startup hustle

In October of 2006 I joined a startup as a marketing manager, which means I was the marketing department. My only post college experience was as a marketing/product strategist for a year. I came into the startup with no knowledge of SEO or paid search, but I was responsible for both. About 2 weeks before starting I was handed Aaron Wall’s SEOBook and started my SEO education. With the help of an outsourced SEO consultant already being used by the startup, I had become versed in the meta text, keyword research and link building techniques.

The problem I have now is I’m the average SEO guy.

I want need to get to the next level of SEO. I now manage the SEO tasks for multiple sites and have the chance to test and experiment different SEO tactics (which I believe is essential). I try to read as much as I can but only find a few select authors actually provide a view behind the curtain of advanced SEO tactics. I believe, as with any industry, those that find a competitive advantage are not going to announce it on a blog or forum.

So how do I reach the next level of SEO?

I figured I would continue to test my own theories as well as those I read about from the “experts”. Then I begin to wonder if the real SEO experts are really spending their time blogging at all. SEO bloggers often keep the sites they work on secret so you can’t dissect the links and keywords they use. The only site you can judge SEO experts on is their blog.

So where does this leave me? That’s a good question.

Have you started your 2008 Marketing Plan yet? If you are lucky enough to actually have a marketing budget, you need to plan where to spend it. Most startups do not bother with such nonsense, there are more important tasks to complete. It is nice to have an established (working) plan so you can see the differences as the year progresses. Where should you spend that marketing money?

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Have you thought of using banner ads in your marketing? Ad blindness (aka banner blindness) is becoming an increasing issue for advertisers. Think of Times Square (on the left), do you really get anything from all of those billboards, or do you just ignore them?

When marketing on the internet, banner ads are a common medium for sites that are trying to reach a target market. Ads are often in the same positions on the majority of sites. This makes it simple for people to ignore banner ads. Are banner ads worth the cost when ad blindness is an issue?

For example, you decide to post a banner ad on a Blog A. Of course the cost varies, most often on the traffic stats of the publishing site. You eagerly watch your analytics for the traffic and conversions. After a month the blog owner is ready to sign you up for the next month, but after looking at your stats you are hesitant. Were your expectations to high? Was Blog A the best site to advertise on?

I often evaluate the effectiveness of banner ads as if they are pay per click ads. I compare the cost per click of the ads (total clicks / month ad cost) as well as the number of conversions. The most common result is a banner ad that is competitive in the cost per click, often slightly higher, but low conversions. This draws the conclusion that ad blindness is not as prevalent as reports indicate.

Maybe banners ads are not a conversion generating advertising medium.

Did you ever think of banner ads as brand advertising? Your logo displayed on a market relevant blog could insinuate quality. The question I often ask is what do internet users perceive of the ads on a site. If you deem a site as quality, do you consider the sites that advertise to be quality as well? Are companies that advertise on Techcrunch better than companies that advertise on StartupSquad?

Banner Ads could be a “safe” version of text ads.

Now that Google is trying to reduce paid text links, banner ads might help get the PageRank pushed through to your site. Just make sure that you negotiate the removal of the nofollow tag.

There is not a defined answer of how well banner ads will work in your marketing mix. Like all aspects of internet marketing, testing is necessary. Let us know how banner ads have working for your site.

The online marketing community is buzzing about the new Google PageRank (PR) update and the number of sites that are dropping PR. If you are a seasoned internet marketer this update creates enough problems, but those new startups with fresh sites, you have a chance to stay clear of the new line Google has drawn.

The new PR update shows evidence that Google is trying to fight link buying. Selling and buying links is a popular way to increase your PR, especially if you are a new startup that needs love from Google. The link buying process will become even more covert now that Google is penalizing sites that are buying and selling links.

Be very careful with buying and selling links as you launch your new startups site.

The last thing a startup needs is to fight a Google penalty out of the gates. As Google is turning link buying into a black hat SEO act, it would be best for young entrepreneurs to stick with white hat SEO techniques till the dust settles.