Depending on what kind of "entity" you are, you have 3 choices for how to create a presence on Facebook. As I mentioned in A Guide to Social Media Tools and their Uses, many of the social tools handle "entities" differently. The kind of presence you would set up for a business vs. a person in LinkedIn is not the same as what you would set up on Facebook, which makes for a very confusing experience for someone just trying to understand how to get started.

So in keeping with my "start at the beginning" methodology – I'm going to break down what the 3 different choices are for Facebook, how they're different and how each can be used.

1. The Facebook Profile – essentially intended as a personal page for an individual. You use the page to stay in touch with friends.



2. The Facebook Page – in Facebook's own terms, designed for celebrities, bands, businesses and other kinds of entities. The idea is you are using a Page for promotional purposes, to generate buzz around a public brand.



3. The Facebook Group – a way of congregating Facebook members around a topic, idea or entity. You can have a Profile and a Group. Or a Page and a Group.

Before we go any further, it is vital for your own sanity to understand that only the Facebook Profile can exist on it's own. In order to create a Group or a Page you have to attach it to someone's profile. For a Page that attachment is hidden, for a Group that attachment is public.

Places where Facebook Profiles, Pages and Groups are the same

I think the reason why it's so confusing to figure out which one to use is because most of the things people want to do on Facebook can be done with all three.

They all enable you to:

• create a page describing yourself, business or group
• put a main picture or logo on the page
• add photo albums
• get people to "join" the page
• create and promote events associated with the page
• send both individual and mass messages to all those who have "joined"
• have updates appear on the pages of those who have "joined"

At first glance this may seem like all you'd want to do with Facebook which is why it's hard at first glance to tell the 3 presence types apart. But the features that differentiate a Profile from a Page from Group, while usually not top of mind for most users, can become important as your usage of Facebook becomes more sophisticated.

Differences in Facebook Profiles vs. Pages vs. Groups

Audience Terminology – this one's quite simple. For each type of presence the people who are connected to you are called something different to help underscore the purpose of that presence. People connected to your Profile are your "friends". People connected to your Page are "fans" and people connected to your Group are "members".

Custom URLs – Facebook has just recently announced that you can now create "pretty" URLs for your Facebook presence.

For example, my old Facebook page was:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1002729552281

My shiny, new, custom URL Facebook page is now:
http://www.facebook.com/maishawalker

But these custom URLs are only available for Pages and Profiles. It is currently not in the plans to give Groups this feature.

Facebook Apps (Applications) – if you want to use any of the applications that are available on Facebook but not already part of the Groups functionality, you're out of luck. For now at least, Facebook Apps are limited to Profiles and Pages. Also note that some Apps only work in Profiles.

Individual Membership Control – of course in your Profile you have the ability to decline any friendship invitation you're sent. In Groups you also can use settings to allow you to accept or decline anyone who tries to join the group, i.e. creating a group focused on alumni of a specific company or school. Facebook Pages do not give you that ability. You can only control fans in large groups by age and country, not on an individual level.

Discussion Boards – if you want lively discussions that aren't swept away by the speed of your friend's updates, you'll want a Group or a Page so that you can use the "Discussion" feature.

Delegation & Shared Credit – although each of us has at least two people who technically share in the credit of our existence, Facebook isn't in the business of forcing those connections on your profile. You cannot delegate your Facebook Profile within Facebook, nor can you make someone else a "point person". Pages on the other hand have to have an "Administrator" – someone who has a Profile and is fully responsible for maintaining the page. Groups have to have an "Administrator" as well, but they go a step further. Groups also allow you to create "Officers" who have no ability to maintain the Group but are listed for recognition and perhaps as a point person for the group.

Visitor Data – only Pages give you access to information about who is visiting you.

Messaging Ability Limitations – currently, Groups that have more than 5,000 members do not have messaging ability as a way of preventing spam abuse.

Connection Limitations – you can't have more than 5,000 friends on your Profile but you can have an unlimited number of fans on your Page or members in your Group.

So…

Profiles – are for an individual. You are limited in the number of friends you can collect.

Pages – are for promoting a public brand. You must attach it (not publicly) to a profile that will administer the page.

Groups – are for organizing people based on criteria you define. You can interact with group members in a very limited number of ways since you can't install additional Facebook Apps, but Groups do give you the ability to accept members based on your own criteria (or whims).

You can also read up on how Facebook defines Pages and how Facebook defines Groups in their FAQs.

To tie it all together, I'm putting together a Facebook comparison chart. Contact me if you'd like my Facebook comparison chart for free when it's finished.

Related Articles:

• A Guide to Social Media Tools and their Uses
  
• The Weakest Link - Your Social Media Marketing "Killer App"
  
• The Marketing Skills You Can Learn from Obama
  
• Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer for small biz

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As I mentioned in The Weakest Link - Your Social Media Marketing "Killer App" social media tools empower you, using tools that are largely free, to maximize your business' exposure and interaction, connecting and staying in touch more often and with more people than you ever could before.

Now I'd like to talk about how. How does one do this? It all starts with knowing which tools are most useful for your business. In fact I'm often asked "what are the best online marketing tools for small businesses?". I'll save that question for another post. For now let's focus on a subset of that - what are the best social media marketing tools for small businesses?

First let's take stock. Here is a list of some of the most popular social media tools (at least in the US market, in other countries it's a different story mind you). I want to give a nod to Seattle based Creativetechs for doing the thinking and the legwork to gather these sites into tidy categories!

All of these tools enable you to interact with people but in each group a different kind of content is the focus.

Social Directories – in some ways the simplest because it is the content focus is YOU. Each individual creates a profile and the directory enables you to find and connect with people based on the information they supply about themselves in that profile. This has extended beyond individuals to "entities". So that a company or group can also create a profile. Which brings me to one of the most confusing things about these directories - that not all of them approach "entities" the same way and most of them don't make it very easy to figure out how to create a profile for your entity. Facebook invites you to create a Facebook "page" for your business but does not want you to create a "profile" for your business even though pages and profiles can use many of the same features and tools (but not all). On the other hand, LinkedIn has a very limited "page" for businesses providing very limited functionality. Small businesses often struggle to figure out which kind of existence they should have in these directories (should it be me? Should it be my company? Should it be someone else within my company?) both to stay within the terms of service and still maximize the tools marketing potential.

Social Bookmarking (also called Link Sharing) – these tools allow you to highlight and share individual Web pages you like by sharing a link to them. People can "vote" on each link that has been shared and the links with the most votes move to the top of the page making the site a portal to the "best" content as filtered by the community. Note that an individual profile is connected to the posting of each link so over time you can get to know your fellow bookmarkers by their sharing habits, genre, frequency etc. These sites are useful if you post a lot of content and would like that content to be found and read by more people.

Video Sharing – sites like YouTube are usually very straightforward in functionality. They make it very easy to upload your own video and once the video is uploaded, it is also easily viewed and commented on by others. YouTube also provides ways for the video to be shared and embedded in other sites increasing their ability to turn "viral". Because video can be far more useful for branding than for sales, and because small businesses often do not have access to the budgets or marketing expertise to leverage the benefits of viral video, this tends to be a useful tool only when the business has ready and very easy access to a good quality video writing, production and editing resource that is willing to work for free or at low cost (i.e. close friend, owner, family member).

Photo Sharing – these sites are usually quite simple in functionality. Members can post photos which then can be viewed and commented on by the general public or only by those who are invited to see them. Small businesses sometimes use these sites to share photo galleries instead of building photo gallery capability into their own Web site. I think this usually poses a branding and user experience conflict. Especially since photo galleries are usually pretty inexpensive ($300 or less) to integrate into one's own site.

Blogging – the content is your creativity, your voice. You post content on a regular basis whether it's text, video, photos, podcasts or all of the above. Blogs enable you to be an individual publisher, and usually enable readers to participate in the conversation by posting comments.

Out of all of these tools, the top 3 in my list perhaps will not be a surprise:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Next time I'll go into more detail about each and why I prefer these tools for small businesses.

I also am fond of blogging (go figure!) but that deserves to be covered separately.

Also next week on Tuesday, June 16th I will be hosting a Social Media Marketing hands-on workshop for around 20 small businesses. If you'd like to be one of them learn more about it and register here.

Related Articles:

• The Weakest Link - Your Social Media Marketing "Killer App"
  
• Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer
  
• The Marketing Skills You Can Learn from Obama
• The Outsourcing Paradox

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I have this unrelenting suspicion that people deeply, innately, in every fiber of ourselves need to be connected. Radical, I know.

This weekend I went back to Princeton for my college reunion and spent 48 hours either with people I hadn't seen or spoken to in many years and yet because of Facebook and LinkedIn still felt oddly knowledgeable about, or with people I had actually never met but again felt oddly knowledgeable about through the sheer quantity and intensity of the virtual communications we shared. As inevitably strange situations and new sensations came and went at my reunion (because reunions are kind of wonderfully odd), I couldn't escape constant little reminders of how the new technologies we've so quickly become immersed in, are playing a role not only in our need but also our ability to be connected.

While I was on campus, I gave a lecture on social media marketing (and giving a "lecture" at my alma mater was certainly odd for me in so many ways). We looked at the Susan Boyle phenomenon. Note that according to The Telegraph the episode of "Britain's Got Talent" in which Susan Boyle debuted (it was the show's season premiere) had was viewed on television by 11.8 million people. But in just a few days, the video of that same show on YouTube had generated more than 80 million views. That's TV 11.8 million, YouTube 80 million. Anyone who grew up with television as the quintessential mass medium may need to take a moment just to absorb that fundamental shift.

And more and more people have a nagging suspicion that things like Susan's YouTube video are stark examples that social media tools really are changing the way that we communicate, and wondering what to do about it.

I agree with this suspicion because I think such change is inevitable.

What we now call "social media" are just the latest in a long and continuing evolution of communication tools. From smoke signals to Morse code to radio to television, each new tool we invent changes the way we communicate.

If you imagine with me for a moment, communication tools shifting over time in four respects:

1. who sends the communication
2. who receives the communication
3. the ease of communication
4. what's in the communication

we seemed to have had a long progression toward an ever increasing number of recipients from tools like Morse code (only a few people can send complex messages to a few other people, so presumably senders and recipients are chosen carefully as are the messages they send) to tools like television (once the infrastructure is built, a few people can send messages to massive quantities of people relatively easily and so senders are chosen carefully while the recipients not so much & the messages can be drivel or not).

But Social Media seems to have taken this progress on a new path where we are growing not just in the numbers of recipients but also of senders. Large numbers of people can now relatively easily reach large numbers of people, as if we are each our own publishing house.

But the tools go beyond that too. In the past large numbers of recipients meant one-directional messages -- you could reach lots of people but they were passive recipients of your information. Now, these large numbers are also interactive. You can reach out to lots of people and every single one of them can immediately reach back. Instead of controlled, one-directional messaging, these tools enable a constantly evolving, living dialogue on a huge scale.

In it's novelty, just the fact that the power to create large scale dialogue is in the hands of individual people is kind of amazing. As a business owner though, the fact that you can now communicate interactively and regularly with 10 or 1,000 times more people can seem overwhelming.

There is a middle ground.

In the 1970's a sociologist named Mark Granovetter introduced a concept called "the strength of weak ties." It is the idea that as we reach beyond our closest friends and families, we have "weak" but vitally important ties that connect us to other people and their networks and the important information and opportunities that those networks hold. It is far more often through the networks of our "weak ties" for example, that we get referrals for business and find opportunities for new jobs.

What's amazing for small business owners about these new social media tools is that they are incredibly good at empowering individual people to efficiently and inexpensively maintain a far larger number of "weak ties".

Half the battle of being a successful business is just making sure people remember your business and what you offer when it's time to make a purchase or a referral. Through social media tools, a business can stay connected to a larger number of "weak ties" and the networks they belong to, have access to the information and opportunities in those networks, and do it better and faster.

By helping you maximize those weak ties Social Media Marketing provides small businesses with a powerful tool that doesn't need an overwhelming amount of complexity to be useful. Its power is based on the simple human desire to be connected and the tools that now exist to enable you, as an individual to fill that desire.

Here are a few steps for how to maintain your sanity while using social media tools effectively.

1. Learn the differences, know what each tool is good for
   Each social media tool has its own personality, its own community of enthusiasts, its own speed and frequency. Take the time to learn them. Log on, create a personal profile and "lurk" for a while. Invite a few close friends and start to interact. Join groups that are of personal interest to you and watch how people share information. Learn first-hand how the tool is used by others before using it for your business.


2. Stay focused on your goals and know your audience
   While social media tools can reach millions of people as they did with the Susan Boyle video and for the Obama campaign, for most small businesses, reaching millions of people is just not the point. Don't get sucked into the hype and forget that. Perhaps you need to find and build a few key relationships, or reach a few tens of thousands depending on the scale of your business. Figure out who & what you're looking for and stay focused.


3. Don't reinvent the wheel (yet)
   What's already working for you? You don't necessarily need to use social media in a completely different way if you're not trying to reach a completely different audience. If you know what works with your audience now, start by figuring out how to achieve similar results but within the context of these new tools.


4. Don't spread yourself too thin
   You don't necessarily need to be active in all places at once. While Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the hot spots of the moment, spend some time figuring out which ones will give you the greatest access to your audience and start there.


5. Don't sweat it and don't rush it
   Honestly everyone is still figuring out the best way to use social media tools. Heck, the sudden explosion of these tools themselves shows that people are still figuring out how best to use the Internet! Don't give in to the feeling that you've missed the boat and rush into something that you'll have to back pedal on later. Take the time to learn and do what's right for you and your business.

Related Articles:

• The Marketing Skills You Can Learn from Obama
• Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer
  
• The Outsourcing Paradox
  

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So now that we know that Link Farming is bad and reciprocal links may have limited value, how do we convince other Web sites to link to us without linking back to them?

One Directional Link Sources

First - where can you get these one directional links? Great places include:

• Industry directories – sites that are directories of other sites in a particular industry
  
  
• About.com – often has directories and provides information about a wide variety of industries and specific, niche topics
  
  
• Event Sites - for events you are hosting or where you are a sponsor or speaker
  
  
• Online PR – PR sites, or sites that have an article written by you or about you
  
  
• Library sites – if you have content that is relevant to a particular topic and for a wide range of people libraries often offer great directories and resource lists
  
  
• Blogs – if you have a product or service that is exciting and you can get a blogger to write about it.
  
  
• Review Sites – if you have a product that can be reviewed.
  
  

If your site has a lot of free and useful content you will have a much easier time getting incoming, one directional links.

How to Ask for a Link

Also if you plan to reach out to other sites to link to you, make sure you use the right approach.

• Consider "deep linking" - invite linkers to link to a specific page of relevant content rather than linking to your home page. This is usually far more appealing for bloggers and other content sites.
  
  
• Make the contacts personal – avoid sending blanket emails to sites. Write personal emails or consider calling. Consider establishing a relationship over time. The extra time it takes you to do this will force you to be more selective in the sites you choose to reach out to.
  
  
• Choose carefully – getting a link can be a lot like pitching a story to a magazine or even like cold calling. Make sure you have done your research and confirmed that your content is right for the site you're contacting. The last thing you want to do is create bad will by blanketing sites that have no interest in what you do.
  
  
• Have something noteworthy and specific to offer – remember that in general, noone cares about your latest product or your newest client. I know that sounds harsh but it's unfortunately true. You have to find a reason for them to care. Find something interesting, unique, exciting, personal or noteworthy that would make people want to link to you.
  
  

Related Articles:

• Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer
  
• Search Engine Optimization in 3 Easy? Steps
  
• 10 Tips to Avoid the Biggest SEO Mistake
  
• The 9 Places to Put Your Keywords for SEO Power
  
• Link Building -- What Not to Do

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• Show your fans some love. Click here to share "Link Building - What to Do" with your fans on

We've come pretty far in our Search Engine Primer!

Now let's cover the third and final step: link building.

Just like the other steps, link building is very simple on the surface, but getting it done can be more challenging that it appears.

What is link building?

In essence, you want to get other Web sites to link to you. That's it.

When another Web site links to you, it's as if that site is "voting" for your site. Their link is an indication that they believe your site's content is valuable.

If your site gets a lot more "votes" or incoming links than your competitors', this will help boost your search engine rankings higher.

In the past, getting incoming links was quickly and easily accomplished through "reciprocal links".

For example, you own that wonderful diner in Durham, and a motorcycle shop owner in Santa Fe emails you and says "Let's exchange links. You link to my site and we'll link to your site and we'll both improve our search engine rankings." What a great idea! Right?

Link Farming vs. One Directional Links

In the high-rolling '90's, entire businesses were formed based on this concept. You could pay a company a fee and they would instantly add your link to 100's of sites overnight. It was dubbed "Link Farming" and it was all the rage. Link Farming focused simply on buying the most links, not on sites meaningfully "voting" for your site. And Google found that it "unnaturally" inflated the rankings of sites who participated, diluting the value of the search results.

To combat this, Search Engines now focus on "one directional" links – where sites link to you but you do not link back to them. These are harder to get of course. Search Engines also penalize sites they suspect of artificial link building. If you have any reciprocal links, you can avoid this penalty by making sure you don't have too many and that for any reciprocal links, the two sites have content that is related. So avoid motorcycle shops linking to diners, no matter how good the pancakes are, unless that motorcycle shop happens to have a "road trip" feature listing great places to eat across the country.

Now that you know what *not* to do, next week I'll provide some tips on what *to* do - how to find sites that will give you one directional links and then how to ask for them.

To see the other installments in this Small Business SEO Guide visit:

Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer – what are SEO, SEA and SEM and should I really care?
Search Engine Optimization in 3 Easy? Steps – the three elements of SEO
10 Tips to Avoid the Biggest SEO Mistake – all about how to choose your keywords
The 9 Places to Put Your Keywords for SEO Power – what to do with your keywords


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We've covered a lot of ground so far in this SEO Guide. From a definition of Search Engine Marketing, to deciding whether SEO is worth it for you, and if it is identifying the 3 elements involved in SEO:

1. your keyword list – the list of phrases you'd like to be found under
   
   
2. your site's keyword density – how often your keywords appear in your Web site
   
   
3. link building – getting other Web sites to link to your site
   
   

Last time we covered how to create your keyword list - the foundation of all of your other SEO and SEM efforts.

Now let's talk about what to do once those keywords are selected – step #2 is building keyword density.

According to Wikipedia, the definition of keyword density is: "the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase."

Basically - on a given page, what percentage of all the text is used by a specific keyword phrase? So for example, if a page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase is used 5 times, that keyword's density is 5% for that page.

The part that small business owners sometimes don't know is when we say "text" that doesn't only mean the readable text on the page. It also includes text that is found in your HTML code.

In a shout out to readers Sherri and James R. who appreciates the practical and tactical, (thanks for your comments! How am I doing?), here is a very specific rundown of what elements of your HTML code are recognized by search engines. You'll want to put your keyword phrases in these places to ensure the SEO power of each of your pages. Note that depending on how your site is built, some of these places you will have access to and some you may need your developer's help with:

1. Title Tag – not to be confused with your "Page Title," the Title tag text shows up in several places including as the bolded blue text on Google Search Engine Results pages.
   
   
2. Meta Description Tag – like the title tag, this tag is important because it appears on the Search Engine Results page right underneath the page title. Sometimes a snippet of your text will appear instead but you always want to have a meta description on every page and it's usually a good idea to customize it for each page.
   
   
3. Page Title – this is the actual page title your visitors will see when they visit the different pages of your site. Avoid using images, try to make your page titles text, include your keywords in them, and try to put them inside an H1 tag. This will give them greater SEO power.
   
   
4. HTML vs. JavaScript – part of the SEO ranking calculation is how high up on the page do your keywords appear? Because of that, it's a good idea to take as much as possible of your JavaScript code out of your site's pages and put them in a single, common JavaScript file. This will make your site easier to maintain and boost it's SEO power.
   
   
5. Your Site's Text – include your keywords repeatedly in the text of your site, but the text still needs to be readable. A good rule of thumb is no more than 3-6% density. Any higher than that and you risk labeling as search engine spam.
   
   
6. Keywords in Repeated Links – using your keywords in the links on your site is a great way to show their importance to search engines. In addition to doing this in your text another great place is in your sidebar or footer. Also consider using the "name" attribute of your link tags.
   
   
7. Alt Tags – each image on your site has the ability to define "alternate" text. This is originally intended for Web site "reading" machines that read out Web pages to those who might have difficulty seeing the page. Instead of leaving the alt tags blank, fill them with descriptive text of the image that includes your keywords.
   
   
8. Filenames – your filenames for both your individual pages and your image files can be fantastic places to include your keywords. Your page filenames will actually show up in the URL for that page for example last week's post has the file name "10_tips_to_avoid_the_biggest_s.html" and the URL for that post is http://blog.inc.com/e-commerce/2009/04/10_tips_to_avoid_the_biggest_s.html. Using your keywords in these filenames can really help your rankings.
   
   
9. Your Domain Name – if you can get a domain name that uses a primary keyword this will give a big boost to your rankings. The implication is that this the entire content of your site is centered around this keyword.
   
   

A big note - this list does NOT include the Meta Keywords tag. While that used to hold weight with search engines, it's pretty much ignored now. It's too easy to put whatever you want in them, so companies used to stuff them with totally unrelated but super popular terms like Janet Jackson or Britney Spears. Search Engines got wise to that scheme and stopped paying attention to them.

Keyword density is where large, content focused sites have an absolute advantage. The more text or pages you have the more you can repeat your keywords in all of the places outlined above. If you have a 5 page site there's only so much you can do against a 500 page, optimized competitor.

Incidentally, this is one reason why businesses blog. Frequent blogging is an opportunity to create many pages of content that can use your keywords. But you have to believe that SEO (and blogging) is going to be a valuable way to generate new business for you in order to use this tactic. Read my post on that here.

For some additional research get it direct - try Google's Webmaster guidelines and their answer to the question: How can I create a Google-friendly site?

Now here's an offer - do you have questions about keywords and keyword density? Post them over the next 7 days by Thursday, May 7th and I will try to answer as many as possible and encourage everyone to join in the discussion!

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I started this Search Engine Marketing Series with a definition of the two SEM areas – Search Engine Advertising and Search Engine Optimization. Last week we focused on SEO with SEO My Web Site in 3 Easy? Steps. We discussed the three elements of SEO and what I call their "blind spots".

As we learned last week, the first of those 3 elements is your keyword list. Your keyword list is critical because it is these keywords that will be used for optimizing your your HTML code & programming and build your incoming links. When you start doing SEA you'll find that your keywords are critical there too.

So what are keywords?

Keywords are the word or phrase that someone types into a search engine to find something they are looking for – like "buttermilk pancakes" or "cannon digital camera".

When a searcher types in one of these phrases, a "search engine results page" (aka SERP) is returned with a list of Web sites that the search engine has decided best fits that phrase.

Here are the SERP pages for "buttermilk pancakes" on Google (top) and Yahoo (bottom):

So let's say you own a diner in Durham, NC and you'd like anyone who searches for "buttermilk pancakes" to see your diner at the top of the results page.

That sounds pretty good, right?

I mean the #1 ranking, I know the pancakes sound good and yes – that was a trick question.

In fact, choosing "buttermilk pancakes" as your keyword phrase could not only waste a lot of your resources, it could also cause problems for your business.

Here's why.

First – there is such a thing as too much traffic. How many phone calls do you need from someone in another state trying to place a delivery order or asking you'll mail them your pancake recipe? If your staff time get's maxed out by inquiries from people who won't ever do business with you, your staff won't have time or energy for the people who will.

Second – you will have devoted valuable time and money on a top position for a keyword that may hurt your business rather than help it. Those resources could have been spent far more productively elsewhere.

Unfortunately, many small businesses fall into the trap of choosing the keywords based on volume – thinking the ones that provide the most traffic will be the best investment. But what you really want is to focus on the keywords that will bring you the most business, even if they bring a small amount of traffic.

So how do you do that?:

1. Focus on "Buying" Phrases – as shoppers get more serious keywords get more specific like "buttermilk pancakes durham nc". Think of what people are searching for when they're ready to buy.
   
   
2. Skip Generic Phrases - tire kickers love generic keywords. As in the example above, try to make your keyword phrases 3 words or longer.
   
   
3. Iterations - try using what I call "iterations" like locations. "durham nc" "north Carolina" etc.
   
   
4. Is it soda or pop? – there may be more than one way to say the same thing. Use Google's keyword suggestion tool to choose the most popular term and maximize your reach.
   
   
5. Do a Search - for each keyword you're considering, make sure you actually look it up in the various engines. You'll glean really helpful data from this.
   
   
6. Know your neighbors - know what kinds of results you'd be surrounded by. Ranking on some keywords can hurt your brand by association.
   
   
7. Know your competition – your search competition – who is at the top of the list for the keywords you want, how big is their site and how well optimized is their site?
   
   
8. List Length - for SEO the size of your list should depend on how much content you have to work with and how fierce your competition is. Start by looking at the keyword density of your competition as a target. For example 5% density means 5 repetitions for every 100 words. You can then figure out the potential size of your list by taking the keyword density you're aiming for vs. the number of words you have available per page and the number of pages on your site.
   
   
9. Product & Brand names – these can be highly valuable. If your customers know them, don't forget to optimize for them.
   
   
10. Don't forget Misspellings – of brand names, product names, location names, your company name, names of prominent staff etc.
    
    

Have you been burned by keywords or have they been the path to success?

Share some of your keyword tips below!

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So let's jump into our primer with a deeper dive into SEO.

You may be surprised to discover that Search Engine Optimization is essentially comprised of only 3 things:

1. Your Keyword List – the list of phrases you'd like to be found under
   
   
2. Your Keyword Density – maximizing how often and where your keywords appear on your Web site
   
   
3. Your Incoming Links – getting other Web sites to link to your site
   
   

That doesn't sound so hard right?

Well theoretically it isn't. But what makes SEO difficult for most small businesses is what my friend calls "the blind spots" – those major roadblocks you suddenly hit but never even saw coming.

Let's redo that list now with the blind spots added in...

1. Your Keyword List – the list of phrases you'd like to be found under could have you chasing rank on the wrong keywords, also conveniently making your keyword density and link building efforts an exercise in futility
   
   
2. Your Keyword Density - maximizing how often and where your keywords appear on your Web site requires that you a) actually have enough text on your site to use your keywords in the right places repeatedly, and b) have access to the programming skills (or a Content Management Tool) to optimize the HTML code and programming of your site.
   
   
3. Your Incoming Links - getting other Web sites to link to your site is kind of like cold calling. It's always time consuming and can be pretty ineffective and very humbling if you don't have the right approach.
   
   

Now we're getting somewhere! So now that we've out-ed the blind spots, what's a business owner to do?

For starters, we can identify how to avoid each of these roadblocks. I'll start with keyword list creation next week.

But before all of that, there's really a much BIGGER question we haven't even talked about.

As you follow the tactics in my coming posts, and start to see the resources you'll need to invest in SEO, you want to ask yourself – is this really worth it? Does it actually make sense for me to spend time optimizing my site for search engines?

I know, given all the SEO hype this may seem like a shocking question (do I hear gasping?). But you really do need to find the right answer for your inidividual business.

Think of one of those old balances you used to have in chemistry class. On one side of the balance you'll have the cost - the time, money, and strategic focus you'll be spending on SEO that you could be spending on something else. After all, marketing decisions at some point boil down to "is this where I can invest my resources to generate the greatest profit?" SEO should not be immune to this filter.

So, on the other side of the balance is "what will I get out of it?" meaning how likely is it that you'll a) beat out your search competitors given the resources you can put towards SEO and b) get real, live, paying customers from all of this? If 80% of business in your industry is driven by high-touch sales and personal referrals, does it really make sense to spend your resources ranking on a few search engine results pages that frankly leave a lot to be desired in the personality department?

For many businesses the answer is somewhere between an emphatic yes and a mitigated yes. For some it turns out to be a resounding no.

As a business owner, I encourage you to be skeptical of any marketing technique until you understand the "cost" involved and the realistic payoff for your business - no matter how much hype surrounds the technique. By walking you through the "cost" involved with SEO and where the possible payoffs are, through this and the next posts I hope to help you decide if and what amount of SEO is right for you.

Stay tuned next week for some fun with keywords!

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Do you remember those IBM commercials from the early 2000's? The ones where the execs are sitting around a board room table and there's a lone techie at one end spelling out "the new tech thing"? Awe and mysticism seems to fill the room. Appropriately quizzical theme music twinkles in the background. This is one of my favorites:

Clearly this is an exaggeration but those commercials crack me up. Perhaps it's because durng my careeer I've been on both sides. Perhaps it's also because I've spent more than 13 years sitting right in the middle - translating.

A little while ago I found myself in such a situation. I was moderating a panel for a great group of entrepreneurs-in-the-making and the topic was Search Engine Marketing. Much like the "Universal Business Adapter" lots of people eye Search Engine Marketing with a bit of awe and a lot of mystique.

One usually finds mystique in situations of information scarcity, not so with SEM (just do a search for search engine marketing and you'll see what I mean) and yet, the topic is still little understood.

I think part of the challenge is with the way SEM is covered:

1. coverage often starts in the middle without treating the beginning, which makes it difficult to catch up.
2. coverage often doesn't treat the topic from the perspective of small business owners – how do you know which of the techniques you're reading about is actually both meaningful and feasible for your small business?

So I've decided to tackle the problem and share it not only with the people who attended that event, but with Inc.com readers here.

First let's address the biggest question – what does Search Engine Marketing actually mean?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the act of optimizing your Web site and what I like to call your "digital footprint" so that search engines like Google will rank your site above other sites when people search for things. When looking at Google, this refers to the left side of screen or the "organic" listings which can draw more than 70% of the search engine clicks. If you want to get really in depth check out Google's Webmaster Tools http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 (beware, there's a LOT of information there).

Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is making a payment directly to a Search Engine (or through a broker or service provider) so you can place a text advertisement on the search engine results page (or SERP) when people search for things. This is also called "sponsored links" or "Pay Per Click (PPC)" advertising. You bid for a certain keyword phrase and you pay the search engine each time someone clicks on your ad.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – has come to mean different things. Some people use the terms Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Advertising synonymously. I think this isn't really accurate or especially useful. Marketing is not just advertising. I think the better use of "SEM" is to refer to all of the ways that you can use search engines to market what you have to offer.

Next week I'll cover the most critical factor in any search marketing campaign – your keywords. How do you choose them? How should they be different for SEO vs. SEA? How do you keep from loosing your shirt by buying the wrong ones in a PPC campaign? Stay tuned…

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Last time we were discussing some of the challenges of getting up to speed to make technology outsourcing successful for your business.

We looked at the data from a recent programmer project posting which resulted in a variance of more than 250 hours and $5,000 in cost.

While we anticipated the candidate responses would turn out the way they did, the question remains, where do you go from there?

Often business owners set out on outsourcing adventures and only realize how unprepared they are when they're at the point like this one where a decision needs to be made, but they don’t know how to make it.

Here are the primary things you'll need to navigate your next technical outsourcing project:

1. Know the outsourcing market – outsourcing sites have their own modus operandi and the programmers who use them have devised theirs too. It's good to know what those are so you know what to expect out of the process.

2. Product detail & clarity – all too many times we've consoled business owners who felt locked into a project costing far more than anticipated because the programmer had to go through so many iterations of (sometimes still unsuccessfully) translating their idea into a working site. The problem is if you're working directly with a programmer (and not a Project Manager, Technical Lead or other go between) that's not their job. Your programmer shouldn't be figuring out the best way for your Web site to sell your product or what pages it should have. You should work that out in advance and provide all of that information to your programmer in the form of technical specifications…

3. Site specifications – a 3 page description of what you want does not a specification make. When you're building a site that has a certain complexity, a strategically thought out set of features that is then turned into a well written specifications document is essential to creating a site that you (and your customers) will be happy with, and your programmer will be able to do correctly the first time.

4. Technical Expertise – I know, the expertise is what you're trying to hire. That’s the paradox. You need a certain amount of expertise in order to accomplish steps 1-3 for technical outsourcing to be effective. However you find it, you need someone who can effectively interpret and document your needs, evaluate & choose from candidates, manage the ensuing relationship, and evaluate the work being done to ensure it's good quality. Just looking at links to a potential programmer's work and speaking to their references is usually not enough to confidently hire for a technical project.

At the end of the day it is often a wise decision to hire an independent third party to act as your sounding board and guide to help you outline your project clearly, hire the right people, and if budget allows also assist you in managing the relationship either by being the point person or by acting as your behind the scenes adviser.

If you're not a technical person (and don't want to become one) make sure you come to the outsourcing party neither alone nor empty handed. Don't let your outsourcing dream transform into a money wasting, hair pulling nightmare – just be prepared.

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