Small Business Gets Help From Facebook

Earlier this week Facebook announced an educational initiative – which it calls “Small Business Boost” – aimed at helping small businesses optimize their individual or Fan Pages so as to better target customers using Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform, or, to put it another way, to encourage small businesses to spend money on Facebook ads.

This attempt by Facebook should not be easily dismissed as the social media giant is launching its initiative in conjunction with both the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. The program is due to start later this month (October 2011) as Facebook plans to sponsor a series of educational “road shows” in cities across the US, reaching its apex next January when Facebook will offer a $50 ad credit to approximately 200,000 businesses. Do the math and you’ll see that this will set Facebook back $10 million.

Despite this grand effort by Facebook, they face an uphill battle trying to get small and medium-size businesses to advertise on social media as eMarketer, a digital marketing research and analysis company, reported that only 44% of such businesses use social media as a marketing tool and of those 59% spent less than $100 on advertising/marketing efforts in this area.

In addition, AdAge Digital reports that even though there are 9.2 million small businesses in the US that have Facebook pages, but less than 3.2 million of those actively engaged with their page. Nevertheless, the higher-ups in Facebook are optimistic. “We know that small businesses who use web technology grow more than twice as quickly, bring in twice the revenue, and create twice the jobs as small businesses who don’t,” said David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of advertising and global operations.

SEO Principles That Are Here To Stay

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is a fluid, constantly changing landscape.  What worked a year ago at getting your website into the top of the search engines now could drop its rankings 200+ spaces!

This point couldn’t have been made better then back in February 2011 when Google’s “Panda” (the name of a major change in its ranking algorithm) drastically reduced the benefits of article marketing, specifically poorly written articles. Up until then, the SEO value of an article wasn’t affected by how well written or how informative it was, just that it existed.

However, since 1995 when my family and I opened our Internet marketing business, I’ve became involved in optimizing websites for the search engines, there have been several consistent on-page elements that continually add substantially affect how a given website ranks in the search engines, Google include. Here’s my list of SEO principles that have stood the test of time and probably always will:

1. Design your website’s structure to make it easier for visitors and search engine robots to browse and find relevant content;
2. Focus your website’s content on a single topic and then follow up by writing articles that answer a specific question on that topic;
3. Make sure your main keywords are in your webpage’s Title tag as they’re used everywhere (anchor text, bookmarks, browser tabs, RSS feeds, etc.);
4. Have your webpage’s meta description tag match the theme of that webpage as it auto-generates description on Facebook and other sites;
5. Use headlines and headings to help visitors scan the page and find the information relevant to them more quickly;

Unfortunately, the trend in search engine algorithms has been, is and will probably continue to be the importance of links pointing to it being the most important factor in how well it ranks in the engines.  You can thank Google for this as before they came on the scene in 1997, all the factors that went into webpage ranking were determined by what was included in the content (visible as well as invisible) of the webpage.

I guess you could say that in the world of SEO, the more things change, the more things stay the same. And maybe that’s a good thing.

Keyword Phrases That Drive Webmasters Nuts

Webmasters who want to be successful know of the importance of checking their website’s logs to see what keywords (or keyword phrases, to be more exact) their site’s visitors typed in a search engine to find them. Occasionally, they run across a keyword phrase that leaves them scratching their heads wondering, “What the …?”

As a consultant to the webmaster of a site that sells discount dental coverage, I’m no different than any other webmaster except that I thought I’d share some of the more interesting (or stupid, or asinine, or just plain bizarre) keyword phrases people typed into a search engine and visited my client’s website last month;

MOST FUN: “dental discount plan for dentists who dont accept discount plans”
I’m constantly getting Web visitors looking for either dentists who accept discount plans and/or discount plans that are accepted by their own dentist… but never this! Trust me, though, because on January 28, 2011 a person from Shreveport, Louisiana did just that.

MOST STUPID : “can you get braces without dental coverage”
I almost wish this person had sent me an e-mail with this question so I could have written them back and said, “What do you think orthodontists took as payment before there was orthodontic dental insurance; chickens?”. As a whole, practitioners of the orthodontic-arts usually have more education than even dentist so they’re not stupid enough to turn down private paying patients.

MOST WAIT… WHAT? : “homeopathics for dental pain”
I honestly don’t know what the Web visitor wanted to know here. Were they searching for people blessed with homeopathic abilities (i.e. homeopathics) in favor of dental pain or homeopathic masochists or what? Still trying to figure this one out.

MOST INCOMPLETE : “dentist who can bill you the bill because”
Because… because why? I’m guessing this question has to do with a dental bill but that’s all. Also, if a dentist bills you, is there any other type of correspondence you would expect to find in the mailing piece other than a dental bill?

MOST INTRIGUING : “emergency adult dental without insurance san antonio tx”
Call me a pervert but I think what this person was searching for was a San Antonio, Texas dentist with a XXX-rated dental practice who accepted emergency patients without any health/dental insurance coverage.  I’ve never heard of such a dentist but any do exist, chances are they don’t have too many copies of Jack and Jill magazine in their waiting room!