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Social media is the darling of the new SEO verticals, but, is it really worth the time and energy you put into it?

You could calculate the rate of return based on how much an hour you or your staff spend in managing your online social media, or using analytics you could delve in even deeper.

Social media need not be the drain on staff or budget resources you may think. Built as part of your on-going marketing strategy social media is but one element in an overall plan.

Many clients plan their social media campaigns months in advance, using their other ad spends as a base for developing any social media campaigns and or plans.

Don’t forget to make sure that your social media (Facebook and Twitter) are branded across all your offline advertising and marketing materials. Letting your customers, and potential customers know the many ways they can reach out to you is half the battle.

PPC the darling of the search industry has had a hard time keeping up with its promise of equal access putting both small and big business on the same playing field.

Over time, through advertiser saturation, advertisers trial and error and the aging of the pay-per-click market it has become harder and harder for the small and medium sized businesses in well developed markets to compete with the big players.

Who else but big business could compete with the likes of Home Depot paying upwards of $50 per ad click during key promotions. Yes, there are hundreds of second and third tier search engines to use but you have to admit, Google’s market share simply can’t be ignored.

So how do you compete in such a tight market? Using an outside SEO service like Blue Bayou is your best bet when it comes to allocating your companies search engine budget. At around 5%-8% of your ad spend it’s an affordable way to maximize your ad budget especially when spread across so many verticals and networks.

PPC can be expensive but with a properly executed campaign those $0.01 – $0.05 clicks are still possible across many verticals and industries.

Google released its search figures for the past weekend that show queries for “Black Friday” rose this year over last by more than 20%. Longer-tail searches for “black friday sales” and “black friday ads” also showed impressive growth, up 50% compared to 2008. Black Friday the annual event typically marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season for consumers in the U.S.

The figures clearly show that more consumers are taking advantage of the Black Friday deals offered by various brick and mortar and online stores and more than ever you have to have an organic and paid search plan in effect well ahead of the fourth quarter.

This second article in this series discusses more about what we mean when we say adding content to your website on a consistent basis is as important as the content, and, what we mean by content.

Regardless of what your selling, product, service or information, adding content to your website on a consistent basis is an absolute must. Google, and other search engines look at a website, like any business model, believing that it should grow slowly over time, search engines are keenly aware of and particularly not kind to websites that try to become an instant one-all destination, and websites that grow too quickly. Their suspicious of, and rightly so, of automated content building systems, spitting out gibberish websites that usually are nothing more than garbage.

So, rule number one is build your website consistently over a longer period of time and make your content appropriate to promote your business or brand identity.

Second, how often do you add content? Depending on what you’re business model is will partially determine how often you add new content. As a retailer, you may add new products as they become available, some on a daily or weekly basis. An accountant or service provider may only need a minimum once a month addition, like a press release or calendar of events.

Lastly, what do we mean by content? Content is usually text based, product additions which usually have pictures, accompanied by a product description or an article about how to use the product, tips a consumer may use in selecting a service provider. A local fence company provides a checklist the consumer can print out, asking questions like, “is your next contractor insured”, “do they have over 35 years experience”, “are they a member of the BBB” they also write short tips on maintaining a fence, re-staining a fence, and fence industry news.

Content can also be an industry view or outlook written by the company president, the CEO, almost anything can be content. Who’s been hired, industry or company events. One big and tall clothing store makes its own short YouTube videos showing ‘how to tie-a-tie’, ‘how to fold slacks’, ‘how to keep slacks clean’, ‘style and color selections’.

One business owner failed to see how providing tips on landscape maintenance, maintaining potted plants, making plant selections etc would translate to improved visibility of his website until we showed him his competitors doing the exact thing. Content lends authority to a subject, consistent addition of original content is invaluable to building a strong web presence for your company, website or organization.

Having a well executed marketing plan for your business or industry should always include press releases. Why? Believe it or not, there are hungry media sources out there looking for information about your industry right now. Feeding these media sources is as simple as providing regular and relevant press releases.

Put your company on the top of their contact list for when they need information about your service or industry. This will likely increase your businesses exposure and potentially expose yourself to even more media coverage with one-on-one interviews about your business or industry.

If you don’t already, add a media or press link to your website today. I even suggest that you add a reminder to your monthly calendar, then add at least one press release per month or more often as needed.

We counsel new clients everyday, and in search engine optimization much of what holds true for one, holds true for another when it comes to the basics. And one rule that always stands above the others is the following: Add new and original content to your website on a consistent basis.

What do we mean by consistent basis? It can be daily, weekly or even monthly. Whatever schedule you choose, stick to it like it was the single most important step you can take with your website to improve your organic search ranking because it is.

Content is king, and in an information age content will continue to be king however, the consistent adding of content is queen. Without one, their can be no other. The consistent adding of new original content is like search food to the search engines, and like goldfish, can be trained to come back to the same spot to be fed.

Now, what do we mean by content? Sign up now to receive our free newsletter or watch the blog later this month for the second article in the series.

Typically, making changes to your website during the beginning to middle of the 4th quarter is considered too late for results in your search engine ranking.

The big ‘but’ however is that anytime is a good time to correct deficient websites, adding better product descriptions, making sure each page meta tags are in-place and that they are entirely different than that of every other page and correction of non-working links.

Making any other change, especially a site redesign this time of year is not advised and in-fact can hurt much more than it can help.

As always is the case, making changes to a website should be done slowly over time and deliberate with each change.