Search Advisory   Brought to you by Prominent Placement, Inc., provider of search engine optimization services and pay-per-click advertising

I recently attended Internet Summit 2010 in Raleigh, a conference designed to promote forward thinking on topics related to the internet economy and web technologies.

Here are my chief takeaways from the sold-out summit:

1. Social Media is hot
2. Leveraging Social Media for Search is hotter
3. Generating ROI from Social Media is … is anyone really doing that?

Oh, and I learned a new acronym: ROE (return on engagement).

I hit up all the sessions relevant to the above and other aspects of our work here at Prominent Placement including paid search, organic search, usability and analytics. Below are takeaways from some of the presentations. But first up, an overview of the present and future of search: Read more…

I had about 36 hours’ notice that a speaker scheduled for the eMarketing Association’s “The Power of eMarketing” conference couldn’t make it, and I had the opportunity to fill in.  Although I had spoken and written about the topic of “social & search” numerous times, the space changes so quickly that I decided to start over from scratch.

A very long day and night later, I presented this:

I’ve written before about how SEO and social media work well together (most recently here, also a long series here).  There hasn’t been much discussed about how PPC and social media can help inform each other.  An excellent article by Rob Birgfeld passes along some worthy suggestions:

1. Identify top performing keywords from PPC (as well as SEO) and use them in blog posts, tweets, etc.
2. Use PPC data regarding when people are searching for your products and services, and time your tweets and social media posts to coincide.
3. While social media is global, if your PPC data shows that you’ve got some hot markets, find influencial bloggers, Twitterers, etc. in those areas that you can connect with.
4. Do a rough measure of social media ROI by comparing time spent on social media to results yielded.  Compare this to your PPC ROI baseline.
5. While the social media team is gathering data from the SEM team, they should be providing information too.  Tag clouds and reports on what folks are tweeting and sharing can help guide PPC strategy.

Here’s the complete article again.

I’ve presented a great deal of information in my series on Leveraging Social Media for SEO.  It may be a bit overwhelming to know how to get started and where to focus your efforts first, so let me give you some pointers.

First of all, as with all marketing efforts, the ideal approach is to do research and develop a social media strategy that considers your corporate goals and target audience before doing anything else.  If you can actually do this, good for you!  But if your company, like mine, is moving too fast to do this, I suggest you just go ahead and dive in!

Set up profiles – play with the social media sites, learn, adjust, tweak, and chip away at it.  This doesn’t mean you should do anything stupid or inappropriate, of course (you may want to revisit my post on What Not To Do), but I know too many people get “analysis paralysis” and there’s a real danger in not doing anything.  Better to start out rudimentarily, learn, and enhance as you go than to fail to start at all.

With that, I’ve divided the tactics in this series into four categories, roughly in order of priority (assuming that we all have limited time and want to focus first on where we can get the most bang for the proverbial buck).  These categories are based on my opinion, so your mileage may vary.  Also, keep in mind that they’re in priority by results in terms of search engine optimization only.  As I’ve stated before, there are endless other reasons to engage in social media besides SEO, so strategic considerations may mean it makes sense for you to reorder my list.

Fast Tactics That Provide Direct Results

- LinkedIn Profiles (personal and business)

- Squidoo (lensmaster profile, submit existing articles, create a lens for your business/product)

- Optimized Press Releases (use PR Web at the $200 level, which allows you to control anchor text)

Fast Tactics That Provide Some or Indirect Results

- Facebook and Plaxo (maybe MySpace) profiles (personal and business)

- YouTube & Flickr (repurpose existing videos [corporate, product, training, interviews] and photos [product, facilities, executives, events].  Also set up a YouTube channel and Flickr account for your business)

- HubPages and Knol (upload existing articles)

Tactics That Take Time But Are Worth It

- Corporate blog

- Twitter

- YouTube & Flickr (create videos/photos based on in-demand content or targeted keywords)

- StumbleUpon

- Squidoo, HubPages & Knol (create new content regularly)

Tactics That Take A Great Deal of Time and/or Offer Less Value

- Posting comments on others’ blogs (takes time to find worthwhile blogs and posts for comments, one at a time)

- Digg (takes serious participation and engagement in the community to see results)

- Delicious (doesn’t take much time but doesn’t offer much benefit)

When I began this series a few months ago, I had no idea it would take me this long to finish.  I hope it was worth the wait and that you’ve gotten some good information that you can use.  That’s all she wrote!

Throughout my series on Leveraging Social Media for SEO, I’ve talked about the opportunity to put keywords, or search terms, into the text of links pointing to your corporate website.  (This link text is officially known as “anchor text”.)  This helps tell the search engines what the page you’re linking to is about, which can help it rank higher for that search term.  For example, if your company is the Acme Company that sells purple widgets, you could put a link pointing to your site in your corporate Flickr account or a Squidoo lens.  You’ve got options for what you put in your anchor text, such as:

- “click here” (pretty much a totally wasted effort)
- “go to www.acmecompany.com” (doesn’t offer any advantage)
- “click for more information about Acme Company” (may help the site rank higher for “Acme Company,” but presumably you should rank high for your own name anyway), OR
- “click to read about Acme Company’s purple widgets” (should help the site rank higher for the search term “purple widgets”)

Some of the social media sites I’ve covered in this series don’t allow you to dictate the words in the anchor text.  But some do, and of these, some have systems that will automatically turn the words you type into a link (such as Digg and LinkedIn).  That’s easy!  But for many, you’ve got to use basic HTML to program the links yourself.

Don’t be afraid, people!  I am a marketing person, not a programmer, and if I can do this, you can too.  Here is the piece of code to insert into the copy you’re entering into the social media site (such as Flickr, HubPages, Knol, Squidoo, and optimized press releases):

<a href=“www.site.com”>put the search terms that will appear in the anchor text here</a>

That’s all there is to it!  Now you’ve got everything you need in order to leverage the most important social media sites for search engine optimization purposes.  I will write one final post tomorrow, however, putting all this information into priority order.  Stay tuned!

We’ve been optimizing press releases since before “social media” was a widely-used term.  Optimized press releases (described below) are great for getting a release found in regular search engine results as well as news search engine results (Google News, Yahoo News, etc.).  Taking a press release to the next level and using newer social media tagging and distribution options will get it found on social media sites as well, leading to even more viewership.

Let’s get one thing straight first, though – we are not talking about traditional public relations here.  When a public relations professional writes a press release, their target audience is an editor or journalist at a media outlet (newspaper, magazine, TV news station, etc.).  They hand-select the journalists to target and try to build a relationship with them.  They only send truly newsworthy releases, with the goal of reaching the target audience indirectly (through the third party media).  It’s a very “rifleshot” (narrowly targeted) approach, and it works very well for getting editorial coverage.

Optimizing press releases, leveraging their social media aspects and distributing them across the Internet is, instead, a “shotgun” (broad) approach.  We’re not trying to reach journalists here (if we happen to, that’s gravy).  We’re bypassing traditional media and trying to get the press release seen directly by our target audience on search engines, social media sites, and other websites.  We write the release for our prospective customers, but still should only send newsworthy releases.

Here’s how to optimize a press release, in a nutshell:

- Include one or two targeted search terms in the press release’s headline, subhead/summary, and body copy (ideally in the first paragraph, as well as other places).  This will help the release show up in news search engines for the first 30 days after release (they’re purged from the news databases after that since they’re not considered “news” any more).  Releases also often show up in the main search engine results and can be a great way to take up more real estate there, in addition to the company’s website listing.

- Include a link pointing back to the company’s website with search terms in the text of the link (anchor text).  This can help that web page rank higher for that search term (be sure the search term used in the anchor text is the same term for which the linked page is optimized).

- Use PR Web to distribute the release, paying $200 to tailor the anchor text as described above.  There are other online distribution services and newswires, but we’ve found PR Web to be the best for optimization and social media purposes.

Here’s how to leverage social media options on PR Web:

- Upload photos and logos/graphics, if appropriate for that particular release.

- Put search terms in the Technorati tags to help the release get found in that social media search engine.

- Allow the company’s website to be embedded into the bottom of the press release so interested readers can easily visit.

- Take advantage of the “Blog This” and “Share This” buttons, as well as the bookmark links (such as to Delicious) at the bottom of the page.

- PR Web also attaches podcasts to press releases if appropriate (this isn’t something our clients have wanted to try yet).

Not only will this get the press release found on more websites, allowing your brand to take up more room in the search engine results and linking back to the company site, but it’ll increase awareness of your business and drive direct traffic to the site as well.

There are a number of websites that allow anyone to create a page on them, on just about any topic.  This is another great way to create optimized content that can appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs).  You can also build links into the content, pointing to your main website, which may help boost that site’s rankings.

Here are the three most well-known content sites:

Squidoo
Squidoo calls web pages “lenses” (because they’re supposed to be focused on one topic – get it?).  Squidoo encourages commercial lenses, so you can add one about your business as a whole, and/or you can repurpose articles and other content for their site.  Bottom line:

- Lenses appear in SERPs.

- You can include links, in which you can change the text of the link (anchor text) to include search terms.

- These links do pass link juice!

- In addition to lenses you’ve created, the above also applies to your “lensmaster” profile page.

Google Knol
A “knol” is a unit of knowledge, according to Google.  Bottom line:

- Knols appear in SERPs.

- You can include search terms in anchor text.

- Google has said that these links do not pass link juice…except for some particularly “trustworthy” knols (whatever that means).  Still, it can’t hurt to have quality content about your company hosted on a Google property.  Just keep it editorial and informational more than commercial.

HubPages
Keeping with the clever nomenclature, HubPages calls web pages “hubs.”  Bottom line:

- Hubs appear in SERPs.

- You can include search terms in anchor text.

- Links pass juice if the “HubScore” is over 75.  HubScore is based on original content, amount of traffic, number of “thumbs up” votes, and the quality of the “Hubber” (author).  So the more time you spend creating quality content for HubPages, the more likely that content will pass juice to any sites you link to.

When working with content sites – or any social media, for that fact – remember to do it appropriately and add value for the community.  If your time is limited, it’s worth spending some of it in Squidoo, if nowhere else.

To round out the top three most-used social bookmarking sites, we’ll cover Digg today.  Like Delicious, Digg is a site where you can post bookmarks and access them from any computer.  But Digg’s focus is really on news-sharing, as well as sharing videos and images.

You can submit your own news items and (optimized) press releases, and you can put search terms in the title (which becomes a link – hello, anchor text!) and description.  Submissions are listed on the Digg site in order of the number of “diggs” they get from readers (having a lot of comments helps too).  Web pages that get a lot of diggs and rank high on Digg’s site can get tons of traffic, at least until they get bumped off by the next hot news item.

A few warnings about Digg…many of its users are youngish males who tend toward the technical side.  So those are the types of items that tend to rank highest.  Digg users also seem to hate search marketers.  So if you submit an overly-optimized web page or appear to be trying to “game their system,” they will “bury” your submission (a bury is the opposite of a digg).

Digg does not pass along link juice, since the web pages open within a Digg frame.  So Digg has limited uses for SEO purposes unless you’ve got a really interesting, newsworthy item.  Otherwise, given the lack of link juice and the need for many, many diggs, this is a site you can probably put toward the bottom of your priority list.

Yesterday I covered Delicious, which is a true social bookmarking site.  While I’ve lumped StumbleUpon into the same category, it really works quite differently.  Users download the StumbleUpon Firefox add-on and tell StumbleUpon what types of sites they’re interested in – there are business-like categories (technology, news) and fun categories (music, arts).  Clicking on the “Stumble” button on the toolbar will serve up websites that tie in to your interests.  This can be an interesting and easy way to discover new sites on the web (and potentially waste time!).

The toolbar also has “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons.  Hitting them will tell StumbleUpon to serve up more sites like the one you’re on, or fewer.  Sites with lots of thumbs ups get served up more often (there’s that “social media popularity” thing again!).

The key to leveraging StumbleUpon for SEO purposes is to submit your site by navigating to it and then being the first person to hit the thumbs up button on the toolbar.  After doing that, you’ll be able to add a title (which becomes a link – and you can put search terms in the anchor text), reviews, and tags (more places for search terms).  You want to be the first person to “stumble” your site so you can control the title and tags!

Important benefit:  When a StumbleUpon user runs a search on Google, sites that have been stumbled will have a small, colorful StumbleUpon logo to the right of the listing.  If they have received any/many thumbs ups, they’ll also get one to five gold stars listed.  This is huge — among the drab text listings, the colorful logo and stars really draw your eye to these listings, increasing the chance that a searcher will click on them.  This alone is reason enough to submit your site to StumbleUpon, especially as the number of other users grows.

Note that StumbleUpon is mostly used by people for entertainment – at this point, business-oriented sites are not likely to receive a huge number of “stumbles”.  StumbleUpon does use “nofollow” tags, so supposedly it doesn’t pass along link juice.  I have my doubts – like Delicious, StumbleUpon is fast, easy and free to use, so it certainly can’t hurt, as long as it’s used appropriately.

Hint:  “Thumbs up” web pages that link to your site as well!  This may give them a boost, which may trickle down and help your site too.

Now that we’ve covered blogs, social networking profiles, microblogging, and video/photo-sharing sites, let’s turn our attention to social bookmarking sites.  I’m going to cover the three most popular, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg.  Even though I’ve lumped these three sites into the same category, they actually are quite different.

Today, let’s talk about Delicious, one of the first true social bookmarking sites.  It was originally launched at http://del.icio.us by someone being clever with the URL, but now it’s at the much easier to remember and type www.delicious.com.  Delicious launched as a site to save your bookmarks online rather than on your hard drive through your browser’s “favorites”, so when you’re using different computers, they’re always available.

Over time, people started sharing bookmarks with other people on Delicious and using it to discover new sites from people who share their interests.  Delicious tracks how many times each web page has been bookmarked, so this is another instance where social media “popularity” may indirectly affect organic rankings.

Delicious allows its users to save as many links as they’d like, and you can control the anchor text of the link itself, which is great.  I put search terms in the anchor text, as well as the description of the web page and the tags for that bookmark.

Important: Delicious does use the “nofollow” tag on all their links, so supposedly they don’t pass along any link juice.  However, I strongly suspect that some juice may be passed along, plus it can’t hurt to have search terms in the anchor text of the links.  Delicious is fast, free, and easy to use, so while it may not have a tremendous impact on your organic rankings, it’s still worthwhile.