Fans vs Links or Search Engines vs Social Networks.

In this down economic, small businesses must adapt or die. To survive, they seek new opportunities such as to find new customers or to offer new and superior products/services to their existing customers.
So How do they communicate those opportunities to their new or existing customers. Is it through Search Engines or Social Networks? which one is better for your small mid-sized business?
Let us explore these two digital marketing tactics:

1) Search Engines:
A Search Engine is designed to search for any kind of information on the internet. The information comes in many formats : web pages, images, video, sound and other types of files.
The dominant players are Google and Baidu.
In the United States, Google held a 63.2% market share in May 2009, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
In the People’s Republic of China, Baidu held a 61.6% market share for web search in July 2009.
In order for your website to be seen by prospects or random buyers or researchers, you should optimize it by using SEO (search engine optimization). It is one of the tactic used by the Marketer, so that your website could be found by any Search Engines such as Google.com or Bing.com when the prospect or the customer is researching randomly your products/services.
The main currency of SEO is Link Building, which allows Google.com (they create the expression link lover in order to highlight the importance of link building) or Bing.com to find your website easily.
As a result of good link building, your website should get a
well deserved quality traffic .

Briefly let’s describe how Search Engine:
It stores information about many web pages retrieving from the html pages by following this process:

• Web crawling: an automated Web browser which follows every link on the site.
• Indexing: Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries to be found
  quickly.
• Searching and Retrieval : When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using key words),
  the search engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary
  containing the document’s title and sometimes parts of the text.

2) Social or Business or Professional Networks:
A Social Network is a social structure made up of individuals or organizations
called “nodes,” which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency such as friendship, kinship, common interest and financial exchange.
With such networks, you could engage with people at the social level ( e.g. Facebook.com or twitter.com) or at the business level (linkedin.com).
Let’s examine briefly how it works:
Create an Individual or Business profile that is used to connect to others by becoming their fans or friends (in case of Social Networks) or by being their followers (in case of Business Networks).
It means that you can connect to people and organizations quickly on 24h/7 days.

3) What is the best tactic for your organization: Fans or/and Links?
Social Networks allow small business to connect directly to organizations, people and distribute your content constantly at nearly zero cost;
it can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact or customer base without big budget.
These networks can also act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services where they can listen to their customers (particularly their complaints or their praise), engage with them (e.g Twitter.com).
Companies can also use Social Networks for advertising (social advertising in FaceBook.com) in the form of banners and text ads.
If your Businesses operate globally, Social Networks can make it easier to keep in touch with your contacts around the world.

Clearly, whether it is Social/business/professional Networks (
TaxMamba , Facebook, Twitter, Xing.com,
Spoke.com, Marriage.com….) or Search Engines (google.com, bing.com, ask.com …),
both of them are here to stay and they will be used by small businesses not only to get deep customer insight but also to design strong business branding by converting their customers into brand advocates or influencers.

3 favorite types of Vertical Websites

Most small business store owners see their firm as local. The same thing applies to a small online business.
A local internet company usually belongs to a vertical market, which is a set of businesses that offer specialized needs for a niche market.
Thus, Let’s talk about 3 types of vertical websites that are often used by customers:
Online coupon sites, Shopping comparison sites, User review and Professional network sites.

• Online coupon sites
  You must have noticed a proliferation of coupon based websites recently such Groupon.com, mycoupon.com etc….
  They are just right behind major search engines. 35% of US online users are using coupons to buy online.
  It favors users that are looking for low price, deals etc…

• Shopping Comparison sites :
  According to compete.com 80M of US online users use shopping comparison sites (dealtime.com, zappos.com, like.com, milo.com, shopzilla.com, Nextag.com, ComparisonBuys.com etc..) .
  This group is really used by e-commerce businesses to sell electronic devices, groceries, shoes etc…
  It contains user-generating reviews and rating; it is used by people who are sensitive to price, location and brand.
• User review and Professional network sites :
  Online users trust users-generated review sites. It usually includes RATING and other features such company profile, discussion and job postings, tips, questions answered by experts. it’s a trusty, measurable way that business owners use to promote their product or service in the community. Some of these names are zocdoc.com, avvo.com, webmd.com and Taxmamba.com (in beta phase and
  powered by MLFSolutions)

Finally, the future of business is online where you (business owner or searcher or browser ) should precise and measurable results. Therefore, vertical businesses allow small business to reach this goal quickly
(and avoid big online and offline businesses) by targeting a niche market with AGILE and LEAN goals in this
challenging and rapidly change world.


Let me know what you think about any type of vertical business, just add your comments below.

Why create a landing page for Google, Bing, Ask and other Search Engines?

If I can guess, you have a website and wished you could drive more traffic to it? You have tried pretty much Facebook, Twitter, telling your friends and family, going to trade shows, conference … but at the end still NOTHING.The answer is SEO and PPC ( visit last month blog about Paid Search or Natural SEO ) but before that you need to create and optimize a Landing Page for all the search engines.In this article, I will introduce and elaborate on some characteristics of a Landing Page Optimization(OLP) without going into a lot of details. 1 – What is a landing page and what are the different types? A landing page is a the first page where an online user faces when he/she clicks on an external link responding to a query search or to a direct browsing to a site. A landing page fufills critical functions and could come in three categories: A main site that has a home page to your entire audience, access to other pages via navigation. A microsite focus to a subset of audience which requires a lot of supporting information, A stand-alone page to a very specific audience with single service or product. For e.g. Lead capture page or white paper distribution page. 2 – What type of audience are you targeting on your landing Page? The landing page is optimized by targeting specific audience. For e.g. you could taylor your landing page for lead capture by providing a white paper to the user, it can be for purchase or printout as well. An optimized landing page should not target every type of user at the same time. Thus, it serves a single mission critical function linked to an online user type. They are various types of audience for a landing page optimization(OLP): Prospects (convert visitors into customers). Customers (convert prospects into customers, get repetitive customers). Expert seekers. Investors. workers. Competitors. 3 – Conclusion: By optimizing your landing page you implement a mission critical function of your website such as Purchase or Donation for a specific group of online users in order to ‘Get QUALITY TRAFFIC’, which should translate into ‘REPEATBLE AND PROFITABLE’ CUSTOMERS OR MEMBERS. Let me know what you think about this subject. The MLFSolutions Team.

Paid search or Organic SEO?

Should I do Paid Search Or Organic search?.
It is the same question big CEOs face when they want to grow their customer base:
M&A (merging and acquisition) or Organic growth?.
To determine which search optimization methods the website owner could choose,
we will examine each method and how to use it for the appropriate situation.

1. Organic or Natural SEO (Search engine Optimization):
In general, Website owners use this technique so that their website could be found (on Page 1) and be
indexed by most search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Dogpile etc….).
Briefly (I will not go into much details here), it is about a set of tactics
such as incoming links, web page title, description and keywords to be implemented for each
page on your site. To do it the right way, you should contact a professional or an agency. This on-going process takes time to be successful.
The success comes when the name of your site appears in the middle of the search engine
page (on Page 1 on Google or Bing or Yahoo…) after a keyword search query (SERP: search engine results page, is a listing of web pages).
<< This tactic is also used to search your site internally (this functionality is available
with Google at Google Site Search).
I will talk more about “Your Website Search” in more detail in the future.>>
However, as you can guess this process takes time to succeed, so what is out there for those
who can’t wait (as a lot of entrepreneurs face time issue). Fortunately, the answer is PPC.

2. PPC (Pay per click):
Some clients are only interested in this method because they want quick results
and nothing else. It is a process of bidding on keyword phrases linked to your targeted
market. The advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. Some content sites
may charge only fixed price fee per click. It is an Off and On process.
They are many providers: Google Adwords, Yahoo!Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.
Even with a limited spend, clients choose also this method because it gives a predictable ROI (return on Investment).
You can track the conversion from leads or visitors to customers easily.
This tactic also suits clients who want to mount a quick and segmented online campaign to a particular audience.
They can use unlimited keywords (if they can afford them) with PPC compared to Organic SEO where there
are some limitations. The result coming from this method is a list of web pages seen at the right side or at the top of the page
after a keyword query search. The listing has usually a header called SPONSORED LINKS.
This process requires often a landing page which is an optimized Marketing web page that displays relevant
content to the advertisement (selected keyword) in order to get the targeted audience.
Basically , if you bid on individual tax preparation keyword and you display
“corporate tax information” on your web page, you definitively will miss your targeted audience, therefore you will waste a lot of money.
I will be talking about Landing Page optimization (LPO) in the future in much more details.

3. Natural (Organic) SEO & PPC:
The response is definitively yes. The mixing of PPC (or paid placement) and Organic or Natural SEO is designed under the
process called SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It is a process of promoting your website by being visible
on the search engines through PPC, Organic SEO, contextual advertising (scans your website for keywords, for e.g Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter, Ad-in-Motion)
and paid inclusion (charge fee to include your site in their search index) and paid placement.
With this tactic, the client’s website appears in any place (top,down and middle) in the listing result
after a keyword search query on the search engine. So both tactics can be used simultaneously to have
maximum online visibility; Lead Conversion and ROI Tracking become more efficient.
A Digital Marketing plan will be required to define your audience, objectives, marketing tools or tactics,
measurement tools(metrics) and ROI, which will allow you to get leads, and converts them to customers.
To execute it the right way, do not hesitate to contact a professional or
an agency

Finally, your choice depends on your objective:
a quick campaign with unlimited keywords (off and on) or on-going long process campaign with limited keywords.
in order to be competitive in this crowded online market for a long term, one way to do it is by differentiating yourself from
your competitors through an aggressive mixing of Organic SEO and PPC(SEM).
Please tell me what you think and do hesitate to give me your comments, thoughts, feedback.