I read a twit today (entry on the web site Twitter) that stood out to me. Working with local businesses, it touches on a common issue. It’s about your business name and how it affects your search engine rankings. Almost every business will rank highest for their business name.

That’s because the name of your business is usually all over your web site. It’s in your title tags, the first thing on every page, you have links to it within your site, and from other sites, etc. That’s not bad because you do want to be the first result when someone types in the name of your business.

The problem is when you’re a new business no one has heard of you. Unless you do a lot of marketing and advertising and spend the time to familiarize people with your business, there probably aren’t many people typing your business name into a search engine. Being number one isn’t that helpful and it’s likely pretty easy and quick to achieve. What you really want is to be number one when someone types in what you sell or do.

Example: I just wrote a press release for a locally owned business called HugaMonkey. They sell baby slings. If you type in HugaMonkey their business is #3 in Google. That’s pretty good, but they’d get even more value if they came up #1 for the words: baby sling.

According to WordTracker there are 256 searches a day on the term “baby sling.” It’s actually a lot more that, but that’s a number you can use to approximate how many people are searching the internet for baby slings.

Here’s the twit that spurned this post – it’s from Wendy Piersall. She is inspiring to me. It took courage for her to transform her blog into a business and expand it. She pulled it off beautifully and her community is as vibrant as ever because of her work. Not long ago, she changed her business name from eMoms to Sparkplugging. There are over 400 searches a day on the term “spark plugs,” it’s probably a reasonably competitive term.

It’s great that Wendy ranks high (#2) for that term, but the problem is, she doesn’t sell spark plugs! This may not be a big deal because Wendy has a community not an ecommerce site, but if I were selling sparkplugs I’d be mad. And then I’d start blogging. If that’s all I sell or a big part of my businses, I’d wish my business name had the words “spark plug” in it.

Takeaway SEO lesson: Think about how your business name will affect your search engine rankings, especially if you’re a small business. It’s not an end-all, but consider tacking on other words (like a tagline) that explains what you do – and uses a keyword that people are searching for.

Lately I’ve been focused on celebrating the successes at work. I’m certainly aware of the things I could improve but also that my talents contribute to business and that I enjoy what I do.

I love to get positive feedback from a client or see how things I’m responsible for impact the bottom line. The people I work with are smart and capable. There are small details that make work fun (besides the people) – like ping pong – and muffin deliveries every Wednesday.

I’m in the habit of celebrating successes, such as:

• This week I got another 5/5 editorial score on a PRWeb press release I wrote for Shoemoney. Here’s what Jeremy wrote (on Twitter): “nice job with the press release got calls this morning to appear on espn radio in phoenix and st louis + other calls.”

• My blogging and twittering helped lead to a potential new client that otherwise didn’t respond to calls. In the end they called us.

• A meeting with a potential business partnership found on CraigsList several months led to an introduction to someone else. That person is doing a project I’m excited about and may be a part of.

I spoke at a Startup Princess (a blog about women entrepreneurs) event last month about SEO and specifically about keywords. Before I started, my friend Kelly said there was probably someone in the audience who needs to learn what we know or knows something we need to learn. That stuck out in my mind.
At times in my life I’ve been drawn to specific people for what they could teach me. I’ve been a bit apologetic about this because it feels so one-sided. But what I discovered is in turn I naturally found ways I could teach or help them – as much or more than they did for me. Yes, keeping score isn’t that smart, but I like to exchange value and not just take.

So Vicki introduced herself and said she taught people how to be organized. I was instantly aware that she was who I needed to talk to. I’m marrying someone who is much more organized than I am and even before this I knew it was something I needed to improve about myself. Reading books about it wasn’t working either.
We met after (she actually approached me) and we’re going to trade – she’s teaching me about being organized and I’m helping her with her web site (www.organize-utah.com). I think one obstacle to making space in life is the fear that we don’t know what to fill it with. Mine has been too full and now I’m making room. It feels different and I’m apprehensive but I’m going to do it anyway.

I’ve noticed that I’ve struggled being committed, which isn’t a trait I used to fight (I took violin and piano lessons for years, played soccer, ran cross country, and kept jobs for longer, etc). I really think getting divorced, laid off, and then doing contract work changed my thinking about commitment.
While I’m still writing about marketing, as usual when life shifts, so does the content of my blog. Since it’s a time of transition, I’ll probably take a more personal, philosophical bent in my writing. Transitions for me always start with a lot of questions and that is what fills my head these days.
Since I haven’t been a regular poster for a while now anyway I probably won’t lose too many of you. And if I do, thanks for reading and welcome newcomers.

It’s true. Here we are.

From todaywasawesome (my cousin-in-law Dan)

“Being an SEO is a crappy job. You drag your client kicking and screaming to get success. And when they fail to follow your advice, they blame you for their lack of success. If they do what you recommend, it’s probably some sort of compromise, which leaves the solution half baked at best.” Then we still get blamed.

He then suggested (in my words): the most effective way for us to do our job is to go to IT, knock them out, fix everything, and then let them come back.

It’s ok Dan, just do SEO until your film and photography career takes off…

I asked an editor at PRWeb the best day to release your press release. They said on a Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s generally speaking. I’d avoid Friday or weekends in most cases.

Search Results Will Bounce Around

You’ll notice that in the first few weeks of a release you’ll come up higher in search engines. But since Google in particular counts freshness, you probably won’t stay there. As the news matures your rankings will most likely drop. It’s just one tool among many to get backlinks and distribute information about your business online.
Social Bookmark Your Press Release

One way to increase its visibility long-term is to social bookmark and inner-link to related press releases. That means Sphinn, Digg, and Delicious it (etc). Put a feed of them on your Facebook page. Blog about them, put them on your main site. In other words, you can do things to increase the visibility of your press release.

PRWeb is ideal for their social bookmarking and extra features (attaching images, PDF files, podcasts, video, etc). What I’d like to know, for search engine optimization purposes, do you still think PRWeb is the best bang for your buck? I need to run a test: running a release at each level at PRWeb and comparing them. Then, taking another release and running it through some other PR sites.

Test, Test, Test

One of my favorite posts still is the one where I ran a test and found that our $200 PRWeb press release performed by far the best. However, I’ve never tested it against other PR services. Maybe the next time I’m on the phone I could see if PRWeb would sponsor a test between levels. I know there are several factors that influence how much traffic a press release gets besides the distribution, but it’s probably one of the most influential.

I get an email from HR that says “free pizza in the break room.” The second I read it I call out, “Free pizza – RUN!” I’m hungry so I sprint. Then the entire SEO team starts running behind me. I’m laughing as I run. I have flashbacks to the movie Run Lola Run. We arrive and it’s already a madhouse but we beat most of the crowd there.

At OrangeSoda we’re still hungry. I find that makes for the most creative juice. It fuels a startup. It might explain why people are leaving Google (cashed in on stock options) to go to Facebook (possibility of lucrative stock options). That hungry stage usually fades to complacency and order.

Interesting enough in my personal life I’m going from famine to feast and I have mixed emotions about it. It’s welcomed but I want to keep that hungriness too. Except I don’t like worrying about eating (irrational though it may be). I noticed my fridge is a lot less full these days because when I’m scared about money I stock up. Now I’m clearing out to make and keep space.
5 mins after the email I hear there are 2 slices left…and speaking of still hungry….

If you missed the first session of Jeremy Palmer’s affiliate marketing course, you can listen to a recording of it on WebEx’s web site. There are other free webinars on the site that sound good too. I wish there was some sort of rating system because it’s basically just a list with no promotion. It’s not just a free webinar on finding a niche – it’s by an industry leader who is qualified and also good at teaching! I also wish I could subscribe so I get reminders of new webinars by my favorite presenters.

Also, I’m thinking, where’s their blog? Then they could promote webinars and get comments on them.

Basically Jeremy is giving away information that he’s invested a lot in learning – high quality information – free. He invests a lot in keeping up on the industry, testing, and reading. The best motivation is no results no pay. In other words, he’s not on salary. The feedback I’ve heard so far is that it’s the information is excellent and presented well. I heard one person say, “what’s the catch?!!!?” and “is this for real??!?” In this case there is no catch and he is for real.

I write about Jeremy a lot since he’s the super affiliate I know best. There aren’t many super affiliates and I only know a couple. As his business has grown he’s been more open to sharing what he’s learned as an affiliate marketer with more people. Don’t miss out.

Don’t Schedule Press Releases Too Close Together
This is a mystery solved from over a year ago. I had a client who had me write a press release every week. We had to scramble to find news and sometimes it was difficult. But then I talked to an editor at PRWeb and learned that you’ll start to see diminishing returns if you publish press releases too often (and the contract ended because he said he wasn’t getting the return he expected).

The releases go to Google News and Yahoo News first and stay there for 28 days. You’re basically spamming those news sites if you distribute a release too much more often than that. You want to keep in the news, but not saturate it.