The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

I’ve been using Flickr! personally for the past few years in order to share my artwork through groups, individuals, and the handy RSS feed included in the basic Flickr! account membership. Although I am a member on many other Social Media sites aimed towards artists of different sorts, including deviantART, Myspace (music), and ETSY (although more of an eBay for crafts), Flickr! has thus far been the best catalyst for self-promotion of my work.

The beauty of a Flickr! account is that each photograph is basically treated by search engines as a separate web page, the main difference being the extension used. In the spirit of the structure of an search-engine-readable page, each image submitted to Flickr! contains a name and a description (which may contain links), much like a web page contains a header, title and body, which may include links. The reason for this special treatment is to make Flickr! submissions search-able in both image and web searches, as a means to encourage online sharing of photos.

Thus far, I personally have gotten a lot of attention and a bit of publicity by using Flickr! as a sort of gallery for my artwork. Likewise, many businesses have found Flickr! to be an invaluable means for Social media Optimization, or SMO. Unfortunately, as of recently, Flickr! has been cracking down and doing some searching of their own - for strictly business accounts using Flickr! for SEO.

Although only time will tell where the hard-working staff at Flickr! will draw the line between personal and business accounts, here are a few things to consider if you don’t want to find your Flickr! account deleted:

• Interact with the Community. Normally, I would say that it is better not to draw attention to an optimization based account or profile on any of these sites, since it may draw attention to the fact that you are not a personal user - however, in this particular case, it seems to me that a complete lack of interaction (via messages, comments, etc) would be a red flag to the ‘cleaning crew’ and may more likely result in account deletion than sticking out like a sore thumb (as long as that sore thumb appears to look like a natural human kindly interacting with other members).
• Use Links Sparingly. This may seem obvious, but when you split up 80 links between 80 photos, you may not immediately realize how many there are in total. While I personally do not get a lot of traffic to my personal blog through Flickr!, many businesses use it for that purpose. Be conscious of how many links you are throwing to the same URL - you should only place a few links here and there, and make sure the surrounding text is relevant but not ’selling’ anything.
• Post More Pictures. This does not mean you should post a ton of pointless pictures, but if you were only uploading pictures of products and linking each one to a product page on an eCommerce site, this would draw attention to the ‘misuse’ of the account, and blatant violation of Flickr! user policy. The key is to post pictures of many different things, all somehow relevant, but not all blatant image adverts. The more you mix it up, the more natural and ‘random’ it will appear to both human and bot browsers of your photostream.

These are a few things that I personally will be trying out to avoid getting my account deleted, but I would think that businesses would have to exercise more caution than personal users.

For more information on effective Social Media and Search Engine Optimization services, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

When it comes to small business advertising on the Internet, organic search engine optimization may be out of your budget. I recently talked with a friend and small business owner from Philadelphia who had a very limited budget and was faced with the decision hire a firm he knew nothing about and either get a good deal, or become victim to one of the most common SEO scams on the web, which is a firm that requires a full payment up front before doing any work. My advice to him was to either find a pay per performance internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting, and invest a little more, or try out a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

The general advantage of PPC over SEO is the level of control you have over keywords and the bids on them, but for a small business, the real beauty of that control is the ability to target local Internet users only. In my friend’s situation, he runs a small business in the greater Philadelphia area, so initializing an SEO campaign which would be seen by users all over the country would make less sense than a geo-targeted PPC campaign.

Setting up geo-targeting in Adwords is as easy is checking a few boxes in the Campaign Settings. For those running a content campaign, which is a good idea if you have a little extra ad money to spend, geo-targeting is available on the content network as well.

When in doubt, just ask an Internet Marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting to explain PPC to you.

If you’re not familiar with the Google Content Network option within a Pay Per Click campaign, it may be worth looking in to. Depending on your niche, there may be countless websites partnered with Google who participate in Adwords. Essentially, these sites have “digital billboards” which are swapped out much like ranking positions on paid Google searches.

Within an Adwords campaign, you can set a given campaign to bid on these spots, just the same as bidding on search rank position. The idea is, visitors to these sites are already looking for information or a service relavant to your business, which makes these ads highly visible to those that may not be doing searches for your niche, but are still looking for it. It’s a good idea to set up a test campaign so that, at the very least, you can see if this is a good option for your company. After gathering a certain amount of data from various reports provided in Adwords, it is best to set up a Placement campaign, which will either allow or disallow specific websites from showing your ad.

The first step is to utilize the Placement Tool to search for sites relevant to your site. By entering a number of keywords for each adgroup you set up, a list returned, and you can add placements to each adgroup from a list of sites returned. Each adgroup will then specifically target the placement sites within to have your ad shown. This is not a guarantee that your ad will show, but a bid much like standard PPC campaigns. Of course, your ads should be relavant to each placement adgroup you setup.

The next step is to set up a number of general content adgroups with your keywords, relavant ads to display, and no placements. Let this campaign and the placement campaign run for the course of a few months to see which sites are showing your ads, how many clicks they are getting, what the click-through rate is, and how many conversions result. Once you’ve let the campaign run for awhile, you can run a placement report for each, which can be set to return the domains with pages on which your ad was shown. Organize your report by conversions and those sites with good conversions (be sure to check for lower costs per conversion as well) can be kept within the placement campaign, or added to it if they show in the general content campaign and were not already in the placement campaign.

Next, organize each report by cost. This way, you can find the sites with no conversions and a lot of spend, or those with high conversion rates. With this list of domains, you can add them to the negative keyword/placement list, so they will no longer show the ad. Do this within the general content campaign, but before you add these sites to the placement campaign, move these sites into a new adgroup that basically mirrors the one from which it came, and add a list of keywords to the group. This way, only pages relavant to those keywords will show the ad, and you will be more likely to get conversions. If the site placements within a placement campaign adgroup including keywords are not converting, then ad them to the negative kayword/placement list.

If PPC confuses you, don’t hesitate to ask an Internet Marketinf Firm like Reciprocal Consulting any questions you may have.

Believe it or not, a good number of people don’t know that a Pay Per Click campaign as an ongoing process can be just as intense as the initial setup. Sure, for the first few months of PPC, keywords are created, bids are set, adgroups are organized and ads are written, but after the keywords are chosen, they need to be analyzed on a weekly basis, and bids need to be adjusted, which can be pretty time consuming if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

The general idea is to adjust bids for each keyword based on a number of different factors, so you may very well be adjusting the bid on the same keyword multiple times. It is best to use Adwords Editor for this process, and depending on your niche, you should download the data for all active campaigns (choose the Selected Campaigns option from the menu) over a good chunk of time (a month or two is the standard), and view all of the keywords at once.

1. Start by checking the cost per conversion  on keywords that are converting - organize the column by descending order, with the greater values at the top, and the lower values at the bottom. This is important, because the cost per conversion tells you exactly what you are paying, verses what you are making from the use of that keyword. If you come accross keywords with a high conversion rate and a good position (1-3) you may be able to trim the bid a little, but not any lower than your average Cost Per Click (CPC), as this would likely lower your position, which can have a large factor in clicks. Generally, if a keyword that converts at a good rate is in a high position, you may be able to spend less per conversion.
2. Next, look at the Position of keywords. For keywords that are in position 1-3, you may not need to adjust them at this point, as those positions are likely leading to the most clicks. For the rest of the keywords, if they have a good conversion rate, try raising the bid just enough to get them to show up in the top 3 positions. If they convert well with a few views, they will probably convert well with more views, and the conversion rate should be similar, but also lead to more conversions.
3. You should now have a good number of keywords with adjusted bids. The next step is to check the overall Cost of each keyword. See how much each one is costing overall, and then compmare them to the conversion rate and CPC. Some keywords may be converting great, and at an excellent rate, but costing you the majority of your budget for that campaign or adgroup. If this is the case, you have two options - adjust the bid to allow for other keywords to perform, or lower the bid on other keywords to improve the number of conversions on that keyword. Basically, you would only want to limit the well performing keyword if your budget is tight, and/or your other keywords have not been in high enough positions to have the chance to show their conversion potential.
4. Lastly, organize your keywords by clicks. Reference all other information in the campaign while checking how many times people actually click the ads for that keyword. However, instead of changing bids, check the ads in that adgroup. If the clicks are low, the ad might not accurately represent the keyword. If there are only a few like this, you can pretty much let those keywords continue to run, as they will not cost much, and may change. If there are a lot of keywords like this, you may want to consider creating a new adgroup which shows ads more relavant to those keywords - or put them into an adgroup with an ad using a dynamic header.

For more information on Pay Per Click, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like ReciprocalConsulting.

For those of you just popping online before work, I’ll give you the short answer: To immeasurable lengths. For those with a little more time on their hands, I’ll try to sum it all up the best I can, but don’t be surprised if I leave a lot of information out - this is a very broad topic.

In fact, I may not get very far from a single topic concerning how the Internet has changed, because something occured to me the other day, as to just how different the world is with the Internet, and how hard it would be for most of us to go back to the early 90’s, before everything we know and love about said Internet. What came to mind was not how many great resources for information are available thanks to the Internet, or how easy it is to book a hotel, buy a car, find a friend, or stay in touch. I’d like to say that the simple pleasures of cuteoverload.com popped into my head, but the thought was not so quaint.

No, my mind decided to remind me how easy it would be for a 13 year old to ruin me. Odd, I agree, but hear me out.

In 1992, what would a 13 year old need to accomplish in order to get his or her opinion seen, spread and confirmed? Perhaps a paper route, a friend who’s parents worked at the Daily News, a good deal of editing, a petition…the list could go on, but to quickly convey my point, that child would need to go to great lengths to have even a few hundred people see his review on the newest Nintendo game, or perhaps his favorite place to eat in his small town.

Fast forward to 2008, and what do we see on the Internet? Blogs, review sites, forums - and lots of them - many members on these sites of which are 13-18 year olds ranting about their uninformed opinions, trashing companies, and incoherantly attempting to disuade the world from making the same mistake they did by going with the cheaper model. Don’t let their lack of formal education and bad grammar fool you - these people have an amazing influence on the world.

But a few hundred-thousand teens aren’t so scary, right? What can they do to hurt your business? Well, imagine someone searches for your company because they can’t remember the website URL, and just as they’re about to click on your site they see the next search result, an excerpt from a high ranking blog: “Company makes crappy products”. Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe, the excerpt under the result, chosen by the search engine, reads something more like: “Company owner John Smith likes little boys”.

Yeah, that’s pretty scary.

Fear not, friend, the Internet is a very big place, so the chances of someone singling out your business over the rest is as unlikely as the number of businesses out there are many; but who really wants to take the chance? The fact is, simple Preventative Reputation Management can save you a huge hassle, as well as a lot of spend, later on.

The basic idea behind Reputation Management is to populate search results with positive content concerning your business, and it is much better if all those good pieces of information reguarding your business show up in the first 20 results, instead of those frightening 13 year olds who know more about the Internet than a lot of adults, with a brutal opinion, and 120wpm typing “skillz”.

If you’d like to know more about how to protect your online reputation, please don’t hesitate to contact an Internet Marketing Firm such as Reciprocal Consulting today, and ask how.

I may be stating the obvious when I say that buying links can get expensive. I may also be doing so by informing you that there will come a day when this practice will no longer be effective for Search Engine Optimization. Well, that day may come a lot sooner than you expect. In fact, that day could very well be today.

As many already know, Google has pioneered the way for optimal search engine return. This wasn’t the result of investments or big spending, necessarily, but rather the result of a complicated algorithm which calculated importance, relevance, and the overall natural appearance of links to a given site. It should then come as no surprise that if a link looks bought, then it won’t do you any good.

Back in the hay day of SEO, metatags were sufficient to improve the ranking and serch query position of a website. Then the search engines caught on and that no longer worked. What came to follow was the random placement of links all over the Internet, from directory listings to link farms. This is no longer as effective as it once was, and Google has even penalized high profile websites for this strategy. What is needed, then, is natural links. An example of a natural link is a blog that is informative on a subject matter, linking to a business which deals in that subject matter. This could be the result of the blogger knowing the business personally, or because they simply have used their product or service, and were satisfied with the results. Either way, this link was not paid for, nor is it located on a site simply filled with other links on the subject; and furthermore, the link is surrounded by text pertaining to the subject, which adds relevance to the link.

However, for most businesses, there are not enough people out there who are willing to write about, and link to, their site for this completely natural link building to be effective. There is a very thin line between white and black hat SEO practices, but there are many ways to get natural links, without crossing this line.

Among these methods, many can be inexpensive or even free, but the process is very time consuming. There is a reason for this, as a search result should not simply show sites for businesses that spend a lot on an SEO campaign. If all one had to do was to buy as many links as possible, then that would be the case. However, what is required is a tactical, intentional, placement of links from quality sources. Although this can cost money, the more important part of any SEO campaign is the knowledge of how to do so, and the amount of time put into it.

Understandably, many businesses do not have the time aspect on their side, which is why there are Internet Marketing Firms to assist with those needs. Instead of spending an entire iMarketing budget on expensive links that do little to nothing for your site, consider the option of consulting and working with a firm that specializes in the area. Likely, your ROI will be much higher.

If I was to tell you that Jefferson Starship had a lot to do with the origins of SEO, you probably wouldn’t believe me. Well, according to Bob Heyman and Rick Bruner, authors of the book Net Results: Marketing That Works, this is their proof that in 1995, they coined the term “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO, as we say for short.

The main issue for me isn’t when or why they coined the term, the issue is Jason Gambert’s claim to have done so in a 2007 email. First of all, anyone claiming to have coined the term “SEO” anytime after 2000 is obviously out of the loop, since it’s been thrown around for over the past decade, at least. Out of the loop and out of his mind, if you ask me. Gambert has taken this claim to the US Patent and Trademark Office, where he undoubtedly was met with irritation, disappointment and resentment by many who believe otherwise.

Apparently, Gambert has filed this same (or similar) claim multiple times, tweaking the wording each time, often to non-sensical lengths. Something along the lines of “…and hereto, where as within a lack of void, without the necessary means to a necessary means to, aside from…” I imagine. Anyone who has seen a patent claim or document knows what I’m talking about. Essentially, he filed this claim so many times, the USPTO decided to let it through, pending no objections with proof otherwise.

Okay, so let’s just get a whole bunch of people together to slam their hands down on a desk, shout “OBJECTION!” and throw down some emails, web sites, books, newspapers, etc, from 2006 and earlier, the term SEO contained within. Unfortunately, it costs a good deal to object, or to get involved in this mess. While this will not stop many people who are outraged, the principle behind it is rather disheartening. If Gambert is simply attempting to get additional traffic to his website, then his strategy is genius…evil genius. If you disagree with his claims, the best thing you can do is NOT to link to his website in a story, article, blog post etc. If you are curious about this man, his website is www[dot]jasongambert[dot]com.

While the main issue isn’t the why, the fact that Jefferson Starship is involved, makes it mentionable. Long story short - 1995, a marketing firm, a band, a bunch of fan sites, unsatisfactory search results, a lot of keyword stuffing, problem solved…Jefferson Starship.

Obviously, keyword stuffing is no longer effective, and furthermore, considered extremely black hat in today’s iMarketing world. There are many ways to optimize your site for search engines, but the best practice is to find an Internet Marketing Firm with genuine practices, which involves relevant linking, quality links, and a knowledgeable staff - an Internet Marketing Firm Like Reciprocal Consulting is a good place to start. You’ll probably have a lot of questions, so don’t hesitate to ask.

Reputation is important in the business world, there is no question about it. For each individual, this may be a different story, but chances are, if you’re selling a product or service, you want people to be saying good things about you - especially the important ones.

This holds truer yet on the Internet, the reason being, because searches are based on (a series of algorithms which determine) the priority of one website over another for various keywords. Naturally, a successful SEO campaign will improve your website’s position in natural search rankings for your keywords and key phrases.

However, have you ever typed the name of your company into a search engine to see what results were returned? I should hope that your website is the number one result, but the following results may amount to thousands that do not take the user to your site, and some of those results may be negative comments about, or poor reviews of, your business. Should you come accross a popular blog or major review site to which that one unreasonable or unsatisfied customer belongs, you may be wishing you had invested in some Reputation Management.

Believe it or not, Reputation Management is not so much about Public Relations as it is about securing good information about your business, and ensuring that is what potential customers will see in the first page or two of natural search results. Sure, with enough money, man hours, and “tactful encouragement”, anything can just disappear from sight, but an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting prefers ethical business practices, and we respect clients’ budgets. We like to refer to our approach as Proactive Reputation Management.

The idea behind the proactive approach is not to rid the World Wide Web of negative opinions - after all, the Internet is about freedom of information, which is why you are advertising your business online in the first place - but to populate the search results for your company with positive opinions, and kind words; that is our goal. The key to a successful Reputation Management campaign is very similar to that of a successful SEO campaign, only instead of optimizing your one website for your keywords, we optimize others for your name. These others may depend on your particular needs, but generally, an informational blog will be among those content rich candidates with the sole purpose of saying nice things about your business.

If you’d like to protect your reputation, or even if you think it’s too late, please don’t hesitate to read about how Reciprocal Consulting can help protect your reputation. After all, you only have one.

1. Do you have your own blog already?
2. Is the topic of the blog relevant to your business?
3. Do you trust the administrator of the site not to altar your posts in a way that could damage your reputation or efforts?
4. Do you have enough free time to consistantly write blog posts?
5. Do you have enough content to consistantly post?
6. Are you a decent enough writer to not have your posts frowned upon when compared to the usual on-site content?
7. Are you sacrificing good content on your own blog for the posts on your guest blogs?
8. Is the information in the posts between your blog and your guest blogs varied enough?

There is no doubt that quality external links increase the importance of a site on the Internet, just as a home which requires water needs plumbing to flow from an outside source. The question as to whether or not internal linking on site is important is like asking whether a resident would prefer to draw their water from a well or have a working plumbing system that brings water to multiple faucets within their home. It’s pretty simple - internal linking is important, at the very least for usability, flow, and convenience of on site navigation.

But how important is internal linking for optimizing a website for natural search? Given the current analogy stated above, consider a plumbing system in a public place, such as a hotel, as its functionality for visitors can make it a more or less desirable place to visit, but more important, to stay. In a private home, only those who reside within will be affected by the current system, inconvenient for them if they cannot access hot or cold water from every bathroom, and convenient if they can. Having said that, if your site is strictly for your own personal use, then no, it does not matter if it works if you don’t care. However, if you plan to have visitors, which will be the case for 99.99999% of sites on the Internet, then it matters a good deal.

The whole idea behind optimization is making something better, but furthermore, making it the best it can possibly be. The optimal conditions of any system require no adjustments for full functionality, or very few adjustments, realistically. Given the nature of a well optimized site, it is no wonder that search engines are programmed to favor such convenient, well designed websites over those that lack the usability that visitors would prefer.

Internal linking structure, as a network of pipes, must therefore be overly convenient, as in, water being able to flow from each room to the next if there is a clog between the source and the destination faucet. However, there is a difference between overly-convenient and excessive linking, which can confuse things. The real life plumbing example of over-linking would be T-Pipes between faucets that link to rooms which already have ample flow from every other room. Too many links from one page to the next can confuse the user, and search engines.

In short, correct on site structure is considered by many to be among the top three important SEO friendly practices, and therefore should be given considerable thought. If you are unsure about how to acheive an optimal internal linking structure, consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.

There’s a good reason why the Internet is referred to as the World Wide Web; there are many strands of information meeting other strand at various junctions, and it is all too easy to get hung up on it. Okay, that’s some pretty corny humor at the end of that statement, but true nonetheless. Discerning a quality piece of information from one with an ulterior motive can be tricky, which is where interacting with others via the social media end of the spectrum can be to your advantage.

Some businesses will view comments, reviews, and opinions on various sites as potential damage to their reputation, but to many, they play a large part in the decisions they make for shopping, using services, and so on. The same goes for services that utilize directory listings, which provide those that prefer to do thorough research with an invaluable source of information.

However, many directory listing sites are comparable to scams, which sell irrelevant listings for the majority of their profit, and sell ad space to supplement the rest. There are also a lot of blogs with a similar purpose, which are often classified as ”made for Adsense”, since they are created not to provide valuable information, but to make money.

So where does Social Media fall into the scheme? Utilizing these sites can be a good way to make friends who know the ins and outs of the industry; both your particular industry and the Internet marketing industry. By creating profiles on these sites, finding contacts who share your field of interest, and joining communities focused on your niche, you not only amplify your Social Media Optimization efforts, but you also gain the opportunity to match minds with others like yourself, who invariably are not in the market to get rich quick, but to share quality information, and possibly some quality links to your site.

Moving focus back to the directory listings, consider the difficulty of truly knowing the difference between the good and the bad; it sure would be nice to have a second opinion, wouldn’t it? There are tips one could follow in order to better understand what makes a listing untrustworthy, such as ludicrus requirements like reciprocal links, an increase in visibility with higher costs, 100% guarantees, etc. Still, the best source of information comes from others with experience in the field.

Understanding the marketing world on the Internet can be hard, but there is help. An Internet Marketing Firm such as Reciprocal Consulting is a good place to start.

Many people have a hard time grasping certain concepts, as they pertain to the Internet. It’s possible that someone who has been in print advertising for years will know absolutely nothing about Internet Marketing, but a lot of people have an easier time understanding something if it is compared to something with which they are familiar. I’ve always liked analogies, because they are a simple way to associate something you get, with something you otherwise wouldn’t get.

Let’s say the Internet is a network of people, which is it. That network is comprised of bodies, all with their own purposes, intentions, desires, needs, etc. Just as a social network of aquaintences relates to eachother in the real world, by means of communication (be those means telephones, letters, newsletters, newspapers, or face to face), the online social network communicates very similarly, only through chat, emails, blogs, articles, and video.

When talking about Search Engine Optimization, the status of your site is like your own personal status, among your group of aquaintences. What it all comes down to is who you know, who knows you, how important you are to the community, and whether or not you are a reliable, trustworthy friend. These things can all contribute to your personal social status. Likewise, the status of your website is based on numerous factors having to do with the ultimate importance of your site.

Pay Per Click Management is comparable to your shopping habits, as well as your interests and hobbies. Those things which you choose to spend money on are representative of your character, of who you are. Likewise, with the keywords you bid on for your business, their relavance to your site and its purposes will better reflect you as being trustworthy, reliable, and significant in the community.

Consider your reputation. They say that out of every ten people, nine will be more likely to share a negative opinion about you or your business than a good one. This can apply to Reputation Management, which works to populate search results with more of those honest, good opinions. Likewise, in the real world, many people and businesses will go out of their way to satisfy customers or their friend, not just for their own sake, but to re-instate their good purpose.

While these strategies for Internet Marketing success can be compared to how we live our lives apart from the Internet, it is near impossible to imagine a world without the World Wide Web, and therefore it is becoming ever more crucial to the success of a business to utilize the Internet for their marketing efforts.

I watched an interview with Sergey Brin, cofounder of, and president of technology, at Google, in which he discusses the reasons for Google’s late entrance into the browser race with the beta release of “Chrome”. Chrome is Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari, and according to Brin, the success of Mozilla’s Firefox was a primary reason for the decision to develop the browser.

General first responses to the beta version, including my own, is positive in outlook. Based on Google’s success in the past with Web Applications, such as GMail, Google Docs, Adwords, and iGoogle, it’s a fair bet that many are looking forward to future versions of the Chrome browser software. Considering how well Google has managed to integrate their web apps into other browsers, it should be a treat for regular Google web apps users to customize a fully-functional version of Chrome.

The main feature in Chrome is a combined search and website bar. What this means is, there is no need to visit a search engine site, such as Yahoo, MSN, and of course, Google, in order to perform a search. This is similar to having Google Toolbar installed on your computer. Basically, you can type in a URL or search term, and Chrome will either take you to the website entered or return a list of results for a search term entered. A list of color-coded suggestions are also available in a drop down menu while typing.

Another key feature of Chrome is the most visited page, which automatically displays when a new tab is opened. This page displays a number of browsing options, the most pertinant being a series of thumbnail previews of the most common sites you visit.

In my opinion, this is a good step for Google. Many people are questioning the timing of the release of a new browser software, especially from a company such as Google, who many would have expected to have done so years ago. However, many questioned the release of Mozilla Firefox among giants such as Internet Explorer and Safari, and as many know, it has become a huge success. What it comes down to for most people is preference. The decision for others, however, will be their daily browsing habits. For those that utilize many of Google’s web applications, future versions of Chrome will likely be their browser of choice.

The main problem I see for Google Chrome is the support of third party developers, or lack thereof. Assuredly, Google will eventually integrate equivelants to many popular browser plugins, such as Robo Forms, Delicious, the Stumble bar, or other common toolbar downloads. The question is, does Google really need the support of these third party developers?

At present time, I would only recommend downloading Google Chrome for simple browsing, as it’s main offers at present time are easy search and a larger area for browsing. For anyone who uses toolbar plugins, it may be pointless until further versions are released. As a consistent user of Google web apps, I am looking forward to the culmination of Chrome.

What will Chrome mean for the Internet Marketing world? It may mean that your Internet Marketing Firm will be able to improve by utilizing Google’s subsequent releases of Chrome, but only time will tell.

While Google Adwords is an easy way to create an effective, keyword-rich PPC campaign, in order to use the program to its full potential, consider which features to use and when to use them. This is a continuation of sorts to my previous post about setting up an Adwords PPC campaign, discussing the keyword grouper featureavailable in the Adwords Editor.

Remember, the first step is to create a basic keyword list. Then, once you’ve explored all variations for your keywords, you’re ready to use the keyword grouper.

Ideally, different ads should show up for different keywords, but it takes awhile when done manually. That’s why Adwords includes the Keyword Grouper. This tool will show you commonalities between keywords and attempt to group them based on these similarities between keywords. However, this tool may not always group keywords as effectively as hand-picking keywords for your various adgroups. More so, editing such a campaign later on will prove more difficult.

Suppose you run a PPC campaign for a travel agency. Your best option would likely be to create a master adgroup for the general area of travel you service, then to duplicate this adgroup and change the area name to specific locations in the keywords, as well as within each ad. This way, you can cycle 4 or 5 relavant ads for the particular area denoted by the adgroup, for each main area of travel.

Using the keyword grouper in this case may be overkill. Not only will the travel areas be grouped, but so will methods of travel, places of interest, as well as different synonyms for travel, such as trip, vacation, tour, etc. For smaller overall campaigns, this may be optimal, but your ads need not always repeat exactly what the user searched for, as would be the purpose for creating as many adgroups as would be generated through this method of keyword grouping.

Still, one can use the tool in this case and simply copy and paste the unnecessary adgroups into more appropriate, existing adgroups. Either way, the tool can be handy, or it could create more work for you.

Pay Per Click is a formidable task for anyone without a lot of experience. It is highly recommended that anyone interested in setting up a PPC campaign should consult professionals, or at the very least, take the full tour of Google Adwords before embarking on the journey to an efficient PPC campaign.

Some businesses choose to set up their Pay Per Click campaign themselves. Often times, they will create a base upon which an Internet Marketing FIrm like Reciprocal Consulting will build, and mantain beyond its inception. In other cases, however, the initial campaign runs poorly, and the business enlists the help of PPC professionals to correct the issues, or create a new campaign all together. In order to avoid wasted time and bids, consider the following tips:

1. Google provides a series of in depth video tutorials to help learn the ins and outs of Adwords. As stated above, it is preferable to run through these tutorials prior to using Adwords for PPC.
2. Make a keyword list, using broad matching. Basically, anything that you would want a user to search for in order to find your site, these will be your keywords.
3. Divide these keywords into relavant Adgroups, each of which will show different Ads. Some of these keywords may overlap, but remember, the search term should return an advertisement relavant to the search term which returns the ad.
4. Include all possible variations for appropriate key words. This includes plurals (vacation & vacations), sensible re-ordering of keyphrases (europe vacation & vacation in europe), as well as different forms of the same word (europe & european), where applicable.
5. Once you have your complete set of keywords for an Adgroup, including all relavant variations, duplicate the entire set to create an identical group using phrase matching and another using exact matching.
6. Try to avoid one-word key phrases. Your Cost Per Click (CPC) depends on your quality score, which means if you’re bidding on highly competitive keywords (ball versus rubber ball), you may overpay for a top spot that will bring no conversion, or have no position on the search at all. Keep your keywords relavant and not only will your CPC likely be lower, but your conversion rate will be higher.

These are just a few tips for PPC. Obviously, there is much more to a successful campaign than just these six steps. For more in depth information on using Adwords, consult Google’s tutorials.

In every area of marketing on the web there are questions surrounding morality and fairness. These debates generally stem from questionable practices, and more specifically from uncovering those that are involved in such “foul play” pertaining to their area of so-called expertise. With Search Engine Optimization, there have been numerous malpractices, known as black hat SEO, from link farms to cloaking, which achieve numerous links by deceiving search engines and misrepresenting actual content on site. Luckily, for those of us that wish for search engines to return relevant results and not those which contain massive metatags or get the majority of their rank from sites riddled with unrelated links, search engines are smarter now.

But the debate still remains, whether or not certain practices are ethical. Competitive Intelligence is one of these areas with a significant grey area between what is considered right and that which is not.

Consider sites that store information about other sites. Whois.net, for example, is a domain-based research service, which will return numerous facts about any domain name, including registrant, server, date registered, and more. Many other sites like Whois.net will disclose similar information. Additionally, searching on Yahoo, appending “link:” to a domain name will show all incoming links to that domain, and it’s various pages.

As you can imagine, there are a significant number of ways to retrieve information about a competitor through publicly accessible sites and databases, so as one may wonder, where is the line drawn?

• First and foremost, anything that is illegal applies online as well. This may be a no-brainer for most of us, but there are still those that think being behind a screen protects them from certain laws, like plagiary. This is most certainly not the case.
• Public databases, searches, and information are available for everyone; what they choose to do with what they find is their decision, and the choice to use that information in an ethical manner is theirs, as well as any consequences which may result.
• Analyzing data is a large part of Competitive Intelligence. Obtaining such data through illegal practices, such as bribery, bugging, or theft, is of course considered to be extremely unethical.

The best way to protect yourself against such practices is to ask a lot of questions of your Internet Marketing Firm. As part of a firm that insists on ethical practices, we are happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have about the services we offer.

Most of our clients have asked us to setup both PPC and SEO for their businesses because it is preferable to utilize more resources in order to get their website maximum visibility on the internet, but one thing that we certainly understand here at Reciprocal Consulting, is budget. While setting up both PPC and SEO campaigns may be optimal for most businesses, there are cases which may warrant one or the other to a greater extent, as various aspects of each type may hold more relevance to the site for which the optimization is being performed.

It is imperative to be well-informed of the differences between PPC and SEO, and which can be more beneficial to your particular business needs. This depends on a number of factors, but generally your niche is key, followed by what type of business it is, how grand a scale you intend to market to, and who your target audience is. These factors all determine which keywords will convert best, and are the backbone to any campaign, PPC or SEO.

With Pay Per Click, we utilize Google Adwords, as well as similar PPC services on Yahoo and MSN. A maximum budget can be set for such a campaign, and within that budget, we strategically bid on your keywords, targeting geographically and categorically, displaying custom ads based on the search terms entered. These ads appear on the right-hand side of the browser, under the sponsored ads of the Google search page. How it works is you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. The price you pay for the click depends on your bid, quality score, particular position of the keyword(s) in the results, as well as other factors. Ads may also be shown on the Google Content Network, featuring your ads on sites within the network, which contain content relevant to your site. These ads may also be filtered depending on which lead to more conversions and better costs per conversion.

With Search Engine Optimization, we use your niche to build links to your site, build actual page rank, and get your site to show up higher on natural search results for your best performing keywords. We also have writers on staff who utilize various article and press release sites to spread the word about your site, new products and services, as well as other pieces of newsworthy information pertaining to your business. It should be noted that there are many factors that determine page rank, and the Google toolbar does not necessarily accurately represent your actual page rank. The focus of any SEO campaign is relevant link building on a wide scale.

The differences between PPC and SEO are vast, even though the purpose of both are the same. Online visibility can be achieved in many ways by utilizing a lot of different resources, but it is important that you choose the correct methods for your particular business and its needs.

Linking is the key to any natural search-oriented campaign. While Pay Per Click increases the visibility of your website through strategic keyword building, natural search is a combination of on page and off page optimization. The main difference between the two, as to how you achieve a desired visibility status, is the importance of your site. A site of lesser importance, as determined by Google’s complex algorithm, can obtain the first position in searches utilizing a PPC campaign. While it is possible for the same site to appear within the top 3 for natural searches, it is less likely, and therefore natural search depends more on page rank for a site’s position. The similarity between the two is the keyword relevance to the search.

While it would be nice for your website to appear number one for every search, this is not practical. Via a PPC campaign, this mis-targeted traffic would cost you thousands, maybe more, as the majority of clicks would not take the user to a site relevant to that for which they searched. It would make no sense for a law firm website to show up in the top spot for a “heavy equipment training” search query. The purpose of search engines is to return relevant results, not just high ranking sites. The rank is factored in only to represent the importance and usability of the site itself, generally determined by relevant links. Here are four steps for building relevant links to your site, for free:

Social Media Optimization - this may not be the most efficient approach, as far as time is concerned, but the use of Social Media can prove very effective for the initial campaign. Simply, it puts your website on the map. The main quality to look for in a Social Media Site is the ability to add direct links with custom anchor text. This is possible through your profile, various groups, or occasionally, through message systems which allow users to contact each other, via their profile pages. It should be note, however, that many SM profile sites utilize no follow links, which will not benefit keyword relevance of links. Much like relevant pages on a website linking to each other, if only for ease-of-use, consider the network of pages linked to each other on a site such as MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog. It is important to exercise self control with such links, as irrelevant links may be read as spam or abuse of the site. Be sure to read the terms of use for such sites, as violation of such terms can result in the deletion of your account.

Forums - actively participating in forum discussions can increase the online visibility of your company greatly. Choosing a username on said forum that represents your company’s name or primary keyword will increase the relevance of posts, and posting within categories related to your business, its name or its purpose, will increase its importance. Much like social media sites, many forums will have no follow links, so use caution. The best way to utilize a forum is to set up your own. This gives you full control over comments, link properties, posts, and categories. Additionally, relevant traffic generally increases on forums as it allows others to participate in discussions and talk about their own interests in relation to your site.

Free Article and PR Sites - articles and press releases are a great way to build relevant links to your site, and its sub domains, as well as increasing your online availability through referred traffic. Additionally, you have full control over the surrounding text, and many free article sites allow you to include multiple links within the content. An article site might also feature a well-written, highly viewed article on the front page, and if nothing else, feature the submission in a category section related to your article or press release, which will have a URL containing very relevant text.

Blogging - much like article sites, setting up a blog is another good way to build links with more relevance and rank behind them. The only difference is, you can also optimize the blog itself, utilizing your social media profiles, and the articles/pr you’ve written. You may also include links to your blog from your site and forum posts. Cross linking relevant content on your blog and your site, as well as all other areas of the web you maintain, can be quite the task, but well worth the effort and time. Additionally, blogging allows for minimal effort in organizing, coding and optimizing content. Since posts are automatically sorted by date, category and tags, this is an easy way to quickly add content with little hassle; plus, adding images makes your blog more vivid, wont clutter the screen as much, and when ALT tags are properly used, will return links to your blog via image searches. Also, if said images are hosted on your site’s domain, this will add to the relevance of the blog to your site and the use of such images within your blog. You may be hosted on a Blog Site if you wish, but it is generally preferable to be self-hosted, as it implies that your site is more important.

These are only the basics of free link building, and as effective as these may be, there is only so much you can achieve with this method - it really depends on your niche. If you are fighting over less common, less desired, or more unique keywords, these tactics may be enough to put your site on the charts, even at the top spot in searches for those keywords. However, more competitive keywords require more variation, dedication, time, and resources.

When it comes down, most businesses don’t have the time or man-power within the company to embark on a campaign of such magnitude. Consider an experienced, well established, Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to aid you in this endeavor.

It is no secret that images are a large part of any internet user’s browsing experience. Pictures of products, sports games, celebrities, and so on, are important for associating onsite text content with that which the text is describing. However, many tend to overlook images in SEO practice, which can lead to a few, though not detrimental, problems:

1. Believe it or not, the seeing impaired browse the internet, too. There are programs available to these people that will read the text straight from the browser, and having an image in a document without simple SEO considerations will diminish their experience. They will not even know the image is there.
2. Search engines cannot read image files. While there is a filename associated with every image on the internet, chances are, these filenames do not contain a sensible title or description of the image. More than likely, image titles found online have names including a string of numbers, letters or abbreviations for what is actually represented in the image.
3. Even image searches will not recognize images in raw form. You may have an image on your site depicting a celebrity relevant to the topic described in your content, but with no mention of the person, this will not be relevant to the image search. Many times, a simple image search can lead a person to your site when there are no other means to bring them there.
4. Various handheld devices and older versions of web browsers cannot display images. Although rare these days, there will occasionally be users without image capabilities in their web browsing experience. When this is the case, an empty box will appear in the images place the user will be left to wonder what should be contained within.

SEO is a kind of structure, much like any great work of architecture, with a foundation, supports, design and an overall sense of flow. Build a campaign up right and the result will be a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing site. While images may serve this appeal, the structural integrity of your site gains nothing from images with no association.

There are a few ways to associate text with your image, including surrounding text which relates to the image itself, but rather than interrupt the flow of the writing to include a shameless plug for the image, the best way to make your image visible to searches is via the ALT tag.

Here is your basic image tag: <img src=”IMAGE URL”>

And here it is with the ALT tag: <img src=”IMAGE URL” alt=”NAME”>

The addition of this tag, however, should most certainly not be used to stuff keywords. This practice has long been exposed and will achieve nothing at best. Worst case scenario, your site will be penalized for Black Hat SEO practices. You should also refrain from using the ALT tag to describe the image or relay information that the image itself does not convey.

Icons used on page, as well as images used in the site’s appearance, need not use this tag. This is what is referred to as eye candy, which is onsite strictly to better the appearance. Still, some icons which serve a purpose, such as an image used as a button, will benifit from the use of the ALT tag. A good example of this would be a “submit” button, should be tagged as such.

The importance of ALT tags with images is overlooked many times, and especially now with sites like Digg, Spinn, and other popular social media sites, it is important to practice using ALT tags on your site, and anywhere you share said content.

In case you’ve been dying to know the answer to this question, the answer is both.

A personalized, custom built Website gives a business many freedoms concerning structure, content, and additional applications, such as shopping carts, forms, dynamic flash interfaces, and more, plus a very fresh, from-scratch, start. While many of these things may be available on a self hosted Blog, there is a difference between having a recognizable format and having one that may very well cause a user to bounce from your page. Self hosted Blogs, while capable of hosting many things that a website can, have an expected format, and should be used primarily for content. Content refers to onsite, html readable text, and links. This includes headers, footers, side bars, body text, posts, etc.

Now, what is the meaning behind this question, and more importantly, why the need for both?

The simple answer:

Blogs are becoming increasingly popular, to the point of absurdity. Every other person who is active on the internet these days has at least one blog to which they contribute, and many have two or three. Still, some have more even than that! So why join the crowd?

First of all, all the well tuned on and off site optimization in the world will not turn leads into conversions. For your sites ROI (return on investment) goals, more than likely there is a thank you page, order confirmation page, or some similar page which contains a tracking code. This is how you tally conversions, and when pitted against clicks, impressions, or monthly budget (depending on your campaign), you can measure ROI. There is a key factor between the initial lead and the conversion: Your Website

I’ve discussed how your optimized keywords and on site content need to relate to eachother, but these things should also be related to the design and structure of your website. If a lead comes to your site expecting to find a list of available products, easy to use shopping cart and easy checkout, more than likely, they will not find this on a Blog.

Another example, on the flip side, is content. While your site’s page content is crucial to optimization, suppose there is a good deal more information pertaining to your business that you wish to share with your potential clients or customers. Having all this information on a website that is also being used for checkout and browsing may bog things down for the user because,  as I mentioned earlier, the quicker and easier it is for them to order and pay, the better the chance they will do just that. Adding a link on your site to a Blog about your company and it’s products, as well as news about upcoming products or services, is the best way to share large amounts of information without interfering with their shopping or browsing experience.

Additionally, having “sister sites” which link to eachother, one of which being a Blog containing feeds, news, links from Social Media Blog profiles, and lots of key content, is a good way to increase relevance and page rank, as well as targeted traffic. You can link relevant posts in the Blog to product pages on your site (and to other relevant posts within the Blog itself), give the user more opportunities to contact you with questions, and provide more than enough information that may already answer their inqueries.

There is a good deal of optimization that goes into a successful Blog (be it Sponsored Ads or Natural Search), but the beauty is, traffic coming to one site will lead to the other, and there is a clean, concise, well designed format which makes it easier for your leads to convert to sales.

A lot of people aren’t familiar with the method behind how Google ranks pages, which can generate a good deal of confusion. Often times, they think that a high page rank means that they will show up higher in search results for keywords related to their site’s content, but this is not neccessarily true. In fact, it is not uncommon for a page with a higher overall rank to show up below another with a lesser rank, for various key words.

The best example of this would be Google’s home page, which is ranked 10/10. If you search for “googly eyes” on Google, no page even containing a “google” related URL will show up in the top results. The reason for this is that the Google home page contains no content related to googly eyes and, furthermore, contains very little content at all. The Google home page contains next to no specificly targetted content, and yet the page is ranked 10/10. Of course, this is because Google owns many other sites, and therefore it is possible that a page beloning to Google, containing information about googly eyes, will return a related page from them, due to the general page rank of their pages.

While higher page rank does weigh in on search results, the relevance of your site to the particular key word or key phrase triggering a search is equally, if not more important - and it’s a two fold process. Even with a high overall page rank, if your on site SEO is well executed, just because you’re site contains “Teak Furniture” in the title bar, header tags, meta tags and body content, this does not neccessarily mean you will rank well for the keyphrase “Teak Furniture”.

Since inbound links generate rank, it is important to know what anchor text to use, and to which page those keyword links should point to. Also, where those links are coming from can be very important as well, as links coming from related pages are more beneficial.

If you are optimizing your home page, linking keywords related to your other pages is important, as they may contain more relevant information related to that keyword, and also because each one of those sub-pages are (or should be) linking back to your home page. Internal linking is not as important for page rank or keyword rank as external linking, but for navigation purposes, it is crucial.

So, in short, rank is measured in many areas, but two main ones to remember:

1. General Rank - Pages linked to you, whether they use your URL as the anchor text, a string of coded numbers that leads to your site, or what-have-you. This is measured by incoming links.
2. Keyword Rank - Before you even attempt optimization for your site, come up with a list of keywords - not too long, not too short - but all very relevant and specific to your site, what its purpose is, and what is contained within your on site content: title, headers, text, tags, etc.

Still confused about SEO? Have more questions about Internet Marketing? Contact Reciprocal Consulting fo any questions you might have. We like to talk about this stuff.

While Social Media Optimization may take a backseat to Search Engine Optimization, it requires an equal level of persistance to achieve your desired results. Just like SEO, SMO is an ongoing process, one which will not show immediate results. One of the biggest misconceptions concerning both SEO and SMO is that there is a definitive goal in mind. Sure, we aim to raise page ranks, and we certainly work towards getting sites to the top of search results for their niche and corresponsing keywords, but it doesn’t end when those goals are achieved, it must continue to be successful. Here’s why:

• Web crawlers gather a lot of information. This includes times, dates, and other facts about your site that are relevant to your sites statistics, not just inlinks and on-site content.
• Dates apply to rankings. The longer your site goes without new links pointing towards your site, the less relevant your site becomes to the current date and time.
• Rank is measured not just by the volume of links. A bunch of links from a few of the same sites will not do much good, as this points to only a few sites that consider your site relevant. Continually getting links means a greater chance of getting more links from a greater number of different sites.

Now, how does this apply to your Social Media profiles? Optimizing these profiles is the same process as optimizing your site, with one catch: You are optimizing more than one site.

I find that often times, clients of our Internet Marketing Firm are generally less interested in SMO than they are in SEO because it seems like a waste of time and money to them, but consider this: Inlinks from higher ranking sites will do more for your site than inlinks from lower ranking sites, correct? Therefore, properly maintaining and linking to a Social Media profile that links to your page, which raises it’s own page rank is helping your site by raising it’s page rank!

For more information on improving your website rank and importance, or for any other Internet Marketing inqueries, please don’t hesitate to contact one of us from Reciprocal Consulting.

A simple way to optimize your Adwords PPC campaign, is to run regularly scheduled search query reports.

What is a “search query report,” you ask?  A search query report is available through the Adwords interface, and it shows the actual search queries people typed in before clicking on one of your ads. While the reports leave something to be desired in terms of their level of detail, they can still be very useful. The problem is that some of the keywords get lumped together under the heading, “x other unique queries.” That being said, the queries that are actually shown can be surprising and informative at times.

New Adwords users often think that their ads will only show up when someone searches for the keywords exactly as they enter them into Adwords, but that’s not usually the case. Whenever you “broad match,” or “phrase match,” a keyword, you leave the door open for many different variations on the search phrase to trigger your ad to display.

Broad matching in particular, gives Google a lot of room to show your ad for a wide range of different queries. I’ve seen where Google completely drops one of the keywords in a broad matched phrase. An example would be:

Keyword: bright blue widgets
Search phrase that displays ad: blue widgets

Google can also change your broad matched keywords based upon algorithmic ways that it defines concepts. This can get scary at times. To prevent your ads from showing up for keywords you don’t want, run search query reports regularly; and either use “negative keywords” to get rid of terms you don’t want, or take out the broad matched keywords replacing them with more accurate phrase matched keywords.

Don’t rule out the “broad match” altogether though, because broad matching can sometimes bring in cheaper conversion costs by showing your ad for search queries you hadn’t thought of targeting.

To run a search query report while in the Adwords interface, click on the “Reports” tab, “Create a new report,” then choose the “search query performance” radio button, and define the rest of the options.

Internet marketing takes years of experience to master and is constantly changing, therefore requiring dedication to continually grasp in full. However, there are a few basics that anyone interested in internet marketing should know. When it comes to understanding the fundamentals, it’s all in the terms. ROI, SEO, SMO, RM, CI, PPC, etc. These acronyms may mean nothing to most people but to us as an internet marketing firm they are our bread and butter.

Here is a basic rundown of our services and how they can help our clients:

• ROI (Return on Investment) - the key to any campaign in a simple question: is it worth it? The ROI is the net of what is spent on a campaign verses the increase of leads, sales, customers, etc. Depending on your niche, certain marketing campaigns may not be best suited for you.
• PPC (Pay Per Click) - refers to the use of AdWords campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. A PPC AdWords Campaign is the sum of keywords relevant to the client’s website, which are used to target potential customers through bidding for sponsored ads, reaching them on searches, as well as high-ranking sites relevant to the site.
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - encompasses nearly every end of internet marketing, more specifically as pertaining to a campaign utilizing search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to reach a targeted audience.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - process of optimizing on-site and off-site specifics in order to increase the relevance of the website to specific keywords and search terms, therefore increasing page rank and ultimately increasing online visibility in searches, essentially, making your site more popular.
• SMO (Social Media Optimization) - targeting non-search groups on social networking sites, such as Technorati, Digg, Squidoo and various blog sites. SMO targets those that may not necessarily search for your keywords because they already belong to an online community which shares information on those search terms.
• RM (Reputation Management) - various augmented forms of SEO and SMO which populate remaining ranking positions on searches for a site’s keyword set. While SEO and SMO may independently secure a top-ranking position, RM will help to populate the remaining positions in order to protect the site itself from high-ranking blogs or review sites slandering your good name.
• CI (Competitive Intelligence) - utilizing various resources and databases in order to compare your site to your competition. By pitting your site against other sites, we get a better idea of which branches of a given campaign are excelling and which need a boost.

These are just the basics. For more information about these services and others, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.

There are many ways to optimize your website through SEO and PPC, but even if your website is showing up at the top of search results, there are at least nine more ranking spots that could be pointing to you. So why bother joining the world of Social Media Optimization when you have the number one spot in search results?

• An added online presence through SMO says more about your dedication to the internet community, which in turn shows that you care more about reaching your customers.
• Depending on which SMO sites you utilize, you can reach potential customers outside of direct search results. If someone is searching Google for your niche they will be sure to find you. However, if they belong to a forum, online community or message board dedicated to that niche, they may not bother searching Google and, furthermore, anyone who finds you on those sites is guaranteed to show interest in your business and will subsequently be more likely to become a customer.
• When coupled with SEO, SMO can push your profiles, posts and contributions to various SMO communities to search results beneath your website. This is an additional protection that falls under Reputation Management, but it is just one way to protect your name.
• Having a presence on multiple SMO sites can generate more links to your website, which adds a layer of security to your top spot on searches.

Basically, Social Media Optimization is an extension of SEO that reaches a large number of more accurately targeted potential customers.

There are many things to consider before setting up an SMO campaign. Everything from which sites you utilize to what your avatar on your various profiles will be, these things all have an impact on your image. Also, choosing keywords wisely can become the difference between an excellent campaign and an ineffective one.

If you’d like to set up a Social Media Optimization campaign for your business, Reciprocal Consulting can help.

When evaluating site content, it’s vital to, have a look at the title tags when doing SEO. If the title tags don’t contain keywords relevant to the content of the web page, then it has a significantly lower chance of showing up in the search results. Unfortunately, many web designers these days don’t know anything about search engine optimization. A common misconception is that your site will show up for its keywords when you add them in it’s “Meta tags.” The truth is, that meta tags are one of the least effective things you can do to improve your site’s search results.

Below are a few guidelines for writing effective title tags, when we do SEO at Reciprocal Consulting, we evaluate many factor of “on-page” optimization, and help to make your site as search engine friendly as possible.

• Don’t exceed 10-12 words in the title tag.
• Make sure that the keywords you’re targeting are actually represented in content on the page.
• For more competitive keywords, keep it short and sweet.
• For less competitive keywords, or when you’re not targeting anything specific, shoot for the “long tail” by having longer title tags.
• Think about clickthrough rates and visitor perception - the title tag is the first thing they will see in the search results, so it helps if it has meaning, rather than just a bunch of keywords mashed together. You want visitors to click on the search result, not ignore it as spam.