One affordable online marketing solution that can give a boost to your lead generation, sales, and search engine optimization is blogging. It's one of the easiest and most effective way to generate web traffic, which turns into leads, which turns into sales.

Blogging is a quick, easy way to inform and educate your customers, be easily found by search engines, and to talk about the things you're passionate about. All of this has the net effect of getting more and more information online, which makes it easier for customers to find you and buy from you.

Why Blogging is a Crucial Part of Any Affordable Online Marketing Campaign

Blogging is a great way to build a social media marketing campaign. In fact, if you're a small business, social media is one of the most affordable online marketing tactics you can use. It should be the hub of your entire campaign, and the other social networks serve as the spokes.

There are other avenues you can try, like pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, and even email marketing. But social media is going to be your most cost-effective option for affordable online marketing, because it's something you can do yourself, for free, if you have the time and patience. If you don't have the time, or you don't feel you can learn enough, hire a professional who can get it done for you quickly and expertly.

How to Integrate Blogging Into Your Affordable Online Marketing Campaign

To integrate blogging into your affordable online marketing campaign, the first thing to do is to find a blogging platform you feel comfortable with. There are several options — Blogspot.com, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, TypePad.com — so find the one that you feel comfortable with, can easily set up and maintain yourself, or hire someone to do for you.

Blogspot and WordPress.com are self-hosted, and the companies make it easy to do everything yourself. WordPress.org requires its own server, and someone to set it up. Those options are free (although you have to pay for the server hosting for WordPress.org), but TypePad is a fee-based service. Still, a lot of people swear by it, so give it a good look.

Take a look at your budget, your resources, your expertise, and your time before you set up your platform, to insure you choose the one that is the best affordable online marketing choice.

Promote Your Blog Through Affordable Online Marketing

Promoting your blog is going to be the biggest part of your affordable online marketing campaign. In fact, the promotion is where most people lose traction, because it takes a lot of work. But if you want your blog to be successful, you need to put this time into it.

Social network is some of the most affordable online marketing you can do. Join two or three social networks — we typically recommend Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook — and grow your network of business associates, friends, and potential customers. Participate in conversations with people, and only make your blog promotion part of what you put up there. By interacting with people on your networks, you can make normal, everyday conversations part of your affordable online marketing.

But avoid spamming your network with product and blog messages only. Instead, talk about things that your network will find interesting. If you sell women's exercise gear, talk about women's health and exercise. Forward articles that will be of interest to women who exercise. Offer nutrition tips. Refer people to other blogs and exercise programs. Becoming a valuable resource to your network is an important part of affordable online marketing. And when you write about the exercise gear you sell, feel free to post it.

But, and this is important, make sure you talk about your own products only 10% of the time In other words, for every one time you promote one of your blog posts, talk about something else nine times. Otherwise your affordable online marketing tactics will be ignored, and you'll lose all the traction you gained.

Reverse SEO has become critical in managing public relations for organizations and executive employees. It has never been easier for your customers, competitors, and employees to publish items online that can have a damaging impact upon your business.  If those items gain exposure in Google, Yahoo!, Bing other major search engines, their effects can last for years.

Whether you operate a small firm with less than ten employees or a multi-billion dollar company, bad publicity can destroy your business.

To follow are the fundamentals of reverse SEO. We explain how it works and the advantages of using it. We'll also describe a seldom talked about strategy of leveraging reverse SEO as a preventative approach to online reputation management (ORM). You'll discover why many companies are rushing to search engine optimization specialists to enlist their help for damage control. If you are not currently using reverse SEO to limit the effects of bad publicity, your company may be vulnerable.


How Reverse Search Engine Optimization Works

Google ranks pages based on several criteria. One of its organic algorithm's ranking parameters is a website's authority within its space. The more authority a site has, the easier it is for a page on that site to rank well and control its position. When an authoritative page carries bad publicity about your company, it can gain exposure to a wide audience. This is the problem that reverse search engine optimization resolves.

Reverse SEO specialists have a number of tools at their disposal they can use to suppress bad publicity in the search engines. First, they'll analyze the authority of high-ranking pages that speak negatively of your business. Then, they'll formulate a strategy to push those pages into the depths of the search engines' organic listings, limiting their visibility.


Long-Term Advantages Of Reverse SEO

A single unsatisfied customer can create havoc for your company by spreading deceptive stories of poor service or shoddy workmanship. Similarly, one resentful employee can anonymously unfurl a string of damaging diatribes. If such stories and diatribes are merely told to another person, their effects are limited and temporary. By contrast, if they are published online and gain exposure in Google, they can have disastrous results for your business.

This type of negative press tends to gain a groundswell of momentum, regardless of its accuracy. By suppressing these pages in the search engines, reverse SEO allows you to control the effects of bad publicity. It helps you to smother the flames before they grow out of control.

Reverse SEO: The Preemptive Strike

Most companies launch a reverse SEO campaign after bad publicity has already crept toward the top of Google's organic listings. That is a reactive approach. The problem is that high-ranking pages with negative press tend to generate inbound links. Those links further strengthen the pages' positions. As a result, they become more difficult to suppress.

You can use reverse SEO as a preventative measure. By launching a campaign that controls the top organic positions, you can prevent negative publicity from gaining exposure in the first place. In effect, you can insulate your company from the whims and machinations of frustrated customers, unhappy employees, and deceitful competitors.


Is Reverse SEO An Essential Cog Of Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) increases your company's exposure within your space. On its own, an SEM campaign can deliver staggering results that translate directly to your business's bottom line. However, bad publicity can disrupt even the most formidable of search engine marketing campaigns.

Reverse SEO is a vital component of any SEM effort. It protects the integrity of your search engine marketing campaign and supports its growth. The same tools that can be used to control the top positions in Google and prevent negative press from gaining traction can seed inbound links to your website. This creates a well-rounded SEM campaign that is potent on multiple fronts.

Damage Control And Online Reputation Management

If your company enjoys exposure on the internet, whether from social networking sites, professional online trade journals, or broad media, online reputation management is important. The number of authoritative websites that your customers, employees, and competitors can use to spread negative press about your business is increasing. Making matters worse, many journalists have become lax in sourcing their stories. ORM and reverse SEO can work seamlessly together to control the spread of bad publicity.

Negative press does not need to be accurate in order to rank well in Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines. That makes reverse SEO more critical for your company than ever.


Receive a free reverse SEO evaluation and begin to take control of your company's online reputation today.

Local SEO consulting is becoming more and more important to businesses that have a local presence, rather than a global one. If your retail business relies on walk-in traffic, rather than people ordering online, then you absolutely need local SEO consulting.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of making your website appear at the top of  the search results. And as more people are looking for a product or service in their own hometown, rather than just searching for it in general, means that local SEO is crucial to your business success.

Let's say you own an ice cream store in Lawrence, Kansas.  If someone in Lawrence is in the mood for ice cream, they're not just going to do a Google search for "ice cream." They want something in their own town, not three states away. That's where a local SEO consulting firm can help. They'll make sure your website and/or your Google maps location appear at the top of the search results.

Google is trying to win the local search market, which is why local SEO consulting is the hot new technique these days. In some cases, it's not even important to type in your city name. If you do a search for "plumbers" or "steakhouse," Google will pull up a map with addresses and information on the local plumbers and area steakhouses. But the only way you're going to appear up there is if you practice these local SEO consulting techniques and get your website optimized for local search results.

A local SEO consulting firm can help you do keyword research, make sure your website is easily indexed by search engines, and can help you build links back to your site. All of these will insure your site can easily be found

A local SEO consulting firm can help you find the best links — local links are the most effective — to point back to your site. That's because Google and other search engines see these backlinks, they assume that your site is a valuable resource for the keywords and your city. The more backlinks you have, the more of an authority your site is seen as, and the higher you rank.

If you own a custom boot shop in Dallas, Texas your local SEO consulting company will help you place links on your local chamber of commerce site, in the comments sections of local bloggers, and on local search engines and search sites like Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, and online yellow pages.

Another local SEO consulting trick is to use landing pages for each local address. If you have a chain of ice cream stores around Kansas, don't just list every store on a single page. Create one internal page for each store address. Put a live Google map on the page, and any pertinent local information you can think of.

Buying a special domain name is another local SEO consulting technique. Buy the URL "DallasCustomBoots.com" or "DallasTexasCustomBoots.com." That's because search engines love descriptive URLs. And if it contains crucial keywords about the site, all the better. That's because the search engines will automatically know what the site is about, and rank it higher on their search results page for it.

If you're in the retail business, or only cover a small geographic area, like Miami-Dade county, then a local SEO consulting firm can help make your business a thriving success. The best way to find them? Google your city's name and "search engine optimization." The best local SEO consulting firm will have practiced what they preach and their page will appear at the top.

Video SEO is making headlines in politics: "Politically Correct in the Press on Current US Events"

The "Politically Correct" blog uses video in social media to advertise current events in politics, while driving traffic and building links which search engines value. The blog carries on the tradition of social mainstream by marketing political views, as we recently viewed in this year's first political ad placed in the Superbowl. Whether intended to be political or not, the controversial ad made social media headlines. The difference is the video above is accounting for both left and right wing perspectives.

A search on the video, released for search engine optimization, found ties to strong content on the subject of government and politics. Even the politicians are finding good use of social media through video. As demonstrated in the brilliance of the Obama campaign, the politicians are building social marketing into the campaign budget with great market share.  The viral aspect of video marketing allows for rapid penetration of media viewed by the target market at a much lower costs to the advertiser.   

As seen in this Politically Correct video, politics today understand the value of video marketing as it relates to Gen Y and older demographics. Let's face it, who would not rather have someone communicate their point in graphic format with audio? Video SEO has made its way into social marketing and it is here to stay in politics as well.

Media jargon aside:  Build video into your marketing plan, launch it on YouTube and within Google Video, and watch your brand penetrate search engine rankings.  Video search engine optimization provides high visibility to your brand at a fraction of the cost of television, cable, or display advertising online.  And Video SEO is arguably more effective than the more intrusive traditional mediums.

Reference Politically Correct, by Cameron Patrick Ross, Government & Politics Today

Online Marketing is demonstating an incline in marketshare, as demonstrated by the 2010 Google Superbowl Ad: According to CBS a 30-second commercial is approximately $3.01 million and this excludes fees for celebrities or models who will endorse their product, equipment, and the entire crew behind their ads. Since advertising space cost millions of dollars, the advertisers make sure that people will enjoy and at the same time will be attracted to their ads. Creative commercials generally create a great impact to the audience.

Online marketing is becoming more important to all businesses these days, especially in a down economy. This is especially important for small businesses (fewer than 100 employees), since we make up 98.3 percent of companies in America. Small businesses need affordable online marketing services to reach people online. According to projections from Forrester Research, U.S. online retail sales are expected to rise 11 percent to $156 billion this year.

If you're not familiar with what online marketing is these days, it's gone beyond the days of banner advertisements that ran along the top of websites. Now it's blogging, social networking, and even pay-per-click. Each has its own place in your online marketing toolbox, depending on what the focus of your company is.

As you learn more about online marketing, you'll start hearing terms like "relationship marketing" versus "interruption marketing," and people will talk about Generation Y (also called "Millennials"), which are going to become more and more important to your online marketing efforts.

Generation Y are those people who were born between 1977 and 1994 — between 16 and 33 now — don't respond well to traditional marketing services. They're tired of their programs being interrupted by ads (Interruption Marketing). Instead, they want relationships with their favorite companies (Relationship Marketing). And since it seems most of Generation Y was born with a computer on their lap and a cell phone in their hand, online marketing is the most effective way to find them.

That's because new technology has made it easier for Generation Y to avoid being bombarded by traditional marketing. They watch replays of their favorite shows on Hulu.com and YouTube. They get their news from My Yahoo and Google. They play video games for entertainment. They connect with friends on Facebook and MySpace. And rather than using email, they text the bejeezus out of each other when they want to communicate.

In other words, they're immune to traditional marketing, but they're wide open to online marketing campaigns.

Let's say you had a club downtown, appealing to the 21 - 29 crowd, and you want to reach that age group within a 5 mile radius of your club. How does online marketing stack up against traditional marketing?

You could put an ad in the newspaper, advertise on TV, and even put a few ads on the radio station. The problem is traditional advertising is expensive, will only reach people if they're reading, watching, or listening (and they're not always doing that). It's a total hit-and-miss whether you even reach people. You're reaching thousands, if not millions of people, but they're not all in your target market.

Online marketing can change all that, and for a lot less money. What if you could post an ad on Facebook that reached only people who lived in a 5 mile radius of your restaurant, and were between the ages of 21 - 29? Then you're not broadcasting ads to people who live 30 or 40 miles away. What if you could send a text message to people who have been to your club before? Then you're reaching people who want to hear from you. What if you could post 5 minute videos of the DJs or bands playing at your club? Then people can watch them on YouTube and see what they missed. Plus their fans will be able to watch the video, and will know to come to your place the next time their band is in town.

You can reach people who search for your exact product or service online by applying effective SEO consulting techniques and rank #1 on Google, Yahoo, and Bing without paying for keyword advertising.  It is called organic search engine ranking. Google estimates that 42% of clicks within search results come from the fist listing on the page.  Even if you pay for that listing, through Google Adwords, you don't have to pay Google until someone clicks on your listing and visits your website. 

That's the magic of online marketing: reaching only the people you want, talking to the people who want to hear from you, and making the messages as long or short as you want, rather than in small boxes or 30 second bursts.

Reverse SEO is becoming both easier and more difficult for people managing a personal brand.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of getting your name to appear at the top of the search engine rankings, while reverse SEO pushes other results off the first page.

Occasionally, something not very flattering appears at the top of the search results, and it becomes necessary to push those rankings out of sight. That's what reverse SEO does.

Let's say someone takes a shot at your speaking ability after you speak at a conference. Normally you're on your game, but that day just wasn't great. Plus that guy wasn't too happy when you said you wouldn't take requests. But his negative blog post about how you wouldn't sing "Swinging on a Star" is now ranking #3 on Google. This is where reverse SEO comes in handy.

You can push that search result out of sight just by adding more content with your name on it to the search indexes. Reverse SEO basically means you're going to optimize more positive things in order to push the negative down.

Last summer, reverse SEO just involved putting content up on a website, blog, or forum discussion. Facebook and LinkedIn were also searchable, so if you were to put up some great content on those two sites (and no, Mafia War scores on Facebook don't count), you could easily reverse SEO your way out of a jam.

But here's where it gets easier. Google and Bing have announced partnerships and plans with social media tools like Twitter, as well as indexing things like Picasa and Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and other social networks.

Now, rather than putting up several blog posts (which we still recommend, since they're a little more evergreen than tweets and Flickr photos), you can tweet, upload photos and videos, and add some additional fun content that will reverse SEO your negative review off the front page.

But it's still important to continue to use some of the more text-heavy tools, like Blogger, WordPress, and Squidoo, to help create content. If you get a negative review, use your blog to counter it, but don't respond to it. Your reverse SEO efforts will fail if all you end up doing is drawing attention to the thing you're trying to hide in the first place.

(Because nothing will cause a reverse SEO campaign to backfire like "So some big jerk said I was a bad speaker and he gave me a negative review. Here's a link to his blog post, followed by a 27-point rebuttal.")

Instead, if you got a negative review for your presentation, talk about upcoming presentations. Reprise the talks you gave, and publish some of the tips and ideas you discussed. Talk about lessons you have learned in the past from "other" presentations where you didn't do so well.

Another way you can combine your blogging and social media in your reverse SEO campaign is to promote your blog posts through your different social networks. Use Twitter to tell your followers. Connect your blog through Networked Blogs on Facebook. Post your new article and a link on LinkedIn's status update window. Since these three tools appear in search engine results, not only will they add backlinks to your blog posts, but they're searchable as well.

Video SEO can be an important part of reverse SEO. As we've discussed in other blog posts, video SEO can be a little tricky. You need to make sure your target keywords appear in your titles and any surrounding text, and try to include an edited transcript of the video.

Reverse SEO is a necessity in public relations online, given the recent search engine integration of social media comments within search engine results pages. Reverse SEO is an online reputation management (ORM) strategy. It protects companies and notable individuals from negative publicity and rumors that can circulate quickly online. Left unattended, this bad press can find a permanent home within the natural listings of the search engines.

Blogs, forums, and social networking sites have given millions of people the ability to publish their thoughts on a global stage. What's more, they can do so instantly and anonymously. Many companies have discovered that these community-based platforms can attract a groundswell of attention. If bad press gains momentum on such sites, reverse SEO becomes the only cost-effective way to control it in the search engines.

The search engines have given social media and community sites a bump in ranking authority. These sites tend to rank well in Google, Bing and Yahoo. If a company or individual becomes the target of false rumors or negative publicity posted on these sites, the damage to online reputation can be substantial.

Therefore, a growing number of companies are launching reverse search engine optimization campaigns. Reverse SEO can push the bad press off the first page of search listings. Because few people explore past the first page, few will see the negative publicity.

Reverse SEO is an effective strategy for suppressing negative publicity about a company within the search results. However, once the bad press takes root, it begins to cement its position. As a result, it become more difficult to remove.

The grounded information is based on the age and number of inbound links. The longer a page stays within the index, the more authority it receives from the search engine. Meanwhile, the more exposure it receives, the more inbound links it attracts. Those links further strengthen its position. Reverse SEO techniques can push negative publicity from the first page of organic listings. But, it requires time and effort to knock entrenched pages from their ranking.

It is easier than ever for embittered employees, irritated customers, and deceitful competitors to post bad press online. If the sites on which they publish their thoughts gain traction in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, it will become more difficult to remove them. Public Relations Experts are incorporating Reverse SEO into campaign strategy to prevent negative publicity in search engines.

Reverse SEO manages your online reputation, pushing the negative information down in search engine results. Manage your online reputation with these proven techniques of these Reverse SEO Management pros. Online reputation management (ORM) was created to help business owners and professionals deal with bad press. Countless companies – large and small – have found themselves on the receiving end of negative publicity. When it is posted online, it can spread quickly. The size of your business has little influence on the devastating effect of such feedback. Online reputation management curbs the impact of bad publicity in search engine results. It allows you to control information about you. Rostin Ventures, http://www.rostinventures.com, Reverse SEO Experts in SEO Consulting and Public Relations Online

SEO Consulting Firms are changing strategy for 2010 to include a larger focus on social media strategy.  At the Web 2.0 Summit last week, Google just announced a new partnership with Twitter and indicated other plans to include personalized search results based on user profiles and preferences within social networks. Photos, Videos, and Social content will be served within search results pages of search Google and other search engines, including Bing.

Video SEO is already ranking for both consumer and B2B marketing.  Google search results are including video within first page rankings.  Users are served video within search results pages of Google and other search engines, based on specific keyword searches.  SEO Consulting Firms are using Video SEO to provide optimal search engine marketing results.

Social Media conent is also included in rankings.  Currently, search engine marketing and SEO consulting experts are building content to increase backlinks and ranking value of websites they are contracted to market.  Rostin Ventures Social Promoter product provides search engine marketing benefits through social media content marketing.  Blogs are built, linked together, and linked back to a core site to build a network of social media sites which drive traffic back to the main site.  The network of sites rank within the search engines, simply because they are very specific content, providing users with very specific information, for which they are seeking within search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress, Squidoo, Typepad, Linked In and the hundreds of other social communities and networks are developing partnerships with the search engines to increase relevant information which is served within search engine results pages.  This personalization of content being served in the search engines increases search relevancy and increases value of social communities and networks, as the social content is now just as important in search engine marketing as the initial site link was considered in backlinks value to the search engine ranking equation.

The online marketing space is changing.  Search engine marketing is always on the move, but this year's changes are making great strides to provide each search engine user with the most preferred content within search results.  The new strategy using search results of social media content will provide the most personalization of content we have seen since the inception of Web 2.0.

Generation Y is online. They are defined as the 10-30 year olds with more discretionary spending than their parents have, according to Author Kit Yarrow of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing retail. On NPR this morning, she noted the average number of text messages sent by a teen, during a given month. The number was 2,273 text messages. They communicate in email, but chat more often, and they are active users of social media and video. Gen Y uses search engines daily. Schools introduce interaction with web 2.0 applications as early as elementary school and access to the internet is a requirement in secondary education. They are comfortable online and have chosen to use the medium over any other form of communication. If you are working in marketing, you can not afford to miss this generation which Yarrow coined Gen BuY. Online marketing has changed. This new generation expects you to communicate with them.

Online marketing is the best way to reach this demographic, but what specific applications within the internet space are they responding to? How are they interacting online? Generation X brought offline social networking to the online social networks, with the introduction of sites like Linked In. Today, the largest growing segment of Facebook is Generation X. So how do online marketing professionals reach Generation Y? What is the online marketing plan for reaching Gen Y? There is a difference in how these two generations are responding to traditional and online mediums.