One of the foundations upon which the field of Internet Marketing is built is Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of ensuring that a web page is found and indexed by the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) so that when people are searching for keywords of value to the business, the search engines will return results for those web pages to the person searching. These listings of links to other web pages are known as the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

SEO is mostly built upon discovering the keyword phrases of value to a particular business and then optimizing the content and links to a web page containing that keyword phrase. Most of this part of SEO is product and service related. For example, an electronics manufacturer might want to optimize a keyword phrase like “52-inch Panasonic plasma TV” so that people looking for information on that product will find his web page and it will have the opportunity to sell products it has in inventory.

The SEO professional researches the keyword phrases that have high value to the business by determining how many people are searching for that term, how many other web pages are optimized for that keyword phrase, how strongly they are optimized for the phrase and how likely it can be to obtain a first page ranking on the SERPs for that keyword phrase.

However, not all SEO is about products and services. If SEO is the foundation of Internet Marketing, the pillars upon which most of the structure is built must include an element of branding. Much of the searching on the Internet are people looking up information on companies they’ve heard about. Whether it’s simply looking up contact information, or they’ve heard about your brand from some other source (referral, traditional advertising, etc.) and want to know more about you, many people type in your company name or some iteration of it.

Many of us assume that people will find us because we believe our brand is unique and we should therefore by default be the #1 listing on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). But are we? And who else shows up on that page? And if they have better Conversion Architecture on their site, are you giving sales leads to a competitor?

Try this exercise now. Open up a new window in your browser, go to Google and type in your company name. See who comes up and then come back here to find out why. Go do it; I’ll wait.

How’d you do? Are you giving away free leads? Do you have every listing on the Search Engine Results Page? No? Then consider that someone who is looking for you is also going to click on one of the other listings on the page and go to their site. You could be giving away free leads to your competitor.

How to monopolize the first page of the SERPs So, how do you monopolize the first page of the SERPs? You have to have more than one web property listed on the SERP. I hear you saying, “but I only have one website; how am I going to get 10 listings on Google? Well, there are a number of ways. Read on.

Run a search on your strongest competitor or a brand you know well and you’ll see that they likely have many web properties. They might have a number of entries for different pages of their website. They may have an entry for their company blog (which could be on their website or on another website they own. They may have entries on other sites for articles they have written. They may have directory sites that have listings for their brand. And of course, they may have listings for their social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or a YouTube channel Most likely, if they have all of these, they probably don’t have any of their competitors on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page.

So, you can see that there are a lot of different ways for people to find a company online. And you can have the same results.

Local Listings are Critical

In the SERP example above, I didn’t ask you to include any geo-locators (City, State, County, or other geographical locator). If I had, you may have seen listings for Google Places, Yahoo listing, Bing local listings or other l local directories.

These listings are very important to establishing your online presence. This is particularly important on Google, where the Places listings are often the first organic listings on the page. These listings also help authenticate your brand with the search engines.

One critical point on local listings and directories is that you have to be very careful to ensure that your business information is listed in exactly the same way everywhere on the web. The search engines are very interested in knowing that you are a legitimate business before they will index your location.

Other ways to increase your web properties are through your social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. All of these properties are indexed by Google and if you have the right keywords, you’ll be indexed for more than just your name. Also check out local directories. If you don’t find any of these when you search for your business name, search for your competitor’s name and see what directory listing they have. Then submit to those same directories. Publish articles on free article submission sites like EzineArticles.com. Bookmark your site on sites lie reddit.com, squidoo, giigo.com, delicious, and many others. Create a Manta profile.

Most of us have had occasion in the past to look up a business location online only to find when we got there that they had moved or closed or weren’t where the internet said they were. Google is aware of this and now scans the entire web to confirm the listing it has for your business on any number of other sites. Something as simple as spelling your street address as Main St. in one listing and Main Street in another listing will cause the search engines to consider these two different businesses. Google’s spiders are very smart, but they can only look at the information that is presented to them. The old “S in; S out” applies.

This guide will offer substantial suggestions for developing a practical approach to measure your social media marketing return on investment (ROI).

You begin by posting to Facebook and Twitter to interact with your fans and followers. You think your actions are OK, but are not sure how to determine the impact of your efforts and the ROI.

Counting how many Twitter followers and Facebook fans you have is a way to jump in and start measuring your ROI. A slightly more advanced method is to measure Facebook likes and Twitter retweets. A better approach to ROI measurement that is goal-based will help you understand the “how” behind the “why” of the marketing initiatives you implement.

Many internet marketers will focus on acquiring contacts first, strengthening their brand, then how to create more sales. Any return on investment in social media marketing should be tied in with the goal of your social media messages and your presence online.

Survey Results

A typical purchasing process starts with becoming aware of a brand, then showing enough interest to become a contact, and finally, deciding to make a purchase.

Step One – Strengthen Your Brand

The total of all social interactions regarding your product drives your brands’ success. You need other people talking about you and your products with their networks so these interactions do not just involve your efforts alone.

Attention

Attention revolves around the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Potential customers have to be engaged with your brand. It is not sufficient to just have a large group of social media followers.

Reach

When you engage in social media, how many people can you reach to interact with? Your reach will grow as people want to hear more if you offer content that interests people and gets noticed. Marketers claim it is analogous to your brand reach which will be equal to your email marketing list size.

Every piece of your content posted should be so good your fans and followers will want to share it with their friends which is known as viral marketing. More people see your content when they do this.

Engagement

What your audience is saying about your brand is known as brand engagement. Engagement includes both content engagement and brand engagement.

Content

One way to measure content engagement is by measuring social media shares (i.e., likes or retweets) which shows how engaged your audience is with your content. If your content clicks with your audience you can better understand the level of your content engagement. In an example, were your visitors connected with your content well enough to share it with their group of friends?

Step Two – Acquire Contacts

Understanding your list of social media followers is critical. Measuring the growth in brand reach is a common way to accomplish this. It is likewise important you understand how all of your actions may affect the reach of your brand. A table or line graph are common tools to help you measure this.

Your actions have an impact on the resulting count of your Twitter followers.

Your latest product release and asking people for product feedback probably increased your Twitter follower count after sharing content about the product. Ideally, the type of content you publish and the subject matter resonated with visitors enough to push them past their inertia point so they will click the Twitter follow button.

It is not just how you say it and what you say on Twitter and Facebook that assists growing your following. The key is to analyze your overall social media actions and then tie them to the goal you are intending to achieve.

One example is, both your email and website contain valuable content; by including social sharing toolbars to both of them, it can increase the number of touch points available for visiting followers and fans.

Step Three – Generate Sales

How do you transform your visitors and contacts into revenue once you have an audience built from your hard work? The usual marketer desires to drive quantifiable results so their time investment is justified, but they remain difficult to measure entirely.

There are some things you can do to measure if your efforts are delivering results.

• Surveys – Survey your customers is one way to measure if your social media efforts had any impact on them. Ask which of your efforts added to their purchasing process.

• Social Media-Specific Offers – A second idea is to create a special offer or specific landing pages to promote via just your social media marketing. Using these pages you can track actions and traffic as these pages are specifically aimed to your social media efforts.

• Google Analytics – One can create social media-specific campaigns and tag those links and campaigns if you use Google Analytics, which is a free download for you. This can analyze how many visitors came from a social media source to visit a particular landing page.

• Different Links – To determine your traffic sources more accurately, employ different links in your social media for tracking information. As an example, use a different link for your Facebook post than the one you use for a Twitter tweet to determine which media source your traffic came from.

Other solutions can include engaging browser cookies to track the source from where a purchaser clicked a link and from which social media posting. If you want other methods to track your results you can research more solutions in a Google search.

Step Four – Gain Community Participants

If you’ve done all the above steps adequately, you should see your social media presence growing each week. Some revenues may be showing up now from your actions. How does one boost it up to the next level then?

In the world of social media, there is a neat trick called viral marketing which is having your friends, followers and contacts pass information or tweets about you and your products along to their friends’ social pages. This acts to distribute notice of your brand for you.

Conclusion

Your goals in social media marketing are tied to the purchasing process, which involves acquiring contacts first, then promoting your brand, eventually creating sales, and gaining brand followers. Whichever goal you have, to evaluate your social marketing efforts’ ROI, it’s important to use a goal-based approach. One will not know whether their social media campaign is working for them until they completely understand their final objective.