There are millions of website online in 2011.

Nowadays, there is competition within every niche market. New websites pop up every day, making the internet a very crowded place.

How do you connect with your target market?

That is literally the million dollar question. How can you beat out your competitors & have your digital customers find you?

The short answer is it is possible, but it does require a large effort in time and unless you are willing to spend even more time manually doing certain SEO processes, money.

In this post, I’m just going to go over some very high level items that will help you get started.

In any case, a website owner MUST either learn SEO strategies OR hire a SEO professional. In the best of worlds, the website owner would perform certain SEO tasks them selves and contract out other tasks.

A good SEO professional is usually a web designer and has an understanding of programming. Legit SEO professionals will outline their strategies in how they will help your website gain online visibility. But SEO is only 1 part of the equation.

If your website is not a typical retail business, or offers specific services the best way to find new customers may be to leverage social media. Word of mouth sometimes is the best way to sell your services. Social Media Optimization or SMO as it is known is the term for properly configuring your social media.

Connecting with certain people on Twitter or Facebook is like hitting the Jackpot

Connecting with reputable people who have high status with online communities can make or break your business. Receiving a positive rate or testimonial from certain people can create a huge buzz. Finding and impressing these people is the hard part.

With the Internet changing so rapidly, new methods of finding your target market are just around the corner.

Keep your website’s visibility on the cutting edge by hiring the right SEO / SMO professional today!

Rehoboth Beach Bodywork needed their content moved into a CMS so we chose WordPress for its ease of use and shorter learning curve for the user. Additionally we custom wrote a couple of web applications to handle the specific types of content, including massage types. We also did analysis of keyword density per page, and came up with improvements to the existing content. We also implemented some other Search Engine Optimization tricks within the site to increase traffic.

The project turned out to be very successful for both the client and us.

Please check out the Rehoboth Beach Bodywork website as a great example of a superior site done on a limited budget.

Geoff Matheson Design took care of the graphic design for this WordPress site, EJHost did all of the keyword research. proper tagging, and other elements of SEO for the site.

The best explanation for SMO comes from, yes.. Wikipedia itself. So we’ve reprinted the Wikipedia article just for those not aware of SMO (linked here).

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Social Media Optimization (SMO) or Social SEO is the methodization of social media activity with the intent of attracting unique visitors to website content. SMO is one of two online methods of website optimization; the other method is search engine optimization or SEO.

There are two categories of SMO/Social SEO methods:

(a) Social media features added to the content itself, including: RSS feeds, social news and sharing buttons, user rating and polling tools, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos

(b) Promotional activities in social media aside from the content being promoted, including: blogging, commenting on other blogs, participating in discussion groups, and posting status updates on social networking profiles

Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

Social Media Optimisation (SMO), is not limited to marketing and brand building. Increasingly smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (ie. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more). Additionally, Social Media Optimization is oftentimes implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business to consumer relationship.

According to search engine expert Danny Sullivan, the term “social media optimization” was first used and described by Rohit Bhargava.^[1] Bhargava’s original five rules for conducting social media optimization are:^[2]

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup
6. Get communities connected

Their new SEO guide includes (from Google):

About two years ago we published our first SEO Starter Guide, which we have since translated into 40 languages. Today, we’re very happy to share with you the new version of the guide with more content and examples.

Here’s what’s new:

- Glossary to define terms throughout the guide
- More example images to help you understand the content
- Ways to optimize your site for mobile devices
- Clearer wording for better readability

The original article about Google updating its SEO Starter Guide was published here.

Here is a link to the SEO starter Guide:

Prior version of Play Therapy Delaware

New Play Therapy Delaware Website

Play Therapy Delaware

Play Therapy Delaware was recently relaunched with its new brand and look of the website. Carol Bouzoukis contacted EJHost regarding increasing both the traffic to her website and her number of clients. Her old website needed a complete makeover + it needed to be optimized for Search Engine Optimization. The project included creation of a new logotype for her site, minor updates to copy writing, proper html and image tagging, increasing the depth of her content, addition of a blog, and keyword targeting for SEO optimization. The budget for this project was under $1,000, so most of the development time was spent on design, properly tagging her site and html optimization. WordPress was used as the CMS and a custom theme was designed. After the completion of the project, PLay Therapy Delaware is now positioned for an advertising / marketing campaign with Google AdWords or another PPC program.

Geoff Matheson Design took care of the graphic design for this WordPress site, EJHost did all of the keyword research. proper tagging, and other elements of SEO for the site.

EJHost is currently running a special on hosting. Our hosting Quick Plans, normally costing $10 / month have been reduced by 50% to $5 / month through August 7th, 2010. Please use the code: AUGHOST to take advantage of this hosting special.

EJ Host Loves SEO!

In addition to the hosting special, EJHost is also currently running a SEO services special. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. Have your site analyzed and a proposal put together for FREE! Just use our contact form and send us your site name and some background about your business. Together we can put together a plan of SEO your site and to increase your online presence. EJHost’s SEO services typically start around $700, however it is possible to focus on parts of SEO for much less. We will work with any budget and have put together many successful campaigns for varying budgets. Make sure you mention you saw our special.

Unlike some of our competitors, we do not try to package our SEO services into plans like you can for hosting. Whereas hosting has clearly defined services, SEO services shouldn’t be broadly defined and each business is truly unique. We will do the legwork to find who your customers are and how to appeal to those customers. While it is difficult to explain the inner workings of SEO, it IS extremely important to provide clear quantifiable goals. The mechanics behind SEO vary greatly site to site and really are dependent on each business’ goals. Read more about SEO using the EJHost method here.

Need SEO, get Hosting for Free!

We will also provide 1 year free hosting with the purchase of any SEO package.