The sheer volume of different social media types and websites can be overwhelming to new marketers. Between Digg, Reddit, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and countless others, even seasoned Internet marketing professionals can have trouble keeping up.

It’s important, however, not to let fear and inexperience keep you from a marketing channel that could do wonders for your business. You may be “socially awkward” now, but you don’t have to stay that way. I’m going to give you a few techniques that will help you get started marketing your site through social media, starting with the first and most important one:

• Don’t try everything at once

The biggest mistake new social media marketers make is trying to play catch-up by creating accounts on every social media site they’ve ever heard or read about. This is a surefire way to rapid burnout.

The amount of time it would take to maintain all those accounts would suck any and all time away from running your business. Plus, by trying to juggle profiles and build networks on too many sites at once, you’d do an ineffective job of marketing.

Start slowly. Maybe even start by surveying your current customers to see which social media site most of them use. Once you dip your toe in and get a feel for how a particular site functions, how its users behave and the kind of content/conversations they respond to, you’ll have a better idea of how that site fits with your message. And once you know that, you’ll know if that is a site to keep and nurture or one to scrap. You can ramp up from there.

If you run a political blog or website, for instance, you may find that Reddit members respond to your content better than Digg members.

Or, if you’re a photographer, you may think it’s a no-brainer to open a Flickr account, only to find that you can get more inquiries from users of Google’s Picasa.

Then there’s Twitter. What can I say about Twitter? Okay, I’m not going to lie… I hate Twitter. The minutia of Twitter drives me crazy. But that might be because I haven’t figured out a good use for it. Dell certainly did. They managed to turn Twitter into a million-dollar sales channel for their computers by using it to alert users of new sales and discounts.

But that’s the beauty of social media. There is no right or wrong way to use it. It’s like every other marketing channel. You have to test to find out what works best for your business.

• Have a unique purpose

Another mistake marketers make is using different social media sites to simply regurgitate the same tired message over and over – sometimes with the same exact copy!

How could this be useful to your customers? Why would they want to connect with you through Twitter or Facebook, only to get the same thing they can see on your site or in your newsletter? That’s like telling someone to put on the TV, radio, portable DVD player, and iPod at the same time to watch the same movie.

What your customers want is the equivalent of the special features section of the DVD. They’ve seen the movie. That’s your main content, right? Your main message on your site, in your newsletter, or your blog. Now – to really get to know you and build a relationship with your business and your content – they want the interviews, the outtakes, the deleted scenes, the director’s cut, the commentary. You get the idea.

Here at ETR, for example, we strive to provide additional unique content for you through our YouTube channel. We include things like additional business and copywriting tips, clips from conferences, and even the opinions of your fellow ETR readers.

Because we’ve received so much positive feedback on this additional content, we’re expanding to bring you our soon-to-be-launched ETR TV channel.

The point is to use social media to deliver a different message, a unique spin – to show your personality. Make sure the message is remarkable in a way that’s a bit different from your regular content, and you will keep your customers interested. Plus, you will entice new prospects to start a relationship with you.

• Be genuine

I’ve mentioned this before when talking about using social media for link building. It’s especially important when you’re trying to build relationships with customers and prospects. No matter which site or sites you choose to use, make sure you really are connecting with them and not just hammering them with ad copy.

You are networking, after all. You wouldn’t go to a business networking cocktail reception wearing a sandwich board and handing out flyers. Don’t do it online either. Your customers have needs, their friends have needs, their friends’ friends have needs. Fulfill those needs – even in the smallest of ways – and you’ll have an army of advocates faster than you can say “social butterfly.”

When it comes to social media marketing, the rules are pliable. So long as you are connecting with your audience in a meaningful way, you can experiment and have fun.

I’ll leave you with an example of some really daring social media marketing by Skittles that has the Internet marketing community tweeting in their seats.

Go to Skittles.com and take a look at their new corporate website. Thanks to some clever thinking and a few programming tweaks, they’ve turned their site into a social media extravaganza.

Will this bold move be a success? Only time will tell. Let me know what you think in the comments section here - and feel free to share some of your own social media marketing success stories!

[Ed. Note: How have you used social media to market your business? Which networks do you belong to? Which networks have worked? And which have bombed? Let us know right here.

Social media is just one way to market your business. For a dozen proven methods of connecting with your prospective customers, pick up a copy of Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby's Amazon.com bestseller, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business.]

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That’s why one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to become a master link builder. Today, I’m going to show you just how to do it.

Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). When you attract links from other relevant websites, that tells the search engines that yours is a site to be trusted, and, therefore, displayed for relevant keyword searches.

The process of building those connections can be tedious. First you have to find sites in your niche, determine whether they’re relevant and of respectable quality, and then figure out the best way to contact the people behind them. It can be overwhelming. But I have three simple steps to get you started.

Link-Building Step #1: Link Research

The first step is to do a bit of research. What kinds of sites do you want to get links from? How do you go about finding them? There are several strategies, but one that will get you going in the right direction is to research your competitors’ links.

Let’s say you just launched a new site selling homebrew supplies. You would likely know that a popular competitive supply shop is NorthernBrewer.com. By finding the sites that link to the Northern Brewer website, you would instantly have a list of relevant sites that would potentially be willing to link to your site as well.

And you don’t need any fancy software. Both Google and Yahoo provide ways to perform this link research right from their websites:

• Link research on Google. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Google, you would enter the following in Google’s search box:

• link:http://www.northernbrewer.com

• Link research on Yahoo. To research the sites linking to your competitor, Northern Brewer, on Yahoo, you would go to a special section of Yahoo’s site called Site Explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) and enter Northern Brewer’s URL in the field at the top. Make sure to click the “inlinks” tab to get the list you are looking for.

Now Google is a little stingy with their information. They will typically display only a portion of the links that they have in their database, which is why it’s a good idea to use Yahoo’s Site Explorer as well. In our example, you’d see that Google shows only 352 links for Northern Brewer while Yahoo shows 62,810.

Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of links. Now the hard work starts. You have to go through all those sites and determine which ones you want to have link to your site. Why not just pick them all? Well, just because a site is linking to Northern Brewer doesn’t mean they were asked to do it. Remember, any website can link to any other website for any reason at all… and without the site owner’s knowledge. There can be some link farms and other dubious low-quality sites in the mix, and you definitely don’t want to get links from them.

Link-Building Step #2: Link Quality

You want the good links – the high-quality, relevant, highly trafficked websites. So how do you weed them out? There are a few online tools that can help you make the distinction between a good link and a bad link.

• Alexa.com and Compete.com.  These websites give you a general idea of the kind of traffic a particular site gets, and that can help you determine the quality of the site. High traffic typically means high quality.

• Google Toolbar PageRank (PR). Always controversial in SEO circles, many debate whether this particular little number means anything at all. Whenever I mention it, I always recommend taking it with a grain of salt. But a site with a higher Google PR is seen by Google as a higher quality site with a respectable number of links. In other words, a website you would want a link from.

These are good tools to have on your side, but not the only ways to determine the quality of a potential link. You can also use a kind of website common sense.

• Does the site have quality relevant content?

• If the site makes it possible for users to leave comments about its content, are they participating? This can be a sign of how active the site’s community is – a sign of quality.

• Does the site consist of nothing but links to other sites? If it’s not a known directory like Yahoo, etc. it’s likely a link farm – so stay away.

• Does the site have good design and navigation? Or does it look like it was patched together with FrontPage in 1998 and left to die?

Once you’ve identified the websites you definitely want to target for links, you have to determine the best way to approach each one.

Link-Building Step #3: Link Request

Gone are the days of the generic link request form letter. E-mails addressed “To Whom It May Concern” are usually deleted automatically by website owners

Link requests are now a request for a kind of partnership. That doesn’t necessarily mean reciprocal linking, but it does mean that site owners want to know that you have a genuine interest in their sites, not just in the “link juice” they can pass on to you.

Try to get familiar with the sites you want a link from. If you are targeting a blog, read it. Make some non-link-related comments. If you become part of the blog’s community, you’ll find the site owner much more receptive to a follow-up link request. You may also find that other commenters on that site have their own sites – and they may be willing to link to you.

If you find that you have no choice but to send a cold e-mail, try your best to find the e-mail address of a person to send it to. Not just a webmaster@ or info@ e-mail address. And when you write to that person, make it personal. Talk to them about why you like their site and why you think a link to you would be a fit for their readers/customers. Spouting off stats about your PageRank and traffic could be a turnoff for the site owner. If those things are really important to him, he knows how to do his own research (and will).

Link building may be a slow and tedious process – but it’s an absolutely necessary part of a successful SEO initiative. Knowing how to get started will make it much easier for you to build the links you need. And once you start acquiring some really solid quality links, you will no doubt begin to see improvement in your search engine rankings, your website traffic, and even your sales.

[Ed. Note: Running a successful online business takes more than just throwing up a website - but it doesn't have to be complicated or confusing. Get a step-by-step guide to link building, search engine optimization, and more as a member of ETR's Internet Money Club. Spaces are limited, so find out now if there are any spots left for the "Class" of 2009.]

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While these are all crucial elements in building targeted traffic (and, ultimately, sales) through the search engines, they are, in fact, building blocks of a larger SEO structure. And they all rely on each other to support the SEO foundation. If any one of these building blocks is missing, the structure will collapse, and you could miss out on profitable search engine traffic. But if you truly understand the relationship between them, you will have a rock-solid foundation for executing everything you learn about search engine marketing in ETR, and will see your traffic and profits soar!

When doing research for this article, I was looking for the simplest and most direct way to explain the building blocks of SEO and how they relate to each other. I found one so brilliant I wish I could take credit for it. But I have to tip my hat to the folks at SEOmoz for the diagram below.

[image location: http://www.earlytorise.com/outpro/images/etr/content_chart.JPG]

All of the SEO techniques that you’ve read about here in ETR fit into one of the above cornerstones. Every building block of SEO can be categorized as a technical component, a content component, or a trust component. Let’s dive on in and see what fits where!

Technical SEO Components

The technical components are typically what scare people the most, especially if they are new to SEO. But you don’t need a detailed understanding of how these building blocks work to know what they are and be able to talk to your Web designer about them.

Executing the wrong technical components on your website could result in the search engine spiders being unable to access its content. I have covered some of these problematic components in my “SEO Don’ts” series. The ones to watch out for – and eliminate from your site – include, but are not limited to:

• Flash graphics
• Important text inserted in images  
• iFrames – an HTML element that allows you to “frame” another HTML document within the original
• Session IDs – a string of nonsense characters appended to the URL that uniquely identifies a visitor’s session

The technical cornerstone of your website is the first one you must address. What you’re doing here is kind of like giving the search engines the keys to your house. Of course, once you let them in, you have to make it easy for them – and your potential customers – to find what they’re interested in. You don’t want them to stumble onto a door marked “kitchen” when it’s the bathroom they’re looking for. This is where the content cornerstone comes in to play.

Content SEO Components

The content components are the ones that are discussed the most. Typically, this is in terms of doing keyword research and writing keyword-relevant articles. It is important to understand the language your potential customers use when searching for your products. If you are optimizing a product page for “key fobs” and everyone searches for “key chains”… well you see the disconnect.

But content issues don’t end there. Information architecture is an often neglected part of the content cornerstone. Information architecture basically breaks down to the navigation and linking structure of your website. It’s like arranging the furniture in your house to create a clear pathway to a door that’s clearly marked “bathroom.” The easier you make it for your potential customers to find your content, the better it will be for the search engines. This includes using things like:

• Flat site architecture – the fewest number of clicks from the home page to important content
• Breadcrumb links – a trail of text links at the top of the page showing the user how they arrived at that page
• Anchor text links within articles – the clickable text part of a hyperlink
• Universal link menus – navigation menus that appear on all pages of the site, making it easy to access different areas from each page

By using the same language as your customers, and holding their hands as you guide them through your site, you will automatically be doing the same for the search engines.

Trust SEO Components

The third and final cornerstone in a rock-solid SEO foundation is trust. Simply defined, this boils down to links. Building a strong network of inbound links from relevant, trusted sources tells the search engines that your site is also a trusted source for your particular niche or market. When the search engines trust your site, they will be more likely to serve it up in the top of their results pages.

When you break down SEO into these three main building blocks, it’s much easier to see how they relate to each other, and how success can be achieved only when all three are present. If your search engine friends trust you but can’t get in the front door, your site won’t rank. If they can get in the front door but stumble over the coffee table to get to the only bathroom upstairs that you’ve labeled “kitchen,” your site won’t rank. Only if they trust you enough to use your keys and then breeze through the living room to the bathroom will your site rank.

This is your foundation for generating tons of targeted search engine traffic and sales for your website.

[Ed. Note: Search engine optimization should be one marketing element you're using at your company. For 11 other tried-and-true "profit accelerators" that could add as much as $10 million to your bottom line, check out the brand-new book by MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson. Get your copy of Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business right here.]  

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Google scored an 86 on the consumer satisfaction index and was the only one among the “big 3″ (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) to experience an increase in customer satisfaction over last year.

This is great information for search marketers. Satisfied searchers trust the results from the search engine they are using. Meaning, they are likely to return to that search engine again and again, and are more apt to purchase from the sites they find in its results.

I know I want to run my ad campaigns where satisfied searchers are. And you want your own pay-per-click ads and organic results to show up in search engines that people trust.

For now, that means sticking with Google.

A good way to get started is with a Google AdWords campaign.

[Ed. Note: So... did the University of Michigan and ForeSee surveys get it right? Which search engine gives you the most satisfying search results? Let us know in our comments section here.]

One method I’ve recommended in the past is to launch a PPC (pay-per-click) search campaign on Google AdWords. But you can also use Google to test online media buys on other sites with banner ads and other creative formats. There are a couple of reasons why banner testing through Google is a great way to generate fast and cheap traffic and sales.

Bypassing Standard Rate Card Fees

At a recent in-house marketing meeting, ETR’s media buyer mentioned a new banner campaign she was preparing to launch on a well-known financial website.

Usually, a website will charge you a fee for the number of “impressions” your banner serves – how many times your banner will be displayed to visitors to that site. This fee is expressed as CPM (cost per thousand impressions), and is listed on the “rate card” page of the website, along with the prices of all the other advertising options the site offers. Kind of like the sticker price on a vehicle at the dealership, experienced media buyers know that the rate card price is a number to begin negotiating from.

When you’re setting up your banner on a site, they will either lock you in to X amount of impressions or will keep your banner running for Y days. Sometimes, this is a perfectly reasonable agreement. But it can be too expensive to be worthwhile for a test. (And, as you know, testing is critical when it comes to your marketing efforts.)

In this case, our media buyer lamented that the financial website’s ad representative refused to go lower than the rate card price of $18 CPM for her banner test. I recognized the website’s name and knew that they were part of Google’s Content Network – the network of sites that display Google ads. So I suggested we use Google AdWords to serve our banners on the site… for a fraction of their rate card price.

Not only can you get banner space much cheaper through Google AdWords, you can also get your campaign up and running much faster and with much more flexibility than you can when dealing directly with the publisher. Plus, you aren’t locked in to a set number of impressions or amount of time. If the campaign isn’t performing well, you can stop it whenever you want. (More on that later.)

This leads me to the next reason for launching a banner test campaign through Google AdWords…

Expanding a Small Niche

Let’s say you’re a believer in the ability of a PPC search campaign on Google AdWords to drive traffic and sales to your website. But maybe your business is in a very specialized niche that not many people know about. The keyword research you did for your product resulted in few keywords with even fewer searches. You know there are people interested in what you’re selling, but they might not know how to search for you. How do you quickly reach this niche market?

With a fast and cheap banner test on Google’s Content Network, of course. You can target your campaign by demographic, by site, or by category to find the perfect space for your banner and launch your test on your terms with your desired budget. Here are the steps to take:

• Open a Google AdWords account. Couldn’t be easier. Type “Google AdWords” into the Google search box, and follow directions.

• Create a Placement Targeted campaign. This is different from a Keyword Targeted campaign, but many of the same settings apply that let you target your banner ads in more specific ways than you might be able to do with a traditional banner buy. For example, using geo-targeting to specify what areas of the country or world will see your ad. You will also have AdGroups, like you do with a Keyword Targeted campaign, and you can use your AdGroups to organize your campaign by product, banner type, or any other way you choose.

• Research placements. This is the where the fun starts. Once you create your campaign and AdGroups, you can access Google’s easy-to-use interface to research and pick the websites on which you want to run your ad.

There are several ways to search for sites. You can browse by category. You can search by topic or keyword. If you know the particular sites where you’d like to advertise, you can simply enter their URLs – and then Google will even list several other sites similar to the ones you’ve chosen. Lastly, you can select the demographic that you’d like to target, choosing by age, gender, household income, ethnicity, and whether there are children in the home.

After you enter your criteria, Google will list all of the matching sites, along with the ad formats they accept (text ad, banner ad, video ad), and the number of impressions each site receives per day. (Very helpful if you are looking for volume.)

• Bidding and budgeting. Next, you’ll be able to bid on the CPM that you’d like to pay. And when you realize how low you can go, you’re going to start to get giddy. Keep in mind, however, that you are competing with other advertisers for that banner ad space – and the higher your CPM bid, the more impressions you’ll likely receive. It’ll take some tweaking to find a balance between the amount you want to spend and the volume of impressions you need in order to run a good test.

I’ve found that you can run a good test with anywhere between a $1-$3 CPM – which is a heck of a lot better than a rate card price of $18! After you set your bid, you’ll want to determine a daily budget, giving yourself enough wiggle room to get the number of impressions you need on a daily basis.

• Uploading your banners. Determine the banner sizes your sites accept and upload them to your campaign. Each banner should link to a landing page you’ve set up, complete with sales copy for the product you’re selling. You can assign a different landing page URL for each banner, or you can point them all to the same one if you like. There is a short review process for each new banner you upload to your campaign, but once they are approved you’ll be up and running!

The flexibility you get by running a banner campaign through Google AdWords really kicks in when your campaign is live and you can monitor your results. If you see that you’re not receiving enough impressions, you can immediately adjust your bidding. If you are getting great traffic and conversion rates, you can immediately increase your budget. If you see that a particular site isn’t performing, you can remove it from your campaign in seconds. The same goes for your banner headline, graphics, and layout. Changes can be made on the fly without waiting for an ad rep or account manager to make them for you.

[Ed. Note: Banner ads should be a part of any multi-channel marketing campaign. And, as Search Engine Marketing Specialist Alexis Siemon points out, Google's Content Network makes setting up your own banner campaign easy and cost-effective. You can learn more about the best ways to market your Internet business at this fall's Information Marketing Bootcamp. 12 speakers will reveal exactly how you can make between $100,000 and $1.2 million your first year. Get the details here.

And keep reading ETR for details on the new multi-channel marketing book by MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson.]

If this news is true, it could mean two things: They did it on purpose, in which case Papa Google will swiftly ban the real estate site from its index. Or they did it unknowingly, meaning they have a very naive SEO specialist working for them and will still have to answer to Papa Google.

So what, exactly, is cloaking – and why does it irritate Google so much?

Cloaking is the practice of serving a different version of your website to the search engines than you do to the end user. When the practice first started, there was a much larger gap between what looked good to the end user and what looked good to the search engines. So cloaking seemed like the perfect solution – not to mention, mighty tempting. But it was quickly, and rightly, deemed a black hat and spammy practice. Google specifies in its webmaster guidelines that if they suspect you of cloaking, they will remove your site from their index.

To hear that a prominent website could be cloaking is surprising. An experienced SEO specialist knows that it is a deceptive, outlawed, and, frankly, lazy technique. There are so many legitimate ways you can optimize your site for both search engine and visitor usability these days. I hope for this real estate site’s sake that the allegations are false. But if they’re true, they should start shopping for a new SEO guy.

[Ed. Note: Staying on Google's good side can mean more traffic, more customers... and more money in your pocket. Of course, building a successful business involves a few other details. Learn how you can get insider advice from expert business builders right here.]

It seems I’m not the only one. Recent studies indicate that print Yellow Pages will be all but defunct in the next four years. The myriad of local business information available on the Internet and the bevy of options you can use to find that information have made it easier, faster, and more convenient than flipping through that bulky yellow book.

What does this mean to you as a local business owner? Well, if you haven’t taken the time to list your business online, your competitors may be leaving you in the dust.

Whether you run a restaurant, auto body shop, pet grooming service, or landscaping company, taking the steps below to position your business in front of local customers will make a big difference to your bottom line.

The Anatomy of a Local Business Listing

There are certain elements of your online listing that will be similar across the board – in a local search engine, Internet Yellow Pages site, or customer review site. Not just limited to your company name, address, and phone number, online local business listings allow you to display a ton of information about your business – for free! I’m always amazed when I see bare bones listings that aren’t taking full advantage of this opportunity for free advertising, but it happens fairly often. Below is just a sample of the information you are usually allowed to display:

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Fax Number
• URL
• E-Mail Address
• Short Description of Business
• Services, Products, and Brands Offered
• Specialties and Amenities
• Payment Options
• Hours of Operation
• Logo
• Photos
• User Reviews

Wow!

Right about now you might be saying, "But my local business listing only has my name, address, and phone number. What do I do? "The more information you can include with your listing, the more likely it is that you’ll attract a targeted customer. So let me show you the sites you need to visit to include more information.

Internet Yellow Pages

The most logical places for many people to start looking for local goods and services are the Internet Yellow Pages sites. If you are brand-new to updating and optimizing your company’s local listings, begin with these.

Just like the print Yellow Pages, the Internet Yellow Pages will automatically have a basic listing for your company. (It’s up to you to make the listing pop and really work to drive customers from their computer screens to your storefront.) And in addition to your free listing, many Internet Yellow Pages sites offer advertising and fee-based enhanced feature options.

Some of the most popular Internet Yellow Pages sites for you to start with are:

• YellowPages.com
• SuperPages.com
• YellowBook.com
• Local.com

Upon locating your listing, you may be surprised to find that it contains information that you didn’t provide. This is because customers, too, are allowed to update and add to the listings – all the more reason to take action to make sure your information is correct.

Local Search Engines

It didn’t take long for the major search engines to get in on the local scene. Each of them has a local version. Google has Google Maps, Yahoo has Yahoo Local, and Ask has AskCity.

They all have impressive features. But because of my unhealthy obsession with all things Google, and to give you a head start on the most market share, I’ll talk about Google Maps here.

As with the Internet Yellow Pages, your business will likely already have a listing in Google Maps. You can spice up that listing from Google’s Local Business Center. To edit your listing, Google requires you to "claim" your business first. So they send a postcard to the mailing address listed with a special PIN (personal identification number) that you will use. Naturally, this takes a few days. Once claimed, however, you can edit your listing to your heart’s content.

Your local business listing on Google allows for all the information listed above. Google also pulls a lot of user reviews from customer review sites (which I’ll explain in a moment). Additionally, Google offers a couple of really cool features that you simply must take advantage of:

1. Coupons. You can create a special offer coupon right alongside your listing and update it as often as you want. This is a great way to encourage people to visit your store.

2. Video (a feature that has been added fairly recently). That’s right. You can add a video that you’ve posted on YouTube to your Google Maps listing. How cool is that? Think of the possibilities! You could shoot a short commercial, record testimonials from happy customers, or even shoot footage of your clean restaurant teeming with enthusiastic diners.

Once you’ve perfected your listing on Google Maps, you can promote it through Google AdWords and target a particular region, city, or even neighborhood. For more information, and to get started, go to Maps.Google.com or Google.com/local/add.

Customer Review Websites

Customer review sites are arguably the most important of the three local search areas, because the content is user-generated. And, like I mentioned above, Google (and other local search engines) pulls customer reviews from these websites to display on your listing. So it’s important to be aware of what people are saying about your business.

Get a little PR for your business by encouraging your happy customers to post positive reviews of your company and its services. You can also benefit from monitoring any unfavorable reviews about you on these sites to see where you can make improvements.

Popular customer review sites include:

• Yelp.com
• InsiderPages.com
• CitySearch.com
• JudysBook.com

There are even specialized customer review sites like AngiesList.com for home improvement and MenuPages.com for restaurants.

A Quick Word About Mobile Search

Mobile search is usually mentioned in tandem with local search. After all, people are usually on the road when they are looking for things like food, gas, lodging, or the nearest pet store. The good news is that if you do the work to enhance your listings on all the sites mentioned in this article, you will be more than covered in the mobile search arena. Most, if not all, of the local search engines and Internet Yellow Pages have special mobile versions that are readable on mobile phones and other handhelds – including the ever-popular iPhone.

So get to work on your listings on Internet Yellow Pages sites, local search engines, and customer review sites. You’ll soon see a big improvement in your business – whether you run a one-person dog walking service or a local pizza franchise. And when delivery of that big, bulky print phonebook finally comes to a grinding halt, your business won’t miss a beat.

[Ed. Note: No matter what kind of business you have, getting online is critical to your success. ETR's team of business-building and Internet marketing experts can give you a step-by-step rundown of exactly how to make your business grow - from the comfort of your own living room.]

A close cousin to that potential SEO disaster is using Flash to design your website. If your designer or Web development firm suggests a cool Flash design, resist the temptation and say no.

This always makes my designer friends grumble, because they love to have the freedom to make a really cool Flash site. And I don’t blame them. But, alas, just like images, search engines can’t see content that is programmed in Flash.
 
Now, as I write this, news has come out that Google and Yahoo are working closely with the makers of the Flash program to rectify this issue. The two search giants are now able to crawl some Flash content. While this is exciting news, there are still limitations. Not all search engines are involved in this new development, and not all content contained within a Flash application can be crawled. To be on the safe side for now, you should still stay away from Flash.

Recently, I was asked to make a few suggestions on how to improve the SEO of a friend’s website. As soon as I saw that the site was designed exclusively in Flash, I knew the only piece of advice worth giving them: Redesign.

What should you do if you have a Flash site? Well, like I said to my friend, I recommend a redesign. If you are dead set on implementing Flash on your site, use it in non-critical areas only. Use HTML for your navigation and content and reserve the Flash for special areas where you would normally have images.

[Ed. Note: With expert advice from people like Search Engine Marketing Specialist Alexis Siemon, you can cut the time it takes your business to succeed in half. Get the insider secrets into starting and growing your own Internet business right here.]

If your site has large banners or graphics that include promotional or product-oriented copy, the search engines won’t be able to crawl and index that content – and you won’t rank for important keywords.

Keep a cool head during the design phase of your website. Make sure important copy is rendered as text and save the image files for pictures.

[Ed. Note: You can get more little-known secrets to staying on the search engines' good side at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. You don't need a product, a website, or any technical experience to learn how to build your own business. Learn how to create income for life right here.

And keep reading ETR for more search engine optimization Dos and Don'ts from Alexis Siemon, ETR's Search Engine Marketing Specialist.]