Internet Marketing Services, Wilmington NC

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Local SEO Webinar Slides from Talk in Wilmington, NC

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Thanks again to everyone who attended our Local SEO webinar! If you have any additional questions that we didn’t get a chance to answer, please feel free to leave it in the comments below and we’ll respond how we can there! Check back next week for video clips of the presentation.

If you’re interested in further assistance with your local internet marketing efforts or claiming a business, you can contact us for a custom package or check out our Lost & Found, Local SEO package.

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Business Is Personal Webinar Video

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Thanks again to everyone who attended our  Business Is Personal Webinar! You can view the  slides for this webinar on personal branding, and we also have a list of our other videos that are available to watch for free. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us or leave a comment!

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Tech Talk: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Tech Talk - Talk, Wimington NCThere’s a lot of terms flying around in this new age of “social technology”, where companies like Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter are becoming household names. But what do any of these terms really mean and why should you care? That’s what I’ll be explaining in my weekly Tech Talk.

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the act of getting websites to show up in the search results for specific keywords on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or Bing.

For example, it’s through proper SEO that we get Talk’s website to show up when people Google “public relations wilmington nc“.

Why is SEO beneficial?

Every month 10’s of billions of searches are being done on Google alone, not to mention other search engines. That means that billions of people are searching online for specific information, products, or services every month. If you’re targeting the proper keywords, that means that thousands of people could be finding your product or service every month, and that leads to more profits for you, or at the very least, more exposure for your brand. If you’re not targeting any keywords, however, that could mean your site is being lost in the great abyss of the web.

How does SEO work?

There’s a lot that goes into just how SEO works, but there’s fundamentally 3 parts to SEO.

1. Each website has many web pages.
2. Each of these web pages should have a few keywords being used on them.
3. Each of these web pages should have links, that carry “juice”, with the keyword for the web page its linking to being present in the link itself.
4. Link juice is the value being passed from one domain to another as determined by the search engines.

What those 4 steps describe are the following action: I am currently explaining SEO as a component of Internet marketing, in wilmington nc. With that past link, I was pointing to a web page with a link, targeting a specific term, passing “link juice” from this domain (www.talkincblog.com) to another domain (www.talkinc.com).

There is a lot more that goes into SEO than what I described above, for example, determining the competitive value of a keyword, figuring out which web pages (and domains) will pass the most link juice (since not all links are created equal), how to create a proper information architecture to improve link juice flow on a site, and more. But the above describes the fundamental concept behind SEO and how it works.

How can I use this for my business?

If you’re business is located in Wilmington and that’s where you predominantly do business, my first suggestion to you would be to focus on each page of your website (number 1 from above) to improve your on page optimization. Specifically, I would add “Wilmington, NC” to the end of whatever is in the <title> tags of your website (the title tag controls what each web page is called).

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When to use nofollow - SEO Tip

Friday, August 14th, 2009

While search engine optimization is a little more advanced, I figure it can’t hurt to do quick little SEO Tips once and a while that small (and big!) business owners can use to help their site.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the recent months on the usage of the “nofollow” attribute that you can apply to any links you have on your website. Recently Matt Cutts (from Google) spoke on the topic in a video over on SEOmoz, delivering what many will consider a good verdict on the matter.

When to use nofollow

Remove any No Follow links you have that are pointing to other pages internally on your website. The best use of the No Follow attribute is for links pointing OUTSIDE your domain that you may not be entirely comfortable vouching for.

What does a No Follow link do and what does it look like?

What a No Follow link does is block search engines from sending “juice” to the page you’re linking to so that page is less inclined to show up in search results. If you’re still a little fuzzy on what “nofollow” attribute means, you can see it in action below.

<a href=”http://www.talkincblog.com” rel=”nofollow”>This is an internal blog link with a nofollow attribute</a>

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What is a Short URL like TinyURL or Bit.ly? - Tech Talk

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Tech Talk - Talk, Wimington NCThere’s a lot of terms flying around in this new age of “social technology”, where companies like Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter are becoming household names. But what do any of these terms really mean and why should you care? That’s what I’ll be explaining in my weekly Tech Talk.

What is a URL?

Before I explain what a short url is, let me briefly explain what a URL is. We all use URLs every day, in most cases without even thinking about it.A URL, put simply, is the location of a web page on the internet.

For example, www.talkinc.com is a URL that takes you to our homepage.

What is a short url?

A short url, as you might suspect, is actually a shorter URL that can be used to direct people to the normal, longer url. For example, http://bit.ly/nfrsq is a short url for http://www.talkinc.com. They both go to the same place, the only difference is that the short url redirects people to our “long” url.

Why did short URLs come about?

Short URLs really began around 2002 in a variety of forms but didn’t really begin to become popular until internet services based on text messaging such as Twitter were created.

The reason short urls became so popular with these text oriented services is because, as you may know, text messages can only be 160 characters in length. This made the need for conserving characters all the more important. The ability to take a url from 50 characters down to 20 was too attractive to pass up.

Why use URL shorteners?

Often times during the process of redirecting someone from the short url to the long url, the short URL service commits an action, such as tracking the number of people who clicked on the link, or serving up a specialized page. These actions means short url services provide additional benefits for marketing, branding and so forth.

For example: We use bit.ly because it has great statistics on impressions and conversions which help our marketing efforts. Digg has created their own URL shortener which aids them with much the same, along with additional exposure of their brand.

Which URL shortener should I use?

If you have a need to use a URL shortener, such as sharing content across social networks, twitter, or text, then I would suggest using bit.ly. There are other shorteners, and Danny Sullivan has written a great comparison of the different shortening services for those interested in part of the technical depth. If you’re not, just use bit.ly!

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Social Networks 101 Video

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Thanks again to everyone who attended our  Business Is Personal Webinar! You can view the  slides for this webinar on personal branding, and we also have a list of our other videos that are available to watch for free. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us or leave a comment!

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All copywriting should be from an SEO standpoint

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

While I am certainly no copywriting master like Debbie or Susan here, I do wield my force in search engine optimization and other online strategies. What I have been noticing, however, is probably what most of you in the copywriting or public relations industry are noticing (and where the money is going): SEO is a “new” copywriting tool.

All copy on the web should be written from an SEO standpoint.This means writing from the basis of keywords that will optimize your online exposure and narrow the focus of your message, making your work that much more effective.

A marriage between SEO and copywriting means more sales. If search engine optimization is the act of getting your information found by your customers based on the keywords your customers are already searching for, then using the very same words your customers found the content with to begin with should improve sales due to your copy resonating with the consumer. This, no doubt, provides the best use of the content, or copy, being created.

Use SEO methods in your copywriting to improve your content.

  • You improve sales by using words that resonate with the customer - it’s what they searched for, after all.
  • You’re writing copy that not only sells, but gets found by your target audience.
  • Your copy is benefiting your website as a whole due to its search engine optimization components.

    If you’re looking to do copywriting or press release writing, an understanding of search engine optimization is becoming more and more critical to the point where it’s beginning to be listed in job requirements. This makes perfect sense, since copy and content should have been created this way to begin with. And with the majority of content going digital, even the copy you’re writing for traditional outlets are finding their way to the internet.

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    Tech Talk: What is a hashtag?

    Thursday, July 9th, 2009

    Tech Talk - Talk, Wimington NCThere’s a lot of terms flying around in this new age of “social technology”, where companies like Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter are becoming household names. But what do any of these terms really mean and why should you care? That’s what I’ll be explaining in my weekly Tech Talk.

    What is a hashtag?

    Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional information and context to messages on Twitter. This is accomplished by using a hash sign ‘#’ and having a “tag” immediately after it.

    Part of understanding hashtags means understanding tags. People use tags to easily clasify the topics or categories content is related to. The classification of content through the use of tags benefits the individual as they’ll know what to look for when wanting to find the information again, and benefits other internet users who may be looking for similar content by a similar tag. This process also frequently mentioned with taxonomy.

    For example: At the bottom of this blog post, you will notice there are a few tags that I have used to classify topics this blog posts relates to.

    How are hashtags used?

    Hashtags came about with the advent of Twitter. Without users having any formal way of organizing tweets into categories, but wanting to add additional information, the twitter community began adopting the notion of a #hashtag. As such, hashtags have are used in a variety of ways on Twitter.

    For those who love LOST, on Wednesday nights, you could frequently follow the hashtag #lost for what people thought about the episode, what they were guessing the next plot twist was, or placing bets on when Sawyer would punch someone in the face.

    Conversely, and much more useful, hashtags have been used to follow the elections in Iran, to keep people posted about fires in San Diego, and or to share thoughts on what the latest going on is in the news.

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    Blogging 101 Video - Learn how to use blogs to grow your business one post at a time.

    Thursday, June 25th, 2009

    Thanks again to everyone who attended our SEO Basics Webinar! You can view the  slides for this webinar on SEO Basics, and we also have a list of our other videos that are available to watch for free. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us or leave a comment!

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    Tech Talk: What are keywords?

    Monday, June 22nd, 2009

    Tech Talk - Talk, Wimington NC

    There’s a lot of terms flying around in this new age of “social technology”, where companies like Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter are becoming household names. But what do any of these terms really mean and why should you care? That’s what I’ll be explaining in my weekly Tech Talk.

    What are “keywords” exactly?

    Keywords are the words people use to search for information online. For example, if you’re looking for information on how to blog, you might google “How to blog” or “What is a blog”. These are keywords, or what are sometimes referred to as key phrases (where the keywords make up a keyphrase).

    Why are keywords and key phrases important?

    The proper keywords and key phrases can drive significant traffic to your website through a method called search engine optimization. Think of the “traffic” that comes to your website in the same way you might think of the traffic that you get stuck in heading to the mall, or the grocery store - lots of people are taking a specific road to go to a destination (it’s why you’re stuck in traffic, after all). The same concept applies to the internet with search engine optimization and keywords.

    Finding the right key phrase(s) is like finding the right road to have your business located on. It’s making sure when people drive by, or when people search, you’re currently at the location they’re looking. This is why the old adage of “Location, location, location” isn’t dead by any means. There’s just a different method for determining what the best location online is, a method where keywords are the road, and search engine optimization is preparing your business for display.

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