Lately small businesses have been bombarded with strategies and tricks to improve SEO efforts.

As an employee hired solely for SEO reasons, I understand the importance of organic search rankings and the excitement that comes from seeing your company pop up after a Google search.However, companies need to remember that pay per click (PPC) advertising is still an important part of the marketing process.

Even if your businesses in ranking well in organic search, PPC marketing should still be on the top of the priority list. Unfortunately, many companies toss PPC marketing to this side once SEO efforts yield positive results.

For those who are unfamiliar, PPC marketing allows a company to place little ads either on the top or on the side of search engine results pages (SERP), and each time that ad is clicked the company has to pay a certain amount of money. This is a quick way for a business to get their ads at the top of major search engines, and is therefore primarily used by startup companies and companies who haven’t see their website rank well in organic search.

Consider a few of the benefits of PPC advertising:
• Keyword and Phrase Tracking—PPC advertising allows a company to learn quickly which keywords and/or phrases and ads yield the most profitable results. This takes much longer to track if you’re using SEO alone. Knowing this information will then, in turn, also help your future SEO efforts.

• Reliable—SEO rankings can fluctuate at any time, but a company can count on PPC marketing. If you pay for an ad to be at the top of a Google search page, it will be there. It also serves as a nice back-up in case your organic search ranking does fall short of your expectations.

• Competition—It can be very difficult to compete with dominant brands. However, PPC helps to keep things fair. If you can pay for that top spot on Google, you’ve got it. This will put your company’s ad right in the middle of all those dominant brands, which helps to even out the competition.

• Budget—Many companies think that PPC will force them to take out a small business loan, but companies can actually set their own budget. You can be as aggressive or as passive as you’d like to be, which puts you, the company owner, in total control.
PPC can offer these benefits to both small and large companies. Regardless of where your company falls on the SEO scale, PPC will always be important. Whether your company has taken a break from this type of advertising or has never given it a thought, it’s time to put it on the radar. Below lists 5 steps to getting started with PPC:

4 Simple Steps to Get Your Company Going with PPC
1. Search Engine—Just about every major search engine (and many local search engines) allows PPC advertising. The first step is deciding where you want to place your ads. Different search engines have different benefits, so don’t go running to Google without doing a little bit of research! Consider your budget and your company goals.

2. Keywords—It is important to consider which keywords you want to target. PPC ads are connected to specific keywords, so in other words, the ad will only be seen by consumers when the keyword/keywords are typed into the search box. Once you decide keywords that work for you, be sure to add them into the text and title.

3. Bidding—This is where PPC advertising gets a bit confusing. Your company has to pay the search engine every time someone clicks on an ad you placed on their search engine. The highest bidder then gets the best spot on that particular search page (usually at the top as opposed to on the side). This is the easy part. It is deciding how much money you should bid that gets a bit tricky. Consider this example:

- Let’s say you get one sale for every 100 clicks (a conversion rate of 1:100) and your product costs $10. This then means that you should not pay more than 10 cents per click if you want to break even. If the highest bid costs 30 cents, then it is not worth the money for your company.

4. Landing Page—You want to make sure that when someone clicks on your ad they are sent to a page that will allow them to buy the product. Make sure the page is organized and easy to use so that you don’t pay for a bunch of clicks that don’t give you a sale.

Amanda DiSilvestro is an expert writer on toll free numbers based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as workers compensation insurance. You can find more of her articles as well as vendors comparisons for your small business needs at Business.com.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

The best advice I ever got about blogging came from Anita Campbell, publisher of the award winning Small Business Trends with well over 100,000 subscribers.

It came on a day that I was feeling very down. I had been writing posts and…linking to other blogs, doing all the things I had read about but, my readership wasn’t increasing exponentially the way I thought it should.

That’s when Anita told me that attracting an audience was a lot more about persistence and consistency.  Building a thriving readership requires doing effective behaviors every single day and over time a sort of snowball effect will start happening.

Here are five easy-to-do daily strategies to incorporate into your blog marketing strategy.

1. Relate to your customer. The easiest way to get customers to hear you is to relate to them. How are you like them and how can you help them from your own learning experiences. Brainstorm and make a list of what you both like and dislike in your industry or niche. Write about how you are frustrated with “such and such” happens and how you overcame that frustration. Story-telling can be intriguing. Rope them in with your ability to relate to them through your own story.

2. Offer Solutions. Now that you have formed a relationship with the customer because you share the same likes and dislikes you can help them. You don’t have to be the decision-maker for them but simply offer different solutions to the problems or concerns. Even through your story you might have tried one solution and found that didn’t work and you tried another solution and found that was successful for you. You can point out that the first solution could have worked in perhaps a little bit of a different scenario.

3. Engage your customer. It could be that in your story you didn’t find a solution or maybe you want to hear how other people find a solution and what worked for them. Ask your customer direct questions in your blog and share from one another what worked and what didn’t work. Make sure that you follow through with commenting back to your questions. If you want your customer to speak up you need to let them know that they have been heard and their opinion does matter.

4. Get an expert. After your initial blog and you find out what people have tried. You could invite an expert in your field to help narrow the scope or explain why certain solutions work better than others. You will gain respect from your customer if they know they can go to your blog and find out the honest truths, the ins and outs and even get advice from a credible source.

5. A Note from your CEO. The face of the company is your CEO. People value the opinion of the top dog. Have your CEO contribute to the blog as an additional or the final piece of the topic at hand. Blog 1 was about your story and the introduction of the topic. Blog 2 was about offering solutions to the issue or concern. Blog 3 was about engaging your customer and learning from one another. Blog 4 was about offering credible advice from an expert. Blog 5 will close out your topic with a note from your CEO in regards to the topic at hand.

When you think about it, growing a blog readership is a lot like growing a flower from a seed.  With daily watering and sunshine it grows a little every day (it’s just invisible to you because the growth is all happening underground).

Then one day, a green shoot breaks through and you start seeing the fruits of your gardening. Blog marketing is very much the same.  Practice these daily behaviors with persistence, and you’ll see your readership grow.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

So you’ve told yourself you were going to use a marketing strategy that uses blogging and social media to build a loyal customer base.

And soon after, you found out exactly how difficult that would be.

There aren’t nearly… enough hours in the day or automated applications in the world to keep up with all the quality content that you’re going to need to keep those readers satisfied.

This is where “repurposing” blog marketing content becomes a sanity-saving survival strategy and a great way to reach a broader audience and get more visibility.

Let’s take a single event or idea and see how you can turn it into 10 different pieces of content.

1. Interview an industry expert.  Tweet to your community that you’re having the interview, then tweet out several lessons that you learned from the interview.  Remember Twitter is a microblog, so Tweeting is content.

2. Do a presentation.  Turn what you learned from the expert into a presentation that you can deliver either on slideshare or as a webinar. Don’t forget to insert your Slideshare presentation into your LinkedIn profile!

3. Record your presentation (audio, video) and upload to YouTube and Vimeo.  If you conducted your interview on Skype, use VodBurner to record the interview and post it up on Vimeo (if it’s longer than 15 minutes) or break up the interview into small parts and post it up on YouTube.

4. Use the video clips as posts on your blog with short introductions, or embed the video clips as part of an article.
Create a transcript of the presentation and make it a download.  Have your interview transcribed and make it available as a download.

5. Write a white paper based on the interview or presentation use it as a free gift.  Create a white paper using the material from the interview as supporting information.  Combine it with your own research and you’ll have a well documented download.

6. Create a reference guide based on the interview and presentation and publish it on your site as a keyword rich traffic attractor.

7. Break up the white paper into articles and post them as a series.  Article series are really popular and if you reference each preceding article, it will increase the time people spend on your site.

8. Submit your articles to bookmarking sites such as BizSugar, Digg and StumbleUpon.  Bookmarking sites are a great way to build an audience of new readers.

10. Send the articles to article banks such as ezinearticles.com.  Article banks or sites like Squidoo  or Hubpages.

11. Expand the white paper into an eBook and sell it.

12. Create an infographic to attract more visitors and go viral.

The possibilities with blog marketing are only limited by your imagination.  In fact, make a point out of living your day being on the lookout for content.  I carry a digital recorder and a flip cam with me everywhere I go.  I also make sure that I have a notebook with me where I jot down article ideas or headlines.

Another great way to repurpose content is to pay attention to the emails you send and the questions you answer.  I can’t tell you how many times people ask me questions on email and I answer them.

I’ve just recently realized that many of these answers are really blog posts or content in disguise.  I’ll bet the same is true for you.

Content is everywhere, you just have to focus on collecting it and getting the most out of it.  Follow these easy tips and you’ll no longer be a slave to content and get your blog marketing strategy down to a manageable task.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Wondering what big-time bloggers make?

It’s a lot more than you might think.

In these uncertain times, people who blog professionally are… more certain of their security than people who work for someone else.

You can make part-time or full-time income from blogging!

(Even if you don’t know the first thing about it)

Discover how to set yourself up to earn a great living as a popular blogger .

Use this link >>

Or even if you just want to see your existing business take off, the secret is in blog marketing.

Get started today.

To your success,
CharlieMarketingForSuccess

Sell More. Profit More. Live More.

P.S. It wasn’t until I added the blog on my web site that my online business saw the dramatic growth I’d always wanted.

Find out how you can do the same with blog marketing

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Jack Humphrey is well-known as the leader in blogging for dollars. He has taught thousands of people his exact system to bring in major profits from blogging. (He was the blogging expert I interviewed last year for our first Social Media Summit.)

Recently, he released a portion of his revenue numbers from 2010 and let me tell you… - they are off the charts! To think his blog is responsible for over $568,076 of revenue is mind-blowing.

Learn How Jack Profits >>

Jack has been running a training center called “Blog Success” for nearly 5 years now. In Blog Success, he teaches all of the exact methods he uses to create “authority blogs” that lead the pack in any market!

One of his students, Rusty Moore, has actually “become a player” in the VERY difficult fitness niche using blog marketing techniques he learned from Jack.

Recently, Rusty was able to do a product launch that generated over $8000 from a $17 eBook. Rusty’s blog marketing tactics generated ALL of those customers.

He simply used Jack’s proven profit formula!

Get access to the proven profit formula >>

Anyway, I wanted to let you know about Jack’s training center at “Blog Success” and let you know Jack is offering a $9.95 full-featured trial for just a limited time.

I don’t know how long he will keep the trial option active, but I highly recommend you give Jack’s blog marketing training program a try. He’s taught thousands of marketers how to make money blogging and you could be next.

Here’s how to get started >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Ever feel like you’re talking to yourself at your blog and at social networking sites?

I know I’m not the only one who’s spent hours crafting a message, in the hopes it will pique someone’s curiosity, only to receive nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a message, not a comment… not even an email telling me what they learned.

If so, try this experiment. It will lead to… more comments at your blog, on your Facebook wall, on Twitter, and more results from your blog marketing, in general.

Choose one of the following phrases and regularly add it to the end of your blog posts or messages:

–”Am I wrong?”

–”Am I crazy?”

–”What do you think?”

–”Do you agree?”

–”What’s your best advice?”

–”How many of you are guilty of this?” (I use this phrase after linking to an article that talks about “the biggest mistakes.” It drums up a way for your readers to relate and provokes emotions.)

–”Your thoughts?”

–”What’s your best tip?”

–”What’s your Number One pet peeve?”

These are all conversation-starters. They show your blog readers that you’re curious about what’s on their minds and they’ll do wonders for your blog marketing.

And, let’s face it – the feedback you receive helps you to know what your readers are and aren’t enjoying and can help you craft future blog posts accordingly. Knowing your feedback is just one (really important ) way to give your blog marketing a much needed boost.

Sometimes those magic phrases lead to a lively give-and- take. When I end my messages with one of those questions, I generate more comments at my blog and more retweets from my followers on Twitter.

You can also use those phrases when pointing to controversial content at somebody else’s site. Don’t shy away from sharing other people’s information on Facebook.

One of the best ways to do that is by creating a Facebook Note, where you can upload photos, link to other websites and use HTML to command attention.

How many of those opportunities are you missing?

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

If you want people to read your small business blog, look at it, and pay attention, you need something that’s going to grab their attention.

You’ve only got a few seconds to make an impact online.

Of course you’ll write a compelling headline. But what next?

Well, since pictures plus headlines draw more attention than just headlines alone, a picture is the easiest way to turn heads.

Finding a good picture to go with a blog post seems to be one of the biggest problems people have.

Here’s the simple system that I use that comes up with a great graphic that makes everyone love our blog and read our posts.

Start off with a stock photo website, which is the easiest way to find pictures. A pay-per-picture service means you get a higher quality picture and although they’re not particularly cheap, you can keep the picture and repurpose them later on.

There are decent free stock photo services like Stockxchg, but you might have to look a little harder for the perfect picture.

Once you’ve found a stock photo site you like (I use iStockphoto), re-read your blog post. If the main idea of your post is general, like Sales, dig deeper. Is your lead-in story about juggling time? Then how about using a clear picture of a person juggling clocks?

The clearer the picture and the more direct the connection – the better. If your lead in story is about one thing, and your picture is something completely different you may leave your customers confused. And chances are, they’ll be too distracted to read on, which means they’ll never notice the content.

Also, try to choose pictures that have a white, or light, background. They’re easiest on the eyes and overall, more appealing and polished-looking. Another thing that helps is remember to choose pictures that look clear in thumbnail form. A picture of a birds flying through a pasture might look nice close up, but is probably too detailed and zoomed out to be appealing to your blog readers.

If all else fails, ask yourself, could a 5th grader explain why you used this picture? If not, you should probably choose a new picture.

That’s the approach I’ve been using and my blog has never looked better. Try it out and let me know how it works for your small business.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

… tonight at midnight the price to get instant access to Unlimited Web Traffic – ten calls, ten transcripts and the exclusive Guide to Unlimited Web Traffic – goes up.

And I don’t want you to have to pay the higher price I’ll be charging the public.

Today is the last day you can get instant access to all ten of the top web traffic experts I interviewed last week as part of the Web Traffic TeleSummit before the price goes up.

Click here to save $100 >>

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• Access to the top web traffic experts’ closely guarded secrets on how to generate massive traffic and profits.

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The new price will be $197 – but you pay only $97 if you take action today to SAVE $100.

Think how much more you could be making with the Insider Secrets to Unlimited Web Traffic. You pay only $9.70 per interview -  and get my 120 page, step-by-step web traffic guide as a bonus – but only if you take action today.

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7 reasons why you need these web traffic secrets:

1) Most of the information you find online and in free articles about web traffic is plain wrong!
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3) You could be attracting over 3,000 visitors a day just by using the simple strategies I use…
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5) More traffic means more sales ..
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7) With this crash course in web traffic, your business will grow with much less effort, giving you more time to enjoy life.

To grab your copy and save $100, use this link right away >>

When I selected the experts to interview, I made sure to get someone on every key web traffic topic from pay-per-click to on-page optimization to link building – literally everything you need to generate massive traffic for your business.

It’s like getting 10 HOURS of private Web Traffic consultation for only $97! – which would cost you over $5,000 if you had to hire a top expert. Instead, you get full access to all the interviews here for only $9.70 per interview.

If you’ve ever wanted to get more web traffic and more profits – these interviews are a must-have! Grab the entire Unlimited Web Traffic series here >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Today you have a choice.

Last week I interviewed eleven of the world’s top web traffic experts to show you exactly how to flood your site with qualified prospects so you can make more money this year.

In case you missed one or more of the calls, you can still get access to the ten mp3s of the calls, transcripts and the exclusive Unlimited Web Traffic Guide and save yourself $100…

… if you sign up today.

Just go here >>

The price goes up by $100 in the next 48 hours, so if you have any interest in getting more web traffic …

… use the link above, scroll to the bottom of the page and get these amazingly powerful web traffic and profit generating secrets.

Let’s face it.

At some point you’re going to want to get access to the traffic generating secrets of these top web traffic experts and you can either claim your copy now, or you can wait and pay more later this week.

Today the price for VIP Access is still $97. On Wednesday it goes up to $197.

Which is it?

Wait a few days and pay $100 more or take action right now and save yourself $100?

Go here to get all ten interviews, transcripts and the Unlimited Web Traffic guide today  >>

When you do, you’ll get instant access to the mp3s and transcripts from each interview with:

Web Traffic Expert #1 – Perry Marshall
How to Use Google AdWords To Generate Massive Targeted Traffic 24/7/365 – Even If You Don’t Know The First Thing About Search Engine Optimization

Web Traffic Expert #2 – Greg Shuey
The Amazing-Simple Blueprint To Getting Top Rankings In Google That Drive Traffic and Profits To Your Site Every Day While You Sleep

Web Traffic Expert #3 – Stoney deGeyter
How To Flood Your Site With Free Traffic Even If You Never Get Near Page One Of The Search Engines

Web Traffic Expert #4 – Eric Ward
The Link Factor: How You Can Get Others To Provide You With All The Free Traffic You Want Without Having To Touch Your Website

Web Traffic Expert #5 – Shari Thurow
Traffic Secrets Most SEO Firms Don’t Want You To Know

Get VIP Access To All Ten Web Traffic Experts >>

Web Traffic Expert #6 – M.J. Taylor
Incredibly Simple Tweaks You Can Do To Your Website That Bring In All The Traffic You Can Handle

Web Traffic Expert #7 – Ian Lurie
Real-Time Search: The Foolproof,  Five Minute System For Getting Instant Traffic and Buyers To Your Site For Free

Web Traffic Expert #8 – Mary Bowling & Mike Belasco
How To Save Up To $9,200 On Yellow Page Ads And Get A Constant Stream Of Customers With Google Local

Web Traffic Expert #9 – Shelley Ellis
The Most Powerful Ways To Slash Your Advertising Costs and Boost Your ROI With Google’s Content Network

Web Traffic Expert #10 – Dave Davies
Magic Words You Can Use Immediately To Dominate The Search Engines and Gather All The Traffic You Ever Want

And as an extra bonus I’m including my 120-page-plus, step-by-step exclusive Guide to Unlimited Web Traffic.

If you’ve ever wanted to get more web traffic and more profits – these interviews are a must-have! Grab them here today >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

One of the primary reasons to operate and maintain a blog about your industry is to gain high search engine rankings to assist you in driving targeted potential customers and clients.

Because blogs are updated on a daily or weekly basis they naturally have an advantage over static Websites or Websites that rarely has content changes or additional content.  Blogs also naturally receive better rankings because blog posts typically include lot of targeted keywords that helps Google rank your blog for specific targeted keyword phrases.

Even though a blog will naturally gain better rankings, there are still optimization techniques that will assist in gaining high Google and other major search engine rankings.  The two biggest blogging sites are WordPress and Blogger.   Both blogging sites give you the flexibility to optimize your blog for high search engine ranking.

From an optimization standpoint, blogs are not very different from Websites.  Keyword driven content and incoming relevant links are still keys to your SEO success.  The competitive advantage of a blog is from the frequency of keyword driven postings.  By posting daily or multiple times per week, Google and other search engines will quickly take notice and index and rank your blog.

Some Blog Optimization Tips:

• Write an interesting title that correctly describes your blog post.  Your title should captivate the user to read more and possibly attract other Website operators to link to your blog post.
• Try to use the most important blog keywords in the title – while it may be hard to always do this, by keeping the title related to the topic, your blog will always be relevant and assists Search Engines in ranking your Website for those targeted terms.
• Utilize the H1 tags – Your blog editor should allow for custom templates, so be sure to stylize your blog title in the H1 tags.  H1 tags is a specific style that search engines recognize as a title to the page and the importance of the keywords within this title
• Turn on the feature that allows you to control the name of the sub directory that the post exists within.  Use your most important 2 or 3 word keyword phrase, placing a dash between each word. (professional-financial-services)
• Make sure the name of the webpage matches your blog post title; this is referred to as URL Rewritten Permalinks.  In addition, most blogging platforms will allow you to add an SEO widget that will assist in the optimization of your blog pages.
• Don’t forget about your archives.   They are full of great keyword driven content that will be picked up by search engines.  Make sure these are always turned on and linked from your homepage.
• Link your blog from your corporate Website and any sister sites.  Also invite other relevant Websites to trade links with your blog to increase your incoming links.

Again, the key to a successful search engine optimized blog is frequent keyword driven postings.  It may not be necessary to write up a full article every time you post, two paragraphs and maybe some resource links is all you typically need.  One trick is to split a larger blog post into two sections (part 1 & part 2).  Posts the first part one day, and then post the second part the next day.  This will increase the frequency of your blog posts without a lot of additional work.

- Jason

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..