It is probably one of the hottest ways to draw attention to your product or website today.  Video clips.  You can easily create a short video on your product using Camtasia or some other inexpensive video editing software.  There are YouTube enabled video cameras that you can buy from Best Buy or some other store very easily and cheaply.  These cameras cut your video into the exact YouTube video length and film at the exact resolution that YouTube demands.  Plug in, upload and you are done.

If you decide to make a long series of videos you may even want to automate the process with either Traffic Geyser or Tube Mogul.  These software packages can be expensive, so doing it by hand is still an option.

Besides YouTube, consider adding your videos to these websites:

Press releases are probably the best form of marketing available today.  Although I do recommend paid services such as http://PRWEB.Com and others, there is only one service that I have found that is free: http://www.i-newswire.com/submit.php.

It appears on Google and Yahoo almost instantly.  The reason I like the 80$ PRweb service is because it generates many more links back to your website.  Do a release through i-newswire.com and then do a links: yourdomain on google and then see the results.  Then, do the same release on PRWeb and see the results.

However, for low-cost marketing, i-newswire.com is an incredible option to get your news out on the internet.  You would be amazed at how many services pick up the news from this free resource.

Writing press releases is quite simple.  You first need a Headline, a Sub-Headline and then a Body of the message.  In PRWeb you will need some other information such as the contact person of the press release, website name, keywords, and you can attach pictures, pdf brochures and more.  PRWeb also specifies who gets the release and you will need to choose specific categories.  I-newswire.com doesn’t require this info, and just focuses on blasting it out to the internet.  It doesn’t seem to go directly into the hands of editors and writers.

The headline is the most important part of the press release.  You would like to have your hot keywords in there and make it catchy.  Go to one of the press release services mentioned above to see a list of the recent releases for examples of what you can do.   Example:  Dog Business releases new product for Small Dogs

The subheadline can delve into more specifics about the headline.  You would like to keep the headline short.  Therefore, you can expand the idea more in the subheadline.  Example:  New product helps small dogs to be healthier and happier.

The Body is the core of your press release.  You start with the Location of your business and the date and then start off with a reiteration of the title.  Go into detail and explain the product and its benefits.  Then give a link for more information, a contact number, and then you give the company blurb.  The company blurb is a standard paragraph that talks about what the company offers, who is the owner of the company and other basic information.  This blurb is generally added to all of your press releases.

Publicity begins within and then you take it to the public.  You need to identify what it is you want to say about your company.  How do you describe yourself?  What specific service/product do you offer.  Drill it into your staff, create scripts for your sales people and then you are ready to take it to the public.  The last thing you want to do is have a public face and a private face.  You want everyone in your organization (including your outsourced workers) to be on the same page and know what you do and what to say if asked.

Now you can start writing your press releases.  If you aren’t good at writing them, perhaps someone in your organization can write them for you or you can outsource it.  But beware.  Public Relations firms cost an arm and a leg.  You can outsource to our firm or many others that offer basic press release writing services and submission services for a few hundred dollars, as opposed to several thousands for a Public Relations firm.  Most PR firms also are newbies when it comes to search engine optimization.  I write press releases for several companies, and one of the biggest areas I focus on is creating search engine optimized text in the header, sub header and body.  I do my keyword research and select the most powerful words for the release. So, whoever you hire, be sure they are SEO savvy and will do the keyword analysis and integration into your PR copy.

Standard submissions start at around $80 with PRWeb.com and you can attach PDF’s, brochures, pictures and other ancillary items to the release.  I sent out one release for an Italian distributor of cosmetics over 3 years ago.  I had my contact info on there and I still get emails and phone calls from editors looking to write a story or businesses looking to sell their products.  Press Releases are amazing if they are written well and submitted well.  Submission is the key to a good press release.  Not only do you have to fill in all the fields you can so you don’t miss any opportunity, but there are several areas that I have realized give more bang for the buck.  One area is submitting to RSS feeds.  RSS is Real Simple Sindication.  It is a news wire source in electronic format.  Always choose this as one of the distribution options.  It is very powerful.

After you set up your press release, don’t forget to send it to your staff.  You definitely want your staff to know what you are publicizing.  The last thing you want is a client to ask a staff member about something they read in a press release or a followup story and have your staff be unaware of the information.  For example, let’s say you publicize the acquisition of a top flyer sales person.  A client says, “hey I know Johnny X when he was with xxx and I see you guys got him.”  Your staff should be prepared with a proper response, “Yes, Johnny is quite a catch.  We were very happy when he joined our firm.  He is a great guy, and provides great customer service–something we strive for.”

Publicity involves much more than just press releases.  However, a press release is the first place to begin your campaign.  You should write on anything that is important to your firm.  Any award, new hire, new product, new website, new focus, new anything that is newsworthy should be publicized.  If you can produced 4 press releases a month you are really gearing up a quality publicity campaign.  Almost every company should be able to do 1 press release per month.  If you don’t have anything worth publicizing, get to work!  Alot of awards are very winable if you just put in half an effort.

Matt Cutts is a Google engineer who is in charge of the Google Webspam team.  Basically if he speaks, nearly every SEO expert listens.  His blog can be found here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ The reason is that he gives insight on the google algorithm and what they may be making “Black-Hat” next.  

Recently Cutts has been focusing on the Universal Search capabilities that Google is striving for.  This means that Google is beginning to integrate Video, Flash and other media into its search algorithm.  Previously the websearch had a preference towards Text Only websites.  This is still the case, however google has improved its ability to catalog Flash and Video.

Also, Cutts asked for input on what he should be targeting.  He gave a listing of what people are annoyed with here http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/webspam-in-2009/#comment-218697 .  This should give you an insight into what Google may slap you with over the next year or two.

One thing is social media.  In fact google places huge emphasis and power on social media sites like Facebook, myspace and others.  However, website owners believe it should rank lower than their main website. Social media works now.  However in the future it may not be so powerful.

Also, owners want harsher penalties including banning of Black Hat SEOs.  Matt emphasizes that they want long-term websites that are interested in developing good content and want to be powerful in the long-run.

However, there are interesting admissions about what black hat techniques still work:

Keyword Rich Domain Names

Wiki’s

Social Networking such as Facebook Myspace Twitter Digg and more

Press Releases

keyword Stuffing, hidden links, article bank sites, forum spammers, doorway pages

Link Exchanges

Paid Links

RSS scraper sites

Cloaking of other sites.

I am not saying that doing any of the above is recommended.  In fact I would stay away from some of it.  But, by Cutt’s admission, it seems that these are still valid ways to get high google rankings, even if Google is actively trying to eliminate the spam.

If you read an SEO book from the late 1990’s you undoubtedly would have read about ways to exchange links with other website owners.  Great tools came out to help assist the link exchange process.  The idea here was to show the search engines that you are relevant and that your site deserves to rank high for specific key phrases.  However, Google changed the rating of link exchange and started to penalize sites if there was rampant abuse of linking.  Specifically they targeted paid links.    Read more here…

No matter what type of website you may have, you absolutely must have descriptive links rather than generic topic links.  The more specific the better.  Let’s take an example of someone selling cars.  Rather than saying in your link structure:

Home
Products
Contact Us

Click Here For More…

First, duplicate content can come in three parts:

1.  Content that is on your site and then duplicated on other pages on your site.

2. Content that is on your site and may also be on other blogs and article directories.

3.  Multiple pages, perhaps doorway pages that have identical content and may have different paths, domain names pointing to it, etc.

Click Here for More

I haven’t posted anything in the past few days because I have been overwhelmed with the awesome features of Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging website. The funny thing about it is that Facebook and others actually have the microblogging built into it. But Twitter is stripped down and allows you to “follow” anybody. By following someone you are more likely to get followed, get email messages and so on. In one day I was able to be followed by over 300 people. That is incredible. Try that with Facebook!! There is nothing like this on the web.

By microblogging, I mean that you are limited to 2 lines of text. In fact, alot of people find that posting URL’s can be too long and so they use the http://tinyurl.com service.

I am working on a training video for Twitter.  This way you get my ideas on how to best utilize it.  But in the short term here are some ways you can benefit from Twitter:

1.  You get to meet alot of competitors and see what they are up to.

2.  You get to meet tons of potential clients and can let them know about anything you are doing or want to publicize to them in seconds and without paying Aweber a dime.

3.  You can meet tons of potential Joint Venture partners through this.

4.  By tweeting you actually get better at sound bytes and doing short statements.  People love soundbytes.  And each tweet is an opportunity to learn better copywriting.  You don’t have time to get long winded or to lose your focus.  Tweets are direct and to the point.

5.  Twitter is a high ranking google site and a linked post there brings in more power ranking to your website.

Tweet on and join me at http://twitter.com/ccardillo

Hitwise recently ranked the percentage of searches and Google is now getting 71%, up from 63% a year earlier. What does this mean? Yahoo and MSN who had 21% and nearly 10% a year ago, are now at 17% and 5%. They are losing market share in search. Ask.com has stayed at a measly 3% with no change.

However, let’s put this into perspective. 17% of trillions of searches is still alot of traffic.

Let’s be clear. Google wants to be the best search engine on the planet. It has done alot over the years to tweak its algorithm. This has affected rankings for many sites, since they have tried to filter out the black hatters and obvious spammers with minimal content. However the search engine gurus always find a way around these hacks, although it takes more resources and time.

Google is attempting to get more pinpoint accuracy with its search and it has left out a few pieces. Video has never really ranked highly even though people view billions of videos each year. Google has started trying to rank these sites, flash enabled sites, and more. They are also trying to weight the authority sites such as blog sites with enough weight but not too much so as to unbalance the scales of ranking. Many bloggers have used the natural authority weight that google gives to Squidoo or Hubpages to great effect. Creating multitudes of these blogs with high natural weight allows these bloggers to give power rank to nearly any website they want.

So this brings me to my point. Universal search is attempting to optimize billions of unranked sites, pages and videos that don’t exist in the engines today. This is creating an avalanche of new competitors. So, for many business owners not willing or able to create hundreds of targeted blog sites, Google Pay Per Click will be the only way to really compete. Obviously this means more income to Google. It also means outrageously high advertising for google key terms. This is forcing people to look at long-tail keyword phrases. That is the hot market going forward. Targeting main key terms is no longer viable from any business perspective. The cost is too high on the PPC and the cost is too high on the resources to get there from standard SEO strategy. However, the long-tail still holds about 80% of all searches. This means that there is still a wild wild west of opportunity out there no matter what Google has done with Universal Search.

Stay tuned for more on this.