It could be a website selling weight loss pajamas ... an eBook on fractal theory ... a copywriting home-study course ... or anything else the marketer wants to promote.

Of course, what the marketer is really asking is: How do I get my valuable, clever, entertaining message about my product to spread like a virus across the web ... so I can make LOTS of MONEY FAST?

Viral Marketing is to Marketers What Immediate Gratification is to Consumers

Everyone wants what they want ... NOW!

Fat people want a skinny pill. Skinny people want a muscle pill. Poor people want a get-rich-quick pill. And flacid male people want a blue pill from Pfizer.

And marketers want to wake up in the morning and see six zeroes added to their PayPal account overnight.

Blame it on YouTube

Whether it was a video of an embarrassing, unlikely yet subsequently wildly talented performer on a TV talent show ... or an awe-inspiring video of dung beetles doing it to the beat of Eminem ... which then spread virulently across the web from one person to another by text, chat, email, Facebook, Twitter, phone call or over-the-shoulder viewing on a Blackberry in the office ... marketers quickly realized that viral is the new, best, must-have marketing pill!

So how do you create an emotionally and intellectually appealing promotion guaranteed to garner a gazillion views within 24 hours of it being uploaded to the web, and quickly make its creator RICH?

How do you harness the wind?

Viral by Any Other Name Would Still be...

... Engaging, stimulating, mass appealing, and ultimately ineffable!

The problem is: How does anyone know how or when the unruly, fickle and transcendent zeitgeist ... or just your target market ... will react to any statement, opinion, proposition, expression or product you proffer?

As a book, Harry Potter went viral. As a movie, Avatar went viral. As a marketing methodology, Mass Control went viral.

No doubt they were in the right place at the right time to strike a perfectly pitched note that resonated wide and far.

So will every fantasy novel, alien movie or marketing platform go viral – even if theme and content are duplicated exactly? Of course not.

If Harry Potter, Avatar, and Mass Control had been released one or two years earlier, or later ... would they have had the same effect, the same appeal if the political, economic, or social landscape had been different?

And what if the same story line or marketing message had been crafted and delivered by someone else ... not J.K, Rowling, James Cameron or Frank Kern ... would they still have been a success?

If you fall in love with a blonde, tall, athletic, tanned, funny and intelligent woman, or man ... will you fall in love with each and every person who looks and acts exactly that way, too?

When you gaze into your lover's eyes ... will you ever see, can you ever feel, ever be enraptured in that same way by the eyes of another person just because they may be brown or blue and almond shaped, too?

What makes a joke hysterically funny when told by one comedian and flat and stupid when told by another?

What can be taught? What can be learned? What can be patented?

The 3 Guardians of Viral's Holy Grail

If you're a marketer, three indispensable components must be present if your marketing message and your product will ever be disseminated at anything close to viral speed.

* One, you must have a quality product - one that eminently satisfies a proven and measurable need or hunger. It must have value beyond its price.

* Two, your marketing platform and creative has to match and cater to the personality and sensibilities of your target market. You must understand them, speak like them and walk some distance in their shoes. You must have a passion to help, not to just make money.

* Three, your target market has to be clearly defined and approachable. It can be delineated by gender, age, income or any other demographic or psychographic attribute, singularly or in combination, so long as they communicate with one another and can be reached initially by you. A communication network must be in place.

And the degree to which those three criteria are met, will determine the light speed and the distance at which your message and product will travel.

Concentrate on one component to the exclusion or the diminution of the other two will effectively produce a crashing and forgettable thud rather than a viral, self-perpetuating marketing bang.

Unfortunately, most marketers who ask: How can I make my <Fill in the Blank> go viral on the web ... just want a magic pill that requires no effort, much less an understanding of what works and what doesn't.

What they have yet to understand is that in the marketing world, going viral, as in getting big-buck lucky, requires the convergence of the tangible with the intangible; it is the hallowed marketplace wherein opportunity and preparation gleefully meet.A great product, a well-planned launch and a continually evolving and adaptive marketing campaign - none of which happens magically or overnight - is marketing's true, only, and attainable Holy Grail.

Going viral only happens, if at all, afterwards.

 

 

What's in a URL? For the search engine optimization  world, everything!

Having a keyword-rich domain name and creating a sound information architecture followed by proper page naming conventions can put you on the fast track for SEO success.

Look on the web for yourself. In the SERPs you'll find many sites that make the great mistake of not creating a hierarchal flow to their site, less than optimal keyword usage in page names, and ill-advised variables in URL strings. Over the past few years I've found great success in URL rewriting to take advantage of a properly created URL structure.

This is your address on the web. To search engines it is much like real estate: location, location, location.

Residing at a keyword-rich domain will give you instant authority out of the gate. This authority has decreased over time, but it still doesn't hurt you.

Ideally, we all wish we had a domain name consisting of our most important keyword. For most of us bound by time and money or organizational red tape, we have to work with what we have.

For those of you wanting to hunt a new domain this is a rather simple process of performing keyword research, defining an overarching general term representing the site, and buying a domain that has no more than one hyphen inside it. Additionally, stick with the .coms and .orgs because they hold the authority, but you can buy up the .net, .biz, .us, etc., if you want to go ahead and keep your name away from any imposters.

This is where search engines have been paying more attention in the last year. As discussed in "What Google Thinks of Your Site," since early 2010 Google often displays URLs with links to site categories in the listing's URL line.

Google does things for a reason. Everything they do is an indication of something you should be doing. Here, Google is announcing that they prefer a sound information architecture.

Despite this notion, for a long time in the world of SEO information architecture has been one of the most important elements in pursuing organic ranking success. It also is of great benefit to the end user.

For instance, if I handed you a proverbial bucket of URLs and said go to my page selling red bicycles, which of these three URL structures would likely be of greater assistance:

Catch my drift? The best way to develop a sound information architecture is through laying out all of the categories of your site along side your keyword research.

Pretend you're showing a search engine (or a slow, dim-witted friend) how to drill down through the site. In showing the hierarchical flow of the site, you want to record the tiers of the site, but you don't want to make it too difficult to follow.

For this, ensure that you stay within three folders of the main site root. Developing a proper information architecture shows search engines what you consider the most important categories on your site as well as the association of these category's pages with their parent category theme. If you do it correctly, it also adds keywords to the top-level folders on your site.

People so often get it wrong -- pages named after product numbers, dynamically generated, no hyphenation between words, and the list goes on. It seems many are so concerned with on-page SEO they forget the foundation of the page.

When building a great page name, consider your keyword research or the top keyword for the page. Or, if it's a product, consider a targeted term plus the product name or ID if it's a popular identification number.

This shouldn't be difficult. Most of your attempts at successfully naming a page will at least be better than a dynamically generated version or letting IT make the decision.

 More SEO Tips

 

In the past there has been debate over hyphens or underscores in word spacing. Now both can be read by crawlers, though I still prefer hyphens.

Whatever you decide, don't add spaces because "%20" instances aren't sexy to search engines or users. Leaving no space between words is also an improper method for search engines to decipher key term separation. At the end of the page name we find the declaration of the scripting language.

Note: If you're rewriting your URLs, it may be worth rewriting them to remove the script extension in case you move to a different programming platform down the road. This will help alleviate any future headaches.

To this day I still get "giddy" when a client is open to a URL rewrite. I've seen so much come from this process. With so many other sites are doing it wrong, these feel like a "can't miss" type of project.

If you don't build a solid pathway throughout your site which forms relevance to your site's theme and targeted keywords, how do you expect search engines and users to find and understand the mission of your site?

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If you are new or eager to learn about search engine optimization you are going to have to understand the lingo that is thrown around the industry. For starters it is a must if you are trying to offer this service to your clients but by learning the different lingo or verbiage that is used in the industry you will ultimately be able to really learn different aspects of the industry at the same time.

Crawling
The search engines use bots or spiders to crawl a website for indexing purposes. When someone says a website has been crawled that means the search bots have scanned across your website and either re-indexed the new information or just checked for new information that might be on the site.

Anchor Text
When you are online surfing or reading an article and you come across a link there are two ways to show that link. It is either in its raw form exactly how it is displayed or it is masked as a clickable word or phrase to another web page. The use of a word or phrase in the link is called anchor text and in the SEO world some anchor text in links pointing to your website is just good search engine optimization.

Back Links
One way links pointing to your website is a very important and integral part of search engine optimization. Back links means you have links from outside sources other than your website pointing back to your website creating one way back links or “link building”.

XML Sitemap
A sitemap is an outline of the structure of your website. It basically looks a family tree but each branch is a page of your site. This tells the search spiders what exactly is going on with your website structure.

Keywords
Keywords are simply the words and phrases that your audience is using to find your types of products or services. Your industry could have lots of keywords or it could have very little depending on how wide your area of business spreads online.

Website Analytics
The most popular term is Google analytics because many website owners opt for the free version of Google’s analytics program in order to track website usage amongst visitors. Analytics is the process of being able to track how your audience interacts with your website on almost every level.

PageRank
PageRank is a little number that Google created years ago to give power to individual web pages. You will see this term used quite a bit in the industry. A higher PageRank is always desirable because it shows greater power for that page.

Organic Listings
Organic listings are the search results that are in the white space to the left below the three PPC ads at the top. These are your organic search results which are free but require search engine optimization efforts and time.

Pay Per Click
Pay per click ads are all the ads that are positioned to the right of the search results and to the top of the organic and these ads cost money per click to be there. Each industry is different and each keyword costs a different price.

SERP
It stands for “search engine results page” which is nothing more than looking at your results page after you conduct a search for something specific.

Outbound Links
An outbound link is a link that sits on your website but points to an external source or another web page somewhere on the web.

Internal Linking
Internal linking is when you interlink some of your web pages within each other which is a very important step in the search engine marketing process. Your website should interlink between some of its important pages.

Footer
A footer is an area of your website which sits at the bottom of your website and is typically consistent throughout your entire site.

Navigation
A navigation is at the top of your website and it controls all your pages and how they are laid out. The navigation should be clearly visible on all your web pages.
SEO lingo is something that is always changing because certain elements and efforts are always changing. New items are being added and websites are spawning creating new verbiage. Overtime you will start to understand more and more of them.

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Video SEO is the newest tool in your branding toolbox. Whether the brand is for a small business or your own personal brand, search engine optimization can help you to create the best brand in today's market. Search engine optimization is crucial to your online reputation. That is why it must be managed. Video SEO can help to maximize positive personal or business feedback through search engines.

The goal of regular search engine optimization is to win all searches on the three main search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Using video SEO is one of the most effective techniques you can use, because video is growing more and more popular, thanks to faster broadband, and smart phones that can play mobile video.

Using Video SEO for your personal brand

Before looking at your ranking on search engines, you must first check out your personal brand. Some people who are focused on their personal brand are using video resumes as a way to boost their personal brand and help with their job search.

But you want your personal brand to signify quality and excellence. The same is true for your resume. Although you can create a homemade video resume on your cell phone, why would you want to? Remember, your brand is one of quality and excellence, so be sure to use the right equipment, quality cameras, and proper video editing software.

Post your video resume to video sharing networks like Video Resume Services, YouTube and Vimeo. Post these to your blog, LinkedIn, and your personal blog/website. Not only will this give employers something to refer to, but the video SEO will boost your page's search engine rankings, making sure this is the information potential employers find.

Using Video SEO for your small business

Small businesses can sometimes overlook the value and benefits of video. Not only can a video boost your company's search engine rankings, but some solid video SEO can push any negative press (and even your competitors. . .) off the front page.

You can also create a video blog to help with your video SEO. Rather than just write a blog post or web page explaining a feature on your product, or giving a tour of your facility, post some demonstration or tour videos to show to people. For example, Blendtec's "Will It Blend" videos have boosted their sales by showing how tough and durable their heavy-duty blenders really are. Not only have the videos gone viral in many cases, but the video SEO has been immense, pushing Blendtec up near the top of the Google search rankings.

One friend of ours even went so far as to create a weekly video show talking about the different developments in his industry. Not only did this add to his video SEO, but it established his company as one of the industry leaders, since he was reporting on a lot of news that the non-insiders were never hearing about.

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If you're pursuing local search marketing strategies for your small business, one of the most powerful and effective tools you can utilize is Google Places, also known as the Google Local Business Center (LBC).

What's so great about Google Places? Well, to start with, it's estimated that Google dominates as much as 90.5 percent of the search market share over Yahoo and Bing (Pingdom, July 2010), clearly making it the king of search engines to be featured in. Now, when people perform local searches in Google, they are often presented with the Google Places results at the very top of the page, complete with an eye-grabbing map. That's good news for you if you're one of the top seven listings included there. In fact, in some cases, the local search results get more clicks than all of the organic results beneath them combined (hotel related searches are often one such example).

How cool is that? Google is basically giving you an opportunity to shortcut to the very top of the search results for keywords about your business in your location. Not only that, they let you do it for free. All you have to do is give them the content they are looking for in your listing.

Here are seven search engine optimization steps you can take to help catapult your Google Places listing to the top of the local search results for your town or area...

- First of all, be sure that your business name, address, and phone number are absolutely correct. Google uses this information to verify the authenticity of your business. Don't forget to include your website if you have one. Fill out all the sections about your business in detail - provide as much helpful information to your prospective customers as possible. Google loves meaty (and accurate) content, and if your listing provides it, they will serve it first to their users.

- Don't overlook the importance of an engaging, keyword-loaded business description that will grab the viewer. This is where you get to speak directly to your customer. Keep it pithy (200 characters or less) and make sure to include a call to action at the end.

- Fill out the categories for your business with as much accuracy as possible. Pick at least one category that is already suggested by the system, and then be sure to include keyword terms for your other category examples.

- Photos and videos engage your prospect, so be sure to add them. People love to see your product, examples of your work, what your store looks like, you name it.

- Get reviews about your business from your customers. As far as rankings go, volume of reviews is more important than the number of stars. But of course 5 stars will serve you a lot better than 1 star when a prospect finally finds your listing.

- Citations from other trusted providers (the references in the section titled "More about this place") are one of the most important elements of your listing, because they indicate to Google that you are a credible, established local business. So, in addition to your Places listing, it's critically important to make sure that your business name, address, and phone number are consistent across all other directories and sites where you may also be listed.
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