Online Marketing Blog

Welcome to the first BIGLIST review of SEM and SEO blogs for 2010!  What a year it will be. We reviewed hundreds of marketing blogs in 2009 and well over a thousand since we started the original list. Today’s BIGLIST update focuses on a few local search marketing blogs we’ve recently discovered.

Expand2Web Blog – The design winner for this BIGLIST Update Local SEM Blog Edition goes to Expand3Web by Don Campbell. This blog offers a rich mix of WordPress and Local search marketing advice as well as how to screencasts & videos as well as a podcast.

If you’ve been marketing online for any length of time, you’ve no doubt seen the brand “Duct Tape Marketing“. John Jantsch, the guy behind that brand is a true, “marketer’s marketer” as you’ll see in the interview below. Because of John early in my blogging experience, I was able to pick up a lot of great insights and secured blogging gigs with Business Blog Consulting and AllBusiness.com which lead to a number of media opportunities and consulting engagements.

In this interview, John talks about getting started, branding, blogging, SEO, outsourcing marketing and tips, getting referrals, specialization and a few of his favorite tools and technologies.

You’re well known, heck you’re famous, for many things related to small business marketing. Tell us about yourself. How did you get started blogging and where did the idea for Duct Tape Marketing begin?

Recently I did a podcast for AllBusiness.com , recently acquired by Dun & Bradstreet, along with their Marketing Director, David Saries. The audience for AllBusiness.com is small businesses, so the questions were flavored toward the perspectives many do it yourself or hands on web site owners and online business owners have.

The podcast discusses a variety of topics ranging from a definition of SEO to common SEO mistakes. We also discuss emerging online marketing channels and whether small businesses can “do SEO in-house” or not. You can listen to the full podcast here: “The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization”

Most companies are aware there are things they can do to improve their visibility on search engines. Some may have even heard the term, “search engine optimization” (SEO). But how many really know what that means?

My blogging and marketing friend, John Jantsch has been providing practical marketing advice to businesses large and small long before I ever started blogging. Actually, it was in part because of John that I started contributing to AllBusiness.com and Business Blog Consulting.

John has long been a trailblazer at using blogs as a marketing tool via Duct Tape Marketing blog and I will readily admit, I have watched John for quite a while to learn his methods of blog promotion. A marketer’s marketer, John’s advice has been highly valuable as we’ve grown our small business.

Many small businesses find the task of marketing a difficult one and it’s that challenge that led John to write his new book, “Duct Tape Marketing ‚Äì The World‚Äôs Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide”. John recently sent me a review copy and I thought I’d share a brief description of it.

Earlier this week Matt McGee of Small Business SEM blog did an interview with me about public relations for small businesses. Matt has had a lot of marketing experience so he asked some great questions that I think businesses small and large will benefit from.

Here are a few sample questions:

Are press releases better for traditional publicity purposes or for SEO purposes — or can the same release do both? How?

The same release can be used as an introduction to a publicity opportunity, but there is no substitute for human contact. Press release distribution alone rarely achieves media coverage. Contacting the media with a reference to a press release and unique story ideas can improve your chances of media coverage significantly. While a large percentage of journalists research press releases online, many continue to rely on press releases via email as a method of getting new story ideas.

When the Yahoo Publisher Network blog editor Michael Mattis asked me to write an short marketing article for small businesses I knew exactly what to write about. As much as anyone, I am a proponent of new and interesting online marketing strategies like using social media for marketing, but I am also a firm believer in tried and true tactics, such as promoting one’s site offline.

After going through the routine hoops with Yahoo, the article has published on the YPN blog today, “Signal to Noise“. The article covers the basics as well as a few new, low cost tactics including:

• Market offline, as well as online
• Announce your site
• Market with a blog
• Optimize content and links
• Keep your content fresh

Google Watch – Steve Bryant from eWeek

Online Marketing Research – Oleg Ishenko

Original Signal – Marketing – A collection of feeds from leading marketing blogs (including ours, yeah!)

Big Marketing for Small Business – Rajan Sodhi

I’d also like to share a few blogs from the TopRank team:

Blogger Design – TopRank’s own SEO Designer, Thomas McMahon aka TwisterMC

Creative Marketing – SEO/PR Account/Project Manager Jolina Pettice

Media Relations – SEO/PR Account/Project Manager Karen Sams

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I’ve managed to get myself into another interesting speaking situation. Last week it was both Pubcon and Bulldog Reporter. This week it’s a chat over at “Conversations with Experts“, with Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakemen of Build a Better Blog System. I’ll be talking about search engine optimization for small and medium businesses with some blogs and press release optimization thrown in for good measure.

Here’s the “official” description:

Search Engine Optimization with Blogs and Press Releases
Gone are the days of optimizing web sites through a sprinkling of keywords and submissions to the search engines. Today’s savvy marketer integrates a mix of tactics to gain the credibility and authority necessary for dominant search engine rankings.

According to a recent study by Wells Fargo and Gallup, small businesses prefer to rely on word of mouth over paid advertising. Out of the small businesses that are looking to advertise, 57 percent said they anticipate spending on internet advertising this year. – Via iMedia Connection

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