In honor of college football’s return, here are the position-by-position starters if Internet marketing strategies made up a football team:

Head Coach – Analytics and A/B Testing

The head coach analyzes everything and makes changes to improve. Analytics and testing gives you the stats, tells you what is working, where people are coming from, how long they’ve been on the site, what is bringing traffic and what converts best. Through analytics and testing, you can tweak strategies to be more successful.

Assistant Coach – Competitive Analysis

The assistant coach often scouts out the competition to know how to beat the bad guys. A detailed competitive analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors so you can know how and where to strike.

Offensive Starters – Building the Brand, Getting Exposure and Outbound Marketing

Quarterback – SEO

Arguably, the quarterback position is the most important position on the field. Top quarterbacks win games despite weaknesses in other areas of the team. If you get top rankings for the right keywords, you will get more website traffic and sales. All-Pro SEO services will almost instantly make you a major player in your industry. Quarterbacks are also the face of a team. Similarly, organic natural results act as the face of your company

Running Back – Conversion Optimization

There are crucial times in any football game where a team needs 1 yard for a first down or a few inches to score a touchdown. A dependable running back will get that extra yardage almost every time. Conversion optimization plays that role for your website. Once you get that extra website traffic, you need dependable website conversion principles to take that visitor into the end zone.

Fullback – Web Design

Fullbacks are often the lead blocker that clears the way for the running back to get that extra yard. Good SEO Web design clears the way for everything else to work right.

Wide Receiver — Social Media Marketing

Fast wide receivers can change the game with one quick-striking score. Good social media marketing using viral video, infographics, blog posts, etc., can quickly send a lot of traffic and create a ton of exposure in a short period of time. Social media can be a game changer just like a flashy wide receiver that blows past the defense.

Tight End – Online Public Relations

Tight ends are instrumental in blocking for the quarterback and running backs. But they also consistently score touchdowns and get first downs in tight situations. Tight ends are critical in clutch moments whether it’s a run or pass play. Online public relations have the same dependability. Online PR doesn’t always results in a home run, but it does consistently bring good traffic quality links. And sometimes online PR scores a touchdown by getting the attention of big blogs and publications. Online PR is the go-to weapon in tight situations when you need good links, and more traffic and exposure.

Offensive Line – Keyword Research

The offensive line is the foundation of every football team. They give the quarterback time to throw and open holes for the running backs. Games are won and lost in the trenches, and they are similar won and lost with the right or wrong keyword research. Every search strategy revolves around picking the right keywords to target. Targeting the right keywords will make you a lot of money. The wrong keywords will keep you guessing and will lose you money.

Defensive Starters, Protecting Your Online Brand

Defensive Line – Reputation Management

The defensive line is the literally first line of defense. Any offense will roll over a team with a pansy D-line. For online marketing, this is similar to reputation management. It’s the foundation to defending your brand online.

Line Backer – Link Building

I chose this mostly because linebackers and link building have the same abbreviation: LB. So, you can come up with your own analogy on this one.

Corner Back – Social Media Profiles

Corner backs protect the pass and are sometimes the secret weapon on a corner blitz to reach the quarterback. I compare this to social media profiles. An active profile that provides valuable information and brings in fans, is a big part of protecting your brand and company. Social profiles are usually found high in the search engines for a company’s name. Plus, social media is all the buzz right now. In the sports world, corner backs are usually the guys with all the hype.

Safety – PPC

The Safety position is self-explanatory. The Safety has a lot of roles, but is there to basically defend wherever things break down. That’s what PPC is for. A good mix of PPC with your SEO will make sure you get the right exposure and traffic while you work on getting your SEO rankings where you want them.

Kicker/Punter – Local Search and Maps Optimization

A good kicker can nail a field goal in clutch situations or pin a team near the end zone on a good punt. Local Internet marketing places your website in the right spot for local shoppers to find your business and buy your products.

One the largest hurdles in getting a website to rank well and make money for a client, can be the client themselves. It is hard to watch a well-meaning client get in their own way and not know it. For that reason I am writing this post to help them understand what they can do (and not do) to make sure that they get the most out of their money when they hire an seo firm.

Choosing the right keywords

One of the most common mistakes that I see clients make when working with an seo company, or doing their own search engine optimization, is picking the wrong keywords. It is easy to become blinded by massive projected traffic numbers instead of focusing on the real number that matters – sales.

I have seen this happen repeatedly. Let me set this up for you. Here is a mock phone conversation after the SEO company has done some keyword research and recommended the appropriate keywords to the client:

Client:  “I would like to target keywords x,y,z.”
SEO Company:  “While the research does show that those will bring traffic, I am not sure those are the right keywords to target for sales.”
Client:  “I know my industry and those are the keywords I need to show up for.”
SEO Company:  “Okay.”

…After months of hard work that has resulted in top rankings for the client’s given keywords:

Client:  “I am not seeing a good enough return on my investment with you to justify continuing. My sales have not increased significantly and it certainly is not enough to cover my contract with you, let alone make money. You have been working on this for several months now and I am not seeing how search engine optimization has helped me at all.”
SEO Company:  “Well, we have gotten the top rankings for the keywords you asked for and your traffic has increased, but perhaps we should look at now optimizing for the other keywords that we recommended.”
Client:  “No, I don’t think that will help.”

The mistake clients make with keywords is demanding that the SEO marketing company target their efforts on broad keywords that will not translate into sales. A better strategy is to start with a list of longer tail keywords to target. These keywords are the ones that will have a much higher conversion rate and they almost always are easier to rank for. You are much more likely to see a positive ROI by using this strategy.

Not making the Recommended Changes To Their Site

There will always need to be changes made to a site for optimization purposes. One of the ways that a client gets in their own way is in their refusal or slow implementation of those changes. It is important that once some recommendations have been made, the changes are made as soon as possible. The longer it takes to make the changes the slower the rankings will come and the longer it will be to see a return on the investment.

Resist Adding Content

In order to get rankings for certain keywords it is necessary to have content that revolves around the keywords that you are trying to rank for. Often there will be recommendations to add or alter content to the site. If content is recommended as part of an SEO campaign, it is important to add it. if some alterations are recommended, then make those. If you are concerned with the recommendation, discuss it and come to some compromise that will work for you and the SEO firm, but do not resist the change all together.

Communication

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! One of the most frustrating things for an Internet marketing company is to have a client’s campaign slowed or stopped due to a lack of response from a client. Understand that if you are not answering their emails and phone calls, then they are likely at a standstill on your SEO campaign.

On the other hand, some clients are a little too eager to communicate. As a client, you should feel comfortable to call or email them whenever you need to. But remember they only have a certain amount of time each day to do the work, and the more hours they spend on the phone with you or replying to your emails, the less time they will have to get the work done.

Micromanaging

It is important to understand the strategy that your SEO company is using, but if you are a client that must approve every little move, then you are getting in the way. Remember that they are the experts and they have done this more than once.

By micromanaging you may cause delays because they are waiting for your approval. You have a business to run. Do your due diligence before hiring any Internet marketing company and then trust that the company you have hired knows what they are doing and can get you the results that you are seeking. Discuss with them what kinds of things you want to approve and then let them do their job.

The sad thing is that a lot of the things we recommend should have been done during the Web development phase the first time around.

No matter how much the SEO world tries to get the information out there, a lot of Web developers don’t understand the basic concepts of SEO. This in turn leads to sites being developed that an SEO team will later have to tear apart and fix.

So whether you’re designing a new site in-house, using some kind of template site-building system, or hiring an outside firm, here are 18 things that you’ll want to make sure are in place before you launch your site. It will keep us SEO guys from giving your site an overhaul later. By following these guidelines you’ll have a much more search engine friendly web design from the beginning.

1- Perform Keyword Research Before Developing the Site

SEO starts with keywords. And if you’re planning to market your site in the search engines, you should know what keywords you want to rank for before you even start building the site. Make sure this is done FIRST.

Here are some other posts that talk about how to properly do keyword research:

• Keyword Research Gems from PubCon
• How to Create a Huge Keyword List
• Use All the Tails in Your Search Marketing Strategy

2- Put Non-www to www Redirects in Place

It amazes me how many sites load with and without the www in the URL. The problem with this is that it creates an automatic duplicate of your site, and can waste a lot of link value as people link to both versions. Decide which version of your URLs you want to use, then 301 redirect everything else to the preferred version.

3- Use a Static, Keyword Based URL Structure

Dynamic URLs can cause a lot of problems if not handled right. So rather than going through all of the headache that they cause us SEO-types, just set your site up with good URL rewrites so that you don’t have dynamic URLs in the first place.

More posts about URLs:

• Checklist for Changing Your URL Structure
• 3 Common URL Problems and How to Fix Them
• Absolute URLs – Better Safe Than Sorry?

4- Have Unique URLs for Each Product/Service

Even if a product or service can be found multiple ways on the site, make sure that there is only one unique URL for each product or service your company offers. This helps to eliminate unnecessary duplicate content problems.

5- Include Redirect Capabilities

You never know when you’re going to want to take a page down and redirect it to something else. The mistake a lot of sites make is that they just take a page down when they don’t need it any more. When this happens you lose the link value that page may have gained while it was live. So do yourself a favor: make sure you can 301 redirect that old page to a new page that can use the juice.

6- Create a Custom 404 Page

Having a custom 404 page makes it so that if someone lands on a 404 page, they at least know they’ve reached the right site. Without a custom 404 in place, they may just assume the site is down and move on to your competitor’s site.

Here is an example of a custom 404 page:

7- Include Keyword-Rich Alt Attributes

Alt attributes are very easy to overlook. But if you use them the right they can be another signal to the search engines to tell them what a page is about. One quick tip on this one: don’t abuse this attribute by using a keyword phrase on every single bullet point image or stuffing a bunch of keywords into the attribute.

8- Make Room for Sufficient Content

Sometimes designers and developers get carried away with the look and feel of the page and forget to include room for text-based content. That’s what the search engines read, so you have to make sure there is a logical place for that content. Ideally, plan on having at least 150-200 words of optimized content on any page you want to rank well.

You should also make sure that your content is structured right. Have one H1 tag at the top of the main content, and then break out other sub topics with H2-H6 tags as appropriate. Make sure to use your keywords in these headings and in the content, but once again don’t overdo it.

9- Set Up Internal Linking Structure

I think that internal linking is one of the most commonly overlooked things for most sites. In fact, Ken Lyons wrote a great post about it that goes into more detail than I can in this post: Want More Link Juice? Here’s an Easy Way to Get It

10- Decide on a Consistent Title Structure

A site should use the same title structure throughout the site. Pick your convention and stick with it. A good format to follow is to have a phrase that includes main keywords for the page and describes what the page is about, followed by a separator (- or | are common), and then your brand name. For example, “Professional SEO Services for Organic Website Optimization | SEO.com”. Keep these titles to under 65-70 characters so they don’t get truncated in the search results.

11- Include Meta Descriptions on Every Page

Since most of the search engines can choose to use your meta description as your snippet in the search results, you should have a unique one written for every page. Include the main keywords and a call to action to encourage clicks. DON’T just make this tag a list of keywords.

12- Allow Inclusion for Other Meta Tags (canonical, robots, etc.)

If you’re using any kind of tracking codes or other things on your site that create duplicate URLs, you’re going to want to be able to include a canonical tag on those pages. Also, depending on how your site is built you may need to include other meta tags like a robots tag and others. Make sure your site’s back end allows for this when necessary.

13- Incorporate Social Media Sharing Buttons

In case you missed it, social media is a pretty big thing right now. I’m not a big fan of the generic ShareThis button, but you need to have some kind of social media sharing buttons on your products and other important pages. Do some research to decide which social networks are best for your site and then stick with those.

More general information about social media:

• 4 Ways Any Business Can Benefit From Social Media
• So Your Industry Is Boring – Don’t Let That Keep You Out of Social Media

14- Install Analytics Tracking

If you don’t have any kind of analytics tracking installed, you have no way to tell where you traffic is coming from, what’s working, and lots of other crucial information. Pick a solution and get it installed. Popular ones include:

• Google Analytics
• Omniture
• Mint
• StatCounter
• And a lot more…

Make sure that the software you go with will allow you to block your office IP address, track conversions, ecommerce revenues generated through different online sources, and anything else that will help you to understand what is actually affecting your bottom line.

15- Set up and Verify Webmaster Tools Account

Through Google Webmaster Tools you can find out a lot about how Google sees your site, and can give them indications on how to handle certain parameters, submit your XML sitemap, and be notified of problems they find with your site. Bing’s Webmaster Center is coming along, so it’s worth it to go ahead and verify that one as well.

16- Follow Web Standards for HTML, CSS, and Database Programming

The more you follow standards, the easier it will be for someone else to come along later and make changes or modify the site. It’s a real problem when a site’s backend code or database is so complex that it has to be rebuilt later in order for it to be changed.

17- Generate an XML Sitemap

It only takes a few minutes to do it, but once the site is live make sure you create and XML sitemap and submit it to the major search engines through their webmaster tools accounts. It’s even better if you can set this up so that it automatically updates and pings the search engines whenever a change is made.

18- Create a Robots.txt File

When you create your robots.txt file make sure that you are disallowing any pages or directories that you don’t want the search engines crawling. Standard examples would be login pages, search results pages, and shopping cart pages. You should also include a link to your XML sitemap as well. Also, make sure you test this file in your Google Webmaster Tools account to make sure it is working correctly.

Here’s a great site that talks more in detail about how to create a robots.txt file: About /robots.txt

If you follow these 18 guidelines you’ll launch a site that is in great shape as far as SEO is concerned. If you’re an SEO, feel free to add anything else to this list in the comments.

Using different methods and different tools, it is very easy to follow what people are saying about your brand. When someone references your brand, you can immediately reach out to that individual and thank them (if it is a good mention) and ask them for a link to your website. You might even ask for specific anchor text to be used and leverage that opportunity for maximum SEO effectiveness. These are some of the easiest, most beneficial, and natural looking links you can acquire to diversify your link portfolio.

What if you took this a step further? What if you used these methods and tools to monitor chatter in your industry and around your keywords and keyphrases? You could not only promote your brand by answering people’s questions, but you could find additional link partners with those people who are already talking about your industry and the specific keywords you are targeting.

There are many different tools that can be leveraged in finding these link building opportunities. I will discuss my favorites and how I use each of them below.

Trackur

Trackur is a full on, brand monitoring service created by Andy Beal. They have a free version where you can have one search query saved and monitored on a regular basis. Most might think that one saved search query is lame, but I run dozens of keywords on a regular basis through Trackur. You just run them one at a time and export the results into a .csv file. I can then take the file and see who is talking about my brand or keywords and where. I can then reach out to them and attempt to create strong link partnerships. Trackur will deliver news, blog, twitter, and other current results. I have found it to be quite extensive and worth every minute of my time.

Replyz

I would classify Replyz, as a real time search engine that delivers questions from individuals who are trying to learn about a particular topic, whether it be a brand or a keyword. Within Replyz, anyone can tap into the real-time stream and monitor keywords, keyphrases, brand names, and just about any thing else being asked on Twitter and on Replyz. When someone asks a question and mentions the words that you are monitoring, it is automatically added to your dashboard. Once it is added to your dashboard, you can easily answer it from your Replyz account, thus promoting your brand.

Reaching out to these individuals first is crucial to building their trust with your website and what you have to offer them. If you portray yourself as an authority in the space, you might even get a link out of it.

Openbook

Openbook is also another real-time search engine where you can search Facebook updates about any keyword, keyphrase, or brand and see what people are talking about. Unlike Twitter’s free for all when connecting with people, Facebook requires you to connect via friend requests and direct messages. The upside of connecting via friend requests and direct messages is that you can build a rapport with those who are willing to let you into their friend circle and leverage those relationships to build your business and ask for links.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is probably my least favorite method to monitoring brand names and keywords, however, it does provide some value so it is at least worth a mention. Within Google alerts you can monitor different search terms and Google will deliver news, blogs, video, and discussions around those search terms to the RSS reader of your choice. I pull it into my Google Reader, but you can take the feed URL supplied and monitor it wherever your heart desires. In Google Alerts, I tend to monitor brand mentions and visit those sites talking about my brand and ensure that they are linking to my website. If not, I contact the editor and ask for a link. This seems to work better if the mention is recent. The older the mention gets, the less success I seem to have with this tactic.

Social Mention

Social Mention is like Google Alerts, but for social media. Just like Google Alerts, you can search on brand names and keywords being discussed in the social media sphere and leverage those opportunities to obtain links. Some of the sites they monitor are Identica, Twitter, Youtube, Delicious, Photobucket, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, Techmeme, Yahoo News, Myspace, Faves, and many others.

Whos Talkin

Whos Talkin is also a social media search tool that should be used in conjunction with Social Mention. Whos Talking searches blogs, news, networks, videos, images, forums, and tags and delivers relevant search results around the brand name or keyword searched on. This tool will not only help you find link acquisition opportunities, but see what the competition is doing in the different realms so you can catch up with or stay ahead of them in the different spaces.

There will be some overlap when using all of these tools, but I have found it to be very minimal and very effective to build natural looking links that will not only help increase your search engine rankings, but also drive relevant traffic to your websites.

If you have any other tools that work really well, please share with us in the comment section.

I saw a post on twitter the other day that essentially said, “Anyone can do SEO, but most do not”

Though I understood what the intent of the comment was (meaning people just never get around to doing the work) it  hit me like a ton of bricks. In the past, I might have wholeheartedly agreed with that statement, but I do not agree with it now.

That would be the same as saying “anyone can repair their own car, but most do not.” The reality is, physically someone may well be capable of doing it (just like they could in any profession), but the key ingredient is the knowledge. Without the know-how, trying to repair your own car will only get you a car that is more broken than when you started. The same could be said for the website rankings of someone who tried to implement DIY (do-it-yourself) SEO without sound SEO knowledge.

I have spent a lot of time learning how to do search engine optimization and then practiced it by implementing it on my own projects as well as that of the clients I have worked with. While to me much of it seems simple enough, I recognize that it is that way because of the years I have spent learning it. Continual learning is essential in this industry because things change so often and so frequently. Many principles of search engine optimization that I learned when I started are no longer best practices.

At one point I worked as a coach teaching people how to build their own Internet business. From that experience, after coaching thousands of clients, I learned there is some truth to the statement that “…most do not.”  Lack of time and dedication is always the culprit in failed DIY SEO.

That is not to say that everyone should rush out and get an SEO proposal from an SEO firm. DIY SEO can be the best solution for some cases. The question, is it the right choice for you? I will let you make that call, but here are some factors that I would consider when making that decision.

1.    How comfortable are you with your SEO knowledge? Have you ever done SEO successfully? Do you feel confident in your ability to get rankings?

2.    How tough is your competition? Even the best SEO minds recruit help to get all of the work done to get top rankings in those extremely competitive markets. If your competition is fierce, how many resources do you have to help you get everything done?

3.    How much time do you have? As much as business owners want to save money so they can make more money, many of them spread themselves too thin. SEO takes a lot of consistent time and attention. Very few business owners can really do that.

4.    Is it cost effective for you? Even when a business owner is comfortable with search engine optimization and their ability to get high rankings, it does not always make sense from a money standpoint. Each case is different and a business owner should do the math to make sure that the time they will spend doing SEO is the best financial use of their time.

5.    Have you received an SEO proposal before? Every case is different and some SEO companies will provide a customized proposal based on each circumstance. Simply put, do not assume because you know how much someone else is paying a company to do their SEO, that your proposal will be the same. Get the numbers to help you make your decision based on facts, not fiction.