Posts Tagged ‘Ron Jones’
Best AdWords Tips and Tactics of 2009, Part 2
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Optimization—the greatest results for the lowest cost—is the goal of every AdWords campaign manager. What are two of the simplest ways to optimize AdWords campaigns? Google is constantly changing and upgrading its AdWords tools; which recent enhancements are most important to understand and take advantage of? Click-through rate (CTR) is the single most important factor in determining Quality Score, which is as important as bid level in determining how highly an ad will appear in search results. But it isn’t the only factor; what other items are considered, and how can you optimize these?
Get the answers to these questions and many others here in more of the best articles and blog posts from last year on Google AdWords search engine marketing.
Setting up PPC Campaigns 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones steps through the process of structuring content for AdWords campaigns, developing keyword lists and setting up ad groups, along the way identifying helpful resources and tools such Permutator.
2 dead simple ways to optimize your Adwords campaign by CDF Networks
Chad Frederiksen recommends using the AdWords Conversion Optimizer tool and Opportunities tab to increase conversion rates while reducing per-conversion costs.
AdWords Management : How ROI, Costs, and Services Measure Up for Your Business by Pure Visibility
Although AdWords advertising can benefit a wide range of businesses, it isn’t right for every company. Steve Loszewski walks through ROI calculations to help determine the value of AdWords for a specific situation, as well as what’s involved in properly managing a successful AdWords program.
Rich Media and Video templates in display ad builder by Inside AdWords
Emel Mutlu explains how to use the AdWords display ad builder tool to create ads for Google’s content network that display multiple products, incorporate multiple destination URLs, track unique interactions, include video, provide in-ad coupon codes and more. New templates simplify these tasks, and Emel notes that he hopes they will be “one more great reason to try out the AdWords display ad builder, and reach additional customers in new ways.” More noteworthy posts from the Inside AdWords blog:
- AdWords Editor 7.5.1 for Windows and Mac: Austin Rachlin reports on key changes in the latest updated of the AdWords Editor tool, including the ability to import .CSV files, selectively download specific campaigns, and view and organize new keywords by topical category. In another newsworthy post, Conversion Optimizer is now available to more campaigns, Austin announced that any campaign with at least 15 conversions in the most recent 30-day period is now eligible to use Google’s Conversion Optimizer tool, and that according to Google’s research, “campaigns which adopted Conversion Optimizer achieved a 21% increase in conversions while at the same time decreasing their CPA by 14% (on average and in comparison to similar campaigns).”
- New Interface Thursdays: Keep tabs on your account with custom alerts: Trevor Claiborne explains how to set up custom alerts to get notified about specific types of events or activities in your AdWords account, such as a spike in impressions for branded keywords or when a campaign is close to hitting its daily budget.
- AdWords Conversion Tracking is now even easier: Emily Williams shows how changes to the interface for the conversion tracking tool make it easier to implement and monitor this capability. Of note, the “New Conversion” button allows you to quickly define new conversion actions or import them from a Google Analytics account, and the “Webpages” tab makes it easier to track conversions by page.
Is The Hype Over Google AdWords Quality Score Justified? by Search Engine Land
Craig Danuloff provides a detailed discussion of Quality Score: its importance (high), its ability to function as either a discount mechanism or a tax, why CTR is critical, and why landing page design isn’t. Two other noteworthy posts from Search Engine Land are The 6/90 Rule: 6 Reports Contain 90% Of Actionable AdWords Insights, in which Brad Geddes identifies and demonstrates the value of the six most important AdWords reports, and How important Is Click Through Rate In Google’s Quality Score Formula?, wherein Siddharth Shah illustrates mathematically the importance of CTR to quality score (it explains about 72%; all other factors combined account for the other 28%).
Learn How to Import Your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords Conversion Tracking by PPC Hero
A concise but helpful post that explains how to pull goals and transactions from Google Analytics into AdWords for unified conversion reporting. Analytics and AdWords have traditionally been completely separate systems with inconsistent data, but Google continues to bring the two into closer harmony. Two other valuable posts from PPC Hero are 5 Tips on Passing the Google Adwords Qualified Professional Exam, which provides tips such as knowing how to calculate ROI and AdWords ad text policies before tackling Google’s AdWords certification examination, and 6 Rules to Achieve Awesome Quality Scores & Increase PPC Performance, which explains five factors other than CTR (such as having well-organized ad groups and pruning under-performing ads and keywords) that can help improve AdWords quality scores.
Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010What are the four stages of Twitter enlightenment? How important is Twitter for business? How can you get more retweets and efficiently manage unfollowers? How exactly did Dell generate so much revenue by Twittering? What are the “secrets” of top corporate Twitterers?
Learn the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best blog posts and articles from last year on Twitter techniques, tools and tactics.
Sanity check: The four stages of a typical Twitter user by TechRepublic
Jason Hiner brilliantly summarizes the path to enlightenment of the typical Twitter newbie, from “confusion and indignation” through the use of tools and mobile messaging. Great advice for newbies, and experienced Tweeters will likely get a smile of recognition out of this post as well.
A Twitter Marketing Sanity Check by iMedia Connection
Yes, another Twitter “sanity check.” In this article, Daniel Flamberg explains why he is “stumped and frustrated” by Twitter (maybe he needs to read Jason’s post above?) but in the end concedes that “Twitter is ripe for experimentation,” and advises marketers to “be true to your brand personality and ethos and play with this (not so) new tool.” In another iMedia Connection piece on Twitter, Twitter brand smackdown: The winners and losers, Rodney Rumford highlights lessons from the Twitter successes of Ford, Zappos and Dell. And in a third piece from the same publication, Twitter now a business ‘must-have,‘ Madhuri Shekar quotes a MarketingProfs survey showing that “84 percent of respondents (most of whom represent small businesses) claim that their company’s Twitter usage will increase and 46 percent say it will increase by a ‘significant’ margin” in the coming year, and quotes the conclusion of Ann Handley, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, “Much like Facebook, Twitter is now moving into the business mainstream.”
What’s a Retweet? by Social Media Today
The title may not sound promising to experienced Twitterers, but in this excellent post, Jill Kurtz notes that less than 1/5 of 1% of all tweets get 100 retweets—the level considered a “home run” for a Twitter post—then provides helpful tips for getting into that retweet stratosphere, such as including “pls RT” with tweets, keeping tweets short enough for others to retweet without editing, and asking for RT’s only for relevant content.
5 Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Unfollowers by WebProNews
Jeremy Muncy reviews five helpful Twitter tools, from the ubiquitous (Twellow) to the less well-known, such as Twitterless, an online application that not only notifies you when someone stops following, but also supplies “a graphed out ‘follower history’ over a period of time to help you understand where your (sic) gaining or losing followers.”
Dell Says It Has Earned $3 Million From Twitter by The New York Times
Okay, the figure quoted in the headline is now outdated (the most recent Twitter revenue claimed by Dell on Twitter is $6.5 million), but Claire Cain Miller does an excellent job of outlining how Dell has generated, and continues to generate, significant sales through Twitter. She also notes that “Twitter made exactly $0 from those Dell sales, something that will very likely change.”
Pro Twitterers Share Their Secrets by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh reports on the secrets of highly successful corporate Twitterers from Comcast, Dunkin’ Donuts and Six Flags. Among the tips: be human, authentic, even a bit immature. Favorite snip: “Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast…drew hearty laughter when he described the cable giant as being known for its customer service. ‘I can’t wait until people stop laughing at that joke,’ added Eliason.”
Twitter in B2B – a Velocity Slideshare by The B2B Marketing Blog
Doug Kessler outlines his firm’s presentation on seven ways to use Twitter for b2b marketing. Advising b2b bloggers on the use of Twitter, Doug writes “Twitter is already playing a role in content marketing campaigns — for finding topics, inviting input and promoting the finished pieces. It’s all about the engagement.”
10 ways to get your business in on the microblogging craze by iMedia Connection
Clay McDaniel offers some basic but solid advice in this guide to making Twitter work for marketing, such as pick a leader (so there is “one personality driving the charge”), establish a regular rhythm, and “talk like a real person” (not as obvious as you might think). Three other articles from iMedia Connection worth reading are 7 marketing mistakes to avoid on Twitter by Rodney Rumford, Meet the brands that ‘get’ Twitter by Michael Estrin, and 7 tips for the perfect Twitter profile by Jason Baer.
Twitter 101, Part 2 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones reviews popular Twitter tools, offers tips on finding the right people to follow while growing your own following, and provides a basic guide to understanding Twitter lingo. This post is an excellent starting point for those new to Twitter.
Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days by Winning The Web
Gyutae Park details a real-world case of how to use Twitter to drive traffic to worthwhile content, using a hot topic, your network of followers, social bookmarking sites, the Tweet This WordPress plugin, a helpful follow-up article—and a bit of luck.
Twitter background guidelines by Croncast
For anyone still using a “canned” Twitter background found somewhere on the web, or worse, one of Twitter’s own default backgrounds, this post provides the technical specifications—file dimensions, size, coordinates and instructions—for creating a custom Twitter background image.
Twitter FAIL! The 8 worst brands on the world’s hottest microblog by Revolution
Gareth Jones heaps scorn on eight global brands that got Twitter wrong, and explains why their strategies (or lack thereof) went awry. Astoundingly, as of May of this year, major brands like McDonalds, Pepsi, Vodafone and Gucci each had less than 1,000 followers. This article lets you learn from their mistakes.
Best AdWords Tips and Tactics of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010How can you utilize rich media ads to take advantage of the coverage provided by Google’s content network? Which AdWords reports are the most critical, and how you can take full advantage of the information they provide? How is AdWords Quality Score calculated, and how can you improve that score in your campaigns? How can you calculate the potential advertising value of AdWords before making a costly investment?
Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on maximizing the value of Google AdWords from the past year.
Setting up PPC Campaigns 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
The prolific and always helpful Ron Jones steps through the basics of setting up a search marketing campaign, from sorting keywords into ad groups to identifying negative keywords to use.
Rich Media and Video templates in display ad builder by Inside AdWords
Emel Mutlu steps through the benefits of and process for creating rich media AdWords ads for display across Google’s content network. This includes the capability to use multiple destination URLs, track all activity including mouseovers, and exercise greater creativity in producing ads. Another Inside AdWords post worth checking out is AdWords Editor 7.5.1 for Windows and Mac by Austin Rachlin, which outlines the process for importing CSV files for editing in the AdWords Editor.
Is The Hype Over Google AdWords Quality Score Justified? by Search Engine Land
Craig Danuloff clearly explains why the AdWords quality score is important, how it affects cost per click for SEM campaigns, and the factors that go into Google’s calculation of quality score. Another noteworthy post from Search Engine Land is The 6/90 Rule: 6 Reports Contain 90% Of Actionable AdWords Insights, in which Brad Geddes details how half a dozen reports—including the AdWords keyword, search query and placement performance reports—provide critical, actionable information, how to use them, and how often to run them.
AdWords Management : How ROI, Costs, and Services Measure Up for Your Business by Pure Visibility
Steve Loszewski explains how to use the AdWords Traffic Estimator tool to calculate the potential value of AdWords for your business, and gives tips for maximizing that value. The only statement I take exception to in this excellent post is that “For small companies unaccustomed to budgeting much at all for advertising, the costs can be impractical.” Actually, by combining the geo-targeted features of AdWords with careful keyword selection and close monitoring, AdWords can be a cost-effective advertising tool even for very modest sized enterprises.
Learn How to Import Your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords Conversion Tracking by PPC Hero
As this post notes, until recently Google AdWords and Analytics were two entirely separate entities. But recent upgrades enable at least partial data sharing between the two systems, and this post provides instructions for importing Analytics goals and transactions into AdWords for unified conversion reporting—a “pretty nice” feature, as the author notes. Another noteworthy post from the PPC Hero blog is 5 Tips on Passing the Google Adwords Qualified Professional Exam, in which Amber provides tips to help “pass the exam with flying colors,” such as reviewing the materials in the AdWords learning center, ad text policies and how to calculate ROI for e-commerce campaigns.
Top 11 Money-Wasting AdWords Mistakes by Alibaba.com
The ubiquitous Jon Rognerud lists 11 common mistakes made by small companies and those new to AdWords, such as duplicating search ads on Google’s content network (the ads need to be different due to the different context in which they are seen), using too many keywords, sending visitors to your home page, and not properly testing ads.
5 Common AdWords Myths Absolutely Destroyed by Search Engine Journal
Brian Carter demolishes five common misconceptions about AdWords, explaining the real story in detail. Among the myths: “AdWords is an auction”—well, sort of, but quality score, which is influenced by the click-through rate, is as big a factor as your bid, and “Google is out to get me”—a common feeling, but as Brian responds to this: “Sure, in some ways. But not so much that you can’t get incredibly good ROI from AdWords for the right offering, if you know what you’re doing” (or are willing to hire professional help from the outside).
Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones explains how to increase your quality score in AdWords, which gets you a higher ad position at a lower cost. Among his recommendations: small (15-20 term), tightly-focused ad groups; including keywords in landing page copy; and experimenting with different matching options. Another interesting AdWords-related post worth checking out from the team at Search Engine Watch is Get More Attention with Legal PPC Ad Symbols. David Szetela recommends experimenting with using symbols in your ads to increase CTRs, though commenters call him out on the practice.
PPC Web Spy For Competitive Keywords Analysis by WordPress Howto Spotter
Alex Sysoef reviews and recommends PPC Web Spy, a free keyword research tool for AdWords and organic search optimization. The post is a little spammy (as is the PPC Web Spy landing page), but the tool sounds interesting. For any keyword, the tool displays statistics like the average cost per click and number of clicks per day. If you have any experience with this tool, feel free to share it in the comments.
Do more with less — Part 2 of 3 by Inside AdWords
Amanda Kelly explains how the free AdWords Conversion Optimizer tool can improve the productivity of AdWords campaigns: “The Conversion Optimizer helps you get the most conversions for your ad spend by using your conversion tracking data to improve your advertising efficiency. It does this by optimizing the placement of your ads in each auction based on the likelihood of a conversion. This process helps to avoid unprofitable clicks and to get you conversions without requiring you to spend as much time managing your bids.”
Everything You Need To Know About AdWords Display URLs by Search Engine Land
Brad Geddes recommends testing the display URL portion of your AdWords ads as thoroughly as you would any other elements, and offers several examples that fall within Google’s requirements.
How Does AdWords Determine a Keyword’s Quality Score Before It’s Even Activated? Find Out! by PPC Hero
This post explains how Google determines a quality score for your keywords as soon as your campaign is launched, by using the experience of other advertisers who have used that keyword as a base. How can you use this information? As the author notes, “If you load a series of new keywords and they all have a low Quality Score, then you may want to re-think these additions. This is because other advertisers have not had success with these keywords. On the other side of the coin, if the Quality Score for a keyword is 9 or 10, this means that previous and current advertisers are having success with this keyword, and competition could be more fierce. You may want to give this keywords special attention and place them into their own ad groups.”
Best of 2009: Social Media Marketing, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010With the rapidly increasing use of social media tools for marketing and PR comes growing pressure to demonstrate results. But what metrics are really most appropriate for social media measurement? How can you monitor everything that’s being said about your company, competitors and key industry topics across the social media landscape without spending a fortune on monitoring software? Is your social media strategy built on a solid foundation, or is it more like a Hollywood movie set—a pretty facade with nothing behind it? Which tools are most important for social media participation, analyzing what’s being said, and separating important substance from the noise?
Discover the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best posts on social media from this year.
ROI Is Dead by StraightUpSearch
This post suggests that marketers should focus on a different ROI when calculating the value of social media efforts: “return on insight.” Traditional ROI measures fail to take into account the search value of social media engagement, as well as the value of the customer service and product enhancements that social listening and interaction can provide.
Facebook Lets Users Open Up Profiles by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh helpfully outlines the recent changes Facebook has made to its privacy settings, though noting that “profiles opened to everyone, however, will still not turn up in searches on Google or other outside search engines.”
How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard by aimClear
Marty Weintraub provides a remarkable and highly detailed guide to setting up a social media reputation monitoring dashboard using free tools such as Google Alerts, iGoogle, Google Analytics, and keyword tools along with Excel. The set up takes some time, but the end result is a powerful monitoring tool without the cost of a paid social media monitoring application. This tutorial is clear and generously illustrated with screenshots.
Is Your Online Marketing Strategy All Tweet and No Meat? by HubSpot
Rick Burnes notes that without a strong content strategy to back up social media efforts, marketers risk the “all hat, no cattle” syndrome: lots of attention on Twitter and Facebook, but no compelling content to back it up and turn the curious into the converted. Compelling thought-leadership content, blog posts, white papers, video and SEO efforts support and create long-term value for social media tactics.
A free DIY approach to social media by iMedia Connection
Rebecca Weeks provides a “cheat sheet” with five key tactics to increase website traffic through social media, including interaction on the most popular social networking sites, using free Twitter tools to maximize the value of that platform, and getting exposure on social news sites. Another noteworthy post from this publication is Facebook is a Personal CRM for Baby Boomers, in which Daniel Flamberg reports on an Accenture study showing that in early 2009, “boomers posted a 59 percent increase in use of social networks; a rate of adoption 30 times faster than any other age group.” Facebook’s InsideFacebook blog reports that in February and March of this year, the number of Facebook users age 35 and over doubled. Boomers use Facebook somewhat differently than younger age groups as well; Flamberg notes that “they are more reticent to share information, less likely to leave comments and a bit slower to join groups.”
8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams by Social Media Today
Noting that with the collective millions of tweets produced every day, there is “an emerging demand to sieve signals from noises and harvest useful information,” Yung-Hui Lim reviews Twitter analytics tools that can help with the task, including Twitalyzer, Trendistic (formerly Twist), Twitt(url)y and TweetStats.
What’s In Your Social Media Toolkit? by Dave Fleet
In this short but useful post, Dave Fleet outlines the set of social media tools he finds most useful on a daily basis, such as Google Reader for keeping up with blogs, Twitter for real-time communications, Radian6 for social media monitoring, and LinkedIn for social networking.
Video search 101: Marketing and optimization by iMedia Connection
Noting some statistics on the explosive growth of online video, David L. Smith explains how marketers can use video search engine optimization (VSEO) and video search engine marketing (VSEM) to maximize both the organic and paid search value of video assets.
Forrester: B2B Marketers Need To Keep Up With Business Technology Buyers On Social Media by Forrester Research
It’s pretty rare to include a press release in a best of list here—actually, this is probably the first time ever—but this one includes key statistics on how b2b buyers use social media on the job. As the release notes, “Despite the fact that 77 percent of business technology decision-makers engage with social media on the job, most B2B marketers are not effectively using social technologies to influence the purchasing decisions of their customers.” For those marketers, reading this announcement is a starting point.
6 Steps for Creating a Social Media Marketing Roadmap & Plan by Social Media Today
Lorna Li provides an outstanding roadmap for b2b social media marketing, starting with an understanding of what social media is and what it can and can’t do. She explains how to use tactics like blogger outreach, social networking and social news marketing to create engagement with prospects and move them toward your solutions. Another noteworthy post from SMT is Social Media ROI – a financially sound method. After noting that no “even ‘somewhat’ acceptable method for calculating marketing ROI” exists, Axel Schultze goes on to propose a formula for measuring the ROI of social media interactions. But measuring the return from social media investments is problematic for several reasons, and the notion of being able to do so with any accuracy remains controversial, as indicated in the large number of comments generated by Axel’s post.
Top 25 Social Networks by Navel Marketing
Brian Critchfield reports on the top social networks ranked by traffic. The list also shows previous rank—indicating which networks are growing and which faltering. While most of the sites on the list are hardly surprising (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), there are a few unexpected results, like Tagged at #6 and Yuku at #16.
Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation by Mashable
Noting that “Depending on how popular and well-known your brand is, there may be few or many people talking about it,” Dan Schawbel recommends setting up an RSS feed reader and Delicious account, then using free monitoring tools such as Google Alerts, Technorati, Twitter and Social Mention to keep tabs on discussions of your company and products across social media platforms. For those marketers more serious about social media engagement, and a budget to back it top, Dan wrote a follow-up post detailing the Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For, including Buzzlogic, Radian 6 and Cision.
5 forces that are strangling conversational marketing by iMedia Connection
Tom Hespos warns marketers against five practices that can damage a brand in the social media sphere, like failing to think about conversational marketing strategically, or flooding Twitter with brand messages rather than engaging in true dialogue.
11 Reasons You Can’t Ignore Social Media in 2009 by Digital Labz
Social media now has wide adoption as a marketing and PR tool, but for those still reluctant to use tools like blogs, video, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing, Eric Brantner offers almost a dozen reasons to get started, such as “social media is gaining trust,” it’s fast, it’s passionate, and it’s free (at least the tools are for the most part).
Study: Company Blogs Lead Social Media Options by MediaPost
Mark Walsh reports that “blogging (is) the most important lead-generation source among social media options, followed by StumbleUpon, YouTube, Facebook, De.lic.ious and Digg” (not a surprising result, considering that those other sites tend to support a corporate blog, not replace it). He also quotes a HubSpot study finding that three-quarters of bloggers in small to midsize companies say that “their company blogs were ‘useful,’ ‘important,’ or ‘critical’ to their business.”
Another MediaPost article worth checking out is Scout Labs Offers Cheaper Way To Monitor Consumers. Gavin O’Malley writes that Scout Labs offers “a more economical consumer sentiment-tracking service for agencies and marketers” than Nielsen BuzzMetrics or TNS Cymfony. The company has an impressive list of clients using its tool to monitor and analyze brand conversations across the social media landscape.
Top 5 SlideShare Groups – A Rich Learning Environment for Social Media by uber.la
John McElhenney praises SlideShare as an innovative social media tool and links to his favorite groups for learning about and sharing knowledge of social media.
How to be a LinkedIn superstar by iMedia Connection
Larry Weintraub explains how to get the most out of LinkedIn, from creating the right kind of profile, building connections and soliciting recommendations to working with LinkedIn groups.
Social Media Marketing 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
For those either still new to social media, or just struggling to explain its value to a manager or client, Ron Jones provides an excellent explanation of social media, the different types of sites on the social media landscape, and the marketing and PR benefits of using social media.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business by Social for Business
As the title promises, here are more than four dozen ideas on how to use Twitter for business, categorized into five groups including “Ideas about WHAT to Tweet” (e.g., ask questions, retweet interesting information from others, and when retweeting your own stuff, make sure it has value to the reader and isn’t just self-promotion) and “Some Positives to Throw Back” when people argue that Twitter is a waste of time, such as Twitter’s value in breaking real-time news and quickly collecting market feedback.
The Periodic Table of the Social Media Elements by eyecube
This very clever and ambitious post compares social media to chemistry, and lays out a “periodic table” for social media encompassing different behaviors (e.g., sharing and listening), key influencers (David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Joe Pulizzi, etc.), tools (delicious, Feedburner, LinkedIn et al.), practices, blogs and more.
7 Social Media Predictions for 2009 by Search Engine Watch
Erik Qualman produced this list of predictions in January. Granted, perhaps none were particularly daring, but his clairvoyance has proven remarkably accurate to this point. “Social media continues its rapid growth”—check. “Marketing budgets will continue shrinking”—yup. “Many free services will become defunct”—hmm, not yet, but there are still three months of 2009 to to.
Social Media and the Enterprise Customer – Wired PR by uber.la
John McElhenney lays out a process for mapping your social media communities, then capitalizing on their structures by letting your customers and partners tell your story for you.
What The F**K is Social Media?
Marta Kagan has put together possibly the best single presentation on social media ever. Not sure how to explain the potential and elements of social media marketing to your boss or client? Borrow some wisdom from Marta’s slide deck:
20 Totally Free Buzz Pocket Mining Tools by aimClear
Want to know what’s being said in social media circles about your company, competitors and industry but don’t have the budget for a tool like Techrigy SM2 or Radian 6? The inscrutable Marty Weintraub reviews 20 free tools for monitoring social media buzz, including StumbleUpon Recently & All Time Most Popular Hot Tags, Facebook Lexicon. Twitter search engines, Google Advanced Blog Search and a few you’ve probably never heard of.
7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!) by Stuntdubl
Todd Malicoat advises marketers on how to avoid social media marketing failure by outlining seven reasons results may fall short of expectations, including “you chose the wrong channels” and “your content sucked.”
5 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid by ZoopMedia
In another post on the theme of social media mistakes to avoid, Justin Wright offers up five surefire ways to fail, such as spamming the networks with only your own content and not taking full advantage of the messaging and SEO potential of social media profiles.
The Six Fears of Facebook and Other Social Media Channels by Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets
Bob Cargill analyzes the fears that keep some people out of the social media realm. These are individual fears (e.g., fear of rejection, loss of privacy, time commitment) rather than the social media ostrich type fears that prevent businesses from taking advantage of it.
How to Make Money Off Social Media (originally titled: Selling Social Media to Your Clients) by Webdesigner Depot
Despite the spammy title, this is a very worthwhile piece for corporate b2b marketers or those who work with them. Most helpfully, for those just getting started with social media (or not sure if they’ve started correctly), this post provides a “Suggested Social Media Package” with a list of must-haves (e.g., a WordPress blog, Twitter account, Facebook page) and nice-to-haves (e.g., a YouTube channel and Live Help component on your website). One caveat to the advice given in this post: for businesses, a Facebook page is generally a better option than a Facebook group.
Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010Which factors are really most important in search engine rankings? How do search engines treat different forms of keywords? How can you get the most of out of Google’s free webmaster tools to improve rankings? What other tools are worth checking out for keywords, linking and website analysis?
Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best SEO blog posts from this year.
Guide to Search Engine Ranking Factors by HuoMah SEO Blog
The brilliant—and entertaining—David Harry provides an exhaustive list of the primary and secondary factors affecting search engine rank, from link-related factors (link text, relevance, PageRank) and header data through trust-related factors (domain history, outbound links) and “dampening factors” (poor coding, duplicate content and URL issues).
Q&A: A Few Things You Need to Know About Keyword Usage by Search Engine Guide
Stoney deGuyter offers valuable insights on how search engines treat keywords, such as that capitalization (usually) doesn’t matter, keywords have more weight if they are used in a title or header tag or are bolded, and search engines are getting better at recognizing forms of a word (e.g. sites including “kayaks” or “kayaking” will show up on a search for “kayak”). On that last point though, keep in mind that for popular search phrases, even a single character can make a big difference. For example, one website shows up at #2 on Google for “business services management,” but at #23 for business service management.
Build A Great B2B Search Engine Marketing Campaign by The Milwaukee SEO
This post combines useful information about setting up b2b SEO and SEM campaigns (such as getting the website information architecture right to start with, choosing keywords carefully with an eye toward the long tail, using PPC advertising effectively, and targeting local search) with humor—at least to those of us who live and breathe b2b marketing, and are amused by how perplexing it can be to b2c marketing agencies. Another noteworthy post from this blog is Get Keyword Rank Data from Google Webmaster Tools, provides detailed step-by-step instructions for analyzing website performance using Google’s webmaster tools. This is geekier than even most search marketers will go, but can supply valuable insights.
SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Thomas McMahon serves up more tips for using Google’s webmaster tools, including how to spot site errors such as broken links, analyze meta and title tags, and identify a site’s top keyword search queries.
Domain Name Forwarding and Search Engines by Best Domain Names
Dan LeFree explains how properly set up forwarding for multiple domain names to a single website without being penalized by the search engines for duplicate content. The site looks a little spammy, but the article is a helpful, quick read.
Five Tips for Avoiding Deceptive SEO Companies by Small Business Trends
An excellent piece from Janet Meiners Thaeler on manipulative practices to watch out for when hiring an SEO firm, such as “guaranteed” rankings, use of hidden links, and duplicate content on multiple domains or subdomains. For more on this topic, see Just Say No to Bad SEO on SEOmoz.
SEO Tools 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones reviews several keyword, site grader and linking tools. His favorite keyword tool is the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool; as Ron explains, “I like this one because it links to most of the other existing keyword tools, such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and tools from Google, MSN, and Yahoo. This one tool lets you explore many others.”
B2B Marketers: Setting Expectations For Your SEO Campaign by Search Engine Land
What’s the magic formula for SEO success? Julie Shumaker writes that “Setting realistic goals, measuring the right thing, and establishing a baseline” are all key parts of the process. She emphasizes that SEO is a long-term project, that getting on page one of Google isn’t always realistic (at least in the short term), and that ultimately, traffic and conversions are what matters—not just rankings. Another excellent SEO post from Search Engine Land is The Evolving State Of Social Media & SEO. Eric Enge notes that “social media will be a major source of ranking signals for the search engines in the future,” both due to its link-building potential and the emergence of real-time search.
Setting Expectations for Search Engine Optimization by Search Engine Watch
Following on the same theme as the post above, Mark Jackson writes a case study on setting realistic expectations with SEO clients. It’s very difficult for small websites to outrank large ones, particularly for highly competitive phrases. Among his conclusions: more content helps. Blogging helps. Social media works. Link buying isn’t supposed to help, but it does, and some large companies spend big bucks on this, which is difficult for smaller firms to compete with. Focusing on longer-tail terms can provide respectable traffic and conversions without huge costs.
Why it Makes Sense to Target Longtail Keywords First by SEO Book
Aaron Wall explains that because new or small sites without a large number of external links pointing to them are unlikely to rank well for highly competitive search phrases, it’s better to focus on longtail terms first, building up trust, links and traffic gradually. This post includes a couple of excellent graphics showing the differences in how search engine algorithms treat highly competitive terms from more specific longtail phrases.
12 Easy Mistakes That Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field by SEOmoz
For those new to SEO, Rand Fishkin provides some excellent advice on mistakes to avoid including reciprocal linking (it doesn’t work, and it looks spammy), targeting the same keyword on multiple pages, and not using XML sitemaps. My only quibble would be with his advice to use the nofollow attribute for PageRank sculpting; the nofollow tag is insidious and the value questionable.
SEO Quality Indicators & The Heap Paradox by Search Engine Journal
Ryan Caldwell ventures from the philosopical to the practical in this post, providing 10 key indicators of website SEO quality, from “lean code and meaty content” along with proper tag usage to listing a physical address and toll-free phone number. Another notable post from Search Engine Journal is There Is No Secret Sauce in SEO! , in which James Morris debunks several common SEO myths, such as that there is “mystical secret formula” or “complicated scientific method” to achieving SEO success. He closes with advice on where to begin, and the missions of an SEO including a clear understanding of goals up front and collaborating with developers and writers to optimize content.
Blog SEO: 5 Tips To Improve Ranking and Increase Traffic by PCWorld
Mike Keller offers a helpful set of tips for new bloggers to optimize their blogs for search, covering basics such as variable title tags in Blogger (note: this won’t work with all templates), meta tags and setting up RSS feeds.
Blog SEO Tips: Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid by Blogsessive
Alex Cristache details five common SEO mistakes bloggers make that cause their sites to fare more poorly than necessary in search engine rankings. Among the mistakes are ignoring (or improper use of) h1, h2 etc. title tags, and viewing SEO as a one-time process rather than an ongoing discipline.
5 Client Pitch Tips That Score Contracts by Search Engine Journal
Dev Basu provides five tips to SEO consultants on how to successfully sell their services, such as asking good questions, focusing on solving client problems, and identifying exactly what the prospective client needs to know (and then not wasting time by telling them everything under the sun). Great tips for SEOs who know their craft but may struggle with business development.
SEO Trends and the Future of SEO by SEO Theory
In this extensive and thoughtful post, Michael Martinez discusses the impact of trends such as personalized search, universal search and social media, and advises SEO professionals to focus on optimizing for query spaces (all the queries and content relevant to a specific topic) in order to capture traffic for long tail keywords.
The Answer To All Your SEO Questions! by Search Engine Land
Jill Whalen exposes the simple two-word answer that applies to nearly any question about SEO, including how quickly Google indexes new pages, what to do if your search position suddenly drops, the benefit of including keywords in URLs and more.
How to do a 301 redirect for a website by Revenue Robot
This post, which belongs in every SEO consultant’s bookmarks on technical topics, explains how to create a 301 redirect for PHP, ASP .Net, Java, ColdFusion and other environments.
6 cures for common SEO mistakes by iMedia Connection
Brian Easter runs down six common SEO mistakes—such as ugly URLs, duplicate content, and a disconnect between SEO and PR—and explains how to correct or avoid them.
Canonical URL Tag – The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps by SEOmoz
Rand Fishkin extols the virtues of and details the process for using the cannonical rel parameter to resolve duplicate content issues with less technical muss and fuss than implementing a 301 redirect. He outlines the tag’s purpose, operation, and treatment by search engines as well as answering common questions. The incredible number of comments this post generated is a testament to the tag’s importance in the SEO toolbag.
Minor Miracles And Major Feats of First-Page Rankings by MediaPost Search Insider
David Berkowitz reports on how critical video is to attaining a first-page ranking on Google, reporting on a study showing that “Videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages.” He also quotes a finding from Nate Elliot of Forrester that there are “an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results.” Every SEO who’s ever achieved this feat should be proud.
Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide Part VIII: Search Engine Tools and Services by SEOmoz
Danny Dover updates one of the most indispensable guides to the SEO craft anywhere. Though written for beginners, even fairly experienced SEOs are likely to find at least a few new ideas, and helpful reminders, in this detailed guide to the robots.txt file, search engine tools and more.
Check Your Search Engine Rankings, Why Your Competitors in Organic Search Might Not Always Be Who You Think They Are by The Internet Marketing Driver
In this extensive post, Glenn Gabe points out that the competitors for a keyword in SEO are often quite different from a company’s real world competitors; they can include reference sites, blogs, publications, review sites, directories and other websites that a business owner wouldn’t normally identify as “competition.” To support his point, Glenn uses example searches for flat screen TVs (only two manufacturers listed in the top 10 sites), HD video cameras (only Canon at #4), cabernet sauvignon and fuel efficient cars (no makers listed in the top search results).
Understand Google’s Guidelines by Alibaba
Jon Rognerud reveals what matters to Google when indexing and ranking pages, and what doesn’t. He provides tips on design (how to get Google’s spider to read your text before your menu links), how to get your site indexed in 24 hours or less (though you need to be careful with this technique), and what Google ignores (e.g. the meta keywords tag, duplicate links, and graphics—except for the alt tag assigned to them).
6 SEO steps for a website redesign by eVision Online Marketing Blog
George Aspland offers an excellent primer on incorporating SEO considerations from the start when doing a website redesign, from the initial site audit and keyword research through navigation, linking and URL structure changes.
Dirty SEO tricks you should avoid by iMedia Connection
Rich Cherecwich delves into the details of two “gray hat” SEO practices that are best avoided: link buying and domain buying. He also gives advice on what to do if your site does somehow get blacklisted by the search engines.
Why do SEOs forget about REAL marketing? by HuoMah SEO Blog
In this long guest post, Ben McKay starts off with the contention that “with market research, planning, implementation, creative flare, and an ongoing feedback loop of course, you can do just that –(SEO to draw the right kind of traffic) the same way you attempt to carry-out more traditional marketing campaigns.” He then goes on to discuss the art vs. science of SEO, ROI measurement, what SEO practitioners can learn from traditional marketing, before concluding “A more fulfilling and professional online presence could be found from thinking along structured lines—both in the way you operate with clients and also the way you achieve your SEO goals.”
DoFollow Links vs. NoFollow Links by The Minority Report
Supporting my recent post on the insidious nofollow attribute, this post notes that “the entire Internet is built on the premise of hyperlinking and as The Pasty Muncher says it here: ‘Links form the chain that holds the web together.’” The writer notes that WordPress blogs are nofollow by default, but again you can fix that with the dofollow WordPress plugin. Just say “no” to nofollow.
How Yahoo Might Automate SEO by SEO by the Sea
In this controversial post (just read the comments!), Bill Slawski reports on a patent from Yahoo! that seems to suggest the search engine can “optimize” pages automatically. Bill outlines what’s in the patent, then points out a number of obvious flaws in any such approach, including “A site owner might want to target less popular search terms on pages that are a few directory levels deep in their site and have those pages rank well for searches that their audience will conduct rather than target more popular terms with those pages, and rank very poorly.”
