Binghamton University School of Management has partnered with Brooklyn-based online marketing company Blue Fly Web Marketing to give their students a real world challenge to learn how to use SEO (search engine optimization) to get web sites ranked at the top of Google.

There are over 1 billion people searching for products and services on Google each day, and so by learning SEO, students will be well positioned upon graduation to help their future employers achieve online success.

“We’re excited about the students’ enthusiasm for getting involved with real-world experiences,” says Robert Weil, CEO of Blue Fly Web. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to partner with a great university and share our knowledge with an eager and intelligent group of students.”

Associate Professor Surinder Kahai is confident that the project will add value to classroom experience. He notes, “Search engine optimization is an art. Learning by doing is critical for acquiring an art and working hand-in-hand with a master can speed up this learning.” He also adds his appreciation for Blue Fly Web’s efforts. “I am very thankful to Blue Fly for providing my students with an opportunity to learn how to “search optimize” web pages from a master and apply that learning to a real-world situation. I look forward to seeing my students feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when the web pages they optimize begin to climb up in search rankings.”

Students will work on SEO project with Blue Fly Web Marketing for the full fall semester of 2011.  The intention of their project will be to create a web page and work with the company to develop a plan to get that page ranked on page 1 of Google by the end of the semester.

The partnership was spearheaded by two Binghamton University Alumni who now work with Blue Fly Web Marketing and their former professor Surinder Kahai.

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Blue Fly Web Marketing is a rapidly-growing search engine optimization firm located in Brooklyn, NY. The company works on optimizing websites for both small and large-sized firms in a wide range of industries. For more information about the services they offer, contact Robert Weil at RobertW@Blueflyweb.com.

This statement, made by Jeffrey Smith, prominent SEO blogger, is a well-articulated description of why monitoring SEO metrics is important to your web marketing goals. It simply helps you to evaluate your standing by the numbers. We’re here to help guide you through understanding what these measures can help you gain and aid in determining the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. Here are some top key performance measures for SEO:

1. Branded to Non-Branded Keyword Mix

One of the very important SEO key performance measures is the brand to non-brand keyword mix. Simply put, this performance indicator demonstrates how well consumers know your brand or products. It is the ratio of how many branded keywords to non-branded keywords power your search. For example, if you are the head of marketing at Petco, you would most likely want to strike a proper balance between getting search traffic from the terms “kitty litter” and “kitty litter Petco”. The brand to non-brand mix gives an indication of how well you are performing for long-tail, product specific searches, related to brand search terms such as the name of your business. Depending on your marketing strategy, you should develop an appropriate mix that makes use of brand-related advertising dollars and captures new business through non-branded search. For advice on selecting relevant keywords for your site, visit our article “Choosing Relevant Keywords for your Website”.

2. Pages Yielding Traffic

A second example of important SEO key performance measures is pages yielding traffic, a metric which determines how well the pages on your site drive search engine traffic. A high percentage could indicate your site employs a strategy to target non-branded keywords. Dr. Surinder Kahai, professor of Management Information Systems at Binghamton University and a strong advocate for SEO, says he believes this is a crucial key performance measure in seeing the level of traffic and whether it meets users’ expectations. As a website creator, it is key for your pages to be visible to search engines to draw new traffic to your site. Keeping your pages relevant, but more importantly exposed, to new potential users is a crucial component of SEO.

3. Index-to-Crawl Ratio

Another one of the SEO key performance measures is the index-to-crawl ratio, a comparison between the number of pages indexed by a search engine to the number of pages crawled on a site. A three to one (3:1) crawl ratio illustrates that for every page crawled by a search engine like Google, three were located in its index. Changes associated with this number usually show up with changes in the search engine index, but sometimes are found in the crawl signal patterns. It is important to monitor this ratio to determine your website’s “indexability”; the higher the number, the more information Google is indexing on your site.

4. Visitors per Keyword

The fourth metric on our SEO key performance measures list is visitors per keyword, which shows on average, how much traffic a site is getting given the keywords entered in the search engine. It is important to examine the performance of keywords on average for all pages yielding traffic. This measure will help indicate which keywords are performing best for your site.

5. Unique Pages

A fifth important figure on our key performance measures list is the number of unique pages on your site. Generally, the more content you have, the more useful your site can be to a greater base of consumers. It is useful to track the number of pages that have been crawled by the search engines, which can generally be estimated over a 30 or 60 day period. Making your site adequately robust to achieve keyword goals is a staple in search engine optimization.

Be sure to keep track of these key performance indicators and set objectives for improving your SEO processes. By monitoring key performance measures on a regular basis, you can best assess whether your search engine optimization efforts are yielding the results you desire.

What is White Hat SEO?

In its most basic sense, White Hat SEO refers to following the search engines’ guidelines, rules, and policies for search engine optimization.   Most of these guidelines are around ensuring that you are providing a natural and valuable experience for your site visitors.  For instance, users don’t want to come to a site and be bombarded with things like stuffed keywords, weird text and images, etc.  They want to come there for what they searched for.  And the search engines want to make sure they deliver a great experience to their users, so creating a good natural looking site is part of what is White Hat SEO and part of what the search engines are looking for.  Someone doing Black Hat SEO might try to hide text or keywords in a way that the search engines may read but the site visitor will not actually see.  If you or your SEO company are trying to trick the search engines on your site, it is probably not White Hat SEO.

For a more in-depth look on how to do set up your site in the best way for the search engines and White Hat SEO, see our article “Tips in Setting up an SEO Friendly Website”. If you take each of the steps we mention seriously, you can make major strides to getting your site ranked.

Another important part of SEO is link building, which is the practice of getting other sites to link to you.  White HAT SEO practices for link building generally would include natural, organic link building.  This means getting people to link to you based on the merits of your content or site.  So, for example if you buy a link, this would not be considered White Hat SEO.  If you SPAM web sites to get links, this would not be considered White Hat SEO.

Some examples of White Hat link building would include:

–writing an article (with a link back to your site) and publishing it somewhere on the web, whether as a guest blog post or on any number of reputable article sites.

–writing a press release with a link and distributing it across the web.

–creating excellent content on your site and people like it enough to link to it from their site- this is excellent and a great example of White Hat SEO.  If you like this article, please feel free to link to us!

What is white hat SEO’s most challenging aspect?

According to Tommy Landry, a professional marketer, co-founder of 3 companies, and blogger, the hardest part of white hat SEO can be seen in two ways:

1. It must follow standards. The content and linking pursuit strategy must be well planned and carried out.
2. It involves politics. You must convince other stakeholders to comply with white hat standards.

What is white hat SEO sometimes called? – Ethical SEO.

Here are some examples of ethical white hat techniques that can help your site:
–Rich and genuine content – What is white hat SEO’s first important step? Write topics that your customers find useful. If you write it well and have something interesting to share, they will likely direct others to your site as well. This is an important part of manual link-building, as mentioned earlier.

–Add relevant keywords to your site – Search engines use keywords to better understand your site.  But don’t overdo it!

–Create unique and accurate titles for each page of your site – Choose a title that corresponds to your page’s content so that search engines can effectively organize your site. Remember to use relevant keywords.

–Describe your page accordingly –Take advantage of the meta tag ‘description’ by putting a summary of your content with relevant keywords.

–Update your pages frequently – Search engines’ robots give more priority to fresh content.

–Manual link-building – Use article writing, press releases and rich, genuine content to get web users to link to you from their sites.

What is white hat SEO‘s unethical opposite?

When a site developer engages in black hat SEO, they are breaking search engine rules and regulations by unethically presenting content to search engine users and spiders. This can often be accomplished via keyword stuffing, doorway pages and invisible text on sites, among many other things. Black hat SEO is often used to gain a quick financial return on a site rather than a long term investment.

According to a February 12, 2011 article in the New York Times entitled “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search”, JC Penney hired a SEO firm called SearchDex that had used black hat practices—allegedly without the knowledge of consent of JC Penney’s management. In fact, JC Penney had backlinks from many unrelated pages in the retail industry. For many months they popped up as the #1 result on Google for clothing, towels, and luggage—even before the manufacturers’ sites. When Google found out about this they took action and significantly dropped JC Penney’s rankings.

White hat SEO helps search engines’ robots get a better understanding of your page. Follow the proper techniques and the robots will surely be your friends!

Pay-For-Performance (PFP) based SEO contracts

We agree.  In fact, here are some valuable issues that should be evaluated when considering Pay-For-Performance SEO contracts:

Deliverables:

Payment Terms:

Keywords:

White hat SEO:

Early-Exit clause:

Any downsides?

Find more about pay-for-performance SEO contracts

1. Think like a search engine user

It is important to put yourself in the shoes of the search engine user when choosing relevant keywords for your website. You should think about which words your user would use to find the content they need. Then, develop a list of potential relevant keywords you think people would use to find your site.  This list should be a good sized list.

2. Use online tools to help you narrow down your relevant keywords list

There are many services to help you find relevant keywords on the internet. One of the most important resources you can consult is the Google keyword tool.  This simple to use tool allows you to enter a keyword(s).  For each keyword entered (and we suggest doing one category of keyword at a time), it will show you the global and local monthly searches as well as the relative competition to those words.  Furthermore below your list of keywords Google will suggest other terms like the ones you’ve entered. Make sure to search for “exact” matches. This filter on the keyword tool will help you determine the exact form of the keywords to use on your site.

3. Things to consider in finalizing your relevant keywords list

Relevancy to your site

You should choose keywords that resonate with your target consumer. Such search terms will help you drive the users you want to your site.

Is your site a local or national site?

Because of the competition with certain keywords, it is sometimes recommended that you specify the location of your product or service.  This not only helps you if your site is meant for local traffic, but if you are trying to optimize for national terms, local searches can help build up to national ones.  An example of this type of keyword could be “exterminator nyc” as opposed to just “exterminator”.

Competition

Consider how many other sites are competing with you for the same term. The Google keyword tool clearly illustrates the degree of competition for chosen search terms.

Traffic

-Clearly evaluate how many users search for your sites. Depending on your budget, it may be difficult to compete with “fat tail” terms with thousands or millions of monthly searches as opposed to “longer-tail” terms with few searches

Fat-tail vs. long-tail:

-Fat-tail traffic: Concise keywords with a great deal of monthly searches (usually also has a lot of competition). Competing for these terms may take a lot of money in content development and link-building. However, pay-offs can be large once you rank high.

-Long-tail traffic: Keywords that consist of more than one or two individual search terms. This strategy enables you to target a very specific user. For example, if you are an auto insurance company you may want to consider using “how to save money on car insurance” to find users who are looking for that specific keyword phrase.

-Which is better?

-All in all, develop a keyword strategy that helps drive the traffic you want within your budget. There are pros and cons to fat-tail and long-tail relevant keywords; choose ones that are appropriate for the audience you’re looking for.

“Buying” Value

It is important to choose relevant keywords that users search to buy a product or service. In other words, it can be great for business to develop a lot of informational content for your site; but it is more important to drive users to purchase your product or service. In relation to the car insurance example, it could be more useful to your business to use the phrase “auto insurance quotes” as opposed to “how to file an insurance claim.” While the former keyword could be from a user seeking out a quote, the latter is most likely looking for an informational page about how to file a claim.

Choose only a few specific words to optimize on your site

We suggest after finalizing your list to choose only 1-2 main keywords and 3-4 surrounding keywords per web page that is being optimized.  However, keep your list handy as you can use those for surrounding pages to help Google feel that you are a credible source for any words with which you are using.

4. Why should you use relevant keywords on your sites?

Ali Yayla, assistant professor of MIS at Binghamton University, stated that relevant keywords “greatly assist in bringing more traffic to your site.  Google’s organic results are generated by matching users’ search requests with relevant keywords on websites. When chosen keywords and the site’s context are not matched by Google’s search algorithm, Google will further examine other elements such as title tags and domain names. Not having relevant keywords in this information will lower the chance that your site will appear in organic search results.”

Once you have chosen the relevant keywords that are best for your site, you are taking a great first step to increase your visibility on search engines. To find out more on how to optimize your website according to search engine rules and regulations, visit our article “What is white hat SEO?”.

With this understanding, we’ve created this very basic 10 step guide to setting up an SEO friendly website that will help you in gaining higher rankings in the SERPS.  While this is not an all inclusive guide (Google is secretive and does not express all that it takes into consideration when giving rank), it is a fantastic start to helping your business structure your site in a way to aid in your rankings.

1. Start with a good domain name

While we do not know exactly what Google thinks about domain names in general, it seems pretty apparent that they are giving precedence to domain names that are either keyword friendly or relative to what you are trying to accomplish.  In other words, creating the website johnsmith.com for selling specialized paper airplanes will be a lot harder sell to Google than creating the site specializedpaperairplanes.com.

If you put things into perspective this makes sense.  Google likes to know that your domain is relative to what is on your site.  The more relative it is, the more credibility Google may give it.

2. Choose a good web hosting company

There are many many web hosting companies out there.  It is vitally important that you pick one with good bandwidth and one that has great reviews.  Many times a webhosting company can make or break you, either by price or by how they handle your site.  For instance, Google gives a lot of credibility to how quickly your site loads as this may impact your user’s experience on your site.  If your site loads slowly due to a poor hosting company, you may find your rankings drop.
More specifically though, make sure that your hosting company provides you with the following:

Static IP address – Ensure that when visitors search out your site, your hosting company assigns the same IP address every time to your site.  For obvious technical reasons, Google prefers an IP address that stays the same.  Thus, it shows Google that this site is this site and not many potentially different sites with the same content.

Enough bandwidth to support a growing site/speedy load time – As mentioned above, site load time has a big impact on SEO rankings.  If your hosting company cannot support a site with room to grow, you may experience slow load times and/or site crashing, which obviously is bad for customers coming to your site.  And this can affect your rankings.

3. Stay away from Flash, make sure that pages are static and not dynamic, and keeping code clean

Flash – Flash overall, is not read by Google’s spiders as of yet.  As such, it’s better to not use it much on your site.  With HTML 5, many things you can do in Flash can now be done in HTML.  Thus, we suggest staying away from it for now.

Static vs. Dynamic Pages – Some web developing software offer ways to organize content that for you as the user becomes quite useful.  We suggest being careful and really making sure that you understand how the software can impact SEO.  For instance, some content organizing software makes it easy for users to search for anything on your site.  If you have a lot of different categories sometimes this may seem great.  User types it in and poof there’s a page of new content.

What most people don’t know though is, if you’re your site has dynamic content; Google is far less likely to find, crawl, and rank a completely dynamic created page.  Thus, the newly created dynamic page will not aid and could potentially hurt your rankings.

Keeping code clean – Without getting too technical, keep your sites coding clean so that when the crawlers come to your site, they don’t have any issues finding your content and keywords.  In other words, if the crawlers come to you site and find a lot of java scripting code and have a rough time finding your content, they may end up leaving without giving your site the credibility it deserves.  We suggest having some scripts be called from an external source to make this easier on the Google’s spiders.

4. Pick the keywords that you want to rank for

Now that you’ve got the domain and a good hosting company, and you’ve got the correct software to set up your site, it’s now time to figure out words that you want to rank for.  In other words, it’s time to choose the words that people would type into Google to find you.

The best way to do this is to come up with a list of words, phrases, and even short sentences that you think people would use to find your site.

Next we suggest using Google’s Keyword Tool to find out how many average monthly searches each keyword has and what the competition looks like.  Specifically to do this, just search in Google for Google’s keyword tool.  Note though, when using the tool, make sure to set the search on the left side bar to exact match.  This will ensure that this is exactly what people are typing in, not something near it (as broad search would do).

Once you’ve done this, you should be able to see what you’ve inputted as keywords and phrases as well as Google’s like terms below it.  You should base the keywords you choose on relativity to your site and to your budget.  Obviously it will take a lot more input (time and money) if the words you’re after have a million searches with high competition as opposed to something with a thousand searches and medium competition.

After you’ve done your research and you make a list of words that you like, choose 1-4 to be your main keywords for each page you are optimizing your site for.   We also suggest choosing 5-10 (based on a small to medium sized site) other secondary keywords that you could use throughout your site as well.  All in all though, your keywords should make sense for your site and for your users.  Furthermore, they should be somewhat relative to each other as well.

5. Writing good, unique content

You’ve chosen your keywords, so what is next?  In general we suggest using them as natural as possible throughout your content.  Specifically, you should use your primary keyword for the page 5-6 times (based on 350-500 words) and your secondary keywords 2-3 times each.  If your articles are longer or shorter, you should adjust the keywords accordingly, but the above is the typical length for most web pages.

This step may be the most important step of all.  When you write the content for your site make sure that the content is unique and original. We cannot emphasize this enough.  Google’s algorithm is quite robust and can recognize if things are borrowed from elsewhere.

Next, as you’re writing this content, think about other keywords that are relative to what you are writing about.  For instance, in writing your specialized paper airplanes home page, you should think about adding keywords about specialized paper, flying techniques, proper folding, etc.  All in all, think of words that would allow a computer to make sense about what exactly your page is about (because that’s what Google’s crawlers are trying to do).

Furthermore, make sure to use your keywords in your title and H1, H2, etc. headings tags of these pages.  It does seem that if you’re giving such importance to these keywords, Google recognizes this and transfers this importance to the page/site for its rankings.

Finally, add relevant content over time.  Google seems to give more credibility to a site with a thousand quality pages than it does to a site with only 8.

**Special Note** this section has laid out how to write and set up content page by page.  That said, if you’re focused on something specific or if there is something that you want to rank for that may not be on your home page (new item, or is on an interior page), we suggest creating a link from your main menu to a static page for it.  In other words, let’s say that you are going to start selling high-end paper for your specialized paper airplanes.  This is relative to your site, but it’s not anywhere on it yet.  The best way to approach it is to link from your home page (preferably on the main menu) to a new static page about the high-end paper with which you have your keywords properly optimized for on the page.

6. Make sure that your Page Title, Permalinks, Meta tags, Meta title, and Meta descriptions are keyword friendly

This is another important step that most people fail to do.  We’ll take each in turn.

Page title – As expressed above, the page title should be keyword friendly and preferably one of the main keywords.  Furthermore, Google generally only shows 65 characters for your title and thus you should stick to this number.

Permalinks – The permalink is the actual URL for each page.  Each permalink to each page should be keyword friendly or at least relevant to the page.  For example, for your specialized paper page, it should be specializedpaperairplanes.com/high-end-paper as opposed to specializedpaperairplanes.com/464654dsa9

Meta Title – Your Meta Title is the title that will actually show up in the search results.  If you haven’t figured out the trend by now, we’ll help say it again.  This should be keyword friendly as well.  So our high end paper page could be entitled (if the keyword was high end paper airplane paper) High End Paper Airplane Paper.

Meta Description – The Meta Descriptions are the little description next to the title in most of Google’s SERPS.  There are 2 things to keep in mind when writing your Meta descriptions – (1) It needs to be keyword friendly (2) Make it inviting and somewhat salesy.  This is what somewhat might read to choose whether or not they will click on your site.    For example for our high-end paper page, we could write something like – “Want to find the best high end paper airplane paper?  You’ve come to the right page.  Our paper airplane paper will make sure your planes always fly perfectly.”  Further, if you have more than 1 primary keyword, you should try to fit it in as well.

Meta Keywords – Your Meta keywords are simply the keywords you are trying to optimize for.

Tags – Your tags are generally not seen, but are a way to organize content for your site.  We suggest making them keyword friendly as well.  A simple route of coming up with tags is to actually use the keywords.

7. Optimize Images –

While Google cannot see the images on your page, there are ways that they can aid in your SERP rankings.  We’ll take each in turn.

Image name – When uploading your image, make sure that the image name is either keyword friendly or at least relevant.  For instance, if you have an image of a paper airplane, name it paper airplane.jpeg not 1316546.jpeg.

Image title – This is the actual title of your image.  It should be keyword friendly.   You can think of this as another heading for your page.

Alt-Text – The original idea for Alt-text was so visually impaired individuals could scroll over your image and be told what it was.  This is still in place today and Google takes these very seriously.  Make sure to write a short, keyword friendly description of your image.

Description – This is an area where you can write a description of the image.  It is another area to use keywords, but it’s only relevant if you plan on ranking for that image specifically.

8. Privacy Policy (if you’re collecting information)

If you are collecting information of any sort, Google seems to give credence to have a Privacy Policy.  This is a simple matter, just do it.  Anything to give your site more credibility is a good thing.

9. Interlink pages, setup a physical sitemap, an XML sitemap, and a Robot.txt file –

All of the above are ways to make it easier for your user and Google to navigate your site.  We’ll go over each here:

Interlink Pages – By linking your pages to and from one another (in a relevant way), your site becomes easier to navigate.  Furthermore, by linking pages together that are relative to one another, you give each of those pages a little more credence that it is about what you say it is about.  This again, gives Google another item to use in deciding the relevance to your site.

Physical Sitemap – In general, this is simple to set up, it gives your user an easier route through your site, and we think that Google prefers you have one.  Basically, from our experience, anything that you do to make life easier for your user, Google seems to give credence to.

XML Sitemap – The XML Sitemap differs from the HTML or physical sitemap in that it is specifically set up for the crawlers to crawl.  This sets up a direction for the crawlers to go through your site and recognize updates.  In terms of SEO this is very important.  And bluntly, anything that you can do to make sure that it is easy for Google to go through your site the better.  Thus, we strongly suggest ensuring that this is set up and especially make sure that it is set up at the root directory (e.g. domain.com/sitemap.xml).

Robot.txt File – Google seems to give a lot of credence to just sheerly having a Robot.txt file.  In general, this is set up as a place to put information that you do not want the crawlers to crawl (test pages and duplicate content) as well as a place to disallow certain crawlers from crawling your website at all.  Even if you have nothing to put in this, we suggest just setting up an empty file.

10. Register with Google Webmaster tools and submit your XML site map as well as register with Google Analytics –

Webmaster tools and submitting your XML site map – Registering your information with Google’s Webmaster tools is an important step in your SEO efforts and it’s free.  Not only does it give you the place to setup your XML sitemap for the crawlers, but it also gives you the following:

- Lets Google know that you are the site owner.  (You are given a piece of code to put on the site).

- Gives you information about your internal and external link.

- Lets you know if the crawlers are finding errors on your site that won’t allow them to access all content

- And much more

Register with Google Analytics – Registering with Google Analytics is also free and very easy to do.  By registering with Google Analytics, you give yourself access to things like:

- Most visited pages

- Traffic

- Bounce Rate

- Conversion info (if you have a goal set up)

- And much more

What not to do -

While we’ve included a top 10 list of tips to “do” to create an SEO friendly site, there are many things that you shouldn’t do.  And trust us when we tell you that if you do any of these items, Google will find out and your rankings may not only fall significantly, but you might actually be taken off of Google’s search entirely.  What we’re talking about is known as “Black-Hat” activities.  These could include things like:

Over-optimizing text – If you stuff keywords into your page (as in putting in paper airplane 40 times in a 400 word page), you are over optimizing the page and Google will not like this.  Your pages should be natural and something your reader would appreciate, not just there to aid in rankings.

Don’t hide text – If you hide text in a white background to help with rankings or elsewhere on your site, Google will find out and question why your users and crawlers are seeing two different things.  This is not just wrong for your rankings, but unethical in general.

Don’t make your font so small that user cannot read it – If you’re trying to add content for crawlers by making font so small that a human cannot reader, Google will figure this out and you could lose rankings.  This again is a way to make Google feel like you are trying to deceive it and this makes you lose credibility.

While the above three is by far not an all inclusive list, in regards to this article it is a few things for you to look out for.  We do suggest reading up a bit further on “Black-Hat” optimization and the things you should not do when setting up a website.

With all that said, now that you’ve established your site in the most SEO friendly way, you’re still not done.  It’s important now to focus on what is called “off-page optimization.”  This involves building links, social media sharing, writing blogs, etc., etc.  There is much information out there on this and its scope is a little bit out of reach of this article.  We do suggest doing a little research on this as it is another key part of helping your rankings with Google.  That said if you would like to contact us to find out more information or to see how we can help you make sure that your site is SEO friendly, please either call at 1-800-613-7105 or email us at info@www.blueflyweb.com and we’d be more than happy to go over anything you need to know.

We hope that this guide was informative and easy to follow.  And if you would like to link to this article that information is held below.  Thank you.

Tips in Setting up an SEO Friendly Website

* News: Zarrella says that the “most popular” content you can put on your site is “breaking, exclusive news.” But the problem is that such items are not exactly easily to find out. He says the best way to get connected is to form real connections with people in the know. Also, pay attention to what is going on in your field, and you might find something worth publishing. If you do, “act fast,” Zarrella says, with blog content on the news. It doesn’t do you much good to be second or third in revealing what could have been your exclusive.

* Lists: It’s easier for readers to grasp content that is broken up into a list, as opposed to some long block of text that nobody wants to wade through. Zarrella says that you can have some great blog content creation by ranking things in a 10 best — or 10 worst — list, and use images to illustrate your points.

* How-Tos: If you know a lot about how to do something, “write a tutorial” or a how-to to showcase, Zarrella advises. Break it down in a way novices can understand, with a list of subtasks to do, and use videos and photos to illustrate your point. The author says that blog creation of posts like this can “spread like wildfire.”

* Controversy: Don’t be controversial just for the sake of getting page views. But if you have an opinion that is against conventional wisdom, you can get people to read you with a well-reasoned argument. But Zarrella advises to “stick to your facts” and avoid making personal attacks. But don’t make this your ongoing shtick unless you want a reputation as somebody “who is always looking for a scrap,” the author says.

* Building an Audience: Zarrella says that you should think of blog creation as “hubs” for your web promotion strategies. You should reach out to other bloggers in your niche, and hang out where your audience might be. If you forge relationships with people in your field, link to their articles, and comment on their blog content, they will be much more likely to promote you.

Good luck with these blog content creation tips for helping your web strategies.

Read more from Dan Zarrella at DanZarrella.com.

Blue Fly Web Marketing offers SEO and social media services.

But is it worth all the hype?

We talked to people who use market their business with social media every day, as well as asking experts in the field about what works – and what doesn’t work. Here are some of their thoughts on social media for business marketing, and their best social media marketing tips:

One of the big advantages to using social media to promote your business is the cost – or lack thereof, says Phil Bowyer, author of “Social Media For Small Businesses” and creator of Phibble Media. Traditional advertising is expensive, he notes, and its effectiveness can be hit or miss. Social media is not just free, he says, but it allows businesses to “mingle” with current and future customers to build a lifelong customer base. However, while using social media to promote your business is techically free, it does entail a cost in “time and patience,” Bowyer says.

So what can you sell using social media tools? Jason Falls, industry observer, consultant and speaker at SocialMediaExplorer.com, says that anything can sell well and be promoted through the medium. He says the “difference maker” is not social media itself, but the story you’re telling about your product or service. Since social media is about conversations between companies and customers, Falls says, the businesses that do best with social media are typically those with “customer-first attitudes and connection points.”

Mike Michalowicz, e-marketing expert and author of “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur,” writes about small business for the Wall Street Journal. He says that the things that sell best on social media are the “social media training” and “social media promotion” offerings, comparing it to people on TV saying they can teach you the secrets of wealth by selling “how to get rich” systems. On the other hand, Michalowicz says that “tangible items” – things that need to be looked at, touched, smelled, etc. don’t do well on social media, although they do better on websites where the visual and audio senses can be engaged.

One company has created a way to track the value of social media for business. ForeSee Results has come up with a Social Media Value Calculation to determine exactly how much traffic companies can get from using social media to promote your business. Larry Freed, President and CEO of the company, says that the value of social media “differs a lot from company to company” in both quality and quantity of traffic. For example, some companies get a lot of high quality traffic from social media, he says, and others get a very small amount of very high quality traffic. However, other companies aren’t seeing such a good return on investment. Right now, the company has discovered that just 5% of U.S. sales are driven by social media, but that is expected to increase in the near future as the medium grows in popularity.

So how do you achieve a good ROI with social media for business marketing? And what are some good social media marketing tips? Bowyer emphasized conversations with your potential customers, rather than incessant promotion of your product. You wouldn’t just show up at a party and start yelling “I have a widget that’s really cool, and each one you should buy it,” he says. You would talk to people and ask them about themselves. Keep that in mind with using social media to promote your business, Bowyer says. “Have conversations and you’ll win.”

Falls said social media is “more about service and story than product.” He suggested approaching social media “with a strategic focus.” Freed shared similar sentiments, saying that “the trick is developing a social media presence that gives your customers what they want, not just what you think they want.”

Michalowicz stressed the importance of “transparency and authenticity.” Forget about the idea of faking it until you make it anymore, he said, because if you’re not real, you will get exposed in the blink of an eye. He said the key is to be “authentically you.” Use the same sort of voice you would use in emails to your friends, the entrepreneur sad, and your followers will become “your new best friends, in effect.”

While he uses humor a lot in his social media persona – even his auto-respond Twitter message is funny — Michalowicz doesn’t recommend that approach for everyone. “If you are naturally a jokester, then do that,” he says, but it has to be who you really are. Don’t fake a funny persona if that’s not you. People can spot a phony from a mile away, he notes. “And if they feel they can’t trust your style, they will also feel they can’t trust you.”

Bowyer said people shouldn’t be afraid to change their strategy if it doesn’t work. And don’t worry about being perfect, he said. “It’s the rough edges that give you character and appeal.”

And don’t forget about using blogs to hone your strategy; as one of his social media marketing tips, Falls exhorts using a blog as a “social media hub” and a magnet for search engines.

Where do you find customers on social media? Almost everyone we spoke with agreed that Facebook should be an important part of any social media for business strategy, due to the size of the audience. Freed said his company’s research has determined that not only is Facebook “the best site to target,” but that their study shows that customers are happier with companies’ Facebook sites than they are with Facebook itself. Michalowicz prefers Facebook to Twitter when it comes to having a dialogue with your customers, although he said Twitter works well at “striking curiosity” and starting that dialogue.

Besides Facebook, where else is a good place to find customers? Falls says you need to figure out where your audience is. But determining that “isn’t always easy-peasy,” he says. You can do surveys or spend money on market research to tell you. Even if you just start out with just anecdotal information, “fish where the fish are,” Falls says.

Bowyer, who works with musicians in his business, said that YouTube is supplanting MySpace as the place to find new music. YouTube is “becoming this generation’s version of MTV,” he said. He notes that those who are marketing to teens should stay away from Twitter, due to the low teenage use of the program.

Besides the big name sites like Twitter and Facebook, there are also many niche social media sites to check out. Falls recommends LikeBusiness.com and LinkedIn for business-to-business (B2B) marketing. He suggested Trip Advisor for travel businesses, UrbanSpoon and Yelp for restaurants, and recommended that retailers target tracking sites FourSquare, GoWalla and Whrrl. Bowyer also suggested FourSquare for local companies to promote their locations.

Bowyer also works with authors, and suggested using sites like GoodReads to promote their work, Scribd to show their work, and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords to sell their work.

Most experts agreed that you have to have a “strategic focus,” as Falls puts it, around your social media for business efforts, instead of incorporating it willy-nilly. Bowyer emphasizes that you should “set your goals first, then decide how social media can help you reach them.”

And all agree that putting in the effort in social media for business is worth the time. For example, Selma Avdicevic, founder & owner of Woolly Boo, a company that makes handcrafted children’s bedding made of natural fibers, is one of the social media for business success stories. She has used social media like Facebook, Martha Stewart’s Dreamers Into Doers community, and LinkedIn to grow her business. And she says that the week she joined Twitter “was the week of record sales to date.”

Bowyer uses social media to create interest in his artists’ works. And Michalowicz has built his own online community of sorts by asking readers to contribute ideas to his ToiletPaperEntrepreneur.com site.

Freed says that social media’s influence should continue to be on the rise, “both as a direct driver of traffic and sales and as an influencer or amplifier.” So don’t be afraid to use it for your business.

“Search engine optimization doesn’t need to be such a mystery” says Blue Fly Web Marketing founder Robert Weil, and a good SEO professional should be able to explain how it works, in a way that their customers will understand, and what are the best SEO optimization tips.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #1- If your SEO professional cannot clear things up for you when you speak, this is yellow flag #1.

SEO consists of two different things – on-page and off-page optimization. On-page (also called on-site) optimization consists of setting up your web site in a way search engines can easily recognize it. Your site needs to have information indicating who you are in the title, meta tags, headings, keywords, image tags, and body text.

For example, if you are a personal injury lawyer in New York City, your site should contain those terms in the site headlines, titles, body text, and the internal meta tags that search engines read.   Those items should show consistency to indicate that you are who you say you are.  Otherwise, Google and Bing won’t know what to make of you when their automated crawlers come to read your site, and you won’t get a high Google search optimization rating.

Your SEO professional should be able to explain to you exactly how on page Google search optimization works and what types of things you would need to do for best search engine optimization management. You can also read up on this in any book on basics of SEO, including SEO optimization tips
— on site optimization is fairly straightforward and if you follow some basic rules, you will more or less be in good shape. You can also check out our article with some good basic Google search optimization tips.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #2- We recommend you get a little educated on basic on site optimization. It will go a long way and is fairly straightforward. A little knowledge will also help you determine if the SEO professional you are speaking with knows what he/she is talking about.

Google Search Optimization Tips #3- We find about 95% of graphic and web designers these days say they will set your site up in SEO friendly manner, but we find this to not be the case. Be wary when a graphic designer says this, and if you have read up a bit, you can ask them some questions and get a sense of whether they are really up to speed on best practices.

In our opinion and in most cases, on-page optimization accounts for about 15% what is needed for high rankings.  If you’re optimizing for a very obscure search team (otherwise known as a “keyword”), it might take you all the way to page 1 and it will be all you need to do. But in most cases, on-site optimization, while a necessary precondition, is not sufficient to get a high Google SEO rating for the best search engine optimization management. You will also need to do off-page (also known as off-site) optimization.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #4- In most cases, simply changing your site will not get you good rankings for any competitive keyword/search terms. You will need to do off-page SEO as well.

Off-page optimization is mostly the practice of building links to your site from other web sites. Links can come from directories, press releases, articles, blog postings, other people’s sites, etc.

Depending on how competitive the market is for your keywords, you might need hundreds or even thousands of outside links to your site. The more competitive your business, the more links you will need. SEO is tedious and a few links won’t do it for anything competitive. It is about steadily and consistently getting good links until you are doing better than your competitors. Different links have different value in Google’s mind. The more relevant and authoritative the site and page you are linking from the better. Also, if 100 other people have links on the page you have a link on, that is less powerful than if you are the only one.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #5- Off-page SEO is tedious and takes a lot of time, effort and expertise. Unless you have a real drive to learn SEO and want to spend a lot of time on it, we recommend you outsource this part of SEO. Most people we meet who try to do this themselves, eventually come to the same conclusion.

So how do you know what it will take to get to page 1 for your web site and keywords, and get that top Google SEO rating?  A good SEO expert should be able to look at types of links your competitors have and give you a sense of what it will take to get your site on the first page of Google search results for any keyword. If the expert doesn’t, or if they claim it’s a mystery as to how Google determines who it puts on Page 1, that isn’t a good sign.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #6- If you ask an SEO professional to tell you what it will take to get you to page 1, and they give you the old “we don’t know, it is up to Google”, we recommend finding other options. A good SEO professional should be able to analyze competition for you and give you a good sense/ballpark of what it will take from a time and cost perspective.

And don’t be lured by the SEO professional who tells you he will optimize hundreds of keywords for you. Depending on your budget, it may be completely unrealistic to rank for so many terms. Remember you are going for page 1, which is where all the traffic is. If your SEO gets 100 keywords on page 3 it is not going to help you too much. It is better than being nowhere, but there will be few dollars coming in from this.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #7- If your SEO professional wants to go for lots and lots of keywords, make sure he/she feels (preferably based on real analysis) he/she can get them all to page 1 based on your budget in a time frame that works for you, otherwise consider focusing on fewer keywords that will actually get to page 1 inside of your budget.

An SEO expert should be able to give you an estimated number of monthly Google searches there are for the keywords you’re looking for. The SEO person ought to also be able to give you an estimate on how much traffic those keywords will get you, give you Google search optimization advice, and tell you how long it will take you after optimizing for those keywords to get you on Page 1 of Google search results.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #8- Use Google’s Keyword Tool to get traffic estimates, but make sure settings are set to “Exact Match”. This will tell you how many searches are being done for the exact phrase you are optimizing. Depending on what position on page 1 you get to, you will likely get somewhere between 3% (position 10) and 30% (position 1) of the clicks.

One way to optimize particular keywords or search terms for your site is implementing off-site optimization, with anchor texts with links. For example, if you have an executive coaching site, and many other sites and directories link to your page with the anchor text of “executive coach,” it will do much more for your SEO than a “click here” anchor text will.

So how long will it take to get results? If you have a non-competitive search term you want to optimize for, you could be on the first page of Google search results between one and six months after hiring an SEO expert. If your term is more competitive, and has many more businesses trying to optimize for the same term, it could take between four to ten months to get to Page 1 of Google. An even more competitive term could take up to a year or more for the Google results you desire.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #9- Be patient, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. If it were quick and easy, everybody would do it. But if you have persistence, SEO will almost always pay off handsomely. If an SEO professional tells you he/she can get results quick, consider if it is a non-competitive keyword (i.e. little or no traffic) that is probably true, but if there is any real traffic/competition for this keyword (more than a couple hundred searches per month), we would ask a few more questions.

Some SEO experts don’t give realistic timelines on how long SEO will take, perhaps because they are afraid that potential clients will not work with them if they do. Ask your SEO professional to give you their honest assessment.

Some SEO experts bill by the month, which may mean that they could drag out improving your search results (sorry to be cynical).  In that case, it might be better to use an SEO company that bills you one time based on a particular result.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #10- Ask your SEO professional for some guarantees or assurances of results. Maybe they will say no, but can’t hurt to ask.

SEO is not such a mystery. Build a well optimized site and a better link profile than your competitors and you should be on your way.

If you hire an SEO expert you should ask how many links they are going to build for you, and how strong the links are going to be. Some companies may promise 50 links a month. That would mean it will take 20 months to get to 1000 links. But if your competitors on page 1 have average of 2000 links, then you can expect to be on page 1 in about 40 months (assuming competitors do not keep building which is not realistic). So the reality is you do not have a good plan.

Google Search Optimization Tips- #11- Make sure your link building plan will get you more links (and of similar quality) than your competitors on page 1 in a time frame you are happy with, or you will likely end up disappointed with results. Do the math.

We hope we have helped to demystify things a bit for you. If we’ve confused you more — we’re sorry!

Blue Fly Web Marketing founder Robert Weil says that there is a time and place for both items. Each method has both benefits and drawbacks, he says. You can get up and running with pay per click ads almost immediately, he says, and get traffic literally tonight. It’s a relatively quick and easy process to get the ads up and running.

But those ads will cost you each and every time somebody clicks on one. And that can run up your bill pretty quickly. Also, since placing those ads is so simple to do, many of your competitors are doing the very same thing as you, driving up the bidding on your keywords.

On the other hand, organic search results, which come from SEO, will take a while to bear fruit. SEO is the process of improving your rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, with the intention to drive traffic to your site and increase business. Doing SEO is “a marathon, not a sprint,” says Weil. It’s not quick, not necessarily easy, and it takes patience, but in almost all cases, it ultimately will be more effective for your business than pay per click.

Weil says that in his experience, the return on investment with SEO is almost always superior to pay per click. He has one client who is currently getting 4000 site visitors per month from organic rankings in the search engines.  This client pays him $2000/month.  To get this same traffic with pay per click would cost approximately $24,000 per month.  

In addition, sponsored ads don’t have quite the same credibility cachet as organic search results do. Weil says that there is more credibility with the latter, because they come with Google’s “stamp of approval” being that if Google is showing it on page 1 in organic, Google feels it is the best and most relevant result for your search.  In pay per click search, it may just be the person who pays the most who ends up on top.  
 
While studies have shown that only 10% of searches click on the pay per click sponsored results (versus 90% on organic) you can still drive good traffic with paid search.  This is because Google allows what is called broad match which means they will show your ad for the keyword you want, but also lots of variations and related keywords.  This can be good for traffic, but be careful to ensure that you are happy with what keywords are actually driving you traffic.  You can set up conversion code on your site so you can see what keywords are actually resulting in “conversions”.  Conversions for you might be that someone fills out a form, or if you are an ecommerce site — it may be that they buy products. 

If you want to get results in both the short-term and the long haul, one idea is to do both pay per click and SEO at the same time, says Weil, use pay per click while you’re waiting for your organic search rankings and traffic to improve.  Once you are getting good organic results, you can play with bringing down your paid ad spend.

Robert Weil is President of Blue Fly Web Marketing, a performance based search engine marketing company.