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Are You Voiceless?

Do you feel like you are speaking into a dark hole? Like your marketing efforts are only appreciated by ghosts and crickets? You are not alone.

Many of us feel like we speak, but no one hears our voices. The end result is feeling voiceless in the world. Which is worse? Be able to speak, though not heard or not being able to speak? Is there really a worse? Are not both results the same? No responses. No leads. No customers. No sales.

Pulling from the weeds

Marketing is about placement and message. Where you say is as important as what you say. Writing great copy for the wrong audience will not succeed. First, define your audience and know where they. Pull yourself out of the weeds and into the fairway of success. Do not spend your time and efforts with those known to not buy what you sell. Get out of the tall grass.

Once your audience is defined, now develop marketing to meet their pain or in pull them into their pleasure. Spend your time with them. Get to know them. Build a relationship.

Plotting a new course

There are so many expressions for finding success, they seem like cliches: start with the end in mind, know what you want and get it, define the end and plan backward. All of them have two things in common: a clearly defined goal and a way to get there. Clarity of goal and path are a must. One must know exactly what one wants and how to get there. A poorly defined goal will lead to a poor path.

Suppose you are in charge of building a bridge across a river. They only given requirements is that it must join two particular roads. Is that enough to start building? No? Why not? Why do people start a business with a less defined goal?

To build such a bridge, there are many factors to consider: length, structure weight and strength, type of bridge, building materials, design, function, etc. Scale models of various bridges will be built. Sight lines with the surrounding geography will be considered. Plans have to be approved. Bids for construction have to be made. All of that before one scoop of dirt is moved.

Do not set out into the world of business without defining your goals as clearly. Know your send. Make your plan. Start moving.

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Internet Marketing

Search Engine Optimization – It Moves

The beginning

Search Engine Optimization. What is it? Does it work? How can it be used? Where is it? Why does it keep changing? Is SEO a verb or noun? What about? What about? What about???

In the early days of the web, search engine optimization was nearly unheard of. Websites were grouped by audience or subject. Business sites over here. Research sites over there. Government sites on the shelf below. Yahoo felt more like a library or a book store than a search engine. Ideas for indexing content was in its infancy and WAIS databases were king. The most used protocol was Z39.50, not e-mail, ftp, telnet, gopher or web. Times were about to change.

The Middle

Along came Alta Vista and the proverbial genie was out of the bottle. Now someone did not have to look through a endless sea of categories for a website, but could now enter words and phrases. Ask Jeeves allow the user to take the next step and ask in a question form: “What is the color blue?”, “Why is the sky blue?”, “How is beer made?”. The web and Internet were becoming synonyms, even though the Internet is more than the web. People were getting dial up accounts in large numbers. The web was growing exponentially. Thousands of sites were being added each day. How could a business be heard in all that noise?

By studying the algorithms of the search engines, content started to be created that took advantage of it. Pages did not necessarily have to be human readable. All it had to be was consumed by the spiders and seen as optimized by the search engine. When a page is optimized for say “the best home business” or “make money now stuffing envelopes”, it gets pushed to the top of the page. A business’ voice is heard the best and loudest. They get more traffic, others get less.

As pages become flooded with keywords to create better search engine optimization, the spammers took over. Site after site of pure gibberish was created. The charlatans started to win. The snake oil salesmen gave everyone a bad name. Something had to give. It did.

Panda Me

The largest search engine, Google, changed their algorithm. Panda went live and search engine optimization changed overnight. Content became king again. Real content. Not machine gibberish. Articles started to become relevant again. Blogs mattered. The sun came out.

Google continues to change their algorithm. Search engine optimization has become both an Art and a Science. Good content, good social awareness and backlinking all play their part in making sites rank higher. Sure, the spammers will now hire armies of writers to earn their top spots again, however, their efforts and expenses will greatly increase. In the meantime, actual individuals will be able to have their voices heard.

Learn to move with search engine optimization or get left behind. Know what the changes mean. Create your content to adhere to the new standards. Be heard. Be seen.

Bryon Lape can also be read on HubPages. A longer form article entitled SEO: the moving target can be found there. Read. Comment. Share. Together we grow.