Branding Your Business Through SEO
Here is an interview I did recently with with Joe Balestrino of www.MR-SEO.com:
Kevin: How did you come up with MR-SEO.com?
Joe: I had just started my small business, focused on search engine optimization and knew I wanted to come up with a name that would be memorable and would help me brand my business. As a small web-based business, it is important to choose a name that has to do with your industry and will count in search terms. I liked MR-SEO.com but when I typed it into the search engines a bunch of guys were coming up that had nothing to do with my business. I knew I wanted that name and had to think of a way to capture people based on my spelling of MR-SEO. To make it happen I had to work constantly on getting other sites to link to me.
Kevin: Why is link-building so important?
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The Branding Power of Business Networking
For this piece I am interviewing Chris Pareja, founder of B2BpowerExchange.com, a leads group for “true B2B business developers”. Chris started the organization over three years ago as a means of cultivating substantial B2B (business-to-business) business opportunities for himself and others. Chris felt that normal business networking groups weren’t generating opportunities for him of the caliber he was seeking. To him, these organizations were primarily focused on exchanging retail-focused leads and not business-to-business opportunities which is where his focus was.
What follows is my interview with Chris…
Kevin: What does branding mean to you Chris?
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The Marketing Power of Success Stories
We often hear the phrase “prove it” in our daily lives. In the world of sales and marketing this “proof” typically comes in the form of validated ROI statistics for your products or services, a research report touting your offerings by a credible third party, etc. I believe the single most effective proof a business can provide is with a quantifiable success story from a successful past client. What better validation could there be in business than a satisfied client talking about how you and your business helped them in some way?
I write success stories for my clients all the time. Once I’ve received approval from my client and from my client’s client, I urge both parties to promote the piece on their websites. I then tell my client to post the article online, perhaps at a superblog like hubpages.com for added visibility. A recent client of mine posted a success story I developed on hubpages.com and actually generated a $70,000 deal from a person that searched on Google for the types of products they sell (wireless communications systems) and found the success story. The prospective buyer read the story, contacted my client and purchased thousands of dollars of equipment.
An effective success story for any type of business should have several components, including:
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Effective Positioning Addresses Customer Needs
Often times companies get caught up in telling all about the bells and whistles of their products and services and neglect to talk about the most important element of all…how their solutions address their customers’ needs. After all, isn’t that what we are all in business to do? If we aren’t then we have a big problem!
Effective business positioning is all about describing the value your products and services provide to your target customer. Yes it is important to some degree to describe what it is you are selling, but it is most critical to focus primarily on the value you are providing. Many businesses fall into this trap of focusing too heavily on their products and services (features) and not enough on the problems they solve (benefits).
Let me give you an example:
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The Art of Writing With Brevity
I come from the world of Public Relations, which I believe is all about succinct, clear communications to external audiences. From my years in the field, I learned an extremely valuable lesson for effective communications that has carried with me ever since and will most certainly be a constant theme throughout my career. What I learned is that brevity is king!
Just like people typically don’t like all the endless pages of detail in novels, people don’t like to be overwhelmed with unnecessary fluff in business communications either. Much like the 10-second elevator speech, you need to keep your sales, marketing and website copy short and directly to the point.
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The SEO and Branding Power of a Topical Article
Did you know that a simple 400-800 word informational article related to some topic relevant to your business can do the following:
A. Draw significant web traffic to your site?
B. Put your company name in front of hundreds or thousands of prospective customers?
C. Create countless links back to your site for search engine optimization purposes?
Well I can tell you from personal experience that one single article I wrote titled “How to Differentiate Your Business” has drawn over 75 visitors to my website, added 25 links back to my website, has put my company name in front of over 600 people and actually helped me land two clients.
What I do to maximize the visibility of my brand and help generate potential sales for my business is something you too can do. I write my own articles about topics relevant to my business and I post them all over the web for free. You can either do the same or hire someone to write the articles for you. Once you have this rich piece of content that you own, you can do so many things with it.
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How to Develop and Leverage an Effective Press Release
A press release, when leveraged properly, can be a highly effective marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. Prior to the Internet, a press release was mailed out to editors and reporters at leading magazines, newspapers and broadcast stations, followed up by an aggressive PR person trying to gain coverage for some new product, service or event. Beyond this attempt to gain free publicity, a press release was not terribly effective at promoting a business or its brand.
Today, however, with the power and ubiquity of the Internet, a press release opens up a whole new world of branding/marketing opportunities to businesses of all sizes. Furthermore, if you know how to appropriately craft one yourself, it costs you nothing. In addition to the potential print and broadcast news value, a press release today (whether newsworthy or not) will likely wind up on national and international news distribution services sharing your news with media, investors, potential customers and the like, the world over. All you need to do is develop an effective press release and post it online at a number of free press release distribution sites (listed later).
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