Online reputation management is a multi-faceted strategy that helps you preserve the integrity of your name online. It includes monitoring every mention of your company and evaluating whether any mention poses a potential problem. ORM also includes having a plan in place to address issues before they can escalate and impact your public relations online.

This article will explain the reasons online reputation management is a critical component of your overall SEM campaign. You’ll learn the basics of ORM and how reverse search engine optimization plays a key role in suppressing bad publicity. We’ll also describe the process of determining whether a given negative comment or blog post requires a response. Lastly, we’ll provide a short list of important tools should you decide to do online reputation management on your own.

Why You Need Online Reputation Management

Twenty years ago, negative press rarely gained traction. If a disgruntled customer or an irritated employee wanted to vent their frustrations, they were limited to writing letters to newspapers and magazines. Both were forgotten by the time new editions hit the store shelves. The internet changed everything.

Today, social media profiles, blog and forum posts, and entire websites devoted to publishing negative commentary about others, remain online. They gain traction in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Once they do, they can gain momentum in your market. This is the core reason to maintain an ongoing online reputation management program.

By vigilantly monitoring every mention of your company’s name, you can identify issues that threaten to tarnish your reputation. If you discover a public relations disaster in the making, you can immediately respond. You might decide to open a dialogue to present the facts. Or, you might launch a reverse SEO campaign to remove bad press from the search engines. The goal of online reputation management is to prevent negative commentary from gaining momentum.

Basics Of Online Reputation Management

Your online reputation management program should include several tactics to prevent public relations problems. Reverse search engine optimization can remove damaging press from the first page of the natural listings. Once that negative commentary has been pushed onto the second, third, and fourth pages, few people will see it.

Online reputation SEO will help you control the top listings for keywords that are directly related to you and your company. This strategy dovetails with your reverse SEO campaign. As damaging publicity is pushed from Google’s first page, online reputation SEO places the top position in your control. That prevents negative press from gaining exposure in the future.

Consistent monitoring is critical to your online reputation management program. You should track mentions of your name and that of key employees, your company, brand, and products. This is the most effective way to quell potential problems before they can gain traction in the search engines within your market.

Online Reputation Management: Addressing Problems

So, what should you do in the event that someone posts a damaging account about you or your company? It’s important to realize that not every occurrence of negative press requires a personal response. For example, if you enjoy a stellar reputation within your market, others may come to your defense. In some cases, it will be impossible to satisfy the disgruntled party; a response will only ignite the spark, giving momentum to something that was best left ignored.

Your online reputation management campaign should include a process through which you determine if the accusation or bad press in question is accurate. If so, is there an opportunity to engage the accuser and present the facts in a way that avoids exacerbating the situation? If that is not possible, using reverse SEO and online reputation SEO may offer the best solution.

Important Tools For Online Reputation Management

There are dozens of tools that you can use to handle your own online reputation management campaign. For monitoring forums, blogs, social media sites, and other properties, you can use Google and Yahoo alerts. You should also subscribe to RSS feeds from Technorati, BlogPulse, and FeedBurner (currently in Google’s stable of tools). Because Twitter is so popular, you should also subscribe to tools that monitor Tweets (e.g. TweetBleep, TweetLater, etc.).

Search engine optimization is an essential part of online reputation management. To that end, you should incorporate tools for content syndication, keyword analysis, and link-building. While you can perform SEO on your own, be aware that the ranking algorithms used by Google, Yahoo, and Bing are continually growing in complexity.

Protect Yourself With Online Reputation Management

There has never been a greater need for online reputation management. Angry customers, annoyed employees, and even disingenuous competitors can spread damaging rumors about you and your company with a few clicks. If the bad publicity gains traction in the search engines, it can spread quickly. Online reputation management is the most effective solution for controlling the message. The question is, are you using it?

Search engine marketing (SEM) has evolved to become the most reliable strategy for reaching a target audience,driving sales, & managing public relations online.. It boosts your company’s
exposure within your space; it compels your market to visit your website; it
positions your product as the solution to their problems. As a result, your sales
increase. Your revenue and profit swell. Your ROI rises. And your business enjoys
stronger branding and customer loyalty in the process.

Many of your competitors are already using SEM in an attempt to capture a larger
portion of your market. There has never been a better time to protect and expand
your territory. This article will explain why search engine marketing should be a
critical piece of your online marketing strategy. You’ll discover the value of
hiring an SEM expert versus forging a path on your own. We’ll also describe how SEM
PR and SEM social media tactics converge with SEO and PPC to produce a groundswell
of momentum.

Why Search Engine Marketing Is Critical

Search engine marketing blends SEO, pay-per-click advertising, and social media
strategies to give your company a higher level of visibility within the search
engines’ listings. But, visibility without sales is useless. And therein lies the
true value of SEM.

Your online marketing efforts must generate conversions in order to justify the
investment. Conversions might include a prospect buying your product, signing up for
your newsletter, or becoming your affiliate. It might include subscribing to a
continuity program that generates monthly revenue. Search engine marketing not only
allows your company to approach your audience, but it engages the conversation that
is already occurring in their mind. It compels action, which lifts your conversion
rate.

Is Hiring A Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Expert Necessary?

Every tactic that is leveraged within a comprehensive search engine marketing
deployment can be learned. The problem is, doing so is incredibly time-consuming.
The algorithms that govern the search engine’s organic rankings change constantly.
The major PPC platforms endure a seemingly endless string of upheavals. Social media
sites are still in their infancy; as they mature, so too, will the tactics required
to leverage them. Developing proficiency in each area of search engine marketing
takes an enormous amount of time.

An SEM expert will design a search engine optimization campaign that pushes your
website to the top rankings for your chosen keywords. They can also launch a
pay-per-click advertising campaign that further improves your exposure. Social media
marketing tactics can be integrated to dovetail with the rest of your search engine
marketing deployment. Even though you could launch these strategies on your own, do
you have the time to learn and apply them?

SEM PR: Melding Search Engine Marketing With Public Relations

SEM PR has its roots in search engine optimization. Years ago, online public
relations was managed largely through the creation and distribution of online press
releases. This is still effective today. These press releases gain traction in the
search engines’ organic listings. That builds your company’s brand while helping to
push negative publicity off the first page of results.

Today, online PR has been incorporated within a broader search engine marketing
context that includes SEO, PPC, and online reputation management (ORM). For example,
a press release can be distributed online in order to gain traction within the
natural listings. Then, a PPC campaign can be launched to direct your audience to
the press release on your website. Links can be placed throughout the page to other
positive coverage. The more points of exposure, the less likely negative press will
penetrate the top rankings in the search engines. This is a core element of ORM and
by extension, search engine marketing.

Leveraging SEM Social Media Optimization For A Competitive Edge

Social media sites began to enjoy ranking authority in the major search engines a
few years ago. That authority has only increased over time, making social media an
important cog in search engine marketing. This is the reason SEM social media
optimization has become critical for companies that need to reach niche markets.

By establishing a presence on the top social media sites, a search engine marketing
agency can develop multiple entry points in the organic listings. That increases
your exposure to your audience. It also prevents bad press from infiltrating the top
listings for your keywords. These advantages converge to deliver a competitive edge
for your company.

The Value Of Hiring A Professional SEO Marketing Consultant

Time is the most valuable commodity of all. Once it expires, it cannot be retrieved.
This is why a growing number of companies - including your competitors - are opting
to hire a professional SEO marketing consultant. They realize that search engine
marketing strategies are complex. The learning curve is steep. What’s more,
deploying SEO, PPC, and SMO tactics poorly can do far more harm than good. Precision
in execution is critical.

If you have already mastered each of the strategies that make up search engine
marketing, and have a refined system through which to deploy them, you may not need
an SEM expert. Otherwise, you might be fighting an uphill struggle. Consider
contacting a search engine marketing specialist today.

Reverse SEO has become critical for all types of organizations. It has never been
easier for your customers, competitors, and employees to publish items online that
can have a damaging impact upon your business. If those items gain exposure in
Google, Yahoo!, and other major search engines, their effects can last for years.
Regardless of whether you operate a small firm with less than ten employees or a
multi-billion dollar company, bad publicity can decimate your business.

This post will introduce you to the fundamentals of reverse SEO. We’ll explain
how it works and the advantages of using it. We’ll also describe a seldom talked
about strategy of leveraging reverse SEO as a preventative approach to online
reputation management (ORM). You’ll discover why many companies are rushing to
search engine optimization specialists to enlist their help for damage control. If
you are not currently using reverse SEO to limit the effects of bad publicity, your
company may be vulnerable.

How Reverse Search Engine Optimization Works

Google ranks pages based on several criteria. One of its organic algorithm’s ranking
parameters is a website’s authority within its space. The more authority a site has,
the easier it is for a page on that site to rank well and control its position. When
an authoritative page carries bad publicity about your company, it can gain exposure
to a wide audience. This is the problem that reverse search engine optimization
resolves.

Reverse SEO specialists have a number of tools at their disposal they can use to
suppress bad publicity in the search engines. First, they’ll analyze the authority
of high-ranking pages that speak negatively of your business. Then, they’ll
formulate a strategy to push those pages into the depths of the search engines’
organic listings, limiting their visibility.

Long-Term Advantages Of Reverse SEO

A single unsatisfied customer can create havoc for your company by spreading
deceptive stories of poor service or shoddy workmanship. Similarly, one resentful
employee can anonymously unfurl a string of damaging diatribes. If such stories and
diatribes are merely told to another person, their effects are limited and
temporary. By contrast, if they are published online and gain exposure in Google,
they can have disastrous results for your business.

This type of negative press tends to gain a groundswell of momentum, regardless of
its accuracy. By suppressing these pages in the search engines, reverse SEO allows
you to control the effects of bad publicity. It helps you to smother the flames
before they grow out of control.

Reverse SEO: The Preemptive Strike

Most companies launch a reverse SEO campaign after bad publicity has already crept
toward the top of Google’s organic listings. That is a reactive approach. The
problem is that high-ranking pages with negative press tend to generate inbound
links. Those links further strengthen the pages’ positions. As a result, they become
more difficult to suppress.

You can use reverse SEO as a preventative measure. By launching a campaign that
controls the top organic positions, you can prevent negative publicity from gaining
exposure in the first place. In effect, you can insulate your company from the whims
and machinations of frustrated customers, unhappy employees, and deceitful
competitors.

Is Reverse SEO An Essential Cog Of Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) increases your company’s exposure within your space.
On its own, an SEM campaign can deliver staggering results that translate directly
to your business’s bottom line. However, bad publicity can disrupt even the most
formidable of search engine marketing campaigns.

Reverse SEO is a vital component of any SEM effort. It protects the integrity of
your search engine marketing campaign and supports its growth. The same tools that
can be used to control the top positions in Google and prevent negative press from
gaining traction can seed inbound links to your website. This creates a well-rounded
SEM campaign that is potent on multiple fronts.

Damage Control And Online Reputation Management

If your company enjoys exposure on the internet, whether from social networking
sites, professional online trade journals, or broad media, online reputation
management is important. The number of authoritative websites that your customers,
employees, and competitors can use to spread negative press about your business is
increasing. Making matters worse, many journalists have become lax in sourcing their
stories. ORM and reverse SEO can work seamlessly together to control the spread of
bad publicity.

Negative press does not need to be accurate in order to rank well in Google. That makes reverse SEO more critical for your company than ever.

Receive a free reverse SEO evaluation and begin to take control of your company’s online reputation today.

What is reverse search engine optimization? Is that even a real thing, or just some sort of search engine marketing they practice on Bizarro World?

Regular SEO means practicing positive online reputation management and making sure your website reaches the top of the search engine rankings. But reverse search engine optimization means doing the opposite, and pushing negative press and negative reviews further down the search engine results.

Use reverse search engine optimization when your company or brand has been lambasted in the online world, and that negative review is showing up at the top of the Google search results. Reverse search engine optimization pushes the negative pages down in the ranking, but doesn’t necessarily put your page at the top.

We have a friend who once had a very unpleasant experience with his personal bank, and blogged about the experience. For months afterward, if you were to Google the name of that bank — and it was a small one, so it’s not like you were spoiled for choices — his post was the #1 result. Even now, it still appears in the top ten. But if the bank were to practice a little reverse search engine optimization, they could have that problem solved in no time.

What about when customers are Googling your name or products, but your competitor’s name is showing up at the top? While you have to admire the other guy’s online reputation management, it can be aggravating when you’re selling roses, but your competition’s tulips keep popping up instead. While you can hope and pray that the other jerk goes out of business soon, you’re better off trying a little reverse search engine optimization instead. It’s cheaper, easier, and doesn’t cost other people their livelihoods. (On the other hand, anything that happens to them after your reverse search engine optimization is just a bonus.)

Search engine marketing experts tell us that most people don’t visit the second or third page of results. So the goal behind reverse search engine optimization is to push a negative review like that off of the first page, and possibly into the fourth or fifth page.

So what are some reverse search engine optimization techniques? What can you ETHICALLY do to make sure your bad press or your competition’s results are being pushed farther down the search page?

The biggest weapon in our reverse search engine optimization arsenal: start blogging. Search engines love blogs, because they provide fresh content. And the more fresh content you have, the higher you place in the search engine results. Publish a new blog post at least two or three times a week (10 times a month).

Another reverse search engine optimization technique is to write press releases filled with your search engine marketing terms. If you sell roses in Chicago, write press releases about roses in Chicago. It helps search engines find your content useful, which boosts you up in the rankings, and pushes the other websites down.

Leaving comments in other websites is another reverse search engine optimization practice. By leaving comments on other blogs, discussion forums, and social networks with links that point to your blog posts, you tell the search engines your blog is important. If you find a blog about removing thorns from roses, leave useful comments like “I wrote about five ways to safely remove thorns on my own blog,” and then link it to your blog.

Finally, joining social networks is another great reverse search engine optimization method. Believe it or not, search engines will even post results from Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube in their search results. So don’t forget to include valuable content (including keywords) on these other sites, which will then start appearing on the top search pages.

SEM SEO experts of today have modified the practices of SEO Consulting firms of yesterday to offer techniques to their clients which are ranking higher with the search engines.  These new techniques are providing higher search engine ranking because they offer search engine users the quality content for which they are requesting information.  We are not only learning from the mistakes of our industry’s past, but the evolution of these new practices of SEO consulting professionals is providing a higher quality online experience.

Rostin Reagor Smith recently joined the social media debate on proposed FTC guidelines for social media content.  Companies, such as Rostin Reagor Smith are hired by brand managers and marketers to develop online brands through social media marketing efforts.   The proposed FTC guidelines on social media blog and comment posts will not affect Rostin Reagor Smith practices or results of our SEM SEO consultants.  The practices we use for management of public relations online will be enhanced by enforcement of regulations within the field of social media marketing.

Once again, the Internet Marketing industry is making strides to provide users with quality online content.  Just as news and magazine print made the evolution to mark advertisements as such within editorial content, regulations are placing guidelines within social media content.  Basically, if a company is posting blogs and comments within social media content, on behalf of another company, regulators are requesting that consumers should be made aware of the fact that the comments and blogs are not being written by other consumers, but are actual advertisements and promotional content.

These new guidelines leave room for interpretation, which is where the social media debate is established.  The FTC is interested in establishing guidelines to ensure that advertising does not make its way into online editorial content and that companies are held responsible for claims they are making which may or may not directly affect the public.  What they are attempting to regulate is known by the industry as Sponsored Conversation.

Sponsored Conversation has migrated to the online marketing space through social media content.  It is paid editorial content.  Sponsored Conversation was originally established as grass roots marketing efforts of the large corporation to the small business marketer.  It is cost effective and offers brand managers an avenue of direct communication with the consumer. It is also used in public relations online to manage online brands and increase consumer interest of products and services.  Sponsored Conversation is used in online reputation management and reverse SEO.

The migration of practices including questionable ethics in Sponsored Conversation is what initiated the new guidelines.  A few large social media marketing campaigns including political campaigns have used substandard guidelines within their efforts.  They have paid for placing mass comments within social media to divert the path of the conversation, enabling a positive spin to benefit the company or paying organization.

Company executives, brand managers, and politicians justify their practice by what guidelines offline media have also established.  We used the example of newsprint to make the analogy clear, but there are many examples which allow the lines of ethics to move.  The practice of product placement in movies and television, promotional sponsorships including celebrity clothing and product sponsorships establish some of the gray lines.  When is the last time our favorite golfer mentioned his clothing sponsorship on the 18th green or our favorite actor stopped a scene in a movie to establish that the product placed in the scene was actually a paid sponsorship?  So the debate continues, with reasonable question.

The practices used within the SEM SEO Formula include Sponsored Conversation to enable companies to directly communicate with the consumer.  Those practices are above board.  The consumer knows who is speaking to them.  Just as they do in offline sponsorships and product placement.

Social Media Marketing includes Article Marketing, Social Network Marketing, and creation of blog content, which are used to educate consumers on specific products or services. The practice also includes many bookmarking and tagging sites which allow social networking of friends, family and people of similar interests to communicate about a wide variety of products, services, concerns, and interests.

Social media marketing strategies work in every vertical market, for B2B marketing, consumer marketing and non profit organizations. In economic times we find today, social marketing applications are crucial to the overall marketing strategy and are necessary to engage customers to act in the very competitive markets.

A portion of the SEM SEO Expert Formula and what we use in best practices of search engine marketing will not be affected by the FTC guidelines.  The industry will be affected and driven to what will once again establish practices to offer the online consumer the highest quality content.

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• SEO with Social Marketing and Web 2.0 (rostinreagorsmith.com)

Social media optimization (SMO) is gaining momentum in SEO Consulting.  MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and similar properties that form the springboard for communities of like-minded consumers have reached a tipping point. Once a novelty, they have quickly dominated popular media. In the process, they have become the focus of social media optimization.

One of the reasons social media optimization has gained significant traction with companies is because it provides a unique marketing channel. Rather than depending solely upon traffic generated from specific search queries on Google and Yahoo!, a site can be positioned to enjoy a grassroots - and often, viral - marketing momentum. But, the strategy is not without challenges. To that end, here are the four basic tenets for a savvy social media optimization (SMO) campaign.

Encourage Community Links

Consumers are starved for compelling content. Blog posts, videos, white papers, and news feeds that inform or entertain (ideally both) are perfectly positioned to attract attention. Once such content is discovered, entire communities descend upon it and spread the word. As a result, a company’s exposure and link profile can expand rapidly. Community links are one of the underpinnings of an effective social media optimization campaign. As the members of a community spread the word, inbound links grow. And with it comes a growth in organic traffic.

Leverage Tags And Bookmarks

When sharing content with others in their community, people will always gravitate toward the path of least resistance. In the context of social media optimization (SMO), leveraging tags and bookmarks from popular social networking sites is critical. There is no shortage of plugins and scripts that allow your audience to share your content with a single click. Whether “tweeting” to their thousands of Twitter followers or seeding your content on YouTube, Flickr, or Facebook, these tags and bookmarks can help trigger a groundswell of exposure.

Identify The Best Opportunities

Not every social media site offers the same potential for a social media optimization project. Some sites cater to a younger audience. Other sites cater to a professional audience. The key is to properly isolate the target community given a company’s product line. For example, a financial services company geared toward high net worth individuals would find limited success on MySpace. On the other hand, a social media optimization (SMO) campaign that targeted professional communities on LinkedIn might be more appropriate.

Integrate Social Media Optimization

The advantages of a social media optimization project, while significant, often distract companies from leveraging SEO, SEM, and ORM. It’s important to realize that effective online promotion is a confluence of all strategies. Not only does each use a different route to increase a company’s exposure, traffic, and sales, but all blend seamlessly with one another. In effect, social media optimization (SMO) should be integrated as one of several best practices.

These basic tenets form the foundation of a social media optimization project. When crafted carefully, SMO can be used to gain access to communities that would otherwise lie beyond the reach of traditional marketing strategies.

SMO Experts in Social Media Optimization are found at Rostin Regor Smith.  Contact us today.

SEO consulting practices differ from one SEO Consultant to another. Hiring an SEO Consultant who uses optimal SEO practices can make the difference between high search engine ranking and not being found in search engine results. If you are marketing a website or are responsible for reviewing SEO Consultants or SEM Experts for your company, you cannot afford to overlook this information. Read this article and you will find the top 10 SEO practices to consider before hiring an SEO Consulting Firm.

1. Find an SEO Consultant with a proven track record of high ranking in search engines and make sure their clients are still ranking today. SEO Consulting practices of yesterday do not matter because the search engines’ considerations for higher search engine ranking change with time.
2. SEO, search engine optimization, is the practice of optimizing your site to be viewed as you intended by search engines and your online target audience. Hire an SEO Consulting firm which understands that your online market may differ from your offline market and that the demographics of that market may change as well. Find an SEO Consultant who understands your online market and the search engines will be more likely to find your site.
3. Your SEO Consultant should include SEM, search engine marketing, practices in their SEO consulting formula. SEM is a form of internet marketing used to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results. It differs from search engine optimization and the SEO Consulting firms that use SEM provide benefits to their clients by obtaining higher search engine rankings. Hire an SEO firm that does not use SEM and your competitors will rank higher.
4. Find an SEO consulting services firm that uses social media marketing and web 2.0 content to provide higher search engine ranking for their clients’ websites. If the SEO consulting firm does not include social media, do not hire them.
5. If your SEO Consultant focuses on obtaining search engine rankings lower than the top 10, or past the first page listings in search engines, you are wasting your time. 89% of clicks on search engine results are made on the first page listings.
6. Hire an SEO Consulting firm that acknowledges a difference between organic ranking and paid keyword advertising. Achieving search engine ranking through paid keyword advertising is like turning a traffic faucet on and off. Pay and the traffic is there. Stop paying and it goes away. A professional SEO consulting firm will use best SEO consulting practices to rank your site on the first organic rank, which is number 4 in search results, within the most competitive paid keyword advertising categories. If a search engine user clicks on your organic listing, that visit to your website is free.
7. Find an SEO Consultant that has a history of ranking in the #1 position on Google. 42% of clicks that come from search engine results are made on the #1 position in Google search results. 67% of the online searches are done on Google. Rank in the number one position in Google and receive 42% of the traffic on that keyword. Rank organically and that traffic will not go away.
8. Make sure your SEO Consultant is using ethical practices to promote your website. If your SEO Consultant is using poor SEO consulting practices, black hat tactics, your URL could be banned from search engine results.
9. The best SEO Consultants focus on obtaining one way links back to your site to increase your website’s value to the search engines. If your SEO Consultant does not include backlinks in your SEO SEM plan, you will have a difficult time ranking in search engine results.
10. SEO Consulting firms using research that can be substantiated by hard numbers and statistics are the only companies worth your time. If your SEO Consultant cannot back up research with solid stats of daily visitors, competitive keyword data, and keyword advertising competition, you will not benefit from high search engine ranking. This data is accessible to professional SEO Consultants and should always be available to you, the client.

Before hiring an SEO Consulting services firm, ensure that your firm meets the criteria on this “Best SEO Consulting Practices List.” This is a best practices SEO Consulting Formula which includes an understanding of SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), and also incorporates web 2.0 applications of social media marketing techniques as an additional way to rank your site higher in the search engines. Apply it and you will benefit from obtaining the highest organic search engine rankings and your results will be sustainable.

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• SEO Consultants Introduce Social Marketing, SEM, and Web 2.0 into Public Relations (rostinreagorsmith.com)

SEM SEO Experts are finding ways of establishing higher ranking in search engine results by serving quality content to search engine users. Over the past 10 years, search engine optimization techniques have evolved with the demand of the search engines to serve quality search engine results to users requesting information. That evolution has forced SEO Consulting Experts to develop new strategies for higher search engine ranking. These SEM SEO Experts have learned from the sins of the past and are achieving higher search engine rankings for their clients by avoiding black hat marketing techniques.

Ten years ago, black hat marketing techniques were used frequently to market products online. Keyword stuffing was a frequently used technique by SEO Consultants to achieve higher search engine ranking. Attempting to gain high rankings for a specifically targeted keyword or phrase, SEO Consulting Experts would employ a keyword density of up to 50% to secure first page, first position listings in search engines. Needless to say, the results found by search engine users were less than optimal and the search engines were not serving the quality search engine results they were seeking for users on Yahoo, MSN, or Google.

Another tactic that backfired on SEM SEO Experts was the establishment of link farms. Over the past 10 years, and on many sites today, SEO Consultants are using link farms to establish higher search engine rankings for their clients. Considered by SEM SEO Experts as black hat marketing techniques, link farms are a bank of links on a page which is established without a relevant theme or associated content to the link farm page. Since SEO Consultants realized a large factor in search engine ranking depended upon the number of backlinks to their site, SEO Consulting firms of yesterday were allowing clients to establish links to any page online, regardless of the theme of the website. Today, SEM and SEO Exerts are finding ways to establish backlinks from relevant theme associated content. By establishing relevant links within a theme or category, a website will be perceived at a higher value to the search engines for that particular category. SEO Consultants of today are finding that a higher perceived value within a category by the search engines, gives a website the ability to rank higher in search engine results.

Pop-up advertising and Spam are black hat marketing techniques once used by SEO Consulting Firms to achieve higher search engine ranking. Today, search engines still use traffic as a factor in search engine ranking. However submission of identical content within comments on websites, creating identical pages linked to website content, or employing advertising companies to spam online users with pop up or pop under ads just to increase website traffic will no longer assist websites in higher search engine ranking. Quite the contrary, search engines are penalizing websites which employ these black hat techniques. The penalty for using spam techniques can be as minor as a lower value to the search engines and associated search engine ranking. The penalty of using black hat techniques can be as severe as delisting with search engines for 6 months or longer.

Studying history gives us the opportunity to learn from our predecessors. SEM SEO Experts today have modified the practices of SEO Consulting firms of yesterday to offer techniques to their clients which are ranking higher with the search engines. These new techniques are providing higher search engine ranking because they offer search engine users the quality content for which they are requesting information. We are not only learning from the mistakes of our industry’s past, but the evolution of these new practices of SEO consulting professionals is providing a higher quality online experience.

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• SEM SEO Expert Formula Works in Search Engine Marketing (rostinreagorsmith.com)

SEO, SEM, SMO, ORM:  What do all these terms mean to search engine ranking and the industry of SEO Consulting?  What do the terms mean to you and me?

With websites competing fiercely for top rankings in the search engines, companies are looking to hire the best search engine optimization consultants to help them to rank better, drive more qualified traffic, and ultimately make more money.

Since search engine optimization is highly competitive, search engine optimization consultants are implementing innovative formulas to get their clients faster and better results.

Gone are the days when SEO Consulting was purely based on website design, development, keyword research and meta tags. Today, companies want and need instant results. They want their websites to be found by qualified consumers and at the same time they want to use their web presence to drive public relations efforts. All of these expectations have opened doors to more innovative ideas… and companies. Rostin Reagor Smith is a pioneer in the SEO consulting world. We have introduced SMO, Social Media Optimization, into the SEO SEM formula.

Social Media Optimization, SMO, uses social media, online communities and community websites to generate  publicity. SMO methods include; adding RSS feeds, social news buttons and blogging. Although social media optimization is related to SEM, its primary difference is that it focuses on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, thus creating a push/pull scenario to bring consumers to websites. For example, a company wishing to educate teenagers on the hazards of smoking would have a hard time getting a fifteen year old to type in “stop smoking” on Google. That company would be much more effective if it went into a social community such as myspace and presented their message there with an end result of bringing the teenager to their website.

Social Media Optimization is also an integral part of ORM, Online Reputation Management, which is essential for individuals or organizations who care about maintaining their online brands and reputations. Large companies know the value and importance of this and employ branding agencies and public relations firms, but reputations can easily be denigrated on the anonymous world wide web. The rules are different online and Online Reputation Management is becoming even more important.

By combining SEO, SEM, SMO and ORM Rostin Reagor Smith is taking SEO Consulting to a higher level. These extra initiatives yield significant results and have become a major differentiator between our clients and their competition.

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• Social Marketing, Web 2.0: The SEO Secret? (rostinreagorsmith.com)

The key to higher search engine ranking can be found through this search engine marketing formula. Over the next 10 days, we are going to post ten free steps in a formula which will help you reach top page ranking on Google and rapidly reach higher search engine ranking. SEO Consultants and search engine marketing experts try to keep these tools a secret, to maintain high search engine ranking for their online products or services.

Over the next 10 days, Rostin Reagor Smith is going to show you how to rank on your own, with free search engine marketing tools. If you are marketing products online, you cannot afford to miss this. Read on and you will find free steps to take to reach higher search engine ranking and rank in top first page listings on Google.

Why is it important to rank in search engine results and most importantly to rank in Google? 67% of online searches for information are done on Google. 98% of business to business buyers are searching on Google. If you are looking to sell products or services to consumers or businesses, your website must be found in search engine results. You can pay for the listings with Google Adwords or you can read on to find free ways to reach top first page rankings in search engines. Follow these steps and you will rank.

#1 Subscribe to this feed and you will have access to the Search Engine Marketing Experts at Rostin Reagor Smith, who will share the SEM SEO Expert Formula. The sooner you learn about new trends in SEO and SEM, the easier it will be to reach top search engine ranking. You can choose to receive the next 9 steps for higher search engine ranking through this RSS Feed in email, Google reader, or various other social media and web 2.0 applications.

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