Are you trying to increase traffic to your website? Do you realize the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but have trouble taking actionable steps to improve it? Whether you are just getting started with SEO, or have been at it for years, this ebook offers useful tips to get found online by more prospective customers.

This free 23-page SEO guide covers all the elements of a successful SEO improvement strategy, including:

• Identifying Keyword Opportunities
• Mastering On-Page SEO
• Link-Building Strategies
• Tips for Ongoing SEO Improvement

Click here to download this Step-By-Step Guide provided by HubSpot.

How to Double Your Agency Sales in 90 Days

For those of you who are struggling to grow your sales, I’d encourage you to watch the recording of the webinar, “How to 2x Your Agency Sales in 90 Days”.

View the recorded Webinar here: http://www.hubspot.com/thank-you-partner-webinar-2x-agency-sales-90days

• Learn about the hidden traps that prospects might already be using to erode your revenues and waste your time.
• What challenges might you face as you incorporate inbound marketing services into your business?
• Easy commitments and changes to your approach that will drive in new business in just 90 days!
• Practical and easy steps to help you learn and implement a winning process with limited pain!
• Why you should use a sales coach and how to leverage your sales coaching for success.

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Find out more about how to legally spy on your competition in a webinar that compete broadcasted on event 24.

Click here to see the “Webinar” in a separate Window.

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Online Marketing Blueprint – A Multimedia Guide to Growing Your Business Online

From establishing a keyword strategy to leveraging social media to promote content online, this eBookconsolidates how-to videos, external resources and written sections to provide a multimedia learningexperience for every business.

Click here to download the 2010 Blueprint in pdf format. (1015KB)

Watch the Blueprint video on Youtube:

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Accelerate Your SEO:

Learn Ways To Rank Higher in Search Like Today’s Top 100 Multi-Channel Marketers.

Thursday, May 20, 2010 by ON24

• Watch the above presentation in a separate Window.
• Click here to Download the above presentation “Accelerate your SEO” in PDF Format.

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From developing your video idea all the way to promoting it, find out how to use online video to reach your marketing goals. When done effectively, online video can help your business generate website traffic, build brand buzz, collect inbound links and extend social media reach.

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Webcast: Jason Falls & Chris Baggott

April 1, 2010

Overview of Study: Corporate Blogging and Social Media Marketing Survey.

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Dan Schawbel is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 09), and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog.

With over 200 million active users, Facebook has become a personal, product and corporate branding hub. Every brand that exists on Facebook () has the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. You have a unique opportunity to leverage this platform for career success or as a playground for you and your closest friends.

The social graph is filled with CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs and people just like you who can be reached through Facebook’s messaging system without any boundaries or restrictions. Facebook is also a talent search engine and part of the college admission and corporate recruiting criteria. You will be searched on Facebook by potential dates, managers, and teachers, so use common sense in determining how you want to represent yourself. You are what you publish and first impressions are everything.

What follows is a guide to building your personal brand on Facebook. Continue the conversation by adding your own tips and stories below in the comments.

This post is part of Mashable ()’s Facebook Week. To discuss everything Facebook, join our authors and community at Mashable’s Facebook Page.

1. Know your audience

Do you want to use Facebook as a communication stream to your family and friends? Are you looking to network with professionals that could help you get a job? These are questions you need to start asking yourself before you add “friends” to your Facebook profile. If you decide to open it up to the masses, then you need to be mindful of what you share and how that could impact people’s perception of you. Remember, you can limit what select users can see on your profile, just by changing your settings, which we’ll discuss more below.

2. Decide on your branding strategy

If you haven’t signed up for Facebook, then you have a great opportunity to start fresh and to build your Facebook profile to best represent you. If you’re a current Facebook user, then start analyzing how your brand is being portrayed and take steps to customize it to reflect your branding strategy.

If you don’t want to build a branding empire, a strategy should still be extremely important to you; you’re already branded and that brand can help shape perceptions online to portray you in a positive light and help you secure a good reputation. This means choosing what links and media you share in your news stream to add value to your brand and those you’re friends with.

3. Set your privacy settings

I recommend turning tagging settings off for both photos and pictures so that you can take control of your Facebook wall. You wouldn’t want your friends tagging you in a picture of you doing something stupid, would you?

4. Fill out your profile completely

Also, in the contact information field, be sure to list your blog, any websites you might own and links to your profiles on other social networks. Since hiring managers use Facebook’s search engine to find candidates, it pays to load up your profile with keywords that they can search against. Depending on your Facebook brand strategy, you’ll want to promote more information in certain fields like your contact information and less in other fields.

5. Import contacts and grow your network

If you have a blog, it’s also a smart idea to use Facebook Connect. By having Facebook Connect on your blog, you can bring your friends with you and promote your content through social interactions that start on your blog and end up on Facebook.

6. Update your status

7. Start a group or a page

Facebook pages are for brands, ranging from Coca Cola to Barack Obama and even you. These pages resemble your Facebook profiles, so only use one if you have a large number of Facebook friends. By having a Facebook page, your brand can go viral, holding a spot on other people’s profiles. The other main advantage is that your page will rank high for your name in Google () and you can use it for your professional career, while keeping your personal profile private.

8. Join or start an event in your area

If you’re looking to start a weekly or monthly event and want to keep a calendar, logging it on a page is a good strategy. By starting an event, you’re positioning yourself as a leader and an expert, which is great for your personal brand.

9. Link out to your Facebook profile

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As the chief marketing officer for your personal brand, you want to build your friend list, so that you have more people to market to now and in the future. Think of your Facebook profile as a digital asset and grow the equity in that asset over the rest of your life.

10. Feed your social networks

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Not only does this make you more productive, but it appears as though you’re contributing to your community, without you having to think about it. Since Facebook is all about sharing, those that share more will be remembered more, which is great for personal branding.

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At this point, you have heard of social media and inbound marketing. Maybe you experimented with Twitter and checked out your kids’ Facebook profiles, and you can see the value for college students who want to make sure they’re all at the same bar on Saturday night. But why does any of this matter to you or your business?

HubSpot.com released several Documents with detailed information on Facebook:

Click on each link to download.

• How to Use Facebook for Business (PDF)
• Facebook for Business Nov2008 Slideshow (PDF)
• Facebook for Business Report (PDF)
• Webinar Slideshow : The State of Facebook (PDF)

75+ Charts & Stats You Can Use in Your Proposals & Pitches

Industry Benchmark Data

“50 Marketing Charts and Graphs” presentation (pdf 2.21MB).

“Social Media Slides” presentation! (pdf 6.74MB)

(Videos may take several minutes to load)

Play Video

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Add your Business to Google Business Center now!

Click on this link.

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Content is the lifeblood of you Web site. Well-written, original content is essential to the success of your Web site efforts. Web sites with keyword-rich, naturally flowing, original content are judged better than web sites that simply stuff keywords into otherwise poorly written text.

Write for People, not Search Engines

The algorithms of today’s popular search engines are sophisticated enough to determine whether a page is acceptable for human consumption; search engines tend to favor and reward high rankings to Web sites with well-written original content.

Keeping your content flavorful and persuasive is the best way to accomplish superlative rankings and consistent conversions.

Search engines grant high rankings to Web sites deemed most relevant and valuable to the user; therefore, writing for search engines and writing for people are not mutually exclusive concepts.

• Write original, persuasive, and natural content
  if your content is original, persuasive and has a natural tone, search engines tend to recognize it as worthwhile and therefore rank it positively. Packing too many keywords into your content creates an awkward tone and unnatural flow.
• Structure your content with your reader in mind
  it is beneficial to view content as your Web site’s salesperson. Your content must address the gamut of possible questions and concerns your reader may have regarding your product, service or message. Supply genuine, thought-provoking product information rather than hollow, stale slogans.
• Avoid Poor Grammar
  Your Grammar should be of the highest caliber. The key to writing accessible yet impressive content is determining the level at which your target audience reads.
• Write Useful and Informative Content
  it is important that your content be informative, concise, and easy to navigate. Write in a concise manner and use headings, subheadings, bold type and similar formatting that illustrate the information contained in each subsequent section of your page.
• Using Bold-Type Headings
  many inexperienced copywriters make the mistake of writing their material in one large block of content without headings that grab the reader’s attention. Some readers are looking for specific information, and consider the task of reading the giant blocks of content to be too time consuming.
• Using Call-to-Action Statements
  present your readers with readily accessible call-to-action options such as Sign Up Today or Register Here. Make it eye catching, reminding readers that they can take action whenever they feel ready.
• Write Interesting Content in a Friendly Tone
  On of your main goals is to keep readers engaged long enough for them to read all the facts: the best way to accomplish this goal is to entertain while informing. Keep your content interesting and persuasive, and you will be pleased to find that not only people but also search engines will enjoy it.

Avoid Duplicate Content

A trustworthy content writer understands the importance of writing and maintaining original content on a Web site. Search engines award original content and penalize identical content.

Tools exist that allow you to scan the Web for instances of duplicate copy and prevent plagiarism of you work from ever happening.

One of the most commonly used tools is Copyscape.com. It offers a free plagiarism warning banner that you can display on your Web site to deter others from stealing your work.

You can submit reports of spam to Google at: www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html. Or to Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/hahoo/search/spam_abuse.html . Microsoft’s webpage: http://feedback.live.com/eform.aspx?productkey=wlaccounts&mkt=en-us.

The most successful way to minimize this common problem is to write unique titles and descriptions for all your products when submitting them to comparison engines and affiliates.

Using Proper Keyword Density

The goal of search-engine optimization is to make sure that your Web site ranks at the top of the search results when high-converting, target keywords related to your product or service are typed into popular search engines as search queries. Using proper keyword density is a process that includes the strategic repetition of select, target keywords and the minimization of nontarget keywords throughout your content.

Keyword density tools like WeBuildPages.com can help you with this process. Once you identify your competitors that rank #1 for the keywords you want to rank for, use the keyword density tool to look for similarities among them that you can use to rank well.

Tip: As a rule of thumb, search algorithms apply more weight to the title of you Web page than the density of the keywords on it. Therefore, your most important target keywords should be contained in your title and should also be dispersed throughout the content of your Web page. Keywords should not be repeated more than four to six times per 350 words of content. It is best to optimize each page of text, including title, for no more than two keywords or phrases.

Using Latent Semantic Content

Search engines use latent semantic indexing to determine a site’s thematic relevance to a particular search query. You can use latent semantic content to create relevancy while maintaining the organic flow of your content.

In the world of organic search, latent semantic content refers to words that are connected thematically to a specific search query.

If you perform a synonym search for ~apple on Google, the result pages then show several terms highlighted in bold type. Quintura.com is also an excellent source for latent semantic keyword research.

Keep Content Current

It is vitally important to you Web site’s success that you update content on a fairly regular basis. Search engines consider fresh content to be of greater value than outdated content. There are many ways to keep content fresh and original. User-generated content from testimonials, forums, and blogs, as well as content through content aggregation networks, are highly recommended methods for supplying your site with fresh, stimulating content.

Another approach to keeping content current is through the use of free content aggregation systems such as Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. RSS technology allows you to subscribe to various content sources, such as relevant news and blog feeds.

Freshcontent.net offers a newsfeed. YellowBrix.com is a leading paid online content aggregator that offers real-time online syndicated content from reliable and respected premium sources and numerous industry-specific trades.

Another approach to keeping content fresh is to launch a company blog.

Optimize Non-HTML Documents

For SEO purposes, you should fill you page primarily with textual content rather than image files. Bottom line: Text lends itself to SEO: images do not.

If you choose to post non-HTML files to your Web site, you can optimize each document to improve the results when search engines index them. Make sure that it contains readable text.

Treat each PDF file lie it is a separate Web page and link to it from your sitemap the same way you would an HTML page. Break your PDF documents into several smaller documents if it is very large or if it contains multiple topics. PDF files should be used sparingly and large PDF files should be minimized.

HTMLDOC 1.8.27 from Easy Software Products located at www.easysw.com/htmldoc is a tool that provides a free 21-day demo.

If you have a very popular PDF file, you may want to consider structuring it as an e-book and charging your visitors to view it. The downside of an e-book is that because you restrict access to it, search engines do not index it and therefore your Website is not ranked based on the content of the book.

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