By Bill Slawski

If you run a business, and own a web site, it’s not a bad idea to include the address of your site on your invoices, your business cards, within the letterhead of your stationary, and other paperwork that comes out of your office. You may even want to include that URL on shipping boxes, on your business sign, and in other places where the address might be visible.

Every few months, I like to take a walk through the small town I live in, with a pen and notepad in hand, and look for web addresses in places that I haven’t seen them before. On a normal day, I don’t think that I pay too much attention to how the Web and the world interact on a stroll through town, but I see some surprises when I start looking more closely.

My town is a University town, and most of the students are away on winter break, which made this morning quieter than it is when school is in session.

I start searching for URLs as soon as I get out of my front door, and the first one that I see is in a nearby parking lot. There’s a Marine recruiting station close by, and a number of recruiters’ cars in the lot. A number of them had written across their sides and back the Web address “marines.com” and “1-800-marines.”

As I walk past them, I decide to stop for a cup of coffee at one of the local coffee shops. Next to the credit card logos on the door of the shop is a small sign advertising a University meal plan. Students can pay for a card which they can use to buy food at different eating establishments in town, and these signs let them know which ones accept that meal card. It also acts as an advertisment for students, so that they can find out more about the program, and the URL is shown so that they can find out more about the service.

I grab the local paper while I’m getting my coffee, and start looking through it for Web addresses. A front page banner ad, below the fold, looks more like it was designed for a web portal than news print. Appropriately, it advertises a web site.

Turning through the pages of the newspaper, I’m starting to see ads that don’t carry a street address or a phone number - just a URL. I wonder how many of them are actually local businesses, and how many are located somewhere else. The advertisements are for items that could be anywhere in the world.

I finish looking through the paper, and and leave the coffee house onto Main Street, when a bus passes by. I expect a URL on the bus, and don’t see one. I’ve seen their schedules online, so I’m surprised that they don’t include their web address next to their name.

A sticker from a local band, pasted on a utility pole catches my attention, and it provides a URL for their MySpace page. Another sticker, sloppily attached to a mail pickup box a little further down the street is for the state National Guard, and shows their toll free phone number, but not a web address.

A sign at the post office provides a list of dates that the the office will be closed, but tells us that “We’re always open at usps.com.” I’ve been wondering why they didn’t choose the name “mail.gov.”

A paper company truck is stopped on Main Street, to make a delivery, and the side of their truck is a billboard for their goods. Under the sentence where they tell us that they’ve been around since 1919 is the URL for their business.

As I return home, I notice that I’ve received my mail, and on the back of one of the envelopes, I see a message that I can pay my bills online, along with a URL. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a envelope with both web address, and a call to action like that before.

I think I’ve seen more URLs on this walk than I’ve seen in previous trips through town. There are a few on business signs, and on posters in store windows, and in notices posted on the community bulletin board. Next time I try this, I’m going to have to take my phone with me, and see how well those show up on a screen for handhelds.

By Li Evans

As a online marketer with a public relations background I get pretty fired up about Public Relations companies who think that Social Media and Blogging are just something they can incorporate into their “publicity” offerings without any experience in the online world. I’ve done public relations before, and I know what goes into it, I know how to make the contacts, I know how to approach media outlets, and I know how to maintain the clients message. I’ve run successful public relations campaigns for clients that included press releases, media spots, events for the press and events for the community, so it isn’t like I come at this from an online marketer’s perspective that only online marketers should do this type of work.

There are some very experienced public relations companies out there that fully understand and grasp the effect that online media has on a company’s name, brand, products and reputation. They’ve been able to make the transition from working offline, to truly understanding and working with online media outlets, which has a very loose definition. However, these public relations firms are very few and far between, and usually swamped because there are so few of them.

Then you have Public Relations firms who “think” they get it. Who claim they understand bloggers. Who think because they just hired this college graduate who has a Facebook page, that they can spin that into being able to map out a social media strategy for a client. Who think that bloggers are just another place to mass email their client’s press release too.

The key here is “don’t believe the hype“. Public relations firms are great at “SPIN“! It’s their job, it’s what they do best. But, trusting in that spin, when it’s not really true can cost your dearly when it comes to your online reputation. This is the reason you really need to investigate a public relations company’s strategies’ when it comes to online marketing. Here are some things to look out for:

• Look At Their Own Website: Is it all about them? Does it even work right? Is it all in Flash? How did you find them in the first place? All of this comes into play in a big way. If they cannot translate what they do offline into online success for themselves, why would you even want to deal with them? If all they can promote was that they won this PR award or that PR honor, and it has nothing to do with online marketing, what does that tell you? Here are some key things to look at.
  • Does the site work properly?
  • Are they optimized for the search engines?
  • Is their site done in all Flash?
  • Is there site image heavy?
  • Is it all about the awards they’ve won?
  • Do they even have a blog?
• Look At Their Company Blog: This is one key indicator that a public relations company understands bloggers, the community and social media. If they don’t even have a blog, you might want to find another company to work with to handle your online marketing efforts in the blogging and social media space. If they do have a blog, look at it closely. A serious down deep look at their own blog.
  • How long as it been in existence?
  • What kind of content does it have?
  • Is the content just press releases?
  • How often do they blog?
  • How many subscribers does it have?
  • Do they allow comments?
  • Is there much discussion going on?
  • Do they use social media promotion (Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)?
• Ask To See How the Contact Bloggers: This could get a little tricky, however, a good public relations company just like in the above example, should have no problem with this. They should be showing you that they establish a relationship with a blogger first. If they start pulling out numbers of bloggers they can contact - run, run very far away. If they start spouting “we can contact XXX bloggers with your information”, or they even mutter, “we can distribute your press release…” when you mention blogging or bloggers to them, its time to close up that briefcase and end the meeting.
• Ask To See Success Stories: Don’t just take their word for it. Ask to see SEVERAL successful results. Ask for general information about their strategy. A public relations company who knows they are successful and has a great strategy in place for working in this space will have no problem showing you exactly what they did for other clients. The key is to understanding that if their approach for each client is unique in social media and blogging. If the public relations company shows you the same strategy over and over again, it’s time to move on.
• Ask About Their Strategy For You: If they start saying “We’ll take the standard approach” or “We’ve done this a thousand times before for other clients”, stop and hang up the phone. Every client is different when it comes to social media. If you are a textile company and they start talking about Digg, honestly, it’s time to start looking at a company who recognizes each client has to be dealt with individually, there’s no “mass marketing plan” for social media and blogging.
• Ask for References & Do Research!: Ask for references from clients they’ve worked with in the past on online media promotions when using social media or blogging. Now, just don’t take that references word for it either! You can do the research, just go to any search engine, or look at that client’s website and you can likely see the results. The online results will speak for themselves as to how successful the public relations company is.

Don’t get caught up in the hype that because they are a public relations company they can handle your online marketing. This is serious business, it’s your name or your brand. It’s something you cherish with pride. The last thing you need is a blogger being mass emailed about your event, when that blogger has asked several times to be taken off your public relations company’s mass spam list they send out every press release they write to. It really doesn’t bode well for your chances the blogger will ever pay attention - other than to write you and email letting you know your public relations company really doesn’t know what they are doing when it comes to online media. I know, I just did that this morning!

By Christine Churchill

Last Spring, my friend Jim Boykin of WeBuildPages contacted me about participating in a new training program he was developing. Jim’s goal was to create a training package with help from some of the best minds in the industry. It sounded like an intriguing endeavor. Shortly after, Jim interviewed and videotaped top experts in the industry – three of whom are now with KeyRelevance – myself (Christine Churchill), Jim Gilbert, and our in-house search engine patent guru Bill Slawski.

In our videos, Jim Gilbert and I present a combination of formal Pay Per Click training and Q&A, where we provide practical advice to people or companies who want to do paid search more successfully. My goal in the putting the training material together was to have actionable information that you can go out and use today. It’s the kind of information that I wish someone had told me when I was starting out in PPC. The advice presented in the videos should help both beginners and experienced marketers get better returns on their paid search dollars.

If your interest in on organic search, you’ll love Bill Slawski’s videos. If you’re a regular at Bill’s blog, SEOByTheSea, then you know that Bill is probably one of the smartest guys in search and I can tell you from working with him on a daily basis, he is also one of the nicest. Bill has a knack for taking complicated subjects like search engine patents and explaining them in layman’s English so the rest of the world can understand. It’s a true gift. I guarantee you’ll learn a lot about the inner workings of search engines by listening to Bill speak. His advice and clear explanations will expand your understanding about search engine optimization. There are actually four videos with Bill, making up nearly two hours of solid SEO advice from one of the most knowledgeable guys in the industry. If you want to expand your education about search engines and organic rankings, Bill’s videos are perfect. Check out the SEO Traiining Videos today.

Jim Boykin sweetened the Ninja training deal by throwing in his incredible array of SEO tools. These tools provide you an amazing amount of SEO and link information on your site and your competitors. The tools save you a lot of time from pulling the data manually and free you up to make better marketing decisions.

In addition to the video interviews with Jim Gilbert, Bill Slawski, and myself, Jim Boykin gathered an A-list of search marketers including such notables as Aaron Wall (SEOBook), Andy Beal (Marketing Pilgrim), Cameron Olthuis, Neil Patel (ACS), Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney), Jill Whalen (HighRankings), Jim Boykin (We Build Pages), Lee Odden (TopRank), Todd Malicoat (Stuntdubl), and others!

The price for the training package is $2995. That is a chunk of change, but when you consider what you get, the price is reasonable, especially since many of the experts on the tape charge $300-$600 an hour for consulting. When you join Internet Marketing Ninjas, you get access to the private SEO tools, plus over 15 hours of “tell-all” videos by some of the sharpest people in the industry. Get the details on Internet Ninja SEO Training here.

By Li Evans

As a social media “junkie”, I get a lot of questions thrown my way. From “Why can’t I succeed on Digg”, to “Why can’t I get my page stumbled?”, to “What the heck is the value of this social stuff?”. There are a lot of people that look to social media as a way to boost SEO rankings, and gain links into their sites. However, if that’s all that you are looking at social media for, you’re missing a whole boat load of added benefit.

Social media is about interaction and conversation about something. That something could be a video, a photo, an article, a web page, a podcast, a game or even a song. The possibilities are endless for what that interaction and conversation could be about. So you are now probably wondering, “So why should I care if they talk about me?” You should care because its YOUR brand, YOUR product, YOUR service, or YOUR company. It’s amazing how things on the internet can get so turned around so quickly, and social media tends to increase that rate of speed tremendously, and if you aren’t paying attention to that conversation before you know it you could have a surprise situation on your hands.

Here’s a few reasons why you should care about these conversations going on:

• Are They Getting it Right?
  A lot of misinformation is out there, has your company or brand fallen victim to it? Did someone misinterpret what one of your company spokespeople said at a conference or in a presentation? Is what is being linked to, to describe your product or service correct?

  If you aren’t keeping an eye out for these type of situations, before you know it, you could have a mess on your hands that even your Public Relations team will have a hard time digging you out of.

• Stalkers & Trolls
  Lets face it, companies will piss off someone at one point or another. In some way shape or form, someone will be angry with the service they received, quality of a product or receiving an answer that isn’t to their liking. With today’s day & age of technology, it’s even more easy to tell the world about your grievances than ever. That’s when you need to approach with caution, and figure out if they really do have a legitimate gripe, or they are just being a “Troll” for the attention.
• Jackpot! Evangelists!
  On the opposite of the Troll Spectrum lies the Evangelists. These folks LOVE you! They talk about how great your product / service / brand / company is. They lavish links and traffic to your website. They unload heaps of praise on your efforts and guess what, they tell their audiences that you are Awesome! So, now you say “Great!” and just walk away? Wrong! Capture these Evangelists’ enthusiasm and use it. Thank them publicly, heap your own praise back. Remember it doesn’t take much to turn your most loyal evangelist into someone who can turn the world against you.
• Who’s Talking About Me?
  Not only should you care about what’s being said, but you should be mindful of WHO’S saying it. Is it a newspaper columnist, is it your industry publication, is it your fan base, is it a troll, is it your grandmother? All of these people (and more) have varying degrees of influence over their own audiences. Knowing who’s saying something, whether it’s an article, a forum post, or a comment on a social site, is just as important as knowing what’s been said.

There’s a lot more to social media than links and page rankings. Understanding that and knowing how to capture and utilize it, is a whole different strategy all together. Is your social media strategy reaching its full potential? If not, maybe you need to rethink who’s handling it!

By Christine Churchill

I am honored to announce that SEO By The Sea was named Best Search Engine Research Blog of 2007 by Search Engine Journal. KeyRelevance’s own Director of Internet Marketing, Bill Slawski, is the man behind the blog.

Search Engine Journal announced the results of the contest today and described the blog in this way:

“Bill Slawski’s endless research on search engine patent filings has unearthed some intriguing plans by all of the search companies and brought reason to projects like Google Universal, Personalized Search or Yahoo Paid Inclusion.

Instead of being reactive to the changes in search, Bill’s patent filing coverage helps us become more proactive, analyzing the trends which may happen, and preparing for them. Thank you Bill for all of your hard work, and to all of the nominees in this category.”

Congratulations Bill. We know you’ve earned it.