The founders of HubSpot, Inc., Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, last week announced the publication of their new book, Inbound Marketing: Getting Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs (Wiley).

Full disclosure: I edited this book, so this post isn’t a book review nor was I paid (or even asked) to write it.

. . .

The one reason I really like Inbound Marketing is because Brian and Dharmesh talk about viewing one’s Website as a city or hub. You can have a Website that’s a small town, like Bath, New Hampshire (pop: 893), which has one road in and out — like this:

Or, you can have a Website that’s New York City where all roads, trains, buses, and planes lead to it — like this:

Because a small town Website has only one road to it, it has little in the way of visitors.

A large city Website has hundreds of ways to visit due to links from blogs, industry portals, other Websites, social media, and search engines — hence it gets loads of traffic all day every day.

If you want your Website to be an asset, you must view it as a thriving metropolis, and as Brian stated at HubSpot’s book launch party on Friday, October 16, you have to use all of the tools currently available to encourage people to visit it.

The more roads or paths you create, the more traffic you drive to your site, and the more leads / conversions / sales you get.

That in a nutshell is the basis of inbound marketing (a term coined by Brian and Dharmesh).

Brian and Dharmesh wrote Inbound Marketing because they wanted to share what they’ve learned as the founders of HubSpot and why marketing is changing. In it you’ll find their explanation for why inbound marketing works, and why it’s really important that you “get” the concept of inbound, as well as hundreds of practical tips for creating your own inbound marketing hub.

Although I consider myself a fairly sophisticated Web marketer, I learned quite a bit while editing Inbound Marketing. The book is an easy and interesting read, it’s geared toward small business owners, and it’s full of “real world” case studies on companies, from Zappos.com to Whole Foods Market, using inbound marketing tactics to reach customers and prospects.

So be sure to pick up your copy of Inbound Marketing — and be sure to download HubSpot’s new e-book: Hiring in the DARC Ages: Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?

The e-book is a chapter from the Inbound Marketing book and it’s really fabulous as Brian and Dharmesh explain how to hire people who understand social media and inbound marketing — and how to apply it. After reading it, I realized I bring far more value to my clients than I knew.

Brian and Dharmesh, thank you again for the opportunity to work with you, and congratulations on your book and business success.

The SEO world is abuzz with Google’s confirmation that it does NOT use the keywords in the meta keyword tag when determining how a site ranks in the search engine.

In its Google Webmaster Blog, Google states, “Google doesn’t use the ‘keywords’ meta tag in our web search rankings.”

For those of you who don’t know, the meta keyword tag is found in your HTML source code. To find it, open your Web browser and click “View” and then “Source.” This will open a new page where you can see the HTML code. As an example, I’ve shown Yahoo’s! Title and meta tags below:

I’m glad Google repeated their stance about the keyword tag again — because quite frankly, I’m still amazed at the number of people who think that the keyword tag is important.

One prospect called me a few months ago, for example, asking about my SEO services. When I gave him a quote, he choked due to sticker shock and said he had to “get back to me” (re: find a cheaper alternative).

He called me a few weeks later to exclaim, “My site’s optimized! I found someone to do it for me.”

I had to laugh because the SEO “expert” had simply put keywords in the keyword meta tag.

I’ve had other companies say, “We want to rank for this keyword,” and when I say, “Well, you need content to support that keyword” (as in a new page or pages plus links), I usually hear, “Can’t you just put keywords in the keyword tag?”

Short answer: No.

So people, listen up. Google does not and never did look at the keywords in the keyword tag. Period. If you don’t want to listen to me, do pay attention to Google’s Matt Cutts.

According to the experts at Planet Ocean, publishers of Search Engine News, “. . . very soon any business, small, large, local or international must include a plan and strategy to incorporate Local Search optimization efforts into their online marketing plan or be left to catch up on those who do.”

This is basically the same thing I said in my MarCom Strategist newsletter, “Increase Business with Local Search” (I read SE News after publishing it, so obviously great minds think alike!).

In short, local search is going to be BIG! HUGE! (as Julia Roberts says in the movie Pretty Woman) so it pays to take steps now to ensure customers / prospects can find your site when they’re searching for it — whether they’re down the street or across the U.S.

In addition to having a site optimized for search engines, you also need to get your business listed in the three search engines’ local listing centers.

Before you begin, take a moment to ensure you have accounts with all three search engines. You’ll need a Windows Live ID for Bing.

Google Local Business Center
Yahoo! Local
Bing Local Listing Center

Once you open your accounts, you’re effectively creating profiles people can see, so you’ll want to take a minute to ensure that people you don’t know are viewing only the information you want them to see.

Setting up your local listings is pretty easy but can take a good half hour or more — and after having just added my listing to Yahoo and Bing, I have three tips you can do before-hand to help you save some time.

1. Create a tag line — Each listing center requires you to include a tag line of approximately 150 to 200 characters that describes your business. Be sure to develop a tag line that describes what you do using action verbs and plain English.

2. Write a description — Yahoo and Bing also require that you include a longer description where you can flesh out the services you offer and what makes you unique from your competition.

I created a really good one for Yahoo and then kicked myself when I realized that I couldn’t access my Enhanced Yahoo Listing since it’s pending review — hence, I had to make a new one for Bing from memory.

So be sure to have your tag line and description ready to go in a separate document when updating or adding your local listings. (This step ensures that your tag and description are the same across all three platforms, too.)

3. Have images ready to go — All three local listing platforms let you upload images, including photographs of your products (or yourself) and videos. Save time by having these images and/or URLs ready to go.

In addition to the basic listings, Yahoo offers an Enhanced Listing for $9.95 per month and a Featured Listing for $24.95 per month.

And speaking of Yahoo, you can also pay $299 annually to be listed in the Yahoo Directory. Now, I’ve read in places that getting listed is good for SEO as Google considers the directory a trusted source. (This is because a “real” person reviews each directory listing.)

However, some people believe that a Yahoo Directory listing can adversely affect your Yahoo rankings, so I can’t advise you whether you should pay the fee or not.

And, if you were grandfathered into the Yahoo Directory the way I was (and hence don’t have to pay the $299 annual fee) and you’re listed in the wrong category but your URL is correct, just leave it alone (which seems to be the general consensus).

And that’s it for setting up local search listings. Once they’re complete, you’ll then want to ask your customers to post online reviews to sites such as Yelp — which is a Google Partner — as reviews are now part of the local search algorithm.

When I give presentations and people ask if they should be on LinkedIn or Facebook or both, I tell them that both social networking sites fill a similar function but that the social “rules” are very different.

LinkedIn is like a professional meeting or face-to-face networking function. You know how to dress (no jeans or sexy clothing) and mingle with people.

You know that you don’t pick up chicken with your fingers or talk too much about yourself (the best networkers always ask lots of questions of the people to whom they’re talking).

In short, “business professional” is a mode of behavior and dress that we all know and feel comfortable with.

That’s why many people like LinkedIn — it feels comfortable and familiar.

Facebook, according to the anecdotal evidence I hear, causes anxiety. This is because Facebook is like attending a Saturday BBQ at your boss’s house.

The event itself brings up a whole host of questions for which the rules aren’t clear — especially if you’re in corporate or work for a conservative company:

Which clothes should you wear? For women, this is particularly tricky: can you wear the sexy sundress or should you stay with something more modest?

Can you eat that BBQ chicken and corn on the cob with your fingers — which can become pretty messy — or stick with something safe?

Should you drink?

Do you bring the spouse? The kids? The pet dog?

What do you talk about? Business? Personal? The books you’re reading? What if you don’t read and watch trashy reality TV shows instead? Is that something you want everyone to know?

Now I know many people use Facebook quite well for both business and pleasure — and that they’re able to keep their personal lives separate from their business lives via the judicious use of groups within Facebook.

I also know that people feel quite relieved when I tell them they really don’t have to use Facebook for business.

In fact, many people tell me they use it only to keep up with far-flung family and don’t use it for business — that’s why they use LinkedIn.

And some people even admit they don’t have a Facebook page at all.

Here’s the bottom line with regard to social media: Do what makes you feel comfortable.

Along that note, I decided to delete my Facebook profile altogether.

After reading The Power of Less, I decided it was time to simplify my life, including my online life.

So, I deleted my profile in order to stop worrying about the fact that I had a profile that I virtually ignored.

How do you use Facebook and/or LinkedIn — and how do you feel about each one? I’d love to hear your story.

Yield Software is offering its new free e-book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small & Growing Businesses (no registration required).

(Full disclosure: Yield is my client and I helped put the book together.)

The 70-page e-book explains why small and medium-sized businesses need to sit up and pay attention to the Link Economy.

As authors Matt Malden and Derek Gordon state in the book, it’s no longer enough to simply have a website.

These days, you must understand and employ the Link Economy — which means you must create content that other site owners will want to link to and in turn, you must link out to other content.

The Link Economy concept is something I knew about based on my own business and how people find me but I didn’t connect the dots in a big picture way until I began working on the book.

What hit home for me: links don’t just happen between website and website.

They happen when someone includes a link to your blog post via a Tweet, another blog post, a news article, a Facebook or LinkedIn comment, or an e-newsletter article.

They happen in iPhone apps, in YouTube videos, and within e-books like this one.

And they happen when someone comments on your blog and you comment on theirs.

In short, we are a Linked Economy and the sooner you as a business owner or marketer understand this — and take advantage of it — the further ahead you’ll be.

A Silicon Valley start-up, Yield Software offers its Yield Software Web Marketing Suite.

The software enables small and mid-sized businesses to automatically perform multivariate testing for SEO, PPC, and landing page optimization across all three search engines — and then serves up the best performing pages automatically in real time.

Based on my own experience working with small companies, this type of software is desperately needed as many small mom and pop shops are losing their shirts on PPC campaigns and have no clue to how to maximize SEO and landing page tactics.

Be sure to download the e-book (it’s chockablock full of Web marketing info) and do check out Yield Software.

You can test drive the software via a risk-free, no obligation demo.

According to the new 2009 Lead Generation Benchmark by ExperiGenExperts and Mac McIntosh, Inc., the vast majority of B2B lead generation professionals use multiple methods to reach key groups of prospective customers.

“Leads from Website” topped the list of most productive lead generation tactics at 59.4%, with Inside Sales/Telemarketing (51.7%), Outside Sales/Account Executive (47.2%), and Email (39.4%) rounding out the top four lead generation methods.

B2B companies continue to use tradeshows (27.2%), direct mail (20.6%), and social networking (14.4%), but these sources don’t yield high conversion rates.

That companies see high conversion rates from Website leads isn’t surprising. According to a June 20, 2009 B2B Magazine article, “Natural Search Adherents Learn the Value of Tweets and Tweaks,” B2B marketers have realized in the last six months that search engine optimization (SEO) is the “most effective way to get traffic, leads, and sales.”

According to the article, SEO is on the rise due to the drop in PPC ad spend.

Both the survey and the article struck me as a bit funny. I feel like I’ve been preaching the benefits for SEO for years and only now companies are “getting” it.

These days, not having an optimized site is just plain stupid and short-sighted given the fact that we’re now a linked economy — and that SEO and search is dramatically changing.

Due to these changes, simply having a Website won’t suffice if a company wants to remain in business.

Interestingly, about one third of benchmark participants believe that some lead generation activities generate responses that should go directly to sales for follow-up, including leads from tradeshows, Web inquiries, leads from channel partners and responses from email campaigns.

I found this interesting because the benchmark survey didn’t define the type of lead coming from the Web — someone who downloaded a white paper? Attended a Webinar? Signed up for a free trial or a demo?

A person who downloads a white paper for example, is not as qualified as someone who signs up for a free 30-day trial.

However, according to the benchmark survey, the majority of respondents “believe that most responses from lead generation activities need to be further qualified before being passed on to sales as leads.”

The benchmark survey also asked respondents who should provide the list or database for lead generation. Two-thirds (66.7%) stated that marketing was responsible for providing prospecting lists for lead generation.

As the benchmark survey points out, while two-thirds of respondents believe that marketing is responsible for lead generation, a little more than half said they tie marketing strategies to sales goals — with nearly one in five indicating they seldom or never tie their marketing strategies to sales goals.

This piece of data lead me to ask, “How does marketing get in tune with sales?” I often hear anecdotal evidence that marketing will develop great campaigns that sales does not bother to take advantage of.

Clearly, it behooves marketers to work with sales to learn what they need as well as learn how to determine campaign ROI and ensure their efforts are tied to business objectives. (Which is why I’ve stated in the past that B2B marcom professionals need more than the ability to manage multiple projects and write well.)

You can purchase the 2009 B2B Lead Generation Benchmark at introductory price of $159. The report includes all data plus detailed conclusions and recommendations by Patrika Hardnett, President and CEO of ExperiGenExperts, and Mac McIntosh, the B2B sales and marketing consultant.

This is one of the few reports to provide B2B benchmarking data — and with all the chatter about social media, inbound marketing, etc. — is a timely resource all B2B marketing and sales professionals need in order to help justify larger investments for lead generation or to justify existing budgets.

I’ve been watching my e-newsletter new subscriber stats for a while now, mostly because the number of subscribers had been increasing even though e-newsletter open rates have been declining — according to most industry reports.

In the last year, the number of people who subscribe to my e-newsletter on a daily / monthly basis has doubled, as has the overall number on the list.

The number of subscribers started increasing when I added my e-newsletter subscription form to this blog — which generates more traffic now than my DH Communications, Inc. Website.

Because I have a field on my subscription form that asks people how they found me, I’m able to see which marketing tactics generate the most subscribers.

Hands down, “search” is the number one method of driving traffic and subscribers. Over 89% of new visitors to the blog came through Google organic search alone (for the period 1/1/09 to 6/15/2009).

For the time period cited, approximately 25% of all newsletter subscribers came via search.

Writing articles for other blogs, portals, and e-newsletters is the second best way to drive traffic and subscriptions. For example, an article I wrote for Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Newsletter netted over 100 new subscribers in 24 hours.

And today (June 25), MarketingProfs featured my blog post about “Plug & Play Website Templates” in their Get to the Point e-newsletter — which is driving e-newsletter subscribers even as I write!

What has surprised me the most, however, is the number of subscribers who come in from *comments* I’ve left on blogs — as well as links to this blog from other bloggers.

I’m surprised for two reasons: I didn’t really think people followed blog links, and two, blogs were supposed to supplant e-newsletters when in fact, it’s blogs driving the traffic — and subscriptions.

I’m not quite sure what ideas or analysis I can derive from my numbers except for this:

Despite the number of blogs to which I’m subscribed and don’t have time to read, I always seem to find time for e-newsletters and this is because the e-newsletter arrives in my inbox — whereas I have to open my blog reader to access new blog posts, something I don’t do often enough.

An e-newsletter is like a good sandwich — quick and easy to digest.

Done well, e-newsletters give me a quick tip or two I can use. Most important, they arrive in my inbox without me having to do much of anything — except subscribe once.

If you read still subscribe to and read e-newsletters, please tell me why. I’d love to know.

I’ve been working on a complete Website overhaul for a dentist and noted, while cruising around the Internet, that many dentists across the U.S. use templated or “out of the box” Websites.

For busy dentists, these types of Websites make sense: you get a template with all the pages you need and you simply plug in your content via a content management system (CMS). The CMS even shows you where to add in your name and local keywords, such as the towns from which your patients come in order to help with local search.

The danger with these sites, however, is that they come with “hidden” code. Because the dentist has no clue about HTML or SEO, they don’t know that their source code is filled with stuff like this (name changed to protect the scumbag company):

Copyright 2009 Scumbag, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This software, source code, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and all other content and code is copyrighted
by Scumbag, Inc. and may NOT be copied, reproduced, translated, reverse engineered, reduced to
any electronic medium or machine-readable form without the prior written consent of Scumbag, Inc.,
except that you may use it according to our Terms of Use agreement. Terms of Use may be
modified at anytime, and you agree to be bound by such modifications.

As small business owners find, much to their dismay, the scumbag company could construe these terms to say they own your site and your content. Afterall, the copyright is there in the code.

According to my Web designer, Jim Somers at Sonora DesignWorks, he gets calls all the time from companies that learn they don’t even own their own domain names because they went with a Web marketing company offering a “turnkey Website solution.”

In addition to the above copy found in one dentist’s source code, I also found that the scumbag company also included links back to its site via the image alt tags. Nice — for the scumbag company!

Key takeaway for small businesses: You get what you pay for. If you have no clue about Website design, SEO, online marketing or anything else, get help. Don’t settle for the cheapest alternative or a DIY site. You’ll end up paying much more than if you had simply went the professional route the first time around.

I recently moved my office from out of my home and into a professional building. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

I first started my business (in 1998) when my son was 12 months old. At the time, working part-time out of my home was ideal as it allowed me to spend more time with my son.

As my workload increased, however, it became harder to separate work from my personal life. Then, with the advent of social media and email overload, I experienced too many days when I felt like I was working around the clock and/or chained to my computer.

Moving my business out of my house has given me that “separation” that I’ve craved for a long time. (And quite frankly, not listening to my dogs bark during client calls is a definite plus!)

I thought moving my office would be a simple matter. My husband had my desk, a couple of file cabinets, and a bookcase out of my old office in a couple of hours.

It was the packing up that really opened my eyes to how lost I had become in my office — something that can happen to anyone who has been working in the same space for years.

Your sub-conscious affects your conscious

Once my furniture was gone, I was shocked at how dirty my office really was — even though I cleaned it regularly.

It was in that instant of standing in an empty room that I understood why you must keep your workspace immaculate.

Cobwebs on the ceiling, piles of paper, and lots of unnecessary “stuff” equals cobwebs on the brain — and unclear thinking.

Because I had to empty all my drawers so that my husband could lift the furniture, I took the time to clean out my files. What started off as an “easy” task ballooned into days of going through piles of paper.

I realized that although my files *looked* organized, they were anything but. I ended up recycling five bins of paper.

Even better, I culled four drawers of files down to one — and ended up throwing away YEARS of hard copy writing samples (all of which were covered in dust due to sitting on shelves, which tells you something).

I also realized I no longer needed many of my books and called Got Books, who carted away seven cartons of them. (Whew!)

At the end of the day, it took me a week to clean out my office, files, and assorted items. It was a lot of work but well worth the time and effort.

My new office is immaculate and pared down. For the first time, I’m able to use my entire desk because it’s not covered in piles of magazines, printed reports, and other junk.

And, I now have a good view of where I’m going . . . because my view is no longer obstructed by years of detritus.

Have you moved your office and/or done a total clean out? If so, what lessons did you learn?

I write a monthly real estate newsletter for my client, ForeclosuresMass.

Each month I have to find real estate experts to interview on topics ranging from property management and rehabbing to marketing and financing.

Of course, the first place I begin my search is with Google. And, many of the top results for my search terms include articles submitted by “experts” to article submission sites.

After clicking through to these articles, however, I’ve learned that many times you can’t contact the people behind the articles. One day I spent close to two hours trying to track down an “expert” whose name was on all kinds of articles (which were actually rather well done).

Alas, I could not find him — not on any real estate Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, or via Google search on his name and town. I realized that his articles were simply a means to get people to his e-commerce site — and even then, you could not contact him. (Which then made me wonder what he was hiding.)

Suffice to say, I now skip over articles when they appear in the search results and have learned how to cherry pick the real experts — those that have real Websites that include contact information.

I bring up this topic because my last blog post, about saving money on translations, has garnered a number of comments. I wondered if the post is appearing for search terms. I checked, and yes, it’s at the top in Google for “saving money on translations” (I’ve seen it at #1 and #2).

The listing directly below it is to an article on the Ezine Articles site.

Those people who promote submitting articles to sites like Ezine Articles state that it helps you get top search engine listings. True enough.

However, a well-written blog and/or Website can get you the same results – with the additional benefit of driving people to content that resides on YOUR site versus content that resides with thousands of other “experts” on another site.

Having the same article appear on dozens of sites dilutes the value of the content as it’s no longer fresh or original. (And, I’ve found, too, that those blogs and ezines that re-use the content often don’t include links back to the author’s site/blog.)

The translation article in question does at least send people to a valid Website.

But don’t you think it would be better if the company included all kinds of optimized, educational content on its own Website or a blog — in the form of articles, reports, surveys, etc. — versus submitting it to article sites?

(I wonder, too, if Google won’t start cracking down on this duplicate content. Currently, you can find a “reprinted” article listed 3 – 5 times in the top 20 search results for a given search phrase. Is this duplication really helping people find the best information?)