Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Eight Factors to Consider When (Re)Launching a Business Blog
Monday, November 21st, 2011Over the last decade, business blogs have gone from being a novelty to a leading-edge practice to an essential element for any company seeking to optimize its presence on the web. According to Small Business Trends and HubSpot, the percentage of businesses with blogs has increased from less than half in 2009 to nearly two out of three in 2011.
Why are so many companies now embracing blogging? In addition to the traditional benefits of business blogging, recent changes in the way search engines rank content have made blogging crucial for obtaining and maintaining high search engine visibility.
Three ranking factors that have recently taken on increased importance from Google (and will therefore likely soon become important to other search engines as well) are content quality and authority, social media links and content freshness. A blog helps on all three fronts much more than a standard corporate website. Google is also placing increased weight on link quality and diversity; thoughtful, helpful blog posts are more likely to attract such links than typical vendor product and service content.
What’s more, blogs are a central component of web presence optimization, and the core of a productive social media strategy.
Once your organization makes the decision to start a blog—or to re-launch one that’s been neglected or has underperformed—here are eight key factors to consider.
1. Location. Will the blog be part of your corporate site or have its own unique URL? The more common practice today is to treat the blog as a section of the website, often with a URL like company.com/blog. The primary advantage of this approach is that all of the SEO value of external links accrues to the corporate site, giving it more authority in the eyes of the search engines.
An alternative approach is to treat the blog as a separate entity with a meaningful URL. For example, if Acme Widgets wants to rank for the very competitive phrase “widget management software,” and their corporate site is at acmewidgets.com, they may want to use the URL widgetmanagementsoftware.com for the blog. This option is worth considering in product categories that are highly competitive in search. It also provides the opportunity to give the blog a distinct and less “corporate” personality of its own, as well as potentially providing the company with an extra spot on the first page of search results.
2. Author(s). The internet is littered with a hundred million abandoned blogs, for two primary reasons: first, it’s a fair amount of work to research and write quality content on a regular basis. And second, there is no instant gratification—it takes time to build an audience and authority with the search engines. Assigning multiple writers (i.e., creating a group blog) can help spread the load and allow for more frequent posting, a variety of styles, and broader topic coverage. Just make sure all of the authors have what it takes to be successful business bloggers: writing skills (of course), but also originality, subject matter expertise, a point of view, and most importantly—persistence.
3. Tone. Sassy? Intellectual? Helpful? Informative? Sophisticated? Technical? While a blog is likely to contain a mix of attributes (particularly a multi-author blog), think about the overall tone and personality your blog should have. Unlike website copy (which tends to be feature/benefit, marketing oriented), a blog can project a distinct and less directly sales-y side of your organization.
4. Design. Some corporate blogs (particularly those integrated into the company website) simply match the look and feel of the corporate website as closely as possible. But while a company blog should carry over certain key branding elements (e.g., colors, logo), it can also have some distinctiveness to its look, reflecting the tone (above) and setting it apart from the “commercial” content of the corporate site.
5. Platform. Just kidding, this really isn’t a tough decision: use WordPress. Sure, there are alternatives, ranging from other free or low-cost platforms (e.g., Blogger, TypePad) to fee-based systems (e.g., Compendium, HubSpot) to tools built into web content management system (CMS) platforms, but it’s tough to find an alternative that can compete with the flexibility, affordability, capability and search engine-friendliness of WordPress.
6. Structure (topics). Though these will likely evolve over time, it’s best to think about at least the obvious subjects for your company and industry up front. First, doing so will help keep subsequent posts organized into logical groups, without “category proliferation” (an excessive number of categories) or multiple overlapping topic areas.
Second, properly naming the categories is critical both for human navigation and for search engine optimization; a mis-named category (e.g., one that uses internal company jargon rather than the language of your prospects and customers) won’t attract as many readers as a better-named category would, and won’t help your blog rank as well for popular industry search terms.
Determining a set of baseline categories up front also helps in developing an editorial calendar. While this may be too formal for a single-contributor or small company blog, it can be very helpful for assuring topic diversity and a steady stream of content.
7. Post frequency. As Heidi Cohen points out, there is no hard and fast rule as to how often a blog needs fresh content, but the best strategy is to “blog as often as you can create quality content.” In terms of a blog’s impact on customer acquisition, posting once per week is nearly 50% more effective than posting only once per month, and more than twice as effective as posting even less frequently. But posting 2-3 times per week yields only a small incremental gain, and posting daily provides an even smaller incremental improvement.
Again, having multiple authors (see factor #2 above) can help increase post frequency without placing an excessive burden on any one contributor. Five authors, each writing two posts per month, would result in 2-3 posts per week—a highly effective frequency for customer acquisition. Spreading the burden should also (at least theoretically) improve the depth and quality of each post as well.
8. Features. Any blogging platform should provide the capability to add common features to your blog like a subscribe-by-email option, buttons/links to your social media accounts, and social sharing buttons to make it easy for your readers to share your posts on social networks and social bookmarking sites (though few platforms offer as many options for “pimping out” a blog as WordPress—see factor #5 above).
WordPress plugins let you add a wide variety of more advanced functions to your blog such as incorporating feeds from social media sites, enable your readers to rate posts, build customized contact forms, automatically display contextually related posts, add an online directory to your blog, display your most popular posts, insert a customized greeting based on the site that referred the reader to your blog (e.g., Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn), even create an e-commerce store.
By addressing each of these factors in your blog planning and setup, you’ll be ready to launch (or re-launch) a business blog built for success.
On-Page SEO: Eight Techniques for On-Page Website Optimization
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011While search engines use hundreds of signals to determine how any particular web page should rank for a given search phrase query, all of those signals feed into two primary measures: relevance and authority.
Relevance is principally determined by content and other site-wide or on-page factors. For example, on a search for information about a specific breed of dog, a page devoted to that breed would typically be deemed more relevant than a page about dogs in general. And a page on site solely focused on dogs would likely be judged by the search engines to be more relevant than a page on a site about domestic pets, or animals in general.
Authority is predominantly determined by the quantity and quality of external links to a site. One common technique for building links in the past was to submit a website to hundreds of general online directories. The major search engines have now caught on to this tactic, however, and discount links from low-quality directories to the point where they are nearly worthless.
It’s still helpful to be listed in a few of the well-respected, higher-quality online business directories, but the focus of link building is now through social media, content sharing and online PR activities. In short, links can’t be bought (at least not without risk) and they can’t be spammed—they have to be earned by producing great content and exposing it to key influencers in your industry.
On-page search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques for making it clear to the search engines what each page, and your website overall, is about. Think of these signals like the dust jacket of a book; you can discern quite a bit about what a book is about just by the cover, promotional blurbs and table of contents. Similarly, the search engines use meta tags, page headings and other signals to assess the relevancy of your site for given search phrases.
Each page on your site should have one main search phrase assigned to it, though often the page will also rank well for associated phrases (in the example below, the page optimized for records management software may also rank well for phrases such as “records management software system” and “records management software solution”).
Here are eight ways to utilize that key phrase on a page to help search engines understand what your site is about.
1. In the body text. The target search phrase should appear at least twice in the body text of the page, and more than twice for long content pages. There’s no need to overdo this, however, and search engines may actually penalize your site for “keyword stuffing”—using the same phrase with unnatural frequency. The text should always read well to a human visitor. Mix in synonymous phrases as well, such as, in this case, phrases like “records management system” or “RM software.”
2. In page headings and subheads. Not every word on a page has equal value. Putting the main idea (your target key search phrase) in headings and subheads emphasizes its important.
3. In the meta title tag. This is one of the most important single elements for SEO, akin to the title of a book. You have (depending on who you believe) somewhere between 65 and 85 characters to tell the search engines what is most important about this page. Use them carefully, wisely and judiciously. You can find more detailed guidance on writing effective title tags here and here.
4. In the site navigation menus. Too often, websites use generic menu text like “Products” and “Services.” Using specific phrases instead is more meaningful both to site visitors and to search engines.
5. In the page file name (end of the URL). Except for the home page on your site (which has to named either Index, Home or Default), you have complete freedom (within reasonable number-of-character limits) to name pages whatever you like. Using a specific phrase helps with SEO, and also makes your page stand out in the search results.
6. In the page meta tags (description and keywords). The description title tag isn’t specifically used by search engines, but it’s value lies in “selling” your page to searchers. It should give searchers a compelling reason to click on your link. Including the key search phrase in the description tag isn’t strictly required, but can help demonstrate the relevance of your page to searchers.
The keywords meta tag is optional. The major search engines no longer use this tag in formulating their rankings (or at least they say they don’t). On the plus side, the tag may still be used by some of the smaller search engines, and it’s helpful internally for organizing SEO efforts. On the downside, it takes time to craft, and it shows your competitors which search terms you are focused on (not that they couldn’t figure this out using other methods). In short, this tag probably doesn’t help much, but it doesn’t hurt either.
7. In image file names and alt tags. These attributes help with image searches as well as regular search. Instead of naming an image file IMG02134.jpg or something similarly meaningless, use a search-friendly file name like electric-blue-widget.jpg (or whatever is relevant for your product, service or topic). Also include a descriptive image alt tag; this is the text that appears in a browser with images turned off and also used for accessibility (e.g. speech browsers for the visually impaired). But the tag is also used be search engines to categorize your image, since search engines can’t “read” the content of the image itself.
8. In internal text links. Let’s say you have one page on your site completely dedicated to “electric blue widgets,” but you use that phrase in passing on other pages of the site as well. From those pages, link the phrase “electric blue widgets” (or variations of it, such as “blue electric widgets”) to the main page on that topic. Again, these links serve as signals to both human readers and search engines that they can find more detailed information about that topic on the target page.
The most fundamental element for on-site optimization is high-quality original content. Strive to write the “ultimate page” for someone searching on that particular topic. Then use these eight techniques to provide helpful guideposts for both human readers and search engines to draw them to that compelling information.
Real-World Results from Web Presence Optimization
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011My last post, What is Web Presence Optimization, and Why Should I Care?, laid out the definition of and rationale for a web presence optimization (WPO) strategy. But what do the real-world results look like? Here are four case studies demonstrating how WPO does more than get a company or individual onto the first page of results in search—it helps them own the first page of search results.
(Keep in mind that search results change constantly; all of these examples were accurate at the time of the search screen captures.)
TAB Products – “Hybrid Records Management”
TAB Products is a provider of records management software, file folders and other filing supplies, mobile shelving, and health records management products through its AMES division. As shown below, the company dominates search results for hybrid records management (managing paper and electronic files together in a single system). The company has integrated its SEO and online PR efforts for WPO.
Jill Konrath – “Selling to Big Companies”
Author and sales trainer Jill Konrath combines her website and blog with content marketing, online PR, social media and AdWords to dominate both sides of the front page of Google for the phrase “selling to big companies.” If you were struggling with how to effectively sell to large organizations, who would you call?
Kinetic Data – “Extend the Value of BMC Remedy”
Business service management software developer Kinetic Data builds products that extend the value of one of the top IT management platforms, and the company dominates search for that phrase by combining an optimized website with blogging, social media, online PR and content marketing activities.
Workface – “Realtime Customer Engagement Platform”
Through a combination of SEO, online PR and social media, customer engagement platform vendor Workface dominates the first page of Google for that term along with “realtime.” Turning customers into fans always helps with WPO.
Obviously, dominating the first page of Google in this manner is affected by factors (including Google’s ongoing changes to its algorithms). But being strategic about web presence optimization—utilizing SEO, online PR, SEM, content marketing and social media in a coordinated manner—can pay significant dividends in terms of search visibility.
Best SEO Guides, Tips and Resources of 2010
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011Ranking well in organic search results becomes more imperative every day, particularly in the B2B world. According to recent research, 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you. 93% of these decision makers use search to begin the buying process. And it isn’t just low-level minions conducting searches at the behest of higher-ups; 63% of C-level executives say they first turn to mainstream search engines to locate information.
That makes optimization more important than ever, and leads to questions like: How can SEO be used in online reputation management? What common SEO mistakes are critical to avoid? How important are footer links to SEO? How can PDF content be optimized for search? How does the introduction of Google Instant change SEO tactics? What are the crucial tasks to include on site audit and pre-launch SEO checklists?
Find the answers to those questions and many more here in more than two dozen of the best guides to SEO tips, strategies, techniques and tactics of the past year.
SEO Basics
SEO: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners by KISS Metrics
Neil Patel provides an excellent and largely non-technical guide to SEO success, from keyword research and content development through meta tags, search-friendly URLs and link building.
Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide 2010- Plain Speak on SEO by WorkingPoint
For those without the time, inclination or webmaster jargon knowledge to read Google’s 32-page SEO Starter Guide, this blog post nets it out: choose the right keywords (based on your market knowledge, not so much what keyword tools tell you), optimize your site, pursue quality links, and unless you have such expertise internally—hire professional help.
SEO 101: Defining the long tail by Conversation Marketing
Ian Lurie lucidly explains the meaning of “long tail” in search with simple and compelling graphics showing that while individual “head” terms may get management salivating for top rank position, it’s the less sexy but more specific 3-word and longer queries that collectively generate more traffic and a much higher conversion rate.
What Is SEO, Really? by SEO Book
After providing an explanation of SEO, brief history of the discipline and recommendations on how to learn modern SEO techniques, Peter Da Vanzo concludes that SEO isn’t only about rankings—but it isn’t just about money either.
You WANT Rankings, But What Do You Really NEED? by Search Engine Guide
Frequent best-of contributor Stoney deGeyter elaborates on the “key components to a well-rounded optimization campaign,” including keyword research, website architecture, copywriting, on-page optimization, analytics and more.
Advanced SEO Tactics, Techniques and Considerations
The dangers of ranking No. 1 on Google by iMediaConnection
***** 5 Stars
Drew Hubbard quantifies both the value and risk of high rankings. On the value side, getting your site ranked #1 on both Google and Yahoo/Bing means you’ll attract (on average) 40% of ALL organic search clicks for that term. On the risk side, however, carefully choose which terms you really want to rank for. People search for different reasons. Ranking highly for an informational—rather than transactional—can end up drawing a ton of traffic to your site and putting a big load on your servers for no real business benefit. Ranking for high-conversion keywords is far more important (i.e. profitable) than just showing up well for high-traffic terms. Still, considering all of the worries that might keep an SEO pro up at night, this one is probably pretty low on the list.
How to optimize page Titles and improve click through rates by Web SEO Analytics
Vasilis Vryniotis runs through the basics of optimizing titles for search: make them brief, descriptive, attractive and branded, with the most important keywords up front.
25 tips to skyrocket your search engine rankings by Socialmedia.biz
Karan Singhal offers 25 tips that may not “skyrocket” your site’s rankings but should help, among them: understanding your target market and how they search, using internal linking with anchor text, utilizing keyword-rich URLs, and keeping your site’s content fresh.
12 Amazing SEO Infographics by HubSpot Blog
***** 5 Stars
Kipp Bodnar compiles an outstanding, highly bookmarkable set of SEO infographics suitable for printing out and posting in a highly visible location. Examples include the SEO Order of Operations (grab and include with the post?), SEO vs. PPC stats, and the ROI of SEO.
Search Marketing in a B2B World – PPC and SEO by SlideShare
Magnus Nilsson guides b2b marketers through search optimization in this online presentation, from recognizing the differences between how buyers search at home versus at the office, and how different types of business buyers search, to using analytics to measure what’s really important.
Do You Make Any of These 10 Simple SEO Mistakes? by KISS Metrics
Kristi Hines details 10 common SEO mistakes and how to correct them, such as focusing on link quantity over quality and not creating compelling, linkworthy content.
SEO Raises Awareness and Reputation Better than PPC by MarketingSherpa Blog
Adam T. Sutton reports on MarketingSherpa research showing that more marketers view SEO as “very effective” than PPC at increasing brand/product awareness (42% to 34%), improving brand/product reputation (29% to 19%) and improving PR (27% to 6%). For many if not most companies, PPC and SEO should both be part of the marketing mix; but it’s important to recognize their differing and often complementary strengths.
The Business Of Burying Internet Search Results by NPR
Noting that “The Internet can be a hostile place, with powerful companies paying handsome sums to hide negative content in Google search results…Unseen battles are waged every day to protect and destroy brands and reputations,” Peter O’Dowd demonstrates how companies and political figures are turning to content marketing and SEO to push negative mentions of them off the front page of search results.
The Problem with Footer Links in SEO by WordStream Internet Marketing Blog
Lior Levin writes that footer links generally don’t carry much weight with search engines: “Since the webmaster has heavily devalued the link, it only makes sense that the search engines would as well.” While footer links have valid purposes, important links should be placed more highly, and prominently, on the page.
We’ll Stop Screaming “Relevance” When You Start Listening by Search News Central
Gabriella Sannino demonstrates the centrality of relevance to search results by stepping through the process of optimizing a single page, from keyword targeting and meta tags to content development and link-building through guest posts or bylined articles.
The Art and Science of SEO Site Audits [Best of SEW 2010 #10] by Search Engine Watch
***** 5 Stars
Adam Audette outlines an extensive checklist and process for performing SEO site audits, including on-page and off-page factors, reporting, and audit tools.
Twitter & Facebook links affect SEO on Google and Bing by Web SEO Analytics
Another noteworthy post from Vasilis Vryniotis, this one detailing how search engine are using social signals to impact rankings and what type of information the search engines attempt to glean from links in social media.
Fundamentals of PDF Optimisation for Search by Bruce Clay
Explaining that “Properties to a PDF are what meta tags are to a web page,” Aaron Egan demonstrates how to use text, properties, tags and navigation to make PDF documents as search-friendly as possible.
The SEOmoz Internal SEO Pre-Launch Checklist by The Daily SEO Blog
Aaron Wheeler outlines critical (e.g., title tag, URL structure, image alt tags) and “worth double-checking” (robots.txt file, H1 tags, images optimized) SEO tasks to complete prior to launch. Danny Dover elaborates on this SEO “cheat sheet” in the accompanying video.
Google Instant and SEO
Google Instant: Fewer Changes to SEO than the Average Algo Update by The Daily SEO Blog
Rand Fishkin pulls data from a variety of sources to show that the introduction of Google Instant had only subtle impacts on search behavior.
6 Ways to Ensure Better Rankings in Google Instant by Search Engine Journal
Kristi Hines here offers a half-dozen tips for ranking better in Google Instant, though most are just good solid SEO practice regardless, such as thinking like searchers, keeping your online reputation clean and producing content in a variety of formats—not just text.
Google: Complexity is Good! by SEO Book
***** 5 Stars
Aaron Wall posts an entertaining and informative rant on how the increasing complexity of Google search (incorporating personalization, social signals, video results, Google Instant, etc.) has also led to a proliferation of bugs. A quote that every SEO should print out in a large font and tape up on his or her wall: “Sometimes you don’t rank because you screwed up. But sometimes you don’t rank because Google screwed up.”
SEO Planning for 2011 by Search Engine Watch
Eric Enge reviews some of the most impactful changes for search optimization in 2010 (e.g., May Day, Caffeine, Instant) and identifies four key factors SEO practitioners will need to focus on for search success in 2011.
SEO for Bing
SEO Tips for Bing by MarketingProfs
With Bing now accounting for roughly 30% of organic search in the U.S., John Pring provides timely advice on how to optimize for this search engine and differences from Google; while backlinks, pagerank and fresh content matter less to Bing, many of the same factors (keyword research and density, an XML sitemap) apply.
SEO for Bing: Don’t Ignore It by Search Engine Watch
Stating that “Google is absolutely watching Bing’s every move, and search marketers should be doing the same thing,” Adam Audette predicts that Bing’s market share will grow and provides several general (e.g., clean code, quality content) and specific (use XML sitemaps and keep them up to date) tips on optimizing for the #2 search engine.
Google Webmaster Tools and SEO
Beginner’s Guide to Google Webmaster Tools by KISS Metrics
Neil Patel (again) provides an outstanding primer on the functions and use of Google Webmaster Tools, from adding your site and uploading an XML site map through sitelinks, settings, identifying your best external links and keywords, and much more.
Google Webmaster Tools 101 by ClickZ
Ron Jones explains how to use Google Webmaster Tools to diagnose SEO problems and make improvements in different areas (HTML, internal links, keywords) to optimize overall website performance.
Related Post
40 (of the) Top SEO Guides, Tips and Resources of 2010 (So Far)
Best Web Presence Optimization Guides and Tips of 2010
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011Web presence optimization (WPO)—using tactics like SEO, PPC, online PR, social media, content marketing and reputation management in a coordinated fashion to maximize your online visibility and business results—is the core theme of this blog. It’s also frequently written about in popular blogs and online publications, though strangely almost no one uses the term. It’s almost like a big game of Taboo, Catch Phrase, Password, or even Red Green’s Possum Lodge Word Game; all of these writers are describing the concept of WPO, but are apparently forbidden by some cosmic rule book from using the actual phrase.
Or maybe it just hasn’t caught on. Yet. Whatever.
But fundamentally, 1) there are now far more online venues than just your website or blog where you and/or your company be found (social media pages and profiles, articles, videos, etc.), and 2) there are more ways for people to search than just Google and Yah-Bing (YouTube is now the second-largest search engine and Facebook SEO is its own emerging discipline). WPO is about capitalizing on these trends, so learn how to integrate your social media, search, SEM, content marketing and other interactive marketing and PR efforts to optimize your web presence here in some of the best articles and blog posts on (shhh! Don’t say those words!) of the past year.
Web Presence Optimization Tips and Tactics (Though They Don’t Call Them That)
4 tips for higher rankings through better links by iMedia Connection
Great content naturally attracts links, but Matt Malden points out ways to go beyond that by blogging, sending a regular email newsletter, using Twitter, social networks, YouTube and other sites to expand your online presence.
Social Media Affecting BtoB Buying Behavior by The Proactive Report
Sally Falkow reports research on new influences in the B2B buying process (e.g., 59% of b2b buyers engage online with peers who have addressed similar challenges; 48% follow industry conversations on the topic; and 37% have posed questions on social networking sites), then emphasizes that your “content must be visible as your prospective customer moves through all the possible sources of content” including social bookmarking sites, forums, blogs, your website and in the industry press.
How to use search to shield your brand from negativity by iMedia Connection
Eric Papczun delves into three key components of online reputation management: SEO (long-term promotion of content in search), paid search (SEM—addresses immediate needs), and social media (message distribution and brand engagement).
Don’t let your social media presence crush your brand’s future by iMedia Connection
Eric Papczun follows up on his post above with more guidance to help “dominate search engine results pages” including leveraging alternate domains, creating a corporate presence on social networking and content-sharing sites, and search-optimizing your press releases. He also lists several tools to help track and monitor your brand reputation online.
Why B2B Marketers Should Leverage Flickr by Search Engine Land
Andy Komack explains why business marketers should use Flickr, the social photo-sharing platform, what types of images to upload (e.g., product photos, diagrams, infographics, trade show pics etc.), and how to leverage Flickr through blogs, articles, Facebook and other tools.
Tools to Include in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy by CompuKol Connection
Michael Cohn supplies an excellent list of “useful and effective tools that will help you create a buzz for your business,” from social networks and photo-sharing sites to wikis and review sites.
Social referrals: How to attract this vital currency by iMedia Connection
Noting that, for an increasing number of websites, “referral traffic is as significant from social networks as it is from search engines, making social the next search,” Liza Hausman details three components of what she terms “an effective on-site social optimization strategy:” social connectivity, the connected experience (e.g., making it as simply as possible for visitors to share your site content across multiple social networks), and social analytics.
The best 159 social websites by Populair
Social media profiles and content promotion are key elements of WPO, and here is an excellent list of social sites across various categories including social networks, answers and knowledge, social travel, local social, social phone apps, business social, events and more.
Social Media and Search
Social Media and Search Optimization Integration by SEO Wizardry
Frequent best-of contributor Pete Hollier details the social media optimization (SMO) process, explains how a corporate website and blog integrate with social bookmarking and social networking, and shows how SMO and SEO efforts support each other.
Titles, Tags & Tweets: the Role of Search in Social Media Marketing by PR-Squared
Todd Defren emphasizes quite properly that when it comes to titles, headings and tags for blog posts or other social media content, descriptive words (i.e., what your audience is likely to be searching for) are far better than “clever” titles. He also advises, “many brands will supplement their blogging with Blogger Relations, YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc…the content created for one outlet, e.g., a YouTube video, ought to be promoted across any other frequently-used channels. Tweet about the video. Post it to the Facebook Wall. When appropriate, let key bloggers know about it.” Hmm, sounds a lot like WPO.
How search can boost your social media campaigns by iMedia Connection
Vanessa Newkirk shows how insights gained about your prospective customers and the search keywords they use from social media, SEO and SEM efforts can be applied across all of these online marketing activities to make each one more effective.
B2Bs Tap Social to Boost Search by eMarketer
In a recent survey, 44% of B2B marketers said that their social media activities have had a positive effect on search performance for their websites (a figure that is likely much higher in reality, as another 27% respondents admitted they “don’t know” what effect social has on their search results). This makes sense, as SEO success is driven by links, and social media sites can be a rich source of relevant links. The top two goals B2B marketers identified for social media are building brand awareness and increasing website traffic.
How to adapt to the evolving search landscape by iMedia Connection
Jonathan Shapiro shares some thoughtful, strategic insights on how search is evolving, how social media impacts search, how social+SEO+PPC efforts can work in tandem, and how to utilize off-site content, (e.g., YouTube) to enhance your brand presence online.
Why Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers by eMarketer
“Is 2011 set to be the ‘year of Facebook,’ even among search marketers?” That’s the opening question here, and recent research indicates the answer is a clear “yes.” SEO and social media program integration is the top organic search priority, while social media advertising is the paid search priority; at 46%, it’s ranked well ahead of tactics like local search advertising (18%) and mobile search ads (11%).
Online Reputation Management
20 Common LinkedIn Mistakes Online Job Seekers Make by New Grad Life
Though aimed at job seekers, this post provides an excellent checklist for anyone on LinkedIn to review. Among the common mistakes to avoid: not creating a personalized public profile URL, not making your headline (and profile summary, and specialties) searchable by including key search words, not proofreading your profile for typos and grammatical errors (ouch!), not personalizing your invitation-to-connect messages, and more.
5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Noting that LinkedIn has more than 60 million members, including executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies, Michelle Bowles presents five excellent techniques for optimizing your personal marketing through LinkedIn, such as optimizing your profile, leveraging third-party apps such as Slideshare, and promoting your LinkedIn profile through other channels (your blog, email signature and business cards, for example).
Google on Manipulating Search for ORM by Outspoken Media
***** 5 Stars
It can happen—negative commentary about you or your company gets posted online. Maybe it’s valid (e.g. an instance of less-than-optimal product or service delivery; no organization or person is perfect) or maybe not (e.g. a disgruntled ex-employee seeks online revenge), but either way, it’s potentially damaging, particularly if it appears prominently in search results. Rhea Drysdale walks through several steps you can take to push the bad stuff off the front page of Google by creating and promoting positive content—profiles, blog posts, news, favorable reviews, and other items.
