When SEO companies used to call me up saying that they could get my website to rank on the front page ( usually some poor salesperson who didn’t have a clue who I was ) and knew all about Internet Marketing I would casually say oh ok, so you know all about SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation ) then do you ??? of course the answer was yes. So, if I google ” SEO and Internet Marketing ” you will be on the front page will you ?? ( Usually I was doing it in the background ). Then I would give them the bad news and help them by saying well maybe if I Google ” SEO and Internet Marketing in wherever it is you are based ” you will be on the front page ??? Ummmm! Maybe .. was usually the response. ok then, last chance, what would I have to Google to find you on the front page ???

I am not TRYING to be cruel I am just saying that if you want to ring me up and tell me that you are the best at SEO and Internet Marketing then you had better be able to prove that you are !!

Nowadays there are many companies around the world who proclaim that they are Internet Marketing Experts. Previously, as explained above , I used to test this with Google,  but these days I have another tool that I use called ” HubSpot Marketing Grader “.

HubSpot is a Boston, U.S. based software company that mainly provides HubSpot based websites and promotes an Internet Marketing philosophy called ” Inbound Marketing “.

To promote the company ( and get leads ) HubSpot provides a number of free Tools like Marketing Grader ( a development of Website Grader ) and Twitter Grader.

I used Marketing Grader to look at a number of websites in the Lichfield and Tamworth area recently and that was how I came to ” rate ” Staffordshire IT as, probably one of the most knowledgeable companies in the area. I first came across them on Twitter ( where they have more followers than most other people from Lichfield and Tamworth ) and then looked at their website using Marketing Grader:

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.staffordshireit.co.uk

When I first looked at their grade it was 76/100. They have improved it since then to 80/100. This is an amazing score and I have only ever graded one higher score ( not in the Lichfield and Tamworth area ) which is Nikki Pilkington’s website:

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.nikkipilkington.com

which has a grade of 87/100 which is incredible. Nikki was the designer of this M&A Rainmaker blogsite.

Some info on Staffordshire IT

We are a professional website design firm based in Tamworth and Lichfield, however we are able to service clients nationally. We have very competitive prices, easy to use, clean and professional web design, and programming services.

Having a website is just the start of a good internet marketing strategy: now you need people to look at it! You need to get more visitors to your site, so you need good website ranking, and it shouldn’t need to take 6 months and thousands of pounds to get to the top of Google, Yahoo & Bing.

You need a company with many years in online marketing (check), very reasonable costs (check), who are diligent and hard grafters (check), and show a willingness to constantly monitor your site alongside you, to keep you at the top of the charts! (Big check!)

From the very start we can demonstrate proven white hat (legal) SEO techniques to you and we GUARANTEE we will increase your traffic. In fact, we are so confident in what we do, that you do not need to pay a penny until you have been shown an increase in visibility of your website online!

Good, savvy Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not an option in today’s fast-moving markets– it’s essential and the key to success in any marketing campaign is pretty simple. The Return on Investment (also known as ROI) must outweigh the initial and ongoing outlay of funds. In a web environment, there are multiple ways in which this may be measured including online sales, enquiries through the website (be they emails, surveys or phone calls), website traffic and overall increase in brand awareness.

A well-optimised site can provide numerous benefits, as long as the site is designed well in the first place. It is important to optimise a site for the most relevant terms whilst at the same time including more popular, generic key phrases.

Please feel free to give us a call on 01827 313111 and we can provide a free SEO report for you.

We all know the saying a picture tells a thousand words. I can’t remember where I saw it but apparently it has also been proven that a video tells a million words ( or more ) !  So what you want in online content is some great pictures and videos.

During the recent XeeMe Xweek review of Twylah that I attended ( online ) the discussion turned to the SEO value of Twylah and I was saying that my Twylah was now ranking quite well for a Google search on e.g. ” internet marketing strategy lichfield ” ( well at least it does from the U.K. ) and that as we were still in early days ( beta ) for Twylah this boded well for the future.

I also pointed out that in addition to having SEO value the pages looked great and someone said  that they loved the fact that pictures and videos were highlighted in Twylah so prominentlyand clearly. A great example of this I said was the Vanilla Chef Twylah page:

The food products on this Twylah page looked really great – http://www.twylah.com/vanillachef – e.g. see below

PRODUCTS

One of our favourite products at Vanilla Chef and the only olive oil that can boas… more»

one of my favourite products fresh green peppercorn from Madagascar

This discussion also reminded me of  a term that we used to use  on a Social Network called ecademy.com. This term was ” Posting into the search ” which basically meant that we would write an Ecademy post that we knew would get picked up by Google for a relevant search. It could actually have been text and pictures and videos but I mainly used to use text.  We now have the opportunity to ” Post into the Twylah  search ” which will in turn create a Twylah page that will be posted into a Google search. ( Sorry if this is a bit confusing – it is quite hard to explain ). What will happen when you do a relevant Google search is that the Twylah ( landing page ) will come up resplendent with it’s beautiful pictures and videos.

When I wrote the blog http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2012/03/12/the-internet-marketing-ecosystem-this-is-the-way-it-is/ recently it was my view on the ” state of the art ” in terms of creating what I call an Internet Marketing Ecosystem.

Last Week I was involved in the XeeMe Xweek chat about Twylah. http://xeeme.com/_/system/appspub/XWeek/XWeek-Twylah.cfm This was a great event where Kelly Kim, co-founder of Twylah got to answer set and spontaneous  questions about Twylah. Based on this online chat session ( my first such XeeMe chat ) I highly recommend these chats.

Participants in the chat included Mindy Koch ( http://xeeme.com/MindyKoch ) and Irene Kimmel ( http://xeeme.com/irenekimmel ) and I was quite fascinated to see their XeeMe profiles ( the first time I had really seen anyone’s XeeMe profile ). As per my Internet Marketing Ecosystem philosophy they have a web/blogsite ( both WordPress ) which are themselves pretty state of the art and then multiple social media accounts, bookmarking sites and Internet Influence summaries ( Klout, Kred, PeerIndex ).

XeeMe has little ” How active am I on this site ” indicators which I quite liked and it’s sort of good to see that Mindy and Irene are not as active on some as they are on others ( because I have no idea how they would maintain all these presences !! ).

Some of my influences in coming up with the description of the Internet Marketing Ecosystem include a number of ” auto-posting systems ” whereby a piece of content ( text, picture or video )  can be automatically posted to 10’s or even 100’s of social media and bookmarking sites automatically thereby creating 10’s or 100’s of powerful backlinks to e.g. a blog post almost immediately. I signed up to at least 2 of these auto-posting systems but I never actually used them in anger for loads of reasons including the fact that I thought Google would probably blacklist them at some point.

The objective of these systems always fascinated me though.

At that time I was focused on being FOUND on the Internet i.e. getting a high ranking position for a particular search word or phrase. Later on, with the help of HubSpot I became more interested in not only being found but also converting visitors to the content into long lasting subscribers and hopefully revenue generating customers.

Mindy’s ( WordPress ) Blog at  http://social-drivers.com/ reflects her XeeMe profile in having Subscribe areas, Influence areas and Twylah trending ( Twitter ) topics.

The CONVERSION of visitors through appropriate Landing Pages and Calls to Action is an area that Twylah helps with. ( e.g. Posts on Twylah automatically convert into Landing Pages ).

The other area that I have not looked into is what Mindy and Irene are using to ANALYSE where visitors to their web/blog sites are coming from ( there are a lot of possible sources bearing in mind the extent of their ecosystems ).

It is also not obvious what systems they are using to MONITOR relevant conversations.

I also thought it was interesting that Mindy had XeeMe and Twylah as her ” summarisers “. Here is her Twitter summary:

If you have been to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery recently you will have noticed that the Anglo-Saxon Golden Hoard found near Silicon Crossroads ( the junction of the old Watling Street and Rykneld Street – now the A5 and A38 ) Lichfield is missing.

The good news is that it is away doing a great job of promoting Staffordshire ( the old Mercia ) the Lichfield area and Silicon Crossroads to America.

As this article says the Saxon Hoard has gone to the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-15496704 .

Washington D.C. is not one of the recognised ” Startup ” centres of the U.S. although Baltimore ( Maryland ) recently raised $84 Million via an innovative online auction of tax credits ( see  http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-03-15/news/bs-bz-invest-maryland-funding-20120315_1_tax-credits-investmaryland-program-christian-s-johansson ) in yet another example of U.S. startup funding initiatives.

There have also been a number of other ” Startups ” in the area e.g.

Cerecor Biotech http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2012/04/04/cerecor-biotech-startup-headed-by.html

SemaConnect  http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2011/11/28/annapolis-startup-semaconnect-raises.html

WooFound http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/technology/2011/11/baltimore_startup_woofound_rai.html

MoodleRooms http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/technology/2011/06/startup_story_baltimores_moodl_1.html

Nearby Pennsylvania also has a long standing history of investing in Startups:

http://www.prlog.org/11837942-ben-franklin-program-invests-650000-in-central-pa-startups.html

The SiliconCrossroads VCT founders  actually invested in Pennsylvania Startup eschoolmall ( now esm solutions ) some years ago  http://www.esmsolutions.com/SchoolDistrictsSolutions.aspx

New York ( not far away ) is also a recognised startup centre.

Washington is a place that we British can easily get confused about ( although most of us recognise Washington D.C. we may not know exactly where it is – just West of New York ) and there are 2 or 3 Washingtons in the U.S.

Similarly many Americans probably don’t know where Birmingham or Staffordshire is ( a couple of hundred miles North of London would probably work – which would be a short car ride for many Americans ) so it is great news that the Saxon Hoard is increasing awareness of Staffordshire and the Silicon Crossroads area ( Lichfield, Tamworth, Walsall and Sutton Coldfield ).

Key components of the ” Internet Marketing Ecosystem ” by Chris Windley are a WordPress based web or blogsite; the Twylah page ( derived automatically from Tweets on Twitter ) and the use of Digg.com. ( Alongside Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter itself, Linkedin and Google +.)

WordPress currently ranks as 18th in the worlds most ” powerful ” websites. Digg ranks 186. Twylah ranks 10,935. ( http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twylah.com ).

Google is the top website, Facebook the 2nd, Twitter the 9th and Linkedin the 12th. So, when you post something on a WordPress web/blogsite
( like this one ) then re-post on Digg, Twylah and all four Social Networks mentioned it is not particularly surprising that a search on ”  Internet Marketing Strategy Lichfield ”  reveals that the WordPress post itself is at search position  3, the Digg post at position 4 and the Twylah position 8 on the first page of a search that has some 244,000 results.

As we know getting Found for a particular search term or phrase is a function of a web or blogsite having relevant content, on page SEO, high quality links and a powerful platform. All of these ingredients are present in the ” Internet Marketing Ecosystem ”  that I have created.

The core or epicentre of the Ecosystem is the web/blogsite and the Twylah page the other websites mentioned are supporting players to the content posted on the web/blogsite. The Ecosystem is extraordinarily powerful when it comes to achieving a high ranking position for a particular word or phrase.

This is a content driven strategy – it is not an SEO driven strategy and therefore it is complimentary to Googles recent announcement that it will penalise over-SEO’d websites.

N.B. Chris Windley’s Brandyourself profile can be found >>>>>>>> HERE <<<<<<<<<<<<<<