Small business owners are an incredibly diverse group of people who know a lot about their chosen fields. Slightly less than half of all small businesses have more than one owner, and sixty percent of small business owners have worked in their industry for more than 20 years. That’s a lot of total combined experience. These owners are always looking for new ways to connect to their customers and clients and grow their businesses.

About 63 percent of small businesses find that social media is a good way to increase customer loyalty, and 27 percent plan to increase their investment in social media. When it comes to the impact of social media, 40 percent of small businesses find it helpful for customer reviews, 30 percent find useful for correcting problems brought up by customers, 18 percent find that it gives them a chance to defend against negative publicity, and only 5 percent feel that social media has hurt their image more than helped. If used correctly, it’s clear that social media generally has an overall positive effect on small businesses.

If your small business is one of the 52 percent that plan to increase their SEO budget, it’s important to make the most of your investment by implementing a sound small business SEO plan. You can do that with the assistance of an SEO company with lots of experience in managing successful small business SEO campaigns.

Embed this image on your site:

<a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/small-business-marketing-infographic"><img src="http://www.seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Small-Business-and-Marketing-infographic.png" alt="Small Business and Marketing - Infographic "width="100%" border="0" /></a>

Sources:

• SEO Attachment: The State of Marketing 2011: Unica’s Annual Survey of Marketers
• SEO Attachment: 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report: SEO.com Takeaways
• SEO Attachment: The State of Marketing 2011: Unica’s Annual Survey of Marketers PPTX (survey based on 300 online & direct marketers)
• http://www.legalzoom.com/business-management/promoting-your-business/cost-marketing-what-is
• http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbusiness/wpcontent/files/Homepreneurs_A_Vital_Economic_Force.pdf?channelid=P99C425S627N0B142A1D38E0000V100
• http://www.thegrowblog.com/content/online-marketing-beats-offline-marketing-highest-roi
• http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/more-bad-news-for-yellow-pages/3679/

I just finished reading an interesting article: The blogosphere as an excitable social medium: Richter’s and Omori’s Law in media coverage, It takes us through the effect blog content instigates online. In it the authors ran studies focusing on keyword usage to discover how people react to new information by their blogging behavior. The result was a discovery of two types of events:

Exogenous: These are events where the use of a keyword is recognized in one sudden explosion. They used the event of Sarah Palin’s nomination as an illustration by following the use of “palin.” The event drew a massive, out-of-nowhere interest in the subject. Shown in graph figure (a).

Endogenous: These events begin gradually with the use of a certain keyword increasing to an eventual climax. The scenario exampled in the article was when President Obama’s inauguration was approaching. They tracked the use of the word “inauguration” and found it to follow the format of the graph in figure (b).

In both scenarios it was discovered these occurrences—particularly the fore and aftershocks— are similar to the experience of earthquakes.

So what does this mean for SEO? We know people are reacting to and involved with blogs. We also know online interaction is increasing. The question we should be asking is, “what marketing opportunities are being missed in these scenarios?”

The above occurrences likely would have been spotted and discussed  without all the research spent discovering it. The endogenous event is one I feel SEOs are already doing well fielding for optimization and link building opportunities. However, when approaching an exogenous (or sudden) event I find these are missed opportunities.

A Call For Collaboration

More than any other issue in digital marketing, I consider collaboration among inbound marketing initiatives (PR, social, email, paid advertising, SEO, etc.) to be the biggest downfall. With more collaboration of marketing efforts these explosive events could be pushed more effectively and achieve larger gains.

Here is one instance I see this happening:

A company is featured on a large website, television show or otherwise. Likely the PR department was responsible for facilitating the appearance, but this wasn’t well communicated to the other marketing departments. Soon after follows a mass spread of information and news online about the subject. To the naked eye this seems great. The company got exposure, increased in sales and is doing well. But what was missed here:

• A well-crafted press release (for both SEO and PR purposes) could have been coordinated.
• Social media could have been building anticipation and preparing for how to push it best after—creating a well-rounded trend.
• Paid search could better prepare with additional keywords to bring into the campaign.
• Already established online relationships could have been contacted, guest blog posts and other specific link opportunities could have been brought in.
• An email campaign could have been designed for correct timing in correlation.
• Quality, fresh and optimized content could be prepared to go live on the site.
• And likely many other approaches…

From a data perspective, would you rather see one large spike in traffic and revenue that month or a consistent above-average trend all month long? Nearly every time a steady trend achieving long-term gains will be better than a single spike. By unifying marketing avenues an exogenous event will become an endogenous occurrence with long-lasting results.

I see this issue occurring in-house and from an agency platform as well. In the most recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday, Tom Critchlow did a great job explaining the importance of communication and processes to be sure SEO gets done:

…When you’re trying to get things done, processes are at the heart of everything a business does. If you want to make something happen that isn’t already happening, you need a new process, or if there is an existing process, you might need to modify that process to make it SEO friendly or make it happen in a particular way.

The integration of marketing departments needs to begin at an upper level. This is one of those new processes to set in place. SEO specialists, social media gurus and PR experts all know how to roll out an effective campaign. But what seems to be missing is the perspective that all of these campaigns can be viewed as one. What is really lacking is effective project management between the different avenues.

Let me know your thoughts. Have you had this same experience or do you have an effective process established?

Step  1 – Choose a .com

There is a lot of speculation about whether any domain or top level domain is given preference by the search engines. The search engines have said they are not, while some anecdotal evidence says they do. The following is a data table in which I compared the number of registered domains to the number of pages indexed by Google. I then listed the average number of pages indexed per domain by TLD.

This data is not scientific. It is most likely biased towards .com and .org. Many people purchase the other TLDs to protect their brand and have them redirect to the .com or .org version of their website, which causes them not to be indexed by Google. And while it doesn’t prove causation, the data is interesting and if nothing else, it shows that there are a lot more .coms out there. While we may never know for sure if one TLD is preferred over another by the search engines, this table does suggest that .com and .org are preferred by users.

Step 2 – Use your industry in your domain name

Let me preface this post by saying that some of the biggest and most successful businesses online did not follow this step. Names like Amazon, Flikr and Monster have been extremely successful. Though, the goal of this step is to help a business create a domain name that will stand on its own, not one that requires a large advertising budget to promote.

The best practice is to name your industry in the domain you choose. If you sell knives, “knives” should be in your domain name. This not only helps customers identify immediately with your product, it will also help search engine optimization as users type that keyword into their browser.

Also be sure not to stuff your name full of keywords. This looks spammy and is a huge turn-off to Internet users. Besides good link building will help you rank for additional keywords later in your SEO campaign.

Step 3 – Brand yourself

Unless you can jump back in time, or shell out big bucks, chances are that keyword you want is already taken. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Ever try going to nissan.com? It is not what you think. It is some guy’s computer shop in North Carolina with the last name Nissan. I guarantee he gets lots of unwanted traffic and his bounce rate (people going to his website and immediately leaving) is huge. The point is that having that domain name has not benefited him, just like having the name cars.com would not help you if you run a used car lot in Lubbock, Texas.

Branding yourself allows you to get creative by giving a memorable and distinct name to your company. If you already have a business name then this should be easy, just put it up front or in the back of your industry keyword. If you are starting a brand new online business then have some fun and think of something catchy.

Step 4 – Put in your geographic location

If you serve only one geographic location then you can go ahead and add it to your domain name, or use it instead of your brand. This will not only make it more likely for the people within that location to click on your site, but it will also make it less likely for people you don’t serve to click on your site.

Step 5 – Keep it to a handful of words

Obviously, the shorter your name, the easier it is to remember. In fact, there is really no reason your name should be longer than five words.

Sometimes you may need to introduce a second keyword, such as “usedcars” or “tacticalknives,” to clarify what types of products you sell. In addition, you may need to be specific in your location, and add that to your domain name. In some cases, your domain name could end up three, four or even five words. But never go longer than five.

You may tempted to use an acronym. But acronyms don’t help you with keywords or do anything for branding. Basically, you would be ignoring steps two through four. Plus, they can often be difficult to remember.

Step 6 – Make it easy to say

Stay away from names that use hyphens, numbers, slang and homonyms. This may help you get a name you might not have otherwise received, but it makes it difficult for people to remember your domain name and you will lose traffic. Besides, just imagine having to tell people what your domain name is. Names laced with hyphens or numbers get tiring.

Step 7 – Make it easy to remember

Stay away from plural words unless you can get both the singular and plural domain name. If you only get the plural, you may lose traffic to someone who registered the singular form. Also, if the “perfect name” is already taken, it is tempting to add “my,” “the” or “your” to the beginning. This can cause a less professional look and you may end up losing some traffic to your competitor without these modifiers in their name.

Step 8 – Make sure you love it

This is your brand, your website. Imagine it on business cards and on billboards. Imagine telling people every day the name of your website. Be sure it makes you proud. If it doesn’t give you pride then keep on brainstorming and go through these steps again. Keep brainstorming keywords and creative branding words. Eventually, you will stumble upon something that excites you.

A brief synopsis of the Butt-Brush Effect: Underhill observed women shopping for neckties at a department store (not in a creepy way, he was conducting research). He noticed that the racks were really close to the entrance and at peak times, women looking at ties might get brushed from behind by a passer-by. When that happened to one of the women, she would almost immediately stop shopping in that section and either go to another or just leave the store.

This is a phenomenon that occurs frequently in stores, but what about online? Is your website guilty of creating “butt-brush” moments of anxiety for your customers? Does your website violate your customers’s sense of security, comfort and control? Here are five common examples of online butt-brush moments that you should immediately purge from your website:

Pop-ups

I’m not talking about the standard spammy pop-up ads. Obviously those are bad. They’re so flagrantly bad that there’s no point in discussing them. I’m talking about the well-intentioned pop-ups like customer service chat windows or moving-target survey solicitations; obstacles that interrupt the persuasive momentum of focused shoppers.

Be extremely careful in how you use chat windows. While they can be helpful for visitors that are genuinely lost or confused, don’t interrupt a focused customer on a path to their destination. Be selective about the pages that can trigger a pop-up. Check your analytics data for high exit rates and restrict the use of interruptions to pages that are already failing.

A similar problem exists for survey solicitations. There are ways to invite visitors to take a survey without taking the entire screen hostage. A tool like KissInsights allows you to ask survey questions with a noticeable but modestly placed question box. With this type of approach, you don’t risk frustrating your website visitors to gather a little intelligence. You still want the sale, after all, right?

Hey, get out of my way. I'm trying to give you money!

Auto-play music and video

Sometimes this works for shaping the conversation and producing the outcome you want from your website visitors. For a LOT of people, it’s on par with dumping a bucket of cold water on them or – wait for it – unexpectedly smacking them on the butt.

We’ve all seen it: your default action when a video starts playing without your permission is not to watch, but to turn it off and reestablish control of your experience with the website. Make your video conspicuous enough that people will choose to start it on their own. Assuming control over your visitors in this way is bad manners.

Mind your manners. Let your visitors choose whether or not they’ll watch the video.

Kanye thinks your video is one of the best ever, too, but don't interrupt your visitors to show it.

Dramatic changes in design between pages of your site

This often occurs when shoppers go from a custom landing page to the main website, or if your website uses a third-party shopping cart with low customization capabilities.

Consistency in design is a strong comfort signal to shoppers as they progress from one page to the next. Abrupt changes to the site layout, color scheme, images, font styles/sizes, etc., can spook customers and cause them to abandon the buying process. Make sure that you maintain visual consistency from start to finish in order to keep customer anxiety as low as possible.

Concealing shipping costs until late in the checkout process

Shoppers  aren’t stupid. If your shipping prices are really high, shoppers are going to abandon the buying process regardless of whether you show them shipping price in the shopping cart or on the last page of the checkout process.

When you withhold this information on the shopping cart page, shoppers aren’t thinking, “Oh that’s OK, I’ll just keep going and they’ll show it later.” They are thinking, “Yup, the shipping is a rip-off. If it wasn’t, they’d show it right away.” It’s an instant red flag that will have your customers on high alert for the remainder of their experience with your company.

As online shoppers get more savvy, your only hope is transparency.

What other “butt-brush” moments have you noticed in your own personal experience? Please share in the comments and help us all improve the experience we provide to our customers.

When people come to your site, they are looking for one thing, and one thing only.

For us, our visitors are looking for one product: Top Search Engine Rankings. That’s really it.

Sure, they might want top rankings to get more traffic, sales, or to be above their hated competitors, whatever. But, regardless of why, when they come to us it boils down to top rankings.

They wouldn’t search “SEO” or “SEO company” in Google, then click to our site hoping to find a creative advertising agency. They usually don’t initially come to our site for social media or PPC or website conversion or whatever (although those are great supplemental services for a complete search marketing strategy). And just like our visitors, your visitors are similarly looking for just one thing.

So, what’s my point?

Address the main point.

Don’t mess around.

Make it simple.

Here are 4 commonsense ways how NOT to mess around so you can sell more stuff:

1. Directly punch your visitors in the face with what they have come to see

That’s right. Hit ‘em where it counts. Make sure your site has a clear, powerful, influencing message — which should include points 2-4 below.

2. Show why you’re really good at it

Whether you have proprietary technology, proven strategies, superb quality products, awards, third-party validation, etc., show that quickly. And remember to SHOW why you are awesome, don’t just TELL us you’re awesome. There’s a big difference.

3. Show how you’ve successfully done it for someone else

This kind of merges into the previous point. Testimonials, case studies, stats, etc., show that you’ve done it for someone else and that you can do it for the visitor.

4. And most importantly, give them an easy way to buy it

Sometimes, it really is this simple.

Then, once I got over how cool it looked (and stopped trying to figure out if I could do this myself), I did some Googling. Sure enough it’s not only fake, but an advertising campaign. Now my Internet marketing (and Video SEO) brain kicks in and this video becomes amazing again, but for different reasons. In just one month, it had nearly 4 million views. Here it is, if you haven’t seen it yet:

Where does the marketing come in? For just a second, there’s a close-up shot of the shoes they use to perform the impossible feat. Just a couple seconds, barely noticeable by most standards. Certainly short enough to make marketing directors cringe.

Nevertheless, you can’t argue with four million views. While the impact on sales is yet to be seen, let’s take a look at some other highly successful videos and see why they worked so well in gaining so many views.

Honda Rube Goldberg Machine

Let’s face it, who doesn’t love watching these machines? There’s something about the ridiculous absurdity of having so many parts to accomplish one simple task that simply fascinates us. The genius in this particular video, however, is in how well they effectively demonstrate the car’s functionality. The machine is made up completely of parts from a Honda vehicle, and they keep the machine going by using features found on the car. For example, the windshield wipers turn on automatically from a water stream.

Guitar Hero on a Bike

Guitar Hero and related music based games have seen huge popularity and success in the past decade (hey, I’m a big fan myself). This video takes the concept into a real life situation where a full music track is ridden over on a bike in nearly perfect sync to the song. The beauty of this video is how realistic it looks. You watch the video wondering how long it must have taken to get perfect. Its only downfall is when it was revealed that the dots were added in afterward using special effects. Even with this minor shortcoming, you still hear a song featured in Guitar Hero and see what the game play would look like.

OK Go Music Video

First of all, yes, I consider this a viral Marketing Video. Why? Because this video helped put the band ‘OK Go’ on the map. With 51 million views to date, it can only be estimated how many singles were sold. I never knew they existed before this video found its way into my inbox. It works because of its simplistic and comedic effect of grown men dancing on treadmills. It’s creative, simple, and it looks like it was done in the basement of one of their homes. It also lets viewers hear their song giving them more exposure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI&feature=channel (Imbed not available – Sorry!)

Stolen Nascar Video

This video is a little bit under the radar in terms of total views, but I liked this marketing campaign because of who did it. It was from Taxbrain.com, which takes on the boring topic of taxes (obviously). It’s hard to come up with a good viral video for some topics, but this company proves that it’s possible even for the not-so-obvious industries. They took the resources that were available to them, created a video that would cause some buzz, and got a great amount of exposure. Notice in particular the amount of times the domain Taxbrain.com is mentioned.

LED Sheep

Samsung also jumped onto the bandwagon recently by creating a video of sheep covered in LEDs. The shear absurdity of plastering sheep in LED’s and then herding the sheep to create moving images is enough to arouse the interest in any bored Internet surfer. Plus, the recreation of the Mona Lisa from the LEDs is also an impressive demonstration of the technology behind LED’s televisions. With a URL for Samsung at the end of the video, this video becomes a complete marketing viral video, and then sits back to enjoy its 12 million views over the next year.

Laptop Catching

While a little crude, this is still a great viral video at more than 3 million views. The concept is a couple of guys catching an MSI laptop in their butt cheeks. Even though it’s obviously fake (but real looking enough to be entertaining), the real value in this video, and why I mention it, is because it is a successfull takoff of another video that was also viral (which was a video of a guy impossibly catching sunglasses on his face). Creating parodies of other videos is a great way to piggyback the success of already existing videos.

Will it Blend

It seems hardly appropriate to mention viral videos without mentioning the now famous Blendtec “Will it Blend” videos. It’s probably gotten to the point where any internet marketer groans when they hear mention of these videos, but they persist in providing a near perfect example of viral marketing. It’s so good because:

1. They are entertaining while effectively giving viewers a literal demonstration of their product.

2. They show off their seriously powerful blenders.

3. They are not isolated to one video, but there are now hundreds of these videos. Usually, “sequels” to viral videos fail horribly, but the “Will it Blend” concept will stay fresh as long as there are items to blend.

4. They are very easily created to match current trends. For example the video below takes advantage of the release of the iPad and subsequently getting 6.5 million views in one month. From an SEO perspective, this is brilliant as these videos will show up for searches for the iPad.

A few take aways from the videos above:

• Create videos that demonstrate your product or service if possible
• Be creative with your resources.
• Create parodies of already existing videos, incorporating your business or service
• Videos should be entertaining by either being comical, or impressive (such as running on water)

I’m on a Horse

Finally, I leave you with another viral video that I found to be a personal favorite (It doesn’t quite make the list because it’s an outright commercial, but it still had a viral great presence on the Web).

If you have ever received a distinct marketing piece that drove you to a webpage where the experience was different, you know why the transition matters. Tight online/offline integration tells the visitor they are at the right place, lends credibility to the offer, and encourages further clicks down the purchasing funnel.

The URL

The first and most obvious thing to remember is the URL on the marketing piece. Since it’s a given to have it present, I’ll just remind you to make sure it’s correct. A former colleague of mine almost lost her job when a very crucial marketing campaign she headed was found to have a URL without an important slash. Most people will probably know what you meant, but don’t take that chance.

Branding Consistency

You have taken a lot of care to make the offline brand visuals just right, so make sure the experience continues to the webpage as exactly as possible. The experience entails everything from color hues and fonts to the offer wording.  Whether you promote online only discounts with your marketing pieces or any other kind of lead-in, take care to implement both sides of the campaign at the same time and with consistency. Details that don’t seem like a big deal to you will reassure a prospect that they are looking at the offer you intended for them to see.

Landing Pages

Since marketing campaigns change frequently, destination webpages should too. Unique landing pages are perfect for marketing campaigns where the aesthetic doesn’t match the company website. Landing pages can be created from scratch specifically to suit the purpose of the campaign, and can be modified as often as you change your marketing message. Keep in mind that your landing page is not the end-all of your Web presence; you want prospects to be familiar with your actual website, so keep the branding of your landing pages generally consistent with your main website.

The Other Half

Once your prospects have crossed that chasm from offline to online, you’ve got a whole new set of challenges to ensure consistency within your website down to the point of purchase. But that’s a topic for another day.

Anytime you ask a prospect to spend money, trust and confidence in your company is required. If your prospect has taken the time to follow a marketing piece to your website or landing page, it’s your job to reduce as much noise as possible to get them to buy. You can do that by creating a consistent branding experience between the offline and online parts of your marketing campaigns. If you reassure your prospects that you’ll deliver the same quality experience every time, no matter the medium, they will come back again and again.

As you look at these sites, act like you are the customer and you have no ties to either one. You go looking to buy Widget X online and you find this website listed first:

Exhibit A

How user friendly is this site?  In other words, how easy is it for a customer to look at this website and know exactly what they are supposed to do in a few seconds time?

Now, you return to the search results and you find this website:

Exhibit B

What you see above is a clean, orderly interface. You know exactly what they sell, and they make it easy to buy. The design is excellent, and the checkout process is simple.  I actually went through the process of buying a shirt on this site, and I was done after a few easy steps.

Why you should care

Sometimes website owners get so used to their website that it becomes hard to see past the usability flaws. Before they know it, the site starts looking like Exhibit A when it should look as good as Exhibit B. Hopefully you don’t have a site like the first one up above, but I’m willing to bet yours could still use some improvement. Here are a few areas where your site might be suffering and what you can do about it.

Too much text distracts from the call to action

Don’t get caught in the trap of cramming too much text onto your homepage. Unfortunately, if you try to give readers all the information at once, you risk boring or confusing them. That leads to high bounce rates and less conversions. Bounce rate refers to how many site visitors leave your site from the same page they came from, without exploring any other pages. Obviously, you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible.

How to do it right

All you need on the homepage is what leads a customer to buy now. If you want them to buy a t-shirt, put up a big picture of a t-shirt. Put the price right underneath it. Then either make it clickable, or put a big bold button to the right of it that says something like “buy now”. If you don’t sell t-shirts, apply this advice to your product. Simplicity will work anywhere.

Make your content to the point

When you have to include text on the homepage, it must be clear and to the point. Consider the what, why, when, where, and how, and answer it as concisely as possible. Test out your site content by getting somebody else to read it. If they get it the first time, and it’s perfectly clear (avoid industry jargon), you’ve got something to go with. Also, don’t forget the navigational text should be simple, too. Avoid having a top menu, left sidebar menu, right sidebar menu, mini menu, bottom menu, etc. Just put it up top or on the left side and be done with it.

Color and size matter

Pick the area on the page where you want to direct the most eyeballs and make it stand out. If it is a “Sign Up” or “Buy Now” button, color it in stark contrast to the background so it’s easy to see. Make your main call to action button larger than your intuition tells you, and put it in a prominent and clean area of the homepage. You have unlimited options, but the concept of bold and obvious remains.

You might need a redesign

Most of you would agree that the red and blue thing at the top of this post needs a website redesign. The hard part is acknowledging that your site needs one too. Moving buttons around, changing colors, and cutting out text is enough for a lot of websites, but some are too far gone. If you’re there, start from scratch with a designer you trust. Just make sure that your designer knows how to design a site that converts into sales.

Conversion is an essential part of search engine marketing because it deals with what happens after the customer has clicked on your search engine listing. Make sure you are balancing your resources between search results and conversion, because nobody will purchase your amazing product if they can’t find it on your site.

*Exhibit B is the totally rad Ugmonk.com. Buy one of their shirts.

It is great news that many companies are seeing value in SEO and SEM. It makes it easier for companies like SEO.com to persuade people to let us do what works. But the basic nature of some SEO services has led some to question whether or not the investment is worth it. It is tempting to view SEO as simply a task that once achieved by a first page ranking can be eliminated or at least outsourced for cheap.

So why is this misguided thinking?

SEO has become something much bigger than most people realize. This is why some use the term ‘SEM’ (search engine marketing), or ‘online marketing’, instead of SEO. SEO plays a very important part in what we do, but when you take into account our people who run PPC campaigns for clients, optimize site layouts for better conversion rates, re-design websites for better usability, and whatever else we do, you have something resembling a full-service web marketing firm.

More than building a link or two

Consider the advantage that comes with expertise. For example,did you read Greg Shuey’s post about building links from relevant sites? If you didn’t know any better, you might think all link building was created equal. Turns out, there is a direct correlation between link building and on-page site structure. Go back and read up to find out more.

Or how about Rick Hardman’s discussion about Twitter? As social media continues to evolve, will you have anyone to consult with about its direction? Chances are, what you know about social media’s strategic relation to SEO is already a bit dated. You could study up, but you’ve got a business to run.

Maybe you missed David Malmborg’s post on why you shouldn’t send PPC traffic to your home page. Would you have continued to send all your hot leads to a poorly laid out page if you didn’t know that it was costing you money? Maybe, maybe not. But unless you had somebody on staff that had tested a landing page versus a home page for PPC traffic, you might never even think of something like that.

Pardon me for being a bit sales-pitchy there, but when you understand what SEO/SEM entails, it becomes clear that interns won’t cut it. Because while the business world got web savvy, online marketers were moving ahead. Some simple SEO tasks became commoditized, but web strategy became more complicated as social media, video, etc., gained acceptance. In sum, it takes more now than it ever has before to get the results you want. You could do some link building and content creation yourself, but your resources would be better spent on strategic search engine marketing.