The 10 Truths Every CMO Should Know About Search Marketing

Last week I attended Search Engine Land’s SMX East show in New York City. What a great time of year to be in New York. My first day there I attended a couple of seminars, day one was not the best for me, but the one that really stood out to me was The 10 Truths Every CMO Must Know About Search Marketing.....
What amazed me about this track was how trivial it was...if you are a CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, I would think you should already know what those 10 truths are.
1 - SEO is an ongoing process – as an executive in a company please don’t ask for miracles, you cannot just optimize your meta tags and think everything is “A OK,” now where are our rankings!!!???
2- The #1 position is not always everything and sometimes not even possible--- NO KIDDING!!! Multiple positions can and should be a blessing...
3 - The long tail is your friend --- if you are a CMO and do not know what the long tail is and that it can bring in extremely qualified traffic then maybe you should not be a CMO! Sorry just my opinion.
4 - Both paid and natural search are equally important. Ask yourself, do you want to increase brand awareness??? Well being seen more often will allow that and then some....
5 - Customers -- hear “their" language not "yours" -- yes by golly darn you betcha -- you should be speaking to your customers telling them what they WANT to hear not what YOU want to say!!
**SIGH** half way through what a CMO should already know!!
6 - Web pages are not the ONLY assets you need to optimize -- come on folks there are Press Releases, blogs, articles so much MORE than just the web pages which should be optimized and even bidded on at times in paid search arenas.
7 - Integration is a must! -- if you are NOT sending the same message in print, that you are on the web there is a serious issue, get it together!
8 - Tools simplify everything -- well I was hoping to get some golden nugget from this statement, and well I didn't, yes tools simplify everything and yes you should be using them to make your life easier, but is there a new one, a better one????? I didn't get anything from this one other than if you are able to utilize tools to make your life easier and it does not have a negative affect on your consumer then good for you ... I already knew that – **SIGH**
9 - Bid on brand terms - if you are not doing this you are completely missing the boat ....enough said..
FINALLY – Number 10!!!
10 - Set goals -- ya think??? All CMO’s should know that goals need to be set, but you need to understand what you are trying to accomplish before you set those goals, be clear, and don’t be unrealistic, please!
Someone told me there were 11 things a CMO should know but I didn't buy it, this pretty much covers it unless someone else can think of something I might have missed. If so, please do chime in!!!

Small Business Owners - Trust Your SEO Professional

Small businesses are always challenged by finding the right folks to help them improve their search engine visibility. Most small business are starting off with limited capital and therefore are challenged by the price tag that comes along with either hiring an SEO professional or outsourcing a reputable SEO professional who can assist them. What often happens is they end up finding someone who will “cut them a deal” and sometimes you get what you pay for. So what is a small business supposed to do? If you are a small business owner you need to get educated. Try reading some blogs from places like, search engine land to get up to speed, or sign up for Mediapost to read articles related to building an internet strategy. But most of all if you hire a consultant make sure they have not told you any of the following will help to increase your ranking in the search engines.

Here are a few SEO “I Don’t Think So’s”:

You Must Submit Your URL to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN On a Monthly Basis
While that might have been the case many years ago it is definitely not the case now. Once you register your domain name these search engines will find you. So don’t let someone tell you that you need to submit to over 5,000 search engines and directories just stop right there and say, No Thank You!

Organic Rankings Are Affected by Pay Per Click Campaigns with Google Adwords
This one always makes me laugh, but quite honestly there are many people out there who actually believe that if they run a pay per click campaign with Adwords they will get organic benefits from it, and believe it or not I actually spoke with someone who even thought that when they stopped running their pay per click campaigns with Google that their natural search results would disappear. Now come on, this is just simply not true. Paid search campaigns are an absolute benefit for many types of businesses, it helps to expand your exposure online and increases the chances of getting that prospect to your website where you can convince them to become a customer, but in no way will a paid search campaign positively or negatively influence your organic positioning.

Update Your Website’s Content Regularly to Gain Higher Rankings
While I am not against updating website content/copy and keeping it fresh this does not mean you need to go in every month and add a word or two, it simply is not going to affect your overall ranking the search engines. The only time you should update your content is when you have something of value to add that not only your potential customers will benefit from but also the search engines. Think about becoming a resource to your customers and a source of relevant information for the search engines to index and you will find that the spiders will crawl your site more often, but still no guarantee here on higher ranking.

Google Will Ban My Website if I Buy Paid Links!
You know this one is the worst, in my opinion. Not only is it not true but I am quite annoyed by this comment. Part of building a good solid online strategy may include at times purchasing paid link to increase traffic flow to your website. Google will not “ban” your site, if they feel the links are not relevant to your website’s content they may “discount” those links but they certainly will not “ban” your website, that’s just silly. Now I will say that when purchasing links one should absolutely be cautious of those strategies and ensure they will benefit your website’s overall website traffic. You will also need to be sure the site linking to you provides relevant information related to what your website offers, and finally try to stay away from those sites that are obviously adding tons of outbound links from their website. Just be smart about it and stop worrying everything will be ok.

Now I can probably go on forever here but I won’t. Here are a couple more thoughts:

Use of the Meta Keywords Tag for Higher Ranking
Do you need it? Well some might yes, and some might say no. Google does not really pay attention to it but it does not hurt you to have it, as long as you do not over do it. Keep it to about 5-7 relevant keywords and leave it alone.

Adding a Google XML Sitemap for Higher Ranking
The idea of adding the good ole Google XML site map is to let Google know about pages within your site that it may not have recognized already. Go ahead and create it you can easily do so by using a tool like XML Site Maps, and make sure you do not forget to add to Google's Webmaster Tools. While you are at it you can also submit it to Yahoo! Site Explorer and check out the Live.com Webmaster Tools as well - although the Live.com one is still in beta but worth a shot.

To wrap things up let me just quickly remind you not to use submission tools, and never believe an SEO “professional” who tells you they will guarantee you top listings in Google because to be real honest NO ONE can, how could they, even their top Web Spam Strategist Matt Cutts says you can never guarantee a #1 position in Google.

There are many consultants out there and some are willing to train you instead of tell you what they think you need to do. If you decide to hire an Internet Marketing Executive who can help with your internet strategies try to choose one that will not only be honest but one who is willing to share their strategies that will help you succeed online.

Catchy Linkbait Is Worthless Without Really Good Content

Recently I read an article that came from Search Engine Land regarding LinkBait. What is linkbait? The best definition I could find on linkbaiting was written in a blog by a man named Stuart Brown -- ahhh the love of blogs ** sigh ** Linkbaiting is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it's an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Does it work? It can if it is done the right way but it should not be considered as a sole source of long term traffic. Check out this post from Digg which basically says the best way to handle Linkbait is with really good quality content. Getting to the top spot on Social Network's doesn't mean you will automatically get the inbound links you really want....

read more digg story

SEO Do's and Don't's

I often get caught up in the every day grind that I sometimes forget most small businesses are still doing things they should not be doing to get their site noticed online. It seems that more and more people every day continue to build websites and hope for their site to begin appearing in the search results. Getting traffic to your website once it is built takes time and patience. Many search engines use tiny programs, called spiders, which crawl the Internet in search of new web pages; as such your site appearing does not happen by chance. There is actually a method related to how you get your site noticed by search engines spiders.

I came across a list the other day of “Thou Shalt Not’s” related to optimizing your website. Let’s review them, understand them and follow them for it could be your future rankings at stake:

• Thou Shalt not repeat keywords over and over in the meta tags
• Thou Shalt not use the same title and meta description for each page of your site
• Thou Shalt not link out to a bad neighbor or neighborhood
• Thou Shalt not copy they neighbor’s content
• Thou Shalt not hide your content
• Thou Shalt not make doorway pages
• Thou Shalt not submit the same pages with different URLs
• Thou Shalt not use submission services/tools for repetitive submissions
• Thou Shalt not use frames
• Thou Shalt not believe people when they say, “we guarantee top ten listings”
• Thou Shalt not expect to find your brand new site in search engines after launching it just 2 days ago

What things can you do?

• Do the necessary research to find the best keyword phrases that relate to your business avoid general terms
• Use unique titles and meta descriptions for each page within your site
• Create unique content that will entice your visitors to continue visiting your site
• Ensure there is logical navigation, good site structure and descriptive link text throughout your site
• Make sure your site is crawlable, stay away from all flash or all graphic sites that search engines can’t or won’t crawl
• Keep in mind there should only be one address to get to your site, two separate addresses can be www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com, to a search engine, that means you have the same content at two addresses in other words – duplicate content.

There are definitely more than what you see here, but you get the hint. The bottom line is do what is right there really are no quick fixes that give you long lasting results when it comes to optimizing your site. Google has quality guidelines take the time to read through them and you will reap the benefits of streamlined free traffic to your site.

The above list was taken from a variety of sources such as Webmaster World’s forum, Search Engine Land, WebPro News, and SEO Chat.