a lot of white noise out there about SEO tactics. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with and we fall behind using out dated methods to optimize our websites. Here are the top 10 SEO lies so that you don’t make that same mistake.

Lie 1: You should submit your URLs to search engines. A long time ago in a search engine far far away this was true, but it’s been at least 5 or 6 years since that’s been necessary. It’s not a bad idea to do, don’t expect much out it.

Lie 2: You need a Google Sitemap. If when you designed your website you programmed it properly, meaning that it’s crawler-friendly, you certainly don’t need a Google Sitemap. That being said its not a bad idea. Also you have will access to Google’s webmaster tools which can be a great help in analyzing your website.

Lie 3: Updating your website on a regular basis equals high rankings. I’m pretty tired of this one. Now I agree that it can help in the long run and it is definitely better for your users. However, the truth of the matter is that there are plenty of stale websites with awesome rankings. All of that being said, it can increase your craw rate.

Lie 4: PPC helps rankings. Yet another one that makes me laugh. While traffic does affect your rankings, PPC is not a part of that Ranking. In fact your quality score and your Google page rank have nothing to do with each other. Let’s keep in mind that there are a lot very successful PPC campaigns for websites that on page 50+ of Google. There is simply to substitute for good Content based SEO.

Lie 5: I will be banned forever if I ignore Google’s guidelines. Wow, really? Ok so here is the deal. Google simply wants you to be honest. Don’t do anything to make them mad. That being said you might want to actually read the Google guidelines.

Lie 6: Paid Links equals poor rankings and a banned website. Ok so this one actually has some basis in reality, as Google (Matt Cutts) likes to warn people about this. I think he likes it. They rightly don’t want to count paid links as votes for a page if they can figure out that they are paid, but they often can’t. Even if they do figure it out, they simply won’t count them. It would make no sense to ban a website because of advertising. Oh and one other thing. Be careful which sites your buying links on.

Lie 7: Header tags must be used for high rankings. There’s very little (if any) evidence to support that keywords in Header tags actually affect rankings, people still think this is true. I have run some tests and have yet to see any measurable change in rankings. However, I still maintain that in order to build a site right and have optimized content it’s a good idea on use them.

Lie 8: Meta keyword should be words that are found in my content. I like this one because I still catch myself saying it from time to time. In actually they are designed to be used in the total opposite manner. You should actually be using keywords that don’t show up in your content. Of course none of this really matters because the meta keyword tags are ignored by Google and only used by Yahoo for commonly misspelled words and that aren’t used very often word.

Lie 9: SEO copy must be a certain amount of words. I’m not really sure where this one comes from. Typically speaking content length doesn’t have a lot to do with SEO. it’s more what the content actually says. Long content ranks just as well as short content. I think content length is more likely to be related to the user than the SEO. All of that being said I would try and keep copy under 500 words. You will be able to optimize for several keywords and its not so long that your users will loose interest when reading it.

Lie 10: It is better to optimize for long tail keywords. This is an interesting one because I hear all the time that you should be optimizing for long tail keywords. There are both ups and downs to this one. The up is that long tail keywords are very specific and so your leads have the potential of being very well qualified. However, long tail keywords don’t get a lot of traffic and so typically aren’t worth a lot. Short tail keywords are popular and generate ROI for a reason. Yes it may take longer to get the ranking you want but it is well worth it. In short no it is not better to go about optimizing for long tail keywords.

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Media Planning and What You Need To Know

Over the last 4 years I have been working with client on all types of media buys and planning and it never seems to fail…..Every client I have ever talked to doesn’t seem to know answers to the most basic question.  Keep in mind that this is not a burn.  It is a fact.  In this post I will cover a variety of questions you need to be able to answer before you start any of your marketing efforts.  But first some rules.

Media Planning Rules Not Guidelines

1.) Don’t make it personal.  Many clients wont advertising in a specific media simply because they don’t believe it works.  Or my personal favorite, I wont advertise with you because I don’t think anyone reads, listens or watches you.  Whatever the case maybe.  In any case this is a personal and ultimately inaccurate view.  If there is a paper you can be sure people are reading.  If there is a radio station you can be sure people are listening to it and if there is a tv station you can be sure people are watching it.

2.) Use the right numbers to make a decision.  When a media brings you a proposal please don’t just look at how much is costs.  The numbers that really matter are numbers that tell you about reach.  For example, the Tucson Newspaper has a reach of almost 500,000 people or 60%.  I really don’t care what the distribution is at this point because I know based on reach and a proposal that this 500,000 is non-duplicated adults.  Now the local tv stations have a combined reach of around 20 to 25%.  Even though that number is a lot lower it is still not all that bad I would most likely spend my money in print since I’m going to get a highly readership with every ad I run. This also gets me a lower cost per thousand and ultimately a higher return.

3.) Testing the media.  I am all about testing different media.  However, you can’t simply run one ad in any media and expect results.  The general rule of thumb is 3.  A person has to see you three times before they will buy from you.  This means that on average would will need to run 3 times per week in print and 100 times per week in radio or tv. Anything else is a waist of your money.

4.)Buy Online.  This is pretty obvious. In todays world the internet is more powerful than ever and it is only getting more so.  That being said what should you buy.  Online offers more buying options than tv radio and print combined.  So how do you pick the right product mix.  First off the best buy any business can make is optimization.  It generally takes the largest period of time to see results but the result are extremely long lasting and have the highest return on investment. Paid search or Pay Per Click typically has small to medium return depending on the industry.  I would conduct a lot of research before jumping into this.  Display advertising is a lot like print advertising only better.  The online display ads allow for animated ads, ads with sounds and even running commercials online. Which by the way tv commercial perform better online than they do on TV thanks to You Tube.

Before you can advertise there are some questions you need to have answered.  These are questions that almost every business fails to answer no matter how long they have been in business.

1.) What makes your business unique? Now I don’t care what you less or how long you have been in business.  If you can’t give me a real answer you need to really evaluate your business and what your doing to set yourself apart.

2.) Why should I buy from you instead of your competitiors. Believe it or not I rarely get a real answer.  Keep in mind that this answer can be price, quality, customer service really anything.  However, if you say customer service you better be able to back it up.

3.) what are the goals of your marketing? I know this seems like a pointless question but it really isn’t.  Ad campaigns have a lot of different functions such as branding, event sales, product sales, awareness, location advertising and much more.  Be specific with your ad campaign objectives because they will help you determine what media you buy into and how to judge your success.

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