A local skate board retailer is interested in how search engine visibility and optimization will cross over to mobile web. What modifications will he need to make to his blog and site? He is wise to express interest given that his users are heavy mobile users.

Though this area of SEO is evolving, there has been much written about what an e-commerce site or blog can do to assure that their site can be found and that it displays optimally.

The first considerations should not present any problems if you have employed a simple blog site platform and utilized strict XHTML code. Keep the content short, clean and easy to read on a cell.

“… Mobile search is not trivial. It takes more effort to type a search word or phrase on a mobile device (especially those without a Qwerty keypad) then on the desktop Web. In spite of that time investment, studies show … that 75% of mobile searchers are not willing to browse beyond the second page of search results. With the first mobile results page showing at most 6 items, you can clearly see just how important is for your mobile site to be visible.

Here are some SEO basics for any mobile site:

• Optimize for keywords and short phrases
• Include keywords in title tag, H1’s, H2’s and content
• Think how your title will appear as a mobile bookmark
• Provide keyword-rich anchor text for internal links
• Get indexed. Provide Google Mobile Site Map.

(source)

You will also want to consider registering your site with  services like the recently introduced FeedM8.

“…FeedM8 uses patent-pending technology to enable content to be accessed and read on your cell phone. The intent is to circumvent the necessity for website publishers to create content that’s compatible with several different mobile standards, in order to work across hand-held models. FeedM8 lets you search for content with short codes, and will modify the mobile content to work with your phone, mobile network bandwidth and screen size. Registering for the Publisher Network also lets you join in on the revenue-sharing model that FeedM8 has set up, earning 60% from ad splits and referrals.”

If you think about it, your favorite restaurants and merchants that you revisit time and again have qualities that are unique and engaging. If they were to disappear, you’d definitely miss the experience of doing business with them.

Making Your Blog Your Market’s Online Landmark

Blog marketing is more than generating pages of content. It’s building a stake in a neighborhood in which you intend to become a unique landmark, a recognized and indispensable feature of your market’s online landscape.

Copyblogger.com writes a post that poses an interesting question: would your blog be missed if you were to abandon it? Which sites that you frequent would constitute a loss if they disappeared? What qualities do they have that makes you re-vist them? Does your site employ those same attributes? Will anyone miss you when you are gone?

“The quality of your blog is determined, in the end, by the degree to which your blogging neighborhood relies on you. If your blog is a part of a crowd that fulfills similar needs, your blog may not be relied upon as much as you think.”

Let’s say you are an outdoors sporting goods retailer. Now that is a lot of territory to cover. But if you specialize in or target a specific region and offer reviews on that region’s unique camping and hiking pleasures, you become much more indispensable to that market than if your wrote about camping in generalities.

Become Indispensable to Your Neighborhood

The first blog that I ever developed taught me a similar lesson. I found my search engine visibility crescendoed when I started featuring fishing advice from local fishing guides rather than posts written about lake fishing in general.

Same with the boats that were covered. Million dollar yachts are flashy, but RSS subscriptions tripled when I started concentrating on writing about boats 35′ and under. I posted on every resort, harbor, boat dealer and dock in the region and kept readers who frequented their facilities up to date. I determined to be the go-to regional boating site and achieved it.

If you are the only blog in your market neighborhood serving up a robust menu featuring the regions most desired entrees, then you become a designated stop, a must-see. You’ve become a landmark destination in your online neighborhood.

Things are starting to sound a bit different from when you first started learning about search engine visibility and SEO. Let’s say you started laying the groundwork for your transition into a blog site platform and blog marketing about a year ago.

What is Behavioral Targeting

You are now comfortable in the medium but now you are hearing that the medium is changing. Perhaps you are wondering about what behavioral targeting is and if it is something you should focus on.

“Behavioral Targeting is the ability to target users based on their behavior on your website…”Behavior” in this context is referring to the interactions visitors have with your website as well as off-site factors such as where visitors came from. Targeting is the method of offering your visitors personalized site experiences based on their behavioral traits (such as particular content or advertising). The concept of behavioral/on site targeting is exactly how business should be done: offer a customized solution to your end users so that they are truly engaged with your website.”

This is where your analytics come in. There is where you mine the information on your site visitors. How frequently he visits and what content he focuses on. How recently has he been there, is he a seasonal buyer, what time zone is he in, what did he search for inside your site, age, sex, preferred contact method.

Apply Your Analytics

The following travel site scenario demonstrates how to use such data.

“…you know that ‘Jonathan Bowers’ spends a lot of time on cruises to Hawaii, he often does his research in late November, he uses your site search tool for finding out more information about pricing, his preferred method of communication is by email and from his online profile you know he is married, has 2 kids, makes 200K/year and lives in Portland Oregon. As soon as Jonathan signs into his profile in November you show him family cruise deals to Hawaii and business class flights from Portland. You offer Jonathan a personalized experience and now is more likely to book a vacation using your website.”
(Source)

Can you see how that basic use of data can apply across the board? How a jewelry retailer can present turquoise jewelry to his frequent turquoise purchasers? Or how as a sports retailer you’ll be able to show your repeat fisherman new rods and reels?

Get use to the changes, just like you got used to the acronyms. But keep up with them because you can be assured your online competition is.

The technology that promotes your site, i.e., blog site platforms, XML/RSS, podcasts, videos, etc., is always subject to change. Certainly, if you have been exploring the possibilities of blog marketing for your small business, you no doubt have read about Google’s transition to universal search and the growing emphasis on vertical search, suggesting that optimization will always require new strategies.

So yes, optimizing video and podcasts will continually improve, analytics will continue to become more specific and the means to engage your target niche will become more precise. And all of that is for naught if the content your technology delivers can’t convince your customer/reader to return. You need authority to command attention and you need authority to keep your reader engaged. You need to be the prominent voice speaking to your niche market.

“Professionals and other business people have long been writing for trade publications and newspaper columns to build authority, coupled with networking in the community and at trade shows and conferences, all in an attempt to build word-of-mouth referral business. With blogging, you’re building authority and networking all at once, and on a global scale if your business model benefits from that kind of reach.”
(Source)

This is especially true, and especially beneficial, to the small retailer. In my mid-size city alone there are three communities of “passionate users” who are currently not being served by their retailers via blogs or podcasts: boaters, Harley owners and cyclists. If any one retailer would adopt blog marketing, they would emerge as an authority in any of their respective markets. Their robust and leaderless audience is there for the taking.

Who has the authority in your market niche? What are they saying? How can you say it better? Who is speaking for you?

Please forgive me if I go off on a bit of a tangent. Just can’t help it once I hear the sound of a Harley-Davidson and now, every time I  go to my Google homepage, that is what I hear - and I hear it live.

Live Video via Google Gadget

“A large portion of the avid motorcycle community–some 450,000 strong–is in the Black Hills of South Dakota this week attending the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Thousands of other bikers and fans who couldn’t make the rally in person are flocking online for unprecedented live video coverage–via Harley-Davidson banner ads and a downloadable Google Gadget.

This marks the first time a Google Gadget has included live video, while the display ads arguably represent the greatest use ever of live video in a banner ad–offering 10 hours of coverage each day.”

I lit out of here to get mine, and so did a few others.

“The campaign… actually caused Google to expand its “unlimited bandwidth” on Monday, as users exceeded the search giant’s original capacity by spending an average of 13-1/2 minutes watching the live video via the widgets.

By Tuesday, 3,000 of the Harley-Davidson Google Gadgets had been downloaded…”

I like how this marketing campaign was executed as much as I like my Harley widget.

“…the gadget availability was only promoted through word-of-mouth and seeding of relevant blogs… as the agency “leveraged the social nature of the brand.”
(Source)

As soon as I saw “relevant blogs” I went jamming to see if one of my local dealers had the lucky relevant blog. I wish I could say that I had found stellar examples of blog marketing but, none of the sites have even incorporated blog site platforms, let alone capitalized on this superb marketing opportunity.

Ignoring Your “Community of Passionate Users”

So what we see here is the best and the worst of online marketing. The Harley/Carmichael Lynch campaign is representative of excellent use of new media marketing that, frankly, any of these small dealers can employ on a scale calibrated to their budget, talent and desired reach.

The worst is represented by those retailers who are not taking advantage of, nor serving very well, their “community of passionate users”, totally missing out on the power of “the social nature of the brand”.

Just as RSS marketing serves to syndicate your content, so do widgets. Google calls them gadgets, some folks call them badges. You likely have a few on your desktop that keep you advised of weather or flight cancellations. Besides being a bit addictive, they serve a very practical purpose for business blogging and e-commerce.

“Widgets are mini-applications that generally come packaged in a little window, and can be dragged and dropped onto a Web page and offer a scaled down version of features you would ordinarily get at a full-fledged site.

For e-tailers, this means you can, for instance, showcase your eBay listings on your social networking page, bringing your merchandise to interested shoppers who might not have found your storefront, and those who like what you’re selling can even pass your widget on to their friends. Another way e-biz owners can earn extra revenue is by using affiliate marketing widgets at their Web store sites or blogs. Or, if you’re new to e-commerce, widgets provide an easy access point to online selling.”

There are so many ways to go with this, and like all of the new applications, more will be possible as time goes on. As it is, widgets can deliver any of your content; video, images, podcasts, blog content.

Shel, of ‘Shel of My Former Self’, describes just one way the widget can be deployed. In this instance, he was watching Discovery Channel’s Shark Show when he noticed a crawl across the bottom of the screen inviting viewers to go to Discovery Channel.com to get their shark widget. The widget, pictured above, is on the large side but offers the Discovery fan many options.

MediaRiver is designing widgets that can read your content offering, contextually relevant information,

“We build widgets that understand the content on the page and serves up information based on that,” he said, “so it’s all about driving traffic.”
[..]
Widgets built on the platform quickly scan the contents of a Web page, and search for related content, placing links to that content onto Web pages at a publisher’s Web site, at a partner’s Web site or on any Internet page, including user-generated content sites such as blogs and social networks.
[..]
“If you sell posters, and have a vast catalog, and put a ClickSurge widget at your MySpace site, when someone pastes the widget on their page, it will read the information there and list matches for that person’s favorite bands. It customizes itself for wherever it lands.”
(Source)

Definitely an application worth exploiting for purposes of marketing, increased traffic and search engine visibility.

You’ll find that during the course of learning about the technology that gives you the blog site platform that powers your site, you will find that you will absorb acronym after confusing acronym.

There is one acronym though that represents the technology in that platform that you’ll want to be familiar with; XML/RSS. What is XML/RSS?. Click that link and you’ll get the full explanation but the point to be made here is that because you have a site coded with XML/RSS, you will have far less problems having Google index your site than your less advanced neighbors. Why? Because Google loves clean code, which is what XML is.

SEW.com explains why:

“Because the Web is so much larger than the index, Google has to make decisions about what to spider and what to index… Google doesn’t spider every page they know about, nor do they add every spidered page to the index…
[…]
How much effort Google decides to put into spidering a site is a secret, but it’s influenced by PageRank. If your site has relatively few pages with high PageRank, they’ll all get into the index no problem, but if you have a large number of pages with low PageRank, you may find that some of them don’t make it into Google’s index.
[…]
All too often when I look at a new site, I am appalled at the sloppy coding. The typical site could be streamlined significantly.
[..] you…need to pay attention to the dirty details of how your pages are put together. If everybody served clean code, Google would be able to index significantly more pages.”
(Source)

Not only does Google appreciate clean code, but clean code works with a wider range of browsers, allowing more people to be able to load your site, as well as those who will be accessing your feed via their mobile.

Adding videos to your menu of online marketing tools is icing on the cake. But first you have to bake the cake. As attractive as videocasting is, much depends on the maturity of your site, your stockpile of optimized content, and the results from your current blog promotion campaigns.

It is not the wisest strategy to bring a flood of traffic to your site if it isn’t robust and deep enough for readers to willingly fall into. So, have all your ducks in a row before you make your debut.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t start experimenting and, as is the nature of the technology, the applications available for your video baptism are many and diverse. Two promising examples follow and you can take the link below to review other recommendations.

Eyespot
“User generated content is the most engaging medium to emerge in a significant period of time — online video killed the broadcast star,” said Jim Kaskade, CEO of Eyespot. “Video mashups are among of the most meaningful ways to strategically gain the attention of sought-after demographics. Using Eyespot to interact with consumers offers a higher ROI, is more quantifiable than traditional mediums, has higher brand retention, and is uniquely capable of correlating call to action campaigns directly to purchase.”

Jumpcut
“Jumpcut includes thoughtful tricks, such as letting you add photos automatically from Flickr or Facebook. Clips also can be routinely added to more than half a dozen different blogging services. And inveterate bloggers will appreciate the fact that Jumpcut lets you upload new videos via e-mail—perfect for travelers and those who want to allow friends to contribute their own movies. All of this adds a level of convenience not yet witnessed at other sites.”
(Source)

Just as content is one facet of your marketing, video is just another. As your site grows and as you discover which marketing strategies are gaining you your objectives, you’ll abandon one - maybe social media marketing in favor of mobile, or a newsletter in addition to RSS publishing. Do your analytics, listen to your customers, keep your white hat on, and reap the harvest.

Reading a post on the advertising possibilities with mobile marketing, I was reminded of a nephew whose cell phone is attached to his hand and his skate board attached to his legs. The perfect demographic for mobile marketing and SMS campaigns.

Mobile and SMS Marketing

“The time is right to get engaged in mobile marketing. The industry has experienced near-hockey-stick vertical growth. In the U.S. alone, text campaigns (SMS) have experienced approximately 200 percent growth (extrapolating from H1 2005 growth numbers) in adoption in the last year. No other marketing medium, not the Internet, out of home, or print, has experienced this level of adoption. And this is only beginning (text messaging is only one aspect of the mix).”

Curious to see if local skateboard shops were using mobile and text to target that demographic, I was surprised to find very few local retailers who were even employing basic blog promotion , let alone mobile.

If I were a skateboarder and were to choose a vendor based on what their website offered, ES would win, hands down, over my local retailers. Why? Because they offer news, podcasts, videos, products, interaction and community and RSS publishing that feeds it to my cell or my homepage reader.

The home page offers two invitations to interact - one invites me to win merchandise, landing me in one click to a clean landing page with a simple form. Next I’m invited to upload videos of my “tightest tricks” to “show ‘em off to the whole world”. Perfect way to stimulate some viral marketing via user generated content.

Products are showcased in the middle column with easy click options for more info - all image alt tags are optimized with key words - and blog excerpts run the length of the right hand column with additional clear navigation at the bottom of the page.

Keeping Your Customers Connected

On one central page entitled “Stay Connected”, they serve up a platter of choices for me to get my skateboarding fixes:

• éS Video podcast
• RSS subscriptions
• newsletter
• SMS alerts
• Contact éS

“Mobile marketing is here. Entertainment brands know it; consumer packaged goods brands are on it; quick service restaurants and media companies are active. When are you going to take the plunge and add mobile to your mix?”
(Source)

Business blogging, podcasting, social media marketing, videocasts are only some of the tools available for both the budget conscious entrepreneur or the corporate giant. Your future marketing campaigns will likely involve a mixture of all of these, often in combination with offline media.

Marketing Across Media Channels

Shani Reardon at Mediapost.com counsels…

“..Looking at the big picture,…implementing an online and offline lead generation campaign will provide depth in the media mix and can drive awareness, volume and varying lead quality. Using a mass media outlet such as television, an advertiser will see a lift in lead generation across all media channels, including online.”

A recent campaign launched by Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation for the roll out of their new skin product, Restylane, demonstrates some basic principles that can be applied across the board.

New York Times’ Angel Jennings reports:

“A television spot, which is being shown on cable channels like Lifetime, depicts the before-and-after results of an actual patient, and the mental musings of actresses..who discuss the joys of looking younger…

A second component of the campaign is a video skit on YouTube, capturing a woman’s 50th birthday party. While her son compiles a video birthday card, the mother is caught on a couch smooching with a younger man.
[..]
Medicis executives say they want the campaign to reach consumers in a variety of ways, not only through traditional print and television outlets but also on the Internet and through promotions, like a contest involving user-generated videos.”

Brand Awareness and Volume Traffic

The television spots and print ads create awareness for and educates about the new product and sets the ‘template’ for the campaign in terms of aesthetics, tenor and quality. TV drives the customer online to view the video on YouTube, adding a viral component - the resulting synergy generates traffic to the “Hottest Mom” website where videos can be uploaded, commented on, and voted on.

You’ll note also that Medicis presence as sponsor on the contest site is restrained - a simple logo with a light teaser inviting readers to see more before and after shots or locate a doctor. I do wonder why they didn’t incorporate RSS publishing so fans could be alerted to new entries and voting.

Reardon also cautions that your offline and online campaigns should be consistent, both in message and “look and feel of the creative assets.”