Web Marketing with Bill Fukui

Blogging has been around for a long time. In fact, Blogger.com will be celebrating it's 10th birthday in August.

Blogging still remains one of them most effective ways to build online community, credibility and expand your online presence, but you have to participate and contribute. Also, when you make entries to your blog, be sure to add photos, graphics, or images to make it more appealing and make sure you include links to credible sources for more information, including new pages that get added to your website.

The key is: Keep blogging!

I attended the ASMBS (American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery) 26th Annual Meeting in Dallas at Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center Grapevine last week.

As an industry, the bariatric surgery marketplace is an emerging market for medical advertising and marketing firms and is not as a competitively mature as the LASIK, cosmetic surgery or cosmetic dentistry industries.

Interesting though, many surgeons we talked to were familiar with more sophisticated search engine optimization strategies, like link-building, social media, and pay-per-click advertising. Yet when we looked at their website, they lacked some of the most fundemental elements, which undermined any of their more sophisticated strategies. So this entry is about some of fundamental elements when developing your website.

1- Start with organizing your website and all of its pages with your target keyword phrases in mind, first! Don't try to cram too many topics and target keyword phrases on one page. The more pages; the better. The more focused your content on every page, the better.

2- Make sure your copy is original, not duplicated text found on other websites. Many inexpensive website design firms sell templated website designs with cookie-cutter opy that can be found on many other providers who are "leasing" the same website and copy. Bottom line, search engines don't want to waste space on its servers indexing the same information over, and over, and over again.

3- Don't stop adding to your website. Whether you add new pages, change existing information, or program a blog and make regular entries, search engines will reward you for updating your website with more current and accurate information.

So before you throw all of your efforts and energy into more sophisticated optimization strategies, don't forget to do the basics first. All of your other search engine positioning efforts will make a bigger impact if given the right opportunity.

Just landed today in Dallas and will be attending the 26th Annual American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Meeting (ASMBS), to see if this medical industry can be very synergistic with our current clients, particularly our plastic surgery website marketing clients.

For years (I think I originally started looking into bariatric surgery in 2000), I believed that this industry could be a mutually beneficial relationship for patients, our clients and our business. The type of impact successful weightloss surgery can have on a patient is something I believe everyone in our agency could get behind and feel like we make a difference in the world. It is that altruistic purpose I talked about with Norton.

We have already started to work with a Los Angeles bariatric surgery practice and a Denver bariatric surgery practice. We'll see if this meeting can help accelerate our penetration in this industry and bring its providers a much needed service. Stay tuned.

Hashtags are the latest craze on Twitter. Users are including key search phrases preceded by a hash symbol (#), which helps their tweets show up on relevant searches.

For example, if I am tweeting about my new iphone, I would include the hashtag #iphone at the end of my tweet. Twitter then groups all of the Tweets that include #iphone together, so they can be easily found in a search.

It’s always a good idea to include a hashtag in your tweets, just be careful to make sure that your tags are relevant and appropriate to your topic (otherwise they will be regarded as spammy, hurting your brand more than helping).

Happy Tweeting!

My apologies for leaving those interested in Google Maps/Local hanging. Today's your day.

As mentioned earlier, the optimization strategies that may get you top listings in the "natural" or "organic" listings on Google, may not always get you top Google Local listings.

In addition to utilizing the Google Local Business Center, there are other things you can do to build more local credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

In fact, only a small percentage of business actually claim and validate listings through GLBC. It is believed that much of the local search results are more influenced by trusted sources such as the Better Business Bureau, directories such as InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze.

It also makes good sense to find other "local" sources to get your business information listed. There a lots of local websites, directories, blogs, etc. that can help improve your "local" presence and your credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

Breaking News - ComScor, Inc. recently announced that in the second week of June, Microsoft's share of the Internet search market increase by more than 50 percent from it's share prior to releasing Bing.

Bing's search share rose from 8 percent in May to 12.1 percent in by the end of last week.

The search traffic increase is in large to the $100 million marketing campaign by Microsoft to promote it's new search.

This information is credited to www.Marketwatch.com and comments about Bing are also posted

I am deviating somewhat today in my entry, as I was notified yesterday of the passing of the patriarch of Network Affiliates, Norton Frickey.

Network Affiliates was my first exposure to a career in legal and medical advertising, and I, as well as much of Page 1 Solutions, am a result of what Norton built there about 30 years ago.

Although Norton never really grasped my last name, referring to me as "Foo-too-lie," I always saw it as our little connection.

I will share one conversation I had with NF early in my history with the agency that stuck with me ever since.

I once asked him what drove him to step out of the shadows of the legal establishment and blaze the trail of legal television advertising, knowing he would be somewhat shunned by his colleagues. Did he really forsee the financial success it would bring?

He responded by saying he had no idea. But what he did know was that his message "fighting for the rights of the little guy," was something he really believed in. At the time, there were so many people with no access to the legal system, because you had to be either a company, or very well to do.

"That's not what our forefathers envisioned for our judicial system."

Then it occurred to me: If you do things with passion, for the right reason, and with a bigger, underlying atruistic purpose, success, including financial, is simply an outgrowth.

Since that time, I have tried to take that approach to sales and other things, and not focus so much on the sale, the contract or money. Rather, I focused more on providing a worthy service and products to clients that can really benefit from them. It's worked for me.

Thanks, NF!