March 2-4, 2010: SMX West, Santa Clara, CA. I’m doing a “Ask the Search Engines” panel.

May 19-20, 2010: Google I/O conference in San Francisco. I’m doing a site review session.

June 8-9, 2010: SMX Advanced in Seattle

November 8-11, 2010: PubCon in Vegas

I was gone last week (February 9-13) for the TED conference, but that was attending, not speaking.

We’ve added rel=”nofollow” to any external link that we’re not sure we can vouch for. This includes all external links from comments, user profiles and story pages below a certain threshold of popularity.

I think this is pretty smart. Digg isn’t adding nofollow to everything, just the links that they’re less sure about. Once a story looks real to them, I can imagine that they would lift the nofollow. I discussed this for Google web properties in a recent video:

Google does something similar with Knol. Initially Knol authors received nofollow’ed links, but as we gain more trust in authors, we can remove those nofollows. As I recently said in another video, if a site like Wikipedia had good confidence in an editor, you could imagine links made by that editor not having the nofollow attribute. So if you have a way to determine which user-generated links are trustworthy, that could be a more nuanced measure of when to use the nofollow attribute. I discussed this subject a bit more in this video in case you’re interested. It’s about 1:24 into the video:

So new move by Digg is a positive change in my opinion, because Digg decreases the benefit for spammy stories but Digg still helps normal and high-quality stories in the search engines.

Chances are you have heard people rant about the benefits of blogging. The rumors are true, blogging can help you build your brand and generate new business. If you are willing to speak to your customers in a human voice and share valuable insight, blogging has the potential to kick start or boost your online presence.

Thinking about blogging?

Do you want to set yourself apart from the competition? A blog may be what you have been looking for. Over the last few years people and business of all sizes have used blogs to share their stories, show thought leadership, connect with their audience to build communities and gather feedback. You can do the same.

Already blogging?

Starting a blog is easier than ever before. Diversifying a blog requires expertise. Your blog should match your brand and act as a natural extension of your current online presence. We want to work with you to develop a custom design, optimize your blog for search engines and pinpoint what is driving traffic to your site. If you want to overhaul your blog design or discuss growth strategies, let us help!

Our main skillset lies in the development, tweaking, hybridizing and creation of custom WordPress websites. Since around 2005, we have been working with WordPress as a blogging engine and more specifically, a highly customizable Content Management System.

Our extensive use of WordPress and its abilities, have allowed us to create some interesting and unique websites & applications using the WordPress system.

Combined with genius usage of selected Javascript libraries, we’re able to use WordPress as a highly customizable and powerful content management system.

Budgets are subject to rigorous thought, analysis and planning. Budgets are not received easily and those granting them, be it yourself or your seniors – DEMAND returns.

It’s tough to produce results from a budget. It’s even tougher to produce results that continue to flow over time, while you reduce costs.

You will collect a constant yield from your positions on search engines for as long as you hold those positions, and for as long as there is a demand for your offer on the marketplace.

That fact helps you reduce costs. Here’s how:

• Initial investment buys your way to best search engine positions [via search engine optimization services]
• Over a period of time, collected revenues fully cover your investment.
• You start collecting profits.
• To secure those profits, SEO Expert conducts continuous positions maintenance. Maintenance addresses factors that search engines require to keep website in favourable spots.
• Since your investment paid itself off and you are making profits, you can cut costs in other marketing vehicles such as pay per click, banners, magazines, flyers, and other methods.

1. Your revenue-to-investment ratio grows, since search engine marketing campaign brings consistent customer flow.
2. You can reduce budget in other less effective marketing channels, due to unmatched quality of prospective customers search brings [customers take the initiative to find you, hence they want to do business.

Brand is one of the most important assets a company has.

Development and maintenance of a powerful brand through search engines comes with key aspect – Brand Recall.

Building Your Brand on Search Engines
Successful branding on search engines comes through constant recall of your company’s website on search engines for keywords searched by potential customers.

If a website shows up on best search engine spots for various keywords, users develop a degree of trust and respect for that site. When it comes to final purchase, they feel more comfortable and safe about a purchase from that website, rather than any other web property.

For example – Marry wants to get a mortgage and purchase a new house. She knows little about mortgages, mortgage companies or the process of attaining a mortgage. She goes out to Google with the following questions.

•How do I get a mortgage?
•What are good mortgage options?
•Which is a good mortgage company?
Marry needs to answer those questions before she’ll get a mortgage. She may use the following keywords with questions in mind:

Question  Keywords used on a search engine
How do I get a mortgage?  = how get mortgage
What are good mortgage options? = good mortgage options
Which is a good mortgage company? = good mortgage company

If a company’s website shows up on top of search result for all 3 questions and Marry finds answers helpful, she will develop a degree of trust and appeal for that website [and Company’s Brand], because she found what she needed, when she wanted it.

She may head back to search engines and research more questions. If the same website shows up on top again, she will eventually develop trust, get used the brand name, and turn to it when she’s ready for business.

By giving users information they need, when they need it your company can develop strong brand association, increasing customer base.

To achieve those results, SEO expert employs professionals who are expert in keyword research science and measurement.

We source key phrases from keyword databases that represent questions your potential customers ask, and position your website for those questions on search engines through search engine optimization services.

Protect Your Brand Against Erosion
More and more people head out to Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines for research, comparison and general information. They expect to find top brands on best search engine spots and lack of visibility creates brand erosion.

While writing for websites and interactive marketing presentations, our content developers take pains to ensure that the words/website content are instrumental to reflecting the brand identity of our clients, as they are the only vehicles to communicate with the visitors. At the same time, our copy team has the expertise of weaving keyword-enriched content into each website, so that they can ensure the placement of the websites in premiere search engines. To add precision, personality and professionalism to our websites, we thus depend a lot on the word wizardry of our copy team.

If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be here.

Optimizing your site is the first and most important step to starting a successful search engine marketing campaign. An optimized site addresses the same elements as a search engine spider would. In other words, it has the content, code, links, and other factors that help improve search engine ranking.

Plan a Campaign
Regardless of the size and scope, a solid search engine marketing plan can help drive your business. The fact is that people use the Web as a first step before making a purchase — from reading reviews of a book or movie to figuring out the best lawn mower to buy, to choosing a veterinarian or a vacation destination before making a purchase.

This is good news for businesses of any size because it is an affordable way to help increase site traffic, which translates into paying customers. Part of a good campaign is taking advantage of all the low-cost ways of advertising online (and even offline). The cost of good Web site optimization alone is usually well worth it in the long run.

Make the World See You
With the right search engine marketing plan, you can help put your Web site up where the people can see it. Most people don’t go past the first 10-20 results of a search engine query simply because there are too many options — or distractions — that prevent them from looking further.

If your site is one that sells product in a highly competitive online category, a good search engine marketing campaign is essential to success. This type of campaign usually involves submitting to more of the search engines, as well as to paid listings (perhaps even pay-per-click advertising).

A good search engine marketing campaign does not have to be an expensive endeavor — and it starts with having the right content in a site designed with search engine marketing in mind.

• Achieve and surpass your sales objectives
• Bridge gaps in search visibility
• Provide planned seasonal boost
• Assist with new product launches
• Propel large volumes of qualified customers to your online properties.

As an online marketer you are tasked with bringing visitors to your company’s properties. Your website must produce certain degree of return, be it daily, weekly or quarterly.

In order for a website to bring revenues it must convert visitors into customers.

You may be already engaged in “push” advertising such as banner ads, pop-ups, email lists and others to achieve your goals. “Push” advertising interrupts prospects and is designed to create a demand where there is none. In order to be an effective online marketer and to generate better results – you need to engage in “pull” advertising.

Search engine marketing is a form of “pull” advertising. Search engine marketing provides websites with the most important ingredient of successful online operations – constant, uninterrupted targeted customer flow, throughout the calendar year. Once you have that, you can focus on getting most out of that traffic, by tweaking website layout, copywriting, message, USP, color schemes, but first you need qualified traffic.

Getting More Conversions From Your Traffic
As you know traffic alone does not bring revenues. Visitors must take action, fill out forms, give credit card information, download demos / white papers, share email or pick up a phone and order. Visitors must convert into customers.

Icon Services can get traffic through search engine marketing services and assist with conversion via keyword research service.

Keyword research identifies phrases and language your potential customers use on search engines and spots key-phrases that indicate intent for conversion. A website is then positioned on search engines for those key-phrases, actively attracting visitors that have an intention of doing business.

Online Marketing Strategies – Get Your ROI on Track
SEO Expert offers a broad range of search engine marketing strategies designed to overcome business to consumer marketing challenges:

• Local Search Engine Marketing – select any cities across North America and market your company in those cities.
• Localized Search Engine Marketing – select from  states, regions, counties, cities, metro’s, towns, zip codes. Market your company in any selected areas.
• Product Search Engine Marketing – attract customers who actively search for products to purchase.
• Branding Through Search Engines – develop brand affinity in minds of targeted customers through repeated website recall on search engines during the buying cycle of your prospects.

Our campaigns also help you reduce costs in the long run.

What will be your return on investment? Unlike any other medium, you can track internet user activity to a fraction of a second. Clicks, keyword referrals, site referrals, average time on site, page views, exit pages, entrance pages, conversion rates – all can be documented, tracked and measured with analytics software. You can set up conversion goals and measure increase in customers with increase in visitor traffic from search engines. You can check which keywords bring most customers and which underperform. You can monitor all visitor activity as we get best search positions and ultimately measure your ROI over a timeframe.

Research shows that 92% of all business people research products and solutions over the internet using search engines.

This brings up the fact – your website must be easily found on search to capture leads and turn them into solid sales.
Icon Services offers solutions for B2B marketers who want to increase leads their department delivers. You’re a good candidate for business to business search engine marketing campaign if you identify with any of these statements:

• Our website does not generate business leads for our sales department
• We’re spending too much money on pay per click to produce leads
• Our website holds search engine rankings, but delivers no or low quality business leads
• We would like to get in search marketing game to stay competitive
• Our traditional advertising efforts do not meet our goals in terms of quality and quantity
• We would like to blend traditional lead generation methods(trade shows, magazines), with search engine marketing

Our search marketing methodology delivers the blueprint to help you capture decision makers on search engines as leads and turn them into closed sales.

How Do Decision Makers Use Search?As a marketer, you are well aware that even simple consumer goods have several buying cycles.

• General interest.
• Research.
• Comparison / Vendor Selection
• Purchase

Business to Business buying process is similar, with only one core difference – scale of the investment and number of people involved in the decision making process.

Keyword research uncovers how various stakeholders research solutions and key-phrases they use to find information of their interest on search engines. For example: CFO is after costs, profits and time. IT manager is after technology, service continuity and integration. CEO is after the bottom line. Their differences are reflected with keywords they use on search engines.

Identification of keywords used by various stakeholders within targeted organizations help to position your company on search engines for those keywords and capture necessary leads from proper stakeholders.

Targeting Leads by Geographic Areas
B2B buyers may come from all across US, Canada, Mexico and the world. If you have preference for geographic locations, such as cities, provinces and states, Icon Services can help you with regional marketing.

• Local Search Target potential clients by their cities.
• Provincial or State Search Target potential leads by provinces or states
• Global Strategy Target potential clients globally

Leads can be targeted throughout all cities and all geo-points of your choice.

A Track Record of Success
You don’t  have the funds, nor the time to fail. Oftentimes your company’s financial status depends on your marketing efforts and the quality of leads that you bring.

Do you begin to see why you can’t settle for OK solutions?

Search is the portal to quality leads. Prospective stakeholders head out to search engines and look for solutions. Active initiators, group leaders, CEOs and managers – with willingness to talk to companies and discuss possibilities. They take the time to get to search engines, to type in keywords and to explore websites. They are actively seeking you … or your competitors.