Google says that there are 151,000,000 searches a month for the word “car.” Question…Is it more important to therefore try to rank organically for the word “car,” to try and capture traffic from those hundreds of millions of searches and compete against every other website going after “car” searches? Or should you focus your efforts on other more specific keywords that are more relevant to your brand and you have greater potential to rank for?

Below are some thoughts and questions you should ask yourself about keywords when you are building a site, adding a page, or even naming a product:

1. Just because you call your product something, doesn’t mean that a consumer is searching for your product that way
   • A car can be searched for many different ways: sedan, coupe, Ferrari, sports car, two door sedan, red car, best sports car, which car is better, Ferrari that was in Ferris Bueller’s Day off

   When trying to find keywords for your site, make sure that the keywords make sense for your brand and what the product actually is; this will help them rank better in the long run.

2. Make sure to check out how competitive the search landscape is
   • If you are a smaller website, it might be better to focus less on the broad, very high traffic keyword “cars” and put more effort into the “red four-door sedan” keyword which doesn’t have big companies competing for that space.

   Just because consumers conduct 1,000,000 searches a month for a specific keyword, doesn’t mean you will get any traffic from it, if you are not ranking on the first page or second page of the results. So do your competitive landscape analysis and find the right keyword.

3. Map Your Keywords across your site
   • Why cannibalize your own keywords? Find unique keywords per page that you can optimize and have the possibility of ranking for all of them

   Make sure to focus each page to two or three specific keywords and use each keyword two to three times in the content.


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A frequently updated company blog can accomplish several goals, including improved search engine rankings; driving brand awareness; increased website traffic; and helping position your business as an industry leader. But it’s not always easy to come up with ideas for blog posts. Here are six ways that might help.
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Did you update your site to HTML5, while updating your meta data to reflect the new SEO keyword research done in AdWords, that will best help the webpages PR and PPC quality score so the keywords appear above the fold in the SERPS. Did you have trouble understanding all of those interactive marketing acronyms and terms used in the above sentence? Most people do and that is why we are here to help you have a better understanding of the world of web marketing!

Web Marketing: Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, and is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

HTML5: Hypertext Markup Language version 5 or in simpler terms, the way your website is most likely built or going to be built in the near future

Meta data: data that provides information about the other data managed within an application or environment or in simpler terms, background data on a webpage that helps the search engines figure out what your webpage is about.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing):  is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): can be referred to as organic, natural, or algorithmic rankings and it is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines or in simpler terms, the optimizing of a webpage by changing known factors that best help said web page rank higher in Google.

Keyword Research: is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.
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How are you choosing your domain name? Is it part of your marketing strategy? A short, memorable domain name will let people remember your product or service, but a short dictionary word domain name will also help your SEO positions.

Although many good names may have already been registered, you can still find good names available on secondary market websites such as Sedo and SnapNames.

The Value of Short Domain Names
It isn’t hard to understand why short domain names are valuable. A generic dictionary word domain name may cost thousands of dollars—or even millions. According to DN Journal, Social.com was sold for $2.6 million in the past July. However, don’t be discouraged! A recent study by SnapNames says that a vast majority of the domain names are bought and sold between the $500 to $5,000 range.

What’s a fair price for a domain name?
Generally, the more words in the domain name, the less it is worth. But a common two-word name is worth more than a rarely used single word name. A domain name without dashes or numbers is often worth more because typical users do not use dashes when they search. (Google, too, ignores dashes when you search.) Names ending in “.com” are also more popular than “.net” names because most people equate “.com” to the Internet.

Buy your Ideal Domain
Even when a domain name is listed for $10,000, you may still be able to buy it for significantly less. Like everything else, domain name prices can be negotiated. You can find out the domain owner’s information by looking up its registration records from DomainTools. One word of advice: don’t assume the domain owner is “squatting” on a domain name. Many domain name owners are very organized and have a large portfolio. A few of them are even public traded domain investment companies.
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You know what they say, “All good things must come to an end…” While I’m sad to say that next week marks my last week as a web marketing intern here at EIM, I’m proud to say that I’ve truly enjoyed my time here over the past few months. To say I’ve learned a lot during my summer internship here would be more than an understatement.

Working at a small interactive agency like EIM really gave me the opportunity to gain a lot of hands-on experience. I got to work on several client tasks such as search engine optimization, pay-per click ad management, social media management, and weekly / quarterly reporting. While working closely with the web marketing team, I’ve learned all about the different aspects of search engine optimization including keyword analysis and research, meta-tag writing, content enhancement, video optimization, and link building as well as how to effectively utilize various online marketing tools and resources like social media, keyword tools, and Google Analytics. In addition to learning more about interactive marketing, my internship at EIM has also helped me develop my skills in collaboration, time management, internal communications, and problem solving.

Overall I feel like my time here at EIM has been a great success. I came into this internship as a fresh college grad with very limited knowledge and experience in interactive marketing and now after spending my summer here at EIM, I feel confident and well-prepared to take on the interactive marketing world as a full-time professional! Thank you to everyone at EIM for making my internship here a great experience…I will be sure to keep touch!

…And to close out my last blog post as an EIM intern, I’ve compiled some helpful tips for students or recent grads looking to make the most of their internship with an interactive agency:
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As we all know, and often write about, Google is always making changes (aka “making us crazy”). Whether an interface, algorithm, or product change, sometimes these stay at the “test” status and never really have an impact on a business’s SEO efforts, other times we’re not so lucky. Either way, it’s important to watch them for cues from Google that you can use to drive new search marketing tactics.

So let’s look at one of my favorite recent updates in Google house cleaning news.

Google Places Pages: Google recently updated their Places pages, de-cluttering and reprioritizing certain elements. In the process, they hid some information that always seemed important to SEOs and provided tantalizing keyword opportunities. However, no big surprise here, the pages are much more streamlined and user friendly.

The biggest change and takeaway is related to reviews. Google has added big pretty buttons inviting visitors to write reviews of the business (as seen in the screenshot below), and they they are no longer displaying reviews from 3^rd sites right on the page (they are instead still linking off to some of those sites, though).

This is Google moving into the social realm (in line with Google+),  competing with sites like Yelp, and telling us that customer feedback is important.

So what do you do with this? It’s simple! Just like you (hopefully) already have subtle drivers from existing marketing touchpoints to sites like Yelp where customers can share their experiences with your business, it would be a good idea to more actively ask them to also drop praise on your Google Places page. It is Google, after all, so it’s probably smart to build up your presence there. Start with your Facebook page, where you should have a nice community of your most loyal customers. Post a light message thanking them for all their support, share your Google Places link, and see if they’d like to share their positive feedback there.
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When looking at most business infrastructures there is usually one thing that is most important amongst all of them—the consumer. Your revenue is driven by consumer purchases, and if said consumer is happy with the services your company provides, they will more than likely return for repeat business.

A strong online presence can be everything for your business, so make sure you follow these 4 simple tips when constructing/revamping your website to create the best online user experience for your customers.

1. Have a Mobile Version of Your Website

As we stated earlier, 2011 is the year for mobile marketing and optimization, and rightfully so. With the use of mobile phones for web browsing reaching all time high numbers and constantly climbing, it is important that you have a mobile version of your site so your consumers can access your site, on the go, from their phone.

If your budget doesn’t allow you to build a complete separate mobile version of your website, be sure that you web developers are building your site to be mobile friendly.

2. Constantly Provide Additional Information (Add a Blog or News Section)

Adding new supplemental information to your website can be extremely valuable for multiple different reasons.

Benefits on a Consumer level

The main reason consumers will be going to your website is to find out more information about your product or service, so having supplemental information that’s relevant to your business will strongly benefit them. It can also help push them over the edge to make a purchase.

Not only that, if you are constantly providing new fresh information about the particular space your business is in, your site can become a resource for information which in turn can drive lots of traffic to your site. And believe me there is no such thing as bad traffic to a website.
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Making sure that your website has links from other websites is a very important aspect of SEO. Although link building can sometimes be a very slow and very gradual process, the increase in traffic and visibility that results from meaningful links is a great reward.

As an intern looking to learn the ins and outs of SEO, I sought to find out more about some of the different link building practices and strategies out there. When it comes to SEO, things are constantly changing, so it’s important to continuously keep up to date with the latest news about which link building practices work and which don’t. Here are some great link building tips and strategies that stood out to me:

Create “Link-Bait”: It’s all about good content! Create articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, etc. that are well-researched and provide extremely interesting, educational or entertaining content. If you can establish your site to be one of the best resources in a given market space, people will surely link to it.

Guest Post On Other Sites: Find other bloggers in your industry and ask them if you can write a guest post for their site. Blogs are always hungry for fresh content and there are many blogs out there that accept guest posts. This is a great way to get a link back to your own site, build personal brand visibility, and start becoming a part of the community within your market space.

Conduct Interviews: Interview someone in your industry. Some people love to talk about themselves. You’ll raise exposure for your site through the interview and hopefully generate some favorable links or mentions from the person that you interviewed.

(For more of the latest articles on link building tips and strategies, check out this list of 79 Link Building Resources by KISSmetrics)
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What the H!@# is a Canonical Tag? First off, it is pronounced [kuh-non-i-kuhl] tag and it helps eliminate duplicate content on your site in the eyes of search engines. It is easy to implement, accepted by all the major search engines and can help your site in the rankings.

In its simplest form, a canonical tag tells the search engines which page to display in place of similar pages (like a 301 redirect), but without actually redirecting the user to the new page. When there are multiple versions of the same page/URL (example.com, www.example.com, www.example.com/) they are all considered the same in the eyes of the engines, which means the engines don’t know which URL to display in their indexes. This in turn can affect your pages’ search engine rankings and traffic to your site (something no one wants).

To prevent your site from potentially losing rankings and positions, simply add a canonical tag to the duplicate pages. Like other meta attributes, it is added in the <head> of your page’s code. You will want to add the canonical tag to all of the duplicate pages, but not the preferred page’s URL. Here is an example of code that will be added to the duplicate pages that you will not want indexed:

Add <link rel=”canonical” href=” www.example.com> inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:

• http://www.example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/
• http://www.example.com

And by adding that simple line of code into the header of the duplicate pages, the search engines will understand that the duplicate pages all should be pointed to the preferred canonical URL. You can check your site’s duplicate content by going into Webmaster Tools and adding in canonical tags where appropriate. With these simple instructions and examples, start adding your own canonical tag today!
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It hasn’t even been a month since I started interning here at EIM, yet I feel like I’ve already learned so much. Prior to arriving at EIM, most of my experience with digital media involved managing social media accounts for various local events and businesses and maintaining my own personal blog. As a recent college graduate who studied media and communications for four years, I felt very much aware of the power of social media and how sites like Twitter and Facebook have been reshaping our lives and the way we do business.

But while social media channels can certainly play a great role in things like brand management and customer engagement, it is really just a piece of the marketing puzzle. It’s not enough to just make a Facebook and Twitter page for your business and wait for fans and followers to roll in. It is very important to make sure your social media efforts line up with your overall marketing strategy. It’s also useful to find ways to integrate your social media pages into other channels such as your website, newsletters, mobile apps, print ads, and even TV commercials (see: American Express)

As social media strategist Jay Baer puts it, “Social media is not a solo act. It’s best as part of a jazz combo.” And one very important player in that combo that I knew very little about before coming here was “search marketing.” While working closely with the Web Marketing Team here at EIM, I’m really starting to recognize the importance of search marketing. SEO, SEM, paid search, and search engines in general all play huge parts in gaining traffic to your company website and reaching your marketing goals, whether that means increasing product sales or raising brand awareness.
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