There are so many business owners resorting to paying for ads on search engines such as google, yahoo, and bing, all spending ridiculous amounts of money to rank high in search results. Most of these paid campaigns are unsuccessful and literally bankrupt advertising budgets in no time with no tangible results. There are many reasons for this, and most center around “reading between the lines” in terms of paid search engine marketing such as the following:

1. Organic results are where EVERY searcher starts and ends their search. In other words, people know what’s a paid ad and what isn’t these days. And they tend to ignore the paid ones.
2. Only 12% of searchers have EVER clicked on paid search ads. Wouldn’t it be a better strategy to target this other 88% of searchers?
3. If you want to rank high on competitive search terms, you’re looking at very expensive bidding rates that always go up in price.
4. Organic search engine results are perceived as coming from a higher credit authority. There isn’t a PPC (pay per click) consultant in the world that will tell you this but it’s absolutely true and this point alone is the essence of why organic search results are so powerful.
5. Organic search is a long term asset to your business at absolutely no cost, no matter how many times searchers click your link – which basically translates into the fact that organic search is less expensive long term to grow you business.
6. Paid search engine campaigns are typically in the range of 3-5K per month for their search campaign. Each month… every month… forever (or until you run out of money or go bankrupt.)

Organic search results can be achieved by identifying keywords and tags that relate to a particular business and writing articles, blogs, press releases, social media, mobile media, and a combination of all in a manner where you can actually control what the search engines say about you and your business.

What you need to take away from this is that paid search is VERY expensive and most of a company’s search engine optimization objectives and many more can be achieved through organic search results. Lets face it – if you want to rank highly in the search engines, wouldn’t it be better if it didn’t cost you money when a prospect clicks on your link AND they perceived you as a credible authority? Requesting your free i-Skore is the key to beginning the process.

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Search is taking control over purchase decisions of the masses. That’s a fact and one that’s backed up by statistics recently published on the HubSpot blog.  So here’s a recap of a dozen jaw-dropping stats that should make you request your i-Skore right now and get started on the road to controlling what the search engines say about you and your business:

1. 78% of Internet users conduct product research online.  That means YOUR product and or YOUR service – and Google has become your salesperson, good or bad.
2. In the past year, Web-based email usage dropped a staggering 59% among 12-17 year olds. How many times have we stressed the importance of mobile marketing?
3. 78% of business people use their mobile device to check email. Is your website mobile optimized?
4. 40% of US smartphone owners compare prices on their mobile device while in-store, shopping for an item.  Smartphones are geting smarter and smarter. Are you stuck on traditional website marketing techniques?
5. 200 Million Americans have registered on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. Many of these people are your prospects – how are they going to find you? (HINT: Search Engines!)
6. 91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email they previously opted-in to. It’s harder and harder to keep a prospect’s attention with so much competing noise.
7. 84% of 25-34 year-olds have left a favorite website because of intrusive or irrelevant advertising. In other words, people don’t want to be sold to – they want information on their own terms, which usually translates into a Google search.
8. 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.  Simply put, no matter how much time you need to invest, a blog is an essential marketing item in today’s social media landscape… and search engines love them. Period.
9. 41% of B2B companies and 67% of B2C companies have acquired a customer through Facebook. If you’re not on Facebook and haven’t created a Twitter account yet, stop reading this post and do so now. It’s 2011… don’t wait any longer because social media is NOT a fad that’s going to go away anytime soon. Can it be more obvious that your business is suffering without a Facebook presence?
10. The number of marketers who say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business has increased 83% in just 2 years. And this is just common sense. It’s hard to disagree with those numbers. Yet many business owners remain stubborn on the facts.
11. Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.  Translation: the more you blog, the more likely your business will grow. Why wouldn’t you do that? There is no excuse. If you don’t want to blog yourself, hire someone to do it for you. 55% is nothing to sneeze at and can make the difference between a struggling business and a thriving one.
12. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing. Which is to say you need to incorporate a social media and mobile strategy to your marketing efforts or watch your competitors succeed at your expense.

We can provide all the services you need to fulfill all the above talking points – and at a price that’s a fraction of what “social media consultants’ will generally charge you. (Plus probably do it better and get better results). It all starts with requesting a complimentary i-Skore. Do it for your business sake – and please: stop thinking you can be successful without considering social media and search engine marketing. People are Google-ing you… don’t you want a say in what those results are saying?

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Direct from Google’s blog, today Google announced the completion of their new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than their last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content ever offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Read the entire post here – can Google Circles be far away?

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Two years ago, Century 21 made a bold leap into social and internet marketing by converting ALL their traditional media and advertising outlets to focus 100% on search and social media. How is it working? Read this blog article for a glimpse into the mindset of a real estate agent. Keep in mind the following talking points:

• Social and seo marketing has come to be viewed as very forward-thinking
• With approximately 94% of home buyers starting their home search online, the focus is on driving these consumers directly to brokers and their agents.
• In the first year of digital strategy, Century 21 realized a 65% increase in leads to their franchisees, while decreasing the cost per lead by 50%. Since that time, they have increased leads by an additional 40% and cut their cost per lead incrementally by 33%.
• Read estate agents realize their consumers are online and that’s where they need to be too.
• With more than 500 million active users on Facebook and nearly 200 million users on Twitter, the potential for social media to market directly to consumers and industry professionals is unlimited.

What about you? Are you integrating social media and search engine marketing into your business? How do the search engines view you and your company? Find out by requesting a complimentary i-Skore today.

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Read this article from Search Engine Land by Matt Greff, where he talks about 6 simple seo tips for small businesses. However, this article is exactly why it’s not wise to attempt a “Do It Yourself strategy” when it comes to search engine optimization and search control. I know most business owners will try it themselves, see no results, and complain that SEO doesn’t work. That just is not the case! To summarize the 6 SEO tips:

1. Ensure the technical setup of your website is search engine friendly
2. Make a list of keywords you want your website to appear for
3. Ensure your homepage contains a text description with 2 or 3 of those top keywords
4. Write a page or blog post on your site that’s dedicated to each of your top keywords
5. Post links to your site and/or key pages on social sites like Facebook & Twitter
6. Ask friends or contacts to post something about you on their website

What the article DOESN’T mention is the length of time out of your day on a consistent basis the entire process above will cost you.  It’s not as easy as it sounds or look. You need to contact us today for a FREE i-skore quote to see exactly how the search engines are viewing you TODAY and what needs to be done in the future for you to stay ahead of your competition, many of whom are wasting valuable time trying to do steps 1-6 instead of doing what they do best – running their own businesses!

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According to the Content Discovery and Engagement Report, Q1 2011 from Outbrain, makers of a popular widget platform that’s used on dozens of major publisher sites such as USA Today, Slate, Newsweek and others, Search is the number one source of external traffic for content sites, handily beating social media by more than 300%.

In looking at traffic from 100 million sessions in the first quarter of this year, Outbrain found that search drove 41% of external traffic, with other content sites (31%), portals (17%) and social media (11%) coming behind.

(Outbrain lists AOL Search under the “Search” category, but AOL itself under “Portal.” Ditto for Yahoo search vs. Yahoo. Other portals include Yahoo and MSN.)

Not surprisingly, Google was the primary source of referral traffic to sites in Outbrain’s network, directing almost nine times more traffic than the average site referrer. AOL’s homepage/portal surpassed Yahoo and Facebook to the the number two spot.

Search traffic is also quality traffic, according to Outbrain’s study. Reader engagement is very high with search traffic creating the highest number of average page views per session.

Outbrain also measured reader engagement via bounce rates and “hyper engaged readership” — i.e., readers who view more than five pages in a session. In both of those cases, Content Sites were tops on the charts (lowest bounce rates, most engaged readers), and search traffic was second. Social media traffic created the highest bounce rate per session in the study.

News and entertainment sites make up more than 50% of the publishers that work with Outbrain’s platform, so the results are skewed somewhat toward that type of reader. So, while it may not be indicative of web traffic on the whole, it’s still an interesting look at what’s driving traffic to content sites. You can read more and download the full study on Outbrain’s blog.

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You’ve probably already seen this video countless times, but it still functions as a clear signal as to where you should be with your business and why you need to integrate social media into your business marketing strategy. So we’ll ask one more time: Do you think social media a fad?…

Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

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Among major brands, those in the automobile, finance, and food service industries attracted the most complaint-related searches in 2010. That’s according to a new study from the marketing agency Web Liquid Group.

The 2011 Customer Complaint Index measures search activity in the Google Keyword Research Tool involving complaints (i.e., broad match results for “(brand name) complaints”) and applies the data to Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report.

When it comes to raw complaint searches, no one beats the auto industry. Toyota received the highest amount of complaint-related searches in 2010, and four of the top seven brands are car manufacturers. Beyond the top 10, four others — Hyundai, BMW, Volkswagen and Lexus — were all in the top 30. Three of the top 10 as shown above were restaurants: McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King.

However, when looking at complaint searches as a percentage of the overall searches for a brand, the financial industry dominates. Even though several car companies topped the list, complaints represent a relatively small fraction of the overall search activity for Toyota, Ford, etc. But that’s not the case with financial services brands.

Regarding mobile devices, four of the top five brands getting complaint queries were restaurants. And the same trend exists when comparing mobile complaint searches as a percentage of overall mobile search activity; in that case, the top five brands are all in the food service industry (Burger King, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, McDonald’s and KFC).

What does this all tell you? It means that if you’re in the Auto, Restaurant, or Financial Services industry, you need to control the results being shown when people are searching for your brand. Period! You don’t have to be an industry giant like McDonalds – people are searching your brand no matter how small you are (take that to the bank), so request a complimentary i-skore and let us help you determine a strategy on how to make search control work for your specific business.

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Hear that sound? It’s the sound of social media consultants banging their heads wondering why some businesses have yet to incorporate Twitter into their social media strategy.

Twitter will soon be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the first tweet being sent and they recently released figures to show how huge the service now is. (By the way, this is all just in 5 years! Where will YOUR business startup project be in 5 years – why not shoot for the moon!?!).

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@jack) sent the first Tweet. The data below shows that on every measure of growth and engagement, Twitter is growing at a record pace.

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
• 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
• 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).
• 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
• 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
• 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
• 8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

Using Twitter correctly can greatly impact your search engine presence. In fact, Small Businesses Doubled Their Use of Twitter in 2010. So here’s the big question: If you’re NOT using Twitter, what are you possibly waiting for? Not convinced of its popularity? Not sure how it can impact your business? Think it may be a fad? Regardless of the reason, you need to start today. And if you’re too overwhelmed on just the thought of starting to Tweet, contact us and ask about our Social Media platform where we can do it all for you! Request your complimentary i-skore to get started.

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We have reached the intersection of social media and search engine result generation and we’ve concluded that controlling the results others see when they search for you and your business on the major search engines is of the upmost importance.

Read this article about How Social Has Turned Search on its Head for some jaw-dropping stats about why you absolutely need to incorporate social media into your business strategy.

And even after reading the article and knowing full well why social media is so important, you probably still won’t do it because of one simple reason: it takes too much time. And takes even more time to do it effectively.

So what’s the answer? Have someone do it for you! Don’t have the $6,000/month to pay them? Request a complimentary i-skore which allows us to take a snapshot of how the search engines view you now and exactly what you need to have done in the future to harness the power of internet search. The i-skore functions as an “X-Ray”, per se, of where you currently are – and you’ll probably be presently surprised as to what it would actually cost to have a social media campaigned developed specifically for your business as well.

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