Our questions of the day today comes from Al Ferriulo of Ferriulo & Associates, a provider of Health Insurance Plans for people throughout Texas.

Here’s the answer to your question, Al.

What is better from an SEO standpoint, creating a blog with it’s own unique website, or incorporating it as a page within your current website?

This is a question I had to address for my own business.  For several years I had a blog separate from my main website.  About two months ago I relaunched my main web site as a blog on the WordPress platform.

The reason I did this is so I could have one domain where people could get information about our company and the search engine optimization plans we offer while still having the ability to blog and connect with our readers through their comments.

From an SEO perspective this accomplishes two things:

We are continually adding content to our main site, which the search engines love,

Any new links to our blog posts count as deep links to our domain.

Google puts a lot of emphasis on incoming links when ranking a page, while Yahoo and Bing, though they also factor incoming links into their rankings, they tend to put more emphasis on the content.

So, by having our web site and blog on one domain, it helps our own SEO efforts and helps to solidify our rankings.

I feel that incorporating your blog into your website is the best way to go from an SEO perspective.

To your success!

Ken Partain

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Thanks to Carisse Garcia at My Techie Friend for submitting her Top 3 Online Marketing Questions.

Here are your answers Carisse.

What is the quickest and easiest way to generate targeted traffic to your web site?

First, let me say that the easiest and quickest way is not usually the best way.  Having said that, pay-per-click (ppc) advertising is probably the quickest and easiest way to get targeted traffic to your web site.  Within just a few minutes you can have an Adwords account set up with Google and have an ad created for your most important keywords.

The most effective way to get targeted traffic is to optimize your web site for natural search.  That way, you have a very good chance of ranking well in all the major search engines, not just the one you are advertising in.  Visitors from natural search also convert better than visitors from paid search.  In my opinion, that’s because people trust the natural search results more than the ads.  They feel like, if the search engine ranks it highly, it must be more relevant to their search.

There’s a great article today over at Search Engine Land titled Selling SEO Projects against PPC Campaigns, that gives a little more information on the comparison.

What do you do with the traffic you generate?

Provide them with lots of content about what you do and how you can help solve their problems and ease their pain.

You can also begin building a relationship with your visitors by offering a free newsletter, free download, free audio or video, etc.  Then build a sales funnel with higher priced products and services and continue to build trust with them and offer them more expensive products and services.

How do you target pre-qualified searchers that are intereste in your niche?

The best way to do this is by conducting keyword research.  Find out how people are searching for your niche, then find out where they hang out online.  Is it in Google groups?  Is it on Twitter? Is in on Ning? Is it a forum created around your niche?

Find out those things, then get involved where your target market is hanging out.  Provide them with good information without being sales-y and start to build your reputation as an expert within that group.

To you success,

Ken Partain

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Thanks to Rebecca Romo of SHA Insurance, a Life and Health Insurance Agent in Allen, Texas, for being the first person to submit her Top 3 Online Marketing Questions.

Here are the answers to your questions, Rebecca.

How do you make your business successful online?

As with most questions this broad, the answer is really “it depends”.  It depends on what type of business you are in and what your objectives are.

However, there are several things any small business can do to improve their online presence and help connect with their target market.

1. Establish a web presence.  You can do this several ways, but the most important way, in my opinion, is to have a web site that you control.  With our own website you have full control over the content of the site, how it is marketed, how well it is optimized, etc.
2. Get your business listed in relevant online directories.  There are a multitude of online directories, both free and paid, that you can list your business with.  Some of them, such as MerchantCircle, are a very good alternative if you absolutely can’t afford to build your own web site as I mentioned in #1.  We offer Local Search Engine Business Profiles that are very well optimized for local search and provide a good snapshot of your business, not to mention they are very inexpensive.
3. Get involved in Social Media and Social Networking even if you don’t have the first clue about how to proceed.  Get yourself listed with sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and slowly learn more about each one and how you can use it to connect with your target market and grow your business.

What is your favorite part of online marketing?

This seems to be a more personal question and my answer is optimizing small business websites.  I love seeing a company go from generating very few, or in some cases absolutely no leads from their website, to generating a consistent flow of quality leads because of the work we do.

Search engine rankings are not the be all, end all anymore.  With the introduction of Universal Search and Personalized Search from Google, evey single person could get different search results when looking up the same keyword phrase.  Therefore, the only true measure of how effective your optimization is, is whether or not your business improves as a result.

If you had to start marketing online again, what would you do differently?

I’ve done a few projects in the past where I just leaped out, spent a bunch of money on image stuff like logos, letterhead, business cards, etc. only to find later that the market either wasn’t there, or wasn’t willing to pay for the services we offered.

If I had it to do again I would do more market research before spending a bunch of money developing a web site and other materials.  I would start with some of the free tools available online and find out if there was a need for my idea and how big of a potential market there was for our product or service.

Then I would do everything I could to keep expenses to a bare minimum and not make any long-term obligations until the business started picking up steam.

I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

To your success!

Ken Partain

Follow Me On Twitter

I read an article over at FastCasual.com today entitled How To Use The Mobile Web.  It didn’t really go into how to use the mobile web, but it did point out a couple of things that can help you stay a step ahead of your competition.

1. There is a  new site called Ubik.com that allows you to create your very own mobile web site in about 15 minutes.
2. Claim your local listing in Google maps.

There are also some nice plug-ins and themes available for Wordpress that will make your site mobile friendly.  Another service I have used in the past is Mofuse.com, which will allow you to either mobilize an existing blog or create a mobile website from scratch.

The thing that merchants don’t realize, especially in vacation towns like we live in, is that people don’t typically take their laptops on vacation.  I am definitely an exception to that because in the past ten years I haven’t gone on one vacation without mine.

Anyway, most people go on vacation and all they have with them is their new iPhone or Blackberry or other smart phone.  Besides the local paper, that’s the only thing they have to find local restaurants, shops and other services.  And even if they do bring their laptop, they usually don’t carry it around with them all day like their cell phone.

If you don’t have a web site that is readable on these devices and can be easily found on these devices, you are missing out.  If you are one of the firsts ones in your area to grab this mobile marketing bull by the horns, it could have a major impact on your business.

To your success!

Last week I received a hand-written note (see image below) from one of the developers at Wufoo, a company that makes free forms and online surveys for your website.  I was blown away.

I deal with literally hundreds of sites online and have all kinds of services running and this is the first time I have received any communication of this kind.  Most companies I deal with haven’t even sent an email thanking me for my patronage, much less take the time to hand write a note, stick it in an envelope that is hand-addressed and stamped and get it in the mail.

I signed up with Wufoo a couple of years ago but haven’t done much with them until recently.  I have been very impressed with how easy it is to create custom forms and add them to my website.  There is so much you can customize that you really need to check out their site and see just how many ways you can use their service.

We make marketing easy, and Wufoo makes online forms easy.