Sometimes, I think quite a few people get so wrapped up in sales that they forget the value of Branding. We’re often so focused on a well performing PPC campaign, and a well oiled and lubed SEO campaign that we forget that some efforts that do not produce instant sales and subscribers can have extreme value.

Igniting the conversation online…

Since the 1940’s, Coca-Cola and other big businesses knew the value of getting their logo and a graphic of their product on every wall, flyer and poster out there. They understood visibility = recognition & eventually sales. The more people know about something, the more it becomes socially acceptable and people become aware it exists.

How do you do that online? Especially, with a low budget?

Fact is… It’s going to take man hours, labor.. But it can be done quite affordably beyond the time it takes to do it. First thing is to consider where your target audience hangs out, what sites they visit, what questions they ask themselves each day… And what sites appear when they ask Google those questions in searches…

These sites your target audience hangs out on have comment forms (where you can make your brand, your name or your product name show up in regular conversation – NOT SPAM).

These sites have forums where you can bring up your brand/name/product in a conversation or leave it in your signature.

These communities are often wanting something they can sink their teeth into… Like wallpapers for their computers you can submit to tons of directories.. You don’t get a link, but you sure do get brand visibility.

Sites are always looking for fresh content to post on their blogs and pages. Short article snippets about relevant topics they wanna hear about.  Giving them re-usable content and letting them state who the author was and what the author is known for (IE: Product, Brand) etc…

But those aren’t the only strategies… There’s TONS of ways to get under the skin of that community and start making your presence known. What are you waiting for?

By getting your brand/name/product out there, you invite conversation.. The more conversation about you the more links build toward you automatically and without request. Thus in the end your SEO does benefit.

Dan

This resource is nothing short of amazing. Beyond being able to extract
the ad groups and keywords of your competitors or even other affiliates or
companies that are already profitable…There’s something even cooler here.

Just from a glance, we can all see who’s advertising on a given market or
keyword… But I did a quick scan on "car rental" with their free tool on the
site and found that I could see how many keywords each business had in
their campaigns!!!

Now, I have a team 7 staff dedicated to helping my clients succeed online.
The standard research done by our staff is never less than 1000 keywords
on average. If I see tiny campaigns or accounts running, I *know* they aren’t
capturing the entire market space.

But that’s just the begining. Competitve Intel at it’s best, check out
Keyword Spy for yourself, it’s quite impressive.

Daniel Deyette
SEM/SEO & Copywriting Expert.
Social/Viral Media consultant
AnswersWanted Inc

Mashing Data Together – How one company managed
to put cost per click,
Google estimated traffic, search
trends and number of results in Google into
one simple excel sheet. Brilliant!

Case Study – SEM Rush tool put together by Michael Goldfinch. By Dan Deyette – I’ll show you the tool, what it does and my unbiased view on the utility.

I remember when getting data out of Google and into Microsoft Excel or any other software required serious coding skills or a linux box and a 6 pack of Coke. It was a real challenge and most of us who had any kind of computer skills and wanted to harvest data from Yahoo/Google would simply copy & paste and then play with the data. Times are changing, quickly. More sites are "Mashing Data" to make their own tools, software and competitive intelligence is getting MUCH easier. So easy in fact, that SEM Rush has leveraged API’s and integrations to borrow some data from different parts of google and "Mash" them all onto one page of results for easy reading! Let’s give some examples… Say I want to know who the top websites getting traffic on the internet today are. These would be great places to advertise, try to get links from or even just study as a business model, wouldn’t you agree? I know, this report got a little "blurry" but check it out. Woudn’t it be nice to have the "seasonality" of Google Trends data on the same excel sheet with your search volume and other stats? Let’s break it down: Number of results – How many resutls appear in google for that phrase Competition – The level of advertisers in Google Pay Per Click Cost Per Click – How much it costs to bid on that keyword Average Volume – How many people per day look for it on Google Google Trends – Seasonality or even if this is a newly popular item. In case you hadn’t noticed, the wonderful thing about Google Trends is that it shows you whether your recent drop in traffic or gain is because of worldwide conditions or your rankings. It shows you how much "volume" any phrase is getting in relation to the last few years, and geographic regions. What Trends DOESNT do by itself is give you a number. An exact number, like "there were 3,000 people yesterday". It simply says, it’s way lower last month and much higher this week.. Helpful but not as helpful as an actual number. With an actual number, you can sit back and calculate things like potential ROI or conversion rates or market share potential. Having an idea of the cost per click in relation to seasonal high’s and lows and results in Google makes a lot of trending and analysis alot easier. If this tool stopped here, I’d never have posted this writeup. But trust me – It doesnt! Go play with it, the free version has TONS of features worth noting. The usages are endless. Check out SEM Rush today. You’ll be glad you did. I used to use SpyFu for all my competitive research needs, but the price is getting quite high for their tool. They want $18.95 for a 3 day membership. I used to pay $6.95 and that was alright by me. $50 per month is a bit high for something that essentially scrapes Google. SEM Rush is much more affordable. Their monthly price is similar to 3 days with SpyFu. Their tool does quite a bit more, and adds more value to your reports if you send weekly or monthly client reports or need to spice up an up coming presentation. Sincerely Daniel J Deyette