How to Interview Marketing Professionals

Finding the right candidate for an open marketing position can be a challenge.As the interviewer, it's up to you to make every question count to elicit informative answers and get to know an interviewee and their qualifications for the position.

The following 10 questions provided by the Creative Group - a marketing staffing agency go beyond the average inquiry and allow you to gain deeper insight into each candidate's abilities.

1. "What would you have changed about your last job and why?" The answer to this question serves as a reality check: You're ensuring that a candidate's expectations for this job are realistic and that he's likely to find the qualities he found lacking in his last job. For instance, if he says that he wished he'd had more opportunities for teamwork in his last position, but the one he's applying for doesn't require much interaction with co-workers, he may not be a match.

2. "Tell me about a situation in which you had to address a disagreement or conflict in the workplace." With this question, you're trying to gain insight into a candidate's "soft" skills and ability to negotiate office politics. There are always differences of opinion in the workplace, so be wary of those who say they've never encountered a negative situation. Maybe a candidate disagreed with her colleague on how best to present an ad campaign to a new client. If she steamrolled her coworker's ideas, she may not be the ideal person for the job. She should instead give you an example that demonstrates solid communication and diplomacy abilities in her efforts to work with the other person.

3. "What type of work environment is the least appealing to you?" Instead of asking about an ideal surrounding, this question will elicit a more insightful response. Maybe a candidate says his least favorite aspect of his last job was all the noise in the office. If you manage a boisterous group that thrives on constant interaction with each other, this individual may not be the right fit for your group.

4. "How do you think your favorite manager would describe you?" In this question, you're looking for the candidate's ability to assess her own strong points - and whether they are accurate. For instance, if she says, "My manager would describe me as organized, dedicated and innovative," you'll want to see if these are qualities that match up with what's said when you check her references. This person's favorite supervisor is likely to be on the list and even if he or she isn't, you can see if other references talk about some of these same qualities.

5. "Talk about your least favorite boss and what you could have done to make the relationship better." The candidate's reply will give you insight into how he views management. Many people leave their positions because they aren't happy with their manager, but you're looking for a more reflective, positive answer such as, "I learned so much from my current manager even though we didn't always agree." You don't want to hire a candidate who appears bitter and seems to hold a grudge.

6. "Describe your most significant contributions in your last job." You're looking for solid results here: How could this person directly contribute to your company's bottom line? Maybe she saved her company money by streamlining the process for creating her department's annual brochure, or found a more cost effective vendor to print the piece.

7. "Describe an important decision you made in your last position and how you arrived at it." This is an especially important question for middle- or senior-level management positions. Here, the candidate should reveal his or her decision-making style: For example, if he asked for input from others, it may indicate he's more of a team player - and that he knows it's important to make teammates feel included in major decisions even if he doesn't adopt their advice. The way he arrived at his choice, whatever it is, should fit into your particular business culture.

8. "What do you believe your current or past company could do to be more successful and why?" This question will reveal whether the interviewee has (or had) a solid understanding of an employer's mission and business goals. Watch out if her answer has a bitter edge, such as, "The company is a total disaster - no one could help."

9. "What is your most satisfying career achievement and why?" The response should be specific and verifiable, such as, "I was part of the team of three people who lead a rebranding campaign for the company's top product, widget x."

10. "How can you contribute to our organization?" The candidate should be able to identify ways she can support the company's specific business goals. Her answer should indicate that she has thoroughly researched your company rather than just looked up the corporation's mission statement.

Don't hesitate to ask follow-up questions based on the interviewee's answers - you'll gain even deeper insight into the job candidate and his or her potential as a future employee. The interview is easily the most important step in the hiring process. Asking these questions will help you narrow the candidate field and identify the best match for the role.

The Creative Group is a specialized staffing service placing marketing, advertising, creative, web and public relations professionals with a variety of firms on a project basis. Find more information at http://www.creativegroup.com.

How to Hire the Right SEO Manager

It's true what they say, 'the proof is in the pudding'. At least I've found it to be true when hiring a marketing individual for an SEO, SEM, or PPC marketing related job.

I recently interviewed for an SEO position for my full-time management responsibilities and saw a variety of very qualified candidates. They all seemed to talk the talk.

The ultimate question I had to ask myself is "can they do the job?" Unfortunately for me, I assumed that many of them could based on their resume and job interviews. I was particularly impressed with those candidates who were able to articulate the difference between on-page and off-page optimization, discuss the latest trends in SEO algorithms, and identify opportunities to use social networking sites to improve results.

However, what I found surprised me. When I asked candidates for specific examples of how they helped clients, the types of results they were able to produce, and so on, I was somewhat disappointed. After each interview I spent a few minutes 'googling' the keyword phrases and customers these candidate worked for and wasn't overly impressed with the results. I guess when you get right down to it, the self-proclaimed SEO expert is only as good as his/her results. The proof is in the pudding!

Revamp Your Online Lead Generation Fast

The scenario is familiar. Over time your online lead generation campaign steadily declines in quality. Before long you’re hemorrhaging precious marketing dollars on leads who aren’t interested in your service or who haven’t provided valid contact information. You need to get your program back on track.

After nearly seven years optimizing thousands of online lead generation offers for companies in virtually every industry, I understand this situation intimately. And I can assure you: You can turn around any campaign quickly with minimal effort. Below are five simple changes that you can do right now to improve lead quality.

Before the lead is submitted:

Use targeting. Targeting a cost per acquisition-based offer may sound counterintuitive (“Why shrink my pool of potential customers if I only pay for those who submit my form anyway?”), but it can make all the difference if you define lead quality by specific demographic or geographic criteria.

For example, if consumers younger than 25 don’t qualify for your service, stop wasting time and money showing them your offer. Gender, age, income and geographic targeting should be basic functionality for any ad network. Better networks also will offer behavioral and transactional targeting to improve relevancy and quality.

Revamp creative. Even the best creative tends to get stale. When revamping your offer, basic ad principles apply: use short, hard-hitting headlines and copy that convey the offer benefits, and bold graphics that grab attention (and are under 30K to load quickly).

Moreover, take steps to ensure the consumer is truly interested in your offer and willing to be contacted by you. For example, add bold text explaining exactly what the consumer should expect, such as a telephone call within 24 hours or that she will receive a bill following the free trial period. Finally, choose graphics and text that highlight not just your offer but your brand — an important goal to create continuity and ensure prospects recognize your brand/company when you do follow up with them.

Add qualifying checkbox. A qualifying checkbox is a field that the consumer must check in order to submit the lead. The checkbox field is followed by text that is critical for the consumer to read and understand before submitting your form.

Example language: “By checking this box, you agree to opt in for e-mail from Company X,” or “By checking this box, you understand that you will be contacted by phone by Company Y.” This helps ensure that the consumer is truly interested in the offer and weeds out those who aren’t.

After the lead is submitted:

Change to real-time delivery. The adage “strike while the iron is hot” is particularly applicable to lead generation because the value of a lead increases the faster you contact it and decreases the longer you wait.

In some industries, a lead older than one day is worthless. Whatever the case, reaching out to the consumer immediately after the lead is submitted improves recall and conversion.

Send triggered e-mail. Triggered e-mail, sent automatically by you or your network partner immediately after each lead is submitted, is a highly effective tool to capitalize on consumer interest in a timely manner and increase conversion among the right consumers. A triggered email should reiterate the value of your offer, the next steps that are required of the consumer to complete the offer and/or what the consumer should expect next (i.e., she will receive her free trial in three to four weeks).

Further, triggered e-mail provides an excellent opportunity to encourage consumers to make a purchase or take any other desired action. Finally, find out your partner’s inbox deliverability to the top Internet service providers. If it can’t get e-mail delivered into the inbox, then the consumer won’t likely read it.

What's in a Name?

If you're like most marketers, there are some things that come easy and other aspects of marketing that remain for even the most advanced marketing professionals. My area of weakness comes into play anytime I'm responsible for a new product launch.

I'm on a team right now going through the renaming of a product and thankfully we've hired an outside agency to help us with renaming this product. I'm definitely learning some key elements of a successful name-related strategy during this process, but the one take-away is that your name has to be memorable. So much so that I'll say this... "if your product or company name is not memorable, nothing else matters!"

Disagree with me, argue the point, do what you like. But the fact remains that memorability is the most fundamental and important naming strategy. Here's a good example. Think about Starbucks for a moment. Now, try to name 5 other coffee houses. Difficult to do - isn't it? Why is that?

Of course much of this has to do with branding, repetition, and effective marketing but I believe it also has to do with simplicity and memorability. Send me some more examples and I'll add them to this post.

Reciprocal Linking - Pluses and Minuses

If you're like me, reciprocal linking is a key component to your online marketing campaign. Although I believe in the importance of reciprocal linking, there are positives and negatives to this approach. If done correctly, reciprocal linking and generate results. Here are a few things to consider.

The negatives...

1. Most of the Requests are Automated
It used to be flattering to get a link request, knowing that someone had visited your site and wanted to exchange a link. These days most of the requests are done with software and it means that no one has really visited your site. Automation in itself is not bad, but it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad. Even if you have an automated directory to handle link requests, which is what I installed, you will still be swamped with tons of link requests.

2. Most Link Requests are of Extremely Low Quality
The original idea of linking was to provide your own visitors with quality sites where they could visit next. The links were provided as a resource. Today, many sites have been set up only to make monëy from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test.

3. Links are Buried on Pages Where Human Eyes Will Never See Them
In addition to being a resource to your own visitors, you want to exchange links in hopes of getting some targeted traffíc back to your site. It used to be easier; a webmaster would have a site with say ten different pages and one of his pages would be a "links" page. On that page he would display 30 or so links. The link to this page would be prominent in the site's navigation menu. You could be assured of getting some meaningful traffíc if your link was placed on this kind of page.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.

4. Many of the Link Requests are for "Three Way Links"
I find three-way links "creepy." They work like this, if I link to site A, then they will give a link to my site originating from site B. This is done because Google is supposed to value one-way links more than reciprocal links. I can understand this. If someone links to you without asking you and doesn't request a reciprocal link it means that your site is really good and this is why Google values true one-way links. However, the three-way links proposed by many people are just an attempt to trick the search engines; they are not true one-way links. Sooner or later Google will get wise to such schemes and this kind of effort will yield little benefit to the linking websites.

In addition, I dislike this kind of linking arrangement because you first have to chëck out who you are linking to, and then you are faced with checking another site that is going to link to you. Usually the site where the link to you will be placed is some kind of strange directory, a link-farm.

This is the state of reciprocal linking today. Here are a few suggestions on how to get quality incoming links without adding another reciprocal link request to the flood that is already out there:

1. Make Your Site so Cool that People Will Link to You Without Asking
People come to the Internet to solve a problem, find a solution and get information. If you can make your website a true resource and a great place where visitors can get the information that they need, then it will not go unnoticed. Even if you have a commercial e-commerce site, it is possible to add reviews, articles and information. This additional information will help your own customers and will be a resource for the entire web. Who knows? Maybe one day you will chëck your referrer logs and see that Wikipedia is linking to you. This is the goal, but it will take some work to achieve it.

2. Get Involved in Blogs and Forums that are Related to Your Field of Expertise
You can learn something from forums and blogs and you can contribute something as well. You can usually leave your url when you make a comment or a posting. If you offer solid advice, you will get a good online reputation and become known as an expert in your field. This newfound recognition as an expert, combined with links from these blogs and forums will be worth much more than low quality reciprocal links.

3. Get into Article Marketing
Article marketing means that you will write articles about your field of interest and distribute them for publication on other websites, blogs and ezines with a link back to your site. Each time your article is published on a website you get a one-way link to your site. As with most good things, this method has been pounced upon by Internet marketers and the net is flooded with a lot of low-quality articles. However, if you produce meaningful articles, you can still get a lot of benefit by distributing your articles.

4. Do Judicious Reciprocal Linking
There is nothing wrong with the idea of websites trading links. However, if you are going to do it, then only link to a site that you think is a good one or has some value for your web visitors. Make sure that your link will be placed on a page that has the potential of sending you some traffíc. Make your request with an email that clearly shows that you are a living and breathing human being and not a robot.

So, instead of adding to the spam-like flood of reciprocal link requests, go about building your own content and start using more reliable methods of increasing the number of incoming links to your site.

by Donald Nelson is a search engine optimization specialist. His SEO company A1-Optimization provides affordable search engine optimization, website copywriting, article marketing and other website promotion services.

Search Engine Optimization - It's in the Writing

by Pat Quinn

I now propose to go right out on a limb and say that design has very little to do with search engine optimization. This is a sweeping generalization, I admit, and one to which my designer friends will take ínstant umbrage. But it is true to all intents and purposes. Design can certainly assist in achieving good optimization. By that I mean it will assist if it doesn't hinder the process with acres of code that the robots need to wade through in order to find the potatoes and gravy. Or if the navigation throughout the site is logical and easy to achieve. Or if the pages are designed to load quickly.

Other than that, optimization is all in the writing.

Now, I am a copywriter with around 40 years' experience in the advertising business; and there can be few people in the world who know less about design than I do. But my entire working life seems to have been spent arguing with designers about the length of copy in relation to the size of the pic in any given piece of work. And I confess that I mostly lost, thereafter seeing my words relegated to four lines of 8-point Myopic beneath an illustration the size of a house.

In website terms, however, the tables have been nicely turned. Here's why.

To optimize a website, you first need to take a good, long look at the HTML meta tags of Title, Description and Keywords. Do you see what I see? Yes, they are words. And all of these words require researching and embellishing. Likewise, take a peek under that all-singing, all-dancing Home page banner – and what do you see? More words. These words, unlike those used in the meta tags above, are written for both search engine and potential human customer alike.

Search engines love words. Great, isn't it?

Given all of this, it is pretty clear that all you need in order to properly optimize a website is a lexicon of well thought out words – keywords and keyphrases - sprinkled like generous confetti throughout the meta tags and the body copy. Well, almost.

In the first place, those words must be relevant. They must state clearly what it is you are selling and where you are selling it. The general marketing principle is:

(a) product description,
(b) product benefits,
(c) region of operation.

What you don't need are turgid explanations about the size of your company and who the product is designed for. Your potential customers will mostly be bright enough to know whether or not they are in the market for what you are offering. So to say, for instance, that your 'range of gardening gloves is ideal for gardeners' is a touch obvious, not to mention redundant and a waste of valuable space. In all promotional writing, brevity and clarity are the two most important attributes. But I digress.

So how do you go about collating these key words and phrases? First, you could invest in software that generates your meta tags and keywords for you. Fair enough; there are some good programmes around, and I would be the first to applaud any device that makes life a touch easier. On the other hand, you could take the more intellectually satisfying route and do it yourself.

"Oh, no," you cry, reaching for the gin bottle. "I don't do writing!" To which I answer: "You don't have to. Someone has already done it for you." I should tell you, straight away, that I am not an advocate of plagiarism. However, it is not theft to take a good, long look at somebody else's literary ideas and adapt them to your own ends. I will cite John Donne's penchant for re-working William Shakespeare as a good example of this. And what is good enough for Mr Donne, is certainly good enough for me. So, to formulate your keywords and phrases, why not research what your competitors are doing, then adopt and adapt? By competitors, I mean serious competitors, the people who are listed at No. 1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN in your sphere of activity. Delve into their meta-tags, analyze their body copy, figure out what it is that convinces the search engines to place them at No. 1.

If you feel that such a ploy is a little devious, you can console yourself with the thought that the writers of the No.1 material probably pinched it from someone else in the first place. So that's all right then.

And now for the denouement to this piece, which is the most important bit of all.

We have established with some certainty, I think, that a website stands or falls in the listings stakes by the quality of its words. Of course, that quality is determined by the search engines, not your old professor of English. So the judgement is in algorithm terms rather than literary terms. That's fine; we are simply trying to accommodate the engines, not win a Nobel Prize.

Further, in my not so humble opinion, every Home page should carry a stick of keyphrase-rich body copy. And this stick of copy should be placed where it can be seen, read and acted upon by the search engines. As close to the top of the page as possible.

Sadly, so many Home pages don't have this attribute. The page designs leap from whiz-bang banner to product list or string of pics with no intervening tit-bits of information – in the shape of copy - designed to feed the search engine robots. There is little for the robots to get their shiny little teeth into.

Let me prove the point. On several occasions recently, I have been asked to optimize websites on which the Home pages were bereft of any meaningful copy. Within an hour or two, the copy was written and the sites posted to the engines. Within a couple of days, the sites in question were featuring nicely on the first couple of pages of the major engines. Previously, they were barely indexed.

There's nothing magical about any of this. Because, guess what, search engine optimization is all in the writing.

If this has been helpful, maybe you'll let me know.

About The Author
Pat Quinn is an award-winning UK copywriter who also operates a search engine optimization service. Because it's all in the writing! Visit: http://www.search-engine-mechanics.co.uk.

Direct Marketing Employment Plans Hold Steady

Good news for direct marketers!

According to a recent survey by Bernhart Associates Executive Sear, Direct marketing job seekers have reason to be hopeful this new year. "The new hiring indicator is holding up well," said Jerry Bernhart, President of the Owatonna, MN-based search firm which has been tracking direct marketing hiring activity in the U.S. for the past six years. "We're seeing practically no change from the fourth quarter, which also was a good quarter for hiring."

According to the survey, 66% of respondents said they plan to add to staff during the first quarter of 2007, down 1 percentage point from the fourth quarter of 2006. The number of companies planning staff reductions remained at 10% while the percentage with hiring freezes dropped to 13% compared with 15% last quarter.

"On the recruitment side we're off to a very strong start so far this year," said Bernhart. "Direct marketing employers are competing for the best talent, with recruitment and retention efforts a top priority as they enter 2007."Bernhart said demand is particularly strong for ecommerce-related positions."Those with a good grasp of the online channel should find plenty of opportunity."Bernhart also said employers plan to hire more technical positions than they have in the past couple of years, driven by continued business growth.

Note: 114 companies responded to the survey which was emailed the week of January 8th.

About Bernhart Associates:
Bernhart Associates Executive Search, LLC, is a leading and nationally recognized direct marketing search firm, owned and managed by Jerry Bernhart.

DMOZ is Open For Business!

If you're like me, you many have been wondering what has happened to DMOZ these last few months? For those of you who don't know about DMOZ, you should familiarize yourself with the site as it drives search results for tons of influential sites.


The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. Launched in 1998, DMOZ is used by millions of websites - including some very popular ones, to provide link information.

When doing link analysis, I've noticed that a number of competitive sites appear on affiliate or related sites simply because those site have integrated DMOZ listings into their pages.

The end result is that your competitors may recieve higher seach engine results placement becase their website (via DMOZ) are appearing on more websites than you are. The simple remedy is to list your site in DMOZ. If you want to make the most of your listing, be sure to do the following...

When submitting your site, make sure that the link title contains your keywords. The result will be many links back to your site with the specific keywords you are optimizing for. This 'off-page' optimization is essential.

One last warming... be patient. Before the temporary outage, it took DMOZ about 3 months to list your website. The same might be true today.

It's All About Story Telling

This evening I attended an event where a speaker captivated the audience. It wasn't because of his title, his looks, or even his clothing - it was about the story he told. It made me realize the importance of the stories marketers tell about their product or service. And it got me thinking...

The brands that stand out and achieve the most are the brands built on powerful stories and descriptions about their history, their mission, or their founding. Think of Starbucks which started as a little coffee house in Seattle and a big dream to learn more about coffee than any other coffee retailer. Or what about L.L.Bean, Inc. which was founded in 1912 by avid hunter and fisherman Leon Leonwood? Whether you know the stories in great detail or not, there's always a story behind these brands.

I think that as marketers, it is our responsibility to market our products and define our services through stories that touch the hearts and minds of our prospects and is relished by our customers. It makes much more sense buying form a company that stands for something or has inherent meaning through its history than a brand that only sells itself through product features or price. I can tell you that this idea - the idea of storytelling- is done very well by the top brands and not so well by those brands you can't recall.

How about Dell? Michael Dell started the business in his college dorm room with a vision to mass produce customized computers and sell them for less than any other retailer at the time. He sold direct to the people to make his computers more affordable and meet the needs of each individual. In thinking about his model, and telling the story, one connects with the brand.

If you want to sell more, touch those you market to, and give them a reason to buy from your brand, then start thinking in terms of storytelling - not just benefits. Focusing on benefits in your pitch is important, but stories can be larger than life. Think about it. Try it. The next story you tell could be the one that lasts for a lifetime.

What's More Important - Traffic or Conversion?

Today's debate is about the importance of traffic or conversion. When trying to grow your online business, its vital to consider where your efforts should be focused. Assuming that your resources are fixed, would you rather spend your time increasing traffic to your site or simply focusing on the number of individuals who convert?

For those of you who have been reading my blog, you know that I love to reference the success of others. The answer to the question is BOTH! Successful companies are incredibly proficient at doing this AND doing that... focusing on conversions and driving traffic.

Each area of focus requires individuals who own and are accountable for outcomes - but as a business, especially an online business, you must always be aware of and concerned for driving traffic to your site and improving the percentage of browsers to paying customers.

From a sales and marketing perspective, one of the best ways to improve conversion is to break down the purchase decision process into logical steps. What is the current process prospects must pass through on your website to become paying customers? The best thing you can do is sketch out the steps on a piece of paper and put metrics against each step. How many prospects reach your product page? How many click through to the next step? the next? and so on until a purchase is made. Work at increasing the percentages at each stage of the purchase decision process and your sure to increase revenue.

Simultaneously you should be focused on improving organic search results and paid-for placement results. Which keywords are driving the best conversions? (Don't worry about the number of click -focus on the clicks that are converting). Once you know what words are effective, you can use these to attract the right kind of traffic.

As the business bible (Good to Great) shows us, embrace the power of AND!

What's In a Name?

These Guys Are Good!



So we started a new project at work today - trying to rename a product. Sounds like a pretty simple task but I've got to say there's a pretty significant learning curve. We're using a company called NameStormers. This company has worked with many of the heavy consumer hitters like AOL, CarMax, and others to name new products, companies and the like.

I was so impressed with our contact who is one of the principals and founders of NameStormers, and he personally contributes to every naming project. Mike has over 30 years of experience in marketing and marketing research, including more than 20 years of experience in the branding and naming business.

Mike discussed the marketing process of developing a new name. Once we created a brief and identified our goals, he explained additional details about the process. Before I knew it, he was asking marketing related questions that few ever ask and really delved into our business, our objectives and the sales model.

He touched on a few very important points when it comes to naming a new product. The first was that the name itself didn't really need to follow our traditional naming convention, that it had to be unique - shouldn't have the company name included and shouldn't be more than a word or two max. It has to be memorable!

Additionally, it should be aspirational. The example he gave was Hormel's lunchables? When it launched, was it really a meal replacement? No... it was crackers and cheese - but Hormel admitted its reality and promised to move towards the vision of a meal replacement.

Another example was Apple with iPhone. They launch products knowing that they need to be improved but based on a promise of dominance and being the best in the market.

The last part of the discussion really focused around the one key attribute that we want people to think of when they are exposed to the product name. The example here is Volvo (safe). Another example would be Nike (athletics) or Starbucks (coffee). When brainstorming a name, you need that name to reflect the outcome your product or service stands for and promises!

Getting Started - SEO Basics

If you're a small business trying to make it on the Internet you need to understand some of the basics of SEO. You may be advertising online or using Google adwords, but increasing your success is best when you don't have to pay for it. Increasing your organic placement is simple - but its not easy. In this post, I'll highlight a few things that can get you started.

1. Focus on On-page optimization tactics. When you boil it down, this means that you select a keyword phrase that you will optimize for and placing this phrase appropriately in your meta tags, body copy and anchor text.

Make sure you are using keywords with a high KEI. This measure takes into consideration both the popularity and competitiveness of your keywords. By focusing on keywords with a higher KEI, you can optimize your chance for search engines to select your site for keywords at little or no expense.

For more detailed information on on-page optimization techniques, visit the post entitled, "How Changing One Single Onpage Optimization Factor Can Boost Your Rankings By Over 350 Positions" on the following page. http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_marketing-expert_archive.html

2. Focus on Off-page optimization tactics. In order to improve your search engine results, you need important websites to link to you. Here are a few ideas to get you started...

A. Manually register your site with DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project. The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors and feeds other leading web directories.

B. Manually submit your site to Google. If you'd like to wait, Google will eventually spider your site and return it in search result listings related to your site name and keywords. However, this may take some time. For faster inclusion, visit Google and submit your site manually.

C. Purchase a listing with Yahoo! Directory Submit. Yahoo! like Google provides many search products. However, Directory Submit is essential for any business on the web.

D. Engage in a link building campaign. The more links you have to your site, especially if they have a high Google Page Rank, will signal Google and other search engines that your site is important. A great way to do this is through article submission or affiliate programs. For a great article submission program use Article Submitter Pro.

No matter where you are starting from, be sure to create a list of "to do's" related to search engine optimization. the most important thing to remember is that SEO doesn't happen without you. It requires daily focus and realistic goals.

For valuable SEO related information, tools, and resources, visit MarketingScoop.com.

Don't underestimate what people don't know about SEO

Okay, so I'll admit it - I'm not the brightest guy on the planet when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. However, I have been around a while and know some basics that go a real long way. I've also worked with people much more intelligent than I who can talk about SEO in the most esoteric terms.

The reality is that you don't know what you have until you look at a webpage, take a look under the covers (view code), and evaluate search result rankings. I recently took a look at a website that was ranking in the top 50 for specific keywords. Not bad you might say. However, recent studies show that about 80% of people never make it past the first 3 search results and of those who do, only 16% make it to the second page.

I guess what I'm saying is that if your Search Engine Optimization results don't have you on the first page of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, then you're not doing enough. So what did I find when I analyzed this website (which will remain anonymous)? Where to begin? Here's a short list of things that were not created with SEO in mind.

1. Java script. Java script. Java script. In fact, the first 600 lines of code were java script. I came to find out that all of this java script was part of a content management system to update a very small section of the page under "What's new?". Nice job guys. This is the fastest way to make the content of your webpage difficult to find.

2. No H1 title tag. Search engines love H1's. If your key words aren't enclosed in an h1 tag, then you're not doing what you can to fully optimize your site. H2 tags are valuable as well and you should use them for subheads if possible.

3. Speaking of keywords - probably the most important thing you can focus on - this website didn't have any. That's right. The keywords that would be ideal for their service were not enclosed in the title tag, an H1 tag, or even within the copy of the page. Give me a break! I was told that this site had been optimized!

4. Missing anchor text. I know this is pretty important for Yahoo! and other engines, and the keywords didn't appear on the page as text, as anchor text, or within the first and last 25 words of the page.

This gets even better. Ignoring the fact that nothing was done for on-page optimization, I assumed that when the company told me that the site was "optimized" they were referring to off-page optimization factors. Okay, fair enough I said. And then I actually looked at the apparent off-page optimization effort.

As far as I could tell, I didn't find more than a handful of links from pages with a Google PR of zero that included link text with the proper keywords. The gem in all this is that the company owns a number of website with PR6 ratings. Holy cow! Eureka! This makes link building easy. Of course I instructed them to link to the site from their other high PR sites with the specific link text defined. This made an immediate impact.

I'm still working with this company to improve their SEO but the greatest lesson I learned was that you can't assume that others Search Engine Optimization know the basics. Do the analysis on your own and draw your own conclusions. This is the only way you can be sure of what truly exists.