Driving In Traffic

SEO Tip: Four Places Where You Should List Your Website

One tenet of search engine optimization is that a site's rankings are influenced greatly by the number of sites that link to it.  Seems easy enough, right?

Well, unfortunately many are duped by unscrupulous "SEO Gurus" that use spam postings on blogs and sham sites to drive up the number of links to a site.  This tactic certainly works, but I would advise against it.  Afterall, your company's good reputation is the hardest thing to achieve and also the easiest thing to lose.  All it takes is for a link to your company or its logo to be placed next to an advertisement for a porn site and you are "screwed"  (all puns intended).

If you are a do-it-yourself kind of person, there are a few places where it is worth the time to list your site.  Here they are:

DMOZ Open Directory Project

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. Listing your business is free and easy (link on upper left-hand side of each page).  Many of the search engines routinely cruise DMOZ for new sites that have been added.  The downside of the human-editing process is that your listing will not appear immediately.  You will need to give it a few days to a few weeks to appear.  But geez... its free and you can list in multiple area if appropriate for your business.

Kudzu.com

As a subsidary or Cox Enterprises, Kudzu.com is a great platform and well advertised in the local markets it covers.  Kudzu has both free and paid services.  The free service includes a basic listing and allows customers to leave reviews, which are becoming more and more important in the marketplace.  If you want to optimize your rankings within Kudzu and add photos and videos of your work, the $75/month package is within some small businesses advertising budget.

Flugpo.com

This is a relatively new business listing site that adds a social networking spin to things.  I like that they clearly post their code of conduct for their network participants additionally their FAQs provide a clear explanation of what to do when the code of conduct is violated.

Joint Win-Win 

This is a specialized listing site that focuses on companies that donate at least 8% of their gross revenues to charity.  I realize that not everyone can use this site, but I love the idea and thought it worth including.  With Cause-related marketing and the desire of consumers/customers to buy and do good growing in popularity, this free listing service makes a lot of sense.

Photo by Afferent Rapture

Branding

To me--- nothing says comfort on a winter day than looking at a the red and white of Campbell's Tomato Soup and knowing all I need is a good grilled cheese sandwich. Years of experience with the product, memories associated with those experiences, the occasional TV commercial that gives me the warm fuzzies and the consistent goodness of Campbell's tomato soup have all come together to create an a feeling of contentment and home by just seeing the can. 

Branding is a process by which we try to use a variety of tactics to elicit a positive emotional response from customers and potential customers.  It is much more than selecting a logo, colors and packaging.

Branding involves communication, imagery, and reputation building.

In order to brand effectively, one needs to:

• examine the strengths and weaknesses of the competition,
• examine your own strengths and opportunities for improvement
• communicate and listen to staff regarding perceived internal strengths and goals
  
• listen to customers desires, needs and wants.

From there, we can begin to understand the possibilities for changing customer perceptions in order to improve customer loyalty and probability that a customer will come back-- again and again.

While the informal and personal tone of the blogosphere and social media, to date, has been identified as a risk of  starting a blog, there is the very real possibility that these very traits could play well into marketing and branding endeavors. Afterall, what better way to build an emotional response to what you do than to start a relationship with your customer? What's the harm in letting people know a little bit more about you as long as it is presented professionally?

Branding and Marketing: Do Blogs Fit In?

Marketing and branding are not an activities that manipulate the intrinsic properties of a product, service, company or a cause. Instead, they are processes by which you influence customers, both real and potential, to create in their own mind that your product or service has more value than those of your competitors. 

Many think branding and marketing are the same things.  Unfortunately, they are not.  However, the two are interdependent and intertwined, which probably accounts for much of the misconception.  It is a broad generalization (but take the leap for a moment)... but marketing has its foundation in educating people about you and branding is about taking that knowledge and making it ring emotionally.

Well.... that sounds easy, huh?

Blogs... where do they fit in?

I'm glad you asked... blogs are just one tool to help both educate and to create an emotional bond to you, your business/cause and products/services.  If done correctly, every post of a blog can be a little glimpse into you, your values, your commitment to a cause and/or your passion for what you do.  Now don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that a business/nonprofit blog should be an unfettered gush of emotion and personal musings.  Instead, I want to propose that the words that you choose to talk about something are a subtle reflection of who you are.  Everything you write gives readers a chance to understand how you think, what is important to you, how smart you are, and if you are a person that they might like.

And lets face it... people like to do business with people who they like.  If they like you, they will spend more money, be more loyal customers and tell people about you. 

How does this translate into marketing and branding... well.....blogs give folks a chance to get to know you and decide if they like you.  If people like you and your blog, this will give the emotional underpinnings for your branding efforts to take hold.  The beauty of it is that while doing all of this you can talk about your cause/products/services/company.  Business and nonprofit blogging is simply good bang for your marketing and branding bucks.

Thanks to Anosmia for the photo.