The improving economy is on everyone’s minds lately, and there’s been substantial evidence in recent months that things really are starting to grow again, as the stock market has gained more than 50% from its lows in March earlier this year. Yet, just because that sector has seen gains does not mean that things are all rosy again. Unemployment is likely to remain high for the next few years, and the people in our communities who most need to credit in order to begin rebuilding their lives following job loss or home foreclosure are least likely to be able to get it. It’s not all doom and gloom though. There are opportunities for those in business who wish to make the difficult decisions to strengthen now where they can.

The immediate challenge for small- to medium-sized businesses in a down economy is how to attract new clients while at the same time maintaining old clients. You may be in a position of having customers reach the end of their contracts and not be opting to renew. This means, obviously, that you are facing a revenue shortfall, while at the same time possibly having difficulty enticing new clients to sign on.

Working alongside this is the fact that people are becoming more price conscious. Clients and potential clients want more for less. They are stretching an already thin budget even further, and being extremely reluctant to sign contracts, even though deep down, they likely know that hiring a professional, whether it be for web design, marketing, or whatever, would be in their best interest.

How should you position your business over the next few years, given what is likely to continue to be a very difficult financial environment for many people? Here are 10 ways to strengthen your business despite the economic downturn:

1. Contact Your Clients

Check in on each one with a phone call. If they are local, offer to take them to lunch or coffee. Find out what their needs and concerns are. They may have a need that you are not anticipating, or concerns that you hadn’t thought of.

Don’t feel worried that hearing from you may be the trigger that they’ve been waiting for to drop you. If a client is going to drop you from the job, and they’re really serious about dropping you, then a phone call from you isn’t the reason why. They’re going to drop you anyway, and if you get them on the phone and can begin to understand the reasons behind their decision, you are in a position to actually change their minds.

Call your past clients, don’t email or send a letter. Make some real-time contact. Ask them how their business has changed over the past few months and ask them what they might need help with that you are in a position to provide. Reinforce that your business is stable and you’ll be there for them, whenever they need someone.

2. Reinforce Your Value

For most small- to medium-sized businesses, when they have a need that their in-house staff can’t meet, they are unlikely to hire a new employee for that position. Most businesses will understand that they don’t need to employ someone for every possible job and are quite comfortable outsourcing when the need arises.

This puts you in the position of being valuable. They don’t need to pay for insurance, benefits, training or ongoing costs to hire you. Remind your clients that your services are valuable and can save them money in the long run.

3. Look at Your Pricing

As mentioned above, now is the time that contracts may be dropping off with no renewals and few new clients to replace them with. If you feel that this is happening, it’s a good idea to consider a restructure of your pricing plans. You don’t want to slash your prices to the lowest on the block, but you do want to make sure that your pricing is competitive. The clients that are looking for the cheapest option probably aren’t going to recognize the value of your work and what they’re paying for, so those likely aren’t the clients that you want anyway. You just want to reach that sweet point where you are attracting clients and still making money.

4. Consider Expanding

It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest this right now, but a downturn is an excellent time to consider an acquisition or expansion. For people with excellent credit, loans are available.

Expanding might also mean expanding your staff. Due to extreme job cuts in nearly every sector and industry, many highly qualified people are out of work, or looking for something more stable. Hiring a talented person, even if it is just part-time at first, can give your business new focus and life. Failing that, see where you can cross-train the employees you already have. Asking a new person to do a job can reveal sticking points that the person who does the job on a regular basis has either become used to or has never figured out how to deal with.

5. Choose The Right Add-On Services

Offering clients extra services can be a great way to earn trust and repeat business in times of economic growth, but it is especially true now.

However, make sure that you add on services that you know you can provide, that you can do well with your same attention to detail, and can complete promptly. Don’t offer any work that you aren’t 100% confident that you can provide. It’s OK to agree to do jobs that you normally wouldn’t do, but outsource them if they’re not your strong point.

6. Enhance Your Marketing

Many of your competitors have halted or drastically cut back on their advertising, so if you jump in there, you’ll be poised to reap the business they are losing out on.

Avoid trying to capitalize on “the recession” in your marketing. It has a negative connotation that can actually backfire, if it reminds your potential clients too strongly that they have less to work with. Also, if you don’t change your ad campaign fast enough when things start to improve, your message will seam fearful and dated.

The factors that drive people to buy goods and services are always the same, regardless of the economic situation: reputation, service, and price. Offer those things and position yourself to be there for them when they are ready to make that decision to hire you. Then follow through.

7. Go After Bigger, More Stable Clients

Smaller businesses that were struggling financially before the downturn will be the first ones to collapse when the economy is depressed as it is now. In order to keep your own head above water, don’t pursue the smallest fish in the pond. Go after the larger, more stable companies that still have weight to throw around and money to spend.

8. Form Alliances and Networks

When people have less money to spend and really want to be sure of their decisions, word of mouth recommendations become even more important than they usually are. Take advantage of local opportunities for networking that you may have shunned earlier. Get your name out as a valuable resource by calling other companies and seeing if there is any way that you can help them out. You may be able to teach their employees Flash skills; they in turn may be able to teach you SEO skills.

Also, join or start a peer-to-peer business group (such as Young Professionals Network, or Business Leaders Exchange) to elicit candid feedback and alternatives on what you are doing and what other businesses are doing to remain strong.

9. Reduce Your Overhead

Any expense that isn’t absolutely related to your business management should be cut. Where you can, identify items that you can recycle or reuse rather than buying new, such as printer cartridges. Dollars add up, here, there and everywhere.

10. Focus On Staff

It’s likely that your bottom line is hurting just as much as everyone else’s is. You probably can’t promise all of your employees big raises or better benefits, but your staff needs to know that you still value them. Your staff is the backbone of your business. Keeping them happy keeps them loyal to you and ensures that they will remain strong workers, working for you, not against you. Reduce your staff numbers only if you believe your business is in serious trouble and that is the only way you can survive.

Reassure your staff and contractors that you are doing everything possible, including the steps outlined above, to keep your business strong. Talk to them and find out what they need. Perhaps some would appreciate more flexible hours, or the opportunity to take classes to keep their skills current.

Maybe you are the only “staff” your business has. In that case, take care of yourself. Don’t go into “panic mode.” Realize that things will change, and new opportunities arise where moments ago there wasn’t one in sight.

Summary

The above steps are only 10 ways in which to keep your business strong when things are looking bad. Depending on your specific circumstances, there are other options you have. Take advantage of the business resources that are in your community that you might not be aware of. Cities and governments want to keep businesses strong and growing, and they are there to help.

The most important thing that you can do in this difficult time is to assess the state of your business and see where your processes, pricing, goods and services can be improved. It may mean learning to do more with less as many people are having to do, but when things pick up again, your business will be lean and mean and ready to take action.

These sayings are slogans. You remember these slogans from the past because they are memorable phrases—usually short, catchy, maybe rhyming, and usually used as part of a marketing campaign. This means that you don’t just hear them once while watching TV and then never hear it again. These slogans were effective because when they were used, during the heyday of these ad campaigns, these slogans were everywhere. On TV, on the radio, in print publications, and they were repeated often.

There have been countless slogans used throughout the history of advertising that no one remembers. If a shoe company used the slogan, “Since 1902” would you remember it? What about if a restaurant used the slogan, “Proudly serving you the best”? Probably not, but unfortunately, these are the types of slogans that most businesses come up with.

There is somewhat of an art to creating a memorable slogan. This article explores 5 key things to keep in mind while you are trying to develop a good slogan for your business.

1) Develop a logo, and following that, a slogan. If you are trying to change an existing slogan, then examine how well-known that slogan already is, and what steps you might need to take to re-brand yourself. But also remember that it is OK for you to change your slogan. Businesses change their slogans all the time. The scope and customer base of even a very successful business can change dramatically over five or 10 years, so don’t feel like your slogan is set in stone.

If you have already created some distinct graphics or a logo for your company but you haven’t extended that brand to a slogan, that can be an obvious starting point for you. If you don’t have a logo, create one, because unless you advertise solely on the radio, a slogan works in harmony with a logo to promote brand identity.

2) How do you want to brand your product or company? What image are you trying to project? Are you interested in a playful, catchy, rhyming slogan that has a connotation of fun and easy living? Or are you trying to cultivate an image of corporate professionalism? The more that you can refine how you want to be perceived, the closer you are to creating a slogan. Start by creating a list of adjectives that you feel describe your business effectively, and then narrow down the list to the most important three. Hopefully, you have a well-developed business plan and a clearly defined mission statement to draw from.

3) Sleep on it. Maybe a few times. Regardless of whether you are trying to create the slogan for yourselves or for a client, even a great idea looks different in the morning. Allow yourself plenty of time to come up with alternatives, play with your ideas, research, brainstorm, and consult with others involved in the project or business. Coming up with a slogan isn’t easy, and it does take some time and a measure of creativity that isn’t always possible to rush. Your final idea might be the first one you come up with, or it might take months.

4) Short and simple. Your logo shouldn’t be something that people need time to “get.” It should be instantly understandable and immediately effective at conveying its message. In most instances you will have mere seconds in which to make an impression, so something like “quality in products and services from the crossroads of where customer service and reliability meet″ is dead in the water. Aim for short, sweet, memorable, catchy, and simple. A (good) slogan should be no longer than one sentence, probably capped at 10 words (can you think of any slogan longer than 10?), and it should use easily recognizable language.

5) Memorable often equals rhyming, catchy, or funny. This is one facet of marketing in which humor is a good thing. A popular local business near me is a brewpub theater, in which patrons can watch a movie while enjoying food such as burgers and sandwiches and pints of micro brewed beer. Their slogan is “Not Sneaking Beer Into Movies Since 2008!” I love this slogan as it points out something pretty universal to people who attend movies in theaters, which is the practice of trying to sneak in some type of refreshment. It never fails to bring about a chuckle from patrons, and when a customer remembers your business with a smile, that’s a warm fuzzy feeling you can take to the bank.

The flipside if this is that something one person thinks is funny could be offensive or just plain dumb to the next person. Have some thoughtful people vet your potential slogan, to make sure you’re marketing up the right tree. If you can’t make it funny without being crass or groan-inducing, keep trying, or don’t try to be funny.

6) Be Honest. It might be tempting to slap the slogan “World’s Greatest Pizza” on each of your delivery boxes, but that’s a pretty hefty claim to live up to. Make sure your business delivers what the slogan claims it can. A restaurant near me bills itself as “the best” in the state. While the food is good, the fact is that it is very much like every other restaurant serving that type of food anywhere in the country. There is nothing about this establishment’s menu to distinguish it as the best at anything, much less outside of the city limits. Seeing this preposterous claim every time I drive by the restaurant hasn’t made me start believing that this restaurant truly is the best in the state. On the contrary, it has lowered the esteem I have for this restaurant because each experience I have there reinforces its mediocrity. So, avoid hyperbole. Not only is it commonly used, meaningless marketing jargon, but it can’t be substantiated and will often only serve to make you look desperate.

A slogan is an important part of your business branding, but it shouldn’t be as intimidating as writing a book. Luckily, there are some great examples of successful slogans to look at, so just start brainstorming and see where it leads you. Try and answer the question: What would your product say if it could talk?

See, all online copy is content but not all content is copy. What is the difference, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing content? If you ask copy writers and content developers that question, you will get two different answers.

Dictionary definitions of copy and content are fairly interchangeable: matter to be printed; the subject matter of books or magazines; written material. There’s no mention of the Internet in these definitions. By their nature these are passive definitions, involving nothing more from the audience than that they view words on a page. But with all of the links, videos, audio, and interactive user-generated content, the Internet demands much more from—and offers much more to—its audience. An Internet audience is an audience of participants, not simply passive viewers.

Both content and copy can be interactive but let me put it this way . . . copy is what sells your prospects and content is what gets them to link to you or keeps them coming back (that’s why it’s called “sticky content”). Again, copy is sales oriented (hence “salescopy”) and content is just about everything else. Problems can arise when you have too much copy and not enough content.

For us at Limelight Department, we have mostly content on our main site and not much copy. We rely on our branding, portfolio, testimonials, and account executives to do our selling. For online sales we have satellite sites that speak to niche audiences and drive leads. The content have on our main site is articles, web tools, and tutorials—all the things that help people find the information they seek. This content encourages people to link to us and makes them want to come back for more. This approach is perfectly aligned with our philosophy of empowering and educating our clients so they can see the real value in the services we provide. But like all marketing, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your marketing, your content and copy needs to be customized not just in print but throughout your marketing strategy. This might mean you need much more copy than us, or it may need to be organized in a different fashion.

Also, combinations of content and copy are highly successful. I might have copy at the end of this article saying: “If you’d like more articles like this delivered direct to your inbox, please subscribe to our newsletter.” That call to action would be a great copy addition to increase the effectiveness of this content.

Sites that are merely informative with no copy may wonder why they’re not getting any sales, or why people are leaving their site so quickly. So on the other side of things it’s easy to see how you might have too much content and not enough copy.

Reading something on the Internet should not be like reading a newspaper article or a book. With those mediums, there’s no content, no interaction. No links to follow, no music, no instructional video or tools. It is dynamic and interactive. It is personal in a way that newspapers can’t be because in most cases an Internet user chooses to be looking at exactly the page they’re looking at, whereas a newspaper plunks a whole bunch of things into one compact form and hopes that people pick it up. A person reading a newspaper is unlikely to continue buying newspaper after newspaper if they don’t find exactly the information they’re looking for, but a person on the Internet has one thing with the power to help them do exactly that: their mouse. And it’s free.

Readers may be excited to begin a book, but once they turn the last page, that’s it, it’s done. But if looking at your page is actively engaging and leads to another action or further engaging information, then it’s sticky content and sales copy. . . It’s successful! And that should be the goal.

When you’re trying to engage a web audience, your page shouldn’t be a one-dimensional experience. Your copy should be active and compelling, and like the intention of an advertisement, should lead to an action: buy, subscribe, join, download, call, email, contact, click. Have your content be informative, but also inviting. Create a compelling call to action. Learn to incorporate active language, verbs, and clear directives: buy now, join today, try this, download, click here. Leave them not simply informed, but wanting more.

You can sign up for our newsletter over on the sidebar to the right and get free articles like this delivered direct to your inbox!  ;)

There’s no absolute consensus on how important each element is, and it varies slightly from one search engine to another, but content weighs in as more important, probably about 70%, with inbound links making up the other third of this two part equation.

I would like to point out there are about 100 other factors that play a dynamic roll in acheiving top ranking but these are the foundation of everything else. If you don’t have these two, the rest is useless.

Step 1: Content, Content, Content

Much like the real estate mantra “location, location, location,” climbing the ladder to the top of Google requires great content. The bottom line is that visitors will not stick around to check out your site unless your content is worth looking at. This will not be an overnight process.

Writing for a website is a bit of an art. It’s important to use keywords, but the tone should be one of natural speech. If you’re using to many keywords that you’re stumbling across the words as you read them, and you’re sacrificing general readability to get more keywords in there, that’s a mistake. If you’re unsure, ask a friend to help you write something in a naturally conversant way.

Ideally, each keyword phrase should have its own optimized page. That’s not likely in reality, but you should limit your usage to no more than two or three keyword phrases per page. You should allow for about 200 words per keyword. For a paragraph of the length of this one you’re reading now (~190 words), use the keyword no more than two times within the body text. The keyword should definitely be in the page title, and should be used within the first sentence of the content. Beyond that, limit use of your keyword phrase and spread it equally throughout the page. Wrap up the whole page of text with another usage, to show the spiders that the content is relevant throughout. Incorporate the keyword as anchor text for links that lead to another page of your own site, particularly the first usage. The link should lead to another page optimized for a different keyword, but with related content. For content with two different keyword phrases, the same rule applies: about 150 words per usage of the keyword.

Step 2: Link, Link, Link

When linking, go for the highest quality sites with content that is relevant to yours. Link farms that link your digital photography equipment website to a running shoe website are likely not going to help you. When linking, be consistent in how you enter your website, because in Google’s eyes, “http://www” is not the same as “www”. Google considers links from high PageRank pages as more “authoritative” than links from low PageRank pages. Sites with PR of more than 5 will likely know they are in desirable link territory because they’ll be receiving a lot of link requests. So go back to Step 1 above, and start building that great content so that they’ll have no reason to deny your request.

There are several tools available that can help you determine the PageRank of a site. (This is not the same as a site’s placement in the search engine results pages.) The free Google Toolbar is one tool that can help you quickly determine the PR of any page you surf to. It will appear as a blue bar indicating a whole number strength between 0 to 10. Most high quality pages have a PR of at least 4. Only the most popular pages, like Google itself or something like CNN.com, have a PR of 10.

One thing to avoid if possible is a Links page, where all of your inbound links are essentially relegated to the content dustbin. Having all of those precious links going to one page, or all to your home page, is a big mistake and a waste of what could be major link juice. The links should go to your actual content pages, where they are most closely related to the content of the linking site. Most often, the home page is the highest PR page on a site, so the link should originate from the other site’s home page, to one of your deep content pages.

Inbound links to your pages should feature your keyword as the anchor text triggering the hyperlink, in other words, the keyword is the clickable part leading to your page. Surround the link on your own site with as much relevant content as possible. This is not the place to use generic, placeholder text.

The Method

Building links is a bit of a chore. The best way to handle it is to add it to your schedule and do it like any other task. There’s really no better way, other than great content as we just discussed, to build your website’s stability and authority on the major search engines. It’s a task that will repay you in full, provided it is undertaken with some care. The automated reciprocal link services are questionable. The links are often to low quality junk pages, or temporary, or are links to pages that can get your site blacklisted on Google.

It’s tedious to link manually, so the other option is to hire that service out to a professional. If you do choose to investigate paying a link service, find one that sets it up so your page links to another, which links to a different page, which then links to you. That way each link is counted as a one way inbound link by Google, which is the most valuable type of link to have. Periodically check your backlink profile, and make sure the links aren’t broken, and are to quality pages.

If you’re building the links yourself, take a little care with how you phrase your link request. Some people aren’t aware of the value of links, so explaining to them what you want to do and how it will benefit both of your sites will improve your odds. Don’t write the email like a caveman. Explain why the page you want them to link to is most relevant to the content they have on their own site. Link to it in the email so they can see the page and be sure that what you’re saying is true. Put the link to their site in place first. When possible, use the webmaster’s name, so they know you’ve actually done your homework and you’re not an automated linkbot.

Also, steady linking over time is much more important than just lots of links. Google want to see that people continue to see your site as a valuable resource over time. If links suddenly stop coming, it’s a sign that your site or page no longer holds it’s value. A priceless tool in combating this is to provide something related to your topic like an online tool, video or article (“sticky content”) that makes others want to link to it.

Summary

The goal of having a quality site is that people will naturally want to link to you, and while link-building will be something you have to do, it will be a supplement to organically-grown (so to speak) links on your site. As your content improves, you will get more links, and you will begin that climb up the Google ladder. Add in some links that were hand-picked by you, and improved content, and you’ll climb even higher.

What can Social Media Optimization do for me?

Unhappy customers talk to other people about their experiences. Happy customers talk too. But as the saying goes, the unhappy customer will tell 10 people how bad your company is while the happy customer only tells one person. Whether it’s in your favor or not, the fact is people will talk and that is powerful marketing that can make or break a reputation.

Social Media Optimization allows you to lead the conversations people are having about your brands by interacting with your current and potential clients.

What is Social Media Optimization?

In general, Social Media Optimization, or SMO, is generating publicity and interest in your brand through social networking sites and resources. SMO utilizes news sites, RSS feeds, blogs and blogging networks, videos, and image sharing, just to name a few aspects. The sharing nature of social media means that it is an ongoing, open dialog between you and the rest of the world. It strengthens connections between yourself and your customers and clients, and provides an increased opportunity to strengthen your search engine optimization efforts.

Creating profiles in social media communities such as MySpace and Facebook is an example of current social media efforts, as is blogging, either by creating your own or participating in someone else’s, by leaving comments or as a guest writer. Sharing your expertise through article marketing using RSS feeds, and posting videos to YouTube and photos to Flickr all create opportunities to other people to engage with your brand and share the content.

Social Media Optimization takes search engine optimization to the next level, the “Web 2.0” level, if you will. In other words, the second generation of web activity that is much more interactive than the way the web was originally—web-based communities and services such as the social-networking sites, wikis and tagging and classification technologies which make collaboration and sharing fast and easy. By participating in all of these opportunities where others in your industry aren’t, you position yourself as the expert and increase your online visibility in a tangible way.

Social Media Optimization is most effective when the good content is created to exploit its viral nature, meaning that it is quickly and easily shared and that people want to share it. A big part of this is building a trustworthy reputation for yourself. There is a sense of trust among the sharing communities online that shouldn’t be taken advantage of.

Eventually, the social media optimization will take on a life of its own, as the content you have created is continually shared. But the ongoing communication aspect of SMO means that people will constantly be holding you accountable for every piece of your content that gets shared online. Violating this trust or using questionable techniques will be unappealing to the online communities you are seeking to court, and will very likely result in a backlash that is the opposite of the positive attention you were hoping to achieve.

Gain and keep their trust

The goal of marketing online is to build communities with similar interests. People want safe places to share their thoughts where they know others will have a similar mindset. You should not be chasing down every single person online to be their “friend.” Without a group with similar interests, there will be no cohesive to spread your message.

Of course, it’s perfectly fine to belong to different communities and have different groups of friends within those communities. The goal should be to remain active by building friendships with people with similar interests and contributing relevant content in those communities. Highschoolers can compete with one another to have the most friends on communal sites like Facebook and MySpace, but the small business owner should be concerned with quality, not quantity. Online groups are like planned communities—people join because they already like and agree with that going on, so a savvy online marketers knows there’s no need to do everything “in bulk.”

In fact, conducting business “in bulk” in these communities (by friending anyone, sending unsolicited bulk messages, and contributing only link heavy advertisements) is the equivalent of spam. But spamming in the context of a social network is even more unwelcome, because the user can’t get rid of it or hide it like they can when it appears in their email inbox. It’s visible to everyone and decreases the enjoyment of the site for everyone. If you don’t have something useful or relevant to say in the case of social networks, don’t say anything at all.

How To leverage social media opportunities

There are many different ways to generate social media content, so don’t feel like you have to engage in each one. Find two or three that resonate with you and focus on those. If you put more interest into what you’re doing, it will be more well-received.

News sites such as Digg, Propeller, and Newsvine allow users to submit news articles. If you discover a breaking news story, share it or comment on a news story that someone else found. Giving fellow submitters a “thumbs up” for finding something interesting is a good way to encourage them to give you a “thumbs up” when you find something to share.

YouTube and Flickr are sites that allow users to upload and share different media files such as photos and videos. The benefit of these sites is that they are easily found in search engines, easily searchable, and direct people back to your primary website. Utilize them by filming or photographing your products or services in action.

Wiki sites like Wikipedia, WikiAnswers and WikiHow allow users to contribute content and edit the content that was provided by other users. There are numerous wikis available that are about specific topics.

Networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Virb and many others allow users to create profiles and join and create friend networks with others according to similar interests.

Bookmarking sites such as Stumble Upon, Technorati, and Del.icio.us allow users to bookmark sites they find interesting or informative. The bookmarked collections can be shared publicly. The more often a site is bookmarked, the higher it is ranked within the site, making it easier for additional people to find it.

Is SMO right for you?

While many businesses can benefit from social media, SMO might not be right for some others. These are some guiding questions to consider before embarking on a social media campaign:

• Social media involves sharing some personal information and developing online personas that reveal a bit of the personality of the people behind the brands. Are you comfortable with sharing specific information about you and your company?

• Does your company already have a blog or news feed that is regularly updated? If not, is there potential for your company to begin releasing regular updates?

• Social media operates most effectively when it is about something very specific. Would your products and services benefit from a specific content-driven marketing approach?

• While the pool of users of social media sites is growing and changing, most users are young and technologically sophisticated. Would your company, product, or service appeal to them?

On Facebook, users can click a “like” button when they like something that one of their friends shares. The more “likes” a post has, the higher up it moves in a streamlined news feed that only shows significant posts.

Google has named their entry to the Like and Share craze “+1.” While the +1 works in a similar way, unfortunately when the action is “verbed” to “+1’d” it’s a bit clunkier than “like”!  But there are enough advantages and differences that Google fans should have no problem adopting the new method for sharing.

The +1 button requires users to have a Google profile (create one at https://profiles.google.com) and be logged in to their account. If you already have a Google account, you can upgrade it to receive even more results from your social circle, such as images.

Once logged into your account, you can begin searching. You will see clickable gray +1 buttons. While searching, if there is any result that you “like”, simply click the +1 button. When you click the button, your friends from your Google contacts will be able to see that you have recommended this link when they are searching for the same thing you did. So if you are searching for “American Idol” and “+1” a certain video result, when your friends search for “American Idol” as well they will see your Google profile photo with the words that you have +1’d the link.

Right now, the service is only available to organic search links, but Google has said that they will be adding the +1 button to AdWords ads as well and later pages on websites. They have also suggested that in the future your Twitter and Flickr contacts will also be able to view your +1′s. Your Google profile shows you everything that you have +1’d in one place, and you can delete those you no longer want to recommend. You can also disable this through your account settings tab by clicking on Edit under +1 settings that appear there now.

What seems clear is that Google is hoping to capitalize on the social media sharing craze as well as continue to offer personalized search results to their users. What is less clear is how Google will use this data.  What they are telling the public is that they will use the data to show its users more relevant search results and (eventually) advertisements based on what most people like.

That sounds good on the surface, but the fact is that the likes and dislikes of people you barely know (or know not at all) can influence the search results that you are shown. If Google thinks that one result is more highly favored than another, the other results will be pushed further down the page. While multiple +1s may become a marker of a site’s popularity and relevance, it could just as easily be the result of a system being “gamed” by users with multiple Google accounts who want to push their agenda.

It also presents some challenges for the business owner, as it is even more important to present content on your site that is worthy of +1’s. If your competitors have more +1s than you do, your site will likely be pushed further down the results page, adding a new battlefront to the already crowded and difficult online marketplace.

Some good news is that is fairly easy to add the button to your site or blog. All you have to do is visit Google’s +1configurator at http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button. Choose from two sizes you want to add: small (15px) or medium (20px) and a standard (24px) or tall (60px) option. Copy the first snippet of code just before the closing body tag of page or template. Copy the second snippet of code where you want the button to show up. Or, you can use the advanced option and add the URL of the page you are using the button on.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that how a site interacts with social media is impacting search results. Social media profiles and Twitter accounts now appear in organic search for personal and business names. For now, it seems prudent to take advantage of this new sharing system. Add it to your website and blogs when you can, and try to add content that garners +1s as much as possible.

If you’d like, we can add this new Google feature to your site. Please contact us and we’ll get it live for you right away.

We designed the back-end interface & listing application manager to be u-s-e-r  f-r-i-e-n-d-l-y. They needed to be able to manage all aspects of the website with complete autonomy. We were able to deliver that vision to them with great success!

The picture (above) was taken today at the website launch party, at Gorilla Capital’s Eugene corporate headquarters.

We were honored to be a part of this process, and look forward to continued prosperity & friendship with Gorilla Capital.

About Gorilla Capital: Gorilla Capital is one of the nation’s leaders in offering premium foreclosure properties. Founded in 2005, the company has experienced explosive growth, now operating in Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Florida, and Washington. An Inc-500 company, Gorilla Capital has been voted as one of the top 10 fastest-growing Real Estate companies in the country. Gorilla Capital’s famous ‘Gorilla Process’ has allowed them to achieve great success, both as a business and for their home buyers. Find more information at GorillaCapital.com.

A lot of study has been put into understanding how to inspire people to take action. Writing may seem like a mysterious art form, but in some ways it’s as scientific as any other field of study can be. Writing effectively requires a system, and here’s a good one I use sometimes. It’s called the Customer Focused Story and it’s a six-step process that helps you develop a message that inspires your website visitors to take action. Sometimes I use an even longer system but this is the basis of what really gives the call to action it’s power.

Begin with the idea that visitors to your website are ready to take action. They’ve searched for something you have, clicked the search engine listing to get to you, and are on your site. They’re ready! They just might not know it yet. Now, your job is to give them all the information they need to feel ready. What do they need to know?

1. They need to know that whatever product you’re offering will be useful to them. Not their neighbor or the coworker who told them about it.

2. They need to know that you, the business owner with the product, understand what they need and will be there to help them.

Fine-tune your copy so that it provides this information. If your copy helps them to define their feelings that, yes, you have identified their problem, you do know what they need, and yes, this product is right for them, then chances are very good that your copy will be effective.

As you’re developing the Customer Focused Story for your own product, website or brochure here are some steps to work through.

STEP 1: Name the Audience and the Problem your product can solve

The first thing you want to convey is “this is who I am speaking to and here’s what I can do to help.” You want to elicit in your prospects a strong identification with their situation and the solution you’re offering. Otherwise, there’s no incentive to keep reading.

STEP 2: Specify other Solutions that don’t work

It can be counterintuitive to talk about other solutions and avoid immediately launching into the wonderful solution you have. But there’s a good reason why this step works: the “Yeah, but.” How many times have you been telling someone something about your products and they respond with, “Yeah, but…”

In other words, they don’t trust your product because they’ve tried products that made similar claims and they didn’t work so why should yours be any different? That’s why you put those “Yeah, but” issues first. Get ‘em out in the open and move on to step 3.

STEP 3: Explain why those Solutions don’t work

Acknowledge that your prospects have probably looked elsewhere and been disappointed. You’re demonstrating empathy, demonstrating that you don’t have anything to hide, that you’re not trying to pretend that other solutions don’t exist. You are also letting them know that they are not the only ones who have struggled to find a solution to their problem, and you understand because you’ve tried them all yourself, and so have your friends or family.

STEP 4: Talk about what they need to do to Solve the Problem

At this point your reader understands why the other solutions failed and is ready to hear what does work. They’re ready to hear what they can do and what they must do to solve their problem once and for all. What are the requirements of your solution? What do they need to do to be prepared? How can they make sure they don’t make the same mistake again?

STEP 5: Tell them why you’re qualified to deliver the Solution That Works

Now here, almost at the end, is when you get to write about how you are qualified to deliver a solution that works. Your qualifications can include your personal experience, training and education, and testimonials about how you’ve helped yourself and people in the past.

STEP 6: Tell the reader exactly what the Next Step Is and How to Take It

Your reader has been with you all this time, following along and finding at each step something that they sincerely identify with. They’re hopeful and excited, full of understanding and a readiness to try again. Now all they have to do is get whatever you’re offering for themselves. So tell them exactly what they need to do to take the next step.

For instance: Have them go to your website and complete a short assessment to help them determine whether your product is right for them, call you to talk about how your products might help them or have them download a free trial.

Finalize it

The very last thing to do to complete your marketing message is to make sure it is personalized. Not that you are using their name, but you’re using terms like “you,” in place of “the customer” or “the person,” or “whoever.” This speaks to the reader in a more personal way. I recommend also using “us” and “we” to be empathetic to the reader. Read over your message from the top to make sure everything flows well. Introduce some transitional sentences if necessary.

Many people feel that a good Call To Action is just as simple as having a big flashing button that says “click me.” But there’s a lot more to the message than just showing them where to click. Follow these steps as outlined above for a marketing message that is strong to the core. You might also polish it up with some customer testimonials to make it really “sing”!

Search Engine Optimization is the act of engineering your website content so that your pages appear in top positions on a search engine’s results pages when people search for your specific keywords. There are a number of different search engines—Google, Yahoo, Ask—and all of their search algorithms are a little bit different. But there’s no doubt that most people strive for success on Google. Getting the top spots in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) brings the largest numbers of targeted traffic to your site, which is what every online business is trying to do.

Here are the top 10 basic SEO techniques that are proven to work.

1. Quality Content is “planting the seed” in that gardening analogy. Without quality content to begin with, the other techniques that build off of that will be fruitless. Neither search engines nor human visitors will be interested in your site without finding quality information there. A search engine’s stock and trade is information exchange. Visitors search for something you have, and search engines deliver it if it meets their high standards of content. Give it to them and half your battle is already fought and won.

2. Keywords are another part of planting the seed. It is essential that you do real keyword research to determine what terms people are using to search for what you are offering. There are numerous case studies of business using terms their advertising department throws out as keywords, when the real life human using the Internet is searching for quite a different term. Don’t just trust what you think people are searching for. Beyond high quality content, keywords are your most valuable tool, so find out as much information as you can regarding what terms are used and how many daily searches are made for those terms. A professional SEO provider can assist you with keyword research, and a number of tools or sites like Wordtracker and Seobook are available for you to do your own research. Many of these tools will not be free, but it’s an expense that is worth it.

Keywords integrate with content, because each page on your site should be optimized for one or two different keywords. These sites should have links to and from other pages on your site. Your link building campaign should target these optimized pages for links to and from other relevant sites. Use the “long tail” approach to keywords, and optimize not only for the top terms, but for the keywords that are less common. These less common keywords will also have less competition.

3. Site Design and general technical consideration is like weeding. You’re pruning and removing what doesn’t serve you, and letting the best aspects of SEO friendly web design flourish. Reduce the number of clicks it takes to navigate your site. Add a sitemap so engines have no trouble spidering your site and finding everything. Verify your code, and optimize all the details: page titles, descriptions, and all meta tags should include your top keywords.

Your page titles and description is most likely where the search engines will draw the snippet that they display in the results, so have yours make the best impression possible. Keep your punctuation to a minimum in the title by using a pike (I) symbol to separate terms. Make sure your keywords are used evenly throughout the content of the page, from the first line to the last.

4. Optimize for Google, but don’t ignore Yahoo or Ask (MSN). Use every free tool Google has to offer, from Webmaster Tools to Google Alerts (to monitor new sites containing your keywords) Google Analytics, which is invaluable in understanding your customers.

5. Link Building is the water in our gardening analogy. Find sites relevant to yours and build a backlink profile to and from these sites. The anchor text (clickable link) from the other site should be related to your keywords. Without links from other sites, your site will not have as much esteem in the eyes of Google, your listings will drop and your customer base will dry up.

6. Article Marketing also will build a platform of success and continue to bring in visitors. Articles give you links from other sites and help people find you. You establish yourself as the expert in your field by writing short (500 – 700 word) informative articles with links to your sites in the resource box (or your short bio) at the end. There are a number of sites such as SubmitYourArticle and Isnare, among many, that create a distribution network for you. In addition to that, your own blog, comments you leave on other blogs, and RSS feeds that you have set up will enable you to reach a wider audience with your articles. Anything that creates a high quality, trusted link to you, even from other sites such as Squidoo, increases your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs take one of your site’s major themes and create a “hub” around it. For example, if you sell sports balls on your site, then one separate section would be all about soccer balls. Extensive pages of content would cover covering everything dealing with soccer balls. This is similar to a sub-domain but instead it would be divided into a directory, so your page would be yourdomain/soccer-balls. (It’s fine if you set this up as an underscore rather than a dash. It makes little to no difference from an SEO perspective. But since most links are underlined, the underscore can get lost in that and inexperienced Internet users may mistype the URL.) These types of hubs allow you to create many more optimized pages full of deep links and informative content, which your human visitors will value as much as the spiders will.

8. Set up a WordPress blog. The WordPress software can be used very effectively for SEO purposes. WordPress is relatively easy to install and use even for a beginner, and is set up to be very search engine friendly. Blogs rank very highly in search engines, and there are may aspects that can be put to good SEO use, such as keyword tags, post titles, and ways to modify the indexable URL names.

9. Social Media Sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, and Social Bookmarking/News Sites like Digg, SlashDot, and Technorati are very important on the web, and will be increasingly important as Web 2.0 technology continues to emerge. These sites are crowded, but being included is better than not being included at all. Yes, joining these sites and using them is time consuming, but to not do it puts you at a distinct disadvantage next to everyone else who is using them.

There are some simple steps to take, such as making sure all of your articles and blogs have social bookmark buttons to make it easy for visitors to bookmark and share your content for you. Everything you do that makes it easier for people to find your site as in the above examples, is fertilizing your website so it can flourish.

10. Don’t stop. It’s not enough to do all of these things once and then stop. You can rest on your success for a little while but then you will lose it. You will lose your site placement that you worked so hard to build, and you’ll have to start over again to rebuild the customer base you had, so keep going. You don’t put in a garden and water for a month and then quit. Continually strategize new ways to get eyes to your site. Write new articles on a regular basis. Add new pages to your site. Continually monitor and track your keywords. Don’t quit.

Most of all, you must convince yourself that Search Engine Optimization is not difficult. If you think of it in terms of providing high quality content that is easily searchable and logically organized, continually bringing new eyes to your site through marketing efforts and link building, and maintaining an attitude of persistence, it really isn’t much different than that analogy we gave at the beginning: plant the seed, weed, feed, and water. Your site will flourish.

There are so many factors involved in how Google determines a website’s value, but there are some that rise to the top in order of importance. Here are the top three to focus on:

1. Relevant Content

You should have a list of keywords that are important for your business. These keywords are what you want to get ranked for in Google. When someone searches for one of your keywords, the goal is to have your site be among the top listings for that term.

Each page on your site should be tightly focused on one or two keywords. These should be sprinkled throughout the page, from the page title and section headline to written content, image titles and tags. In the written copy, use these keywords wherever it makes logical sense to include them without forsaking readability.

One of the factors that Google looks for is the context that is surrounding a keyword. If the written copy is highly relevant and related to the keyword, is of sufficient length, and backed up with usages of the keyword in all of the other important places, then Google considers that a more highly ranking page. Increase this contextual relevancy by including other material on the page, such as links to related articles, blog posts, or news items.

When someone searches for a particular keyword phrase, they are looking for information that most closely matches what they are searching for. This is also what Google is looking for. So, essentially, making your content as richly informative as possible will serve a dual purpose.

2. Links

The web is built on links. Indeed, it couldn’t be a called a “web” without the interlinked sites that make up the structure of the World Wide Web. Besides the on-the-page factors that the spiders look for in determining a page’s quality, the link profile is among the most important.

Spiders look for links to and from your site to determine where your site will rank in the search engine for your keywords and phrases. This evaluation weighs the other sites that are associated with yours, their relevance to your content, and what the reputation of those sites is and in turn the sites that they link to.

Because links are so important, huge industries have been built up around buying and selling links to and from highly ranked pages, despite the fact that Google strictly forbids it (with the exceptions of links in advertisements) and devalues those links.

Effective link building involves finding websites that are related and relevant to your own and receiving a link from them to you. This takes place naturally on the web when one page has good content that other sites want to link to and share. The more links you have the more people will find you, and the more links you will get.

There’s no consensus on how many links you need. To search engines, your link profile is like a popularity contest—they’re evaluating the strength and relevance of the pages that are linking to you but that’s not all they look at. They are also looking at the “anchor text,” which is the clickable text and what it says about the page that it links to. It’s better to have the clickable text be a keyword or phrase rather than simply “click here,” for example. Then on the page the link points to, also use that same keyword or phrase.

Paid link schemes promise to drastically increase the number of links to your site, which they often do, but these links are usually of low quality and may not be permanent links. So the programs may help at first but then will leave your site in no better shape than it was before when the links start to disappear. Search engines are onto this tactic, as well, so they look for signs that a site’s link profile has been artificially inflated. A natural approach is best—allow your links to grow slowly over time, no more than 10% per month. And while it’s fine to have some links to low pagerank pages, focus on the greatest degree of relevancy that you can. Link building is never done. It’s an ongoing process and is one of the most effective things that you can do to increase the visibility of your site on search engines.

3. Technical Aspects of Site Design

There are some great-looking websites out there that aren’t in Google’s results pages at all, and it sometimes surprises the site owners why that is. Website designers have a lot of tools at their disposal for designing great looking sites, but not all of those techniques are search engine friendly. Sometimes site owners want a certain feature because they like how it looks, but don’t understand that the design of their site has a great impact on their rankings.

Search engine spiders are pretty smart, but all they know how to “read” are words. There are certain formats such as Flash and Javascript that produce great visuals but can’t be read by the search engines. Depending on how the site is set up there could be entire sections within those menus (like a photo gallery) that can’t be navigated by the spiders, so the pages won’t be indexed and that content is essentially lost to search traffic. There are work-arounds, but not every designer is skilled enough to know what they are.

There’s a search query that you can use on Google to see the pages on your site that are being indexed. Go to the Google search bar and type in site:www.yourdomain.com and the results will show you the page title and description that Google is pulling for the page. If the page titles and descriptions are all the same, short, keyword stuffed, or missing, they’re not going to be effective.

A tool known as a search engine spider simulator can show you what a spider “sees” when it crawls your site. Here’s one: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php (Limelight Department is developing its own and we’ll post it here when it’s completed. 3/22/09)

If you try this and see that there is very little text or that some of your links are not being followed, for instance, these are some big problems with your site that you can address.

Summary

Visitors want the same thing that search engines want: 1) relevant, useful content, 2) easy to navigate design, and 3.) links to and from other high quality related sites. The most natural and organic SEO comes not necessarily from trying to serve the search engines, but by providing the highest quality content to your site visitors that you can. If you do that well, the search engines will value your site too, and your rankings will climb the ladder to the top.