Our popular “What Small Business Owners Should Know and Do!” workshops will be starting up in Nov - Learn how to make Internet Marketing work for Your Business!

Internet Marketing Primer (Wed, Jan 18th)
Learn Internet Marketing trends, terms, and how a Comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategy will bring customers into your business.
Website Design, Development and Promotion   (Wed, Jan 25th)
A successful Internet Marketing Strategy starts with a great website.   Learn how to ensure your website is the ‘value hub’ of your multidimensional marketing strategy.
SEO and Copywriting  (Wed, Feb 1st)
Learn how to ensure your words, messages, and the continuous flow of value,  result in your customer ‘tuning in’ to your business.   This is the essence of Pull Marketing and vital to the success of your Internet Marketing strategy.
Social Marketing / Networking  / Engagement  (Wed, Feb 8th)
Discusses social engagement, so important to participating in the conversation your customers are either having about you – or your competitors.   You need to be ‘talked about’.   Learn how to make that happen.
Using Google Analytics to Guide Your Strategy  (Wed, Feb 15th)
Know your customer and your market better using analytics and social listening systems.  Your customer will tell you how to market to them – you just need to listen.  We will teach you how.

Enroll Now!

When:  Every Wednesday, 8:30-10am, starting Jan, 18th

Women’s Business Center
8527 Bluejacket
Lenexa, KS  66214
913-492-5922
dbrowning@kansaswbc.com

As many of you know who attended our ITSOkc Workshops, CONTENT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT consideration of your Internet Marketing Strategy.  Turns out, Google feels the same way.

If you are writing your own content, using authoritative references, and focusing on providing your readership with value (content your user will subsequently think: “I’m glad I read that”), then Pandas will most certainly be your Cute and Cuddly friend.  You’re gonna like Google’s Panda effort.

So what is Google’s Panda?

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam,  announced  Panda this way:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

The last thing Google wants is searchers to be unhappy with what their search results.  Panda is Google’s effort, launched in Feb 2011, to lower the ranking of poor quality sites, and increase the ranking of high quality sites.

What makes a high quality site according to Google?

Here it is straight from Google:

In recent months we’ve been especially focused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results. The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites, so most of you reading have nothing to be concerned about. However, for the sites that may have been affected by Panda we wanted to provide additional guidance on how Google searches for high-quality sites.

Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals. Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. In fact, since we launched Panda, we’ve rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.

What counts as a high-quality site?

Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find “high-quality” sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content. The recent “Panda” change tackles the difficult task of algorithmically assessing website quality. Taking a step back, we wanted to explain some of the ideas and research that drive the development of our algorithms.

Below are some questions that one could use to assess the “quality” of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.

Of course, we aren’t disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don’t want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google’s mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we’ve been looking at the issue:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

So, what should you do to make sure you are a Panda Friend?  Here’s my take:

1. Write original, keyword savvy content
2. Reference ‘snippets’ from authoritive sites, provide links to the referenced site, and even props (give direct credit) – mashups are fine and even encouraged, but keep the percentage of original content as high as possible.   Google is really cracking down on ‘scraped’ copy …

Just think, the last round of ITSOkc classes had us driving thru snow storms. This series ended with a super heat wave – but, alas, Fall is Coming and so too will be a new Internet Marketing Workshop Series. Let’s call it the … ITSOkc Internet Marketing Fall 2011 Series.

Can’t wait to get started again … We are thinking we will start early September so check back! Better yet, sign up for the ITSOkcNewsletter to be among the first to know.

Finally, tell what topics you would like us to cover right in the Newsletter Signup Form.   We want to know!

See ya soon!

So what’s next?   What’s coming in 2011?   As excited as we are about our past year, we are even more excited about what’s coming.

Here are some of the topics we cover:

• Inbound Marketing – The New Internet Marketing Standard
• Social Media Marketing (destined to be very popular)
• WordPress 3.x
• SEO
• Website Design
• Copywriting
• Blogging
• Newsletters

ITSOkc will teach Small Business Owners “Internet Marketing – What Small Business Owners Should Know and Do” to achieve Business Success – Online.

ITSOkc truly is a great place to learn AND to meet other Small Business Owners who simply want to learn and make the most of the Internet Marketing and Business Development opportunities available today!