Sites referenced in this podcast:

• Salesforce.com
• Highrise HQ
• Sugar CRM
• The MacKay 66 (PDF)
• Social Print Experiment

1. You are targeting keywords that are too competitive.

Let’s face it. You might have the answer to everyone’s chronic headache woes, but the chance of you ranking higher than wikipedia or webmd or any first page result for “headache” just isn’t likely. Whatever your case may be if you are trying to rank for such a general keyword and can’t add anything to it to make it more specific and hopefully less competitive you may be out of luck when it comes to SEO.

What to do instead?

Don’t try and beat them…join them.

Let’s look at the top 3 results for Google…Wikipedia, MediceNet and WebMD. Wikipedia is out since there isn’t a lot of opportunity to get their visitor’s eyes on your product, but MedicineNet and WebMD both have user communities…BINGO. Within 30 seconds of browsing MedicineNet I see a golden opportunity and it’s on the first page I land on after clicking on their link from Google.

Not only do they have a spot for you to discuss your product, they are giving you an open invitation!!! A quick look at compete.com shows me MedicineNet had nearly 6M visitors in the month of January alone. I’d only be guessing how many of those were for the headaches page, but I’m sure its a lot. Let’s say for arguments sake 100,000 people hit their ‘headache’ page (that’s only ~1.6%) and guess that 5% of those actually opened up the link I pointed out in the image above. That is still 5,000 potential visitors for a few minutes of your time. This is only one example I found in a few minutes of searching. I’m sure you can imagine what doing this for an hour each day could do.

2. People aren’t looking for you

Many of our clients have great ideas and websites that can really make a difference, but they are offering a product or service that people just aren’t looking for. Let’s rewind 10 years…intro your great invention, a space saving hanger. You’ve spent countless hours perfecting an ingenious and inexpensive device that will create more room in your closet. You create an awesome site and launch it only to find that nobody is searching online for “wonder hanger” or “space saving hanger”. Obviously that has changed now after seeing the millions of millions of dollars spent on their tv ads, but you don’t have millions of dollars so what do you do instead?

Find your target audience

Who is your target audience? Obviously people interested in organization. My first thought was to search Google for “home organization forums”. Looking at the results I quickly see “mommysavers forums”. Seems like a good fit to me so I open the site and click to the community forums. Immediately I see a forum for “Simple + Green Living Decluttering, consuming less, environmental issues, simplifying your life”. I open the forum and am excited, there are some posts with over 10,000 views. Obviously lots of eyes on the site. Right away I see a post “February De-cluttering Challenge – Your closet”…can’t get any more targeted that that. Create a profile, be sure to add a link to your site in your signature and join the conversation. Others are sharing pics so snap a couple pics of your closet highlighting your “Wonder Hanger”. While you’re at it you find a few additional posts that you can reply in…not necessarily to promote your product, but just to join the conversation…after all you are the “Wonder Hanger” inventor, I’m sure there are other space saving discussions you can add value to.

Don’t stop there, tomorrow search for forums on tips for living in small apartments. The next day search for blogs about college dorm living. Keep seeking out quality places for you to spend time. Eventually you’ll have created more product awareness and even found some sites you enjoy participating in. You spend even more time on certain sites and after a while a moderator decides to feature your product on their site for all the time you spent genuinely participating and adding value on their site. You immediately see a jump in sales and can justify advertising on the site on a permanent basis. You don’t have to participate in the community anymore but you still do because it’s fun.

3. Your site is too new

I’m not advocating that a new site doesn’t need SEO, but even with all of the right preparations, it may be weeks before your site even gets indexed by Google and even that first time around it is probably unlikely you’ll be achieving first page results unless you are in a really niche business. Your business can’t wait months while the SEO effort gets ironed out and kicks in so what do you do.

Get your link out there.

Make sure you are in the Google, Yahoo and Bing local listings. Search for business directories or other sites where you can add a link to your site. Yelp, Gowalla and Foursquare and the others mentioned in our Geolocation article. Ask any strategic alliances you have to link to your website. Do a “link:www.<insert-compeitors-site>” search in Yahoo which will show you all the sites linking to your competitor. Often times, these are informational sites that have no real relationship with your competitor, they are just trying to act as a resource and help guide their visitors. In my experience asking them to link to your site works so don’t be shy and do it. The links you are building will act as a crutch and get you referral visits to your site…even if they don’t, the links will help your site rank better in search engines so either way its time well spent.

Hopefully these examples have sparked some ideas and given you inspiration for easy ways to generate targeted traffic to your website. In my opinion, Search Engines will always have the most potential to drive traffic to your website, but it certainly isn’t the only way to make it happen.  The truth is that you have the ability to find where your target audience is online and make your presence known, so seize it.

If you have other ideas that have worked for you or have questions about anything I posted, please don’t hesitate to use the comment feature on the blog.

Yelp's iPhone app finds nearby restaurants using GPS

Mashable posted a good article called HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready.  This is a service that Anchor Wave has been helping business with since Google released their local business results in March of 2004.  Over recent years, geolocation and online mapping has taken off as smart phones and GPS devices begin to make it into our daily lives.

Yellowpages are dead, but you knew that

Imagine that you’re in a new part of town, or on vacation and you’re looking for a place to eat.  Smart phones that are aware of their physical location (through GPS) can scan the internet to tell you what’s near by.

Some of your potential customers and clients are looking for your services, but here’s the catch: They are not doing a Google search, they are not picking up a phone book, and they are not asking a friend.  Instead, they’re using websites and applications like Yelp.com, famous for helping over 25 million users each month find businesses around the US.

The simple fact is: If your business is not geolocation optimized by listing with sites like yelp.com, you’re invisible to a whole new breed of customers.

So, where should I be listed?

Every day there seems to be more places online where you should be listing your business, but we’ve narrowed it down to a short list that you can get started with.

• Google Local Business Center
• Bing! Local Business Center
• Yelp.com
• Gowalla.com
• Loopt.com
• Foursquare.com

Each site requires some basic information for you to get started.  Listing your business with these sites are free (for now), and just requires some time to gather the necessary information and verify your existence.  With services like Google, Bing!, and Yelp, you can lure customers with advanced profiles that include pictures, video, coupons, detailed product and company information to name a few.

As I mentioned with online video, the risk of getting involved with this technology is low.  Not being on these services for many businesses isn’t a big risk now, but soon it will be. As yellow pages and complex Google searches become a thing of the past, and smart phones, GPS and mapping applications become more commonplace, your business stands to be buried among your competitors that took the time to get listed with these sites.

What should I do next?

If you want to take matters into your own hands, visit the sites listed above and begin the process of getting listed.  If you need some help, Anchor Wave offers a “turn-key” service for getting your business Geolocation Optimized.  Contact us for details, or advice.

Interface Guru has a wealth of experience working with well known brands all over the US. Thanks for the perspective on how Social Media fits into cultures big and small. One thing is for sure we all need to embrace this as it’s a big part of our marketing and businesses going forward.