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Best Web Presence Optimization Guides and Tips of 2010

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Web 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.

The Social Media PoolSocial 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 Network Referral Traffic vs. GoogleSocial 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.

Impact of Social Media and Search for B2B WebsitesB2Bs 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.

How Social Media Changed the Sales Cycle into the Buying Cycle

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Revised May 21, 2020

Back in prehistoric times (before the Internet, that is), b2b buyers learned about products and services by reading (print) magazines and (printed) analyst reports. Once they developed a short list of vendors for consideration, they contacted the companies (using phones, which were connected via wires) and the companies sent them (printed) sales collateral by mail (postal, that is).

Then sales people would contact the prospects and use a “consultative” sales process. Buyers would tell each sales rep all about their company, industry and problems, and each sales rep in turn would then explain why his or her product/service was absolutely the best fit to meet the buyer’s needs.

Marketers spent a lot of time creating attractive sales collateral materials–brochures, specification sheets and the like–and getting these printed on nice, glossy paper. Store rooms and offices were full of these glorious materials.

Then the Internet came along, and despite pronouncements that it would “change everything,” it really didn’t for the first several years. Sure, it was a leap forward in distribution technology: websites replaced printed magazines and reports, email replaced postal mail and faxes, phones lost their wires, and online conferencing reduced, somewhat, the need for travel.

[Read more…]

What is Webbiquity? How to Be Everywhere Online

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Welcome to Webbiquity! What exactly is that? Briefly, Webbiquity, or web presence optimization (WPO for those who prefer TLA’s), is the fusion of SEO, social media, interactive PR, online reputation management and other disciplines to make an individual or organization ubiquitous on the web for their name/brand and unique descriptive phrase. If SEO is about getting your website onto page one of Google, WPO is about owning that page.

For example, Jill Konrath is webbiqitous for the phrase “selling to big companies,” holding all 10 spots on the front page of Google for that phrase. The results include her website, blog, a link to her book of that title on Amazon, and articles she’s written. Ardath Albee is almost as dominant for her unique phrase, “marketing interactions,” placing in 7 of the top 12 spots on Google, including the top four. And if you Google “sales management thought leader” in quotes, six of the top ten spots belong to the same sales leadership guru. Interestingly, a Google search for “world’s largest online bookstore” doesn’t display the most obvious result anywhere on page one. Maybe a company with $300 billion in sales and a $20 billion annual marketing budget doesn’t need webbiquity, but smaller enterprises without Super Bowl-size advertising budgets can certainly benefit from it.

From a historical perspective, the web a decade ago (or even a bit less) was still primarily a broadcast medium with limited inactivity. Although in theory anyone could own a website even then, the web presence of most commercial organizations was limited to their own websites and whatever had been written about them by professional publishers and analysts, plus a few directory listings. The last few years have, of course, seen the emergence of social media and an explosion of user-generated content. A company’s website is now only one of myriad places where customers, buyers and other interested parties can find information about it.

This new environment has created the conditions for web presence optimization: using all of the tools now available to make a company as “findable” as possible not only for branded searches but also for key phrases that uniquely describe the enterprise and its offerings. Using these tools properly means not only dominating search, but also presenting a clear and consistent message across channels, wherever buyers or industry influencers may find you.

Elements of Web Presence OptimizationSpecifically, web presence optimization is about achieving webbiquity using the tools show in this diagram, including social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, interactive PR, video and content marketing to disseminate the company’s message as broadly as possible. Just as importantly, companies need to maximize the search value of these different tools and platforms by taking advantage of the linking and cross-linking opportunities they provide.

So, for example, social media releases–part of interactive PR efforts–point readers to company microsites and its media sharing (images, video, presentations etc.). Media sharing accounts are connected to Twitter, which is also used to promote content marketing. Reputation management sites point the organization’s Twitter account as well as social networking profiles. And everything links back the enterprise’s website and blog.

The end result is that when customers, prospects and influencers (bloggers, journalists, analysts etc.) are looking for information on your industry, they find you everywhere. Your story and messages are bolstered by your webbiquity. You have the opportunity to become a valued resource in your industry. Further, the interactions you have with these various constituencies across social networking and other media platforms demonstrate that your people aren’t just smart, they are also helpful and responsive.

This is obviously a high-level view of the elements of webbiquity. Future posts here will delve more deeply into the tools and tactics that can help you and your company “be everywhere online” for your brand and industry discussions.

The 6 C’s of an Effective Social Media Profile

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A key component of web presence optimization, or webbiquity, is writing and posting an effective online profile. This is equally true for consultants, individual proprietors any executive or public-facing employee in a company. Your profile is not only a key tool in selling you services or organization, but also a gateway to additional information about your expertise or products. It should be a little bit about you and a lot about your, or your firm’s, unique value proposition.

An effective online profile has six critical characteristics:

social-profile-logosCurrent: The information you share about yourself and/or your company should be revised regularly to keep it up to date. A profile that contains old or obsolete information is not only misleading, it just plain looks bad.

Complete: This doesn’t mean a profile needs to contain every detail of your life; most people probably don’t care where you went to junior high for example, and extraneous information only dilutes and unnecessarily lengthens a profile. It does mean, however, that an effective profile should contain all of the information your “customers,” whether they be buyers, investors, potential clients or hiring managers, donors, peers and others can find all of the essential and expected information about you there, including a photo, contact information and links to related resources.

Concise: This may seem to be the opposite of the previous point, but it’s not: again, your profile needn’t contain excessive detail, just the essential information you want people to know. It should include your or your company’s unique value proposition, for example, but doesn’t need to include every proof point for every product or service value statement. You may want to include some client success examples, but don’t need to post a complete client list. And you may want to share some background about your organization, but don’t need to include a detailed company history. Basically, people are busy—tell `em everything they need to know, but no more than that.

Competent: An effective online profile should be crafted as carefully as a resume (which effectively, it often is). Be careful to avoid typos and misspellings, use complete sentences, proper grammar, and appropriate vocabulary. Mistakes will reflect poorly on you and your company. A poorly crafted profile may be viewed as a sign of sloppy workmanship and lack of attention to detail.

Compelling: While a profile should of course be factual, it shouldn’t be a mere collection of facts. Why are you, your company, your products and/or services special? What unique benefits will someone gain from hiring you or buying your goods? An effective profile should make the reader want to learn more or take some other action.

Connected: Take advantage of the opportunity in your online profile to link to additional resources—your blog, YouTube channel, website, Twitter account, even other online profiles. This not only drives direct traffic to those venues but also provides SEO benefit.

A carefully crafted online profile extends your presence on the web and communicates the qualities you want readers to take away about you or your organization: professional, thorough, knowledgeable and helpful.

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