Ideas for Business

Have you considered developing content specifically to drive traffic from social media sites? Have you also considered what you want from that social media traffic, and what to do with it once you have it?

In a session titled, “Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic“, Social Media Marketing advocates including Rank Fishkin, Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray and Alexander Barbara gave some great tips to drive traffic via social media channels and how to monitize that traffic.

Michael Gray kicked off the session discussion how making a connection within the social media world is key to drive traffic to your website. Michael stated that monetizing social media traffic is harder than most other types of traffic and you should only try to make money from this type of traffic if you truly grasp the concept of social media and monetization.

First off, don’t break the rules!

• understand the written and unwritten rules of the community
• know the communities tolerance for sales promotions

Get involved in the social community before you start to market to users.

Michael offered three tips to help business successfully integrate into a social community.

1. Create a knowledge resource:

• create valuable content that is helpful and solves a problem
• offer free solutions
• up-sell only premium products or services

2. Use social media to promote a review:

• compare similar products from different vendors
• works best with new or leading edge products
• keep reviews honest
• be in-depth but avoid TLDR posts

3. Use social media to build memberships:

• use blogs, twitter, and email to create a group of loyal followers
• feed them information with the occasional sales pitches

Twitter can also be leveraged as a way to drive traffic to your site. Michael made the recommendation to design your Twitter campaign around a deal or give a sense of urgency, an example being Woot or Amazon MP3, as this type of campaign has been more successful at driving traffic.

So, what works and what doesn’t work to market within the social media realm?

What Works:

• information resources
• reviews
• problem solving
• deals
• time sensitive offers

What Doesn’t Work:

• direct product links
• hard sell
• mass goods that aren’t unique
• no information value ad

Next up is Alexander Barbara giving advice on how to create content and manage traffic for social media sites such as Digg.

With social media, the bottom line is that your campaigns will be more successful if you create content that speaks specifically to the community audience.

Before you try to promote your site on digg, the first thing you should know is if your site can handle the traffic of being on the first page (what would 200,000 visitors do to your website server?).

The quality of traffic will vary for each social media channel. Sites such as Digg, and Twitter may help you reach a more targeted audience, while StumbleUpon and other niche sites such as Hugg drive non-targeted traffic.

Alexander gave some advice for creating, managing and converting social media traffic:

• understand your audience and create content that appeals to that audience
• choose wisely about your monetization strategy, think about how the traffic will respond to ads
• be prepared for the traffic, if you can’t handle it, you can’t monetize it.

Vanessa Fox took a different approach to social media traffic, providing insight on how to lose lots of money with social media.

If you are a large brand spending a lot of money to develop a ‘viral’ campaign, you may be losing a lot of that money if your content can’t be found.

How search impacts social media:
First thing people do for an offline campaign is to search for more information online. 2/3 of searchers are driven to perform a search online as a result of exposure to offline advertisement.

What does this mean? If you don’t appear in the results during the information search, you don’t exist to that searcher.

Word of Mouth Search
If you spent money to develop a viral campaign and it ‘spreads’ via word of mouth, which helps to drive and increased number of searches for your campaign, but you aren’t actually resulting for the main keywords, what went wrong?

Did your campaign go against the search rules to help you actually get found?

• did you use text, search engines can’t read images (or flash)
• do you have an html version of your site for search engines
• did you include a description or meta tag
• are your title tags descriptive

Metrics and engagement
Anytime you embark on a social media campaign, you must identify your:

• Objective
• Goals
• measurement for success
• adjustment plan

The whole point of social media is engagement, abandoning your community mid campaign will deter the audience from further engagement

Metrics Options:

• views
• qualified visitors
• increased sales
• increased brand awareness

Vanessa wrapped up the session stating that it’s not enough to just have traffic, you have to have qualified traffic. In addition, having a call to action and compelling value proposition is key to making your campaigns worthwhile.

Final thought: measure at each stage of your process to identify where the fail points are.

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more blog coverage of Pubcon 2008 and the Pubcon photosset on Flickr.

Sponsored By: DMA Workshop on Social Media Marketing Build a business case, strategy & tactics - Dec 4-5 NYC

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Universal search has been touted as the biggest change to happen to search in recent years. Certainly universal and personal search have altered the search landscape to an extent, however to what extent is up for debate. In Universal & Personal Search: This Changes Everything, panelists moderated by Jake Baillie brought differing perspectives to the adjustments SEOs should make in light of universal search.

Brian Combs of Apogee Search began the session with an overview of Universal search. The biggest change, according to Combs, is that search is no longer just about text. Now images, videos, and local results can all rank, and rank highly, for any given keyword term.

This opens up a range of opportunities for the search marketer. A given site can now increase their search real estate by appearing multiple times on the search engine results page (SERP). Conversely, universal search can negatively impact your rankings. Local listings can push your site, which ranks number one in the general listings, below the fold of a SERP.

Combs outlined several advantages to getting your digital assets into universal search.  So-called vertical listings, or listings for a specific vertical such as image or video, attract more attention from searchers. Also, many vertical search engines are less competitive than traditional engines like Google. It may be easier to get your video ranking in YouTube for a specific keyword, which can then show up in Google when it blends its results to include video.

Combs recommended going after local search, as it’s often not very competitive and ranks very prominently. He also advises keeping your messaging consistent across all of your digital assets so that you present a unified message no matter how many rankings you capture in the SERP.

Amanda Watlington of APR explained the advent of universal search in terms of the changing role of SEOs. The SEO is now a conductor, not a mere soloist. Search marketers today have to coordinate with others within their company or client’s company to both produce and optimize the assets used for digital search: video, images, PDFs, etc.

Universal search has also changed the meaning of rankings. With personal and local search, the SERP may alter from person to person and location to location. Its becoming more impossible to control your search rankings across the board.

Amanda also pointed out the change in the definition of search engine. By number of queries and visits, YouTube is now the second-largest search engine after Google. Other sites like Facebook, Craigslist and eBay also rank highly in terms of popular search engines.

With Amanda’s point of view on universal search, nearly everything has changed. So how does a modern SEO adapt and become the ‘conductor’ she mentioned?

Search marketers must grow accustomed to working in more of a team environment in order to coordinate the creation and optimization of digital assets. They must also set new optimization procedures and new priorities in terms of what gets optimized and when.

In order to do so, an SEO needs to:

Inventory Digital Assets Identify what types of files you currently have on your site, and what are missing. Look for opportunities.

Evaluate Current Optimization Ensure your traditional search optimization is solid. “Chase universal results from a position of strength,” Amanda advised. Only go forward with universal optimization if you have a strong foundation.

Identify Optimization Gaps Go for the low-hanging fruit and optimize digital assets that already exist on your site, in particular items like PDFs and product descriptions.

Develop a Plan Create best practice documents and train support staff to ensure everyone working on digital asset creation has knowledge of optimization. Also set performance indicators beyond ranking and traffic, as measuring the success of your digital assets can be difficult.

Amanda reminded the session that “the rules have changed, but the expectations have not.” SEOs are still expected to return results. Don’t just create digital assets for the sake of it, create and optimize assets that make sense for your organization.

Greg Boser took a more cautionary approach the changes universal search has wrought upon traditional SEOs.

“The lion’s share of searchers are being served old-fashioned regular results,” Greg stated. He pointed out that even when your digital assets rank in the search, it does not necessarily translate into greater sales and leads. Searchers can’t buy something directly from a video.

According to Greg, an SEO’s primary focus should still be on optimizing for traditional search results. However, universal search should help shape an overall optimization plan. When doing keyword research, be aware of which terms trigger universal results that could cause your ranking to occur lower down the page.

Greg did give some good advice for people optimizing digital assets. Using subjective adjectives, like ‘beautiful’ or ‘funny,’ particularly when optimizing photos can be effective for showing up in the SERPs. Also, many bloggers make the mistake of grabbing photos they host on Flickr for their posts. By inserting pictures directly into their blog platforms, the blog and not Flickr gets credit when the image appears in universal search.

While they brought different perspectives, all three panelists agreed that a site should be solidly optimized for traditional search results before progressing into universal and personal search optimization. While universal search as of yet may only represent a small portion of the overall optimization a site needs, this portion will continue to grow as search becomes more personalized to the individual searcher.

Take a look at all of TopRank’s Pubcon liveblogging coverage here and Pubcon photos on Flickr.

Sponsored By: DMA Workshop on Social Media Marketing Build a business case, strategy & tactics - Dec 4-5 NYC

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The last regular session of the day I decided to attend was on In-House SEO and PPC which was moderated by Melanie Mitchell and included Jessica Bowman, Dan Perry, Ana Schultz, Allison Fabella and Jill Sampey. The issues that in-house search marketers experience are the same issues that SEO agencies experience when performing enterprise SEO and PPC programs.

I walked in at the start of Jessica Bowman’s presentation who was talking about roadblocks to internal search engine marketing efforts:

• Adds projects to man hours
• Inconsistent with other goials
• Goes against existing progrtamming standards
• Were not technically feasible
• Added to the project timeline and cost

Once you get executive buy in, you cannot stop. Most opposition stems from lower and middle management. Middle managers need to get upper level support.

You plan of action needs to constantly and consistently reiterate the SEM message to all employees. The buy in includes a preview that SEO will run into roadblocks. It will take time and there will be complaints. Prepare executives for obstacles before they happen.

• Devlop a 24 month internal PR campaign for SEO
• Create a SEO presentation you can use internally: Why it makes sense and that it gets high priority and give to anyone and everyone
• Offer SEO Brown bags
• Train everyone on SEO
• Have regular SEM update meetings for all levels
• Use the same slides you used to get buy in
• remind them of the timeline and progress
• The internal PR campaign for SEO never ends

Now up is Allison Fabella, SEO Manager for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who discussed SEO at the middle management level.

There are four sections to consider for middle managment in-house SEO::

1. The product manger - Your first and last defense for the longevity and success of a SEO effort. They approve each phase of the project.

2. The developer - The backbone of your SEO and can directly impact traffic positively or negatively.

3. The designer - Plays design cop to the layout and aesthetic of your web pages. Educate them on how search engines “see” web pages

4. The content producer - Directly affects whether content has a chance of ranking. Give them examples of how ironic or clever headlines show up in search compared to literal references.

Achieving SEO Harmony

• Estahlish your credibility by making quick changes that will show results. This is critical when you are new to the organization.
• Document your successes. Theirs, not yours. Emphasize how SEO benefits them, not you.
• Be omnipresent and locate your SEO at the intersection of development, design and content if possible.
• Goals and Accontability - attach success to the productivity of those in the organization helping implement SEO.
• Make sure SEO gets included in the life cycle checklists
• Training - train everyone in your organization on SEO. More education and awareness the more they will appreciate SEO.
• Compromise. “Well, what CAN be done?”

SEO in middle management isn’t so much about writing content, coding pages, desiging grapihics. It’s about leadership.

Next up is Dan Perry from Cars.com who says when you’re first meeting company executives, to stay at 30,000 feet and speak their language. Show them the math that demonstrates financial opportunity for SEO implementation.

Train everyone on SEO. With marketing and PR, explain you can influience brand perception by optimizing the display of brand messaging. IT needs to know that small changes can have large impact. Biz Dev needs to be realistic. SEO is built in to new hire training to let them know the company puts a lot of value in SEO.

Build SEO into the process for new content development and publishing. Seek out SEO Superstars that will help evangelize the benefits of SEO to the organization. Be available to people in the organization who have questions about SEO.

Have a plan and show the math (opportunity to generate revenue), show what the competition is doing, be ready because it will involve a lot of work.

Next up is Ana Schultz Marketing Manager at Qwest who talked about the pros and cons of in-house and agency PPC.

For PPC the pros of in-house include better internal communication and product offer knowledge. The cons include the difficulty of staffing and the available talent pool. Technology and information sharing can be a challenge.

Do the due dilligence for SEO budget justification. Quantify the results for each initiaitive. Ensure the implementation process is clear and too many page owners can mean content can easily get overwritten.

Last up is Jill Sampey from Blast Radius and previously an in-house SEO from ThomasNet.

Use an agency or not? Look at the specific goals at a specific point in time. How complex is it? What is the learning curve and is it unique to the business? What bandwidth, talent and time available. Who are the stakeholders involved? Do you have the right access to the stakeholders who will evaluate success of the program.

The Agency Advantage: Training is less of an issue because the agency will have expertise that can hit the ground running and less overhead to get started. Many agencies will have proprietary tools of benefit not present within the company. An outside party like an agency often carries more respect than someone in house to champion a project. Agencies can be a catalyst for change to provide outside perspective and involvement. An agency can offer another set of eyes and a perspective as a result from working with many different companies and industries that are not as obvious for people in-house.

Potential Issues with Hiring and Agency. The agency is external and removed from the core business. Agency engagements can be expensive if objectives aren’t clear. Hiring an outside agency requires management of the agency. Finding the right agency is difficult and should be considered according to the specific needs.

Make your own ROI goals instead of putting it on the agency to come up with ROI. Emphasize the value and importance of analytics and make sure you have access to the data/reporting.

Sponsored By: SES Chicago Dec 8-10 Learn search marketing from the pros

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The first post-lunch session of day 3 of Pucon brought together a great mix of SEO experts including: Todd Malicoat, Rand Fishkin and last minute fill-in for Jessie Stricchiola, Andy Beal. Moderator duties were handled by Joe Laratro.

First up is Todd who covered 30 different tools which are too many to mention here but included tools for: browsers, domain server, keywords, competitive research, ranking checkers, backlink checking, on page optimization, spidering, productivity and tools for fixing duplicate content. but the most interesting included:

• User agent switcher allows you to surf the web as if you were a bot from an engine so you can see sites the way search engine spiders see them.
• Search Status Firefox plugin shows you various time saving information all in one place 
• Header Checker
• SiteUptime lets you know when your site goes down
• Domain Tools Bookmarklet that gives you whois information on the domain name you’re looking at. Also shows other domain names someone owns (paid)
• Ping time shows how fast your site responds to web requests. If slow, it can cause issues with spidering.
• Keyword tools: WordTracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com, tools.seobook.com also offers a free keyword tool
• SEOBook - SEO for Firefox
• SpyFu scrapes Google AdWords and can give information about competitor keyword purchase activity
• Compete.com shows competitor traffic and keyword information (paid tool)
• Caphyon Advanced Web Ranking - rank checking tool
• Link Harvester shows unique linking domains to a specific URL, deep link ratio, number of .edu links, etc
• Hub Finder - will find collections of sites that all link to a particular URL. If they link to that URL, maybe they will link to you.
• Interet Marketing Ninjas - a Strongest Subpage Tool.
• SoloSEO.com is a project management tool for SEO projects
• Link Suggestion Tool shows a list of search phrases you can combine with keywords to research link opportunities
• Xenu Link Sleuth broken link tool. 
• Roboform remembers form field information for filling out information
• Jing Project ScreenCapture
• Copyscape will show you any time someone copies your content on the web
• DupeCop

Next up is Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz with “6 Tools that Rock” and promises there is very little if any overlap with Todd.

• SEO Automatic Tool - looks at common on page optimization factors and offers recommendations.
• DaveN’s Keyword Density Tool will analyze keyword occurrence on-page and it surfs as Googlebot.
• blogpulse - Tracks millions of blog feeds and provides insight into what bloggers are discussing as well as trends of phrases over time.
• LinkfromDomain Command @ Live.com - who is a particular site linking to. (linkfromdomain:toprankblog.com)
• Historical PageRank Lookup from SEOmoz tools
• Linkscape SEOMoz is a crawl of the web that offers metrics on link and score mozrank on the domain level and at the URL level. Shows who 301 redirects what page, anchor text distribution and others.

Last up is Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim.

• SEOResearchLabs.com offers keyword research for $100. Extensive spreadsheet of keyword data.
• SEO Link Analysis - Firefox extension gives you a bit more information when opening such pages, it gathers the PageRank for the linking page, the anchor text used on the link, and checks whether the link is nofollowed or not
• Google Webmaster Central - 
• Backlinkwatch.com - Shows the URLs of link sources, PageRank, follow/nofollow.
• SEMCheck.com - $12 tool that automates basic SEO functions and issues.

Sponsored By: Follow TopRank on Twitter

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I always get excited whenever I get a link from a reputable site. My traffic increases and my Google rankings go up.

Recently, I got a link to one of my blogs that surprised me. I had not really targeted the blog that linked to me. All I had done was leave a couple of comments. Also, I had linked to him telling my readers to check out his blog.

I checked out the post where he linked to me. On this post, he welcomed my readers and gave an overview of his blog.

This event reminded me of the effectiveness of linking to other sites to build links to your own site.

I’ll Scratch Your Back If You Scratch Mine

Linking to other sites, or “linking out”, works because of human nature. If you do a favor for someone, they’ll often return the favor.

Many bloggers understand the value of links. They know how hard it is to get links especially in the beginning, so they are appreciative whenever they get one.

Also, the web is now a social network instead of just a place to get information. The new PR for businesses is personal relationships instead of public relations. In this environment, a link is the equivalent to a compliment or a personal recommendation.

And just like in the offline world, if you compliment someone, you’ll probably get one back (at least in the long term).

I Thought Reciprocal Linking was Not Effective

You may have heard that reciprocal links are not as effective as one-way links. This is true, but what many people don’t realize is that a reciprocal link is better than no link at all. I’ve had one site that got a good amount of traffic and 95% of its links were reciprocal links.

Also, in the long term, reciprocal links lead to one way links because of the traffic and exposure you receive. Each reciprocal link is going to send you some traffic. Some of the people who follow the link to your blog have their own blog. If they like your blog, they may link to you in the future.

And don’t underestimate the power of word of mouth. Each person that visits your blog may know a blogger. If you have good content, they will probably tell their blogger friend about your blog. This often leads to a link from that blogger.

With traffic and exposure being the key, you’ll want to link to sites that get a lot of traffic. I use these two simple methods to evaluate a site’s traffic volume.

If it’s a blog, I check to see if they have a consistent stream of comments (an average of 5 or more per post).

Looking at the site’s Alexa Rank also helps. Any site with a rank of 500,000 or lower will probably send a good amount of traffic. Alexa Rank is not the most accurate measure of traffic, but for the most part, I find that the lower the Alexa Rank of a site, the more traffic it will send.

Finally, reciprocal links are definitely easier to build. This goes back to my first point. If you link to a site, that site is much more likely to link to you than if you didn’t link to it.

Other Sites in Your Industry are Friends not Competitors

Think of other sites and blogs in your niche not as competitors but as friends.

Why do car dealerships build next to each other? Why are the food shops in a mall located in the same place? To share traffic.

The same principle applies for linking out. There are no physical food courts on the internet. However, if you link out to the blogs you want to be associated with, you can setup a “virtual food court” and share in their traffic as they link back to you.

Over to You

How often do you link out? Have you received any links?