After watching these videos I was quite motivated to go out and make a few videos to put on a few of my personal websites.  I was going to start with my money site since I could most likely see the results quite quickly.

I created a video of my daughter and I, sitting on our couch, in the middle of our home.  The video was simple, nothing too fancy, just welcoming people to my site, telling them why my site solves a problem they have, and giving them a call to action.  I then uploaded the video to a website called Viddler and embedded the code on my main landing page.

Within two hours, I had noticed a spike in affiliate commissions.  The next day and every day since, we have doubled our affiliate commissions on that site.  This was a testimony to me that videos do work to convert visitors!  I am currently in the process of getting video on my other 12 sites that produce an income for me.  I am also working on getting video up on the ioVentures site.

If you are interested in getting video on your site, you need to know and implement the following things on your sites.

1. The video has to be on your landing page where your visitors will see it.
2. Set the video to auto play so your visitors have no choice about watching it.
3. Start by offering a warm welcome to your site.
4. Tell them you understand their problem and why they have come to your site for help.
5. Tell them exactly why you can help them with your site.
6. Give a strong call to action, to purchase a product or affiliate product.

Video does work!  Do what you can to get a video on your site today!  Even if it isn’t the best quality, get something up and work on something better in the mean time.  I honestly believe that video is the future of the internet.  Work on implementing these things and be years a head of your competition.
 

The Challenge

Have 1000 websites live in 60 days (Aug 15th, 2008) with each making $150 per month after 60 more days (Oct 14th, 2008), in total 120 days.

The Landscape

Each of the 1000 sites will be small, with a minimal amount of content to begin with and designed to rank for only one keyword phrase and is based on Courtney Tuttle’s Keyword Sniper Idea. These phrases will be selected by a combination of their demand and profit potential ($150 per month). We will meet this 120 day challenge by monetizing each site with AdSense.

The competition must also be low enough for us to rank each site in 2-3 months with minimal marketing. We will use a customized WordPress template and SEO plugins to optimize our site better than the currently ranked top 10.

Due to the volume of sites we need to create, each step in the process must be as streamlined and as cost effective as possible. We have a process for each of the following 3 steps. The obstacles we’ll face will deal largely with the scalability of each of these processes.

1. Keyword Research & Phrase Selection
2. Mass Site Creation & Maintenance
3. Marketing & Driving Traffic

After the challenge is complete we will revisit the sites that meet a base level of traffic and income potential and they will graduate into phase II of what’s known as the Sprouts Mission. This will include more content, more marketing and perhaps even other monetization models.

The Hurdles

• Domain Names & Hosting

  • Where can we purchase bulk domain names? $4 for 1,000 sites would be better than $10 per site.
  • Should we get hosting and domains from the same place?
    • If they’re separate will setting the DNS on 1,000 domain names be difficult?
    • Are there possible problems with hosting all 1,000 on one server?
    • Do we need a dedicated server?
    • Would there be problems with using a virtual server that hosts other sites as well?
    • Will we be affected if all our sites are on a single IP address and all our links are roughly from the same IPs? (They won’t all be exactly the same)

• WordPress

  • How can we create and manage large amounts of sites, i.e:
    • Way to add all 1,000 sites simultaneously to a hosting package with unlimited domain addons?
    • Install identical WordPress installations, templates & plugins for 1,000 different sites?
    • Make simple “empire-wide” changes to all 1,000 sites?
    • Update WordPress, install plugins & change themes across all 1,000 sites?

• Tracking & Analytics

  • How do we track the rankings and traffic across 1,000 sites?
    • We’d like to use Google Analytics on each site…
    • Do we create an account for each 1,000 or just add them as a Website Profile under one account?
    • Can we just put the same Google Analytics code in the template of all the sites?
    • What tool can at LEAST weekly track the rankings of 1,000 sites for 50-100 keywords a piece without bogging down the tool? We use AWR for our clients, great tool, but that may take too long to run for that many queries.

• Adsense

  • Can we use the same Adsense Code across all sites?
  • If channels are necessary can we have 1,000+ channels in AdSense?
  • Is there a way to get code for that many channels besides the usual one by one process?

• Financing

  • Each of steps cost money, how would you pay to get it done on time?
    • Start smaller and have each site pay for the growth of new ones?
    • Trade services?
    • Credit cards?
    • A loan?
    • Investment money?

• What other obstacles seem apparent that haven’t been mentioned?

The Question:

Q. If you only had 120 days to make this challenge real, how would you answer the questions above? How would you finance it? How would you solve the technical issues without creating future headaches?

A. Leave your DO OR DIE response as a comment below.

Some people miss the “anchor text” part. Unfortunately, if you get a whole bunch of links with no keyword phrases in them or that contain your site name, then at best all you’ve done is help your site rank for your site name. Obviously, this is not the goal. Of course, you should be pushing hard to rank for relevant keyword phrases.

Now before you go out and start putting keyword phrases in your links lets stop and get organized first. This is where clusterizing your phrases comes into place.

Every page on your site has a good chance of ranking for a few keyword phrases. No page has a good chance of ranking for all your phrases. That said, you need to assign clusters of phrases to each URL. When that is done, you will know which phrases need to be included in both on site and off site optimization for each URL.

How To Cluster Your Phrases

Take one URL at a time and create its cluster. Lets use this URL to help explain the process I go through when clusterizing: skincarerx.com/obagi.html.

1. Decide on the main phrase of the URL. In this case, it was easy to choose the main phrase–the brand name Obagi. Generally speaking the main phrase of the web page, and therefore the cluster, is going to be the highest searched for phrase that is relevant to the page.
2. Use a keyword research tool like freekeywords.wordtracker.com to help find the sub phrases of this cluster. After I type obagi into Wordtracker I see:
3. Choose the phrases that are the most relevant to the URL in question and that have the highest search volume. In this case, I chose:
   1. obagi
   2. obagi skin care
   3. obagi nu derm
   4. obagi products
   5. obagi blender
   6. obagi skin care products
   7. obagi tretinoin

I like to keep track of these clusters in an excel sheet with the URL listed at the top of its perspective cluster.

Once you have a cluster for a specific URL, you can then optimize that page. These are the phrases that will be the anchor text in all the links that are pointed to this specific URL. As you get links, you can vary the anchor text and help this one page rank for all these phrases. The nice thing is that all these phrases contain the main phrase “obagi” and therefore every link will help the main phrase as well as a sub phrase! Don’t forget that internal links count as well. All internal links that point to this URL should include one of these phrases. (Most likely all internal links will say the same thing; they won’t be varied).

Also, the phrases in the cluster will be used to create an effective title tag and for best practice should be used within header tags and within the content of the page itself.

As you can see, I didn’t use all the phrases that Wordtracker showed me in this one cluster. It’s a good idea to limit each cluster to 10 or less phrases. All the other relevant phrases that are searched for quite a bit can be broken up into several clusters that each point to different URL’s.

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments down below. I would love to clarify anything that you don’t understand.

The popular micro-blogging site Twitter is a very simple service. For some it’s TOO simple. I find that those who “don’t get” Twitter simply need to find a way to use it. In essence everyone who wishes to understand Twitter needs to find a way to make it their own.

Hopefully this this blog post will help you explore some of the possibilities of how Twitter can work for you.

Why Tweet?

This service is simple, but don’t be fooled! There are so many ways to use Twitter, and here are just a few of them.

1. Haven’t look too much into it, but link building may be a latent benefit.
2. Quickly get advice from a group of friends: “Guys, you know where to get some shin guards for tonight’s game?”
3. Broadcast the play-by-play of town meeting that others couldn’t get to.
4. Get your local traffic report, weather, or sports updates.
5. Get breaking news or top stories from your favorite news station.
6. Political candidates are reaching out to a new generation of voters.
7. Have your plant tell you when it’s thirsty
8. Get out of jail!

How to Tweet

Here are some desktop applications utilizing Twitter:

1. Twitterrific - A small paid desktop application that acts similar to an instant messenger. No need for a browser.
2. Twidget is a free Dashboard Widget for OS X that allows you to update and view your friends’ Twitter statuses.

Use Twitter from your phone or even from an instant messenger like Google Chat. Setup is a cinch. Do this from Twitter’s homepage.

Twitter in Firefox

For those of you who absolutely love to “pimp” your browser, check out the following Firefox Twitter plugins (add-ons):

1. TwittyTunes - By the very competent makers of FoxyTunes, this little app sits in the bottom of your browser and is perhaps one of the easiest ways to twitter about what you’re currently working on.
2. Twitbin - Easily send and receive messages on twitter via your Firefox sidebar.
3. Twitterbar - This is a fun one. Send a Twitter by typing into your address bar.
4. TwitterFox - Get all your twitters fed to your browser like an instant messenger.

And, if you’re into combining several tasks into one place check out these fun Firefox add-ons that combine Tweeting with other social networking options:

1. Shareaholic - You can easily twitter, digg, etc straight from your browser even when the site you’re on doesn’t have the option to do so. (supported networks: * digg * del.icio.us * facebook * friendfeed * google bookmarks * magnolia * mixx * reddit * simpy * stumbleupon * truemors * tumblr * twitter * bzzster!)
2. BlogRovr - Are you an avid blogger? With BlogRover you can blog from the same window as the one you’re browsing in. And of course, built in Twittering!

Twitter for Bloggers

1. Twitter Tools - Blogger? Use this plugin to send the title to Twitter. It will also add a link to your post.

Twitter Apps on Facebook

1. Twitter - As Twitter’s official application this will tie your twitter and facebook accounts together and even give you the option of posting your tweets to your Facebook status, kinda fun if you’re a twitterholic, but don’t spend so much time on Facebook :o).
2. Twittervision - This little application combines mapping technology and twitter to let you see where your friends are twittering from.

Note: If you add several applications that all update your mini feed, you’ll want to edit the settings so that they don’t all junk up your feed with the exact same update.

Twitter Alternatives

If Twitter is not your style then don’t rule out “micro-blogging” just yet. You may find one of these other “presence networks” a little bit better match.
1. Tumblr - Truly this is blogging in its simplest definition of the word. Post a few words, an image, video or audio. Less is more.
2. Jaiku - Google purchased Jaiku is slated to be quite the contender of Twitter. While it’s in beta, you’ll need to request an invitation to use it. Good luck!
3. Pownce - An easy “way to keep in touch with and share stuff with your friends. Send people files, links, events, and messages and then have real conversations with the recipients.”

Keep your eyes open for reviews of these other popular micro-blogging services.

Other Reviews of Twitter Tools

• TWITTER TOOLBOX: 60+ Twitter Tools
• 20 Twitter Services to Enhance Your Experience
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners

Keyword Research

The first place to start is with your keyword research. I like to “clusterize” my phrases which means to group like phrases together.

The short version of clusterizing your phrases is this:

1. Decide upon the main phrase of a web page or blog post
2. Type it into a keyword tool like freekeywords.wordtracker.com
3. Choose a handful of the most relevant phrases to be in the cluster

For a more in depth explanation on how to clusterize, read this post: Clusterize Your Phrases

Once you decide which cluster is assigned to the URL you are optimizing, then you are ready to create an effective title tag.

Title Tag Best Practices

At this point, I want to explain some “best practices” for title tag creation.

1. Prominence - Place your most important phrase closest to the beginning as possible.
2. Density and Long tail - Use long tail phrases and/or a combination of phrases within the cluster to help increase density of main phrase as well as help the page rank for long tail phrases
3. Use plurals and singulars where applicable
4. Realize that the longer the title tag, the more diluted the strength of each word becomes

Let me give you an example that keeps all four points from above in mind. Lets look at a blog post that talks about a forex trading course.

At the time of this writing, the title tag is “Forex Course – Forex Trading Courses – Easiest Forex Course Videos”.

Here is the cluster of phrases that I chose to rank this page for:

1. Forex course
2. Forex courses
3. Forex trading course
4. Forex trading courses
5. Forex course videos
6. Easiest forex course
7. Easiest forex course videos

As you can see, I put the main phrase of the cluster first to give it the most prominence.

I used two of the sub phrases from the cluster which, in one way or another, includes all of the words from each of the seven phrases in the cluster. Doing that increases my keyword density for the main phrase “forex course” and helps me rank for the sub phrases at the same time.

I used both singular and plural for the word “course”. Wordtracker showed me that “course” was searched for more than “courses” and so that is why I placed the singular version first—to give the higher search volume phrase the most prominence.

I limited this title tag to just 3 phrases so as not to dilute the density of every phrase included. I typically don’t do more than 3 phrases in a title tag.

Take Aways

Keep all these factors in mind when you are creating your title tags for every single page. And yes, every page should have its own unique title tag. Also, realize that these are just guidelines. Every phrase has different amounts of competition and there is no set way that works the best in all situations. Sometimes I find that one or two phrases works best and other times I use four or five. The only way to know is to test. Analyze your competition to ideas? Yes…and then test.

Let me say it again in bold, you should always test different title tags to help rankings improve. If you tweak a title tag and your ranking drops, you can always change it back to the original title tag and get your rankings back as soon as the Search Engines re-index the page.

One last thing.

After all this talk about testing different title tags, don’t get too obsessed. You ABSOLUTELY need to focus on BUILDING LINKS TO THIS PAGE. No amount of title tag tweeks will get you to the #1 spot without link building.

You never know just what life will throw at you. At the beginning of March life hurled ioVentures, Inc. a curve ball. Thankfully we had been preparing for just such a time, but somehow it seems like I’m never fully ready for “those times.” While it’s not important what the curve ball was, I do feel that it is important to the storyline that you know we lost one of our main streams of income due to forces out of our control.

Our initial solution consisted of an idea that Courtney Tuttle discusses called “Keyword Sniping“. We adapted the idea to our circumstances, added and tweaked a few things and the ioV Garden was born: 10 money generating “Sprouts”, systematically created for the purpose of growing into greater things.

Each Sprout website was setup with a specially designed SEO WordPress Template from Courtney Tuttle and a birage of plugins that we’ve found to be essential over the years. Each has only ten pages, one keyword focus, an affiliate product to begin with and some in house as well as some automated and outsourced link loving.

Well, after spending a couple weeks focusing as much attention on our Sprouts as we could we determined that to face our financial challenge head on we needed our focus elsewhere. That being the case, our Sprouts were left to fend for themselves in the harsh environment of the web (they are after all, just little guys in a “content is king” world).

While circumstances led us to decide on spending our energy elsewhere for the present, we felt that our initial effort was sufficient to prove Courtney’s Concept. We’ll report on this concept every now and then. Here’s the first of several checkins.

Looking at the Google Analytics from March 16th - April 15th:

1. angular cheilitis: 378
2. run your car on water: 248
3. how to jump higher: 196
4. save my marriage: 50
5. how to stop snoring: 62
6. natural anxiety cures: 109
7. adult dyslexia: 218
8. how to play the piano: 71
9. tmj treatment: 83
10. learn to speak German: 66

Total, these sites received 1481 visits during their inaugural month. No conversions yet.

This is our report.

Video is on the cutting edge of internet marketing and for good reason; People love watching video and videos are ranking high in the search engines and are becoming a source for traffic. In my research I read ‘Optimizing Video Content’ by Andreas Roel on Clickz.com and he made a statement that really emphasizes the call to jump on the video band wagon now.

“By 2012, 62 percent of the total U.S. population and 88 percent of the U.S. online community will be watching videos on the Web, according to eMarketer”- Clickz.com, March 18^th, 2008

That is a huge chunk of people that are becoming marketing targets!

Producing a video seems daunting and like it will be tons of work. There is some truth to this line of thinking; a video can very quickly become very complicated and very costly.

At first you may think you need a high-tech camera, expensive editing software and professional actors, not to mention a script and a music score. A list like this is enough to turn the majority people away from producing videos. There is however another way to produce video in a much more timely manner and on a much smaller budget.

The Step by Step to a $20 Video

1. Download the free 30 day trial of Camtasia- This is a program that will record what is on your computer screen. There are many possibilities for this software but for this video we are going to only use it in conjunction with Microsoft’s PowerPoint.
2. Outline a slide show around your topic. For instance if your keyword was adult dyslexia you could make a slide show on the symptoms to watch for. Or maybe your keyword is bird watching, make a slide show with pictures of various birds and use text to identify them. Or perhaps your keyword is skin care; make a slide show around an effective nightly routine for women to follow. This video will be a still shot video so you will only get 1-2 pictures to portray each idea so make the points short and simple.
3. Gather your pictures for your video at Stock.xchng this is a photo sharing site that is filled with copyright free pictures you can use in your videos. Simply check the availability status (underneath the picture) and it will tell you what you need to do. Some of them ask for you to notify the photographer telling them you are using their picture. In that case send them an email telling them briefly the topic of your video and the number of the picture you are going to use.
4. Now build your PowerPoint slide show. Add the appropriate text (remember to keep the phrases short), the pictures that coincide, timings of the slide and then animations if you would like.
5. Use Camtasia to capture the slide show. (When you download Camtasia there is a tutorial on how to capture a PowerPoint slideshow)
6. Add an appropriate sound track to back up your video, because lets face it a video with out sound is just boring. Make sure to get a royalty free track so you don’t infringe on anyone’s rights. This is where the $20 comes in. A good royalty free track will cost you some money but it will add a new and necessary dimension to your video. Stock20.com (http://www.stock20.com) sells royalty free songs for only $20 where a lot of places will charge you around $80.
7. Then publish the finished video through Camtasia
8. Finally finish by submitting your video to a variety of video sharing sites

Final Video Tips

• Put your URL in the video more than once. Particularly at the end and beginning.
• Keep your phrasing short and don’t try and tackle your entire topic all in one video, pick one facet at a time.

Videos don’t have to be expensive and time consuming but there is a definite benefit to getting your message and keywords out in a variety of media. Take a few minutes to study what makes a good video and the benefits it can have. Then dive in and tackle it.

1. What type of techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
2. What type of risk is involved with this method?
3. What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?
4. Can you show me examples of past work?
5. What was the client’s ROI?
6. What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect?
7. How long until I start to see results?
8. What would you expect from our end to aid your work?
9. What were some of your top search ranking achievements?
10. Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?

Asking each of these questions should give you enough knowledge about the company and their services to make an educated decision. Remember, you are only investing in SEO to gain a competitive advantage in your industry; you need the greatest return that you can possibly get.

1- Instant Popularity

Some believe that starting an SEO campaign will give you instant popularity: ranking you in the search engines, driving up traffic and increasing revenue. Although these are all side of effects of an effective SEO campaign that does not mean that it occurs instantly. As a matter of fact, big effects from SEO can takes months and even years depending on how competitive your industry is. Don’t give up half way down the trail because you haven’t seen the results you want in the first couple months. Quality link building takes time. So hang on for the ride because even though it’s a journey, the end results are well worth it.

2- One Time Magic

False Thinking: ‘I’ve optimized my site, changed my meta tags, added keywords and linked internally creating an impressive web of information. I have also gathered a decent number of back links, submitted to directories, built some Squidoo pages and even gained a PR 6 link! I am finally finished!’

The Truth: SEO isn’t a project that you start and then finish like a To-Do list:

i. Clean Kitchen
ii. Write Term Paper
iii. Rank #1 in Google
iv. Buy Milk and Eggs

Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, like brushing your teeth. You wouldn’t dream of going a day without brushing your teeth, or worse you wouldn’t spend 5 hours brushing your teeth on the first of the month so you didn’t have to brush them the rest of the month. SEO is the same way. SEO is never finished but it isn’t a huge project that has to take hours and hours every day. A simple effort daily can have a big impact but skip a couple days and your rankings may start to decay.

3- Google Hates Me

Well that is a little harsh don’t you think? But the truth of the matter is: Google might. Put yourself in their mindset and see if your efforts are actually countering theirs. One of Google’s biggest business objectives is to provide viewers with a search engine that provides them with relevant and valuable information. If your attempts to get ranked are thwarting that goal by submitting content that is already all across the web, or has no relevance to keywords you say it does, then can’t you see how that could cause some hard feelings.
But the reality of the matter is, if you are making the effort to stick to white hat tactics Google will reward your efforts. It may seem that sketchy tactics work faster, and they probably do at first, but in the end it isn’t IF you’ll get caught it is WHEN. Giving Google what they want, relevant content linked to other relevant content, will give you the benefits of being an asset to its algorithm instead of a worrying when you will get banned.

4- Once an Expert Always an Expert

If we believe we are ever done learning about anything then we are done succeeding because success is based upon a strong, ever growing foundation of knowledge. SEO is no exception; this industry is growing so quickly that in order to gain success you have to have a desire to learn and innovate along with your market. Never be so quick to throw out a concept or idea before mulling it over in your brain and seeing it from every angle. A can opener is a stupid invention if it is used as toddler’s toy but when placed in the right setting it proves invaluable.

5- All Links are Created Equal

Imagine again for a moment that you are a search engine and you had the fun task of organizing sites and ranking them in an order of relevance. What would you look at? If it was me I would look at any element that would prove a site was relevant to the topic they are professing. For instance, pretend a page selling snowboards is trying to rank well in the search engines. I (as a search engine) go to that page and see that they have text about snowboards, meta tags about snowboards , headlines about snowboards, yet they are chalk full of links that lead to everything from buying a car, to taking out a loan, to a Good House Keeping magazine subscription, in my mind those are irrelevant holes in the site making it deal less with snowboards and more with selling anything to anybody.

Also equally important are those links that are pointing at your site. No site can completely control where all of their backlinks are coming from, and it wouldn’t make sense to be punished for having irrelevant backlinks, (because then competition could sabotage you). It does however, make sense though that there are rewards for having relevant ones. A relevant link is like having all three of the properties in Monopoly, the value they carry because they are grouped and all relevant to each other is higher then another property that just stands on its own. Its not that the single property doesn’t carry some value and won’t bring income but you will never win the game if you aren’t creating relevant sets of properties.
6- Beauty is Solely External

I don’t think anyone would deny that one of the most important aspects of SEO is building a strong external linking campaign. However it would be a crucial mistake to forget internal linking and believe that only external links matter to a complete and beautiful campaign.

Internal linking is vitally important. When something on your site is relevant to one of your past articles, link to it. This will create an interlocking web of information that does two things. First, it proves how relevant the information on your site is to itself. And second, it causes the reader to get lost in your site going from one article to the next.

7- And the Lucky Number is…

Some have adopted the idea that there is a certain number of links you have to gain or a PageRank (PR) you have to achieve to get ranked on Google. That is simply a misunderstanding of how rankings work. You are not battling to be ranked #1 in Google you are battling to be ranked #1 for a keyword in Google.

It is a minor wording difference, but the change makes all the difference in terms of meaning. The first phrase suggests that it is a worldwide battle meaning we are all competing against each other in one large war. And if this were the case then there would be a set number of links and rankings that you had to achieve, or top. Instead, we are battling for keywords, making the goal that of winning lots of smaller battles with different competitors. In other words each battle is different and so there is no set number of links or PR because the conditions to win each battle are different.

Ultimately SEO is about being willing to change, grow, research and work hard. Society has a credit mentality, meaning I’ll take it now and pay for it later. This line of thinking has created the idea that you can get something for nothing. Getting caught up in that line of thinking when it comes to SEO will get you nowhere. But if you are willing to work hard, research, change and then research some more then you will succeed at SEO. SEO isn’t a magical, mystical world where results have to fall out of the sky and only a select few are lucky enough succeed in it. You can do SEO and be very successful, just don’t fall prey to the myths that surround it.

Search engine optimization is a very relevant aspect of creating value in an online marketing mix. We all know that phone books are out and websites are in, but what is the secret to transforming a great idea into a world-wide must-have product? How can the little guy win the online battle against the Goliaths of big business?

The trick is to play smarter, not harder. These are four great ways to gain value from SEO:

1. If you can’t beat ‘em, join em. Every business wants to be the first hit on a Google search, but you can’t do it alone. Linking your site to other sites is one of the most important elements to search engine optimization. Google and other search engines weigh the relevance of the link and then send traffic, through higher search rankings, to the sites that best fit the query. Being a respected authority within your industry is an important part of online business. Linking is going to help you make connections with people that sell or deal with similar products. This connection can help you spread the word about your company and synergize with other websites, but most importantly, it’s a necessity for moving your business from page 50 in the search engines to a page someone might actually see.

2. It’s not what you know, but who you know. This rule of thumb from the business world is just as applicable online as Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and a variety of other social networks continue to attract record numbers of visitors. And the popularity of social marketing is not expected to slow down anytime soon. Peter Daboll, President and CEO of Comscore.com said back in 2006, “This is a phenomenon we’re seeing not only in the U.S., but also around the world. Social networks have proven to be a new, innovative way to spread the word about your company. Individuals both young and old are using these sites as a place to gain meaningful information.

3. A picture is worth a thousand words. How does a three-year old know to throw a fit near the Lucky Charms in the grocery store isle? How does your teen decide that she’ll die without a Hannah Montana t-shirt? The answer, of course, is brand impression, and it is the make-it-or-break-it difference that sells “yummy” to tots, “cool” to teens, and “reliable to grandma. SEO can help your market get a good impression of what your company represents. The benefits of brand impression come from exposure and a more meaningful experience on the net. With so much information on the internet, it is easy to have your brand mixed up with another company’s brand. Increased traffic and exposure will help clarify who your company is and why consumers should chose your product. The goal of brand impression is to be the first company the consumer thinks of when looking for a specific product. Having a strong company brand will raise sales and increase the overall value of the company.

4. Every little bit counts. You may think that if you can’t devote your life to search engine optimization, then it’s not worth spending time trying. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Michael Jordan didn’t become famous from shooting one basket, and Mozart’s first work wasn’t his greatest symphony. Thomas Edison is credited with saying that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In the field of internet marketing, any advances you can make in driving traffic and customers to your site will put you one step closer to fulfilling your goals.

Search engine optimization is truly a new, innovative tool that will add value to any company. ioVentures has seen the value of SEO in a variety of companies. If your company is not taking advantage of these benefits, you may want to look into making an SEO investment in the near future. ioVentures would be more than happy to help you assess your SEO needs. This article from Google is also a great place to start your journey:

What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?