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Social Media Marketing Best Practices from Best Buy

Lee Odden — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:03:58 +0000

Adam Singer, Paul Isakson, Brad Smith @ IMS Minneapolis

Social Media advice is cheap and for the most part, you get what you pay for. Best practices social media marketing based on experience, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Social Media Best Practices session at IMS Minneapolis earlier this week gave attendees access to first hand insights from the likes of: Brad Smith from Best Buy, Adam Singer from TopRank Online Marketing, Paul Isakson from Thinkers & Makers (formerly of Space150) and Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating. Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenents that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

Deliver
Blow you away
Never leave you hanging
Make a difference
Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing. You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

(Essentially don’t be stupid)
Listen
Be findable, think distributed
It’s about people
Enable creation
Make it social
Listen some more
Be authentic
Be transparent
Keep it simple
Make a commitment

Best buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

Best Buy is also active with Community Forum, Best Buy IdeaX, a Facebook Fan page and other channels.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

Listen first, talk second
Its OK to fail
The same social mores apply online as offline
Customers don’t care about channels
We have to be ready ro respond
Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey and have learned the importance of listening instead of pushing. It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

I did miss some of the bulleted items above because the presentation went by very quickly. If access to the PowerPoint presentations is made available, I’ll link to it from this post.

I’ll be adding observations on the presentations from Adam Singer and Paul Isakson separately.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Social Media Marketing Best Practices from Best Buy |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Online Marketing Summit Minneapolis 2010

Lee Odden — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:44:14 +0000

: Image by Bruce Clay, Inc via Flickr

In conjunction with ClickZ, OMS has launched its 2010 23-City Tour from Seattle to New York and is coming to Minneapolis June 25th. OMS had an event in the Twin Cities last year at about the same time and provided a great mix of education and networking opportunity for internet marketers of all types.

Best practices in Social Media, Search, Email, Analytics, Demand Generation and Website Strategy are planned for each OMS event. Aaron Kahlow and the OMS team have assembled a great group of thought-leaders, authors, world-class brand marketers and leading online practitioners from companies like: Kodak, REI, DuPont, Wharton, Google AdWords and of course, TopRank Online Marketing, to share their experiences and successes from the front lines of internet marketing.

At last year’s OMS Minneapolis event, I presented on “Making a Case for Social Media Marketing“. This year I will be presenting on what I believe to be the most important trend that combines the best of SEO, Social Media and Online PR: Content Marketing Optimization.

Here are the details of that session:

Content Marketing Optimization: Online marketing is increasingly competitive and brand marketers world-wide are seeking real advantages that will improve the efficiency and impact of their Social Media and SEO efforts. This session provides unique insight into content based optimization strategies and processes as well as tactics for the sourcing, creation and promotion of optimized content on the social web.

It’s not that often that the Twin Cities gets outside marketing conferences and OMS has really perfected their ability to offer a mix of national and local expertise. Each OMS event includes:

A Social Media Training Workshop and Breakfast offered by the Online Marketing Institute in association with Wharton Interactive Media Initiative
Networking opportunities with industry experts and hundreds of peers in sales-free environment
Panels and sessions covering basics to advanced tactics

You can get more information about OMS Minneapolis from their site and you can also drop a comment below. I am happy to answer any questions.

Incidentally, I will be giving away our new 50+ page guide to Content Marketing Optimization at the event, so be sure you register and plan to attend. The guide offers several case studies, trends, insights and of course:

I. Content Marketing Optimization Goals
II. Search and Social Media Keyword Research
III. Buyer Personas & Buying Cycle
IV. Understand the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Landscape
V. Inventory and Assess Current Digital Assets
VI. Define Editorial Guide For New Content
VII. Map Keywords to Current Assets, Content and Future Editorial
VIII. Operationalize Content Optimization with Current Processes
IX. Develop & Optimize Off-Page Digital Assets
X. Develop Channels of Distribution for Digital Media Promotion
XI. Implement Search Marketing, Web Analytics & Social Media Monitoring Tools

This extremely detailed guide will only be offered to attendees of OMS Minneapolis weeks before it’s available to TopRank Marketing

Search Engine Optimization 101 (encourageblogging.com)

Best Practices In SEO And Marketing: IMS MN 2010

Adam Singer — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:27:06 +0000

At the recent Minneapolis Integrated Marketing Summit, TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden moderated an exciting panel of a diverse group of SEO professionals:

Alex Bennert – Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal
Brian Kleisner – Search Engine Marketing Manager for FindLaw
Bill Leake – CEO of Apogee Results

The focus of the panel was on search engine optimization best practices, and panelists discussed everything from leveraging web analytics for decision making to how to scale efforts and many topics in between. Following is a summary of each presenter’s top points:

Alex Bennert – Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal

Alex spoke on the important of using data to make decisions, including leveraging sources such as Google webmaster tools. The information provided in webmaster tools has grown significantly since they have implemented it.

Her favorite addition is the “breaking data” feature, which tells you all of your top keywords driving traffic to the site. You can use this to see terms that gain a high volume of impressions but a low volume of clicks. From this, you’ll know that the page can be optimized better to potentially get more clicks.

And it doesn’t even have to be on page or changing keywords. Sometimes, just testing changes in meta description can help gain additional clicks. It’s something we have control over and can see near immediate results for changes. Leverage meta descriptions for clicks, and to help promote your brand and spread key messages.

Have you given access of webmaster tools to members of your team? You should consider this so they can act on data.

Additionally, branded searches and navigational queries are extremely valuable for a brand and should not be discounted. At the WSJ, hundreds of thousands see our search result monthly from brand terms.

Alex then proceeded to speak on sitemaps. She noted, if you have a large enterprise level site with frequent information that’s added/deleted, a sitemap is vital. That’s because you don’t have to wait for search engines to re-crawl your site, you’re providing it to them in a format they’ll immediately get. At the Wall Street Journal, we organize our sitemaps into specific types of content – i.e. stock queries, articles, etc. Then we can see immediately when problems crop up.

In terms of getting “old school” reporters to create additional content, like to help them see the value of SEO by showing examples of their own content. For example, I find a headline they wrote and show them how not at all findable in search, whereas others are easily findable. By showing examples, Alex is able to be persuasive and help reporters create SEO friendly content.

Brian Kleisner – Search Engine Marketing Manager for FindLaw

Brian spoke on the balance between search, and how search interacts with usability.

“Arriving from search is to enter the unknown:”

1. The searcher’s expectation for what they think they’ll find must be met.

2. Information must be presented to enable a decision or make choices.

3. The next steps must be clear.

4. The entire experience must feel safe, secure, authentic and believable.

Usability and search both share common concerns:

Findable
Credibility
Usable/useful
Valuable/desirable
Offering choice

Addressing this, Brian went on to cite several SEO tips:

SEO Tip #1: Use a keyword oriented tagline with the “Who” and “What answered.

SEO Tip #2: Use content to answer the questions naturally making sure to include the appropriate keyword. For example:

Where is your company located?
When is the next release for “keyword”?
Why are you an expert on “keyword”?

Asking these questions helps generate fresh content, better defines anchor text, provides new ideas for navigation text link labels and increases understandability for humans, search and those using assistive technology to interact with your website.

SEO Tip #3: Consider local SEO

Local search has special rules for SEO:

Claim your listings on the search engines and beyond (Yelp, CitySearch, etc.)
Be consistent, use the same address and phone number across the web.
Monitor and manage you and your competitor’s reputation.

Bill Leake – CEO of Apogee Results

Bill spoke about integration opportunities between Search and other marketing tactics.

He started by speaking at a high level, and that “more arrows are generally good.” Marketing works best when it works together. As we talk about ways to improve search, remember it is just another piece of marketing.

Start by defining what you really want from your marketing efforts and create a key objective.

Bill then shared integrated tactics that will improve ROI of search.

1. Integrate paid media and “earned media” for better results.

Online favorable articles/analyst pieces
Optimized press release mentions
Promote 3^rd party blog posts

2. Consider event and name driven paid and natural search.

Leverage a national events and names for dirt cheap search traffic.

3. House list/direct mail tie-ins: integrate online marketing with more traditional focused direct marketing (think online mail-merge).

4. Create a more integrated search – use PPC traffic with your web analytics and your lead forms for list building and enhances lead generation. Leverage services such as

DemandBase
Jigsaw
Other list building via web traffic

Most B2B terms are not looked at “for fun” they are looked at due to pain points on the part of the searcher.

5. Improve spending by using down-funnel data.

One client was spending 110K per month with well understood and optimized CPL metrics. They started doing PPC optimization using human scrubbed lead data (not web forms). Results: 43% shift in PPC spend allocation, 31% software sales uplift.

6. Choose keywords on conversion metrics, not on search/reach/volume metrics. If you have paid search data, use that to determine what the money keywords are.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Best Practices In SEO And Marketing: IMS MN 2010 |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Enterprise SEO Interview with Scott Skurnick of Edmunds.com

Lee Odden — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:45:41 +0000

Spotlight on Search Interview with Scott Skurnick of Edmunds.com

For every SEO guru speaking at a conference, there are 10 or 20 more SEO experts you might not have heard of, making things happen in amazing ways. Scott Skurnick has worked in the Search Marketing industry as long as anyone I know on the conference speaking circuit and has a tremendous amount of experience and expertise to share.

In this interview, Scott shares his journey to become Executive Director of Search Engine Optimization and User Insights at Edmunds.com, his take on social media and SEO, scalability of SEO, tips on audits, best practices, tools and more.

You’re a long time consumer products search marketer, having worked at companies like Circuit City, OfficeMax and currently with Edmunds.com. What made you decide to work in the search marketing industry and what do you like best about it?

Actually I got my start with Search Marketing in Mexico City when I was working in the Tequila industry. I had worked for Jose Cuervo for a number of years and then went to work for their main competitor at the time which was Tequila Sauza. When I launched the first brand websites back in 1995 I became obsessed with Tequila Sauza being the number one result in Yahoo and Alta Vista for the query “tequila”. Of course that wasn’t a very hard task because there weren’t a lot of tequila related sites but the whole concept of search engines intrigued me.

The thing that I like the most about our industry is the fact that it is ever-changing and there are no “absolute” answers. The end goal is the same for everyone in SEO in that we want to generate both traffic and some kind of conversion. What differs is how we reach that goal. Everyone’s SEO recipe is a little different and who’s to say that their approach is any better than someone else’s. What’s not to like about this?

What job skills and career advice can you offer to Search Marketers that want to work in-house vs working at an agency? Do you think it’s reasonable for companies to expect SEMs to be advanced at both SEO & PPC? And Social?

There are a couple of necessary skills that most people don’t speak of. I won’t get into the debate of whether or not we should be able to write code because I think it depends on the situation. The list of skills and qualities I feel are necessary for a successful in-house SEO are:

Must be highly analytical
Understand how the different parts of an organization work
Have Great negotiating skills
Be likeable and never bite the hand that feeds you (developers and writers)
Be curious and never think you know everything
Be humble. You have to be able to admit your mistakes, we all make them especially working in SEO
Most importantly, you have to have thick skin. You will always have your doubters and people who want to see you fail because they don’t believe in SEO.

While I feel it is vital that an in-house SEO understand both Paid Search and Social, depending on the size of the company it may not be realistic for one person to manage all 3 areas. All 3 are highly specialized and changing very quickly. More importantly, you can easily ruin a company by committing errors in any of these 3 and errors usually occur when there is a lack of understanding or knowledge. At my current company we have separate teams handling PPC, SEO and Social and this seems to work the best. Of course we all interact and share information but at the end of the day we have an expert for each channel.

Speaking of social, what are some of the ways you’ve made SEO content more social at Edmunds.com? What are some of the immediate opportunities within the social web to advance SEO goals?

When we talk about Social Media at Edmunds, we are really talking about Forums, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Edmunds has been running an online automotive community (forums) since 1996 which is, for the most part, based on SEO best practices. As far as Facebook and Twitter are concerned, our editorial and PR teams are directly involved. While we do engage in some auto-tweets, the majority of what we put out there has an original voice to it. We also actively engage with people who are discussing our brand or the automotive market in general.

The biggest Social Media opportunity for us is brand promotion and audience engagement. Our content travels very well. Not only do we review almost every vehicle imaginable, but we also have a data department that is responsible for coming up with industry sales forecasts and results. When we issue a sales forecast or summary, this information is immediately picked up and re-tweeted or shared via Facebook.

Many agency marketers say quality SEO cannot scale because working with many different types of web sites and companies is unpredictable. Do you think that’s true for in-house SEO?

I couldn’t disagree more. Since 1995 I’ve worked as an in-house online marketer with tequila, office supplies, consumer electronics and automobiles. I view myself as product agnostic. For me it is all about the marketing channel. Of course every industry and website presents a different set of challenges but I’ve always followed the same SEO blueprint. The SEO blueprint changes due to the elastic nature of our industry but I’m going to apply pretty much the same strategy regardless of the product I’m trying to promote. Some sites may require more effort when it comes to link building while others may need better editorial content but at the end of the day the basic SEO infrastructure is very similar.

What are some of the common obstacles with large retailer web sites when it comes to SEO? What makes a successful large site SEO program so successful?

Enemy #1 is the CMS. Most large retail sites use shiny and expensive out of the box systems which are great for everything but SEO. From dynamic parameters in url strings (no not just 1 or 2) to duplicate title and description tags across hundreds or thousands of pages, most CMS’s just don’t know how to handle SEO. Add in code bloat and duplicate pages across multiple categories and there is enough to keep any SEO busy for years. The other big issue is unique content. Too many large retail sites don’t put in the effort to write unique and appealing product descriptions so their Sony Plasma TV description is the same as hundreds of others across the web.

As far as what makes a large site SEO program a success, this is very cliché but I dare any in-house SEO to disagree. It comes down to education and compromise. Until everyone in the organization has a very basic understanding of SEO, you will have a hard time getting a SEO project to succeed. The developers need to understand why you are asking them to change the code and the writers need to understand why you are asking them to change their titles. You never ever want to mandate change because this will only make you enemies. You also have to understand that sometimes SEO has to take a backseat to a more important goal. There are few instances where SEO and usability or SEO and development conflict with each other but when they do, you need to choose what’s best for the company. Never ever let your ego get in the way.

Let’s say a friend shows you his new retail product web site and asks you to do a SEO audit. What are 4-5 things you would look for?

Any audit starts with a simple question; are you willing to go under the hood and make potentially large scale changes…If the answer is yes then:

Need to understand the CMS / Shopping Cart solution and see if it’s flexible.
I’m checking urls, most retail web sites use too many dynamic parameters
I’m making sure a product only lives in one department / category. If it doesn’t I’m using the canonical tag (worst case scenario) or convincing him to change his categorization.
Making sure his product descriptions are unique and in-depth. Too many ecommerce sites use canned descriptions.
Making sure he is letting his customers review the products. You can say what you want about the now defunct Circuit City on the store side, but the web site had by far the most comprehensive customer product reviews on the web and these generated considerable SE traffic.

What are your favorite web based SEO and social media marketing tools?

For SEO: Bruce Clay Toolset, SEOmoz Pro Tools, Xenu, Majestic SEO, Ranking Manager and Wordtracker. For Social Media: Co-tweet, Klout and wefollow. I also set up a really nice reputation management dashboard based on a post from aimClear a while back.

What role does social media optimization play in an overall SEO program? Do you think it’s worth optimizing content for search within social media sites like Facebook or MySpace?

Social media is important in that we want to let people consume our content wherever they feel comfortable. We try and optimize the content for the channel but not necessarily for search engines. We don’t create special content hoping to create a temporary lift from social media and we definitely don’t promote all our content via social channels. The worst thing a brand can do is abuse Twitter or Facebook. Our users can smell a “hyped” story from a mile away.

Staying on top of best practices in general and specifically for what’s most important to the web sites you’re working on can be a challenge. What do you do to stay current? What blogs do you read? Do you have favorite conferences, books, forums or newsletters?

I easily spend the first hour of every morning going over my analytics and reading up on the latest SEO news. As far as the sites I visit, they include: Search Engine Land, Michael Gray’s Blog, WebmasterWorld, WebProNews, MediaPost, paidContent.org and the IAB. I also love 1938media.com, it keeps me grounded. I don’t really go to a lot of conferences but I have been attending PubCon since 2005 and SMX Advanced since it started. PubCon is great because there is something for everyone and SMX Advanced is one of the few conferences where experienced SEO’s can learn something. The one conference I would love to attend but haven’t been able to yet is the Search & Social Spring Summit.

Thank you Scott!

Scott has been working in online marketing since 1995 in industries ranging from Tequila to Automobiles. He’s an avid Packers and Soccer fan and live in Redondo Beach, CA with his wife and two girls. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn and working hard on SEO at Edmunds.

Spotlight on Search is an interview series that shines a light on search marketing professionals to learn more about the nature of their work, differences in SEO amongst categories of web sites and of course, SEO tips, tactics and useful tools. We do not take PR firm pitch suggestions or solicitations for these interviews. They are by request from TopRank Online Marketing Blog editorial staff only.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Enterprise SEO Interview with Scott Skurnick of Edmunds.com |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Free Pass: Integrated Marketing Summit Minneapolis

Lee Odden — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:29:05 +0000

Tomorrow the Integrated Marketing Summit in Minneapolis kicks off with a mix of educational sessions and learning opportunities that run the gamut of online marketing topics. The event includes a keynote from Chad Mitchell of Forrester Research as well as sessions on multi-channel marketing, social media, social CRM, Search Marketing and mobile.

I will be moderating a Search Marketing Best Practices panel at 2:45pm with Bill Leake of Apogee Results, Alex Bennert of The Wall Street Journal and Brian Kleisner from FindLaw. Adam Singer of TopRank Online Marketing @toprank will be presenting on a social media panel at 4pm with Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast, Brad Smith, Director of Interactive Marketing and Emerging Media for Best Buy, and Paul Isakson, Co Founder of Thinkers and Makers.

We’re able to give one free pass to this event

Event Details:

Integrated Marketing Summit
Hilton Minneapolis (map)
5/25/10 from 8am-5pm.

I know it’s short notice, but if you can break away from the office for a day, be sure you leave a comment below with your Twitter handle or some other way to contact you ASAP. Creative comments are given preference. Deadline is 2pm today 5/24/10. If your comment is picked, you will be notified by 3:30pm today (or earlier).

The full agenda for the IMS event can be found here.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Free Pass: Integrated Marketing Summit Minneapolis |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

7 Essential SEO Tips for Small Businesses

Glen — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:30:59 +0000

When it comes to marketing in the current economy, small businesses need all the help they can get. They don’t have the ad budgets, the personnel or the time that the bigger competition has. But none of those factors really matter to search engines, and SEO is a great way to both level the playing field and steal marketshare.

Here are a few tips that small businesses can use to improve their SEO and user experience.

1. Turn everything into content

Content is still King. Search engines still love unique content, and the more useful content there is on your website, the more opportunities you give searchers to find your products and services. Rob Snell gave a fabulous presentation at PUBCON South, and one of the main takeaways was how to turn everything on an e-commerce site into content. Here are some ways to “free” extra content on your site. Here were some of his tips:

Record everything and transcribe it all into text. Interviews, conversations, product DVD’s, personal opinions, etc.
Turn support emails into FAQ pages on your site
Turn PDF’s into HTML pages (although PDF files can rank on their own)
Start generating videos of everything

2. Make it personal

Small businesses have a major advantage that most bigger businesses don’t: A personal voice. By making your voice heard, you’re showcasing your authority in your market, and adding trust. Buyers love hearing recommendations or reviews, and are more influenced to buy from those vs. product feature and benefit pages. Consumers use search engines to research products, and other than the lowest price, they’re looking for recommendations. Give them some! If you have a catalog, make a buyers guide in addition to product listings. Show you’re an expert and turn your knowledge into personalized business. Teaching is a great way to make sales.

3. Optimize for local search

Odds are that your small business can take advantage of local search. 63% of consumers use search engines to research information about local companies. Start with Thomas’ excellent guide on local SEO tips that range from claiming your profile to adding media to submitting to content aggregators.

4. Improve your site’s speed

Small business sites can be notoriously slow. Site speed is usually one of the last things that small business owners care about. But now that Google has introduced speed into the ranking algorithm, it’s time to seriously start checking out how fast your site loads. But more importantly, when you improve your site’s speed, you’re also improving your customer’s experience. Don’t make users wait to buy your products! You can use tools like Web Page Analyzerand the Firefox extension YSlow! to see what’s taking your pages so long to load. If you’re using a blog or shopping cart software, search for caching plugins for your software.

5. Refine internal linking

Internal links can add value to your site considerably, but many small businesses don’t understand that you have to develop a linking mindset in order to really capitalize on it. It takes extra time to research old post links and include them in your articles, but the benefits are great. Sites like Copyblogger do an excellent job of referencing older posts in their articles. Not only does this strategy help with SEO, it also adds to the user experience, giving them more Think long and hard about your site’s linking architecture. Is your navigation schema getting to all of your content? Aside from adding sitemaps, related products and posts keep both visitors and search engines happy. Popular posts lists are also great for making sure your best content is getting seen and linked to.

6. Create content for people

If you’re generating content specifically for search engines, you’re missing a major chunk of your market. Humans don’t like to be bamboozled, and when they come to a page on your site that was obviously made for a search engine, they’ll leave in a hurry and never come back. Plus, only humans can link to your site. If you want to get more inbound links and retain customers, you need to write for customers. The goal to higher search results is still to get more people to your site. After all, search engines can’t buy anything from you.

7. Don’t fret about getting nofollow links

It’s easy to get carried away with only trying to get incoming links without the dreaded nofollow. But really, a link is still a link. If that link can bring in a potential customer, then you want it. If you’re only looking for specific types of incoming links, than odds are you’re missing lots of the low-hanging backlink fruit and worrying about the wrong things.

Who knows how long the nofollow link will be around? If you’re smart, you worry about what’s most important: creating great content. You can’t control how Google ranks things in the future. Focus on things you can control, like creating a killer experience for your customers. In the end, if you focus on giving your customers and visitors great content, many aspects of SEO will take care of itself. Great content attracts great links, especially when you promote it and leverage social SEO channels of distribution. If it’s good for your potential customers, odds are it’s good for SEO too.

10 Easy Local SEO & Online Marketing Tips

Thomas McMahon — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:45:46 +0000

There are currently 29.6 million small businesses in the U.S. (SCORE). 63% of consumers and small business owners use the Iinternet to find information about local companies and 82% use search engines (Webvisible & Nielsen). That means there’s a lot of opportunity for local SEO.

Recently I attended GetListed.org’s Local University in Minneapolis which focused on how to optimize web sites for local search. Out of all the good information that came out of the event, here are 10 easy things you can do today to optimize sites and content to attract local customers.

1. Claim your profile.
It’s as simple as logging into Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local and walking through the verification steps which include a phone call or post card to verify your address.

2. Upload Pictures.
The local sites listing services like to provide their users with pictures of your business. To help ensure that they see some good pictures, upload your own. They don’t have to be professional photos, but they will represent your business so make sure they are decent.

3. Control information across the internet.
A big part of local search optimization and marketing involves obtaining information from other sites. Local listing aggregation services search the internet far and wide to find pictures, reviews and any information they can on your company. Submit your info to services like Localeze & infoUSA.

The downside here is that if something is incorrect on another site, it could find its way back into your local listing. If that happens, you have to go back to the source and ask them to fix the issue and then wait while the fix makes its way into local sites.

4. Ask for reviews.
Most local sites, except for Yelp, are fine with you telling your customers to review you. So do it. On your contact form thank you page, on invoices, on email communications, make a point to say “Hey we’d love it if you gave our business a review on Google/Bing/Yahoo Local.” These reviews, good or bad, make your business more creditable to future customers.

5. Bad reviews are good.
No company is perfect, so when users see all positive reviews, something looks wrong and they may actually choose a different company. Bad reviews are a part of any business and a few bad reviews can make the good reviews that much better. Obviously, you don’t want to encourage bad reviews.

6. Add local phone number.
On your website, be sure to publish your local phone number in text vs within an image or not at all. 800 numbers may be nice, but on their own they don’t give any kind of location indication.

7. Have a full physical mailing address on all pages of your website.
Your address is important and it should be on all pages of your website to re-enforce your geographic location.

8. Think like the searcher/customer.
What would your customers put in a search box to find you and buy your products?

Lets say you own an outdoor sporting good store; like hunting, camping, hiking and fishing. If a searcher puts put ’shoes’ into a search box, they probably aren’t a good match as it’s such a generic term. If they put ‘running shoes’ you’re still not a match as your sporting goods store doesn’t focuses on running. If they put in ‘hiking shoes’ then you want to target them.

Business owners often get caught up in popular keywords or keywords that will drive a lot of traffic and forget to focus on less popular keywords that have a higher probability of making sales.

Remember to think like the customer.

9. Multiple locations need multiple landing pages.
Local sites don’t like a business having more than one local listing, but if the business has two locations, than that’s OK. However, you should ensure that each location links back to a page on your website that is all about that location and what it has to offer. Sending both local listings back to the same page, or homepage, isn’t ideal.

10. Treat Customers ‘Righter’
Everyone knows that they need to treat the customer right, but with social media, review sites and the ability for good, or bad, news to spread like wildfire, you need to treat your customers really good or “righter”. This includes online and offline customer service.

Local search takes into account information business owners put in their local profile, information it finds on other sites and information on the business’ website. Even what happens offline can be taken into consideration as customers may bring back those experiences in the form of online reviews.

Local search is it’s own unique entity as no one can control everything that appears on their local listing, but business owners can take steps to ensure that what gets listed is a good representation of the company. For more information, here is a list of local SEO blogs that we’ve reviewed in the past for TopRank’s BIGLIST with many, many more tips.

10 Easy Local SEO & Online Marketing Tips

Thomas McMahon — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:45:46 +0000

7. Have a full physical mailing address on all pages of your website.
Your address is important and it should be on all pages of your website to re-enforce your geographic location.

8. Think like the searcher/customer.
What would your customers put in a search box to find you and buy your products?

Business owners often get caught up in popular keywords or keywords that will drive a lot of traffic and forget to focus on less popular keywords that have a higher probability of making sales.

Remember to think like the customer.

SEO at Turner Broadcasting: Interview with Dan Perry

Lee Odden — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:37:56 +0000

Spotlight on Search Interview with Dan Perry, SEO Director at Turner Broadcasting

Working with Enterprise SEO projects is compared to smaller company sites is as different as marketing to BtoC vs. BtoB customers. This interview with Dany Perry, the SEO Director for Turner Broadcasting covers his SEO dream job, in-house SEO career advice and skills, enterprise SEO, the future of outsourcing to agencies, being persuasive inside organizations and of course, Golf!

We met while you were with Cars.com and now you’re with Turner Broadcasting. (Congratulations) How did you get into the SEO world and what is it that keeps you there?

I started building very basic websites in 1998, but didn’t get into SEO until the summer of 2000. I built a site for a local golf course and a few months later, typed “Michigan golf” into a search engine. The site I built was on the first page! The light bulb went off immediately, and I’ve been promoting sites online ever since. The satisfaction of success is what keeps me in the industry. I’ve done enough SEO on sites of all sizes to know that it clearly works. Watching it work and seeing the baseline numbers for a site consistently increase over time is extremely satisfying.

What do you like best about your current position and company?

I’ll answer that with an example of a semi-typical day for me: Have an early conference call with London to discuss international SEO for Cartoon Network, have a meeting with PGA.com to discuss ongoing SEO Initiatives, meet with Topher Kohan (SEO Coordinator at CNN) to discuss strategy, have a call with NBA.com and TNT.tv to discuss the playoffs, and end the day by providing some Editorial SEO training to the team at Adult Swim. To have the opportunity to move the SEO needle on properties like these is truly a blessing. From an in-house SEO perspective, this job is as good as it gets.

You’ve spent a lot of time working on the client side with SEO. What advice do you have for individuals that would like to break into that kind of career path?

Doing in-house SEO in a large company is much different than doing it for yourself, or at a small company. I haven’t “done” SEO in years. My job is training others how to do it, and having them keep SEO top-of-mind. It requires an even temperament, the ability to explain why SEO should be prioritized to developers, executives, and everyone in-between, and a love of PowerPoint and Excel.

What skills should a corporate marketer develop in order to be capable of handling in-house SEO duties?

The ability to sell SEO internally. You may have to convince a developer to change the way they’ve always done things. You may have to convince an executive that SEO is a good business decision, and be able to back it up with numbers. I don’t believe that SEO starts at the top and works its way down, or vice versa. It has to happen at both ends (and in the middle) and then you need to keep it top-of-mind throughout the organization. To sum it up, a strong ability to sell internally, a logical approach, and an understanding of the SEO potential and the ability to put that potential into realistic forecasts.

Do you look for specific backgrounds, experience or skills when you hire in-house SEOs?

First of all, there has to be a base SEO skill-set; this cannot be overstated. There needs to be a level of SEO confidence that one can only gain with years of trial and error, dealing with algorithm changes, etc. Also, the ability to take a complex SEO element and describe it in a simple and easy-to-understand way is an under-rated skill. Finally, a diplomatic personality is key.

With enterprise SEO, you don’t get to roll up your sleeves and jump in with a program in most cases. What do you see as some of the more common challenges with achieving end-goal results from search engine optimization in a large or complex organization?

Prioritization. You and I both know that SEO is valuable, and can produce impressive results. My job is to convince an executive that SEO should be prioritized above the dozens of other possible projects. I need to pull together an SEO plan, forecast potential gains in traffic, and explain why this should be prioritized over other projects. The funny thing is that once that happens and you get approval, THEN the real work starts.

I’ve seen you present many times on in-house SEO panels, which btw, have been priceless for SEO agencies that work for large companies. Will companies still need to outsource SEO in the next 2-3 years?

I think so. There’s a lot of value an agency can add, even when there’s an internal team. For example, agency folks can see how an algorithm change affects many different companies and industries. Over time, the lessons learned from this broad collection of sites are invaluable.

What role do you see outside agencies playing?

Depends on the level of need within a given organization and the size/bandwidth of the internal employees.

Where are SEO agencies usually the most helpful?

Every property’s needs are different, so it needs to be property-specific and driven by the unique goals and needs of each. It can vary from assisting with major initiatives like a redesign to keyword research to spillover work.

What’s your best tip for getting other departments in an organization on “your side” when it comes to content creation, approval and promotion for advancing search marketing goals? Any examples?

Showing the opportunity lost in terms of traffic and revenue. For example, if one of our sites is on the second page of Google for a set of keyterms, and I can provide data that shows the potential gains they should receive (traffic gains, and revenue gains) by getting on page one, it makes the selling process much easier.

What are some of the common “low hanging fruit” SEO suggestions you see the most often with large site SEO? The classic of course, is updating one robots.txt file to stop blocking all bots.

The SEO maximization of publishing templates is a great place to start. Relatively small changes at the template level can have a big impact. Secondly, finding inbound links that produce 404 errors and converting them to 301 redirects.

Please share some of the SEO and Social Media tools that you like most:

Working with such big brands, a lot of the tools aren’t as important as they used to be. Because of that, I spend more times in our analytics package then I ever have before.

How do you stay current with SEO and all the marketing, technology and communication channels that come with it? What are your favorite conferences, blogs, newsletters, organizations, books or networks that you rely on?

I’m a big fan of David Meerman Scott’s book on the New Rules. He took a relatively complex subject and boiled it down into easy-to-understand language. My favorite book of all-time is Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. One of the few books that made me look at a website in a completely different way. When I attend conferences, I usually choose the sessions I’ll attend by speaker name rather than session description. Finally, the Planet Ocean SEO newsletter is one of the most consistent, well-written newsletters I’ve ever seen.

Since you’re a huge golf fan, do you have any interesting golf metaphors for SEO?

Love them both; here’s my top 10 list of similarities between golf and SEO:

Accept that you don’t know everything.
Learn by doing.
Measure often and pay attention to the numbers.
Be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
Learn from your mistakes.
Stick with it, even during the bad times.
Seek out good advice.
Luck is just that.
Use the right tools.
Be patient and think long term.

Thanks Dan!

You can find Dan online on his Blog, Twitter or LinkedIn.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
SEO at Turner Broadcasting: Interview with Dan Perry |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Beyond Google: SEO and the Social Web

Lee Odden — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:11:29 +0000

88 billion (OK, 87.8, we rounded up). That’s the number of search queries Google web properties are responsible for each month according to comScore.

Core to many search marketing strategies is to “Fish where the fish are” and make no mistake, the fish are decidedly hanging out on Google. YouTube, Gmail, Blogger.com and many other online services from Google make its presence ubiquotous in the online marketing world.

Now imagine if Google disappeared tomorrow. What would that do to your marketing? What would it do to your business?

Some of the people reading this post have experienced such a disappearance. Not of Google going away, but the experience of their own sites or pages disappearing from high visibility positions within Google search results.

Companies that hyper focus on Google or any singular online channel are not only putting themselves at risk, ala ‘all your eggs in one basket”, they’re also putting themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to search engine marketing.

This is the topic I presented on in the opening keynote at SearchExchange, a budding new search marketing conference held this week in Charlotte, NC. Here is a liveblog post of it from Raven Tools. The conference included familiar names including David Szetela, Chris Winfield, Brent Csutoras, Jon Henshaw, Rae Hoffman, Rhea Drysdale, Sarah Evans, Wayne Sutton and many others.

While Google and search engines present a tremendous opportunity to attract new business, support existing customers, attract new employees and media coverage plus a host of other search outcomes, it’s important to diversify online marketing in a way that also benefits overall search marketing.

There’s a segment of search marketers that use social media in a way that focuses on leveraging networks and influential “power” accounts to drive popularity and traffic to content. The boost in visibility exposes the content to blogs and online news sites, resulting in traffic as well as mentions and links from credible sources.

Social news and bookmarking services have been popular channels for this kind of SEO-centric social media marketing. With over 100 million accounts and growth of 300,000 new users per month, Twitter has been added to the mix as well. Well executed promotions or campaigns of this type can drive a substantial amount of traffic and attention.

Another way to include social media in a marketing strategy is to build connections, networks and community within areas of the social web that are meaningful for both short and long term business growth. For many companies, a relationship with customers is worth a lot more than a click, pageview or inbound link.

There’s a significant diversification and SEO productivity opportunity for companies that invest in the creation of an optimized content strategy that incorporates insights from buyer/searcher personas along with business goals. Following through with the development of channels of distribution for that content independent of, but complimentary to search engines like Google, provides exposure to relevant audiences, traffic and links.

“The advantage of adding social media search to your market research toolset is that you’ll get near real-time information that can help you get a head start on the competition on upcoming trends and get much richer detail than a list of generated keywords from search data can provide.”
Vanessa Fox, Author of Marketing in the Age of Google and creator of Google’s Webmaster Central.

The power of a social SEO program focused on content marketing enables companies to realize search engine marketing benefits as well as long term, meaningful connections with a community of customers. “Meaningful connections” means more word of mouth referrals, more purchases per customer, lower attrition and the opportunity to tap into an active fan base for research, consumer generated content and customer evangelists.

Inspired by Adam Singer’s graphic

Developing and promoting optimized content to relevant networks creates a Social and SEO cycle that expands reach, grows community and improves search engine visibility.

The 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey reports that 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. In contrast, only 14% trust advertisements, (According to “Marketing to the Social Web” published by Wiley). Those statistics highlight the influence of consumer generated content and social network recommendations in contrast to traditional marketing and advertising.

The social web is growing at an incredible pace. According to their timeline, Facebook alone added over 200 million users in less than 12 months. Hitwise has reported that Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S. and comScore’s recent Search Engine Ranking report shows that Facebook search is more popular than AOL search. That means SEO for Facebook internal search along with SEO of other niche and internal search engines is something to pay attention to.

As the online experience of information discovery, consumption and sharing changes, so do consumer behaviors. Marketers need to be a few steps ahead of that and know what their customer behaviors are.

SEMPO recently released a new State of the Search Marketing Industry survey with insight specific to social media Marketing. In particular, it includes a number of data points on the intersection of search and social media: 35% of B2B companies integrate social media and search engine marketing programs. For B2C it’s 30%. There’s no reason for those numbers to go anywhere but up.

Marketing Sherpa’s recent Social Media Benchmark Report agrees and shows that SEO goals that social media achieves, very effectively, expanded content in universal search results, increased rankings,traffic from targeted keywords, improved ROI and more qualified leads.

The decision is yours to make. You can focus all your efforts on Google SEO, or you can develop a bigger picture perspective that creates additional relevant traffic channels to your content and at the same time, boosts search engine visibility. In essence, get better results from Google by not focusing exclusively on Google.

Social media marketing, regardless of who “owns” it in an organization can work in concert with SEO efforts to achive branding and community building goals as well as increasing search visibility, web site traffic and online leads/sales. Ultimately, Social SEO and Content Marketing result in more revenue and better customer relationships both in the short and the long term.

5 Steps to Build a Twitter Marketing Strategy

Lee Odden — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:00:17 +0000

So you want to succeed with Twitter eh? Before you run off and chase shiny butterflies and little blue birds, take a seat and collect yourself. Then read the following tips on creating a potential Twitter marketing strategy that will help you become more productive and successful using Twitter for business.

First things first. Who are you trying to connect with?

1. Describe your target audience on Twitter. If you’re not an active participant on Twitter, then research. Do the homework and write it down, including Twitter handles of actual target users. If you’ve been able to go so far as develop a persona that represents your customers that spend time on Twitter or social media sites in general, that’s even better.

The first step in scoring is knowing all about the goal.

2. What outcomes are expected from Twitter participation? Besides being able to say you have 50,000 followers, of course. Incidentally, we experiment with Twitter accounts and those that have a substantial number of followers do not always result in the the most retweets and web site visits. This is important in the fans/friends/followers game. It’s not how many connections you have, it’s who you’re connected with that determines the propagation of tweets, spread of links, traffic, etc.

It’s essential to know how success with Twitter will be measured. If it’s just follower counts, heck those could probably be purchased. (Which TopRankMarketing does NOT recommend) However, that would be a fake network without effect.

Where does Twitter fit in?

3. Where does Twitter fit within your overall online marketing strategy? Is Twitter meant to be a customer service tool? Brand monitoring? Monitoring for sales opportunities? Promotion of other corporate social activities? (ie blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Etc) Does it support some other communications function?

As a communications and social networking tool, Twitter can connect with customers, prospects, journalists, employees, candidates, investors and marketing partners. Understanding where Twitter fits within the overall mix of online marketing and communications will help with: allocating monitoring and engagement resources, establishing a working social media policy, workflow management and reporting. You may very well find a number of synergies available through Twitter, such as connecting with journalists and bloggers for PR purposes but also encouraging link usage when citing the company to assist with SEO efforts.

Twitter is a tool and only as useful as the tactics you use.

4. A firm grasp of the first three steps really needs to be addressed before useful tactics should be implemented. If all you do is focus on Twitter popularity tactics without addressing a plan for reaching other goals (hopefully being popular isn’t the sole goal) then the investment in time and effort becomes more like guesswork.

First and foremost for tactics, the Twitter page needs to be designed and optimized. If a business has the expectation to be perceived in a significant way, then the Twitter page needs to avoid looking insignificant. Tweets need to be diverse, yet follow a theme that is consistent to the messaging and audience goal. Kudos to customers and offering tips are great but alone are not going to attract followers fast.

There are a few tactics with Twitter that are almost always a good idea regardless of the audience, goals and overall plan:

Having a persona or target profile in mind, research Twitter users and follow them.
Associate the Twitter account with something else that is social, such as a YouTube Channel, Facebook Fan Page and/or a blog.
Make an effort to link to a small number of high quality and creatively written resources, daily. Mornings are best. Brand these with a hashtag like #yourbrandtips, where “yourbrand” is the brand within your company that this Twitter account is focused on. It could also be a behavior or action. Ex: #niketips or #runningtips.
Schedule a #yourbrandtips Twitter event every month, two weeks or weekly. This would be run like #blogchat where a real person from your company hosts a chat on Twitter about survey topics. Ideally there would be influential guests involved so that their tweets attract new followers to your brand’s Twitter account.
The company should really post their twitter handle everywhere their web site address is posted.
Find a way to ask followers questions, then use those answers in blog posts, which are promoted via the business twitter account.
Create a Twitter list of a segment of the target audience. One list for each segment. Then solicit followers asking for recommendations of people that belong in the “segment one” list or “segment two” list. Ex: ”librarians” or “network administrators”. Mention that anyone who retweets a link to the list can get added to that list – provided they belong. Lists must be relevant and managed to be of any use. Promote lists with Listorious.com.
Use #FollowFridays or #FF to recognize people that retweet the brand’s Twitter content the most. Also mention influential Twitter accounts that you have had some connection with. They might retweet the #FF and expose the brand Twitter account to new audiences.

Measure twice, Tweet once.

5. Measurement with Twitter can be tricky such as identifying referrers via various URL shortening services, but it’s the most important. By “measurement”, I also mean monitoring on an ongoing basis, not just counting outcomes or KPIs. Followers is just one dimension. Based on what the brand is trying to achieve, a mix of data points and measurement tools should be implemented. Some example metrics:

Tweets published
Retweets & potential reach from those retweets
New targeted Twitter users that are followed by the brand’s Twitter account
New followers of the brand’s Twitter account acquired
Direct traffic from Twitter to brand’s web pages. URL shortening services should be used like bit.ly
Mentions of the brand in Tweets without links
How many lists the brand Twitter account is included in
What new Twitter users has the brand’s Twitter account added to it’s own organized lists?
How many engagements or discussions the brand’s Twitter account has with other users
Connections (follow, retweet, @message, DM) with targeted Twitter users

Example Tools:

search.twitter.com
social media monitoring like socialmention.com, trackur.com, scoutlabs, Techrigy SM2, Radian6
Web analytics
bit.ly
cotweet.com, hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com

Obviously, there are many other tools for Twitter out there, including overall social media marketing campaign management tools such as: Wildfire, Objective Marketer, Spredfast, SocialTalk, pop.to and others.

Sure, you can “experiment” with tools like Twitter and find your specific strategy as you go, but you could also find productivity and valuable connections a lot sooner (as well as effective time and resource management) if you create a plan that addresses who you’re trying to reach on Twitter, what goals you hope to achieve and a plan for getting there. Make no mistake, there will always be a component of on-demand and real time or opportunistic marketing with Twitter. The platform is still so new that the community is finding new and innovative uses every day. You might find new uses too, so don’t get too committed to a single focus in your Twitter efforts. Be flexible, curious and willing to participate.

Some tactics are always a good idea and some will reveal themselves as you develop your Twitter network and participate with the community. Measuring success on Twitter has everything to do with goals, so make sure you’ve spent at least a little time figuring out where Twitter fits in with your overall online marketing strategy and then what tools make the most sense to use when measuring success.

10 Essential Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Sites

Glen — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:30:43 +0000

Social media is impacting how we do business online in new and exciting ways. Customers are sharing more and more data about what they’re doing online and the things they like. Getting people to share your products on social networks is a great way to bring in traffic and find new customers.

But ecommerce sites are stuck in a hard place because the number one goal of an ecommerce site isn’t sharing, it’s selling.

Take the “King” of ecommerce sites, Amazon.com, as an example. They have sharing tools on their product pages, but it’s not quite what you’d think:

While the sharing links are above the fold, they’re in the bottom-right corner of the screen. And you can bet that Amazon has tested that spot and found that it’s the best place for those links.

It’s hard to know how to promote your products and brand on social networks, without sacrificing potential sales. Along the lines of Michelle’s sage advice on 5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing, here are 10 ways that you can improve social media efforts on ecommerce web sites without sending away buyers.

Basic Social Media Optimization for Ecommerce Sites

1. Get Data

First things first: You need to figure out where your site visitors are sharing your products. Without this information, you won’t know where to focus your social media energies.

AddThis provides data on social sharing trends which you can use to make some generalizations about social sharing right out of the gate. For example, right now social media networks make up almost half (44%) of all the sharing done with their service. It might help to add a “Share this” button for Facebook on your product pages.

But that data isn’t specific to your site. Who knows where your site visitors are sharing? They might be doing most of their sharing on Twitter or email.

The biggest benefit from tools like ShareThis and AddThis might be the sharing analytics they provide. You can figure out where your site visitors are sharing your products, and that information is invaluable.

You can also use Google Analytics with their click tracking and goals. Twitip has an excellent tutorial on how to track Twitter conversions and click data that you could use for any other social media site as well.

Once you figure out where your shared traffic is going, then you can modify your site’s design to highlight those services. After all, you don’t want 74 sharing buttons littering your product pages when you’re trying to sell a product.

2. Set up Facebook and Twitter profiles

Your site does have a Twitter account and a Facebook page, right? These two are the “big guns”, with hands-down the most traction for your social media efforts. (Be sure to follow @toprank)

You have to focus first on what social media networks make the most impact, and these two services are the best places to start.

3. Find unique places for sharing buttons

Instead of using a generic sharing widget in the same place across all your sites, try putting sharing features in prominent placements in different places in your site’s design.

For example, after a customer creates a review of a product, give them an easy way to share the review with Facebook friends or Twitter followers. They’ve already shown they’re in sharing mood by filling out a review, why not capitalize on the good vibes? You could create a simple link that sends the url of the page to their Twitter account to send, or use a Facebook share button.

Here are some other unique places on your site that you might put sharing links or widgets:

The thank you page, after making the order.
sale confirmation email
mailing list email templates

There are plenty of other nooks and crannies on your site that you could add sharing links. Don’t feel limited by this list. Just click around your own site for more ideas.

4. Add product videos

Videos are great sales tools. People like seeing a product in action, so video is an excellent way to improve sales. Companies like Zappos have seen major increases in sales just by adding product videos.

But aside from the improved sales, adding product videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites adds another social factor. People like sharing videos, and they’re more likely to embed the videos other sites. Videos are a great way to add a viral factor to your product pages.

5. Engage customers

It’s one thing to just create a Facebook page or Twitter account, but it’s another thing to actually engage with followers. Social media takes work, you have to daily interact with followers to be successful. Easy to say, much harder to do.

Figure out who’s talking about your brand (or your competitors) and open a dialog.

Social media is a great tool to help promote products away from your ecommerce site. You can get people to your site with social media, and once they’re on your site you make the sale.

6. Add exclusivity

Make a strong call to action for your visitors as to why they should follow your brand on Twitter, Facebook, or any other network. Include special offers, coupons, tips, and other things that customers wouldn’t get unless they were following you on social media sites.

7. Don’t stay in “sell mode”

Companies often only post things related to selling on their social media profiles. But that doesn’t provide much benefit to your followers, does it? People want more from social media than just a constant stream of sales pitches.

Use your social media profiles to tell customer stories, stats, news, and other things related to your business.

Here’s a crazy idea: what if you shared one of your competitor’s deals? You’d show that your brand is interested in helping your followers, not just making money from them. It would be insanely useful to your fans, and it would add trust and loyalty to your brand.

8. Integrate your customer service strategy with your social media strategy

People are already talking about your brand on social networks, and odds are a few of them are venting frustration about something. Instead of waiting for them to call or email you, diffuse the situation by reaching out to them.

There are plenty of success stories of major brands reaching out to unhappy customers and diffusing situations quickly with social media.

9. Track what people click on social media sites

Url shorteners like bit.ly give excellent click analytics. When you share links on social networks, you can track and see how many people are actually clicking the link.

Knowing what gets people to actually click a link means that you can tailor your messages to get the most impact from your social media efforts. For example, you might find that your followers click a lot more on links to coupons versus links to product updates.

You could even drill down how effective types of links are across different social media sites. You might find that your Facebook followers like to click on coupons, and your Twitter followers like breaking news.

The more you know about your followers and what they like, the more useful you can be to them.

10. Give back

Giving back creates trust, which is crucial for your brand. Think of ways that you can be useful to your followers. Share news and tips that they’ll find helpful. Ask their opinions. Give them coupons. Interact with them.

The important thing is that you’re openly trying to be helpful to them. The more useful you are to your following, the more loyal they’ll be to your brand.

What creative social media marketing tactics have you implemented with your ecommerce site? Have you noticed rules of thumb recommended that do not apply to your situation?

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Essential Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Sites |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

SEO at Wall Street Journal: Interview with Alex Bennert

Lee Odden — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:23:23 +0000

Spotlight on Search Interview with Alex Bennert, Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal

This interview with Alex Bennert, a longtime SEO professional with experience working on very large web sites such as Zillow and now with the Wall Street Journal, offers SEO career advice, explores the difference between in-house, agency and solo SEO practitioner, her experiences providing SEO services for a large publisher and the inevitable obsolescence of technical SEO. Oh yeah, we hit the obligatory social media topic too. Enjoy:

You’ve provided your SEO expertise for quite a while with some very large web sites. What is it that keeps you motivated about search?

There are some jobs where the skill set you need is reasonably finite. There is a knowable amount of information you need to learn and eventually master. But SEO is a moving target and that makes it more interesting. Boredom never sets in because I never feel as though I’ve mastered it.

How did that motivation influence your journey to become the Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal?

After the Journal contacted me, I was invited down to NYC for a casual “meet and greet.” As my husband dropped me at the airport I remember telling him that it was highly unlikely that I would take a corporate job at someplace like the Wall Street Journal. I pictured buttoned-downed suits and a restrictive 9-5 culture.

So I get there and the first person I meet is Kevin Delaney who used to cover the search industry for the Journal. I was immediately impressed by the breadth of his knowledge of search and his enthusiasm for embracing the Web at the Journal. Within 20 minutes of meeting him, I realized that I really wanted this job. That day I met with five other Journal people and my first impression was confirmed over and over again. These were not stuffy old-school folks looking back, this was a group of some of the smartest people I’ve ever met who were savvy about what was happening online and passionate about moving the Journal forward into it. And they were asking me to help! I’ve been with the Journal almost 2 years now and still to this day it’s the most fascinating and compelling job I’ve ever had.

What new insights about SEO have you learned after working for the WSJ?

Before working at WSJ I had assumed that Google Web search and Google News search would be minor variations on the algorithm.. Bad assumption! Google News uses a very different set of signals than Google Web and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of having a new algorithm to untangle.

Career advice: For people who’ve worked in corporate marketing, PR, web development or advertising that are looking to start a new career in search marketing, what advice would you give?

Many SEOs are evolving with the market and expanding their services into social media. I definitely see the value in expanding your skill set and your potential client base but personally I’ve had great luck going the opposite direction… specialization. I focus strictly on organic SEO with a strong emphasis on the technical. The list of what I don’t do is bigger than what I do… no paid search, no link building, no social media, no commerce sites. I know what I do well and I try to stick to it.

What are the most important skills for an in-house SEO vs a SEO working for an agency?

As an agency SEO you’re often juggling multiple projects that are in different phases and have different goals and frequently different resources. On any given day you could doing keyword research for a on a broad category (like autos), working with a junior web developer to launch a site redesign, deploying a search strategy for a small local gardening center, diving into analytics for a monthly report, or writing protocols to optimize title tags for an online hardware retailer with thousands of products. The upside is that you learn a lot because you get real experience in a little bit of everything. But you also have to be very organized and centered because you get pulled in a lot of directions.

Working in-house I’m still juggling multiple projects and working with different departments but in the end these goals have to ultimately be harmonious….everything has to fit together and support the site as a whole.

You have a lot of experience implementing search engine optimization from a technology perspective. What are some of the most common issues with content management systems and/or publishing systems that get in the way of optimal search visibility?

Common things I see are title tags that can’t be edited after the page is published or title tags that can’t be different from the article headline or title tags on paginated URLs that can’t be customized.

Do you have any headsmacking examples of simple fixes that resulted in large scale benefits?

Invest in a really good chair.

You have the unique perspective of having worked for an agency, for yourself and as an in-house SEO. Do you think companies will be able wean themselves from outsourcing any SEO work? Or do you see SEO as being like other professional services where companies will employ a combination of in-house and specialized or strategic outside expertise?

It’s important to know what you don’t know! When WSJ wanted to publish their international editions online my first recommendation was to bring in a consultant with a solid track record of executing successful SEO strategies in multiple countries. I’ve attended conference sessions on international search and read lots of information on it, but I had never developed, implemented and monitored an international search strategy for a client so my knowledge on the subject was academic.

Outside experts are the best way to learn what you don’t know.

What role does social media and networking play in today’s SEO for publishers?

In terms of SEO, social media offers a much more viable and authentic way to develop links to your site rather than link acquisition campaigns which were generally designed to get links for search engines. Now you can connect with your market, network, create buzz and really increase the exposure of your brand. And a happy by-product of that is links for SEO.
Also, social media provides another distinct source of traffic. A few years ago, you had email, search, referred traffic from editorial or advertising links and direct traffic from offline marketing. It makes me nervous when I see someone rely too much on a single source of traffic. If your business runs on a website and you’re getting 60% of your site traffic from organic search, you need to diversify. One little algorithm shrug and whammo… you could be feeling a lot of pain.

How do you see the influence of search innovations changing how you “do SEO” in the next year? In the next 2-3 years?

I have a hunch that the kind of technical SEO that I do will phase into obsolescence in the next few years. Google and Bing are aggressively expanding their Webmaster toolsets to put much of this information right into the hands of anyone that needs it. I think technical SEO will become a standard part of web development and other forms of SEO will be assimilated into social media, PR and analytics (except for paid search which isn’t going away). Obviously this begs the question, what will I do? I’m still thinking about that!

How is SEO for a large publisher (like Marketwatch or WSJ) different than some of the other large content sites (like Zillow) that you’ve worked on?

The great thing about doing SEO for a publisher is never having to worry about editorial content! Zillow, Avvo and DriverSide all started with a database of useful information. That database of content can be optimized so that it’ll rank for thousands of relevant queries (san diego homes for sale) but if you want to rank for queries like “best elementary schools in san diego” or “safest neighborhoods in san diego” you’ll need editorial content. Lots of it. On a zillion topics. Oh and make it high quality please? Yeh. We got that.

How much of a role do you see structured data and microformats playing in the future of search engine optimization?

I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte who writes about the visual communication of information through display. From a user perspective, I love the addition of structured data and microformats. From an SEO perspective, I firmly believe the more relevant information you can intelligently convey in a search result, the more qualified your visitors will be.

What about sitemaps and feeds? Essential or only necessary in certain situations?

For large sites, feeds and sitemaps are the most efficient method of discovery for new content. Far more efficient than getting crawled. But crawling is also important because you don’t get anchor text factored into a feed.

What tools would you recommend to an in-house marketer that’s newly acquired SEO responsibilities? Any advanced tools for more experienced marketers that you like? SEO or Social?
Most standalone SEO tools are geared towards linking and that’s something I stay away from. If you don’t have a viable PR strategy or a product that people will want to talk about our content that folks want to read and link to, then you’re not my ideal client. I’m not a PR person and to me, that is the essence of link building. So I don’t use too many tools. Xenu has been a workhorse for me over the years and I’m a big believer in having 2 sets of analytics. Besides that, using the engine’s toolsets as well as syntax queries provides the bulk of the data that I need.

My favorite conference is coming up next month. SMX Advanced in Seattle is one of the few SEO conferences I attend where I always learn something to make it worthwhile. PubCon is another one. As for reading… I try not to spread myself to thin during the week because I could easily end up spending all day every day reading blogs. Generally I hit searchengineland.com because if there’s something I need to know, it’s there. On Fridays I try to make the round of blogs and catch up.

Is there a question I should be asking you?

You may not know that although I am “full-time” and “in-house” I’m actually a consultant for WSJ, not an employee. The difference for me (besides longer-than-usual vacations) is that I don’t *do* SEO for them…my goal is embed it as a process into their standard procedures and work-flow systems. I believe that a really good consultant works to make herself unnecessary. It may seem counter-intuitive to remaining employed but I’ve found that this philosophy makes me more valuable to my clients.

Thanks Alex!

Alex Bennert is the in-house SEO at the Wall Street Journal. Specializing in algorithmic search, she’s worked with clients such as Zillow, Philips, SFGate, JibJab and other enterprise level sites with millions of pages. A search geek since 1999, Alex analyzes bot behavior, ponders crawl barriers and conjures friendly URLs while waiting in line at the grocery store.

You can find Alex on Twitter as SEOsylph

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
SEO at Wall Street Journal: Interview with Alex Bennert |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

SEO Google Style: Interview with Maile Ohye

Lee Odden — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:53:04 +0000

Spotlight on Search Interview with Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google

Maile Ohye has become a well known public figure from Google that works with webmasters and web marketers coordinating Google Webmaster Central outreach efforts, including the Webmaster Central Blog. She has been speaking at search conferences for several years and has done many interviews like this video with Greg Jarboe on the topic off real-time search. Her involvement with Google’s Webmaster Central has been instrumental in helping many web site owners find solutions to their Google problems.

In this interview, Maile shares her experience working with Google, Webmaster Central, offers tips on improving page speed, shares unusual SEO problems, offers her perspective on SEO and Social Media as well a hint at her upcoming keynote presentation at SES Toronto.

Please tell us about your career at Google and what’s the most exciting thing about your work?

I’ve worked at Google for over four years. One of my responsibilities is to manage the Webmaster Central Blog. I love the internet, love Search, and it’s all exciting. Monday through Friday I’m able to eat these great lunches (food is another love of mine), collaborate with the coolest people, and work toward a cause I totally believe in: a better web. In my current role, I assist webmasters to implement open standards and best practices that allow search engines to crawl/index their site. Because in the end, better sites make a better web which better facilitates users finding relevant information. Yay!

So dorky, I know. Can’t help it. I really dig this stuff.

Google Webmaster Central has been a great resource for many webmasters. What tips can you share with web site owners to make the most out of Google Webmaster Tools?

Awww, Webmaster Central a “great resource” for many webmasters? That’s wonderful to hear. As for tips, I’d say verify ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools, sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools’ Message Center, and then check out all the specific data for your site: our Top Search Queries feature was just revamped. Crawl Errors is cool for making sure your site is accessed as you’d expect (many people find unknown 404s, or realize they have server downtime because of noticing the “Unreachable” errors), HTML Suggestions shows you the URLs with duplicate titles or meta descriptions. I think once you start poking around in Webmaster Tools you’ll learn more and more. It’s addictive.

How does one become a Bionic Poster?

Lee, Bionic Posters aren’t born, they’re made. They’re the most active, helpful, accurate, friendly webmasters in the discussion forum. Many of them were bionic posters before we ever had recognition for bionic posters — they just went about their day helping others in the webmaster community. It was an honor for me to meet Richard Hearne and dine with webado while I was on holiday in Montreal. They’ve both individually written thousands (thousands!) of posts to help webmasters.

This thread still brings tears to my eyes.

The disclosure about page speed being a ranking factor will certainly have an impact on user experience. What’s the impact for Google?

Speed is now a factor in rankings because we’re trying to best serve users, and studies show that users are happier with faster sites and less satisfied with slow sites. More satisfied users are shown to spend more time on the internet. More time on the internet means more time spent learning new things, becoming a better informed citizen, surfing the web and, of course, checking out your website. Speed can be a win for all parties involved.

Please share a few tips and/or tools for improving page load speed:

First, I’d get a gauge of your site in Webmaster Tools Site Performance. Then, I’d download the Page Speed plugin. Simple implementations to improve performance are compressing/gzip-ping as many file types as possible, using an expires header, and ordering stylesheets the top of the page/scripts at the bottom. More information in my blog post/video from last week, You and site performance, sitting in a tree…”.

In your work with Google Webmaster Central, what are some of the most common mis-conceptions about SEO? Common problems? Really unique or unusual problems?

A more complex problem we’ve discussed recently is what to do with a page that has its (boilerplate) template translated into different language, causing different URLs, but where the actual (non-template) content remains the same. In other words, only the navigation can switch languages, the content itself is unchanged. This configuration is common in user-generated sites. For example, a discussion forum may have it’s template available in 20 languages, however the individual user posts are written in any language and are not translated.

Because the actual/main content is the same, rel=”canonical” makes theoretical sense. So should the webmaster use rel=”canonical” from the different languages to one preferred version? Let’s say the webmaster uses rel=”canonical” on her entire site. She points the French/Spanish/German versions to her canonical English-template version. Now, however, French-speaking users only see the English-template version in search results. Is this a desirable user search experience?

It’s a tough call. At this point, we can’t give a best practice recommendation across the board. It’s a decision left to the individual webmaster as they know their audience best.

If a web site owner was deciding how much effort to focus on standard SEO (keywords in content & links, crawling, external link acquisition) compared to social media (creating profiles, growing a network, sharing content) what tips would you give to help them decide where to spend their time? How do you see SEO and social media working together?

I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you’ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you’ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site.

Congratulations on the keynote presentation at SES Toronto. What will you be speaking about?

Thanks! I’m super excited. I expect to talk about Search, Real Time Search, Webmaster Tools, cool new projects on the web. And hopefully I’ll hear feedback/concerns from the web community in Toronto, too.

Thanks so much for the interview, Lee. Hope to talk again soon.

Thank you Maile!

Find Maile at:
Twitter: @maileohye
Blog: SEO category

10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page

Glen — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:24:19 +0000

Facebook pages can be a huge way to connect to audiences. Facebook statistics tell us that the average user (at the time of this writing) is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. This means that aside from all the other Facebook friend activity that goes on, your page is one of 60 trying to grab attention a fan’s attention.

So here are ten things that you can do to turn your Facebook page into a dynamic and engaging destination for your Facebook fans.

1. Be unique

There’s nothing worse than a bland Facebook page. Think long and hard about how your page can be different. Remember, your page is one of at least 60 things that an average Facebook user is giving attention to. It’s insanely important that your page is unique and stands out from the rest.

Design is a major part of being unique on Facebook. Check out these excellent examples of creative Facebook fan pages for inspiration. You can never go wrong investing time and resources into a great design for your Facebook page.

Think creatively about how you can add value to Facebook users. Can you give them something? Can you provide them with help, or resources? These are the things that will get people joining your Facebook page and keep them coming back.

2. Don’t use a generic landing page

Facebook allows you to customize what page different types of users land on. You can show people who have never been to your page before a completely different message than people who are already fans on your page. It’s a great idea to show potential users a page specifically tailored for them. It might give a little background about your company or site, and would give them a great reason for joining.

Never let new users land on your Wall. The Wall doesn’t really tell anything about your brand, and it won’t have much impact on new visitors.

3. Give something away quickly

Your die-hard followers won’t need any reason for joining your fan page. But if you’re trying to really grow your Facebook presence, consider giving resources back to your community and niche. This allows you to reach other potential fans within your niche that might not have known about your Facebook page.

4. Use a large profile picture

People on Facebook want to see photos. After all, Facebook is far and away the biggest photo sharing site on the web. So make sure your page has a large photo of your company or brand as the profile picture. This helps with branding and adds trust to your profile.

5. Tag fans in photos

This is a great tip if you’re a brick and mortar business. If you’re somehow able to take pictures of your customers, tag them within the picture. Many people have Facebook notifications that alert them when they’ve been tagged in photos, and this will bring them back to your page.

Your fans also have the ability to upload photos as well. (This might require some moderation on your part. As with anything user generated, you might get some spam, etc.) Allowing fans to upload and tag themselves and friends in your pages automatically adds a nice social “hook” to your page.

Not only are you giving back by adding photos, you’re also keeping your brand planted firmly in the fan’s mind.

6. Use contests

Contests are a great way to make your fan page more engaging, and they also give incentive for potential fans to join. Contests that include giveaways can be excellent marketing tools if they’re done properly.

7. Integrate multiple social networks

You can use multiple Facebook applications to pull in your other already existing accounts from other social networking sites. With the help of some nifty applications, you can pull in Twitter, Flickr, and many others fairly quickly.

8. Thank people for becoming your fans

When someone becomes a fan on Facebook, immediately thank them! Give them something in return, like an ebook or coupon, or at the very least send them a quick “thanks!” message.

This small gesture can be huge in spreading goodwill about your page and brand. It might even give users more incentive to share your contests and resources on your fan page.

9. Don’t treat your fans like kids

In case you haven’t noticed, Facebook has grown up a lot in the past few years. What used to be a place for college students and younger is now a place for everyone. According to this report from istrategy labs, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook in 2009 was adults aged 55 and over. The largest overall demographic on Facebook is ages 35-54, which makes up 29% of all Facebook users.

So don’t write for an audience of teenagers. Everyone is now on Facebook. Sure, your brand might dictate the writing style for your target audience. (Seventeen magazine sounds quite different than AARP.) But don’t make the mistake that the only people visiting and joining Facebook Fan pages are teenagers and college kids.

10. Keep at it

Oftentimes people will create their pages and leave them. Facebook pages are breeding grounds for excellent feedback and engagement. Many people are starting to find that Facebook pages have excellent discussions and high interaction rates, oftentimes higher than Twitter and other social networks. Photos and contests are great interaction tools, and posting stories and articles also add lots of value to the community.

There are plenty of ways to stay involved with Facebook fan pages. Growing a fan base on Facebook for your page requires work, but engaging with your community on Facebook pays huge dividends.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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