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

Tom Shivers from Capture Commerce recently interviewed me about how social media impacts search engine optimization.  This was prompted by last month’s AiMA/SEMPO Atlanta event (our coverage here).  Listen to the podcast here.

Topics I cover in about 10 minutes:

• How social media has changed the search landscape
• Google+ and what marketers think about its chance for success
• How businesses can improve the SEO value of their Facebook page
• How businesses can get more marketing value with their use of Twitter
• How Newell-Rubbermaid has pioneered product reviews to impact search rank, marketing, product development, retail shelf space and sales

SEOmoz has published their 2010 Industry Survey, which gives a sneak peek into the details of how search marketers spend their time, which tools they use, and what their priorities are.  With over 10,000 respondents, the data should be quite reliable. 

The statistics that jumped out at me include: Read more…

Larry Chrzan of Blue Horseradish presented an ingenious framework for the different types of inbound links a company might pursue.  He put them in a framework of “The 7 P’s of Link Trust.”

Larry Chrzan after his presentation on link-building

Read more…

The most important thing that human beings do, according to Steve Patrizi, is make decisions.  Which brings us to The Decision-Maker’s Dilemma – I can make a decision quickly, but I may make a mistake.  Or I can be right, but it may take too long to gather all the information I need.  So how can we be fast and right in our decision-making?

Steve Patrizi, VP of Marketing Solutions for LinkedIn

Steve Patrizi, VP of Marketing Solutions for LinkedIn, was the keynote speaker for the first day of The Power of eMarketing conference in Baltimore last week.  His presentation focused on LinkedIn’s new “Signal” product, currently still in beta, which will help businesspeople filter through the deluge of information available today in order to make faster, better decisions.

“More data will be created in the next four years than in the history of the planet,” said Mark Hurd, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, in June of 2009 (meaning we’re more than one year into his four years!).  So how can we wade through this deluge of information to find what we need? Read more…

I was privileged to appear on a panel last night with Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing, Erika Jolly Brookes of Vitrue (also a client of ours), and Collen Jones of Content Science.  Our moderator was Julie Gareleck of Junction Creative.  The event was put on by StartupChicks, led by the inimitable Jen Bonnett.

StartupChicks Digital Strategy Panel

We talked about the importance of a digital strategy – what it is, common misconceptions, how to approach it, value it’s provided, tactics that worked and didn’t, results, and recommendations for new business owners.  We were fortunate to have a good amount of time to delve into the topic in depth, and got some great audience questions.  Some of the points that seemed to hit home for the audience included:

• Everything starts with content.  You’ve got to have content to optimize (SEO), as well as to publish via social media, in an enewsletter, etc.  Have a strategy as to what kind of content your target audience wants, and how to get it to them.
• It’s best to own the platform your content is on, so you control it and it doesn’t just disappear one day (this was my point – I’ve written about this before).  This is a concern with blogs hosted on Blogspot, etc., and note that you’re just renting space on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• In terms of measurement, worry about quality as well as quantity.  It doesn’t do you any good to have a ton of Twitter followers or Facebook fans if they’re not your target audience.
• While digital media is very measurable, don’t forget the “unmeasurable” benefits, such as branding impacts and becoming a thought leader through blogging or social media.
• It’s great to follow best practices, but test and measure everything, because you’ll be surprised as to what works!
• Non-digital marketing efforts that the panelists still use include public relations, speaking engagements, and attending conferences/trade shows.
• We had a long conversation about business versus personal personas online.  It’s uncomfortable to many to blend the two and let the business audience know about you personally.  But it often works to your advantage – business people are people and they prefer to do business with people they like and trust.

This is just a small sample of the discussion – I’ll link to additional blog posts in the comments as they’re published (and feel free to do so yourself).  Live tweets can be viewed here or here, and more photos are on Prominent Placement’s Facebook page here (please “like” us while you’re there!).

Bottom line, it was energizing to have so many entrepreneurial women in one room!

(And props to one of my favorite restaurants, MetroFresh, for the amazing catering!  Speaking of digital strategy – sign up for their daily enewsletter.  It’s so entertaining that I read it every single day, and you can bet I eat there more often as a result.)

Nearly a year ago, we wrote about how to leverage social media for search engine optimization purposes.  That newsletter issue was well-received, but since much has changed since then, it’s time to update the list of worthwhile social media sites.  While there are many good reasons to undertake social media for your business, we’re focusing here only on SEO benefits.  To refresh your memory, there are two primary ones:

• Social media offers additional content that can be optimized and show up in the search engine results pages.  We touched on this in our March newsletter, “Making the Most of the New Search Engine Results Pages.”
• Often, you can build links into your social media content that point back to your corporate site, potentially increasing its organic rankings.  Note that all links are not created equally – links that redirect (such as on MySpace) don’t pass along any “link juice,” and links that are “nofollowed” pass along less link juice than regular links.  Also note that when you can control the text of the link to use your keywords as the “anchor text,” that’s also a significant SEO bonus.

We focus here on the most popular social media sites.  Everyone’s resources are stretched these days, so we generally don’t invest time in a site until it’s reached a critical mass of users.  In our opinion, roughly in the order of priority, you should focus your attention on: Read more…

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land published a superb article today called “The Twitter Search Revolution: Popular & Promoted Tweets Mature The Service.”  It’s a comprehensive look at the difference between “Popular Tweets” and “Promoted Tweets” and where they show up in various Twitter search results.  He also covers where Twitter ads can show up on other search engines.

Danny says, in part:

“What to do if your a search marketer, looking to tap into Twitter search? For one, get involved with Twitter. Understand it. Either participate personally or on behalf of your company.

In terms of SEO — generating traffic from “free” or editorial listings — the move seems clear. Various Twitter search services seem to be shifting away from ranking the most recent stuff first and more toward rewarding relevancy or perceived importance (see The Origin Of #nickcleggsfault & Getting To More Relevant Tweets for some examples of this). Being fresh will likely stay very important, but having good content, being a good authority, that’s going to pay off.

In many ways, that’s the same formula for long term success with a web site in web search: have good content, be an authority. If you’re putting out good information, other people are likely to retweet you. If that grows, you might be deemed an Twitter authority. Similarly, if you can engage existing authorities on Twitter, getting them to retweet your information might make it more visible in search results and add to your own authority.”

There’s a sister article, as well, entitled “The Twitter Search Landscape,” which lists which of the major search engines and Twitter service sites serve up Twitter results in their editorial results and ads.  Both articles are definitely worth a read for anyone interested in marketing via Twitter!

A couple of years ago, one of our clients asked us to manage a pay-per-click advertising campaign for them on Facebook.  I turned them down, since “Facebook isn’t search” – I’ve always been proud that we stick to our knitting and focus solely on search marketing.  This particular client predicted that I’d have to change my tune on this stance sooner or later.  He was right – we’ve been managing Facebook PPC campaigns for some time now, and this points to a larger trend in Internet marketing.

In last month’s newsletter, we stated that the search engine results pages have gotten much more complex over time, especially with universal and personalized search being thrown into the mix.  This same type of complexity, of gray area, is creeping across all facets of Internet marketing.  For one thing, what is search?  How is it defined when we find ourselves constantly searching for various things across different media?  For example:

• We search through ever-increasing DVR libraries for TV shows to watch.
• We search for our old friends from high school on Facebook, hoping that one of the Joe Taylors has a photo and that we’ll recognize him after all these years.
• We search through a lifetime worth of songs on our iPods to find the perfect tune for our current mood.
• We search Twitter handles to find the name used by a new colleague met at an industry event.  And we search Twitter when we hear a rumor of breaking news.
• We search through Netflix’s selection of movies to decide what we want to watch.
• We search through the apps in the iTunes store to find the perfect app to tell us what time the sun rises or what foods are gluten-free.

Everywhere that someone is searching for something using technology (whether it’s a computer, mobile device, MP3 player, video game console, or TV), there is a search algorithm.  And everywhere there’s a search algorithm, there are companies (or TV shows or people’s profiles or songs or web pages or movies or apps) desperately trying to be found.

So…search is getting muddy partly due to the explosion in things to search for and devices to search on. Read more…

Last fall, when I threw my hat into the ring to speak at the eMarketing Association’s “The Power of eMarketing” conference, I didn’t know what to expect.  Even after being accepted as a speaker and flying to San Francisco, I still didn’t know what to expect.

Color me pleasantly surprised!  While there were fewer attendees than I had expected (about 150, not included 20 Europeans who didn’t make it due to the Icelandic volcani ash issue), they were top-notch folks…advanced marketers on the client side from all over the country.  Indeed, from all over the world – I ate lunch today with four people from a large investment bank in China.

Recaps of sessions can be read here.  In the meantime, here are some random points I picked up:

- The average Internet user visits 87 domains, and 2600 unique web pages, a month, spending 68 hours online.

- Two thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites.  Social is growing much faster than use of the Internet as a whole.

- Visiting social sites is now the 4^th most popular online activity, more than checking email.

- Don’t hire a Twittertern (Twitter intern).

- 91% of Internet users between 18 & 64 send or read email.

- Email marketing returns, on average, $48 for each $1 spent.  This can be compared to $7 for each $1 spent for traditional direct mail.

The next eMarketing Association conference will be held in Baltimore, MD on October 20-21.

I spent the better part of a day listening to Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media go in depth about social media.  I have discovered that it’s very difficult to boil this much content down into a series of pithy blog posts, particularly after a long day of listening, taking notes, live tweeting, networking, checking email and voicemail, and keeping a business running long distance.  So while I’m passing along the tidbits that seem the most valuable/new/interesting to me, this is far from all the content being discussed at the Online Marketing Summit this week.  (For more, see my live Twitter feed, or search Twitter using hashtag #oms10 to see the deluge of tweets from more folks.)

Here are some random items from Hallie’s presentations you may find useful:

• Dell has free social media guides for small businesses.
• Announce new product/service launches on Facebook – one client found that Facebook fans, not surprisingly, convert at a 20% higher rate than the average corporate website visitor.
• Facebook ads can be very effective, but if you take advantage of all the targeting options, you may be speaking to a very small audience.  Once you’ve tapped out that audience, you’re done.  One thing that helps is to change your creative very often, even once a week, to get attention and test different messaging.
• YouTube videos rank higher when they have keywords in the video filename, title of the videeo, and description blurb.  Same with Flickr photos.
• Use TubeMogul to syndicate videos to 12 channels beyond YouTube.
• Just like you should register negative versions of your brand name in terms of URLs (“www.brandsucks.com”), you should do the same with Twitter handles (“@brandsucks”, etc.).  This keeps them out of the hands of the disgruntled.
• Twitter analytics: Twitalyzer or Klout.
• More Twitter third party applications: Twitpic, Wildfire, Sprout Publisher, TwtQpon, TwtAway, TwtSurvey, TwtPoll.
• Facebook Fan Pages should use keywords in the page’s title, “about us” blurb, info tab and information box.
• Wikipedia: go to http://stats.grok.se and type in your top keywords.  It’ll tell you which Wikipedia pages for that keyword get the most pageviews.  So if you want to try to add new content to a page related to your industry, choose the page(s) with the most traffic this way.