I Do Web Marketing

This is a guest post by Christian Arno. Interested in contributing to the IDWM Blog? Contact me today!

The World Wide Web has undoubtedly opened a host of opportunities for businesses and organizations of all sizes. The truly global, all-encompassing nature of the Internet has made it easier than ever to reach across linguistic and cultural divides and to target new markets that may once have been out of reach. In theory, no one with an Internet connection is ever more than a mouse-click away from your products, services, blog or personal site. In practice, of course, there’s far more to it than simply setting up your own little corner of cyberspace and waiting for the traffic to arrive. Your content should be both accessible and appealing but people must be able to find it in the first place. This is where SEO and keyword research comes in.

Give keywords the attention they deserve

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of increasing your website’s visibility or ranking in search engine results. There are many different aspects to SEO but the effective use of keywords remains one of the most important. Put simply, keywords are the words or terms that people type into a search engine to look for relevant websites and pages and all search engines take keywords into account when determining your site’s or page’s ranking in its search results.

Don’t rely on automatic translation

Automatic translation programs such as Google Translate and Yahoo! Babel Fish can be handy but, even if you use them to translate or partially translate your content, you should never rely solely on machine translation for your keywords. Alternative terms, colloquialisms, abbreviations and other variations may all give better results. A literal French translation of the term ‘bullet train’, for example, would yield a nonsense phrase. In France, where the high-speed train was developed, a more common term is the acronym TGV (‘Train à Grande Vitesse’ or, literally, ‘high speed train’). In neighbouring Belgium, meanwhile, high speed trains are often referred to as the ‘Thalys,’ referring to the name of the major operator running said trains between Paris and Brussels.
Without a little local knowledge you might never be aware of such regional variations and they certainly wouldn’t emerge from automatic translations. Working with native speaking translators will help you identify the most suitable keyword options.

Build on what you already have

This doesn’t mean you have to throw away the meticulous research you’ve already conducted to find your optimum English language keywords. Translate your English terms and brainstorm foreign language alternatives before running them through an analytical tool. Some words, including proper nouns such as brand names and certain technical terms, may well be the same in English as the language of your target market. Some ‘straight’ dictionary or machine translations may also cross over but your English language keywords should serve as a jumping off point rather than any sort of definitive list.

Test keywords thoroughly

Once you’ve brainstormed your potential foreign language keywords, you’ll want to test them out. Tools such as Google AdWords let you see how popular a particular search term is. It will also provide alternative suggestions and give you an idea of the level of competition you’re facing for each particular keyword.

Go beyond Google

It’s also worth remembering that, while Google is the single most widely used search engine worldwide, other search engines have a greater market share within certain markets. In China, for example, Baidu is the most commonly used search engine while Yandex is the biggest player in Russia. Most major search engines have their own analytical tools and it may be worth concentrating your efforts on these alternatives to Google for localized sites within their spheres of influence. Crucially, different search engines prefer different levels of keyword density. Where Google prefers a density of 2-3%, Yahoo! Japan, the most popular search engine in Japan, prefers a far higher concentration of 7-8%.

Keep up to date

Thorough initial research is essential but the Internet is in a constant state of flux and keyword trends can rapidly change. What works well today may not be quite so effective tomorrow so you should check your keywords’ effectiveness at regular intervals. Check the terms your rivals are using and check your own logs and stats in conjunction with tools such as Google Analytics to see which keywords have already been successful in bringing people your way. Freshness of content also has a bearing on rankings and keyword-rich blogs and news posts can be a great way of keeping your site at the top of the pile.

Your multilingual keyword research is not a one-off task. It’s an ongoing process but the benefits can be worth all the effort if they lead to you reaching a whole new audience.

About the author:
Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, one of the world’s leading providers of translation services and website localization across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 has worked its way to becoming the web’s favorite translation company, working with more than four thousand translators and clients in over sixty countries. Follow Christian (@l24ca) and Lingo24 (@Lingo24) on Twitter.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is a guest post by Steve Pronger, a Business Analyst for SEO Works.

Make your marketing dollars stretch further with these seven free small business online marketing strategies.

Small business online marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote a burgeoning company, build their brand image and boost sales. For a business that doesn’t have a bricks and mortar site, a website may be their main sales funnel and source of sales supplemented perhaps with telephone or email sales. So without further ado, here are five free ways you can improve your bottom line on a budget.

Search Engine Optimisation

When you run a Pay-Per-Click campaign, you are paying every time someone clicks through to your website but indexing your website on search engines is free. Hiring an SEO company should be seen as an asset to your business not a cost but if you feel you cannot afford to hire an online marketing consultant when you first launch your business, you can read marketing blogs, watch seminars and educate yourself on the SEO process.

Google Places Optimisation

Google Places is a free small business online marketing product ideal for companies that do not have a web presence. With the launch of Place Search late last year, Place Pages started to blend with organic listings in search results. Pages can be optimised by adding business details, hours of operation, a keyword-rich description, and so on. You can also add images and videos to your page, upload seasonal menus and sales brochures.

Social media networking

Social media marketing is another economical way to promote your business without a huge initial outlay. Creating accounts on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, is free and it’s an excellent source of pre-qualified leads for your website. The premise behind social networking is to value and give advice rather than openly promote your business. It’s best to get a dedicated person to monitor and update your accounts daily.

Off – page profile (link building and citations)

An essential component of Search Engine Optimisation is maintaining your off-page profile. When you have back links from quality and relevant websites to your site or you citations on quality and relevant websites, this is seen as a validation or ‘vote’ by Search Engines and can boost your ranking significantly. Put half an hour minimum aside per day to work on your citation or link building activities to reap the rewards of a higher ranking.

Online reputation marketing

Every small to medium business irrespective of what industry you are working in to be aware of what their clients and customers are saying about them in the virtual world. This is critical for companies in the tourism industry such as hotels, restaurants and bars. A small business should put together an ORM strategy together so there is a written company line and policy on how to respond to negative and positive reviews.

Website design

You may not be able to afford a new website design but you can make small changes to your website such as uploading high-quality images of your products and services. The saying that ‘an image says a thousand words’ applies well to small business online marketing. Look at elements such as your copywriting to see if it is current and relevant, test your call to actions and landing pages, add testimonials (see below) and so on.

Testimonials and reviews

People like to buy from businesses they think are credible and trustworthy and one of the ways you can earn trust is by adding testimonials and reviews to your website. It is best to have a dedicated landing page and add this to the navigation with a search-friendly URL. Testimonials are a very effective online marketing tool for small businesses – remember to get authorisation to use them on your site and campaigns.

A small to medium company may not have a lot of money to compete with the big boys and larger competitors in the offline world but the internet makes it a more level playing ground. By setting aside time and resources and thinking outside the box when it comes to small business online marketing campaigns, you can outrank, outperform and outwit your business rivals without making a huge dent in the advertising budget.

Steve Pronger is a Business Analyst for SEO Works, a leading Australian Search Engine Optimisation company.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is a guest post from Sachin of Web Profits. If you are interested in providing a guest post, please contact me.

Because we have seen huge growth online marketing, social media marketing (namely, Facebook marketing), and the importance of effective website design, websites are doing more for us – even printing services companies are using intelligent websites to deliver us better products, faster and at much lower costs.

• Websites that work for you. If we want to print a brochure, we should print a brochure. A website should do a lot more than just show people your business. You want to think about what your website can do for you. Can it help you with payments? Can it help you screen clients? Can it help you gather information on your potential customers? Smart websites do more than just market to your potential business; they help you do your business. There are companies who have greatly reduced their other business costs with their marketing budget. Money that was originally allocated for marketing purposes was used to build a smart website, which in turn, reduced the number of manual operations with clients. Think of a website as an application, a piece of software, that everyone can use to do business with you.
• Online print companies. There will always be a place for printing companies. The days of setting up our logo and brand image being painful are long gone. Just as we have mentioned above, smart websites employed by online print agencies has meant a huge reduction in costs and a greater increase in delivery speed. Using these services will mean you can arrange all of your needs in one order, add items you want in the future, including novelty gifts, and all you will need to do is logon, order and pay. Your details and your design are stored in the online application. If you can use a simple word processing application, you can arrange all your printing needs in a matter of minutes with these systemised and easy-to-use websites.
• Content production. Writing, photographing and video-ing your own content is one of the best ways to get free advertising and communications online. You can submit your materials to popular sites, and develop an interesting blog of your own. Do not forget you can apply this strategy to other media, such as local news stations, newspapers and magazines. They are all looking for good content. If you know your area, and you know what your market needs to know, share you knowledge and share your authority in your field.

There is a lot that Internet-based communications has done to help other traditional marketing tools, and more importantly, it has highlighted that we can all demonstrate our skills with content sharing. Demonstrate you talents, and let the web do more work for you.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

You’ve all heard the statement, “Content is king,” and I do believe it is paramount to the success of any SEO campaign. However, isn’t the goal of great content to generate links? Links that build your authority and drive traffic to your site? Great content that never gets seen won’t do anything for you. So if content is the car you ride in on, then links are the engine that makes it run.

Whether you like it or not, you have a job to do AFTER the content is written. Simply put, you must promote it! Don’t just promote any and every piece of content though. You want to promote your best work. Content that you really feel has an impact within your industry, or something that you feel should be shared. The general rule of thumb is this content will not be self-serving in any way. So exactly what type of content can be created to attract links and traffic from other sources?

Here are a few ideas to help you get started with creating your masterpiece:

1. Industry reports – create a report that is conducted from surveys and interviews. Look at Marketing Sherpa and their industry reports for guidance.
2. Infographics – These are all the rage nowadays. Show your information in a visual format, don’t have readers read a bunch of text.
3. Helpful guides – have something to share that could use it in an easy to digest how-to guide format?

There are other ways to generate links, but they all generally require doing some additional work and creating something unique. The question then becomes, “now how do I promote the content?”

This requires using your social networks, doing social bookmarking, asking people you have relationships with to help spread the word about the content you have developed. Be sure the content itself is shareable. Remind people within the content to tweet it, email it, like it, etc. The actual process of promoting will be something else that I go into more detail with a helpful guide (see #3 above:D), so stay tuned!

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

As I deal with prospects, and those newer to online marketing on a regular basis, I am always fascinated with people that assume all they have to do is stuff their web page with keywords. I’m also entertained by those so called SEO experts who try to make themselves out to be rocket scientists. It really isn’t difficult, but it can involve more things depending on your business vertical. Content is a big thing no matter the vertical.

The reason I say your business vertical impacts your SEO effectiveness, is because if you are a company that creates the next generation smart phone, you are going to have a lot of people linking to you and discussing your product (provided there is something groundbreaking to discuss). That said, if you are a financial planner or tax advisor, you aren’t going to have that same type of content that can be linked to and shared in social circles. So you are going to have to go about your SEO efforts in a little different manner. I will be posting more about content and links in my next blog post. For this moment though, I wanted to discuss some realizations you need to have about SEO. Given that today is Halloween, I thought I would share some scary truths about SEO that you need to know:

1. It isn’t the end all be all
SEO should not be your only form of marketing. Do not bother with SEO if you have a $200 marketing budget, it will not work and you will be another person complaining about how SEO doesn’t work.

2. It’s a waiting game
Simply put, there is no magic wand. You don’t just SEO a web page and then it magically appears on the top of search results. Unless it is a search result for some random 8 or 10 word phrase.

3. Doing the wrong things can hurt you
Just ask JC Penny after Google’s Panda update. Keyword stuffing, buying links and link farms are dangerous tactics that can get you quicker results, but also has the down side of removing you from Google’s index entirely.

4. It isn’t a set it and forget it marketing strategy
You need to continuously think of new ways to get your message out. Create new and fresh content for your blog or as a downloadable guide, always look for link opportunities, etc.

5. People in your social circles have influence on your rankings
The more prestigious people are in your social networks, the more power you have on your rankings. You want them talking about you because this can positively influence your rankings.

6. Your customers have an influence on your rankings
Making customers happy allows you the opportunity to receive good reviews. Good reviews can impact your results in a positive manner. Alternatively, the reverse is also true. Bad business practices are now punished with negative search results.

7. You need to write…a LOT
Search engines love fresh new content, so give it to them! It is much easier than you might think. Follow industry blogs by Googling “[Industry] blog” to see what people are talking about in your industry. If that doesn’t give you any ideas, than try taking a contrarian approach to someone’s stance on something.

8. The rules always changing
SEO is an ever-evolving industry. 4 years ago who knew what Google Places was? Now it is a critical driver of traffic and business for a number of companies out there. There are over 400 changes to Google’s algorithms every single year. Stay up to date by reading blogs like this. J

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

There continues to be new reasons nearly everyday to choose online marketing and social media strategies over any other form of marketing for just about all businesses. The United States continues to be the leading example of what will follow in most other markets, and definitely markets like Australia, Europe, Latin America, and even more so nowadays, the Middle East. Here are some of the recent new records, market leaders and new milestones in the world of online marketing and business.

• One Billion. Google continues to make new records, and clearly dominates the absolute majority of the search engine marketing market. Google just recorded over one billion unique users for the month of May. This is a milestone for any website, and a milestone and another boost in business for the search engine giant. It must be stressed this figure is of ‘unique’ visitors. This is clear evidence of the continued increase of internet users, and even more reason to work with those who specialise in SEO (search engine optimisation). Having your website, article or webpage come up at the top of those search results continues to be one of the best ways to market yourself. At the same time, Google is about to be put under a serious spotlight, by an investigation of US Federal regulators looking into Google crowding out competitors, particularly in the area of maps. It does not take much investigation to know this is the case. Maps also forms the basis of Google Places, an area that has become very important to small business.
• Facebook Ads. Facebook has increased its share of the online advertising market. This is a little different to the search engine advertising market of Google, and the two should not be confused. Facebook has now become the largest generator of advertising on the internet according to a survey by eMarketer, and has taken the top spot from Yahoo. The same company (eMarketer) predicts that Facebook’s advertising revenue will reach US$2.2 billion this year. For a company that many still believe doesn’t have a real revenue stream, the figures do a lot of talking. There is a lot to be said about including a targeted Facebook advertising campaign into any online marketing and awareness strategy.
• LinkedIn. LinkedIn, which has a huge popularity in itself, without competing with the likes of Facebook, has taken a leaf from Facebook’s advertising platform. LinkedIn has just started its own new socal ad formats as of late June, 2011. The advertising platform is designed to leverage the actions of members on the site. For example, if you recommend a company or ‘like’ or ‘follow’ a company, LinkedIn will use this data to give users a more targeted advertisement. This is not just about what you see, but how other users could interact with you and those advertisements. The example LinkedIn provides, gives a very good explanation of their strategy. “LinkedIn could put up an ad for a Google job (sponsored by Google) that will show people in your network who work at Google”. This could help you in targeting those who could refer you. Other examples need to be demonstrated, but because of the huge popularity and clear demographics of LinkedIn, the potential is extremely exciting.

The world of online marketing is still playing second fiddle to the budgets for TV advertising, but it is only a short time before this situation changes.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is a guest post from Brendan Egan of Simple SEO Group. If you are interested in providing a guest post, please contact me.

Bloggers around the world know the importance of getting their blog and blog posts ranked on search engines.  While some bloggers depend on referral traffic from other websites to deliver their visitors, the vast majority of bloggers receive their traffic from search engines.  In a recent survey, it was estimated that over 65% of blog traffic comes from a search engine.

With these statistics in mind, you might be wondering what you can do to your own blog to make it more search engine friendly.  Here’s 5 great tips to get the most search engine traffic possible on your blog.

1) SEO Plug Ins: One major aspect of SEO is having a good URL, Title, and description for your blog posts.  If you’re using WordPress or really any blogging platform out there, you can search for SEO plug ins that will allow you to control your URL, Title, and other important aspects of your post.  Make sure you optimize these aspects to be reflective of the keywords you want that blog post ranking for.

2) Write Quality Content: This should come without saying but you’d be surprised how many people out there don’t write quality content for their blog.  “Today we are having a sale come in to our store” is not a quality blog post.  While it may be helpful to write a blog post about your sale today, it would be much better to put “Today we are having a sale come in to our store” as your title or headline, and then expand on this by writing a 200-500 word blog post outlining the sale, what you are offering, and providing other details.  Not only will this help with drawing people in but it will also help with SEO.

3) Never Copy/Paste: Duplicate content is like a bullet to the heart these days.  Never go around on the internet and copy/paste content you think is interesting or helpful. If you find something interesting, write a blog post about it on your own and link to it during your blog post so readers can find the original resource if they want.  Providing duplicate content will most definitely hurt your website’s rankings, especially after Google’s most recent updates this year.

4) Tag/Categorize Your Posts: Adding tags and categories to your posts will not only help you with organization, help your readers find what they are looking for, but it will also help with SEO.  Your blog software will insert your tags/categories throughout your post and then will create a page for these tags/categories with other similar blog posts from your blog.  This gives search engines another keyword rich page to rank and will help search engines understand the relationship between multiple blog posts.

5) Find Similar Blogs And Provide Quality Comments: Ok, this has gotten me in trouble before for posting, so let’s be clear: This is NOT comment spamming which is going to a blog and writing “Great post!” then expecting that to get approved with your link.  Go to similar blogs and read their blogs (it might give you ideas for future blogs) and upon reading write a meaningful, relevant comment and enter your URL in the URL field.  As long as you are actually contributing to their blog, they will likely approve your comment which will give you a great new back link.

While following these steps won’t get you to the first page of search results for a competitive keyword like “Stock Market”, it will  get you to the first page for long tail keywords, for example “Learn How To Trade Options In The Stock Market”.  I’ve seen dozens of posts on our blog and our client’s blogs get ranked on the top page of search results just by following these simple tips, and chances are following these suggestions will only take you an extra 10-15 minutes per blog post, but will help drive much more traffic to your blog.

About The Author: Brendan Egan is the owner of Simple SEO Group, a small business online marketing firm specializing in small business SEO. Brendan can be contacted at SimpleSEOGroup.com

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

This is an update to the original list I wrote a couple of years ago. I felt it was necessary to update this list as a number of statistics and sources are outdated from that post. So, without further ado, here is the 2011 version of the top 10 reasons to use SEO:

#10 – According to data from Search Engine Land, there are 2 million search queries performed per minute on Google. A total of 98.8 billion search queries are performed across Google, Yahoo, and Bing in a given month. 40% of queries are local searches.

#9 – According to Avinash Kaushik of Google, 14% of clicks on a search results page are on PPC ads, while 86% of clicks are on natural search result listings.

#8 – 9 out of 10 people use a search engine when looking for products and services.

#7 – Over a quarter (27 percent) of small businesses have a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan in place, up from 19 percent a year ago. It is only going to get more competitive!

#6 – Online marketing is currently 13.3% of all total advertising spend.

#5 – Online advertising spend expected to be $36.3 billion by 2014 and has seen an average of 10% growth year over year.

#4 – Forrester estimates that both US online retail will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015, reaching $279 billion in 2015.

#3 – Everything is measureable, since you can utilize tools like Google Analytics.

#2 – Your website is a virtual salesman that works 24/7/365, no sick days or paid time off.

#1 – Best way to initiate a direct response as it is the only form of marketing that puts you in front of targeted prospective customers who are looking exactly for what you offer at a point when they are ready to buy.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

In part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series, we talked about how to measure your online marketing efforts and specifically what metrics and tools you should be working with for your SEO and social media campaigns. But in order for this information to be meaningful, you need a concrete strategy with clearly defined goals that will drive your marketing decisions.

Measuring return on investment in the online marketing world necessitates a clear understanding of what you expect from your efforts. The measuring we’ve talked about previously is really the final step of the process. Let’s take a look at what comes before metrics analysis in order to define success.

1. Define Goals

Of course, your big picture goals will be to attract customers and win conversions, but those aren’t specific enough to be helpful in the creation of your marketing strategy. Break these big goals down into smaller increments such as:

• Increase Twitter retweets by 2%
• Offer informative content to encourage retweets
• Create a new blog post each week

Notice how this list begins with the general goal of increasing retweets and funnels down to the specific, actionable goal of creating new content.

2. Create Content

Content creation is the proverbial horse that must come before the cart of social media or SEO promotion. Your promotion efforts will fail miserably if they’re not undergirded by solid content creation. Well written content places you in a position of trust and gives people a reason to keep visiting your site and recommending you to friends. Even Google understands the important of regularly updated content and will give priority in the SERPs to websites that update frequently. Start by researching keywords that your target audience is searching for and focusing on what problems you can solve for your readers.

3. Promote Content

With your content creation strategy underway, you can focus on promotion efforts through SEO and social media. Use search engine optimization and social media venues to keep your content in front of your target audience. Remember that the better your content, the more likely your followers will be to share it with their friends, generating greater interest and brand recognition for you.

4. Measure Success

This is where you come full circle and can begin to measure the results of your online marketing strategy. The metrics we talked about in previous posts will show you how effective your strategy is, giving you the information you need to make educated changes based on measurable results.

What do YOU think? Anything I may have overlooked? Feel free to share some of your own success stories!

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Having discussed the metrics and tools best suited to understanding the success of your SEO strategy in Part Two of this series, it’s time now to turn our attention to social media. You can approach social media ROI by seeking to determine how well your customers are engaging with you through various outlets.

Social Media Metrics to Follow

The success of your social media strategy depends on how well your target audience interacts with you. You can get a feel for customer engagement using the following key metrics:

●      Facebook Likes—While it’s true that there are many ways to determine how effective your Facebook campaign is, the like button is a great place to start. If your customers “like” your page, that means they’re taking the time to read what you’re posting, they’re giving it some thought, and they’re expressing their approval.

●      Re-tweets—The re-tweet tells you that your Twitter followers have engaged with your content enough to share it with their friends. Overall, re-tweets are more important than the number of followers you have since they tell you who is engaging with your content.

●      Google +—Google + offers many of the same benefits as Facebook, but with a few new features. Google + enables you to create circles, segmenting your friend group so that you can designate particular content for particular circles. It also incorporates a video chat feature and content gathering option (similar to an RSS feed). While Google + is still very much in its infancy stage, marketers have already seen great potential for reaching a particular audience with a targeted message.

Start monitoring your Google + account by using Google Analytics to watch Google + generated website traffic as well as clicks and actions.

●      Overall Mentions—Keeping track of your overall brand mentions is the best way to determine how well your branding strategy is working for you. Find out what people are saying about your brand using the following tools:

○    Google Alerts—Setup brand related keyword and phrase alerts and receive a daily report of the overall mentions you receive in a variety of categories including news, blogs, web, and video.

○    HootSuite—A little more sophisticated than Google Alerts, HootSuite is a full social media management tool that allows you to monitor your brand mentions as well as organize them and filter them so the results are more usable, and you can also schedule post across various networks. Free version allows you to monitor up to 5 accounts!

Monitoring your social media metrics along with your SEO effectiveness will give you a good grasp of how well your online marketing efforts are reaching your intended audience. In the next post, we’ll take a look at how to bring all this information together as you formulate your best online marketing strategy.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.